Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Antonio Domenico Viraldini

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was DELETE. jni 13:18, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Delete. This Viraldini guy probably didn't even exist and Antandrus's word and evidence have convinced me that it is probably a hoax which spread across various places on the Internet. Marcus2 00:20, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

• Delete. Thanks Marcus. While it's already marked as a copyvio, and thus likely on Wikipedia death row already, maybe VfD is a way to eradicate it permanently, since it's certainly a hoax. To save everyone the trouble of going there, here is my commentary from the Viraldini talk page:

I strongly suspect that Antonio Domenico Viraldini never existed; this is a hoax, and one which has acquired an unusually wide internet existence.

There is no entry in the complete 20-volume Grove, either the 1980 edition or the 2001 online edition, for the allegedly famous composer (nor is there an entry for his allegedly famous teacher Carlo Tortora). Anyone who wrote 114 cantatas, and who was a prominent figure in Venice at that time, would have several pages devoted to him in this most thorough and monumental of all music reference works. Not only is there no entry, there is not even a single text occurrence of the word "Viraldini" in the online Grove.

As if that's not enough, there is no mention of this composer in Baker's Biographical Dictionary (Slonimsky); the Oxford Companion to Music; Bukofzer's Music in the Baroque era; and most importantly, there is not a single mention of this allegedly famous violinist in Selfridge-Fields' definitive and comprehensive Venetian Instrumental Music; indeed I cannot find a single mention of him in any of the books in my substantial library.

When you start to check out the Google links in detail, you find evidence that one person promoted him wildly in 2003, referring to two web sites with closely related "biographies". Most everything else that Google turns up is a mirror of Wikipedia content.

If he were a "recent discovery" there would be some hits at respected musicology organizations; there are none.

All right, I've gone on enough; this article is not only a copyvio, it is a copyvio of a hoax. Antandrus 05:31, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There's currently no article text; the only thing on the page is the VfD notice. This, my friends, is therefore speedyable. Bearcat 03:20, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, article has no content. Megan1967 03:52, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Comment — it used to have a copyvio tag on it, but Marcus replaced it with a VfD tag; if you want to see the article, it's in the history (but was zapped, as is usual, by the placement of the copyvio tag). Antandrus 03:55, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• delete no such person in other encyclopedias.. Mozzerati 15:02, 2005 Feb 6 (UTC)
• delete for nonverifiability Tuf-Kat 17:04, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:40, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.