Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Gaza Strip)


 * 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. (non-admin closure) Tim Song (talk) 01:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Gaza Strip)

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This article is based on name invented by two journalists at the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post. This name is one used for official morality police groups in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. In Gaza, there is no such official group. The governing authorities in Gaza have not confirmed or denied the existence of such a group. All other mainstream media organizations do not use this name, and while they may discuss rumors of such a group existing under another name, they all repeat that there is no such confirmation that it is an official body in Gaza. Accordingly, I feel this article fails WP:N (based as it is primarily on two sources from the same newspaper), is prone to WP:OR (some of which I have already had to remove more than once), and basically amounts to a WP:HOAX. It is not encyclopedic, and weeks of searching have produced no WP:RS's having anything of value to add to the page that might establish notability of the claims being put forward by the journalists from The Jerusalem Post. PS. I would further add that it may be helpful to review the talk page discussion to see some of the issues that have been covered in prior discussions.  T i a m u t talk 13:15, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions.   T i a m u t talk 13:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Palestine-related deletion discussions.   T i a m u t talk 13:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - At first glance, there seems to be some sourcing from non-Israeli newspapers/news-sources as well: Al-Arabiya and the Associated Press (via the UK's Guardian newspaper). Not sure about the Examiner, as it seems to be some sort of news clearinghouse website. -- nsaum75  ¡שיחת! 02:04, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Al-Arabiya is cited in our article as referring to an "unknown group" (in 2007) by that same name. There are no subsequent reports by them on the group and it is not connected to Hamas by them.
 * The Associated Press report discusses one of the incidents covered in the reports by the journalists fom the Jerusalem Post. It does not use the name used in our article for this group and it notes that while there are rumors about Hamas running some kind of morality police, there is no confirmation of this. In fact, all major news coverage of that same incident fails to mention this group or its association with Hamas. That is a personal theory put forwad only by the journalists at The Jerusalem Post.  T i a m u t talk 07:46, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep - barring the possibility this is mainly propaganda, which it seems to be, it would be helpful if the organisation's Arabic name etc was included.--MacRusgail (talk) 14:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The organization's Arabic name is not mentioned in any reports on this supposed group in Gaza. There are no reports in the Arabic media on on the group in Gaza that I can find either. Including the Arabic name based on the translation available at Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (Saudi Arabia) would be (in my opinion) WP:OR and misleading, given the lack of coverage specific to the Gaza case.  T i a m u t talk 07:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep: This seems to be a case of disguised WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The group is documented in multiple reliable sources (both Israeli and Arab, as it happens), so WP:HOAX is irrelevant and frankly insulting. No reason was given as to why this article is "prone to WP:OR", or why that would be a reason to delete it. Invoking WP:N is bad encyclopedic judgment: the group polices a population of a million people according to strict rules, so it is inherently notable. The nom's various concerns regarding the name and so on were addressed at great length on the talk page, and there was no reason to bring them up at a deletion discussion. Jalapenos do exist (talk) 19:23, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Please assume good faith. IDONTLIKEIT has nothing to do with it. The title of this article refers to a group that supposedly exists in Gaza but that has received no major media coverage. You are well aware that I have spent weeks looking for further confirmation of the group's notability, and have found none. In fact, the group does not seem to exist, or at least, the evidence regarding its existence is extremely circumstantial. There is no official confirmation or denial from Gaza regarding its existence because no one in Gaza has even been asked if such a group exists under such a name. The name is an invention of two journalists from The Jerusalem Post who seem to like the idea of naming a so-called "morality police" in Gaza (whose existence is also not clear) after supposedly similar groups in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. It is, and MacRusgail notes above, "mainly propaganda", and non-notable propaganda at that.  T i a m u t talk 07:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - I have added a  tag to the article, as it could stand to have more sources from main stream media. Several of the existing sources -- especially the one from the Examiner.com -- read like Opinion/Editorial/Blog articles and not WP:RS.  -- nsaum75  ¡שיחת! 08:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * While I appreciate any effort to improve the article and demonstrate that it is in fact notable, a notability tag calling for better referencing had been up for the better part of the last two months, despite being removed a number of times. As I stated above, I actively spent some time looking for sources to improve the article as well. I could find nothing and am sceptical that tagging the article for another two months would provide a different result. As an inclusionist, I dont like nominating articles for deletion. But I believe this article is dangerous in that it promotes what seems to be the personal theory of two journalists at the same newspaper as fact.  T i a m u t talk 10:54, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep I read up on Khaled Abu Toameh and it is apparent that he is quite pro-Palestinian (not anti-Israel, but rather anti-corruption and pro-progress), so it does not seem that he made this up to bash or degrade. His reporting seems to quite revealing and accurate when everyone else self-censors or passes over criticism. Apparently something like this does exist, though it might not be 'official'. In that case, the article could be toned down to be less about the group and more about the trend to police the culture in the Gaza Strip. --Shuki (talk) 21:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Snow keep. Per all the above keeps.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:10, 24 November 2009 (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.