Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul suffectus)

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. Probable WP:HOAX. No prejudice against recreation, assuming WP:V and WP:N can be demonstrated with WP:RS -- RoySmith (talk) 00:22, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul suffectus)

Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul suffectus) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I am also nominating the following related page for the reasons stated below:

Publius Claudius Pulcher (consul suffectus) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Hoax. The short and sweet part of this argument: I have consulted the standard references about people living at this time in the Roman Empire -- Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Géza Alföldy, Konsulat und Senatorenstand unter der Antoninen, & Paul Leunissen, Konsuln und Konsulare in der Zeit von Commodus bis Severus Alexander -- & have found no Claudius Pulcher that matches either of these two people. (There are only two Claudii Pulchri known to have lived during the Roman Empire: one who is mentioned in a legal decision of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but is not thought to have anything to do with the Republican family, as these articles assert; the other, who lived in the 1st century AD, is known only from an inscription where he took credit for repairing one of the city gates of Ostia, & might be a suffect consul. It's obvious neither are the people of these articles.) The person who created these articles cites a book written by Christian Settipani, but as that work runs almost 600 pages & no page number has been provided in either article, I strongly suspect Settipani's book will not confirm anything in either article; in other words, Settipani is being used deceptively to mask this deception.

The long & ugly part of this argument ("Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate.") Some of you may remember an editor of the username G.-M. Cupertino, who was banned for (amongst other things) abusive behavior, who abusively socked for a while under different user names (including Dgarq) until he finally went away. This person has left us reminders of his time here: about 100 biographical articles of varying reliability written to support his theories/fantasies of family lineages. I'm guessing the reason he cites Settipani is due to the latter's investigation into Descent from antiquity, which I confess seems to me to be borderline fringe theory; & if it is not, this banned editor's work makes it appear to be very fringey. His work has the following tells: subject is a person unfamiliar to even serious students of the period, yet provide birth & death dates; the articles are written in the style of a genealogical or prosopographical entry; little information about the person, but extensive detail about ancestors & descendents to the point of genealogical cruft (to use deprecated jargon); & a citation at the end of Settipani's book, Continuité gentilice et continuité sénatoriale dans les familles sénatoriales romaines à l'époque impériale without any page numbers -- & rarely any other work.

I've compiled a list of some of the questionable articles he's created -- the subject area of biographies of the Roman Empire is infested with them -- & because sometimes the article is about a real person (& because I'm an inclusionist at heart, but this mess is making me rethink that stance), I plan to vet them when I can find the time. (I don't own a copy of the Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, & in some cases I'd like to also verify against the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, which means I need to schedule trips to the library.)

If this mess were simply limited to en.wikipedia, that would be the end of the matter. (And I'd have something to keep However, G.-M. Cupertino has been a busy boy & has also been socking on fr.wikipedia & bg.wikipedia, where identical articles appear. And because we have mirrors of this hoax beyond en.wikipedia, there are bogus entries in Wikidata. This makes me physically sick, because now it will be even more difficult to purge Wikipedia completely of his misinformation. (As an aside, do we have any contacts with either project? If someone in fr.wikipedia could comb through Settipani's book & provide complete source info for their articles, it would make it much easier to purge the rest of his misinformation.) -- llywrch (talk) 18:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. llywrch (talk) 19:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I'm copying a comment I left back at WP:Classical Greece and Rome, since it's about the same thing I would say here. The gist of my comment is that I suspect the articles aren't hoaxes, but that they're about individuals whose existence is largely inferred rather than proven, or who probably existed but are known almost entirely because of their connection to known persons. In this respect they're a bit like figures in better-regarded sources, like Birley, who are sometimes connected by shadowy individuals about whom little other than the name is known, and whose relationship is uncertain, but Settipani seems to build such individuals into houses of cards that give the illusion of well-established and unimpeachable biography and genealogy. Here's what I posted:

"I can't really read French (well, I can read it... I just have no idea what most of it says!), but I'm reasonably sure that they're not deliberate hoaxes, but actually found in Settipani. However, I suspect they're individuals whose existence is merely inferred from various sources, such as filiations or other indications that someone was the son, grandson, father, or grandfather of someone else. For example, "this woman and her sister were of consular rank and descended from the family of so-and-so, who had been consul two generations earlier, therefore their father must have been consul at some time, and he would have been the son of the earlier consul and named after his father. His wife's name must have been so-and-so, because that's how this name borne by one of the daughters and her descendants probably came into the family". Without seeing Settipani's sources, I can only guess what they really say, but chances are these are individuals who "probably" existed, or of whom traces exist, possibly even the name of someone who might be the same person (or maybe some other member of the same family who happened to live at the same time). They're probably not worth articles of their own, but might be worth mentioning in the articles of the notable (and reasonably certain) individuals who seem to be connected by them. But I don't think they're actually hoaxes. P Aculeius (talk) 23:41, 22 September 2017 (UTC)" P Aculeius (talk) 02:27, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete no evidence this person existed, and even less that they meet notability guidelines.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:12, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If he existed and was likely consul, then as a nominal head of government he clearly meets notability criteria. The question is whether there's sufficient evidence to conclude that he existed, or to mention a credible theory that he did in existing articles. P Aculeius (talk) 16:52, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Giving the benefit of the doubt and accepting that the articles aren't the product of an intentional fabrication, I have other concerns. The source isn't available online. There are also a bazillion Romans who shared an exact or very similar name. There's no in-line citations, therefore I'd say they fail WP:RELIABLE. With that in mind, I am further concerned about WP:NOR and without any sources, there's no way to tell. Also, @P Aculeius:, is Settipani legit? His own article is... je ne sais pas... etrange ;-) Anyway, I hate deleting articles. I really hope that someone can find some support for them. Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 05:42, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Again, appealing to normal WP policy, the fact that the sources aren't cited in-line doesn't make them unreliable. The problem is real for the reason you give; but the solution is to attempt to improve the references (assuming they support the statements in the article), not to delete the article. Of course, if they don't support the statements in the article, and no other sources can be found, then the articles should go. The question isn't really whether Settipani is a reliable source; that discussion has actually been had, and it seems that, at least in a broad sense, he is, although much of his work is dense, difficult for non-specialists to parse, and of course, speculative. Which means that in some cases, he needs to be cited as hypothesis, or theory, not as proven fact. That may sound unusual, but perfectly good classical writers like Syme or Birley will posit "probable" relationships too, where the facts are too thin to be absolutely certain.

As for whether Settipani is qualitatively different, that depends very much on your point of view. You might say that he's not really a scholar in the vein of the aforementioned experts, since his specialty is tracing ancient genealogies using available sources. On the other hand, the fact that he specializes in doing so, gathering in vast quantities of data for no other purpose, might make him even better at spotting and refining relationships than other sources. I say might, because it's also possible that he leans so far out on limbs that a high percentage of his guesses are not especially reliable, and would likely be disproven as additional data comes to light. From my perspective, the more troubling fact is that his work seems to be agenda-driven; i.e. the need to establish descent from antiquity might tend to make him "discover" links where none exist, based largely on wishful thinking and improbable associations. As a genealogist, I encounter the results of such reasoning regularly, and it can be maddening when you find completely unreliable ancestries glommed onto your known ancestors. But unfortunately, we can't read French and don't have direct access to Settipani, so we aren't in much of a position to evaluate his conclusions; even his reviewers found it difficult to evaluate them because their own specialties weren't such as to allow them to test his reliability. So for the time being, I would suggest that it's not clearly unreliable work, and may potentially be somewhat reliable, but needs to be treated very carefully. These articles demonstrate why, as it's not clear where in Settipani the information is supposed to come from, or exactly what he says. P Aculeius (talk) 12:34, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@P Aculeius:, the problem is not with Settipani's work but that a banned user, who created a number of articles I have found to be (at best) questionable, cited him. And in a slap-dash way, making the citation unreliable, not the source. If you examine the articles themselves, you'll see these are not about inferred people, but ones the article strongly implies firm evidence exists proving they had lived. Further, the article creator supplies information that is rarely available about historical persons of this period, such as dates of birth, names of spouses, & names of children. On the other hand, the only non-genealogical fact offered for either is that they were suffect consuls "in an unknown year". Yes, there is evidence of a large number of suffect consuls whose year holding the fasces is not precisely known -- we have an article listing a few hundred of them -- yet in those cases, we either have just a name, or know something about their lives unrelated to their family connections. (For example, while retelling an anecdote, a historian will describe someone as an "ex-consul".) So the fact that we know so much about how they fit into a genealogical chain is suspicious. Even more suspicious is that both are claimed to be ancestors of the third-century Emperor Pupienus, & provides a link between him & the ancient patrician house of the Claudii.

But I just stumbled across something that ought to make everyone suspect a hoax here. Settipani has posted a list of corrections & additions to the book G.-M. Cupertino so often cites here. (Yes, it's in French, but Bing & Google will translate useful chunks of text from it for you.) In the corrections/additions to pp. 391f, he mentions an Appius Claudius Pulcher, suffect consul of the second century. What I find decisive is that while there is a person with this name in Settipani's book, he is not the Appius Claudius Pulcher of the article. Settipani assigns to this Claudius Pulcher three children not in the Wikipedia article:

• Appia Claudia Sabin[ill]a, a daughter;
• Appius Claudius Lateranus, cos. designate end of the second century;
• Appius Claudius Martialis, governor of Thrace 166-169.

I have no comment about the familial relationships Settipani asserts, but that is not relevant here. I can, however, confirm both of the men he asserts are Claudius Pulcher's sons exist in the prosopographies I mention above. The daughter is another issue, but he has put parentheses around the name indicating her existence is conjectural, & women of the 2nd century are difficult to identify in any case. Compare this to the Wikipedia article. That Appius Claudius Pulcher is said to have a wife named Sextia & two daughters (whose full names are provided, another unusual detail), one of whom just happens to be the mother of emperor Pupienus. (FWIW, Pupienus appears nowhere in the stemma Settipani sets forth for the children of his Claudius Pulcher.) Settipani's Claudius Pulcher must be identical with the one in the Wikipedia article because G.-M. Cupertino told us that was where he found the information for the article. So G.-M. Cupertino either got the details from Settipani very wrong -- maybe he's not competent with French -- or he made up these facts about the person. In short, while the facts in Settipani's book can be verified against other sources, as would be expected in a reliable source, about the only thing in the article that can be verified might be the name of the person. Perhaps he even invented the name of the suffect consul. At this point I'm sick of digging into this rat hole, & feel I've made my case. This banned user used an uncommon book -- according to Worldcat, the nearest copy to me is in the University library of Berkeley, over 500 miles away -- to give his many hoaxes an air of plausibility. We should not trust any article he has written where he offers Settipani as his source like this, & they should be deleted as their information is shown either contradicted or not confirmed by other reliable sources. -- llywrch (talk) 18:58, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't know. I'm reluctant to conclude that he just made it all up without a source, and equally reluctant to delete an article for which sources might eventually be found, even if they refute part of the information, such as estimated dates of birth, which I suppose an overzealous editor might have introduced. It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would go to all this trouble to create articles about non-existent people, with no obvious advantage to himself or anyone else. I mean, if they were silly articles or in some way were a swipe at Wikipedia or Wikipedia policy, maybe. But nobody would ever notice these articles or see anything troubling about them; it's taken years for someone to suggest that they could be a hoax. I know it's possible, but I just have a hard time believing it. Am I being too trusting? Perhaps. Would like to know exactly what could reasonably be inferred by Settipani or anyone else. P Aculeius (talk) 02:54, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I understand where you are coming from. I don't understand why people would add a hoax to Wikipedia, beyond the thrill of getting away with something. But in this case, I suspect his motivation was to push the idea of Descent from antiquity, but instead of doing the research to find lineages that stretch from today back to antiquity -- what Settipani did, I can tell this from reading that pdf I found -- he made them up. He found a period of history not many Wikipedians monitor & put articles there, all to bridge the relatively well-documented Principate & the Late Roman Empire. But he's not the only one to put hoaxes in Wikipedia; I've seen them revealed over the years. For examples, see Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia, & Wikipedia:Society for the Preservation of the Quazer Beast, a couple of pages to read for entertainment, not sorrow. As for trusting what people write... Well, trust but verify. That's what I do. -- llywrch (talk) 05:25, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - Fails WP:NOTGENEALOGY. This article doesn't even contain much content and its accuracy is disputed, but even if the content was genuine I don't see how this person is notable enough to warrant an article. It literally only lists the person's job title and relationship to other people (and some of those pages are also subject to AfD for similar reasons some of which are redirects to other pages, or even a recursive redirect to this article, which confused me at first), and being related to someone notable does not make you notable per WP:BIORELATED. Put aside the debate on whether this is a hoax, because this article should be deleted either way. Shelbystripes (talk) 16:41, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Again, notability is not at issue here. Quoting my earlier post, "If he existed and was likely consul, then as a nominal head of government he clearly meets notability criteria. The question is whether there's sufficient evidence to conclude that he existed, or to mention a credible theory that he did in existing articles." I'm not saying this is a valid article; just that if the facts asserted are true, then the subject is notable by definition. P Aculeius (talk) 12:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question of being a hoax ties back to notability. P Aculeius is mostly correct about the role of suffect consul here. By the time of the Roman Empire, a suffect consul was not a "head of government", but more of an honorific position. Yet it was a very important honorific position, & having held it put the person near the top of the social order. (BTW, I'd argue that anyone who was a suffect consul at any time in Roman history is therefore notable.) It is this importance that one would expect confirmation outside of one suspiciously-used source that either person were suffect consuls. It's a case analogous to finding an article about a medieval pope no one else seems to know about, & his existence is based on a book no one else has apparently read: one would have to be very credulous not to suspect a hoax. -- llywrch (talk) 17:30, 5 October 2017 (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.