Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fondul Proprietatea (2nd nomination)


 * 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. The article certainly needs more work, but there is no clear consensus to delete. As DGG rightly points out, just because the article needs work, is no reason to delete. Content issues are solved by collaborative working. The Fund meets the criteria for inclusion; the actual content of the article is not a matter for AfD. Ged UK  09:21, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Fondul Proprietatea
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Previously nominated for deletion in June, the article was kept, but consensus was that it needed stubbing, and if problems persisted, the closing administrator should be contacted in a couple of months. Well, I contacted him, but he made no reply. I then took the step of stubbing the article, but was soon reverted by its owner. We should delete this because it's an attack page, a soapbox written by someone who refuses to understand basic policies (WP:NPOV, WP:PSTS) and shows no evidence of having read WP:MOS (I refer you to his other masterpiece, Toma T. Socolescu). Yes, the fund is notable, but we can't keep this version lying around forever under circumstances where its creator and defender is clearly biased and refuses both to keep that bias out of mainspace and to compromise in order to follow policy. The page should be recreated when someone with an understanding of policy who has an interest in writing on the subject comes along. - Biruitorul Talk 16:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Stub it - It is definitely a complete mess of an article, maybe not an attack page but it is pretty close in some places. The company is notable, but the article should be drastically reduced to a stub, and then subsequently be re-written in an encyclopedic manner. - Marcusmax  ( speak ) 16:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Not a bad idea, and one I've tried myself. Let's just hope this AfD impels the author to cooperate. - Biruitorul Talk 18:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, I have a suggestion that may solve the issue: to limit to the minimum the titles dedicated to the complains and condemnations, and create a specific article in the "Human Right in Romania" category, dedicated to private property abuses or violations in Romania. It could be named "Private property abuses in Romania" or "Violation of private property in Romania". The title remains to be chosen. What do you think of this proposal? --Cbrajon (talk) 12:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have written this article and I still do not understand its is considered by someones as not acceptable. The fund is real, its problems also and the court decisions are real and have been made public. It would not be fair to describe the fund as if it worked as designed, which is false. So if someone can explain to me what needs to be changed and why I'll be glad to modify and/or adapt the article. The French version of the article does not raise any problem and it is exactly the same text.
 * I strongly suggest you read WP:PSTS, but let me quote some of it for you. "Wikipedia articles should rely mainly on published reliable secondary sources... All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors". Now, aside from a Ziua article that barely mentions the fund, and an Evenimentul Zilei one that does so at greater length, almost the entire article relies on court cases. For verifying certain facts, that's fine: see our Featured Articles Dietrich v The Queen, Al-Kateb v Godwin, Roe v. Wade. But not, I should stress, to build an entire article around. For that we need "mainly published reliable secondary sources" - newspaper and magazine articles and, if applicable, books. As for the other issue: neutrality demands Wikipedia's narrative voice not be negative, but it does not require a positive portrayal either (an obvious problem in your Toma T. Socolescu article, which makes it clear you are very sympathetic to that individual). After all, our articles on Goebbels or Beria are not exactly endorsements of those subjects. Featuring criticism of the Fund is a good idea, provided it appears in published reliable secondary sources and is attributed as such. - Biruitorul Talk 21:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. I read the famous WP:PSTS. This issue (property spoliation) is not a minor issue and I suppose you know it since you have a Romanian username. Moreover, secondary sources include magazines, books and serious written sources. I consider it also includes Court decision that are public, written and published. I do not consider these decisions as "interpretive claims" because they cannot be interpreted. The decisions are clear, simple and the repetition of the decisions in now 30 cases, if we refer only to the specific point of the Fondul Proprietatea issue, build the truth. It is in fact the recurrence of the condemnations for exactly the same reasons, and the questioning of the fund on each case, that is particularly interesting. Without this recurrence, I would not have mentioned the issue. The only thing I regret is not being able to give the English version of the decision because most all of them are written in French and not translated by the ECHR. Unfortunately Romania has lost all of the cases on this issue. So obviously the image is negative for this fund. But this is what is really going on. In this debate we perhaps eventually disagree on the "published reliable secondary sources" concept. What kind of event do we have to wait to write in Wikipedia that this fund is ineffective? There are regularly articles published on the issue:

- Ziarul Financiar written on 03/09/2009 : => Summary: "Still remaining undistributed dividends of the fund test the patience of thousands of people waiting for years to collect cash value part of property confiscated by the communist regime." - Ziare.com written on 03/09/2009 : => Summary : "The fund is suing the Romanian State for not fulfilling its legal duty: paying the social capital of the fund" - BloomBiz.ro written on 04/09/2009 : => Summary : "Romanian state does not pay its own participation in the fund which is obliged to enforce it to pay..." - Ziarul Financiar written on 30/07/2009 : => Summary : "State is trying to find solution in order to compensation former owners but many obstacles remain" + At the end o the article, a list of blocking issues regarding the fund is available: "1/ after four years of its establishment FP does not have a manager 2/ listing will meet the deadline of November 30, 2009 3/ FP can not yet provide dividends of record profits in 2008 4/ social capital and par value of a share should be reduced by 23% 5/ Although it is the largest fund in Europe, it is not functional." - Hotnews.ro written on 10/06/2009 : => Summary : "Four years since the founding of the Property Fund, as a means of compensation to former owners of buildings abusively taken by the Romanian state, if the restitution was not possible, the Property Fund is not yet an effective mechanism for compensation of victims of these abuses, which stain the honor of the Romanian State." - The Romanian Digest written in June 2009 : (in English) => Summary : "Four years after the creation of the Property Fund (“Fondul Proprietatea” in Romanian) as a means of awarding restitution to former owners of properties confiscated by the Romanian state where in-kind restitution is no longer possible, Fondul Proprietatea still does not represent an effective mechanism in awarding compensation to the victims. This is a stain on the honor of the Romanian state. " -- The same article has also been published in another site: romaniannewswatch on 03/06/2009: - FrontNews.ro written on 12/11/2008 : => Summary : "The excessive and undeclared executives salaries raises a scandal at Fondul Proprietatea" - Ziarul Financiar on 31/01/2007: => Summary: "European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg demonstrates that the non-operating Property Fund makes compensation impossible for the Romanians, owners of nationalized houses, so that Romanian Government is sentenced to pay damages for infringement of property rights." - Gandul, written on 14/07/2006: => The title is clear enough : "Fondul Proprietatea Juggling is denounced by the ECHR"

And I have only been searching for half an hour on the net... Reading these articles, I believe anyone realizes that this fund is a mess, and that it does not fulfill its mission at all. Moreover, it seems obvious to me that 30 condemnations in the highest European jurisdictions are the best proof you ever may have. Now on, taking into consideration the pace of the condemnation, we may reach 100 before the end of 2011. On the other hand, Since it has been stated that this fund is not effective, why would Wikipedia sponsor the opposite? I mean not explaining that the fund is not working (and in fact is closer to a cheat than to a useful compensation scheme) would not be honest for the reader. Therefore, if you decide to stub this article you have to include the information, in a way or another, that it is not effective. If you do not, I suppose it is better not even to write an article on this subject. It would be as fair as writing an article on Staline or Lenine and retaining only the official communist figures and publications. --Cbrajon (talk) 14:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You're making some progress. Hopefully you can include some of those press sources, make the language more neutral, and have this more in line with other Wikipedia articles. - Biruitorul Talk 15:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. Let me just one day to do it. It may be finished in a couple of hours if not today, tomorrow. --Cbrajon (talk) 17:34, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Stub it. A notable subject, however the current article is just a soapbox. If third opinions are needed, please post announcements on relevant WikiProjects/Noticeboards, there's no need to delete the article.Anonimu (talk) 19:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "stub it"? English is not my mother tongue and dictionary did not give any useful clue to understand... By the way what do you think of my proposal? --Cbrajon (talk) 19:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * A stub is "an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information, and it should be capable of expansion". This should become a stub, like I did to it but you reverted me. - Biruitorul Talk 21:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you --Cbrajon (talk) 14:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC).
 * Keep The reason given for deletion is invalid "Yes, the fund is notable, but we can't keep this version lying around forever under circumstances where its creator and defender is clearly biased and refuses both to keep that bias out of mainspace and to compromise in order to follow policy." That makes it a content dispute, and there are   ways to settle such. AfD is not one of them.    DGG ( talk ) 22:28, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Author: I am at present working on the article to develop secondary sources references and make the article as neutral as possible.--Cbrajon (talk) 14:29, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Author: I have achieved my changes. The secondary sources are numerous, the ECHR text is much shorter and synthetic, the text has been modified. Two subtitles dedicated to ECHR and Council of Europe condemnation and requests have disappeared. I think the article is now in a much better shape. The title "Effectiveness of the fund and challenges" is corroborated by 29 secondary sources and 33 court decisions. Each statement has at least one secondary written source. Awaiting your comments. --Cbrajon (talk) 15:32, 16 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.