Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gold dust robbery

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Jaranda wat's sup 21:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gold dust robbery

Gold dust robbery (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Questionable-notability incident (no google hits) in a poorly written article Guroadrunner 11:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete Due to serious lack of notability, if the person was still alive it would have serious BLP violations in it. Rlest 11:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Nicko (Talk•Contribs) 13:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete Were this article sourced to reliable non-trivial secondary sources (I assume they'd be independent, since after all the guy died over 150 years ago), I'd change my vote, but the combination of the lack of secondary sources and the unencyclopedic tone makes me wonder if this is notable. The Newgate Calendar is a primary source, which means that although it would be useful as a verification tool, it can't be used to support notability. --Charlene 13:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment References: here, here, here, and here. If this topic merits a Wikipedia entry, it is still in an unacceptable form in its current state. It's harder to find references for events in the 1800s than the 2000s, so I'm not sure this fails notability requirements. Eliz81 15:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom SUBWAYguy 15:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per the above. This also reads suspiciously like a copyright violation but I can't find anything it's been lifted directly from. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 17:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, very weakly, probably with a move to something like Falmouth gold dust theft (1839). The article seems to contain in-text references to sources whose reliability at this remove is hard to dispute. Likewise, the fact that someone bothered to create this article more than 150 years after the incident argues strongly, if circumstantially, that it has some degree of notability; it's still of interest to at least one person. The text as given certainly needs a great deal of editing, but these are not deletion problems. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep and move to Falmouth gold dust theft (1839). The Rootsweb cites need improvement, since they do not say the exact paper being quoted. But several reliable and independent references are presented to show that this crime did occur, that the perpetrators were real people, and that it received notice. The article does sound like a copyvio, but no one has pointed to the source, so that is not a legitimate reason for deletion. If it were pointed to a verbatim source, the basic facts could still be included, and it is likely to be a public domain 19th century source. Notability is not temporary, so a recent major crime has no more reason to have an article than this one. The editing proces now has several sources to work from, and the article can be Wikified and the form of the references improved. ~One improvement would be to state the approximate weight of gold dust, not just its 1839 value in pounds sterling. Edison
  • Weak keep for now, withdrawing my !vote from before. The links above demonstrate that reliable sourcing may exist and I am willing to allow it to be kept for now so that interested editors might have a chance to fix the article. But if it's not been improved in a reasonable amount of time then another discussion may be warranted here. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:31, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - it's in The Times (29 Jun 1839 page 6). Article needs work, but shouldn't be deleted. Have added a ref to the source, and wikified first line of article. PamD 22:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep on the basis of the ref. They called it "extraordinary robbery to which these persons were parties involved circumstances probably more singular than any other which ever came before a court of justice". That the Times used the Newgate Calendar as a ref. in this case validates it. DGG (talk) 00:22, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - agree with move to Falmouth gold dust theft (1839) -- GURoadrunner (original nominator)
  • Keep and move to Falmouth gold dust theft (1839), article does need editing but that is no reason to delete. BLP is irrelevant to dead people. DuncanHill 10:24, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.