Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thymiaterium

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The settlement is only noteworthy through its connection to Hanno the Navigator. It is a WP:REDUNDANTFORK and would be adequately described in the article for Hanno. We do not need to create an article for every place of interest described in Hanno's periplus. wikinights _talk 16:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

:Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. wikinights _talk 16:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

:Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. wikinights _talk 16:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

• Merge to Mehdya, Morocco#History where it is already briefly mentioned as an earlier name for the locale. The target would benefit from the reference to Hanno. 68.189.242.116 (talk) 17:02, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:NOTTEMPORARY and WP:GEOLAND. The suggestion to merge an article on a populated place to a biography is a terrible idea. But I could accept the IP's suggestion of a merge to Mehdya if we are sure that there is academic consensus that this is indeed the location of the site. SpinningSpark 17:33, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
• Keep historically noted populated place.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 18:35, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

:Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Morocco-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 21:54, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

• Keep where it is, unless there is some compelling reason why it should only be a footnote to other articles. Is there any likelihood of an article being created for every place of interest described in Hanno's periplus? It seems to me that the article exists because it was a colony, and the categories in which it's included don't give the immediate impression of being overpopulated by unimportant details. The fact that a modern settlement might have been founded on the same site doesn't seem to justify merging it into the article about that place. P Aculeius (talk) 09:29, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:NOTTEMPORARY and WP:GEOLAND. Not much more to it than that. If Wikipedia were around in the time of Hanno and we applied our guidelines then as they apply now, it would be considered notable. And notability not being temporary, it stands to reason that it remains notable. St★lwart¹¹¹ 11:44, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment Sources I found:

{{Collapse|*{{Cite book |last=Carpenter |first=Rhys |url=https://archive.org/details/beyondpillarsofh00carp |title=Beyond the Pillars of Heracles: The Classical World Seen through the Eyes of its Discoverers |year=1966 |page=98}} identifies it around Mehdia's location (not explicitly). When theorizing about the exact location, he prefers Kenitra, however.

• {{Cite book |last=Cary |first=Max |url=https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.9654 |title=The Ancient Explorers |last2=Warmington |first2=Eric Herbert |year=1929 |page=47}} affirmatively identifies it as Mehdia in an unexplained annotation to the translation.
• {{Cite book |last=Warmington |first=Brian Herbert |url=https://archive.org/details/carthage0000warm |title=Carthage |year=1960 |page=65}} says Thymiaterion is near the Sebou River, which is true of Mehdia. Given that the settlement has been consistently identified as a port, we may say that Warmington supports the somewhere-around-Mehdia hypothesis.}}

:We only know of Thymiaterion as a city Hanno founded, as described in an intentionally vague account. It would be better to merge this article into Mehdya without a certain identification, so as to avoid the proliferation of permastubs about settlements briefly mentioned in ancient sources. wikinights _talk 09:14, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

::Your argument seems to be contradictory—you don't want to give the location as though it were certain, yet merging it into a modern location implies that the identification of the two is certain. However, even if we suppose that the modern place is built on the same site, there appears to be no continuity between the two—so it makes sense for the original settlement to have its own article, however brief. That does not preclude mentioning it in the article about the modern location. There is nothing wrong with stub articles; a great many articles, not only in Wikipedia, but most encyclopedias, are stubs. Nor does the fact that the sources currently cited don't have a lot to say mean that there are no other sources currently available with more information, or that the article can never be expanded. And there seems to be little reason to worry about vast numbers of stubs "proliferating" from this source; the categories relating to this source do not indicate such a risk. It seems to be one of a small number of such articles, and so there seems to be no reason to worry about "an article being created for every place of interest described in Hanno's periplus". P Aculeius (talk) 08:58, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

• Keep -- The identification with Mehdia seems to be inference, though assumed by two commentators. The article on Mehdia in fact says nothing of the subject. It ought to contain one sentence that it is thought to be identical to Thymiaterium. As with many things from the ancient world, we probably know no more than stated in the article. If so, the stub tag should be removed: it is an invitation to WP:OR. Indeed it might be best to tag such articles as having {{tld|no scope for much expansion}}. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:05, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

::There is no such template. SpinningSpark 17:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

::Presumably articles about archaeological sites always have the potential for expansion—even if no digs are currently ongoing, it's entirely possible that historians and archaeologists are currently analyzing the available materials (some of which may not be readily discoverable over the internet), or that new discoveries will be made. That said, a stub tag seems unnecessary if the article contains most of what can conveniently be located at this time—if more is found, nothing prevents it from being expanded in the future. P Aculeius (talk) 19:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. Müller who is mentioned in the article (but whose name was misspelt and his work not linked until I added it just now) mentions Thymiaterium on seven seperate pages and Thymiaterion on an eighth. The work is in Latin so I can't do anything with it, but that is at least an indication that there may be more to write than is currently in the article. SpinningSpark 20:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
• Keep There appears no definitive source indicating that Thymiaterion is the same location as Mehdya, claims otherwise are original research. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 09:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

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: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.