Talk:No-go area

Sweden
Bizarre that Sweden is not mentioned in the Alleged section, yet the term "no-go area" is covered in the article Vulnerable area. I'm not seeing a difference between this and France's Sensitive urban zones, which we do cover. I came to this article specifically for information about vulnerable areas, and was surprised not to find it.

I have reviewed the discussions in Talk:No-go area/Archive 1, Talk:No-go area/Archive 2, Talk:No-go area/Archive 3. I think it is time to revisit this issue. As the article says in the lede, in the 21st century the term is used for "areas that police or medical workers consider too dangerous to enter without heavy backup". This criterion is met by Sweden's "vulnerable areas", of which the national broadcaster NRK reported "They are often called 'no go zones' because ambulances and fire trucks cannot drive into the areas without police protection on critical occasions." cagliost (talk) 11:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Given the disparate usages evident (in reliable sources) for the term 'no-go area', there are basically two options for this article: either contributors decide for themselves what the phrase really means (which is of course contrary to policy), or we stop pretending that a 'no-go area' is anything more than a location that someone somewhere has described as such. Not a thing, a phrase. In the case above, a phrase (at least in part) in Swedish. So a phrase apparently close enough to English to pass muster quite possibly, but only if we arbitrarily decide for ourselves what constitutes a literal translation. As for Sweden's 'vulnerable areas', they are defined as such in a list compiled by the Swedish Police Authority. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:Consensus can change of course, but has anything new emerged since the RfC back in 2020 (Talk:No-go area/Archive 3)? Has anything changed such that we have a strong reason to expect a new discussion to be substantially different, rather than more-or-less a rehash of the previous one? I stand by what I said in my close of the previous RfC: it's almost certainly a better idea to figure out what the scope of this article is supposed to be first (which would of course require reviewing the relevant sources on the overarching topic), rather than debating individual examples. At any rate, anybody who comes here looking for information about vulnerable areas can follow the link to that article in the "See also" section. TompaDompa (talk) 11:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * "either contributors decide for themselves what the phrase really means (which is of course contrary to policy), or we stop pretending that a 'no-go area' is anything more than a location that someone somewhere has described as such. Not a thing, a phrase." This is a false dichotomy. There is a third option, which is to use reliable sources. The term has a dictionary definition, for example the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus defines it as "an area, especially in a town, where it is very dangerous to go, usually because a group of people who have weapons prevent the police, army, and other people from entering".


 * So the scope of the article seems quite clear to me. The article at present tries to draw a distinction between the "historical" usage and the "21st century usage", but this is a false dichotomy. The "historical" examples include Hong Kong, which is a non-military example. It seems to me that the distinction is not one of definition, but merely which are controversial ("alleged") and which are not. The example of Mozambique has a source proclaiming the existence of no-go zones in 1960s-1970s Mozambique, and no sources disputing this, so it's uncontroversial. Whereas the section on Germany has a source (Novotny) describing the controversy. I don't see evidence of disparate usage. Even in the controversial cases, it is clear what is being discussed. The example of Kenya is placed in the "Alleged" section, for no apparent reason. Frankly, the distinction the article attempts to draw between the "historical" usage and the "21st century usage" is Original Research, not supported by reliable sources.


 * It is not up to us to determine whether a given place is a "no-go area". Instead we must use reliable sources, while avoiding False Balance and Original Research. For example, if the Chancellor of Germany proclaims the existence of no-go zones, reported in reliable sources, we can report that without it being Original Research. If the Swedish national broadcaster reports that "vulnerable districts, where criminal networks have a strong influence... are often called 'no go zones' because ambulances and fire trucks cannot drive into the areas without police protection on critical occasions", that sounds like a reliable source to me, and not Original Research. cagliost (talk) 14:51, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Also, it's clear from the Cambridge definition that it doesn't have to be impossible for the authorities to enter, just dangerous/difficult. Ambulances need police escort, police need substantial backup, etc. cagliost (talk) 14:56, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * As I recall one of the objections was that this was very much tabloid journalism, unaffected by more sober analysis. In effect a violation of wp:undue. Lost of towen and cities have "well dodgy" reps (SARF OF THE RIVA DIS TIMEA NIGHT, YOUR AVIN A LARF!"), that does not make them no go zones. Slatersteven (talk) 15:02, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Given TompaDompa's comments about figuring out the scope of the article first, I've started a new discussion below, labelled "Unfocused".

Unfocused
The article has been tagged as Unfocused by TompaDompa. I intend to fix this as follows:

I intend to use the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus definition to define the scope of the article: "an area, especially in a town, where it is very dangerous to go, usually because a group of people who have weapons prevent the police, army, and other people from entering".

I propose to remove the distinction presently drawn between "historical" and "21st century" usage. This is unsupported by sources. Instead, the lede should describe how there are degrees to no-go zones. Areas can be simply high-crime and dangerous, or controlled by organised crime, or controlled by paramilitary, or fully military organisations. It is a spectrum. The lede should also describe how whether an area is or is not a no-go zone can be controversial.

As for how to handle the distinction between controversial or non-controversial designations, this can be done separately at a later date, but we can discuss it here now. The current heading "Alleged contemporary no-go areas" conflates "alleged" and "contemporary". I propose to remove "contemporary" as unnecessary and also because I don't think we should draw a chronological distinction. I don't think we should draw a military versus non-military distinction either. Should we put the controversial cases under their own heading? Or should we just list all cases together, ordered alphabetically or chronologically, and mention which ones are controversial on a case-by-case basis? cagliost (talk) 15:27, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * They should be listed together and any controversy detailed in the section. I imagine they all contain some controversy. A separate controversy section is kind of POVish similar to "criticism" sections. It's better to weave the controversy into the main text. Thanks for considering. -- Green  C  15:31, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But many of them aren't controversial, they are unambiguously false, with no high-quality RS sourcing treating them as credible. In those situations we shouldn't list them as a "controversy" or "alleged", but we also definitely shouldn't mix them in with real examples; instead, we should have a section that directly states that they are false in the heading and which covers them from the perspective that they are false, similar to eg. the hoaxes and conspiracy theories section for our article on Antifa. --Aquillion (talk) 08:33, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But is that not why this is unfocused now, because people want to include anything that has been called a no-go zone, even if the civil authorities can still operate the (for example)? Slatersteven (talk) 16:02, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Above, user Korny O'Near says "There are at least four different (though related) meanings of the term "no-go area" or "no-go zone": [1] an area made restricted by the government (like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone), [2] an area controlled by an insurgent force (like Free Derry), [3] a quasi-independent area that police don't enter (like Kowloon Walled City) and [4] a high-crime area that police are afraid to enter (like, allegedly, parts of France, German, Sweden etc.). They're all different, though of course they have the concept of restricted entry in common." I don't think the article should be about nuclear Exclusion Zones, no one calls those "no-go zones". As for 2,3,4, I deny that they are different. I think they're all the same, and fit under the dictionary definition of an area dangerous to the authorities. The lede should be rewritten with this in mind. I think this issue is being made more complicated than it needs to be. We have a term, "no go zone", which is defined in a dictionary, and which is used word-for-word in reliable sources and by government officials. This doesn't have to be complicated. In cases where the term is used falsely, such as the Perkins and Newberger cases in the United States, we have reliable sources saying it is false. cagliost (talk) 16:12, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Then we are not using the dictionary definition, as that only applies to places Where A "group of people who have weapons prevent the police, army, and other people from entering". So this will not solve the problem of "but this RS says it's a no-go zone". And how do we determine if it is "used falsely", what is the criteria for "meeting the dictionary definition"? Slatersteven (talk) 16:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Cherry-picking one dictionary definition while others say something else is contrary to policy. If reliable sources differ, we report the difference. We don't chose between them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:43, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The first three of those definitions are all substantially the same as the Cambridge definition. The last one introduces the idea that the area is "barricaded off", but this isn't a crucial part of the definition. In any case, I note what TompaDompa says below about dictionary definitions. cagliost (talk) 08:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a bad idea. A dictionary definition is no foundation to build an article upon. This just sounds like a recipe for a WP:SYNTH mess to me. Instead, the question to ask is what reliable sources on the overarching topic—i.e. no-go areas—say. Are there even sources on the overarching topic? If there aren't, that would be an indication that this should not be an article (but perhaps split into several separate ones or included in one or more other articles). TompaDompa (talk) 19:23, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking that, what do Scholastic sources say about this phenomenon, and how do they define it? Slatersteven (talk) 19:42, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Tino Sanandaji has a chapter on it in "Mass Challenge": . A Georgetown University "factsheet" describes it as an "an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory" which "first appeared in the early 2000s" . cagliost (talk) 08:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems a bit odd to me to remove the Northern Ireland usage to a separate article (or delete it). If the usage is distinct, it's related by analogy at least. cagliost (talk) 08:43, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I think that any examples that are unambiguously false - ones where no reliable sources support the designation at all, and where non-opinion WP:RS coverage unanimously covers it as a hoax or misinformation or words to that effect - should be moved to a completely separate section on false claims rather than lumped in with the others and broken down by geographic area. Those are largely a single topic about specific, narrow 21st century political usages and don't really have much to do with the regions in question or anything like that. And more generally, we should have a section devoted to the false allegations. I feel that region-by-region "list" breakdowns are a bad way to organize articles in general, but especially for false claims, where it gives them an air of reliability (even with the "alleged" at the top) by mixing them in with more serious coverage. France and the US are the most obvious examples; I'd also suggest at least considering moving Belgium there, since the only source is relying on a headline (unusable per WP:HEADLINES) and a quote. --Aquillion (talk) 08:30, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A major problem is that the scope of this article is the phrase "no-go-zone", which colloquially refers to a lot of different things, instead of a distinct topic. We've got Exclusion zones, Border zones, Military exclusion zones, Favelas and Vulnerable areas, along with a bunch of conspiracy theories. If we removed everything that is (or should be) covered in another article, what would we have left besides a dismbiguation page? –dlthewave ☎ 16:44, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Which maybe is what this should be, or a list. Slatersteven (talk) 16:46, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What's the relevant policy on this? The Unfocused template links to Splitting, which is an information page but not a policy or guideline. It's not yet clear to me that the page should be split. We have other articles on phrases or idioms. It's not obvious to me that the German usage (or the Swedish) belong in different articles to the Irish usage. cagliost (talk) 14:26, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * «We have other articles on phrases or idioms.» => Currently the No-go area article is not explicitly about a phrase. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 12:48, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

«Instead, the lede should describe how there are degrees to no-go zones.» => I strongly disagree. Either the police (and the military forces) can enter an area, either they can not. There is no in-between. Also can i remind Talk:No-go area/Archive 2 ? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 12:48, 28 March 2023 (UTC)