Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Iyad Burnat


 * 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. There is plenty of coverage and the "delete" !voters have not been able to refute it successfully. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 01:53, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Iyad Burnat
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not notable, no significant RS, poorly sourced, probably WP:BLP1E and WP:NPF Soosim (talk) 08:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep: User:Soosim hasn't bothered to explain on the talk page which of the 14-15 separate sources he considers not to be WP:RS. (I also see reliable sources that can be added from a search of his name in this news archive search.) Sooism has complained about reverts of a vandal who is one or more of the several active in the Israel-Palestine debate being against 1RR, but let's not encourage vandalism, please. I'm sure the article needs work. But there is no reason to delete it. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 19:06, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Here are WP:RS I just put on the talk page of the article that describe his activities and/or quote him. BBC 2005 - Christian Science Monitor Sept 2007 - Washington Times Sept 2007 - Israel National News March 2010 - YnetNews April 2010 - Maan News Dec 2010 - LA Times Dec 2010 - Spokesman Review Jan 2013. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 02:08, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Even if you put in all of those RS, there won't be much of an article beyond his role in the protests.Scarletfire2112 (talk) 06:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Palestine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I just did and there was lots of good stuff. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 02:20, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete: Does not appear notable. Point of fact, many of the details in this article, such as info about the weekly protests and other individuals, are completely irrelevant to Burnat. There is also a striking lack of RS for a lot of the key claims in the opening, and I'm not sure about how reliable a lot of the sources used are as it is. Scarletfire2112 (talk) 19:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep: Mr. Burnat is a key figure in the Bil'in popular movement resisting the separation wall, and Bil'in is currently the most explosive and important flashpoint along the path of the wall. In fact, if the Palestinian-Israeli-international struggle against the wall as a whole has a microcosm, it is most certainly Bil'in. Burnat has been the subject of minor diplomatic incidents involving the U.S. and Jordan and organizations within those countries, and he is certainly on the radars of both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. He is mentioned in articles from several distinguished media outlets including Ha'aretz, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Guardian, to name but a few that are cited on his current Wikipedia page. Additionally, those are merely some of the available English-language sources. Expanding the sources to those in Hebrew and Arabic especially would yield many more mentions from a wide array of source types. Lastly, and least important, he's a direct relation to the filmmaker of one of the most talked-about documentaries of the past year, and said documentary revolved much around the same struggle Iyad is involved in. As such, WP:NOTE does not seem to be a problem with Iyad Burnat. As the article stands right now, the sourcing appears adequate in terms of both reliability and quantity, though I know that much more could be added. Popular, nonviolent struggle by Palestinians has never been headline-making news on the front pages of top Western newspapers (although because of some movements, the Bil'in struggle which Mr. Burnat is linked to in particular, this has recently been changing and nonviolent Palestinian resistance is getting more coverage in more disparate outlets), so the fact that he has any mention at all in papers like CS Monitor and the Guardian is somewhat remarkable. As to the other two specific charges made by Soosim, that Burnat's article is "probably WP:BLP1E and WP:NPF", WP:BLP1E simply doesn't apply. Bil'in's popular resistance against the wall is an ongoing phenomenon, not a single event. Single events have certainly occurred within the framework of the weekly Friday demonstrations and other activities linked to activism in Bil'in, such as the deaths of Bassem Abu Rahmeh and Jawaher Abu Rahmeh, but it's plainly inaccurate to refer to the culmination of Iyad's work as a "single event". As far as WP:NPF is concerned, NPF doesn't seem to be related to the question of whether or not someone is "relatively [known]" enough to warrant an article, but rather to the issue of, when one is faced with an article on a person who's living and "relatively unknown", the editor should be careful not to pad out the article with information that is 1) not worthy of an encyclopedia and 2) raises privacy issues for the person in question, simply to make the article longer. In any case, in such a reading of WP:NPF, it clearly holds no relevance to this AfD. In summary, I find that Iyad Burnat is definitely notable enough to warrant an article, many reliable sources are available and currently incorporated into the article, whose sourcing is adequate, and that there are no issues here with either WP:BLP1E or WP:NPF. I see no acceptable reason to delete this article. Direct action (talk) 21:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep The Bil'in protests are a notable phenomenon and if Burnat is one of the top leaders of that movement that would also make him notable. I don't see a real case on why the subject of this article would be considered otherwise. That being said, the article needs improvement, both in sources and neutrality. Right off the bat, the heading "Police harassment" needs to be changed per NPOV. --Al Ameer son (talk) 02:47, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment - Having spent some time looking at reliable source coverage and trying to add content and sources, the subject does appear to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria as far as I can tell. There are ~17k ghits so it's not possible know to know exactly what information is available at this stage without going through the entire dataset, but the RS based evidence that I have seen does indicate that Iyad Burnat has been "the subject of multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject" and that they have "made a widely recognized contribution". Some of this information has been added. Some of it has been removed. Given the nature of the WP:ARBPIA topic area and the weak constraints in place to deal with editing that is based on politics rather than policy, I don't think it is going be possible in practice to build this article without contributions being degraded. Deleting the article would result in a net reduction of editing in ARBPIA that is inconsistent with policy and Wikipedia's objectives, so I favor deleting it on that basis. I can imagine that some may not see this as a valid reason for deletion but I believe it is in the best interests of Wikipedia. The article can be written when problems within ARBPIA have been resolved. It may take many years to fix the problems. An article about Iyad Burnat can wait until then.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 08:51, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. You favor deleting the article because doing so "would result in a net reduction of editing in ARBPIA that is inconsistent with policy and Wikipedia's objectives". Are you saying that, were the article to stand on Wikipedia, it would exist as one more battleground in the ARBPIA, which is a strike against keeping the article in the first place, and that since the article's subject falls into ARBPIA's purview, it's susceptible to bad editing ("editing... inconsistent with policy and Wikipedia's objectives"), and that these together warrant the article's deletion? Thus, that the encyclopedic value that an article on Iyad Burnat would contribute to Wikipedia (as opposed to having no such article) is outweighed by the possibility that the article, by simply existing, would attract bad editing and further arbitration requests? Am I way off? Because if not, then it seems as if your argument could be extended to literally any article on Israel and Palestine, and function as a case for the deletion of all Israel/Palestine-related content on Wikipedia. Not to mention that this argument could be used to block the continued existence of all newly-created Israel/Palestine-related articles, which by the fact of their existence represent an opportunity for someone to bring them to ARBPIA. In addition, it opens the door for anyone who wants to see the removal of an article, or even all the articles surrounding a particular subject, to bog down the encyclopedia's functionality by inundating the article with bad editing and arbitration requests. It seems like you're saying that there shouldn't be any new Israel/Palestine articles until there are no longer any issues being debated in ARBPIA, and that it would benefit the Wikipedia project as a whole to remove as many Israel/Palestine articles as possible so as to decrease the congestion in ARBPIA. This is a very strange position to take in my view, so I'd not be surprised if I'm interpreting your argument completely incorrectly, ergo the request for clarification. Direct action (talk) 00:15, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You aren't interpreting my argument completely incorrectly, but I probably wasn't specific enough and this probably isn't the place to discuss the wider scale aspects. I will say though that I would fully support there being no new Arab/Iran/Israel conflict related articles until problems in ARBPIA have been resolved, something that would require removing editors, setting very strict topic area entry requirements and editing constraints, and if I had my way, no longer allowing editing under the cover of anonymity, things that are not going to happen tomorrow and may never happen. Having edited in the topic area for over 5 years, made perhaps ~15k edits in ARBPIA, a large proportion of them to fix damage by editors and sockpuppets who are unable or unwilling to follow policy, I have come to the conclusion that there are some things Wikipedia can't do, so it should stop pretending it can and focus efforts on things it can do. Much of the time it doesn't matter very much but sometimes it does, particularly when it involves a living human being. Wikipedia can't ensure that articles about people like Iyad Burnat, a living person, comply with WP:BLP, all other policies and are as good as they can possibly be. It can't prevent extremist supporters of Israel from making vile attacks on the subject as has already happened many times for the article. It can't protect the article from sockpuppets of users who have had their editing privileges revoked because they present a serious risk to content. It can't prevent people whose priorities are inconsistent with Wikipedia's from exploiting the article as a weapon in an information war, something I regard as completely unethical. It can't prevent damage by people (whether in good or bad faith makes no difference) who are not able to make rational policy based content decisions because of their personal views or connection to the conflict. It can't even protect editors who are here to build an encyclopedia based on policy, and there are almost none of those in ARBPIA, from having to deal with editors whose allegiance to things outside of Wikipedia take priority over Wikipedia's content rules. No one should have to collaborate with editors whose priorities are different from Wikipedia's, ever. But most of all, it can't protect the subject of the article, and that means, at least for me, that it is better to delete the article on a 'do no harm' basis. An alternative would be to permanently fully protect the article so that every single edit has to be explained on the talk page using policy based arguments and gain consensus before it is implemented by an admin. I would like to see far more use of full protection in ARBPIA to force people to slow down and justify their proposed changes using rational policy/evidence based arguments that can be scrutinized and evaluated.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 19:16, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * [Insert]I agree there are problems but let's discuss at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration for starters with more appropriate forum later. (Or other ideas?) At this point my problem is more with one or two edit warring/disruptive editors who I'd like to see banned from the topic at least for a while. (But of course we're afraid to bring anyone to WP:ARBPIA because we're afraid of being banned even if we are only 5% as bad as the offender. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 18:05, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I just added more WP:RS info and restructured it slightly so it more than passes muster. Bottom line, Wikipedia doesn't don't allow numbers of editors with strong POVs out to AfD any article they don't like to get their way. I have found Wikipedia policies adequate for dealing with them so far, though it does take far more effort than the zero bucks I'm getting paid for it is worth. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 02:19, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * it may pass gas, but not muster, unless it is muster gas. carol - do you have "strong POVs"? just curious. and really? you don't get paid for this? interesting. Soosim (talk) 05:55, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Keep/ Merge: The subject is notable enough, there are many apparently bad sources in the article, but there is Ynet and NYT that mention him directly as a key element of the story. Sure he isn't Yaseer Arafat, but notable enough per our guidelines. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:05, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry the NYT story was about his brother. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I haven’t seen any specific discussion of RS on the talk page, except for Mondoweiss which sometimes is considered RS; I haven’t looked at the deleted use to further discuss it. However, The Palestine Center, The Advertiser-Tribune, Washington Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Haaretz, Ynet News, Ma'an News Agency, Los Angeles Times, and perhaps a couple other, all together have quite a bit of information, the most important of which probably can fill in any important blanks from sources not considered WP:RS currently. I have already filled in some of that info and the article is a lot better than when originally listed here. CarolMooreDC &#x1f5fd; 18:01, 22 April 2013 (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.