Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of the BBC


 * 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 of the debate was keep. Jaranda wat's sup 04:21, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Criticism of the BBC
Unfinished page that the original author hasn't touched for months. Also seems to be at least moderately POV. Unless expanded and NPOV-ized during the AfD, delete. --Nlu (talk) 04:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete looks like a POV fork to me. KillerChihuahua?!? 04:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Seems interesting. -- JJay 04:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Has potential and maybe this AFD might spur some activity. Perhaps someone might consider moving this to a temp page? 23skidoo 04:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and cleanup. We have a number of organisations that have criticisms including Wikipedia and there is certainly enough verifiable material dating back to the 1920's to justify a page. Capitalistroadster 06:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep as per Capitalistroadster. Can&#39;t sleep, clown will eat me 08:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Cleanup. utcursch | talk 09:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, no reason to delete. Dan100 (Talk) 09:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is pretty poor and is misnamed (it contains criticisms of TV news in general, and BBC news in specific, has very little BBC specific content to do with the licence fee and suchforth.) Morwen - Talk 09:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into BBC controversies or into BBC. - Mgm|(talk) 11:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per Capitalistroadster Tom Harrison (talk) 14:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * "Criticism(s) of X" pages are inherent violations of our neutral point of view policy, since they deliberately present debates in a one-sided way. See Talk:Criticism of Christianity and Talk:Criticisms of communism.  Sidelining all criticisms of a subject into separate articles is not implementing the NPOV.  It is the creation of POV forks, plain and simple. MacGyverMagic has exactly the correct idea. The subject should be covered in articles which are neutral in their scope. Uncle G 14:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep per Capit.R. and expand. Youngamerican 16:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, as of now. First, most of the "good" information is already present in some form in BBC_controversies. Second, as it is now, this is not a worthwhile article and relies on contemporary critiques by bloggers for a significant portion of its content. I agree that there is room for criticism articles, but simply because one could exist (or one exists in a NPOV) doesn't mean that we should keep it.  Unless someone is willing to undertake a significant rewrite, it doesn't seem worthwhile to keep. mmm beer T / C / ? 18:20, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and cleanup. Remove all criticism that is by the article author and not by a cited source. Verified criticism of notable organisations is encyclopedic. &mdash; J I P  | Talk 18:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Just out of curiosity, if votes are "keep" and "cleanup", how does that work.  What if there isn't a cleanup? Even a cursory examination of this article suggests "clean up" would be a massive undertaking.  What's more, a good clean up would seem to require significant duplication of the material that exists already within BBC and BBC controversies.  If this isn't what's meant by "cleanup", then it seems to otherwise be a collection of uotes about the "badness" of the BBC.  Quotes standing alone aren't very encyclopedic. mmm beer T / C / ? 19:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Reply: I would figure that the article would be tagged for clean-up for a month or two, and if it was not cleaned up in that time, it would be AfD'd again. &mdash; J I P  | Talk 19:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Is that really how it works? Or is that just a hope for how it works?  Has this ever happened successfully this way?  If so, I'd be willing to change my vote.  It seems, however, that permitting "cleanup" to complicate a vote is really a form of conditional voting. Seems hardly productive. mmm beer T / C / ? 20:03, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * For me, my vote is keep, while the cleanup is just a suggestion to the closing admin to tag it. Youngamerican 16:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Essetial delete POV fork. There is next to no chance that if we allow articles of this sort of they will achieve neutrality. Rhollenton 00:28, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment There is no consensus that "Criticism of X" articles are automatically POV forks, as some editors here have alleged.  They of course can be, but it is no more inherently POV to write about criticisms of a particular person, place or thing than it is to write about any other aspect of that person, place or thing. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Presenting a discussion of a subject in such a way as to only include the negative views of it is non-neutral. The NPOV policy requires that Wikipedia not present debates in ways that implicitly advocate specific sides.  Articles should be neutral in scope.  The fact that almost all of our "Criticism of X" articles have sported chronic neutrality disputes should be evidence enough of the fact that that isn't the case for articles that are formulated with "this article contains only negative views" scopes. Ironically, in this particular case, we already have proper neutral-scope articles, pre-dating this article by the larger part of a year. Uncle G 08:17, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * "Presenting a discussion of a subject in such a way as to only include the negative views of it is non-neutral." Well, then, there's no problem, because that is not in any way, shape or form inherent in an article titled "Criticism of X".  It is certainly possible to cover the subject of "Criticism of X" one-sidedly, but then that is also possible for the subject "X" to begin with.  How many times does it have to be said?  If an article covers a subject from only one point of view, that is the problem, not the fact that the subject is "Criticism of X". -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:11, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Feldspar, your analysis is clearly wrong. "Criticism" does suggest only one side of the issue.  Nothing about that asks for the opposite, let's just call them "glowing reviews".  By having a criticisms, especially in this case, you're asking for only those things that criticise the BBC's overage.  I can't even imagine how that would constitute NPOV as it totally avoids the other side.  Besides, is there a single topic that doesn't have its critics? On the other hand, "BBC controversies" sort of asks for the controvery to be explained; it BEGS for both sides. In addition, most of the legal topics I could do could also have an entire article devoted to legal criticisms, but I don't think that anyone would advocate such a thing.  That's not to say, of course, that there isn't room for them, but rather there's no point and needlessly POV and lopsided. mmm beer T / C / ? 16:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
 * delete or merge with main BBC article. Unbehagen 00:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. No valid reason for deletion has been put forward. POV is a reason to put a tag on the article asking for help in cleaning it up, not a reason to delete. Turnstep 01:22, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. We have plenty of "criticism of ..." articles (which to me are justified as a way to keep articles shorter more than anything else), and there's plenty on the BBC from all ends of the political spectrum. If "The original author hasn't touched it for months," I submit that the appropriate remedy for that is leaving a message on his/her Talk page, or (God forbid) working on it yourself, rather than a deletion vote. Daniel Case 16:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Addendum and suggestion: The "criticism" article should be about general themes in BBC criticism (like the license fee), whereas the BBC controversies article should be redone as a list to encourage the creation of separate articles about the individual incidents where warranted. Daniel Case 16:52, 18 December 2005 (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.