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. Consensus is that this is a hoax. Sandstein 14:58, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Syed Soleman Shah[edit]

Syed Soleman Shah (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Likely hoax. Fails WP:V, at the very least. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Possible_hoax_on_Syed_Soleman_Shah for context. Fish+Karate 12:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom. Note an old version of the article has more sources, all in Arabic(?) (which doesn't make a difference), but are open-source user-created uploads, are non-functioning, or don't mention the article subject (which does). For example, this reference (not in the current version of the article) contains no mention of the article subject. Fish+Karate 12:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment This source is available, at least, but no page numbers are given so I can't tell if Syed Soleman Shah is mentioned in it easily (can't read Pashto). The first source in the article (حالات مشوانی / Halat-e-Mashwani, 1930) is now a dead link, but may be verifiable — the publisher, Muhammadi Steam Press Lahore was apparently at least printing books around that time. (In terms of being user-uploaded sources, a lot of them look like scans of older books, so should probably be instead judged on those terms rather than just as user-generated content, although I suppose they could be faked.) —((u|Goldenshimmer))｜✝️｜they/their｜😹｜T/C｜☮️｜John 15:12｜🍂 12:42, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pashtun asking for a Pashto speaker to assist. Fish+Karate 14:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Pakistan-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:54, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete for so many reasons: not notable, poorly sourced and likely a hoax. IWI (chat) 14:00, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All sources checked don’t mention the article's subject either. IWI (chat) 14:02, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete possible hoax. CoolSkittle (talk) 15:03, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Whether or not the individual existed, I don't think he has the reliable source coverage to reflect notability. PohranicniStraze (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The individual has no notability as far as the primary English speaking audience of this particular Wikipedia may be concerned. He may be notable in other Wikipedias. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment - while I have nominated this article for deletion, this is absolutely not a valid reason for deletion. Wikipedia is aiming to be the sum of all human knowledge, irrespective of what language it's presented in. Either someone is notable or they are not, the language by which their notability is established is immaterial. Fish+Karate 10:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per above. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 22:20, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment English is a national language of Pakistan, so the "English speaking audience of this particular Wikipedia" includes many Pakistanis. As for "likely a hoax" - is anyone going to AfD all the articles about early Christian saints and martyrs whose modern published sources inevitably rely on legend and posthumous hagiographies? I will search for sources before voting - as a transliteration, "Syed Soleman Shah" is unlikely to be the only English spelling of the name. RebeccaGreen (talk) 10:56, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for now, per WP:AGF. Until we have someone clearly saying they have checked all the sources thoroughly, and the article subject isn't mentioned in them, I don't know why so many seem to be assuming this is a hoax or non-notable. Also, Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog, I don't think language should have anything at all to do with notability, beyond different Wikipedias having different policies (and I don't see anything in English WP's policies that would support your position on this). —((u|Goldenshimmer))｜✝️｜they/their｜😹｜T/C｜☮️｜John 15:12｜🍂 15:02, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like people have been able to check through the sources now, without being able to confirm the article. So, striking my keep. Thanks all! —((u|Goldenshimmer))｜✝️｜they/their｜😹｜T/C｜☮️｜John 15:12｜🍂 14:57, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per above. LivTheAlpaca (talk) 15:50, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  @Goldenshimmer: The sources have now been checked. Thanks, Fish+Karate 10:18, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep for now. I don’t understand why so many people have decided this must be a hoax. Maybe it is, but as I can’t read Pashto I don’t know. It looks exactly like what I would expect such an article to look like. If the subject of the article held the roles claimed for him then he was notable. I’ve no idea why we’d want to rush to zap this article when we have an abundance of articles about beauticians in Iowa and Bolivian footballers who played one match for one team.Mccapra (talk) 00:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

People should know about the person who were alive centuries ago.--Syed Saqib Imad 17:01, 8 December 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Innocentbadshah (talk • contribs)

• Delete articles are built on sources. Unless people can provide reliable sources to show notability, we should delete the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*Comment the article has plenty of sources, just not ones any of us can read. There are thousands of articles about Chinese history with only Chinese sources which are no more verifiable than this. Fish+Karate has asked for help from a Pashto speaker so let’s at least wait until we have that. If we’re just going to zap articles because they don’t have English sources it’s hard to see how we’re going to build a record of all human knowledge. Mccapra (talk) 09:49, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree, but of the few sources I could access/translate, none even mention this person. The language barrier makes it more difficult to check sources but this does not preclude WP:V. Fish+Karate 10:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  Fish and karate, Out of curiosity, which were you able to access and translate? Only a few (1, 2, 3, 4, 15, 16, 17 as of this revision) are positioned in the article in a way that looks like they would mention the subject (the rest are all just supporting various ancestors of the subject, not the subject themself, by my reading). I'd be grateful to know how to access any of those, a lot of them look like pre-digital things not yet available online (no URL in citation), and the others were scans only. Thanks! —((u|Goldenshimmer))｜✝️｜they/their｜😹｜T/C｜☮️｜John 15:12｜🍂 14:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  Just the information pages, but not the content, but none of the information pages mention the subject of this article, nor do they look like they will. As I said, we need someone who can speak the language(s) to provide full verification. I list them below:

  [1] - dead link, can't find an archive of it

  [2] - in Pashto. PDF.

  [3] In Arabic. Content not available, just a title ("Old Fashioned")

  [4] In Arabic. PDF. "The book of Rawad Al-Matar in the Tree of Flowers" is the Google-translated title.

  [5] In Arabic. PDF. "Book of the Mayor of the student in the genealogy of Abu Talib".

  [6] In Arabic. PDF. "Book of masterpiece of flowers and plantation of rivers in the genealogy of the sons of the pure imams". Another one about flowers.

  [7] In Arabic. PDF. I think this is a student's work book.

  [8] In Arabic. PDF. "The secret of the upper chain is in the upper saplings".

  [9] In Arabic. PDF. A "Book of population ratios".

  [10] In Arabic the sayings and teachings of Sahih al-Bukhari. No mention of article subject.

  [11] This is this book, which has nothing to do with the article subject. Some details at Kitab_al-Kafi#Usūl(fundamentals)_al-Kāfī.

The fact the references I can make sense of don't reference the article subject at all make me think this is not verifiable, hoax or not. Fish+Karate 14:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I am still trying to get some assistance from speakers of these various languages, and have posted asking for an Arabic speaker to assist at both Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Islam#Arabic_speaker_needed and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Arab_world#Arabic_speaker_needed. Fish+Karate 14:58, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting! Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Some of the things from the genealogy section are certainly... botanical. I really wish the mashwani.org link to Halat-e-Mashwani weren't dead (although it was still a scan, rather than text). —((u|Goldenshimmer))｜✝️｜they/their｜😹｜T/C｜☮️｜John 15:12｜🍂 15:36, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks I've looked at half a dozen of the Arabic sources and I agree there does not seem to be any relationship between them and the text they refer to. They are about Sufism and isnad but without ploughing through entire online books there's no way of knowing whether they support the article text or not. It may be a hoax, though my guess is that the editor who created the article has derived the article text from a book, and where there were footnotes in the book, just googled to see if they could find an online version of the book cited, and linked to that without any attempt to relate to a specific page or anything. Anyway I'm much clearer now that the alleged references don't support the text, so I'm happy to change my view.

• Delete Mccapra (talk) 18:11, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete the insertion of multiple "sources" that don't mention the subject is a clear indication of a hoax. We don't need to check every source in cases like this. Legacypac (talk) 22:04, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Note Other very similar articles that potentially need to be reviewed:
  • Gesudaraz I
  • Syed Adam Banuri
  • Syed Ali ibn Ismail - was tagged for speedy deletion but this was declined by SoWhy because "people who lived 1300+ years ago are almost always significant"
  • Syed Jafar al-Qa’im
  • Syed Muhammad Masood
  • Ali ibn Ismail
  • Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah
  • Sheikh Isa Mashwani
  • Syed Muhammad Ahmad Shah
  • Syed Faateh
  • Syed Qaaf - was tagged for speedy deletion but declined by Hullaballoo Wolfowitz as "enough to survive A7" (it doesn't, but there we are)

Mashwanis probably needs reviewing carefully also. Fish+Karate 10:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(pinged) My A7 decline was imho correct since anyone noteworthy enough to write about 1300 later requires a closer look, It does not preclude a hoax deletion after discussion. I do agree with Hullaballoo Wolfowitz's decision on Syed Qaaf as well. If the father is notable, there is a WP:ATD redirect/merge target and thus no reason to delete. Regards SoWhy 10:26, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Not criticizing your decline, that one was a reasonable assumption to make. Fish+Karate 10:38, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Anyone proposing delete without having verified the citations, or without even making a comment that 'justifies' their position for delete, should be ignored from consideration of the final decision. I am sure you guys can find somebody who speaks Arabic to look through the material. Just don't rely on "possible hoax" as a reason for deleting articles. DA1 (talk) 13:52, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reply Someone has checked the sources and confirmed that none of those checked seem to mention the article's subject. IWI (chat) 13:57, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@ImprovedWikiImprovment: I've seen articles where a user created their own OR (like a religious sect or movement that isn't even real). In this case, I'm guessing the subject simply isn't very notable. DA1 (talk) 14:30, 14 December 2018 (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.