Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Israeli espionage operation 2000–2001


 * 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. my reading of this is that this comes under WP:FORK Spartaz Humbug! 16:42, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Allegations of Israeli espionage operation 2000–2001

 * – ( View AfD View log )

First, a caution based on previous discussions I've seen on this topic. (A couple of people were blocked following some heated discussions on previous incarnations of this article).


 * Please keep this conversation focused on the topic at hand, whether or not this article should be included in the encyclopedia based on Wikipedia's policies for the inclusion of articles. DO NOT make comments of ANY kind about your fellow participants in the discussion.  Keep in mind that this article is not that important--whether it is deleted or kept, it is not the end of the world.  Please don't let this discussion have a negative effect on your day.  If conflict-related articles are getting you down, try looking at pictures of kittens or listening to Pachelbel's Canon: [[File:Pachelbel's_Canon.ogg]]

That being said, this article should be deleted as a content-fork of material already in Art student scam. Note that even the title of the article violates the Manual of Style (MOS) guideline WP:ALLEGED--". When alleged or accused are used, ensure that the source of the accusation is clear." According to this article, the "allegations of an Israeli espionage operation" come from "news outlets." Actually, looking at the sources, what we have are various journalists speculating that the observation that people claiming to be Israeli art students visited several Drug Enforcement Agency facilities might indicate that the young people were involved in an espionage operation (generally along with advancing other possible explanations for the observation). By collecting the bits of news commentary that most advance the idea that the "art students" may have been spies, the article presents a non-neutral perspective, nor could a neutral article be constructed along these lines. So, both the article title and the article itself are non-neutral and not compliant with policy for the inclusion of articles. (See:WP:POVFORK, which seems to describe pretty well what's happened with this article). CordeliaNaismith (talk) 18:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep, possibly rename to something more appropriate. And, ugh, not this again. Why do we have to keep dragging stuff like this back up? The notability of this article is based upon the event that Israeli students were arrested for being part of this "alleged spy ring" and then deported. It doesn't matter if the spy ring is alleged or not, since this article is about the events surrounding the government's reaction to it. This article is not a content fork of Art student scam, it is a split from it, so as to not give undue weight for the fairly extensive amount of information on this subject in that higher-level article. I agree with the point on the title. I personally feel that it should just be Israeli Espionage Operation, but I suppose that wouldn't be NPOV. Either way, if you look at sources like this, it is quite clear that the events surrounding this sort of scam/spying are notable and were reported on in numerous news outlets. Silver  seren C 19:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Essentially the present article already had an AfD, which can be found under WP:Articles for deletion/Israeli art student scam. I managed to prevent a "delete" outcome of that discussion by rewriting the article so as to give the conspiracy nonsense its proper (i.e. little) weight. Some conspiracy fans were not happy with this and made the article unbalanced again. The result was the second Afd, under WP:Articles for deletion/Art student scam, which again ended with "no consensus" concerning further existence of that article, but with a consensus that the conspiracy cruft must be reduced again. Instead discussion of the conspiracy theory was moved to the present new article. Although the case is somewhat complicated, this action had many of the characteristics of a POV fork and comes close to recreation of a deleted article. It's time now for a clear "delete" outcome as an unambiguous precedent, so that in the future this nonsense can be dealt with without further huge discussions. Hans Adler 19:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Strong Delete. This was already deleted, I believe more than once. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Contacteeperson (talk • contribs) 19:51, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it wasn't. I'm not sure where you're getting that information. Silver  seren C 01:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:42, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete as WP:POVFORK and speedy delete as a g4 .-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 01:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. This is not eligible for WP:CSD because it hasn't been deleted as a result of a discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Correct. Struck.-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 20:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep Concerned about how much it relies on Salon but it is not so bad that it meets deletion standards per NOT and the GNG is met. There was also a discussion after the AfD about the split that was an attempt at consensus. I think it should have waited a bit longer for some more work and opinions but this AfD will probably result in those coming up. See Talk:Art student scam Cptnono (talk) 01:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Referenced, and satisfies notability as well as other relevant guidelines and policies. Edison (talk) 03:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Strong keep with perhaps a rename, if needed to comply with article naming policy. The content of this article handily satisfies the notability requirement, with government announcements and mainstream news articles about it. Binksternet (talk) 17:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. The topic is notable, but the current treatment of the topic runs afoul of WP:FRINGE, and the problem is very hard to fix without merging the article back to where it came from. The problem is that the media like to write about exciting conspiracy theories, and are not particularly interested in writing about the boring explanations why they are groundless, once these become available. That's because we all want to read about the first kind of topics much more than about the second. As a result, we don't have much specific material explaining why the conspiracy theory is groundless, and all those speculations that we are reporting make the article unbalanced. (There is enough in the existing reliable sources to get a clear picture of what actually happened, and I explained this in an earlier AfD. However, there is not enough in the reliable sources to explain the actual facts behind the conspiracy theory without original research.) This is why the previous AfDs tended very strongly to deletion. I am very much surprised that at this AfD this argument does not seem to play a big role any more. Is nobody reading the old AfDs? Hans Adler 00:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete it's a "speculation" about "allegations" article. This is a POV fork of Art Studen blah blah blah.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete, this is already covered in depth under 9/11 conspiracy theories. Marokwitz (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2010 (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.