Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bana Alabed


 * 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.  MBisanz  talk 12:35, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Bana Alabed

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Literally none of this amounts to actual independent notability and substance and the listed links are simply news stories about her Tweets and simply nothing beyond it, as it is, the information itself is labeled as questionable because nothing is certainly sure and thus, let alone that, there's still nothing for a convincing article. Shall I say WP:NOT policy also applies here. SwisterTwister  talk  07:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk &bull;&#32;mail) 10:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Syria-related deletion discussions. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk &bull;&#32;mail) 10:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete – Clearly this made-up. Making tweets or receiving books do not add up to notability. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk &bull;&#32;mail) 10:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. There is no objective evidence of her existence. Purely a Twitter account and some photos and videos which could easily have been faked (especially if the BBC were involved in the deception). There are no reliable sources to confirm that "Bana Alabed" and her "mother" are not actors being used in a propaganda project to smear the Syrian government and its allies and to sanitise the terrorists in east Aleppo.Silicondale (talk) 13:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Her mother is an English teacher and some of the tweets may be translations. Many of the tweets are signed "- Bana" or "- Fatemah" (her mother) and some are not signed. Which tweets signed "- Bana" are politically loaded? Hang googles (talk) 01:22, 7 December 2016 (UTC) This is not just part of a recent news event. The account has gotten plenty of international press coverage before that New York Times article was published. This will be a notable hoax if that turns out to be the case. Please check out some of these articles and reconsider. September - Already getting coverage in The Telegraph, after being created on September 24. November - Times of Israel, Washington Post, TIME, Sky News, National Post, Japan Times December - Middle East Eye, International Business Times, Reuters, New Yorker, The Mercury, CNN It should be edited to reflect current developments not deleted. Could more experienced editors help me fix the issues in the article? Thank you. Hang googles (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * KEEP. News stories are about her, include some information about her past tweets. Her twitter account was deleted, so this is not a page about someone with a twitter account. She amounts to a journalist, and possibly killed in war- that is notoriety enough to warrant an entry, and probably inclusion in the List of journalists killed during the Syrian Civil War page under citizen journalists/media activists missing.Benitoite (talk) 12:51, 5 December 2016 (UTC) Even though her account is back up and appearing safe I'm against deletion.Benitoite (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)˜˜˜˜
 * Do not delete. See this article from The Telegraph. She has been in the public eye since September and now her account deletion is getting major press coverage. Hang googles (talk) 15:35, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Do not delete. Referred over here from google news, heavily covered. Coattail effect (talk) 14:26, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete – There is no evidence even for the objective existence of this girl in Aleppo. The photos are most likely those of a child actor, and the location of Aleppo cannot even be confirmed. The tweets are clearly NOT those of a 7-year-old Syrian child with limited grasp of the English language, and are couched in terms which are politically loaded way beyond the understanding of a child. https://barbaramckenzie.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/bana-of-aleppo-the-story-so-far-update/ Silicondale (talk) 17:00, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * BBC News said "In a patchy video call with the BBC, Bana glances off-camera to her mother, who helps her with the more difficult answers." and "Solar power and patchy internet signal make communication difficult, with small windows of reliable access"
 * Politically loaded? The tweet from Bana which asks for World War 3 rather than Aleppo holocaust. How does a 7yr old with very limited knowledge of English and no experience of Twitter hashtags write a tweet like that? Since BBC are possibly implicated in the faking of this entire story, their news item cannot be taken as reliable. There is no objective evidence of the existence of either Bana or her mother Fatemah in east Aleppo. Since most of east Aleppo including the area where Bana and her mother supposedly lived has now been liberated, why have they not reappeared, alive and well, in west Aleppo, where many thousands of east Aleppo civilians have now found refuge and the medical and food aid that they so desperately need? Silicondale (talk) 12:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is clearly a hoax and as such should be speedily deleted before it brings Wikipedia into disrepute. This article is using Wikipedia for blatantly one-sided political propaganda purposes. An indication of its hoax nature is the mention of the tooth fairy debunked in the tweet from a Syrian - this concept is alien to Syrian culture and clearly included by a non-Syrian (European) hoaxer. Tooth_fairy Silicondale (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete – I don't think this person/event has "enduring notability" per the WP:NOTNEWS section of the WP:What Wikipedia is not policy. I think in ten years time this will not be regarded as notable within the whole scope of the Syrian civil war. Note that WP:SIGCOV says "significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included". Also I think "news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event, our coverage of that individual should be limited to the article about that event" of WP:NOTNEWS applies, so this should be covered within a general article about Syrian civil war media coverage, not an article about a person or individual twitter account. This article seems to me to be a negative example of WP:RECENTISM. Rwendland (talk) 10:09, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect to a single, sourced sentence at List of hoaxes, or to a new article Internet hoaxes in the Syrian Civil War, which cal also include A Gay Girl In Damascus, because this now appears to be a HOAX intended enlist sympathy for the rebels in Aleppo. Today's New York Times   compares this to  A Gay Girl In Damascus and quotes many skeptical experts who sympathize with the rebels, the article is persuasive, while pointing out that it is at present not possible to absolutely establish that the whole thing is  doesn't exist because Aleppo is being blown to smithereens. (who need all the help God can give them because Heaven knows  the world isn't) .  Political and humanitarian sympathies notwithstanding, Wikipedia is letting itself be used here. While I do hear the Delete arguments, it has gotten so much coverage that I think moving both hoaxes to  Internet hoaxes in the Syrian Civil War is a better solution. E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:46, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect to a single, sourced sentence at List of hoaxes as above, although don't think there are enough hoaxes specific to this war that an article about them is needed. In the small chance this article is somehow kept, it needs to be fundamentally rewritten to cover this as a hoax, rather than the current version which mostly presents it as fact. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  17:26, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete – The account run by multiple people is lacking in notability and does not as yet warrant its own article. Lilyfa (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Where in the New York Times article does it call the account a hoax? It's highlighting doubts but it does not confirm it as a hoax. I was always aware that there were doubts in it's authenticity. I started the page as "Bana Alabed is a Syrian girl who supposedly tweets from Aleppo with the help of her mother."
 * October - BBC, The Guardian, New York Times, NBC

That has a blatant POV; sure, but is it less than ? One smart guy said something like this w.r.t  Syrian conflict: "Believe nothing of what you read online, a tiny fraction of what you read in the papers, and only half of what you see with your own eyes." Or something like that. And that sounds about right to me. Having said that, I'm not worried if this is kept, (no more than I'm worried about Ibrahim Qashoush or  A Gay Girl In Damascus is kept. What is important is the content...) But that this girl is tweeting herself (oh, and got "spontaneously" hundreds of thousands of followers virtually overnight??) Sorry, I don't buy that. Call it WP:OR, if you like; I call it common sense. Huldra (talk) 20:44, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete, and redirect this to media coverage of the Syrian Civil War. Editor abcdef (talk) 10:46, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Endorse redirect to media coverage of the Syrian Civil War.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:13, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Me too If content constituted as hoax article, redirected is better.  S A 1 3 B r o  13:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Endorse redirect. Regardless of if this is a hoax or not, per WP:BIO1E, and WP:NOTNEWS "Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event, our coverage of that individual should be limited to the article about that event". Rwendland (talk) 15:42, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * BIO1E says "We should generally avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met:" and condition #2 (If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual.) isn't met since her account is still active. Also what is the "event"? Each of the sources I listed above are about her/her account. Hang googles (talk) 06:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete, they say the truth is the first victim in war, surely true in this case. I don't know the truth behind this twitter handle; but if that is a 7 year old Syrian girl, then I was born yesterday (and I have a very nice bridge to sell you......) See Ibrahim Qashoush for another extremely questionable story  (see Talk:Ibrahim Qashoush) Huldra (talk) 20:44, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This is not a valid reason to delete, see WP:Verifiability. There's clearly an account on Twitter that is supposed to be for a girl named "Bana Alabed". The article already expresses doubt in its authenticity. Hang googles (talk) 06:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There is clearly a growing consensus for deletion. Who has the authority to do this - and when will it be done? Silicondale (talk) 11:24, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Silicondale this discussion will be reviewed, and probably closed, 7 days after the date on which it began.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:14, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer a redirect without deletion. If not now it's very likely that this girl/account will warrant an article in the near future. Sources after December 8 include WBUR, ATTN, and CNN. Hang googles (talk) 05:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The tweets today in this Twitter thread, starting with a CNN "interview" make it crystal clear that the entire Bana Alabed story is a propaganda creation. It is forensically debunked by a number of people. In my opinion, deletion of this article is the only option.Silicondale (talk) 18:13, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Here's the thing--or at least a thing. The NYT article linked above indeed reports on doubts, but that's what they are: reports on doubts. There is no proof that this is a hoax, and until it is proven that it is a hoax, this is a BLP of a seven-year old girl in Syria. Whether she was prepped by her mom is immaterial. Whether this article needs to stay or be redirected is also immaterial to me right now. But calling this article a hoax is, as far as I'm concerned, a BLP violation: when in doubt, err on the side of caution. I will also note that at least one of the editors here has a blatant POV, as proven in this and other related edits. And for the record: it is entirely possible for a seven-year old child to speak a foreign language esp. if her mother is an English teacher. I got a seven-year old at home who would be just as capable of writing similar messages in her father's original language, so let's not start OR-ing here (, I'm looking at you). Of course, that seven-year old doesn't live in a war zone. Drmies (talk) 16:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * So is it a problem to have a POV? - especially if with every day that passes it is becoming more likely to be proved true? The NYT is not exactly a neutral source, now, is it? So if even the NYT admits to doubts, would you not accept that in reality Bana Alabed's veracity is subject to more than mere doubt? With the full liberation of Aleppo the truth should be established very soon. I am not saying that the article itself is a hoax - but that in my opinion all the evidence (necessarily circumstantial) points to the entire Bana Alabed story being a propaganda hoax, a stunt, in which Wikipedia risks being made an unwitting tool. And very similar arguments apply to the White Helmets. It is fact that they are NOT the Syrian Civil Defence, an entirely different organisation, internationally recognised, founded in 1972. It is also fact that with the liberation of Aleppo, when there is REAL work for them to do, they appear to have vanished without trace. They clearly never were a civil defence organisation, but purely a western-funded propaganda outfit closely allied with Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists. Silicondale (talk) 20:30, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No, the problem in your case is that your POV easily crept into your edits. You can have your opinion, that's fine, but that should not interfere with article construction based on reliable sources. Your persistent insertion of editorial commentary in Syrian Civil Defense is evidence of that as well. You don't like the title? Propose a different one--but you cannot insert such comments in article space in Wikipedia's tone. And while the NYT reports doubts, they do not say "hoax", and as long as sources like that don't, you shouldn't either. Drmies (talk) 23:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Drmies: If you look at the videos accompanying the twitter account, it is clear the girl hardly speaks English at all. (Or she is very good at hiding her knowledge of English in those videos....). I have been following the Syria-conflict from the start, (I once took, e.g. the interior photos of Hammam Yalbugha, now sadly destroyed) and there have been a ton of hoaxes.....from all sides. (Do you recall all the fuzz  about A Gay Girl In Damascus?) I've seen Western officials (including HRW) use pictures from Gaza....saying they are from Aleppo... Or this tweet, allegedly a girl in Syria...but actually from the Lebanese   Hiba Tawaji's music video... here
 * Huldra, I've not looked at Hang googles (yet). My concern is the BLP, and as long as reliable sources report on the tweets and as long as it is not at all certain that this is not real, I have to assume that it is real (and even if the mother does all the work, it's still a BLP as far as I'm concerned). You don't have to tell me that there's tons of misinformation around--I'm well aware of that, as I think you know. But we can discuss this civilly and with the use of reliable sources. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 23:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Drmies, yeah, well, that is the problem. Ever since I came back from my first trip to the Middle East, (15 years ago), I have found that what Western WP:RS today writes about the Middle East is nowhere even close to how I have experienced it. Just an example: there are a couple of (Shia) Mosques in Damascus, which brings a lot of Iranian pilgrims,  (e.g. Sayyidah Ruqayya Mosque). Now, the average Iranian females back then dress a lot different from the  average Syrian female  (Iranian: typically, in all black "Abayas". Syrian: much like Western female, but with a head scarf. Or with long, colourful dresses.) But absolutely whenever a Western WP:RS  had an article about  Syria, it would be accompanied with a picture, taken in front of one of those  pilgrimage sites in Damascus. And all the women you would see would be ......Iranian...., illustrating "Syria".
 * So yeah, I know, I know, about Wikipedias WP:RS .... I just don't believe in it very much, when it comes to present day sources... (!). (Sorry, but I have hardly ever seen any even a half–truthful article about the ME in, say,  The New York Times) ........which is why  I nearly only deal with pre –1948 history......
 * And I agree that WP:BLP is extremely important, but I don't think it would be violated if this article is deleted, surely? Huldra (talk) 21:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you don't believe in RS anymore, you can't believe much. As far as I'm concerned things have to be 20 years in the past before they can be written up, but that's just me. The BLP here is a concern because calling this a "hoax" is a violation, and tantamount to slandering (until the opposite is proven)--deletion is not a violation, nor is calm and civil discussion. Thanks Huldra, Drmies (talk) 02:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, when it comes to the ME, I really don't. Seriously. I simply cannot understand, that papers like The New York Times, that writes with so much insights wrt the Western/US world, can write as much imbecile garbage as it does about the ME. I recall around 2003, an opinion poll among Egyptians showed that (IIRC) some 60-70 % of Egyptians believed that "The Jews" and "the US" were behind  9/11...horrible numbers, but then you don't really count Egypt as a country with a free press, do you......However, at the same time, opinion polls in the US showed the same number of Americans believing that Iraq was behind the 9/11!!
 * And I am absolutely outraged that the West, including almost all of the media, support the Syrian opposition no matter what, as long as they fight Assad. Assad is a brutal dictator, sure, but among this opposition are people who have sworn to kill anyone who isnt a Sunni...it is absolutely madness...
 * One of the few in the West who hasnt lost his mind, here, is actually Robert Fisk, read this, e.g..
 * Btw, the first follower on Twitter of #alabedbana was a journalist from the   Al Jazeera (owned by a  Qatari Royal; those famous fighters for freedom and democracy ) Yeah, right. ...looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc, Huldra (talk) 22:08, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Do not delete. We need reliable information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.238.99.2 (talk) 15:35, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep See this Bellingcat article for an analysis of her posts. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:06, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Covered by The Washington Post. Hang googles (talk) 08:51, 15 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep (changed fomr redirect above) ongoing coverage makes it appear that.although coached or staged by her mother with the possible help of others, this is a real child in aleppo. getting massive coverage.  Should be possible to improve article for accuracy.E.M.Gregory (talk) 08:35, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Important piece of hoax propaganda, should be kept and expanded. We have a lot of sources about this hoax. -- Ąnαșταη  ( ταlκ )  15:17, 15 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep per notability and existence given by bellingcat, NYT, and WaPo Dschslava  Δx  parlez moi  20:02, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep We keep articles about notable hoaxes,and this particular one is famous. There's enough commentary on it to justif an article. There is however a question about the article title, whether it should be Bana Alabed  or Bana Alabed (internet character) or Bana Alabed hoax. DGG ( talk ) 00:03, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * DGG. Not "hoax", please. Drmies (talk) 02:54, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep This may or may not be a hoax, but is notable nevertheless.—azuki (talk · contribs · email) 13:24, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Whether or not Bana is a staged propaganda campaign or "real," there can be no doubt this account has had a significant and notable effect on public opinion about the situation in Aleppo. —ForestMars
 * Keep Notable for her comments from Aleppo and for a hoax she has managed to get on a bus! BBC news.--Egghead06 (talk) 07:40, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Real & Notable (too many references available). I also think, regarding Rwendland's comment, "not notable in ten years time" isn't a real Wikipedia rule. Kavas (talk) 12:41, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The ten years view-back is my rule of thumb for the WP:NOTNEWS policy "Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. ... most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion." I think this topic is best suited to a mention or section in Media coverage of the Syrian Civil War at the moment. We really have no idea yet if Bana Alabed at 7-years old will have any enduring notability. Rwendland (talk) 13:16, 19 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep this is not a hoax, she has been seen getting off the evacuation bus from eastern Aleppo and interviewed by journalists . Yes the article needs to be cleaned up and sorted and she is notable as being a primacy source of information from a civilian and child point of view inside the besieged city. ThinkingTwice  contribs &#124; talk 13:41, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep its already part of the history of this war. --Midrashah (talk) 15:20, 19 December 2016 (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.