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 keep. Jenks24 (talk) 11:31, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mughal Artillery (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Artillery Stats)

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This article is written by a blocked user - a sock puppet. The article has multiple issues - and has been tagged for a rewrite. Why are we keeping this? IMO it should be rewritten before being re-submitted by a valid user Gbawden (talk) 07:31, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - we don't generally delete things that just need rewriting, and I can't comment on the original user, though there's no particular reason for an AfD discussion to be concerned about such matters. The article already has one valid source, and there is no doubt at all that the artillery of the mughals is a notable subject. There are good citations available at History of gunpowder#India, Mughal Empire#Technology, and Mughal weapons. For example CSIR: Rockets in Mysore and Britain. The article richly deserves a rewrite with some of the many attractive images that are available: but that's normal editing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:07, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, without prejudice to recreation. Template gnomes have noticed a lot of problems with this page, but largely glossed over the biggest of them. Virtually the entire text is copied wholesale from the cited source (available here). This isn't eligible for a G12 copyvio speedy, because that's a public domain work (1903 publication date), but it's still very clearly plagiarism, and the sprinkle of reference links doesn't change that. The "author" is a sockpuppet of Sridhar100, who apparently has a long history of copyright violation and plagiarism in this topic area. We may be best served by blowing this up and starting over. Speedy criterion G5 is an option if we decide the direct text dump warrants faster action. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:51, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I did not see any wholesale copying. Only reasonably good summarizing of content. It was not there a month ago, and I don't see a list of volunteers willing to redo it after it is blown up. -- :- ) Don 20:11, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• For example, compare "Personnel of the Military" with the source I linked above, beginning at page 152. I may see if I can produce something myself to replace this, although it will likely not happen until Monday. Regardless of whether we could adopt this through attribution of the public domain source, I'm not thrilled with rewarding sockpuppetry with a history of attribution issues. It doesn't help that not all more recent scholars are particularly convinced of the quality or neutrality of the work in question. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:25, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Wonderful. People touching it is what it needs to become a GA. I agree it needs newer sources, and WP:NPV suffers, but it is a good start at a article. -- :- ) Don 16:20, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I still don't think we should make a habit of retaining text copy-pasted from third-party sources, with minimal attribution, by repeatedly-blocked sockpuppeteers. But I suppose that's a WP:SOFIXIT argument. So I fixed it. The result is far from done; information about the military structure of the artillery core and the training of the artillery soldiers deserves a place in the article, but I'm out of time for the moment. I'd rather not just drop the text from Irvine back into the page, either. He's a source, certainly, but he's a source with some considerable bias, to the point that later authors on the topic remark with concern about some of his conclusions. it isn't, but it's better. When this AFD closes, I'll also see about moving it to the correct titling "Mughal artillery" rather than "Mughal Artillery". Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 21:26, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Plagiarism is not a reason to delete this article, if it is genuinely from a public domain source: see Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can_I_add_something_to_Wikipedia_that_I_got_from_somewhere_else? Lots of text on Wikipedia is copied from public-domain sources. A note should be added to the page explaining its source, but it doesn't need to be deleted. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:23, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep AFD is not for cleanup, I don't care who wrote it. Ryan Vesey 15:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - This article was brought to my attention, and I was asked to check the copyright status by User:Dthomsen8. From all the research, I could find no reason this article could not be done or should not be done. I spent some hours working with the editor, and he seemed to have intentions of doing a good job with formatting, cites, images, etc. I had no idea there was any Sock Puppet investigation, and as someone mentioned in the investigation, it may have been unintended based on a misunderstanding of the rules by the non-native English of the editor. I think the article is interesting, looks nice, and is the kind of eye candy, other culture article the Wikipedia needs.-- :- ) Don 19:25, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep With a complete rewrite, there are no grounds for deletion. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:03, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Nothing wrong with taking things from a public domain source. That's how Wikipedia got started after all, the first articles ported in mass from old public domain sources, including a print encyclopedia. Clearly an encyclopedic topic we have here. Dream Focus 22:39, 31 October 2012 (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.