Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miarritze Inscription

:{{la|Miarritze Inscription}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Miarritze Inscription}})

Creating this AFD is one of the reasons I've finally given up on IP editing. Hopefully I haven't botched the process!

I believe this article is a pure fabrication. I did not nominate it G3 because I do not believe it the misinformation is "blatant and obvious" but rather relatively well-crafted. However, that doesn't make it real. The only references I can find to the topic are Wikipedia mirrors. The primary "source" for the article, Antonio La Paglia's Beyond Greece and Rome: Faith and Worship in Ancient Europe almost certainly does not exist. Web searches for the title reveal only Wikipedia mirrors related to this article. Searches for the author, including under a variety of spelling variants, reveal only unrelated people. Surprisingly, Black Mountain Press is real; indeed, there are at least two of them. One publishes solely historical works related to famed Black Mountain College, the other is the publishing house for the Centre for Performance Research [http://www.thecpr.org.uk/shop/blackmountain.php], a Welsh theatre organization. Niether would have any cause to publish a work about European mythology. On the other hand, the other cited work, Michael Jordan's Encyclopedia of Gods, is real, and I have access to a physical copy, but there are problems. It does not mention a Miarritze Inscription and does not provide any refernce for the Candus/Candamius claim -- simply put, it does not support the article in the slightest. I also have significant concerns over that book's general reliability and scholarly weight, but those are issues primarily for the dozens of other articles that cite it legitimately.

As a final concern, albeit one not strictly derived from policy, I will point out that the editor responsible for this article, Sir Landmass Weevil, who appears to have been active only intermittently in 2008 and 2009, anagrams to "Wireless Vandalism". I am in the process of looking over his other contributions. I have some concerns about his work on Aspidotis species, but I'm not ready to make a case for Aspidotis victoriana as a hoax. Yet, anyway. and I've nominated that one for deletion as well, especially since its illustrating photograph is a misrepresented copyright violation.

Please note that if I'm right (and I'd be thrilled to be proved wrong), additional cleanup to Candamius and Basque mythology will be required. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:04, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Delete per nomination. I'd expect Google Scholar not to draw a complete blank about this inscription if it were real. Google Books finds one hit in what looks to be a New Age text about polytheism.[http://books.google.com/books?id=JH1bTOvJo_cC&pg=PA254&dq=%22Miarritze+Inscription%22&hl=en&ei=ZDjFTorpBOXa0QGQjLGfDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Miarritze%20Inscription%22&f=false] Never heard of the publisher, and it may be derivative of Wikipedia rather than the other way around. The books cited as references do not come up as hits. Because this is a Basque name, the possibility of spelling variation may need to be corrected for. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:43, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Looks to be another publisher of Wikipedia content like Books LLC. At the very least, the Google preview text exactly matches Wikipedia content from Basque mythology and is referenced to the same Antonio La Paglia book that I don't think really exists. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete—A hoax, albeit a clever one. Basque wasn't written down extensively until the 16th century. This inscription isn't mentioned in scholarly works that focus specifically on the history of written Basque. The one that I'm pasting in below says explicitly that mediaeval written Basque isn't attested to by anything other than uses of Basque words in other documents, not themselves written in Basque: {{cite book|author1=José Ignacio Hualde|author2=Joseba Lakarra|author3=Robert Lawrence Trask|title=Towards a history of the Basque language|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=jyDjgt1CcU4C&pg=PA8|accessdate=17 November 2011|year=1995|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company|isbn=978-90-272-3634-0|pages=8–}} There are others besides this, as [https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=bks&tbo=1&q=%22written+basque%22+earliest&btnG=#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&tbo=1&tbm=bks&source=hp&q=%22basque+language%22+earliest+written&pbx=1&oq=%22basque+language%22+earliest+written&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=81376l93463l0l93576l36l27l1l0l0l0l243l4618l3.15.9l28l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=38a0ddfd1ebc19a6&biw=1280&bih=796 this Gbooks search] shows.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 18:39, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

:::"Squeamish Ossifrage" is an anagram of "risqué oafish message," by the way...— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 18:48, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

• Delete as hoax. Edison (talk) 20:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete Zero result on Google books.--Aliwiki (talk) 21:46, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete as hoax, per nom's excellent work worthy of a Barnstar. Choosing a publisher's name that is actually two publishers is kind of ingenious, it does complicate proof of hoaxing. But frankly we'd have excellent evidence on the web of any real Basque epigraph from the 13th century. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete: Almost certainly a hoax. Zero hits on Google Scholar or Google Books. Google seach hits are all mirrors of this article. Creator of the page is responsible for confirmed hoax article. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Aspidotis_victoriana. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete as a hoax. Heiro 16:37, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete based on lack of verifiable notability. John Carter (talk) 01:35, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

: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.