Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caftan (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
There's not a standardized, catchy, one-word answer to how I think this needs to be handled. The current article is problematic. It approaches this topic from its perspective as a museum exhibit. Accordingly, the academic journal sponsored by the museum to publish research about its exhibits strains the definition of sources "independent" of the subject. But of course, what is important and notable about this object is not that it is a museum exhibit ''per se'', but that it represents an archaeologically significant textile discovery from an archaeologically significant Silk Road burial site. The information here (absent some of the backgrounder on the definition of a caftan) is best served in an article at a different title. Moshchevaja Balka burial is my preferred choice, which also allows us to include other information about the site, its history, its discover, and so forth... Moshchevaja Balka textiles is a narrower topic that also seems plausible if there are other sources that specifically address the textiles at length. I'd rather we start with the former and |spin out the latter if that proves necessary. Something like Silk Road archaeology is a broader alternative if Moshchevaja Balka lacks supporting sources. This approach solves the independence problem; the subject is no longer a specific item ''qua'' museum exhibit, and so the non-independence of the current sourcing evaporates. It also avoids the uncomfortable suggestion that articles on every individual museum holding might in and of themselves be plausible. This isn't strictly a redirect, and since the target article doesn't exist yet, can't in good faith by called a merge. Fundamentally though, our goal should be to keep the encyclopedic content, but not ''here'' and not precisely ''like this
— User:Squeamish, 14:42, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:SPINOUT (Wikipedia:Article size)