- 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. A move to the hoax museum should be asked for on WP:REFUND Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 22:30, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Henry Abner
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Probable hoax article. See Talk:Henry Abner#No external record of any of these novels for unsuccessful efforts to substantiate the article's content. Deor ( talk) 17:39, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Move to Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Henry Abner (without leaving behind a redirect), as this has survived for long enough to be included as a subpage to our "repository" of hoax articles. From the talk page discussion it's clear that the subject is not mentioned in any of the sources that were checked. I've pesonally tried verifying two of the references, without success. – Uanfala 18:17, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Delete as hoax. I'm new to Wikipedia, and not quite sure how this works, but I've been spending some time this weekend looking at this and thought it would be useful to list what I've found. If this is the wrong place or way to do that, please let me know.
- A) There is no record of any pre-2016 book by a Henry Abner on worldcat, the British Library catalogue, Amazon, or Abebooks. This includes all of the supposed novels listed.
- B) The 'Crime, Mystery, & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index' of pulp fiction authors contains no mention this author existing.
- C) None of the 'references' that can be verified of the article contain any reference to an author called a Henry Abner. (Full details on article's talk page)
- D) None of the references that have been checked make any reference to the short stories they are cited as discussing.
- E) Two sources, in particular, are repeatedly cited: 'Sampson, Robert (1988). Yesterday's Faces' and 'Gerould, K.F. (August 3, 1935). "Murder for Pastime". Saturday Review of Literature: 33.' Both have been checked and neither contain any reference to a Henry Abner, or the supposed works presented in the article.
- F) No google search of the titles of the short stories by me or a couple of other editors has yet turned up any positive id of their existence.
- G) Some claims about the existence of the stories are flatly counter-factual. Most notably, the 1925 editions of Flynn's do not contain the short story attributed to them, and no issue of Flynn's contains any reference to a Henry Abner.
- H) The article was predominantly the creation of a single author (PulpFan35), who originally included an image of a different author before later changing the article image to the present one.
- I) The present article image appears to be a doctored image from this source.
- It's my feeling that the article contains no notable factual information and should be deleted. Landscape repton ( talk) 19:08, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Update: J) Two more of the references have been checked and found wanting. The full archive of Publishers Weekly is text-searchable and contains no reference to a Henry Abner in any edition. New York Libraries ceased publication nearly two years before the supposed edition cited by the article. Details on the talk page of the article.
- At this stage, every reference cited to attest to Henry Abner as an author has been found to be misrepresented, and contains no reference to such a figure. These constitute 19 of the 25 footnotes. Landscape repton ( talk) 09:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:52, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala 20:59, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
- Speedy delete as a hoax. His alleged first novel, Death Wears Yellow Garters, is a title Raymond Chandler made up in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" [1] [2] (though Rae D. Magdon was inspired to use the title much later). None of the other writing claims hold water either. Clarityfiend ( talk) 00:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- Keep :Original poster of the aforementioned Imgur album here. Apologies if my formatting is incorrect, as I'm brand new to Wikipedia. I can assure you that Henry Abner Sturdivant was indeed a real person. Our family records back up the claims about his personal life, law enforcement career, and death. The images I posted in the Imgur album were scans of newspaper clippings personally collected by the family. Several of these newspaper articles are verifiable by checking the archives of the respective papers. I personally found a number of references to the Sturdivant family (and their service as chiefs of police of both Washington and Atlanta, Georgia) within the historic archives of the Atlanta Journal Constitution (here's one example abstract, the full articles are unfortunately behind a paywall: abstract). The Washington newspaper archives are significantly harder to track down, as they seem to only exist in mirofiche form within the Washington/Wilkes County library (and the last few times I tried to access them the viewing machine was not operable). I can also verify that portrait of HA Sturdivant posted here is from the family archives. It was indeed created from the newspaper photo, but was done so at the time of Sturdivant's death, for use at his funeral. Apparently, it was the only professionally taken photograph of him that was accessible or possibly that was ever taken. As far as the writing career goes, it was all news to us (Sturdivant's ancestors), as I mentioned in the Imgur post. We were happy to learn about something exciting and new about our ancestor, but from the looks of things here it might seem that the information given to us has not been the most factual. Bramicles ( talk) 00:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- It doesn't matter if he was a real person. The problem is he's not a real, notable person, certainly not as an WP:AUTHOR nor as the police chief of Washington, Georgia (pop. c. 4k today). Clarityfiend ( talk) 04:54, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- The image's use on this page is still odd. It was uploaded by a user named TheJanosCorporation as their 'Own Work' on Nov 1 2016. That's almost two months before it first appeared on Imgur by a user named Bramicles on Dec 29 2016. Landscape repton ( talk) 21:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- Delete It seems clear that a lot of information in this article is incorrect. Eagleash ( talk) 11:55, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- Delete as a hoax. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 19:55, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
- Delete as a hoax. I find the presentation of investigation on the talk page to be compelling. Carrite ( talk) 21:58, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
- Delete Having looked through the various investigations here and at the talk page, it is a reasonably safe bet that this is a Hoax. — Insert CleverPhrase Here 13:37, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
- 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.