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 delete. NW (Talk) 22:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Paul Haygood[edit]

Paul Haygood (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Fails WP:NOTE. Also, possible hoax? Cirt (talk) 05:24, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I've been hunting around for sources on this guy for the last 20+ minutes, since I came across the discussion at ANI, and I have found absolutely nothing to verify the existence of any counterinsurgency expert by this name. Unless someone comes up with something, I'd think it has to go.--Arxiloxos (talk) 05:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history in a last-ditch effort to see if anyone can verify (or definitively refute) this.--Arxiloxos (talk) 15:24, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - Seems to be a hoax, unable to find anything solid. — neuro^(talk) 06:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. I'm going for hoax here. Too many names for Paul Haygood to do anything with it - narrowing down to resources about this man, I was unable to find anything that connected at all. --Dennis The Tiger (Rawr and stuff) 06:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• comment The historical society appears to be real. I can imagine if someone gave them a call to verify a couple details, they might be happy to do it [1].--Crossmr (talk) 07:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete fails WP:BIO I came up with zip. --Cameron Scott (talk) 09:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. One of the "references" given in the article is just Theorists of Counterinsurgency, with no author's name, publishing detatils, or anything else. I have searched and can find no evidence for the existence of any publication by this title. Another reference given is Boddie, John Bennett. Southside Virginia Families. This does exist, but does not list any family by the name of Haygood. All considered, this looks suspiciously like an attempt to make it look as though there are good sources when ther in fact aren't. I shall remove these highly dubious references. The other reference is "Paul Haygood". Residents of Patrick County. The Patrick County Historical Society certainly exists, but the only Google hit for "Residents of Patrick County" "The Patrick County Historical Society" is this Wikipedia article. This too looks dubious to me, but for now I will give it the benefit of the doubt and leave it in. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe, just maybe, it's a citation of History of Patrick County, which is one of the publications of Patrick County Historical Society and which comprises "a 470 page study of the county, with chapters on settlement, communities, churches, schools, businesses, industries, and county's participation in military service" as well as "Sketches of many early families".

    The work by John Bennett Boddie definitely exists, and was given the correct title in the citation. Volume 1 was published by the Genealogical Publishing Co. of Baltimore, in 1966 as the citation said. It was republished by Clearfield in 2009, and Amazon has it in stock as ISBN 9780806300405.

    There might be some crow to be eaten, here. Uncle G (talk) 13:39, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    • If the reference to "Residents of Patrick County" was a mangled attempt to refer to "History of Patrick County" then clearly it is not a good reference. I looked up Eating crow, which is apparently an American colloquial expression meaning "humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proven wrong". (The disadvantage of using colloquialisms in a medium such as Wikipedia is that they may not be universally understood.) I now understand the language, but I don't understand the point intended. I explicitly said in my comment above that the work by John Bennett Boddie "does exist" (including emphasis), but that it "does not list any family by the name of Haygood". Uncle G's comment does not contradict either part of that; I agree that there may be crow to be eaten, but I am not planning to eat it. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • You perhaps should make preparations. Paul Haygood, born 1889-07-14, is listed on page 303 of Volume 2 of Southside Virginia families‎. Note that it is a two-volume work. He is also listed on page 294 of volume 5 of Boddie's 23-volume Historical Southern families‎. Both come up in a simple Google Books search for "Paul Haygood virginia", for me. Uncle G (talk) 14:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • The abovementioned list him as marrying Lulu Helm and Loretta Fitzgerald. Paul Haygood, born 1889-02-04 and marrying Lula Helms and Loretta Fitzgerald, is listed on page 81 of Billups and allied families‎ (Katie-Prince Ward Esker. Gateway Press. 1984). It has him marrying his second wife in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, in 1922. But it also states that he lived there at one point, employed by Coca Cola.

        The date on Residents of Patrick County doesn't check out, by the way. I've just managed to unearth the publication date of History of Patrick County. It was published in 1999, not 1984. Uncle G (talk) 14:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

        • Yes, so there is evidence that someone of the name existed, born in the given year, and (depending on which source you follow) may or may not have been born on the same day or in the same month. However, is there any reliable source which confirms that this Paul Haygood had anything else in common with the one described in the article? (On a trivial note, if "You perhaps should make preparations" is intended to refer to the nonsense about eating crow, then why? My doubting the existence of the claimed sources is not contradicted by finding other sources.) JamesBWatson (talk) 16:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Your stating that this person isn't mentioned anywhere in Boddie is, however, contradicted by a pointer to the very page number where he definitely is mentioned. I quite deliberately said "maybe", "might", and "perhaps", and as things stand it is still "maybe", "might", and "perhaps". I shouldn't get too upset about the possibility until "maybe", and "might", and "perhaps" become "definitely". ☺ Note, though, that from what people are writing, it seems that no-one has read these books to see what they actually say in full. (I haven't. Have you?) But at least we've identified precisely what to check, which is more than the article's authors gave us, and found both no support from what limited excerpts from the sources we can turn up in concert thus far, and strong indications that there is little more in those sources to be had. Uncle G (talk) 18:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • Without wishing to be unfriendly, I may say that Uncle G's capacity for continually misreading what I have written is impressive. I said that J.B. Boddie's Southside Virginia Families "does not list any family by the name of Haygood". (This was based on seeing a list of the families covered.) I am now told that an individual by the name of Haygood is mentioned there, which does not contradict what I said. It may, of course, be that this individual was included in a coverage of his family which was omitted from the list in error, in which case my assertion was wrong, but that does not alter the fact that the evidence cited above does not contradict my assertion. However, perhaps we should both call a truce on this: it is really off-topic.

On a more important point, no I haven't seen the books themselves; hence my need to refer to the list of families covered. Of course it would be better if someone could actually see copies of the books, rather than rely on what we can pick up at a distance. However, since the sources seem to be little more than lists of births, marriages, etc, they could scarcely indicate notability of the subject anyway, whatever they say about Paul Haygood. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:01, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete The deal with these sources, is none of them appears to amount to much more than genological databases; they seem to report mostly marriages and employment records, but do not seem to be anywhere near substantial. Having ones name mentioned in a reliable source does not mean one passes the inclusion criteria, the vital bit missing is the substantial portion. --Jayron32 15:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - The article says he was an influential theorist, and that current military figures use his ideas. In that case it's hard to believe that the internet would have no trace of him, except for a couple of works that seem to be mostly genealogy (a record of births, deaths and marriages). A History of Patrick County, even if it does include him, is unlikely to provide such elaborate details of his military career as this article contains. At present it would be reasonable to consider everything in the article to be completely unsourced, except possibly for his birthdate. The chance of a hoax seems to strengthen the case for delete. Even if there were a Marine officer named Paul Haygood who taught in Quantico, there is no way to tell whether what this article says about him is true. '"Paul Haygood" Quantico' gets no Google hits that have any chance of being him. EdJohnston (talk) 16:32, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The article makes some assertions of notability that, if true, shouldn't be too hard to prove (given the name-dropping and positions involved). That no such proofs apparently exist mean this article can never get over the notability bar, hoax or not. EyeSerene^talk 17:13, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wasn't able to find out who the aide was to Frederick Huff Payne in 1930, whether this person or some other. Were you? A fair few of the things stated here are quite hard to refute, too. There's a lot of support for the hoax assertion, but that's as yet unproven. No-one has found an actual contradicting source here, which would prove the hoax assertion quite conclusively. (That's one of the reasons that I went looking for who the aide was. It seemed one of the easiest claims to find a refutation for.) I know that I've looked for such sources, and I don't doubt that others here have, too. The most we can say at the moment is that this content is wholly unverifiable beyond the name and birthdate. But at least we'll have had a whole lot of editors look, and look quite hard, independently of one another, for any sources, so we can assert unverifiability with quite a good degree of confidence. It's a good idea of Arxiloxos' to give the WikiProject a tap on the shoulder. Uncle G (talk) 18:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, that's my point really. I can't say if it's a hoax or not, and no, I couldn't find out who Payne's aide was either :) Permutations of 'obituary', 'Marine Corps', 'Haygood' etc yield nothing meaningful, so setting aside the difficulty of proving a negative, on current information even if the article is all factual, without sources (let alone reliable ones) I can't see it meeting the GNG. Others at Milhist may well have more information, but I've certainly drawn a blank. EyeSerene^talk 19:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Appears that the article fails notability. I also drew a blank trying every way I could think of to locate electronically available resources on this person. Even though VMI's archives have references to the class of 1910, his name doesn't appear. And similar results from locale, geneology, military history, etc. searches. Part of the problem for someone deceased in 1941 is that much information is likely contained on the deep web, if it's been digitized at all, or in hard copy accessible only the old-fashioned way by travel, libraries, books, etc. If the content of the article were true, I would still expect to have found some more traces of the man's long lifetime of work. Perhaps Arxiloxos' posting at the Military History Project will turn up someone with leads to good references. Geoff ^{T C} 20:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• I think we're in a bit of a bind here - whilst we can't say for sure the article is a hoax, because all the details quoted are astonishingly hard to prove or disprove... they're still astonishingly hard to prove, and we haven't been able to verify a single scrap of information beyond "Paul Haygood (b. 1889) existed". Were we to remove everything that can't be supported by a source yet found, we're left with something which doesn't even manage to imply notability. Shimgray | talk | 22:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - removal of questioned sources leaves this with nothing meriting notability. Buckshot06(prof) 22:53, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Nick-D (talk) 23:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Hoax or non-notable. Joe Chill (talk) 03:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - at best, unverifiable. There is circumstantial supporting evidence this is a hoax from the article's edit history, with an SPA author and several single-day editors (SDAs). Those who have done more than maintenance edits are:

• Petie J (talk · contribs), the original author, edited only on this subject, and only on 21 July except for one return on 9 August to add a paragraph about Haygood to Counter-insurgency
• The Super Cool Amazement (talk · contribs) edited only on 22 July
• November 199 (talk · contribs) edited only on 22 July (vandalism only)
• Napth (talk · contribs) edited only on 22 July (vandalism only)
• New Nothing (talk · contribs) edited only on 11 September, mostly on this article; added a db-hoax tag with the summary "this is all made up" but took it off, added db-person and prod tags which were reverted

The three 22 July editors were probably friends of the original hoaxer, mucking about. JohnCD (talk) 11:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New Nothing (talk · contribs)'s other edits varied among trivial (e.g. adding hi to a user talk page), vandalism, and personal attack until eventually the account was blocked. JamesBWatson (talk) 15 September 2009

• Delete -- Ejosse1 (talk) 15:16, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Hoax. Although Paul Haygood was probably a real person, this lone contribution from a new account purports to be about a little-known pioneer in military counterinsurgency theory. I would expect a citation, real or fake, to a mention in a book about military science or history, or perhaps a book about General Petraeus, but the source is a locally published book called "Residents of Patrick County"? Gimme a break. Too stupid to be believed. Mandsford (talk) 17:30, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment There seems to be a pretty solid consensus for deletion. Nobody has argued to keep the article. Even if the article is not a hoax, nobody has found any support anywhere for anything in the article except the existence of a man of this name born in this year and perhaps on this day. Need any more be said? JamesBWatson (talk) 13:27, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- I agree this is almost certainly a hoax. Even if it weren't a hoax, there are no references. But I strongly disagree with the assertion in the nomination that the article fails WP:NOTE. If we believed the article was accurate is would comply with WP:NOTE, while lapsing from WP:VER. The article states: "but notes taken on his lectures... as well as short essays and memorandums he had prepared for the Marine Corps were gathered and studied by a number of young scholars of counterinsurgency." If this were not a hoax we would find traces of these influential essays and memoranduums. I was going to cite the unverifiability of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College as another clue this was a hoax. It turns out this institution does exists. Geo Swan (talk) 14:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wonder whether the hoaxer is a student at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College? If this material were verifiable it would require an editorializectomy. Pink's War did exist, and our article on it asserts it showed the success of air power in cointerinsurgency -- the opposite conclusion that this article claims its hero reached. Geo Swan (talk) 15:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment WP:NOTE tells us "Notability requires verifiable evidence". It is not possible to satisfy WP:NOTE without verifiable sources; the article certainly does fail WP:NOTE. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as unverifiable even to the simplest detail. I queried VMI's Historical Roster Database, both for "Paul Haygood" and separately for "class of 1910." There were no results for Paul Haygood (for any year), and the 1910 roster did not include any name even vaguely similar. --A More Perfect Onion (talk) 13:55, 17 September 2009 (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.