Wikipedia:Really old articles that shouldn't be deleted due to a lack of references

Really old articles that shouldn't be deleted due to a lack of references

The wikipedia is now over twenty years old. During that twenty years the wikipedia's support for infrastructure has grown more sophisticated. During those twenty years the wikipedia's inclusion standards have grown more stringent.

Unreferenced articles on BLP individuals

For the last ten or twelve years one specific way the wikipedia's inclusion standards have grown more stringent is that articles on living people now require at least one good reference, as per {{blpprod}}. Articles on living people that lack even one good reference are subject to deletion. These articles are an exception to the requirement in WP:BEFORE, that imposes an obligation on nominators to perform a meaningful, effective web search, so they confirm or refute whether the article's topic was documented in WP:reliable sources.

Please note the advice in #Step zero.

History of referencing articles on the wikipedia

All wikipedia articles that were started during the wikipedia's first seven years lacked modern references, because technical support for footnote style references, and the rarely used alternate reference styles, weren't introduced until 2006, and modern referencing took a year or two to be completely adopted.

Prior to modern referencing

Prior to the introduction of modern referencing wikipedia contributors supplied RS to articles through a combination of embedding raw URLs into the body of the article, and relying on the "External links" section.

Some contributors, even very experienced contributors, who come across a very old article, that was written before the wikipedia had support for footnote style references, and that never had the raw URLs it was written with updated to modern references, treat those articles as "unreferenced".

I suggest it is disruptive to class older articles on BLP individuals that still relied on embedded raw URLs as unreferenced, and eligible for deletion as unreferenced.

Articles that use an obsolete or deprecated reference style

A related and worse phenomenon is that some contributors who come across an older article, that never had its embedded raw URLs and RS in its external links section modernized into footnote style references, and has had an {{unreferenced}} tag placed on it, will nominate that article for deletion, solely because it is unreferenced.

Technically, those articles aren't eligible for deletion, even if they are about living people, if those embedded URLs are recognized as constituting the single reference {{blpprod}} requires.

Step zero

When a contributor who knows that BEFORE obliges them to confirm or refute the existence of reliable source, first considers nominating an article for deletion. step zero should be to recognize that embedded raw URLs, and the article's external links are the first URLs they should review before deciding whether the article is really eligible for deletion.

Respect NODEADLINE

WP:NODEADLINE is an argument often used in AFD to keep unimproved articles that have been tagged for improvement for a long time.

Recognize the value of the original contributor's efforts

The bottom line, those older articles represented a considerable effort on the part of the contributors who wrote them. Those contributors may have left the project, or passed away, and yet their efforts still merit respect from the wikipedia's current contributors, even when their efforts may give a surface appearance of not measuring up to today's standards. Don't be hasty. Recognize their embedded raw URLs may be valid references, that could be updated to modern style references, with very little effort.