Talk:Robert II, Count of Hesbaye

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should this article be deleted?

I am trying to think of an argument for keeping this article. Currently it is like a very poor stub article about the idea of a Robertian dynasty, and specifically about some of the most speculative ideas available. There are many such articles, all just badly covering the same group of ideas, and presenting speculation as fact, in a garbled way. In order to clean the handling of this subject up it would help a lot to make each article sticks to a clear topic so what is this one about?

My first impression is that the only possible excuse for the existence of this article is that it is about a theory connecting a few records mentioning Roberts in very different places and times. But the article does not even make it clear which medieval records are being called "Robert II". For example we also have Robert I, Count of Hesbaye. How should our readers understand the difference between them? I would have thought that Robert I refers to the one described in Counts of Hesbaye, who can be connected to some sources and valid discussions. But isn't this article about the same person?? If so then we need to consider merges, deletions etc. If not then maybe some articles need re-writing. Frankly, we would have better articles if we had fewer to look after though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:56, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To see how our article compares to the medieval evidence (which are not explained by us) compare our article to another website, the article for Robert the Strong (supposedly this Robert's grandson) on the Henry II Project: http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/rober100.htm --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:12, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew,

While you have some good points, I don’t think it should be deleted. As to it being “better articles if we had fewer to look after” to me seems to go against the whole “Wikipedia movement”. Some editing should help the real issues in the article.CSvBibra (talk) 21:05, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That is a reasonable general point to make. But in this specific case, can we actually define what the article is about in a clear way, such that we can find more than one source agreeing about that? At the moment the article is about the grandfather of Robert the Strong who some people think might have been named Robert. It mainly talks about which descendants this means he would have if we knew who he was. We don't need an article for that. Let's consider two possibilities:

An accurate article about the ancestors of Robert the Strong would have to say we don't know who the grandfather was. We could discuss the different speculative proposals. But then why would we need several articles for various people defined by exact positions in a speculative family tree, in order to discuss the many different theories? That is not the correct way to present uncertain speculations.
...and/or... We could also have articles for identified people, with remarks in them saying they might be uncle, grandfather, distant cousin or whatever to Robert the Strong. But even identifying individuals is difficult in this period. To be sure to avoid taking sides, we would need to have an articles for individual records of Roberts, who are not all definitely known to be the same.

...so in practice, what do you see this article should be about? Is it about a specific record of a Robert who MIGHT be grandfather of Robert the Strong?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:28, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am thinking:

We can best cover theories about Robert the Strong's ancestry in his article? (If it were to get too big we could create an article, about the origins of the Capetians or something, but I doubt this will ever be justified.)
This means the problem with this current article is that it is only about ancestry theories for a person covered by another article. It does not actually clearly identify which records if any would correspond to the subject of this article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]