Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Human trafficking in Serbia


 * 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. John254 02:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Human trafficking in Serbia

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Article is an opinionated and unencyclopedic political rant based on original research and/or copied directly from an outside source, complete with a navigation box at the bottom full of nonexistent links. Beemer 69  chitchat  07:37, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep (as author). This admittedly needs cleanup but is a good start to an article. It is copied from a public domain US government report. The navbox will be filled up as more articles are added. The fastest way to build wikipedia's poor coverage of human trafficking is to start with these reports--I can create about one of these a minute. A person looking for information about human rights in Serbia would certainly do better with this than nothing. To write articles of comparable quality from scratch would take months. Calliopejen1 (talk) 07:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * But Wikipedia is not a mirror. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of previously published material, even if this material is in the public domain. Calgary (talk) 07:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * But this is the start of an encyclopedia article! Nor was wikipedia a mirror of Britannica when it used Britannica articles as starting points for articles, nor a mirror of the library of congress when its country reports are used to create articles like Precolonial Mauritania. If we should have an article on human trafficking in Serbia (which I don't think is disputed), I believe this is a helpful starting point. Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:05, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * But as it stands the current article is not an encyclopedia article. Any stage of an encyclopedia article, no matter how early on in its development, is still distinctively recongizeable as an encyclopedia article. Now, perhaps the subject is notable, perhaps there could be an article on the subject, but what currently exists is just the foundation to something that may at some point become an encyclopedia article. What we have right now is a source. And as I understand it, Wikipedia policy has traditionally been to use information from reliable sources to write original encyclopedic articles, never to copy source material, then edit it until it becomes distinctly different/encyclopedic. Calgary (talk) 08:36, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That's simply not correct. This will not require that much editing to become a decent article, and is far better than most new articles anyways. Wikipedia has a long history of copying source material--see Public domain resources. How is this fundamentally different than Precolonial Mauritania? If this were sourced to fifty different references (one for each sentence) but had similar tone problems, would it be deleted? Of course not. This is a matter for cleanup, not deletion. Calliopejen1 (talk) 08:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say that this is a matter of cleanup. The problem isn't that the quality of the article needs to be significantly improved, it's that the article needs to undergo significant change in order for it to actually qualify as an article. And no, I wouldn't say that Precolonial Mauritania is any different. Calgary (talk) 09:19, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then. By your logic, the entire History of Cambodia series, for instance, would have to be deleted too! (It's been around for years, by the way.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 09:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep on merits of the subject (which obviously can be written about) and creator... but, it obviously needs cleanup or it will have to be trimmed down a bunch. gren グレン 11:16, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, wikify and find additional references. Valid subject. --Soman (talk) 13:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, certainly seems like a valid and notable topic. That it needs cleaned up is not a reason to delete. Umbralcorax (talk) 13:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Valid and notable topic; it belongs to "Human trafficking by country" series. There are some problems as usual, but they can be fixed including additional referencing.Biophys (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge this, and all of the new human trafficking articles Calliopejen1 is busily making for every country in the world, into a suitable place. I agree entirely that human trafficking is probably not as thoroughly covered here as it should be, but these articles are cut & paste jobs from This website that do not differ substantially from one another. They all seem to be based on fill-in-the-blank templates, so the article for one country is unlikely to differ much from a neighbouring country's, and for this reason the articles should be merged. I'd fully support a stand-alone article for individual countries where the human trafficking situation stands out in some way from other countries- that is, more is required than just a generic report from a single website. Reyk  YO!  02:22, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * A brief response: Just to note, that site is a mirror of the original source, which is the US govt. They are clearly built around a template, but the information in each article is completely different from every other article. I can't think of a place where these could be merged to. The situation in each country is quite different, since prosecution etc. is clearly domestic, so it makes little sense generally merge these into regional articles. Do you have a suggestion of where these could be merged? Calliopejen1 (talk) 02:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We do have a history of filling in article sets from public domain sources and while... in 2008 this is less palatable than when we did it in 2004, it is not a practice worthy of deletion when the subject is notable and the information sourced and informative (even if not fully encyclopedic in tone). This might be reflective of my eventualist tendencies, but they are not doing any harm, are sourced, and better than a vast number of articles we have. gren グレン 04:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm always suspicious of fill-in-the-gaps article sets, where the articles are created simply for the sake of having the article. this discussion and this one should explain why. I'll bow to consensus on these ones though. Reyk  YO!  05:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Those are being deleted for non-notability, so I don't see the comparison.... All wikipedia articles are created "simply for the sake of having an article"! Calliopejen1 (talk) 07:17, 30 July 2008 (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.