Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ennodius

Ennodius

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This brief and awkward article (created by a now-banned user) is about a man who was serving as governor of the Roman province of Africa in AD 395. The content consists almost entirely of speculation on genealogy, and the sole author cited as a source does not seem to meet WP:RS standards. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (page 278: ennoivs proconsul Africae 395), a RS, gives nothing on this person aside from his existence being recorded in official documents. Fails WP:NOTABILITY and WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Avilich (talk) 00:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 02:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 02:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 02:54, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. ^{Engr. Smitty Werben} 02:54, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. WP:Notability does state that governors by virtue of their position are inherently notable. However, this seems to have WP:RS issues and should be deleted unless someone can come up with a more thorough and sourced article. ~RAM (talk) 05:41, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete WP:TNT Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 16:04, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or merge into another suitable article. As governor of Africa, he clearly meets the criteria for notability, even if very little is known of him apart from his (possible) relationships to other notable persons. He might be merged into another article, perhaps about Roman governors of Africa, but only if most or all of the data here is suitable for inclusion there. The arguments about the sourcing given above are misdirected. Settipani is a source of uncertain value, because his work is difficult to obtain and review, and it has received relatively little peer review due to its density—but there is no direct evidence that his conclusions are unreliable, provided that they're accurately described when cited. And to dispute that, we'd need to see what Settipani says—we can't demand that the article's author prove that the source says what it's claimed to say, or else delete it. That's not what verifiability means, and verifiability is not determined by whether a source is available online, in English, or conveniently. But even if you delete Settipani, that wouldn't make the subject non-notable or the details unverifiable. Due diligence would require us to make a reasonable search for sources before concluding that there are none—and it seems very improbable that there aren't some reliable sources other than Settipani—whatever you think of his methodology and conclusions, he didn't just invent governors of Africa for whom there was no evidence. WP:TNT is not policy, and clearly does not describe this article; this short and relatively succinct article is obviously not "hopelessly irreparable" simply because it could use additional details or more accessible sources. P Aculeius (talk) 14:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -- He would be notable if we knew anything about him. However all we have here is genealogfical links to Magnus Felix Ennodius, which names two people called Ennodius as proconsuls of Africa. I believe that in many cases, we do not know the full succession of provincial governors. Perhaps merge/redirect to Magnus Felix Ennodius. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:10, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:03, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reiterate support for deletion. We know nothing about this Ennodius aside from his name being mentioned in law codes from after his death (see the reference provided in the original post). We know nothing about his life, what he did as governor... nothing – just that he existed. The article only contains speculative genealogical trivia which, even if relevant, belongs in the article of his supposed descendant. I have no idea what this article should be merged into, as has been suggested above. As of now, we have virtually nothing on the subject, so WP:TNT can by all means apply here: nothing of much value will be lost. Avilich (talk) 19:27, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NOTABILITY and WP:NOTGENEALOGY. @Avilich: Please add the ref to Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire here. T8612 (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Avilich (talk) 19:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or merge P Aculeius has an iron-clad point: as proconsul of Africa, he meets the bar of notability, no matter what more we can say about him. (This is a replay of every deletion argument about professional athletes who appear once in a major-league game, but we add nothing more to their permastub. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXITS be damned.) Beyond this, I can supply another source that discusses his importance in genealogy: T.S. Mommaerts & D.H. Kelley, "The Anicii of Gaul and Rome", chapter 10 in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, John Drinkwater & Hugh Elton (ed.), (Cambridge: University Press, 1992) discusses how Ennodius (aka Ennoius) possibly fits into the 3rd century House of the Anicii. All four men involved with this article are reliable sources about the subject. Mommaerts & Kelley propose a family tree where this Ennodius marries a hypothetical daughter of the usurper Magnus Maximus, which results with two children: Felix Ennodius, proconsul of Africa 408-420; & a hypothetical daughter who married Anicius Probinus & was the mother of Petronius Maximus, Emperor in 455. While I personally don't believe this proposed stemma accurately reflects history -- too many are too eager to map lineages that connect families of the 3rd & 4th centuries with those of the 5th & later -- it contains reasonable hypotheses worth mentioning in Wikipedia.
But I want to salute the efforts Avilich is making to clean up the mess not only this now-banned editor has made, but others inadvertently have added to. There are many articles in this area that need work -- either rewriting or deletion -- but sometimes this clean up needs to be handled with care. I honestly wish we had another article we could merge this permastub with -- that is the best solution -- but I can't think of a good candidate. (If Anicia gens were in better shape, that would be a good choice.) There is no harm in keeping this permastub around for the time being until a satisfactory solution is found. -- llywrch (talk) 22:57, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

After a bit more thought, I think the best solution might be to merge this article with Felix Ennodius, another article stuffed with dubious genealogy-cruft. These two men have similar names & it is not out of the question they are related. Unless merging these 2 articles would lead to WP:FRANKENSTEIN. -- llywrch (talk) 23:27, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Llywrch, first of all, many thanks for your words. The pool of questionable articles isn't that big to begin with, and I think many if not most of those worthy of deletion (those related to ancient Rome) are already dealt with, as of now. Hopefully my pinging you multiple times hasn't been a bother.

I wasn't aware that there were multiple Ennodii whose articles are in a similar state to the one currently nominated for deletion. With regards to this specific one, I don't like the idea of keeping, since mentioning only that he was governor of Africa in 395 and nothing else makes for an awkward article, though the comparison with the football players was admittedly compelling. The genealogical stuff, which does not itself determine notability, could simply be scattered among the articles of relevant individual Anicii (perhaps a family tree could feature on one of them). As for merging, this question is made difficult because there is no obvious 'gens' article to which Ennodius could be redirected by default. A prosopographical list of Ennodii could be created, but we only seem to know that they were governors of Africa, and we already have governor lists for that. In the end, I had thought there was no harm in getting rid of a subpar article and letting a diligent editor figure the problem out in the future; in the meantime, we already have the list of governors here indicating that Ennodius held the position in 395 – the only certain fact we know about him to begin with. With this paucity of information, the Ennodius article may very well be regarded as a redundant fork of the African governors' list. Avilich (talk) 01:43, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Avilich, you make a good argument if we assume that it is proper to delete articles about people who meet the bar for notability, but for whom we have little or no information. However, even if we were to delete these articles it would be inevitable at some time in the future another Wikipedian would try to recreate this article -- which would then be a permastub, perhaps with less reliable information. (This is a problem waiting for us with a large number of articles.) Let's avoid this problem by creating an article about both, mention that some experts believe they are related... & this is all there is to know about them. That way we have decisively dealt with this subject -- which is all I'm interested in -- & we can move on to other challenges. -- llywrch (talk) 08:03, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As correctly pointed out by others before me, this person is notable. No question about it. So delete is really not an option. Merge is an option and, since the article is short, would be my first preference. Yet there is no good merge target. Which leaves keep as the only great option. gidonb (talk) 20:11, 24 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]