Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017 Kandel stabbing attack


 * 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 keep. The conversation can continue on the talk page J04n(talk page) 20:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

2017 Kandel stabbing attack

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WP:NOTNEWS article is mostly a collection of statements from various politicians with no indication of lasting impact SeraphWiki (talk) 04:05, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. Jack Frost (talk) 04:12, 17 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. We're seeing wide WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE on the international scale - e.g. German prosecutors raise charge in teen's stabbing to murder, Business Insider, ‘Teen’ refugees threaten to scupper Angela Merkel, The Times from the past week. Event has WP:SIGCOV amply meeting WP:NCRIME, the sole question being perhaps WP:LASTING and continued coverage in the future - per WP:RAPID in such a situation the article should be kept. LASTING doesn't require a big BALL here, as several sources are describing this case as a possible policy changing trigger to Germany's asylum practices - but in any event per RAPID given the SUSTAINED coverage in wide, international, well regarded sources from the time of the event and until present - this should be kept.Icewhiz (talk) 08:14, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * RAPID has been used a lot to keep these articles, and nothing has ever come of it. These articles are created at a low level without any indication of whether they would even be due for inclusion in an article about violence against women in Germany, or violence committed by refugees in Germany. There is no analysis at all and no indication of how they would fit into a higher level article because no sources have ever discussed these particular incidents. RAPID should not be used to keep these dead-end breaking news articles that have no hope of ever becoming neutral, balanced articles because they have a very narrow topic. Each one is basically a POV fork of the actual encyclopedic topic (in this case violence committed by refugees, or violence against women in Germany) where the main article would have to also include content about racism and other neutral content about domestic violence, etc. SeraphWiki (talk) 08:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I hate to say this really, but there is a tremendous amount of violence against women in Germany - It has been the subject of publication after publication and we don't even have an article about Violence against women in Germany. That is embarrassing. Until clear guidelines are set these articles are going to keep proliferating. One particular crime being committed by a refugee from Afghanistan is so narrow that it would be WP:SYNTH to bring in the broader discussion, but the POV presented in the context of a one week news-cycle about the crime, largely based on rhetorical statements from politicians, is allowed to stand in these articles without any hope of ever balancing them. If there were policy changes, the higher level article would be written first and the relevant articles would be created as link development, but that is not what happens.SeraphWiki (talk) 08:51, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The incident occurred on 27 December 2017. Business insider (AP reprint) ran a story on 16 January - which would be 3 weeks later. You seem to mixing your personal opinion of whether such incidents should be notable - and actual coverage. We don't decided on notability based on editor opinion. We do decided based on coverage. RAPID is a valid argument for an in-the-news event receiving wide international coverage. If you want to claim lack of SUSTAINED - you'd be better off waiting six months or a year - and then taking out the AfD axe (claiming that while covered widely in the month of the incident - coverage has since....). Doing an AfD based on crystal-ball guesses of editors regarding future coverage - which is pointless - as pointed out by the WP:RAPID policy.Icewhiz (talk) 09:01, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And of course, coverage in German, e.g. bild or RTL is on-going. This incident has political ramifications regarding asylum as well as an interesting legal question regarding the age of the alleged perpetrator - is an interesting legal issue (how do you determine the age, in the modern era with laws protected minors, of an individual with no documentation) as well as a policy issue (being a declared minor is advantageous in the asylum system).Icewhiz (talk) 09:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTNEWS is not a discussion of whether a topic is notable. It is grounds for deletion of a topic that may satisfy WP:GNG. So you can strike your personal comments above. I do have some background knowledge on violent crimes against women, having studied the topic in several University and law school courses. No amount of wikilawyering around this changes it. I can't find a single similar news story about a white German man being violent. Maybe white German men just aren't violent, that could be true, I don't know because Germany doesn't even collect statistics based on ethnicity. This is why an encyclopedia should have a strong preference for secondary source academic analysis, writen by experts. News sources should really be used for basic non-controversial facts, not as a basis to really shape the content and tone of the encyclopedia on a large scale. It is creating a big mess that will have to be cleaned up down the line.SeraphWiki (talk) 09:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * NOTNEWS not relevant - this is not a routine event and in any event has persisted across several news cycles covered via many different angles (which we, as an encyclopedia, should summarize). Perhaps the German and international media are wrong in their coverage priorities - that should be taken up with them and their readership. On Wikipedia we determine notability by WP:SIGCOV by WP:RS, which is present in this case, and not by editor opinion on the editorial policy of RSes.Icewhiz (talk) 09:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For example here a US army sergeant decapitated his wife's lover's head and brought it to her but we don't seem to have an article about it. Nadav Sela killed his wife and two children in Israel but I can't find a Wikipedia article about it. It is partially the priorities of the media, but not entirely. This really needs to be made more precise at the policy-level. The NOTNEWS criteria are simply not clear enough about what is and is not a routine news event. SeraphWiki (talk) 10:06, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It actually is quite clear. Per NOTNEWS: "For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia", and further expanded in WP:ROUTINE. A murder (in peace time in a normal country) is never routine. A murder that has political ramifications (e.g. ) - is far off from routine. A murder still might not be notable, and most murders are indeed not notable, it depends on whether there is WP:SIGCOV. The Nadav Sela case - probably would pass notability guidelines if someone created it (even though there are no political ramifications - it is a straight up horror story)- though it would be more difficult to defend at AfD (as there is less coverage than this AfD - which has become an international item - Sela is fairly widely covered - but it is limited to the national level (and is mostly non-English, though English coverage does exist).Icewhiz (talk) 10:22, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * NOTNEWS is not a notability, it is an exclusion policy. You need to read WP:NN again. This decision about what is "routine" always comes down to what individual editors believe is notable. Nowhere in the policy does it say "murders are never routine" - are rapes routine? Is domestic violence routine? Is police brutality routine? Are military accidents routine? No, only editor's ex cathedra personal statements. WP:SIGCOV and WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE are notability guidelines. The fact that editors routinely vote on this in AfDs without a basic understanding of what the WP:ISNOT policy actually is, is an issue. The language of WP:NN should probably be restated in the WP:ISNOT policy. This isn't to question anyones competence, I only recently learned this at AfC, many editors are just not aware that WP:ISNOT is not a notability guideline. SeraphWiki (talk) 10:37, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, I am aware of the difference between notability and NOTNEWS and I put it up for nomination as NOTNEWS, so all the argument about notability is off-topic. SeraphWiki (talk) 11:04, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * In that case, this should be speedily kept, as claiming murders/attacks fall under NOTNEWS is contrary to the policy and community consensus regarding articles about murders/attacks.Icewhiz (talk) 09:33, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * No, there is a rough consensus about terrorist attacks, but this seems to have been run of the mill 'she left him, he killed her'. This is a very common type of crime. If we keep the article when the crime is committed by an Afghan refugee, I hope we will keep all of them, if someone takes the time to create the new article.SeraphWiki (talk) 22:42, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep I am seeing continued coverage . D4iNa4 (talk) 09:43, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Suspect charged with murder; ongoing coverage; and Note that the suspect's age is being investigated. With similar cases, such as Killing of Alexandra Mezher, expert medical examinations determine that adult migrants have claimed status as "minors" to secure more favorable immigrant status; such findings do bring additional coverage/notability to this sort of crime.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:15, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The issue here isn't "ongoing coverage". There is a huge and voluminous body of scholarly literature about this that goes back decades, some of it specifically about Muslims. Here are some titles of recent academic papers:
 * Islamophobia: examining causal links between the media and “race hate” from “below”
 * Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media
 * The Changing Misrepresentation of Race and Crime on Network and Cable News
 * That's the kind of stuff we are supposed to write about. Serious encyclopedia stuff. Not echoing a particular array of crime news stories that have been linked to racial bias in academic publications for decades (most of it about blacks, now more recently about Muslims and Latinos as well). Crime reporting in particular has been such a subject of scrutiny that our policies advise us to steer clear of it unless it is about a wrongful accusation (At least when creating standalone articles about individuals). Naming the article 2017 stabbing attack does not fundamentally change what this article is. Despite the title, this article is exactly what we are not supposed to write under WP:PERP. This isn't benign.SeraphWiki (talk) 15:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Please re-read the policy you cite and Note that, a.) article is named for the crime, not after the PERP; b.) German police have protected PERP's name with an alias (even though there is no doubt about the identity about this long-time boyfriend who stabbed a 15-year-old to death after she broke up with him.) also, please stop WP:BLUDGEONING this AfD.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We are not here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. We are here only to determine whether this event meets WP:NCRIME.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:30, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I nominated it for NOTNEWS, not NCRIME and am frankly tired of voting on these discussions on grounds other than what the article was nominated for. When dozens of articles are created about routine news reporting on the topic of crimes committed by minorities despite decades of widely accepted, highly cited, established published research that crime journalism has a racial bias, and those articles can't be linked to other articles on the topic because they aren't specifically discussed in any secondary source analysis, that is proliferating non-encyclopedic content on a significant scale, and it certainly triggers NOTNEWS and "routine" because it undermines Wikipedia's purpose of building an encyclopedia. It has nothing to do with NCRIME. SeraphWiki (talk) 01:22, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Cautioning User:SeraphWiki, You have been editing for a long time, but perhaps you are unaware that it is against the rules to return to comments you have made in a discussion and alter them after the conversation has moved on, as yo did here: .  When making such changes you must clearly mark them, by striking and similar.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Since the diff you cited clearly shows that I refactored my comment before anyone had responded, I think you should strike the above accusation.SeraphWiki (talk) 01:33, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Done. My error and my apology. I assumed that you were new to AfD because of your apparent unfamiliarity with the process. For example, you assert that: "I nominated it for"NOTNEWS, not NCRIME and am frankly tired of voting on these discussions on grounds other than what the article was nominated for." And similar statements here:, and .E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:56, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Why do those diffs make you believe I am unfamiliar with "the process"?SeraphWiki (talk) 23:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For example, I refactored this statement The only thing that is WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS is when editors try to work around the majority view of WP:RS on a subject by proliferating non-encyclopedic articles about crimes committed by minorities. because after reading it, I thought it was too personal. If there had been any replies, I would have struck it. I don't think it is intentional, but I think that is the effect - so I tried to reword it to explain in a more neutral way - dozens of low-level standalone articles on routine crime reporting that about crimes (committed by minorities) without a clear parent don't have any place in the encyclopedia. This is a thing that is quantifiable, if we are creating a lot of content about routine crimes because crimes committed by minorities receive more media coverage then other types, then I think it is fair to say that these types of articles may not have encyclopedic value as standalone articles and may even inadvertently introduce bias. There is enough serious academic research about this that I think it should be taken seriously. The article itself is written in a news summary style. But I don't see how a diff of a comment that I have already struck (or removed under WP:TPG in this case) is relevant to this AfD. SeraphWiki (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. North America1000 13:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. North America1000 13:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)


 * WP:HEYMANN article has been upgraded, most notably with A Girl’s Killing Puts Germany’s Migration Policy on Trial in today's New York Times.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:58, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Ongoing coverage. Many more sources can be found in the German article (see Interwiki links).--Greywin (talk) 19:58, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: SeraphWiki is correct in observing that by collecting and preserving articles like these, we WP editors are reinforcing the racial bias that our sources carry. Check out the NYT article linked above: "If the boy had been German, [...] we wouldn't be having this conversation". However, taking them to AfD is not a good strategy against this effect, and discussing lasting encyclopedic value in an AfD has never been a good use of time. --Pgallert (talk) 08:13, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We're not reinforcing - we're merely following the sources - reflecting whatever selection of coverage may be there. Claims of bias should be addressed to the editors of the New York Times or Der Spiegel - and perhaps their readership who seem interested in such coverage.Icewhiz (talk) 08:22, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just that we have a lot more readership and influence than NYT or Spiegel. That gives us more responsibility, too. There is enough paperwork on WP with which we could avoid reflecting whatever selection of coverage may be there, if only we wanted to. --Pgallert (talk) 08:50, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is not following the sources - we are supposed to follow reliable secondary sources - media reports are not reliable secondary sources for articles about crimes - there should be some secondary source somewhere that has at least mentioned this incident if it is notable and/or has encyclopedic value and it should have a parent article - what is the parent article for these? This has not been mentioned in so much as an academic footnote. This is basically all covered by WP:NEVENT -  WP:DIVERSE, WP:SENSATION, WP:PERSISTENCE - If an event is cited as a case study in multiple sources after the initial coverage has died down, this may be an indication of lasting significance. - it should be at least cited, somewhere, outside the news to be notable. This is not a very high standard as most crime related academiclaw articles are copiously cited, and include hundreds of crimes that have never been mentioned the press. If it has never been cited, it is probably non-notable for an encyclopedia.SeraphWiki (talk) 01:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep - National and international coverage (such as in The New York Times). A high-profile killing which sparked a wider debate with concerns expressed by a number of senior politicians. Kind Tennis Fan (talk) 01:41, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Here are the relevant notability policies though (since NEVENT and NOTNEWS are often discussed at the same AfD): SeraphWiki (talk) 02:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:DIVERSE A series of news reports by a single newspaper or news channel would not be sufficient basis for an article...Similarly, where a single story or press release is simply re-reported (often word-for-word) by news publications, or when reporters base their information on repeating news coverage from elsewhere (for example, "AP reported that ..."), this should only be counted as a single source for the purpose of determining notability (see Bombardment). Derivative reports and reports under common control cannot be used to verify each other, nor does mere repetition necessarily show the kind of effort that is good evidence of a significant matter.
 * Right now five of the references in the article are to one paper Die Welt. Two are to Frankfurter Allgemeine. One is to a DW opinion piece. The NY Times article has been cited five times, but none of the substantive context has been added like "Half of that increase is due to the fact that crimes involving migrants are twice as likely to be reported, the authors of the study said...violent crime, including murder and rape, remains well below its 2007 peak." The local.de source only repeats what is in other sources. I can improve this based on the NYTimes source, which was added as a reference after the nomination. Looking at how the more recently added sources have been used I am starting to think this may be more a behavioral issue, and not within the scope of AfD.
 * WP:SENSATION Some editors may take into account perceived media bias, such as Missing white woman syndrome, when assessing notability.
 * WP:BREAKING - It is recommended that editors start a section about the event within an existing article on a related topic if possible, which may later be split into its own article if the coverage suggests that the event is independently notable.
 * Right now this article is linked to Kandel for which it is most likely undue and Immigration and crime in Germany - which leaves no doubt that the parent topic is about immigrants and crime, (Parent Category:Correlates of crime. I am willing to withdraw the nomination and attempt to improve the article and discuss merging into the (short) parent article.
 * WP:PERSISTENCE Which I quoted above.
 * We keep articles on individual crimes that garner sufficient attention in reliable, independent sources to pass WP:NCRIME and WP:GNG. You might want to look at AfDs on crimes that are in some ways similar, Articles for deletion/2012 Paros (Greece) rape, Articles for deletion/2016 Sweden asylum center stabbing, Articles for deletion/Palagonia double homicide.  While it is true that some crimes/criminals Shooting of Kathryn Steinle, Edwin Ramos, Pablo Antonio Serrano-Vitorino,) draw intense attention from WP:RS because the perpetrator is an illegal immigrant, the question at AfD is not why attention was drawn, but does sourcing suffice to establish notability.  On your "merge" proposal.  When a CRIME is notable, we keep it, even though articles on broader phenomena of which is is part exist.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You've already stated your position. There is no need to repeat your position in a way that does not address any of the policy language that I highlighted, after a nomination has been withdrawn, or to argue against a merger that has not even been proposed yet. I've checked some of the AfDs you linked and I see one repeat participant who has been CheckUser blocked. Maybe, as other editors have pointed out, it was a mistake to nominate it as NOTNEWS, but the notability question can't be fully resolved until the initial coverage has died down, per WP:NEVENT and WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE.SeraphWiki (talk) 02:43, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Point of fact: you did not withdraw. You offered to withdraw on conditions that included a proposed merger. to which I made a policy-based response.E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:12, 24 January 2018 (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.