Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zafar Mahmud (2nd nomination)

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2023 August 5.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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. Happy to userfy this for a restart but the majority of the keep votes underline the paucity of strong sources. Spartaz ^Humbug! 14:59, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Zafar Mahmud

AfDs for this article:

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Very poorly sourced. Fails WP:GNG. US-Verified (talk) 23:34, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians, Bilateral relations, Somalia, Pakistan, and Czech Republic. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Poland and Slovakia. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 19:06, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete or draftify. My source query only confirmed this is not a hoax (there was such an ambassador in Pakistani service, according to some snippets in Google Books). What I see are however mentions in passing or press release or equivalents. Prior AfD 10 years ago ended as keep b/c he reached the rank of air commodore, which was said to be equivalent of general and passing the now-depreciated WP:SOLDIER. Per WP:POLOUTCOMES, "Ambassadors are not considered presumptively notable." So we have two aspects of "close but no banana". The article is also mostly unrerferenced, and the refs cited are poor. Maybe there are some sources we haven't found, but what we have is poor - and poorly written (one of the sources is youtube, poorly described and even mispelled as "vido tribute"). The creator is not very active; maybe they can ask for WP:REFUND when they come back and learn of this deletion and improve it in their userspace; I also wouldn't be opposed to moving it there instead of deletion --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:15, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Winston Churchill was in the same rank I also added some references.WhyWeAll (talk) 23:28, 1 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. US-Verified (talk) 05:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 02:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This person seems to just cross the line into relevance because of an interesting (and verifiable) history, including being one of the few Indian pilots that took part in the second world war (verified by the Indian Air Force) and also for his role in a couple of fairly significant events, namely, the defense of Zia ul Haq in a court martial (he later became the President of Pakistan) and his participation in the creation of the Hamood-ur-Rehman report which had extremely significant consequences for the Pakistani Military after their 1971 war. Sourcing is weak, but NOT non-existent...and allowances need to be made for the time period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.36.234.200 (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:44, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - we should trust what sources are there in my opinion and give the benefit of the doubt given the historical background and context for the subject. - Indefensible (talk) 06:39, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above. NYC Guru (talk) 09:05, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Has played a role in notable historical events. I found two articles about him in local U.S. newspapers in the 1950s and added them to the article. While there are citation gaps, this article needs improvement, not deletion. CT55555(talk) 13:31, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Weak draftify, otherwise I guess delete. I really appreciate the work that CT55555 has put in, both here and in the article. But I'm not really thrilled with those sources, especially the dinner party one, and it doesn't seem like they really furnish much to build an article out of. Nor do they really verify the encyclopedic significance of the subject, which would be helpful in a borderline case. I would acknowledge that the Robins article with its two paragraphs of biographical information meets the SIGCOV requirement that no original research is needed to extract the content. But I think we're still a little short of the NBASIC threshold of significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject. The mid-to-late 20th century is a difficult period to research in general, and the best material here might be in sources that are either offline or in nonpublic databases, and also possibly in Urdu. But I would say that I'm not really seeing the kind of signature in the search results that would make me think "there must be more out there", which leaves me unpersuaded that we really have encyclopedia material here. So I find myself leaning toward either slow deletion (draftification) or the fast kind. (I am saddened to see that the former SOLDIER essay seems to have been deprecated based on an RFC close by an involved and now CU-blocked user who ignored multiple reasoned dissents. But I guess it is what it is at this point.) -- Visviva (talk) 17:46, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The beauty of the net is that the cost of maintaining marginal information is fairly low now. While the cited references may not be that significant, some of events this person participated in were very significant, particularly for the country it impacted. These include the Hamood-ur-Rehman commission, the defense of the future President of Pakistan in a court martial and being a key player in circumventing a US arms embargo on Pakistan via Turkey when Pakistan was in a war with India. Once deleted these will, given the time period they relate to, just vanish, much like tears in the rain (shout out to Rutger Hauer). Yes this may be marginal, but just the fact it is attracting this much attention in the deletion discussion may indicate that it may be better to err on the side of preservation rather than on the side of deletion...one action always rectifiable, one, permanent. 100.36.234.200 (talk) 02:10, 27 July 2023 (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.