Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alchemical literature

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 redirect to Alchemy. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 22:10, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alchemical literature

Alchemical literature (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Summary:

This is a redundant content fork of alchemy, copied together from different articles, extremely selective and incomplete, and adding nothing of value over and above the existing article. The topic as given by the title has no potential for a stand-alone article.

Fuller explanation:

I'm rather familiar with the history of alchemy, and I don't think "alchemical literature" has any more specific meaning than 'literature/works on the topic of alchemy'. This would seem to be confirmed by Google Scholar. As such, 'alchemical literature' refers to a huge and extremely diverse corpus of texts, going from the Greek pseudo-Democritus texts, over the Arabic texts attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, to the late medieval Latin works by the likes of pseudo-Geber or John of Rupescissa, and onward to the Golden Age of the 16th-17th century, with Paracelsus, Jan Baptist van Helmont, George Starkey, etc., but also the completely different tradition marked by such esoteric writers as Michael Maier or Jakob Böhme (for a fuller list, see Template:Alchemy).

To describe this huge literature would be nothing more or less than to describe the history of alchemy. There's nothing linking all the different forms of alchemical literature throughout history except that it's all about alchemy. As such, there would be no added value of having an 'alchemical literature' article over and above a 'history of alchemy' article, or indeed just an 'alchemy' article (history of alchemy currently redirects to the large history section in our alchemy article, and probably has not potential for a separate article itself, since alchemy as an encyclopedic topic is almost exclusively of historical interest).

The article as it currently stands illustrates this well: in fact, it is nothing more than a chronological list of famous alchemists, organized in historical sections. It was recently copied together from a bunch of different articles and is completely lacking in encyclopedic style. Our alchemy article is in a rather bad state, but this wholly redundant content fork is a lot worse. It's all copy-paste work with some unsourced POV inserted (a form of scripture, not something one would find in a reliable source), and should just be deleted. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:46, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. Skyerise (talk) 21:01, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Is there anything here that could usefully be merged to List of alchemists. 68.189.242.116 (talk) 17:02, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but perhaps purge. The main Alchemy article surveys the subject by country/region. After an introduction (which might be shortened) this one is mainly a list of practitioners and authors. The two are thus complementary, not a mere fork. Perhaps Rename and repurpose as List of writers about alchemy (or something like that). Peterkingiron (talk) 17:38, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Peterkingiron: as pointed out by the IP above, we already have List of alchemists (and as I've pointed out, that list is quasi identical to the List of writers about alchemy). But there are a number of good reasons not to merge content from Alchemical literature to List of alchemists: one is that the content of Alchemical literature is very poorly sourced and often blatantly wrong; another is that List of alchemists contains so many alchemists that anything more than a one- or two-sentence description for every alchemist would render that list-article unreasonably long. If you'd like to undertake a merge, it would be good to point out specifically which content you'd want to merge (otherwise the article can be deleted, and you can ask the deleting admin later to restore the content you need for merging). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:12, 20 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and perhaps rename or merge with the previously article History of alchemy, to see the full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_alchemy&oldid=439756308 --Alpha Lion (talk) 00:33, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I've skimmed both articles a bit and the AfD article does look to mostly contain content in the Alchemy article. Maybe this can just be redirected to Alchemy in order to retain the history if needed for merging? MarshallKe (talk) 20:51, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @MarshallKe: I've tried redirecting this to Alchemy twice [1] [2] but since it was recreated each time (see the article's history) I've brought it here. Note that you can !vote for redirecting (see WP:AFDR). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 21:10, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect per nom. Santacruz ⁂ Please tag me! 23:37, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 23:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. Unnecessary content fork. Avilich (talk) 13:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep Is a potentially reasonable topic on its own right. I'm not convinced there's any content fork or agenda going on here. If it isn't kept, redirection to allow the good content to be eventually salvaged also seems reasonable. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. So much of this is copied from articles that already exist. It's unnecessary for that reason, but also as per nom this topic is not much narrower than "alchemy" or "history of alchemy". A redirect would work too. Merging looks like it will just be redundant. -- asilvering (talk) 09:01, 2 December 2021 (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.