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 redirect to Southern Levant. Consensus is that this is an undesirable content fork, and that any useful material should be merged to more specific history articles. In the meantime, I'm (editorially) redirecting the article to a neutral redirect target. Sandstein 08:54, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

History of the Southern Levant

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WP:CFORK from History of Israel and History of Palestine. We really don't need three articles covering the same topic - this article has very few eyes on it, compared with History of Israel and History of Palestine, which are much better articles.

According to google books, there are 49 books with the title including the words "History of Israel", 67 with "History of Palestine", and none (really none - both of the links shown are wikipedia duplicates) including the words "History of the Southern Levant".

Oncenawhile (talk) 19:22, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It should be examined for material that can be usefully merged into History of Israel, History of Palestine, Land of Israel or another of the many overlapping articles. However, unlike those articles much of this one is unsourced so it isn't just a matter of copying material. Then this fork should be retired. Incidentally, the phrase "southern Levant" is popular in archaeology but much less in history, as you can check by searching for it at Scholar. It is inappropriate to use it for historically recent events. Zero^talk 04:21, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I performed exactly that review vs. History of Palestine prior to submitting this AfD. I do not believe there is a single piece of material which is covered in this article that can usefully be merged into History of Palestine - the latter article already includes all the quality information within this article. The other articles (eg History of Israel) arguably have slightly different scopes, and I would have thought we only need one article to ensure no work is lost.

Out of interest, how does retiring differ from delete+redirect?

Oncenawhile (talk) 07:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Palestine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:07, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

merge them all -- As nom says, we have multiple articles covering the same subject. The use of the terms Israel and Palestine is liable to produce all sorts of POV issues. In dealing with the 20th century, there is probably no NPOV solution, but there is no reason for multiple articles for the preceding period. If anything the Palestine article has the better structure with plenty of cross-references (via main and see also templates) to more detailed articles on particular periods, etc. On the other hand, the present article has found a NPOV title. I suspect that Palestine is the primary article and all the rest are POV forks, but Palestine is cognate with Philistine, which raises difficult issues over the existence of ancient Israel

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 16:46, 10 January 2014 (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.