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 delete. Cirt (talk) 06:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Siege of Gordium[edit]

Siege of Gordium (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

I cannot find any sources for this, even looking under the spelling Gordion. Searching the book referenced using Google books gave me nothing either. All I can find is that it was where Alexander and Parmenion met up and seems to have been used as a garrison for a short while. dougweller (talk) 10:40, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Metacomment. It seems to me clear from sources that Alexander took control over Gordium (that's where he cut the Gordian knot). I haven't seen any sources for how he and his army did that (siege, stealth, storm, bribery, threat or any of the numerous other methods for taking control of a city). --Alvestrand (talk) 13:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, even if the siege took place in fact, we now virtually nothing. Apparently Shishov endorsed a speculative claim. --Brand спойт 10:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Wow, this is unexpected, Ev I already have things to worry about, please do not make yourself one of them. Please do not be one sided. The sentences I added to this article already existed on Wikipedia's Gordium article. Therefore I did not initially create anything here, if you try to ban me from this topic, your are making an ill fated and innapropriate mistake, that will have Wikipedia consequences. You people can not think outside of the box. Please think clearly before trying to piss me off more. Imagine that ever time you try to assume good faith another smarty comes along and pokes you. Cornerning me just gives evidence to what I have said before about equal representation of editing, and making a POV encyclopaedia is not the way, excluding somewhat unreliable sources is not for us to decide, because there are better encyclopaedia's out there that include all the information. Yet, here information is limited because of certain revisionist policies begun by Wikipedia's new police force. If this is really happening, then God help us all, thank you. Ev, if you want to ban from a certain topic, say it to my face (talk page), not sneak it somewhere on a deletion page, unless you want this to be secret? I would not be surprised if you got this idea from a certain user... So please reconsider, thank you.--Ariobarza (talk) 18:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza[reply]
Ariobarza, you're not doing yourself any favours with comments like that. I think Ev has a point - you simply don't seem to understand the basics of source-based research. Nobody's saying that's your fault. It's a skill that has to be learned, and maybe you just never learned it? Unfortunately that does put you at a disadvantage here. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ariobarza, my comments were rather misplaced, as in principle comments at this venue should focus on each entry's merits, and avoid such digressions. It was only my intention of not becoming directly involved in this whole affaire (and in subsequent discussions that could take place elsehwere), and the fact that ChrisO had already mentioned the general situation above, that led me to state here my opinion on that general situation, "for the record" as it were (so that others can cite it at will).
Far from "keeping my opinion secret by whispering it in an obscure deletion discussion", I expected all the main participants to read it, including you (rather obviously given your level of participation in that discussion).
Now, regarding the "Siege of Gordium" entry (and looking in detail, for absolute clarity), the sentences you added to this article did not already exist on Wikipedia's article on Gordium.
Using one sentence from the article on "Gordium":
The garrison stayed there until the last months of 334, when the Macedonian commander Parmenion captured the city.
(despite the fact that anonymous Wikipedia entries by themselves are most definitively not reliable sources, but mere guides pointing to certain bibliography)
...you started an entry framed as the "Siege of Gordium" with one sentence (diff.):
The Siege of Gordium , which was part of a low key siege at the city of Gordium in which Alexander the Great captured, and according to myth cut the Gordium Not.
...without having any source that mentioned such thing (that a siege took place, much less that it was "low key"). Not even the sentence from "Gordium" mentioned a siege. It was just a product of your imagination.
The sentence was then further developed into (diff.):
The Siege of Gordium , which was part of an infamous siege at the city of Gordium in which, in the absence ofAlexander the Great, his commander Parmenion captured the city.
...now adding that it was infamous! (in other words, notorious). And, again, without any source whatsoever to back up those claims. And so it remains to this day.
Our policies are clear. To demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. – The Verifiability policy states that "[i]f no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."
If even now you're unable to follow these core policies when dealing with one single sentence taken from an easy-to-check Wikipedia article, I tremble at what could take place with the whole Google Books library at your disposal.
I'm sorry to be blunt, Ariobarza. But please understand that here, inappropriately conducted research implies that other people have to set aside a lot of their time to rectify articles' content, so that they comply with our policies. Ultimately, we're always talking about time... about knowledgeable persons who have to divert their valuable time from other, more productive -and/or enjoyable- occupations. - Best regards, Ev (talk) 22:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are saying your sorry, as you won't want topic ban on me? This is what I find funny, The only part I used my imagination on was saying it was a "low key siege," I should have and did say "infamous," because I could not find any sources for it, for example, even ChrisO agreed it should be deleted (he could not find anything either, so he said DELETE like he always does), while I kept an open mind. Anyways, if you check the link here, the only thing I added to the existing sentence was, "it was in Phrygia," this is fact, but it is not sourced. And here it is, others edited this article too, (while) your accusing me of the wrong things here, [1]. Why don't you contact this fellow, the actual creator of this red link, which I made blue, User:Brandmeister, he named it "Siege of Gordium", I read history, and I have never heard of a siege there, except Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot. And according to the most recent comments, I think someone has found this siege to be true, am I right? Don't worry I am improving, this is a old forgotten article.--Ariobarza (talk) 23:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Ariobarza talk[reply]
There's a basic problem with knowledge of English here. "Infamous" does not mean "not famous". Rather it means "famous for reasons that reflect badly on the subject". The other problem is of course that whether Brandmeister or Ariobarza made the first mistake is totally irrelevant to whether or not the article should be deleted; neither person WP:OWNs the article, it's the sources that matter. --Alvestrand (talk) 04:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ariobarza, the general method is incorrect: you come up with a certain text first, and then proceed to search for sources to corroborate it. – You should be doing the exact opposite: first find reliable sources that deal with a certain issue, and only then write a text that accurately reflects what those sources state.
In this particular case, instead of looking for sources, you took "Parmenion captured the city" from one Wikipedia article (in great part copied verbatim from livius.org) and "Siege of Gordium" from a Wikipedia template, and combined both fragments into a novel, entirely imaginary "Parmenion captured the city in a not famous siege", which even includes your own opinion that lack of sources implies little fame. – In fact, it appears that no source mentions how the city was taken, much less a siege or how famous it is. And that is the only relevant issue to consider. The mention of this "siege" will be removed from the template for the very same reason. – Ev (talk) 06:12, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ariobarza

Factoring out the comments from this single user, and comments on those comments, since they are not strictly statements about whether or not to delete the article. --Alvestrand (talk) 13:22, 17 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment 'Red' articles don't exist, that's what the red means. Who knows why the Gordium article has that unsourced sentence. You can't use it as a source. And it seems that Crowsness, Chris and I have looked at the book and not found anything to back this up. And you should not be attacking Chris for saying you've used your imagination, a number of other editors have said the same thing, not because of Chris but because that is their own opinion. Unless all those other editors are wrong, you do have a problem, and that isn't a personal attack it is an observation -- we all have various problems. Hopefully you are learning how Wikipedia works, which is quite different from the way you work as a student for instance. dougweller (talk) 19:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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