Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/History of tax resistance


 * 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. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:59, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

History of tax resistance

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A misleading example farm that has had people complain on its talk page for years. As it stand this article is really "List of protests, rebellions, and revolutions vaguely involving taxes somewhere." And vague is correct: I certainly wouldn't associate the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong as largely related to taxation. Lots of the examples are peripherally related to taxes at best: to take one example of many, the Comuneros of New Granada were (partially) protesting royal monopolies forbidding tobacco cultivation, which was certainly a form of revenue generation for the government, but not exactly a tax in the modern sense.

A better list might focus on some consistent type of tax resistance: are we talking some kind of anarchist / libertarian opposition to taxes in general? Conscientious objection to wars and the like, a la Thoreau? Political questions over the process & legitimacy of a tax, e.g. *parts* (but not all!) of the American Revolution? Or just the more common "people don't like or want to pay a proposed tax", but are not tax-resisters in general? I'm not averse to possibly porting *some* of the content to a new article, but as it stands this article is a mishmash that could arguably extend to half the revolts in history, since there's usually some complaints about taxes in 'em. SnowFire (talk) 01:31, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:12, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:12, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - important article on a notable topic. Tax resistance is widely covered on WP (see Template:Tax resistance) and a history of it is important. Nominator is kindly reminded that WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. —Мандичка YO 😜 22:04, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I entirely agree with the "AFD is not cleanup sentiment", but perhaps I should be more explicit: This article is unsalvageable in its current form. It is not an accurate or useful article, so if it is important, it's misleading!  If someone wants to write an actual article on the history of tax resistance or some form of it, great, but this is really just "List of random revolts & protests."  It has very little to do with actual tax resistance.  SnowFire (talk) 06:11, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Let me note as well that my original complaint was in 2011. I think that 4 years is a good faith time given for some sort of actual article to be written, or for a better list that actually has some sort of inclusion criteria to be created! SnowFire (talk) 06:14, 17 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - contrary to the misleading intro, aside from SnowFire's own complaint there are a total of *two* people on the talk page over the years who have made complaints that might be considered germaine to this afd. The given ideas for improvement or extension (e.g. differently organized lists) may have merit, but aren't good arguments for deletion. —Moorlock (talk) 23:24, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Do my complaints not count or something? 3 people complaining about a very obscure article on talk is a lot I'd think, 3 more than the vast majority of articles nominated for AfD!  More to the point, can you explain why exactly these repeated complaints about this article being a misleading example farm are wrong? SnowFire (talk) 06:11, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Additionally, please do not edit other editor's comments. You can say why you think I'm wrong just fine here. SnowFire (talk) 06:18, 17 July 2015 (UTC)'
 * We don't decide whether articles get deleted because people complain about them. It's sort of irrelevant - that's what issue templates are for. Please familiarize yourself with the criteria for deletion at WP:DEL-REASON: I don't see that you are citing any of the listed issues that can be used as criteria for deletion.Your issue is basically that you don't like the article in its current state, apparently don't care to fix it, and so you want it deleted... yes? Again I kindly suggest you reread the superfragilistic essay "Articles for Deletion is not to be used to fix articles with issues". —Мандичка YO 😜 09:13, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * So the fact I didn't throw alphabet soup is the problem? WP:INDISCRIMINATE I suppose, but sheesh, is the fact that the article is *incorrect* not enough?!  I gave two examples above and could go on at length about why many/most of the examples in the list are wrong / misleading.  If someone created an article on an "important article on a notable topic" like History of Barack Obama that was 100% wrong, then even if we'd be fine with somebody writing a good article on that topic some day, it'd be entirely reasonable to redirect to the main article and/or cut to a stub.  Not just reasonable, required!  This would be true even if everything had nice references (that were irrelevant). SnowFire (talk) 16:55, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * And, per above, I too despise the old trend of using AFD as cleanup, as I already said! However I think going to AFD is good wikiquette rather than just blindly redirecting the content.  If you're saying that you'd be okay with me just "cleaning it up" that way, I guess I could, but then why not vote redirect rather than keep?  You want me to be specific, so please be specific for me: do you think the current incorrect example farm has encyclopedic value that you'd like kept somewhere? SnowFire (talk) 16:59, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not quite sure how else I can explain it so you can get it. An article having factual errors is not an issue for AfD: mere factual errors can be easily removed. None of the criteria at AfD requires alphabet soup but it does require a valid reason according to the deletion guideline I keep asking you to read - you can say it doesn't meet notability guidelines, it's an ad/spam, copyright violation, duplicate of another article, an unacceptable fork of another topic, neologism, etc. WP:INDISCRIMINATE doesn't work on an article that meets GNG. If someone created an article on a notable topic about Obama that was 100 percent wrong/invented, then it would clearly fall under vandaliasm/hoax or attack page, and would violate the policy about biograpy of living people, all of which are valid reasons for deletion. Additionally, an article that is 100 percent wrong is 100 percent likely to be vandalism, and this article on the history of tax resistance shows no signs of vandalism or malicious edits. It just needs to be cleaned up. Please just remove the bad examples - you are welcome and highly encouraged to do that. —Мандичка YO 😜 19:06, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I think we're going in circles on this, but to be clear, I'm fine with stubbing the article from its current state but keeping it as a potential location for a new article. The problem with this particular article isn't "factual errors" exactly, which is why it's complicated; it's more "irrelevant / misleading synthesis", since everybody agrees these revolts / protests actually happened.  (I think there was a similarly sticky situation a long while back where people had created "Allegations of {X} apartheid" that were collections of sources mentioning the word "apartheid" near the topic {X} somewhere, vaguely similar to revolts that involved a tax somewhere.  Sourced, yet needed to be deleted at AFD as a bad idea.)  We disagree on proper Wikipedia etiquette when such a drastic cutback is proposed though: you seem to think this is merely a matter for cleanup, while I believe it should usually go to AFD.  I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree.  SnowFire (talk) 19:56, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not my opinion but policy. WP:BEFORE states before nominating, you need to: Consider whether the article could be improved rather than deleted. If the article can be fixed through normal editing, then it is not a candidate for AfD. You're unhappy with examples you don't think should be there... anyone, you included, can easily remove the irrelevant ones. It's list format so it should not be very complicated. Removing those examples falls under "normal editing;" therefore this article is not a candidate for AfD. Just go through and delete the problematic examples.  —Мандичка YO 😜 22:03, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Continued on your talk page. SnowFire (talk) 00:18, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep but gut - The topic is notable and there are clearly sources that could be used to write an article about the "the history of tax resistance," so this is an obvious "keep" for me - the article as it stands, however, is not a "history of tax resistance," but rather a (dubiously sourced, likely synthesized) list of alleged tax revolts/rebellions, which includes many "revolts" that arguably should not be on the list. I think the article should be kept but stubbed. If people want to resurrect some of the content in a separate list article, they're free to do so, but care should be taken to ensure that the list follows the relevant guidelines for lists and that the list is properly sourced. Fyddlestix (talk) 17:29, 17 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but cut it substantially. I am happy to allow "resistance" to cover a variety of different kinds of movement, ranging from political campaigning through tax strikes to all out rebellions.  However, I would prefer to see this as a list article, with columns covering such matters as date, location, tax involved, and outcome.  Each item should link to another article, which would be the appropriate place for sources to be cited: in other words the link to another article would be the list's source.  Nevertheless, I have to day that the article is excessively long, and may need splitting geographically.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:48, 19 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree a table format would work better and this changed to a list in the title. We need someone knowledgable in this area to clean it up however. —Мандичка YO 😜 19:32, 20 July 2015 (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.