Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/December 2022 Twitter suspensions


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Liz Read! Talk! 18:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

December 2022 Twitter suspensions

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Previous nomination: Articles for deletion/December 15, 2022 Twitter suspensions

I believe it's time to revisit this AfD which was very contentious the last time due to the issue being red hot. Now that things have cooled down, it is easy to see how this was a flash-in-the-pan with no lasting or global significance, with all coverage of it happening around the time of the incident. It has no independent notability separate from Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.

Delete per WP:10YT, WP:PAGEDECIDE and WP:NEVENT. TryKid&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 18:15, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events and Internet.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 18:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: falls into WP:NOTNEWS territory. No long term significance, can certainly be sufficiently covered in other places. Esolo5002 (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  18:39, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. Nothing has changed to affect the notability of this event since the last AFD. Notability is not temporary; if it was temporary then, it was temporary now, and the notability of this article is established because it meets the notability standards of significant coverage in reliable, verifiable, secondary sources (New York Times, NBC News, The Washington Post, Reuters, Fox News, and many, many others). That is the standard by which we judge notability, not an editor's subjective opinion that it was a "flash-in-the-pan" event. (If anything, I'd argue this event is more significant now than it was before, given that the free speech issues surrounding Twitter have only continued to persist.) Incidentally, this incident has continued to generate coverage in sources since the actual incident occurred, including in books like this, this, and this, and that's after only a very cursory search.) Furthermore, despite some editors' wish to re-litigate this issue, the article has already had an AFD, and the moderator who closed it specifically said the keep arguments for the article's notability were stronger than the delete arguments against it (many of which the moderator said were "transparently motivated by off-wiki sociopolitical concerns"). He suggested if there was a debate to be had, it was whether not whether the article should be deleted, but rather whether it should be merged with some other article. (I would still argue there is enough coverage to warrant its own standalone article, but that's an argument for another forum.) It would have been more appropriate for the nominator to attempt to start a merge discussion before taking it to AFD yet again, but since that was not done, I would argue the AFD should be closed and the article should be kept. — Hunter Kahn 20:45, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no procedural requirements to initiate a merger discussion before an AfD; whether the article should deleted, merged or redirected is probably best discussed here. This whole suspension saga is a marginal incident in the larger Elon takeover and ElonJet sagas—it is already adequately covered in those pages, and there is neither a need to merge anything, nor any one appropriate merge target. Many of the "keep" !votes were, and are also, as much if not even greatly "motivated by offwiki sociopolitical concerns", as your reference to "free speech issues surrounding Twitter" demonstrates, so let's not put too much weight onto that; the new AfD is needed precisely because of the number of such motivated !votes in the previous one, and so let's not repeat that again. The sources you present demonstrate this point—they discuss the issue not at length as some great story on its own, but as a marginal point, part of the larger stories about Elon Musk and Twitter. This is what WP:PAGEDECIDE is about. regards, TryKid&thinsp;[dubious – discuss] 21:54, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies, but as someone who was heavily involved in that discussion and recently reread it, I cannot fathom how one could come away from it with the conclusion that the keep arguments were just as "motivated by offwiki sociopolitical concerns" if not more. The closer only singled out the delete !votes because some of them really were a sight to see. One !vote was just a quote of Elon making fun of the article in place of a rationale for deletion, one delete !vote was just a personal attack against a keep !voter claiming they are "the reason Wikipedia is the leftist cesspool it is today", quite a few !votes' only rationale was the unconvincing argument that the article itself is inherently biased. Where was the equivalent from the keep !votes in that discussion? There was a stark contrast in the ratio of policy-based rationales between the various positions, so the suggestion that actually the keep !votes were just as ill-motivated makes me question your judgment on this one.  Vanilla  Wizard  💙 04:45, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep: More than well-sourced, still being discussed into 2023. . Strong keep Oaktree b (talk) 22:44, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep This event was quite notable, and the sourcing is ample. TH1980 (talk) 01:59, 12 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep. This event is still notable and talked about to this day. The whole platform of Twitter was changed into a website totally different from what it was prior to late 2022, and this article exemplifies what Elon has done to the website under his tenure. Strong keep, per Hunter and everyone else. Explodicator7331 (talk) 14:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep: It's an obscure topic but remains very relevant in the context of what occurred to Twitter since Elon took over. It's a great detailed reference as to the turning point in Twitter history as well as Musk's legacy. It documents forgotten truths about the suspensions,ie that certain journalists in fact weren't reinstated. Still very useful for digital archaeology purposes. CommunityNotesContributor (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep Not much has changed since the last discussion, and I don't think I have it in me to rewrite the excessively long and rambly !vote I left last time, so I'll instead link to it, the main takeaway being that there is a very poor case for deletion and it's large enough that a merge would not be appropriate as it would warrant a WP:SPLIT if covered elsewhere. Please do give it a read, I put way too much time into it and I really don't have the energy to do it again, not when nothing has fundamentally changed since then and everything that could be said on the topic has already been said and still applies. I'll also be linking to this reply articulating why the 10 year test is not a deletion rationale as I noticed it was the first rationale the nom invoked. The frequent misapplication of 10YT and NOTNEWS I see in a lot of AfDs is something I've been trying very hard to push back against, as it can be easy to think they mean "will it be viewed as important ten years from now" and "don't cover the news" respectively until one takes the time to carefully read what they actually say. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 04:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:GNG. Article is well-cited and balanced, and offers in-depth information about a complex event and aftermath that are still being talked about. Cielquiparle (talk) 17:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.