Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Estimates of the Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP. dbenbenn | talk 02:54, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The votes were 8 delete, 9 keep, 5 merge.

Estimates of the Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948
Please pick your favourite refugee number or what is the purpose of this list? A mere number collection isn't informative at all, it doesn't even say how the mentioned sources arrive at their count. The topic should be and is covered in Palestinian exodus, there is no need for this non-article. Either expand or delete. --Elian 03:03, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete. Belongs in Palestinian exodus. Indrian 03:05, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. The talk page and history contains a huge amount of very important information. The discussion and development of the page is very active. It is not reasonable to hold a vfd vote over that pages future at this point in time. Palestine-info 03:36, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep it and besides, this was a huge event that much of the English-speaking world is only dimly aware of, if at all, even if its blowback is still responsible for much of the unrest in the ME. Wyss 07:22, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * the article is not about the event but about a number. --Elian 16:40, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. It is useful discussion/info; and because of its contentiousness it is useful to separate out from the main article (Palestinian exodus). However it does need clearly linking with and making consistent with that article. Rd232 10:12, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. This doesn't make sense to me as an independent article.  The range of estimates belongs in Palestinian exodus, along with discussion at who has made estimates, the methodologies that were used, and the problems with those methodologies.   Just listing the numbers used by various people and on various web sites doesn't make much sense.   For one thing, there is no reason to believe that they are even independent estimates.  Several of the numbers appear more than once.  Is that because two sources have independently attacked the problem and arrived at the same result, which would tend to add confidence to the number?   Or is it simply that someone made an estimate, and other people have used it.   This wouldn't add any confidence to the estimate, any more than buying a second copy of the New York  Times and finding that it has the same news as the first copy adds any confidence that the information is true.    Finally, retaining an article because of valuable information on its Talk page seems strange.  If that is so, then that information can be moved to another Talk page or sub-page, when the article is deleted. --BM 13:58, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. This article was created as an offshot of another heavily contentious article. The point was to move contested data to another place where it can be presented in a neutral way without overloading the main article. --Gene s 14:16, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep For historical reasons, the estimates in themselves are encyclopedic and a good subject for an article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:47, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I quite agree, but this is not an article; it is a list of figures. An article already exists that these figures belong in: Palestinian exodus. Indrian 17:49, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, needs cleanup and expansion. Megan1967 01:48, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. It should be pruned by removing tertiary sources, augumented with a discussion of the problem, then merged with Palestinian exodus or Palestinian refugee. --Zero 10:21, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep for all the valid arguments to keep listed above. GRider\talk 20:01, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, No brainer really, it's a brilliant collection for research. --Irishpunktom\talk 00:50, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not an online archives, it is an encyclopedia. Integrating data into an article is a good thing; justifying a page that contains nothing but data by calling it a colletion for research is, in my opinion only of course, not proper for an encyclopedia. Indrian 16:09, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with relevant articles (either Palestinian exodus or Palestinian refugee), after cleanup. Some of the information in there now is quite good, particularly the hard to find information regarding U.N. and UNRWA estimates.  Various numbers are often bandied about, often for propagandistic purposes, and this article clarifies exactly where they come from and what they mean.  However, most of the "Other" estimates are either wild guesses or partisan junk. Jayjg  |  (Talk)  16:08, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete the fact that there are several dozen estimates for the same figure show how unencyclopedic this is. What Wikipedia is not: Original research. Jewbacca 18:17, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * Do I see some personal bias showing through here? I voted delete, but not for these reasons.  Numbers are often disputed, and a good encyclopedia will point out a controversy that large.  A paper encyclopedia may not have room to actually list said figures, but wikipedia can.  Also, this is certainly not original research, as the figures are all quoted from already existing sources and therefore represents a synthesis of prior work.  The problem with this "article" is that it is not an article at all, which is why the figures belong someplace else on the site. Indrian 19:17, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Gamaliel 19:20, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into Palestinian refugee and delete the redirect. -- uriber 20:41, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect into Palestinian exodus. A collection of data is not an article. These should be discussed, but they are not worthy of an article because they have no importance in themselves. The Palestinian exodus deserves an article; the debate about how many Palestinians were dislocated does not deserve an article. JoaoRicardo 04:44, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect, don't need a separate article.  &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 10:08, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Informative data, ItisIAnonymous 20:10, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Carioca 20:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect, the latter to avoid article recreation. Subject notable, and keep the talk page.  But the article is not useful as is, without any context.  Smoddy | &epsilon;&iota;&pi;&epsilon;&tau;&epsilon; 22:28, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * keep. This bunch of numbers will only clutter a normal article, but makes perfect sense as a supplementary article. "Merge & redirect" proposals are valid only for stubby articles, not like this one. Mikkalai 06:16, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete This shouldn't be an independent article. SlimVirgin 18:02, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.