Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barack Obama on mass surveillance


 * 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   no consensus. slakr \ talk / 03:52, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Barack Obama on mass surveillance

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WP:NOT. POTUS makes tens of speeches each year, and there's no indication of why this one is particularly important that it deserves its own article. No landmark disclosures, no iconic phrases or quotes. I've read the entire transcript, so please someone tell me what I have missed. The article has a cursory description of the speech, balanced with a repository of sound bites of continued discussion post the Snowden disclosures. It's ironic that pro-privacy advocates say Obama is offering nothing in this speech. Anything worth keeping could go aftermath of the global surveillance disclosure.  Ohc  ¡digame! 07:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2014 February 22.  — cyberbot I  Notify Online 07:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Though this article should indeed be summarized at aftermath ..., there is enough detail and importance in Obama's responses that commentators have got their teeth into, over time. It is not just one speech, but a sequence of 4 statements over a year, with their reactions, so it is not iconic, but it is more than news. It is an important subtopic of Obama, of the NSA and of mass surveillance. (Though 'other stuff exists' is not an argument for keep, European foreign policy of the Barack Obama administration is worth a read as one of many similar Obama articles for comparison.) --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:21, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep This isn't about a single speech, it is about a long string of statements on mass surveillance that spans from June of 2013 to January of 2014 (and it is reasonable to assume that more statements will be made). Also, this article describes the reactions of high ranking officials (many of them elected) in Germany, the United States and the European Union, as well as companies such as Facebook, Google and Mozilla and organizations such as the EFF to the specific statements made by Obama. As for the Notnews argument, that is really meant to apply to things that only get covered for a couple of days and forgotten. It does not apply when there is extended coverage for months that receives numerous reactions from world leaders. Altogether, this is a notable article with some minor issues that would be better solved through editing than deletion.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 16:32, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I disagree with the original rationale as it's fairly common to split up extremely large articles into subcategories, particularly politicians and their stances, see George Washington and religion, George Washington and slavery, George W. Bush and the Iraq War, plus the separate articles on the Political positions of Barack Obama. For me, the question is 1.) whether "mass surveillance" is a wide enough topic to be independently notable or if this needs to be moved to something like Barack Obama on National Security or some broader topics and 2.) whether "Barack Obama on mass surveillance" is the right name. It seems like with previous presidents the standard title is "Name and topic" not "Name on topic". For now I'll hold my !vote until some more people with experience with politics articles weigh in. Either way, I think merge-not-delete is appropriate, as there's plenty of good content here.  0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 17:28, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I believe that a name change would be best, perhaps to something like "Obama and Surveillance". If the name is changed, information about Obama's position and actions on surveillance before the NSA leaks could be added (I know he spoke greatly on the Patriot Act and that there were a few smaller cases of surveillance that got controversy during his presidency, but don't quite meet the "mass" criteria).Spirit of Eagle (talk) 19:02, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * OSE is not an argument on such discussions either.Lihaas (talk) 01:09, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The way I read WP:OSE, it doesn't apply to this - it even specifically says that when deciding upon creation of articles you can look to past analogous situations to determine if something is common on Wikipedia. The argument I put forth wasn't that this should be kept because those things exist, but that the reasoning for creating them also applies here - extremely large articles like you get for famous politicians like Barack Obama are generally split up into conceptual subgroups. It's clear that this has already happened for Barack Obama, and this material probably does belong on Wikipedia, so the question is where it belongs - does it belong in one of the existing policy articles, a new one or what? I'd probably tend towards moving it to something about national security or something, but again I'd like to hear how these are normally organized from someone who usually creates politician articles of this sort. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 03:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:SIZERULE-We are generally required to split up articles when they get way to large to reasonably read. The PRISM, Reactions to global surveillance disclosures and Obama articles are all well over 100,000 bytes, so a merge would not be a good idea for these articles. The Political positions of Barack Obama article is less than 20,000 bytes and has a section for security, although it would look kind of lopsided if any significant part of the article were merged into it because it would nearly double the size of the article. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:52, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * delete UNDUE influence to one speech. There have been many important speeches with reactions. This can be merged or deleted with the PRISM surveillance. Or mentioned on his/administrations page.Lihaas (talk) 01:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The article covers statements made by Obama from June of 2013 to January of 2014 on surveillance. It focuses on more than the January    17th speech.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 01:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Even if it is primarily about one speech, this seems to be very much a surmountable problem, not necessitating deletion, as other material exists on the topic and will very likely continue to be produced. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 03:58, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. This article is not limited to one speech, but should cover Barack Obama's positions on the topic in general.  It needs additions, not deletion.  It might at some point need renaming as more material is added about the Barack Obama administration rather than the man per se, but it is clear that as the person at least nominally in command over the NSA that Obama's personal use of his authority in this situation to control the fate of this issue is of very high historical significance. Wnt (talk) 14:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Strong delete. You can see how odd this page is by looking at Political positions of Barack Obama. Every other area that got its own page are general policy areas: economic, energy, foreign, and social policy. The only one that focuses on a narrow subject is mass surveillance. I don't see any justification for that. I suspect, perhaps unfairly, the reason for this one specific area of interest getting its own page reflects the editorial interests of the users and editors of this site. I simply don't see any other reasoning on why this area is getting outsized attention. Perhaps a page on national security could include a section on surveillance. mikeman67 (talk) 20:46, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If you believe that this information would be best displayed on a page about national security, then why would it be in the interest of Wikipedia to delete it outright? Someone would have to pointlessly research and rewrite the information we already have in this article. If this is the route a majority of responders want to go, I would suggest renaming the article to something like "Obama and National Security" (no such page currently exists, so a merge wouldn't work), and then adding information to the article. Also, the reason such a "narrow" page exists in the first place is because of the intense media and political attention given to the subject. There are more than enough sources and information available to justify a keep.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 23:51, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Well to clarify, I think the page should be deleted (but not the content necessarily). It would be absurd to create a page for every single policy of Obama. It would be like instead of Economic policy of Barack Obama, creating pages for corporate tax policy of Barack Obama, Social Security policy of Barack Obama, Education policy of Barack Obama, etc. Obviously we can find an endless amount of reliable sources to create those pages as well (and just as many sources and information as mass surveillance, and likely more so). Like it says in WP:NOTABILITY, "This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article." So as you can see in articles like Political positions of George W. Bush, one page is sufficient to list the positions of an American president. I don't believe a separate page is required here. But yes, if the consensus is to keep, I would suggest instead creating a page on national security generally (but personally think there are already an excessive amount of articles for a topic that could be better covered on the political positions page). And this all goes without saying that most of the page is dedicated to a single speech he made (and again, nobody would propose to create a page for every speech Obama gives). mikeman67 (talk) 00:12, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Reading through all of the comments, I am seeing a consensus that the information in the article should be largely kept. However, there is legitimate debate over whether it should be allowed to stand as is in its current article or be made part of a larger article (presumably about Obama and national security). Both are valid solutions, although I have argued for a keep primarily because there is a lot of information (as well as reactions from prominent individuals and organizations) on Obama and Surveilance (much more than on the overwhelming majority of subsections in the categories you identified)and much more is liable to be released. If we just straight-merged to a section on National Security, it would quickly become excessively long and give excessive focus to surveillance at the expense of other forms of Obama's national security policy. That being said, the solution proposed below would work. Chalk me up as a merge/article rename to Obama on National Security supporter should a consensus form against keeping the page.  Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:37, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the reason why there's such a narrow focus on Mass Surveillance is because of the interests of the people involved in writing the article, but I don't see that as a reason for deletion. Articles are improved according to the interest of the people improving them, and it's pointless to deny that extra content because they're getting "too far ahead" or something. I realize that was a side point, but I'd like to address the fact that it's irrelevant to the discussion of whether this article deserves to be here.


 * If anything, you're not making an argument for deletion so much as refactoring into a broader topic (which is probably a good idea). We could even wholesale move it to Barack Obama on National Security which would be a stub with a really high quality subsection in it, and leave it to the editors in this area to improve the article. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 05:20, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course my argument about whether to keep or delete the article isn't based on the editor's political positions. I only speculated why there was a page on mass surveillance and not education, social security, or corporate taxation. I do think this whole exercise involves a bit of judgement and is quite subjective, so I did think that was a relevant point. But clearly not the focus of my argument. But yes, I did suggest doing an article titled National security policy of Barack Obama as an alternative to deleting (which is what I meant above by suggesting a page on national security generally), in line with already created articles like Economic policy of Barack Obama and Energy policy of the Obama Administration (unclear why the naming convention is inconsistent). Note that the page would be on policy positions, so inevitably much of the current article here would need to be heavily pared down and refined. My vote, however, is still for delete, until someone can convince me why the topic deserves a page on its own merits (simply arguing there are enough sources isn't sufficient when the topic can be covered better in Political positions of Barack Obama). mikeman67 (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm confused here. Your vote is to delete the article or to merge the contents? It seems like you are supporting a merge/redirect, but then you say your vote is to delete. Is "delete" your way of saying that a paged called "Barack Obama on mass surveillance" shouldn't exist, regardless of whether the content is simply moved somewhere else? That seems nonstandard. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 20:15, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Mikeman67, in a merge outcome, the current article would be deleted, but the information contained within would be saved in another article. In a delete, all of the information in the article is destroyed and irrevocable lost. If you want to include it elsewhere, you would have to reresearch and rewrite it. (Deletes are usually reserved for information that is entirely non-notable and has no place anywhere on Wikipedia). If you want to merge the article, I would suggest doing so in the wider Obama and National Security. Merging it into the political positions of Obama article would double it in size. We could of course delete a lot of the information, but this seems rather pointless when other valid merge locations exist that would leave the information decently intact.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 21:17, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep, meets the general notability guideline and doesn't come under WP:What Wikipedia is not. Aftermath of the global surveillance disclosure is over 123,000 bytes, whereas SPLIT says that articles over 100 kB "almost certainly should be divided"--the opposite of what's proposed. In the Reactions section, there are four quotes. While one is lengthy, two have only two words each. A single lengthy quote is a good reason for deleting the quote, but a poor reason for deleting the entire article. The nominator has linked to WP:NPOV, perhaps to tell us that pro-surveillance viewpoints aren't adequately covered by the article. I do see that problem, but it could be fixed through editing. &mdash; rybec   15:26, 4 March 2014 (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.