Talk:Rufus (consul 457)

Proposed deletion, May 30, 2021

This article was proposed for deletion by User:Avilich with the following explanation: "Fails, by the article's own admission, WP:SIGCOV, WP:NPOL, and WP:SIZERULE, and is technically a wp:contentfork of the list linked at the succession box below." Deprodding, and per PROD suggestions, explaining the reasons in detail on the article's talk page.

This is a very short article, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future; however, it retains the potential for expansion, and its contents do not clearly belong elsewhere. The policies/guidelines cited by the nominator cannot really be applied in this manner. Specifically:

• WP:SIGCOV is merely one means of establishing the notability of an article's subject under the general notability guidelines. If the notability of a subject is established, then the argument that the subject has not received significant coverage—something which, in this case, is a matter of opinion—is no longer relevant.
• WP:NPOL clearly does not apply here. The subject of the article was a Roman consul, which is to say technically a head of state of the Roman Empire. I think that longstanding practice has established that Roman consuls are inherently notable for this reason, even though in many cases we know very little about them. In fact there are many figures in history about whom little more can be said with certainty than their name, and when and where they ruled or what they were famous for. In this instance we have a little bit more than that—the matter of how and by whom he was appointed, and how far his writ of authority extended. And even the fact that "nothing more is known of him" is of some significance, although that could potentially change with the advance of scholarship into this period of Roman history. Most of these facts, while brief and minimal, would not normally be spelled out in a table, such as the List of Roman consuls. They could conceivably appear in articles about other figures of the period, but readers seeking information about the subject would not necessarily think to look for them in those articles; thus a stand-alone article, however brief, seems justified.
• WP:SIZERULE is chiefly a guideline for when to consider splitting large articles—it isn't intended to justify the deletion of article stubs, which is what this article is. There is nothing wrong with stubs; they provide valuable information that doesn't clearly belong elsewhere, and a logical place for future expansion, whether or not that expansion is imminent. Perfectly valid articles may remain stubs for their entire existence on Wikipedia, and being a stub does not in itself justify deletion.
• WP:contentfork is about wholly-redundant information concerning the subjects of other articles. The fact that people appear in a list does not make articles about individual members of that list content forks. The argument seems to be that if the sum total of knowledge about someone is only slightly more than can be gleaned from the list, then we can safely deem it unimportant and remove that information from Wikipedia. This seems to me to be a dangerous approach to the encyclopedia: the notion that scholarship on relatively obscure historical personages, however important they may have been during their lifetimes, can and should be discarded if it is minimal and the general gist of the person's place in history can be gleaned from a list.

In summary, I don't think that these policies can or should be applied to this article. It is a very short article, and all of its contents could conceivably be found elsewhere, but it seems unlikely that anyone seeking information about the subject would expect to find it in other topics, or be certain of whether information found there truly applies to the subject of this article. The List of Roman consuls does not provide an overview of individual members; inclusion in this list alone does not supply the level of detail that even a stub article such as this one does. It is true that many Roman consuls do not have articles written about them, because there is very little information about them as individuals, and that's fine. But that doesn't and shouldn't become a blanket rule that such articles should not exist, and I'm not prepared to see this article deleted simply because it contains only minimal details about the subject. P Aculeius (talk) 13:03, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Heh, you at least troubled to explain in detail, which is more than most people ever do.

Your argument boils down to 'established notability', which doesn't exist. SIGCOV (NB "more than a trivial mention") is critical to determining whether or not somebody is qualified to have a Wikipedia article. Saying 'he's notable simply because he's a consul' in an argument based on feeling alone (consuls weren't even that important in the 5th c.). Were anything other than his office known I would probably agree with you, but this is not the case here. The article can very well be recreated in the future if additional information ever surfaces, but, as it currently stands, it adds no functional benefit to his presence in the consuls' list (content fork). NPOL says simply holding office does not establish notability, so it clearly applies here. SIZERULE of course isn't binding, but it's still a useful guideline that shows articles like this are not recommended. Avilich (talk) 16:34, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you've delved into what is meant by a "trivial mention". The examples suggest things such as a band that a notable celebrity was once a member of not making the band notable. Here we're talking heads of state—it's true that the consulship in the fifth century wasn't nearly what it had been under the Republic, or even early in imperial times. But it was still the highest dignity that could be conferred on anyone other than an emperor, and was presumably still the principal gateway to other offices; the evidence suggests that the reason for having multiple sets of consuls each year was to provide suitably-qualified executives to fill important governorships and similar offices, although it could also be used as a reward for faithful service. But we also have some other guidance in long-standing practice in CGR.

One never-refuted argument is that anyone who lived in antiquity whose name is known to us today is inherently notable. I don't happen to subscribe to that argument, but I'm sympathetic to it. There's certainly room in some articles for persons with minimal notability—articles about Roman gentes are a prime example. Listing known members, important or not, demonstrates something about the size, territorial extent, origin and duration of a family through time. It probably isn't practical to list all the persons with common nomina known from epigraphy alone, although major references such as PW have typically included even "trivial mentions" in classical literature. But with small families, every member who can be found, even in minor inscriptions giving the name alone, can be helpful, and there's certainly room for them.

The other, perhaps more persuasive argument, is that anyone who was a head of state, however little is known of him, possesses inherent notability. This actually seems to be written into the general notability guidelines, and it's usually been interpreted to include most major sub-national offices, such as governors of various sorts. And we've always applied it that way in CGR. There are certainly persons who would qualify under this view who don't have articles: perhaps hundreds of consuls about whom nothing is known besides their (approximate) dates of office. Nobody has created them, and it's likely that nobody will in the near future. However, the circumstances in which this particular consul held office, his colleague and the extent of their authority, together with the known (and sourced) lack of other scholarship on him at this point seem to place him just within the threshold of a stub article's useful contents.

If this article were deleted, we would find a name on a list of consuls, and no further information; we wouldn't even have the statement that nothing further is known about him, and just knowing that is itself useful, since it implies an area ripe for further scholarship. Let me be clear: I'm not advocating that articles of a similar length be created for every consul about whom similar things could possibly be said. But I don't see the benefit to deleting this article now that it's here; it has some minimal usefulness that seems to justify its existence, and I don't think that PROD is particularly useful in this case. P Aculeius (talk) 20:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)