Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bulgarian Human Rights in Macedonia (2nd nomination)


 * 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   a more or less unanimous delete.   Sandstein   21:31, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Bulgarian Human Rights in Macedonia
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This was nominated some weeks back and closed (in a decision I find utterly incomprehensible) with a "no consensus", with a request to the delete voters to first try and improve the article (shouldn't that be the responsibility of those who wanted to keep?) and then come back here if that didn't help. There had previously be a consensus to delete among all editors who actually had tried for months to maintain this article; all keep votes were by drive-by outsiders who never raised a finger to improve it. So, now we're back here. Predictably, there has been no improvement to the article since the closure (in fact, not a single edit). There couldn't possibly be, because there are no sources out there. This has been nothing but a predictable waste of time.

The subject in question is an alleged political organisation representing a nationalist fringe group; in reality it is not much more than a one-man personal website run by a notorious hate propagandist (who also happens to be a wikipedia editor banned for personal attacks and sockpuppetry.) It has no known public activities, other than occasionally writing letters to politicians and newspapers, and publishing crude hate videos on youtube. Information derived from the "organisation"'s own sources is even more unuseable in this case than anywhere else, because lying about itself is exactly the one thing which earned it its only claim to public notoriety (in a limited media incident back when it was founded.)

All the "keep" arguments brought forward in the previous AfD were specious and ought to have been disregarded by the closing admin.


 * 1) "The organization exists and is registered" (brought forward by an anon, probably a COI sock). — Existence doesn't mean notability. I once founded a registered association myself, does that make it notable? You need 20 signatures to legally register an association in Greece. So what?
 * 2) "Ethnic issues and minority rights are extremely important in the Balkans" — of course they are, but this "organisation" doesn't represent such an issue, but merely the hate propaganda of a single disturbed individual and a few friends of his.
 * 3) "There is a longer article about it on the Bulgarian Wikipedia" — which is itself unsourced and can obviously not serve as a source for us.
 * 4) "It has over 500 members" — the bg-wiki reports that the group's website claimed that (couldn't find the info there though). As pointed out above, any information derived from the organisation itself is ipso facto dubious. This organisation is known to lie about itself; in fact that is the only notable thing it has ever been known for.
 * 5) A wiki-lawyerish argument saying that "if a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be notable. [...] That means that just because it doesn't have multiple, reliable sources doesn't make it non-notable." — I'm still speechless at this display of logic.

This leaves us with that one small incident when a couple of newspapers reported about the founding of this organisation, its claims of enjoying support from the Bulgarian government, and Bulgaria's subsequent denial. Fifteen minutes of notoriety in a single incident. Additionally, none of the media coverage we found of this incident contains any real information about the organisation itself (who's behind it, what they really want, how many they are, etc.) The media coverage is really more informative about the hysterical over-reaction from Greek nationalists, than about the organisation that triggered it.

In short, the only reliably sourced piece of information we have about this organisation is that the Bulgarian prime minister wants nothing to do with them. That's not enough for an article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete OR Merge into "Bulgarians" Mactruth (talk) 20:17, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete only one source in English to prove the organization does exist, google search, news, books and scholar turn up nothing. Seems to be famous for one isolated incident, fails organization notability criteria. Atyndall93  |  talk  10:12, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge probably into Bulgarians. Not because I disagree with Future Perfect at Sunrise, I rather think that he is fundamentally correct, but part of me also says that the irridentism in Macedonia is so substantial that we need a place to put it.  There are two difficulties here.  One is that irredentist groups tend to morph and multiply (remember the hysterically funny scene in the Life of Brian with the Palestine Liberation Army, the National Palestinian Front and a dozen other splinter groups).  Of course, it's only funny if you are not a member of a dissatisfied ethnic minority, of which there are a  lot with a lot of organizations.  You really don't want to give each small org. its own page.  On the other hand, Macedonia actaully does have ethnic Bulgarian irredentists.  the problem, as I see it, is where to put small write-ups of irredentist groups?  If you put them on the page of the ocuntry they live in, the material will be deleted by partisans of the nation they don't want to be part of.  So, perhaps it is best to put small sectins not on the page belonging to the state they would prefer to be a part of (this might imply government support) but on the page of the ethnie with which they identify.  In this case. BulgarianElan26 (talk) 16:55, 18 May 2008 (UTC)Elan26
 * Comment: I'm not sure you realise just how marginal this thing is. Bulgarian irridentists in Greek Macedonia? I'm not sure, I've never heard of any, except this one. Sources? This guy is essentially a single person (who probably got some friends to sign up to get his 20 signatures together, sure, but we have no evidence whatsoever that anybody except one or possibly two persons ever were active in this group.) Mentioning this in any way in the context of an article like Bulgarians would almost certainly constitute undue weight. And of course, you still have the sourcing issue. Remember, we have exactly one single factbite about this group that is sourced, and that fact is a negative one (they are not supported by the Bulgarian government). What would your small writeup contain? Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:13, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll switch my vote to agree with you on this group, which may not may not exist in any real sense. Elan26 (talk) 18:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)Elan26
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Macedonia-related deletion discussions.   -- Fabrictramp (talk) 23:56, 21 May 2008 (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.