Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicolaus von Braun

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. Consensus is sourcing is insufficient. Joe Roe, if you want this to work on to see if you can suitably improve, feel free to restore to draft. Star Mississippi 23:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nicolaus von Braun

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This is a weird one. This guy was quartermaster of the garrison regiment of Malmo, Sweden in the early 1700s. Which seems to have been the town guard. Obviously in modern terms being a department chief in a city's police department wouldn't warrant a Wikipedia article by itself, but does it historically? I don't honestly know. The impetus for the Wikipedia article is a 30-page article in a local history yearbook, the citation for which I've cleaned up with a URL which I invite commenters to look at, especially if you speak Swedish. I doubt there are any other internet-accessible sources.

The source material is written in an academic style with citations, but many seem to be general ones for historical context, rather than ones that actually mention von Braun. He seems to only be documented in primary sources found by the chapter's writers, which in theory is fine. Their book chapter is a secondary source which Wikipedia can cite. It is likely to be the only valid source for Wikipedia on von Braun, though. Is that enough? Again, I don't honestly know. This is an AFD where I'm asking what you all think, rather than saying we definitely need to delete the article.

Reading the source through auto-translation it seems to be much more speculative than the Wikipedia article implies, with much of the information about von Braun being guesses and suppositions. It does seem like a bit of hyper-local history. In Wikipedia terms, it will probably be difficult to create meaningful inbound links (I found this article trying to create links to old orphan articles). And it's hard to imagine who's going to be getting useful information from a vague article about a city guard quartermaster from 300 years ago. I know you could make the "it's not useful..." argument for lots of Wikipedia articles, and Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia so it's fine to have articles on very obscure things, but in this case, I mean... who actually is needing this vague information about a city guard quartermaster who didn't do anything notable?

The article was created by a user who was long ago banned, with the central issue seeming to be stretching sources way too far to write content on hyper-local topics... which sounds exactly like what might be going on here right? Here2rewrite (talk) 22:58, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: I ran the name through Project Runeberg [1] and nothing pops up. If there's no biography there, I'm going to say this person isn't notable. Oaktree b (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: People, History, Military, and Sweden. C F A 💬 04:31, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Notability is not importance so the significance of his office or whether he "did anything notable" is not relevant. All that matters if whether there are enough reliable sources to write a basic biography. Between the thirty pages written about him in the academic edited volume already cited and the literature list therein (most of which are not primary, and several appear to contain significant coverage based on how Norström & Bjernehed cite them, e.g. Den Aran Pommern harstammande svenska atten von Braun and Den med skoldebref forldnade men ej riddarhuset Introducerade svenska adelns attar-tailor). This is a local historical subject but that doesn't exclude it from Wikipedia – Malmö is a city of 350,000 people with an 800 year history, lots of people will be interested in it, even if the nominator isn't. What it does mean is that we shouldn't expect the sources to be an easy google away; they'll be in local libraries, in Swedish, and likely not digitised. – Joe (talk) 07:20, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But we don't have these sources, likely existing isn't good enough. All we have is one biography. Oaktree b (talk) 04:14, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I listed three specific sources. There's Nörstrom & Bjernehed, "Nicolaus von Braun - the major city of Malmö 1705–1710", available online; Schlegel, Den med sköldebref förlänade men ej å Riddarhuset introducerade svenska adelns ättar-taflor, available online; and Sundberg, Den Frȧn pommern Härstammande svenska ätten von braun, available in several libraries. And that's just from a five minute search by somebody who doesn't understand Swedish very well. Sources don't have to be easy to find to be useable. – Joe (talk) 08:44, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTGENEALOGY and the latter two are certainly genealogical reference books. Geschichte (talk) 10:40, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTGENEALOGY says family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic. What part of that excludes considering independent, secondary, reliable sources on genealogy when assessing notability? – Joe (talk) 10:53, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do those sources contain WP:Significant coverage, i.e. non-genealogical coverage, of the subject? TompaDompa (talk) 12:47, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I do not agree that the sources mentioned above are significant coverage. Geschichte (talk) 13:46, 8 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I must state first that he was, in addition to a police chief, a member of what would become the Swedish Army Quartermaster Corps, more akin to the Army Corps of Engineers than a city police department or gendarmerie. In substance, there is no difference between having a single source and original research. Significant coverage requires multiple (at least three) sources. This one fails. Bearian (talk) 00:56, 16 August 2024 (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.