Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Estonia–India relations


 * 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   no consensus. BJ Talk 19:54, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Estonia–India relations

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

neither country has a resident embassy. if total trade is less than 31miliion euro, that is a minute fraction of India's trade. a real lack of coverage of actual bilateral relations, mainly multilateral. LibStar (talk) 13:12, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions.  —  Salih  ( talk ) 13:17, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Estonia-related deletion discussions.  —  Salih  ( talk ) 13:17, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Speedy Keep has a wide scope of information on ties between the countries. A look at that would prove without a doubt the ties between the countries is extremely notable. India is a county that has economic relations with a lot of countries, so what really is the point of saying that by comparison it's trade with Estonia is negligible ? a real lack of coverage of actual bilateral relations: Again, I recommend this link mentioning various agreements and other information. --Roaring Siren (talk) 14:30, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * that source is a primary source, you need to provide evidence of independent third party coverage. for notability to be established there must be significant coverage, not 1 government website as per WP:GNG. 1 govt website is not wide coverage. LibStar (talk) 14:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * also just because it has a relationship does not automatically mean it needs a bilateral article. LibStar (talk) 14:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. A couple of reliable sources - Financial Express, BBC - SpacemanSpiff (talk) 16:07, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * A simple google search for "India Estonia relations" reveal numerous hits from relibale sources and I have included many of them in the article. Did you even bother to search for sources ? Just looking at your statement :a real lack of coverage of actual bilateral relation. --Roaring Siren (talk) 16:25, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:GOOGLEHITS isn't a valid argument. I could do a Google search on Estonia Seychelles relations and it doesn't prove notable relations. I still stand by my comment, your google search shows mainly multilateral sources, ie Estonia, India AND another country. there are very few third party sources that cover ONLY Estonia and India and no other country. LibStar (talk) 23:56, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Per nom. No one—including me—likes deleting pretty, content-ful (as opposed to contentless) articles, but this is really a non-topic. Quite simply, there are no independent, secondary sources that discuss this topic directly or in depth, and therefore, according the notability guidelines this article should be deleted. Sure, the Indian and Estonia gov'ts have a lot info on this topic on their websites, but these sources aren't independent so they do not establish notability. And sure, there are a handful of 200 to 300 word articles in reliable, third-party sources that talk about meetings between these governments, but I would not call this coverage in-depth, nor does it directly address the topic of these countries' relations. The article as it is stands looks nice, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a synthesis of primary/non-independent sources. Yilloslime T C  19:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What position is it advancing? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:57, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Any valid content should be in a single country article - not in a non-notable permutation and combination exercise. Collect (talk) 20:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Per Yilloslime. The article is a collection of trivia, not an in-depth overview of relations, and neither are any of the sources anything more than coverage of individual events, not the topic as a whole. -- Blue Squadron  Raven  21:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep very much to my surprise--when I saw the article title, I thought this would be a clear delete, but then I saw the sources and checked the article, & it's very much otherwise. The two sources that Spacemanstiff highlighted above show that the bilateral relations between the two countries are enough for two leading newspapers to write an article specifically about it. For those who like to base things on the GNG, that fulfills any possible interpretation of the GNG. For those who prefer common sense, if the trade between two nations is important enough for them to go to the trouble of making treaties about t it, their relationship is notable. Often common sense and the GNG do agree, even in disputed cases, and this is one of the examples. DGG (talk) 02:32, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep the article is both reliable and notable, but needs more of the independent sources.--Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:ITSNOTABLE not quoting as policy but as an argument to avoid. LibStar (talk) 03:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:DONTQUOTEESSAYSASPOLICY --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * as I said I was not quoting as policy. LibStar (talk) 04:06, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep I think there's barely enough to meet the guidelines. ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Minor relations between the countries simply don't seem notable......no matter how I twist it. Niteshift36 (talk) 06:24, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Once again, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )'s excellent edits have improved this article to demonstrate its underlying notability. DGG makes excellent points above. Even ignoring the common sense view that relations between countries that are documented to exist are inherently notable, here, independent 3rd party sources demonstrate notability. .--Cdogsimmons (talk) 14:05, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent edits? Oh, you mean his dump of uncontextualized factoids. Well, I guess if all you're interested in is article counts... -- Blue Squadron  Raven  16:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * BlueSquadronRaven, what you subjectively term "factoids", I call sourced factual information of some importance (it's a matter of two countries' foreign relations covered by the international press). I suggest you reread our policies regarding notability as well as our policies regarding civility. There should be no personal attacks here, and your criticism of RAN's edits as a "dump" is unfounded. Pointing fingers at each other and saying "your edits are worthless because I don't agree with your philosophy of inclusionism/deletionism" will make this a much harder discussion than it has to be. Please stick to policy and assume good faith in the future. Thanks.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 23:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * While you refer to it as "a the common sense view that relations between countries that are documented to exist are inherently notable", I respectfully disagree. (I won't harp on the fact that your assertion ends up implying that anyone who disagrees doesn't have common sense). Pedestrain, mundane functions are not inherently notable to me. Countries agreeing on things like tourism or exchanging sports teams is simply the functions that governments do. For one of these articles to be notable to me (and I have voted keep), there needs to be something beyond the run of the mill, mundane stuff that happens every day. There needs to be significant agreements, events etc. Just agreeing to honor visas or relax some tariffs doesn't get there to me. Niteshift36 (talk) 04:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is a debate for somewhere else but it should be debated. I do think that these relations are inherently notable, in the same way populated places are assumed to be inherently notable. For one reason, it's unfriendly and offensive to call someone's hometown "un-notable" and the deletion of these articles raises the same issue. However, I'm not just talking about relations between populated place here. Ask any political science professor and he or she will tell you that the nation state is the building block of modern political science. Bilateral relations (including conflicts, trade, immigration, cultural ties, etc.) between nation states are the glue that creates the subject. I think that's worthy of inherent notability. We disagree about this. You call trade agreements "mundane", I call them "important". I hope this community reaches a consensus on who is right someday soon.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Given that some of these get kept and some (probably more) get deleted, I think it is evident that there is no consensus that basic governmental interaction is inherently notable. While find that to be a "lack of common sense" (which is an opinion and I'm ok with opinions in AfD's), I submit to you that the editors look at each one independantly and make a determination without a bright-line rule in place. I think that is a good thing. These should be debated and people allowed to express their views and arrive at a consensus. I think that trade agreements can be notable, but that this is not the case here. For example, NAFTA is a trade agreement that wasn't even bilateral, but had a great affect on the relations between the US and Mexico and the US and Canada. So making the blanket statement that I don't think trade agreements are notable is really a falsehood. This trade agreement was a standard, boilerplate "we'll sell you stuff and you'll sell us stuff" thing that I don't find to be significant. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. First, India and Estonia are two countries that publish materials on relations with all countries with which they have relations; we've deleted plenty of both, despite such pages, and besides, they fail WP:GNG. Second, part of this is fictitious: the Republic of Estonia has only existed since ca. 1920; an Estonian visiting India in 1680 or 1805 simply is not a function of "Estonia–India relations". Neither are Estonian films showing in India. Third, the article, being about a topic no independent sources have actually bothered covering, strains to make itself look important, but cannot mask the fact that "Indian investment in Estonia is small-scale ... Estonia has no direct investment in India". Of course, the Estonian side has "expressed desire [sic] to improve economic ties" and to "open it's [sic] own embassy", but everyone does that - it's thoroughly boilerplate. Finally, we have the usual trivia - ok, the Indian foreign minister went on a junket to Estonia once, and Estonia backs some Indian initiative at the UN, but see WP:NOONECARES for that. I'm not being facetious, either: no one, outside the respective foreign ministries and Wikipedia, has actually paid attention to this "topic". Neither should we. - Biruitorul Talk 15:13, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * If we go by your theory,the US and UK had no relation before 1776. It also seems to have evaded your attention that Indian languages were taught in Estonia as early as the 19th century and parts of the Indian epic 'Mahabarata' were also translated into Indian languages. This is stark evidence of cultural exchange between the countries. And if the previously stated examples of non-primary sources detailing the relations between the countries aren't good enough for you, please do remember both are non-English speaking countries and therefore more sources might exist in the native language of the two countries. Estonia does not have it's own embassy in India, but has two honorary embassies. Correct me if I'm wrong,but I don't think there exists a policy that prohibits articles about relations of countries that do not have resident embassies. Nor does minor volumes of trade qualify relations as "unnotable". --Roaring Siren (talk) 16:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * 1. This is not a question of "my theory", it's a question of what reliable sources have to say about the subject. In the US-UK case, well, a number of works, among them To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1843; Restoring the Chain of Friendship: British Policy and the Indians of the Great Lakes, 1783-1815, and Great Britain and the United States: A History of Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1952 do consider that, yes, Anglo-American relations as such began in 1783. Oh, sure, it may well be appropriate to mention in a background section that one was a colony of the other prior to that, but actual relations didn't begin until Britain recognised American independence. That's not my opinion; that's scholarly consensus.
 * 2. That languages of a British colonial possession were taught in a Russian possession is interesting, but has rather little contextual relevance on relations between the Republic of India and the Republic of Estonia - unless, of course, sources can be adduced attesting relevance.
 * 3. Do see WP:BURDEN - the "more sources might exist" argument (i.e., "maybe some day some strapping lad from Lucknow will scour his local library for mentions of Estonia, and graciously translate them for us from the original Urdu") is a convenient way of dodging the responsibility that "keep" voters have, which is for them to demonstrate notability conclusively during the AfD discussion.
 * 4. There's no such thing as an "honorary embassy"; those are honorary consulates - i.e., offices where not much happens, not even the granting of visas; see also WP:NOTDIR for that. And volume of trade is notable to a relationship if its notability is validated by a secondary source discussing that relationship (which is of course not the case).
 * 5. No, no such prohibition, only one on relations lacking "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", which ... is the case here. - Biruitorul Talk 19:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Excellent job on expanding the article to satisfy notability with appropriate sources. Alansohn (talk) 20:41, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Not one of the independent sources actually addresses the topic of the article. The Indian government website lays bare the unimportance -- less than 600 Estonians even visited India in 2004.  Note that they haven't bothered to update the website since July 2005.  Must not be too important of a relationship even in the Indian government's eyes, much less anyone elses'. Fails WP:NOTE and the effort at rescue that came up with exactly ZERO sources addressing the subject makes that VERY clear. Drawn Some (talk) 02:01, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As always you appear to be looking for the word "relation" and ignoring the concept. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Like I've asked before, just who defines this "concept"? If it's independent sources, point to them. If it's Richard Arthur Norton, let me point you to WP:NOR. - Biruitorul Talk 03:48, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We define the concept (we could call this article "Estonia-India relations", "Estonian-Indian relations", "Estonia-India links", "... diplomacy", "... contacts", etc.) It's an organizational issue as much as a definitional one. The sources clearly show that the thing, whatever you want to call it exists in the form of diplomatic visits, trade, and treaties.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:09, 14 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete India and Estonia share relations that can be at best described as nominal. Not notable enough for a separate article .This sounds more like an assertion of non-notability than of notability:India was Estonia’s 34th import partner and 37th export partner.--Deepak D'Souza 06:39, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Every country would like more trade and more agreements with every other country in the world. Naturally, government web sites list trade arrangements and agreements, and local news sources sometimes give brief mentions to government press releases, as is done in the references. But no secondary source discusses relations between these two countries, so the relations are not notable. The references do not satisfy WP:GNG. For example, the interesting reference 3 is titled "Estonia and India Consider Combating Pirates to Be Essential", but turns out to be one of a number of announcements by an Estonian embassy (in Sweden). The essence of the story is that an Estonian delegation visited India and discussed various things (mainly trade). Since piracy was news at the time, the politicians agreed that it was bad and should be combatted – no substance. Johnuniq (talk) 10:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  —Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep – I would be perfectly happy to accept all Foo-Boo relations (rather than having these repeated afds with the same contestants struggling over the same ground) and this one seems particularly well-sourced. Move on. Occuli (talk) 08:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge with Foreign relations of Estonia. utcursch | talk 12:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There's too much information to merge without losing a lot of information. Now with notability established, I think it's time we cancelled the nomination for deletion. --Roaring Siren (talk) 13:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * nice try to change my mind, but I'm convinced it should still be deleted. please don't use arguments to avoid like WP:LOSE and AADD. LibStar (talk) 13:28, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - The topic satisfies the general notability guidelines, as evidenced by the numerous secondary, reliable sources. Per DGG, basically. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 17:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG. Alefbe (talk) 17:51, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep per sources added in the article. Could meet notability guidelines. ApprenticeFan  talk  contribs 23:47, 17 July 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.