Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bloodied But Unbowed (HR report on Bahrain)


 * 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. Discussion about merging can continue outside of AFD on the appropriate talk pages. --MuZemike 02:55, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Bloodied But Unbowed (HR report on Bahrain)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Contested prod. No evidence provided for the notability of this report, independently of the uprising it chronicles. This report may be used as a source for the 2011 Bahraini uprising article, but there's nothing that warrants an article dedicated to the report itself.  Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 16:40, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Middle East-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 18:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Topic is notable. Reliable sources: HSRP: Bloodied but Unbowed: Unwarranted State Violence Against Bahraini Protesters, UNHCR: Bahrain: Bloodied but unbowed: Unwarranted state violence against Bahraini protesters, M&C: Amnesty International criticises Bahrain over "excessive force". Will search for more if needed. Bahraini Activist (talk) 18:48, 25 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Soft keep There are three qualifying third-party sources at least, if you don't count the hosting of the original text by other organizations. Since the topic is ongoing maybe deletion should wait until more sources indicating the notability of the report can be found. Or consider merging into the Bahraini uprising's article section |"Coverage by human rights organizations" to replace the links with prose. If the article stays its  prose should be rewritten to emphasize the notability of the report not the uprisings, ie what role does/did the report play in different cultural fields.  Galadrist (talk) 20:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Userfy, and I suggest using this as a source for an article on the 2011 Bahrain uprising rather than making this source itself the subject of an article  There is a trio of articles with the same story.  The subject of the reports is notable, but there is little or no indication of wp:notability for the report.  Sources given in comments are generally the author of the report itself, or just condensations of or listings of the report.  The content of the article is a presentation of the assertions of the report rather than being about the report.  North8000 (talk) 22:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete An EIGHT page report. Can't see this as notable. Above alternatives to deletion do have merit, so maybe userfy or merge into Bahraini Uprising. BTW isn't "Uprising" POV? Tigerboy1966 (talk) 23:02, 25 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Firm Keep. Other than when challenged on a specific point with contradictory evidence adduced, Amnesty is a reliable source. It is hard to envisage how an Amnesty publication dealing with a specific national-level situation would not be notable and there are third party references -
 * Linked directly by Refworld at UNHCR - http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,,,BHR,,,130.html
 * CNN iReport - http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-575161
 * The Public Record - http://pubrecord.org/world/9087/obama-saudi-arabia-bahrain/
 * JafariyaNews.com - http://www.jafariyanews.com/2k11_news/march/24brutalities_against_bahrainies.htm
 * Linked directly at IFEX - http://www.ifex.org/bahrain/2011/03/23/raids_detentions/
 * However those references should not be essential to the retention of the article because a primary source may be used "to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source." Common sense and even enshrined in WP policy - WP:Primary source.Opbeith (talk) 23:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes but we are not talking about whether Amnesty is a reliable source. We are talking about whether an eight page Amnesty report is sufficiently notable to be the subject of an idependent article. Tigerboy1966 (talk) 00:12, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We live in a world in which human rights abuses compete with one another for attention on an almost Darwinian basis. Understandably, given the level of competition for its official attention as one of the small group of organisations operating at the highest level of human rights campaigning, Amnesty is not in the business of publishing ephemeral trivialities, whatever the number of pages. Opbeith (talk) 22:04, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sure that neither the report nor the issue is trivial. I am sorry if I gave this impression. I do think that what he have here is a useful source, but not a good topic for an article.Tigerboy1966 (talk) 23:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We're on the Great Wikipedia Philosophical Faultline here, Tigerboy1966. I know that my perception of Wikipedia isn't universally shared.  As far as I'm concerned the value and justification of Wikipedia as a collaborative enterprise is that it serves as a place where information on any subject of interest can be shared directly (defining "subject of interest" broadly as a subject of interest to anyone other than the individual who has created the article and which is not inaccurate, misleading or exploitative for purposes of purely private or partisan gain).  I know that other people have a more rigorous notion of what Wikipedia should be.  The filter of "notability" is a compromise aimed at resolving that fundamental conflict by providing a baseline "quality control" mechanism aimed at excluding abuse.  When the bar is raised and notability requirements are applied more strictly than is necessary to exclude abuse, then something different is happening. I disagree with the idea of "tweaking" notability as a mechanism for "quality improvement" based on essentially subjective criteria of what an encyclopaedia should be and what should qualify for inclusion.  This report is significant to people interested in the Bahraini Uprising itself; it's also significant to people interested in human rights issues generally for whom Bahrain is an important example of how the substance of respect for human rights is determined at the interface of principle and pragmatism.  For me, that's enough for it to be a "good" topic.  So we disagree, but in present circumstances that doesn't matter.  What does matter is that (as I  see it, of course) the baseline notability requirement for the topic seems to have been satisfied.


 * To go back to your previous comment concerning use of the term "2011 Bahrain Uprising" as indicating the expression of a point of view/POV and hence presumably relevant to this discussion. I presume that the element that you object to is the use of the word "Uprising".  The substance of the event is consistent with the Wikipedia definition of an uprising, so if someone as authoritative as Frank Gardner is happy to use the term in relation to the events in Bahrain this year, I see no solid reason why Wikipedia shouldn't. Opbeith (talk) 11:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for responding in such a thoughtful and detailed way. I sort of see your point, but I don't think that every "subject of interest" needs a separate article. Wikipedia has other ways of making information available. As for "uprising", I don't much like it, but the usage seems to be established by precedent, and I can't think of an appropriate alternative.Tigerboy1966 (talk) 11:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Firm delete. Current events are reported and commented upon by a number of bodies, institutions and organisations, Amnesty and HRW being just two among them. Whilst this is not to diminish the content of their reports, please let it be kept in mind that these are no more than reports on current political events. The fact that Amnesty International is a familiar name - more for generating publicity than for the quality of their reporting (and I am saying it as a human rights professional!) - does not merit every report signed by Amnesty to have a separate article devoted to it (unless you really need a place to discuss its contents critically). Here I disagree with Opbeith: Wikipedia is not to replace Google or the Internet. Anyone wishing to read a particular report will find it at the source, there is hardly any need to reword all these articles for Wikipedia (which will not be the first search result returned anyway). What is key for me, a report per se - as any news article or analysis of current events - should only be regarded as just one more opinion on these events; it has no meaning outside the context of the political development. Hence, I strongly suggest that the report in question (which is more of a publicity article) is definitely mentioned in the 2011 Bahraini uprising article. However, let's keep this report where it belongs: a point of view (backed by some first-hand experience) on these events. kashmiri (talk) 00:55, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The report, like any document, has meaning/significance beyond its simple content that as you indicate has to do with the relationship to its context - its issue and its impact, and, again as you indicate, any critical discussion reported. Your criticism of the article is justified insofar as the content of the article (and the others discussed here with it) still needs expansion by the author to reflect this. I have had my own tangles with Amnesty but your suggestion that the defects in reporting and other inconsistencies, which I acknowledged, make Amnesty more notable for publicity generation than for the substance of its reporting seems a little extreme.Opbeith (talk) 06:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't intend to underestimate Amnesty's role in generating awareness on current-day events. My intention was only to indicate that reports and analyses by professional political analysts (usually affiliated with large think-tanks) tend to be of distinctly higher quality. Human rights reporting, especially in Amnesty's edition, seems to focus on denouncing what actually is only a (more or less natural) outcome of certain historical, ethnic, political, cultural, etc., conditions; it does not see the bigger context at all. Moreover, and unfortunately, it mostly focuses on not what the people affected consider as most oppressive in their everyday lives (e.g., persisting threat of violence, highhandedness of civil administration, forced labour) but on what generates most publicity in the West (lack of democracy, freedom of speech, persecution of 'human rights defenders', a "bad president", etc.). I have been involved, at one point, both in human rights reporting and in analysing its impact - and can't really say these reports contain much of reliable information. Not at all. kashmiri (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A smile to Bahraini Activist: English language has some capitalisation rules, it would be nice if they are respected at creation of new articles.kashmiri (talk) 01:00, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Of the three Arab Spring countries at "uprising" status (meaning government seriously challenged and destabilised by protests but not yet replaced by transition government), Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, i get the impression that the amount of documentation by human rights organisations - both local and international - is a lot more detailed in Bahrain than in the other two. In that sense, an article like 2011 human rights reports on Bahrain may be justified as covering a notable topic in itself, and in any case, is likely to be justified as a WP:SPLIT off the main article. The main article is already huge, and International reactions to the 2011–2012 Bahraini uprising, with a brief section on NGO reactions, is also huge. So IMHO a split is justified. Six separate articles are not justified. After writing the merged article and giving it some time to settle, it should become possible to see if the article can stand on its own or if it would be better compressed and merged into the already huge main Bahrain article. Boud (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * @Kashmiri, English is not my first language, so if you see any mistakes, you may edit them out ;) Bahraini Activist (talk) 11:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Neither is mine ;) But article names cannot be edited - hence my humble request.kashmiri (talk) 18:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge the six NGO Bahrain 2011 human rights reports, all of which are under AfD, into a single article something like 2011 human rights reports on Bahrain. A link to the governmental commission and its report should go in the article. Removing the redundant background and see also sections of the individual articles will reduce the overall length of the combined article. The six AfD links are:
 * local,
 * HRWF,
 * Amnesty,
 * ICG,
 * HRW,
 * Physicians
 * Boud (talk) 01:35, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A thoughtful and constructive suggestion. Though my own preference is still for retention of individual articles (covering context as well as content), a general article could also give a broader perspective. It would be helpful to have the author's thoughts. Opbeith (talk) 06:27, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I find the Merge as a good compensatory idea. I think there are 2 more ICG reports and 2 more HRWF reports as well, but I stopped working on that since this issue was raised. There is also one more local report by Al Wefaq to be published. Also there is the Irish Fact Finding Delegation On Bahrain, which according to these articles, , , should have reached a conclusion, but I couldn't find it anywhere. If it's not too much, I asked you (Boud) to take a look at that topic as well as give your opinion about it. Bahraini Activist (talk) 11:56, 2 January 2012 (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.