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. -- Cirt (talk) 12:48, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Its stamps are not recognized by the IPU and the ability for this list to have encyclopedic utility seems unlikely. jps (talk) 17:15, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that this article was ironically rescuable by having it say what Joshua P. Schroeder wrote in the nomination. After all, the fact of non-recognition is surely verifiable. Then I read the potential sources that my searches had turned up. They all turned out to be advertisements by U.S.-based companies. There was no non-advertising source documenting any of these purported issues of stamps, or non-recognition of the same, and nothing to indicate that this wasn't some entirely U.S.-based philatelic snake oil. I have, as yet, found zero trustworthy and independent sources supporting anything that could be put into this article at all. I haven't yet even found a good source (that isn't an advertisement from a U.S. company selling joke stamps, or someone who has obviously taken that advertisement at face value) confirming that Abkhazia has in fact issued any stamps of its own. Uncle G (talk) 03:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Pseudonymous discussion forum posting; person selling stamps priced in U.S. dollars; news report that has a government spokesman responding to a hypothetical. You make my point for me. Uncle G (talk) 09:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this article is part of the series of lists within Category:Lists of people on stamps and non-membership of the UPU is not a good reason for deletion. ww2censor (talk) 04:20, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of any properly documented existence of the subject is, though, and as yet no-one has provided any such reliable documentation, whose authors can be identified and whose reputations for fact checking and intention of accuracy (rather than of selling joke stamps or stamps of dubious provenance for a profit) are good. Uncle G (talk) 10:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The "person selling stamps priced in U.S. dollars" is in fact based in Moscow. However, the "stamps" of Abkhazia are not listed in Stanley Gibbons' catalogues as at the most recent edition of Part 10 that I have to hand (6th edition, 2008). Daveosaurus (talk) 05:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And Moscow is not, last that I looked, in Abkhazia. Again my point is made for me. If, as the person selling the stamps in U.S. dollars would have you believe, these stamps have been in circulation since 1994, why is the Georgian government official some fifteen years later in 2009 treating this as a hypothetical situation? Indeed, if the stamp issues commenced in 1994, why is the article discussing rumours of stamp issue commencing in 2009? No-one apart from a few people with catalogues of stamps to (re-)sell, priced in U.S. dollars, appears to have documented any such thing as this at all. Uncle G (talk) 10:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Most of the stamps in this list are probably bogus but there does appear to be a legitimate limited local service within Abkhazia and there is evidence of the use of Abkhazian stamps in conjunction with other stamps for international mail. See here. I added details to the Stamps of Georgia article and if the Abkhazians make enough progress in their struggle, they might even justify there own "Stamps of...." article in time. We don't restrict ourselves just to UPU recognised territories. Maidonian (talk) 11:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your source, that you're having the entire validity of an article on, is an image of unknown provenance on a web log? Uncle G (talk) 18:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not on its own, it is that plus the several articles referenced in the Stamps of Georgia article which combined make it clear that there is some sort of limited local postal service operating in the area. Maidonian (talk) 00:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So you missed the point where the very New York Times source that you cited in that other article says what I said above, that there's nothing to indicate that this wasn't some entirely U.S.-based philatelic snake oil? How do you justify the existence of a "list of stamps of Abkhazia" article on the basis of sources which, like the NYT there, don't authoritatively state that these in fact are stamps of Abkhazia at all? Uncle G (talk) 03:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As already mentioned, most of the stamps are probably bogus as you say but there is a form of postal service so the list is legitimate if of limited use at present. The answer is to edit the list not delete it. Maidonian (talk) 11:46, 21 December 2010 (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.