Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manzur Nu'mani

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The result was keep, nomination withdrawn. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 16:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Manzur Nu'mani

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I am having difficulty finding non-trivial RS coverage of this person. Zero refs. Tagged for being an orphan for well over 2 years. Epeefleche (talk) 19:55, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - As an Indian scholar, systematic bias might make it hard to come up with sources, so I feel we should subject this article to less harsh criticism. What coverage at all have you found? ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:03, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've turned up zero Gnews archives hits. Some of the systematic bias concerns he avoids. Like the average Wikipedian on the English Wikipedia, he is: (1) a male, (2) formally educated, (3) a non-labourer, hailing from (4) a country win which English is an official (subsidiary, in his case) language. In any event, I don't think that we address systemic bias by lowering our notability standards, but rather by looking carefully for substantive RS coverage.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:30, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Islam-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. If this is the same person as the Muhammad Manzur Nu'mani who was involved with the Jamaat-e-Islami in the 1940s (this seems likely but not certain), there seem to be quite enough good GBook hits to establish notability - in which case, keep (and add the information to the article). PWilkinson (talk) 13:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —Tom Morris (talk) 14:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

His name is more commonly transliterated to English as Muhammad Manzoor Nomani. Pseudofusulina (talk) 20:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Or just looking for Manzoor Nomani (Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) may be even better - some sources either transliterate Muhammad as Mohammad, abbreviate it or omit it altogether. Given the sources I am now seeing, we are looking at a religious figure (and controversialist) who was influential among at least a significant minority of Indian Muslims from the late 1930s to the 1990s - and Al Furqan, the journal and publishing house he founded in Lucknow, seems to be continuing at least some of that influence even today. The problem now seems to be that while there are quite a few reliable sources, they all seem to be concentrating on particular periods or aspects of his career - I haven't yet spotted any overviews. But while this may make the article tricky to write while avoiding synthesis, I have no doubts of his notability. The conditional keep that I gave above is now definite. PWilkinson (talk) 00:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I agree with Epeefleche that we address our systematic bias by looking carefully for sources--but that means looking beyond the googles. Anyone who appears notable on the basis of verifiable information from India would need a careful search in local print sources before rejecting as unsourceable--and our criterion is not unsourced, but unsourceable. Unfortunately, India at present has neither a union catalog of books, nor a comprehensive index to articles in periodicals and newspapers. When such indexes become available, I predict a great expansion of our coverage from that country. Meanwhile, it is rash to make the judgment of unsourceable on the basis of information available online in the US, or indeed from even a print search with resources available in any US library I know of. the source given in even G News by Pseudofusulina's spelling [1] a[[ears sufficient for WEP:V, and enough of an indication of WP:N. DGG ( talk ) 08:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We have over 100 Indian scholar articles on wp. See Category:Indian scholars. It is not clear to me that Indian scholars are "unsourceable". Nor -- correct me if I am incorrect -- is it our policy to keep articles where we lack substantial RS coverage, on the basis of the supposition that such coverage exists. In addition, this article has zero refs -- it is not my understanding (tell me if I am incorrect) that we should by policy keep this information (which I challenge, as it is unreferenced) which lacks any refs, let alone RS refs.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I consider it an unfortunate dilemma: material which almost certainly can be sourced, but not by any of the people present here. It is not difficult to source Indian scholars who work in Western fields. It is very difficult for the people here to source scholars of hadith, such as he is, Indian or otherwise, --and even harder for Hindu and Buddhist religious scholars. I agree that we can't have articles for which there is no verification at all. However, this does not apply to him.

I admit I made my statement yesterday on a hunch. Today I checked the hunch, and I was correct, since for this particular individual, the books can be verified: [ http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=Manzur%20Nu'mani WorldCat listing] -- over 100 books, some translated into English such as Meaning and message of the traditions = Maʻārif al-Ḥadīs̲ : being an English translation of Maulana Mohammad Manzoor Nomaniʼs Maariful Hadith OCLC 13525757 and Islamic faith and practice, OCLC 539491 . I think that certainly meets WP:V, and is probably enough to imply WP:N also. I should really have done this search yesterday. A search of the googles without searching worldcat is inadequate for anyone who may have published books. But some do regard a library catalog as a arcane tool for specialists. So even in the Googles: Epeefleche, did you actually search Google books: [2] Multiple source about him, including several that refers to him as a religious leader, including " another possible contender for the office of amir was Muhammad Manzur Nu'mani, a Deobandi religious leader, who was the editor of Al- Furqan, a respectable religious journal in Lucknow" [3]. This is not a trivial mention. It's a statement that he was a viable candidate for high office and editor of a respectable religious journal. Frankly, I think it is unwise to take your statements that something is unsourceable on good faith alone, as we normally do take such statements to avoid duplicating each others' work. At this point, I think that other people need to check everything you say you can find no sources, or non non-trivial sources, and I hope to have time after coping with your current group of mostly reckless nominations to recheck every deleted article where the deletion relied upon your statement that you could not find sources. If you were merely careless, I retract what I said about reckless, for anyone can make errors--and I expect you to show it as I would in a similar case, by withdrawing the nomination. DGG ( talk ) 02:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG -- Good work. Apparently we both missed that in our first searches. As did each of the other editors here. I routinely as my general practice check both gnews and gbooks (at a minimum).

You can see by my first post, below the nomintation but on the same date in response to the first comment, why we had a difference in search results, however. I (as you can tell from that post, above) was searching for him under the spelling "Manzoor Nu'mani". Which, as our friend PWilkinson indicated (later) is the subject's more common English transliterated name. My gbooks search would have yielded this result. A mere 5 snippet views, and 2 previews, insufficient to base a notability determination on IMHO. I'm still not sure how I came to his "more common" transliterated name, rather than the better one and one in the article name which you used which yielded a bevy of results. But it appears that all of the editors in this string must have done the same until you used the better name (assuming they all did searches). I would likely also have searched using all three names, since the article when it refers to him refers to him as "Maulana". If you run that search, you also find the results are meager -- under both spellings of his name -- yielding only 3 hits, which seem insufficient as well. In any event, if you look at my initial posting, and that of PWilkinson as well, you will understand how such a mistake can be made. I apologize -- but hope you can see how it was made, and that the search used was transparent to others in the first place.

One last point -- I'm not sure I agree that we have trouble sourcing Indian scholars of hadith in the least. If you're not impressed by our Category:Indian Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam, and the sources therein, you need only look at all the sources you found on this scholar when you (to your credit) spelled his name correctly, which I had not done. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:07, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn. Per DGG's findings, using the better spelling of the scholar's name -- per the above.Bold text

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.