Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International opinion on the South Atlantic sovereignty dispute


 * 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   delete. Stifle (talk) 10:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

International opinion on the South Atlantic sovereignty dispute

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Written as an essay by a wikipedia editor as a content fork from Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute. Its a rather one sided selection of quotations and a violation of wikipedia's policy of a WP:NPOV. There has been an extensive and rather toxic debate at Talk:Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute on the inclusion of this sort of commentary, with the point being wikipedia requires a source to discuss it. A wikipedian cannot compile and edit a disparate selection of quotations, as this is clearly WP:OR and WP:SYN. The author who created this, attempted to insert this content into Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute and consensus was very much against him Talk:Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute/Archive 20. WCM email 11:29, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Clear content fork with an apparent violation of WP:RS, WP:OR and WP:NPOV to boot, alas.  The extant article it is a fork of appears to be policy compliant, and covers both major positions adequately. Collect (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep & Template to Merge  Reading the archive I don't think consensus was very much against the author. I do not see it as clearly WP:OR and WP:SYN. I don't think it is written as an essay. I don't think it is a one sided selection. I do think it is a content fork but do not think a "merge vote" here alone would be appropriate, as this might well end up a controversial merge via the backdoor. We should keep and add merge templates MyTuppence (talk) 13:02, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Strong delete for all the reasons I gave at the time of the discussion that WCM notes. I would suggest that the fact that the article is orphaned - despite major potential for inward links - implies that it was not intended to be found by editors who disagreed with it.


 * The whole thing is a mess of WP:OR and always will be. It is WP:OR because it combines multiple primary sources - statements of international governments - and uses them to draw conclusions (stated and implied) that cannot be reasonably supported based on the available sourcing.  For example, look at the list, which side has more international support?  Obviously Argentina.  But no reliable secondary source will tell you this because in the real world it is not clear-cut fact that Argentina has more support.  Moreover, there are several individual instances of states on the list whose position would be sharply disputed and could not easily be defended - because either the statements are contradictory or the reporting is contradictory.  The user writing this article has come to one conclusion for each state listed.  S/he might easily come up with the opposite conclusion in most cases here.  Remember that, in this dispute, there are states that have appeared to switch sides twice is as many months.


 * What this means in turn is that the list is irretrievably WP:POV. Again, it always will be.  Part of the point of WP:NOR is that, particularly in controversial areas, you cannot achieved neutrality because there are not the sources to allow you to determine what neutrality is.  This article is highly biased toward Argentina.  If somebody else wrote it (e.g. by taking the general international principle that silence is implicit support for the status quo) it might be highly biased toward Britain.  Or, one might find that it is inconsistently biased, skewing things in favour of Argentina with one sentence and Britain in the next.  But it will never be neutral - that is an impossibility because of the reliance on WP:OR.


 * Such a list is not something that has not been tried before. The article Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute used to have a map of countries categorised with support for each side.  It was removed for precisely the same reason as this should be deleted.  Those reasons also mean that any attempt to merge will violate WP:NPOV.  But they would also be biased for another reason - and that is that it would inevitably vastly overstate the importance of the international opinions in this particular dispute. Kahastok talk 13:33, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete This is a real mess of a fork. I don't see why or how it could be saved. Capitalismojo (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Argentina-related deletion discussions. -- Sam Sing! 14:06, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. -- Sam Sing! 14:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- Sam Sing! 14:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete Collection of few opinions about a dispute.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 16:41, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete with all due dispatch, obvious WP:POVFORK. Guy (Help!) 00:22, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep and improve This article IS NOT WP:POVFORK since its theme is not the Dispute between the UK and Argentina that dates back 200 years (Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute), but only current international reactions. It is a WP:SPINOFF of former article. What it needs to avoid is classifications like "supporting the British position" or "supporting the Argentine position", since that's the part that could be seen as a leap of WP:OR. That's the way it's done in articles like International reactions to the Syrian Civil War, Reactions to the September 11 attacks, Positions on Jerusalem, International reactions to the Gaza War (2008%E2%80%9309), International reactions to the Bahraini uprising (2011%E2%80%93present), etc. There's a constant influx of uninvolved editors that arrive at Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute to include a declaration of a country or organism about the dispute, only to get reverted (see e.g. ); as a plus, this article would solve that problem. Therefore, I'm reiterating the support I gave a while ago. --Langus (t) 17:03, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Edit: done. --Langus (t) 19:15, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SPINOFF, "[s]pinouts are intended to improve readability and navigation, not to evade Wikipedia's content policies." This latter point is what has happened here.  The text was rejected at existing articles because it breaks standard content policies such as WP:NPOV and WP:NOR, so the editor decided to create a fork instead.  You've made the pro-Argentine POV slightly less obvious but have not removed it, nor removed the POV in many of the individual points.  I wouldn't expect you to because it's asking the impossible - the thing cannot be made neutral because of the lack of sources.  Which is why it should be deleted. Kahastok talk 21:25, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "The thing cannot be made neutral because of the lack of sources" this is novel to me... could you elaborate? This situation doesn't seem to be covered by WP:NPOV, despite your insistence that this article goes against this core policy. It doesn't seem to be a WP:DEL-REASON either. --Langus (t) 01:10, 9 February 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.