Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Militant Organizations

List of terrorist groups was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was KEEP

List of terrorist groups should be deleted. It appears to be based on US and UK government designations. Terrorist is value-laden politicized term not suitable for Wikipedia articles without attribution. Violates NPOV policies, is vague and undefined. The person or authority attributing the title of terrorist should be identified. Replace with List of Militant Organizations? Alberuni 18:02, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep. I find it to be a useful list. If you think there needs to be other things on the list to balance it, feel free.  I do agree that attributions would be useful, but I don't think they should be required.  A cross reference with the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list (for example) is not difficult.  If we have to get rid of this page because "terrorist" is a pejorative, we'll also have to get rid of about 20 other valuable pages.  --ChrisRuvolo 23:08, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep or Move to list of alleged terrorist groups as suggested by Sean Curtin. --ChrisRuvolo 01:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Terrorist is not a vague and undefined term. Governments track terrorist groups all the time. This should be the place they are listed. Any recognized government could be a determiner of who gets placed on the list. Reasons they are considered a terrorist organization and by whom should be clear.  Just because someone somewhere approves of tactics considered to "terrorist" does not make this entry invalid. --toddp 22:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Move to a less provocative title "Terrorists are terrorists, unless they're on our side, in which case they're 'freedom fighters'." Chris 19:03, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Move. For an example List of Militant Organizations. We could put a REDIRECT on this page to a List of Militant Organizations or some other name that we come up to. --Milant 23:56, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Lost/unresolved VfD. Keep even though this is a high maintainence article. Cool Hand Luke  01:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree that it is inherently POV. "Terrorism" is an agenda to create and fight by terror.  One side's "freedom fighter" is the other side's terrorist (the IRA or the Tamil Tigers, e.g.).  Therefore, it is unencyclopedic, without basically listing every single insurgency group in the world.  Were the SLA terrorists, even though they had no real homeland to fight for?  Very troublesome.  At the same time, a simple list, along with who calls the group "terrorist," is less NPOV since it establishes that the truth is the claim, not a claim for the truth.  Abstain but lean toward delete or rewrite to ensure an NPOV reflection of the fact that these are not terrorist groups, but alledged terrorist groups. Geogre 04:04, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep - if there is debate whether a group should be included, keep in mind that terrorist activity is defined at Terrorism. If this page didn't exist, this list would have to be part of one, or many, articles. -- Netoholic @ 06:53, 2004 Oct 31 (UTC)
 * Keep if it can be cleaned up and made NPOV. Replace the intro sentence "considered by many" and add references (e.g. USA, UK (or whoever has the job in the UK)) to each entry.  Otherwise split into separate lists of "CIA terrorist organisations list" etc.  No weasel terms!  Joe D (t) 13:05, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Move/Redirect to List of Militant Organizations. That's a better term for this. --Improv 16:54, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Redirect to List of Militant Organizations. The term "militant" is more appropriate. --*drew 16:59, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Move as above unless qualified better, and keep. &mdash;siro &chi; o  00:05, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep or Move as mentioned above. --Nought 00:23, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep and NPOV as per Joe D's suggestion. We have the official US and UK lists in Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Terrorism Act 2000. &#8212;No-One Jones (m) 00:31, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * So how is "militant" any better defined? &mdash;Ashley Y 03:38, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - political correctness has no place in an encyclopedia as opposed to NPOV. Militant is an ill-defined weasel word in its current meaning whereas terrorism is fairly clearly defined. Capitalistroadster 06:19, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Further to the above, militant has been used as a term to indicate that someone has radical leftwing views see Militant Tendency the British political organisation originally associated with the Labour Party. Or militant unionism associated with frequent strikes. This does not mean that they are terrorists as indicated by the new meanings.
 * Keep. -- but "terrorist group" defined by whom? Hizbollah is a terrorist group just because the US and Israel say so? Yeah, right. And where is the list of Christian terrorist groups, like the ones operating in Nagaland? OneGuy 07:18, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * No, Hezbollah is a terrorist group because it is using violence to incite a fearful reaction from a civilian population, for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or social goal. --Nought 11:26, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * That's just a provably false (lie?). Hizbollah used violence against the illegal Israeli troops who were squatting in Southern Lebanon illegally in violation of UN resolution. The only  group that deliberately used violence in southern Lebanon against civilian were Israeli troops and their Christian mercenaries. That's just a fact. Look it up 02:44, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Where is the list of Christian terrorist groups? -- Right there, under "Irish Nationalists" and "Protestant Supremacists". Keep - GWO 11:40, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, but why are they not EXPICITLY called Christian terrorist groups under the headline Christian terrorist groups? OneGuy 02:47, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Move to list of alleged terrorist groups. -Sean Curtin 01:22, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * I voted for "Keep" above, but I find this move agreeable. Modifying my vote. --ChrisRuvolo 01:48, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Rename, redirect or whatever. The word "terrorist" is too vaguely defined. --Marco 15:32, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Rename or merge. Most of them are militant groups disliked by the U.S. and other powerful national governments. And IMHO, there are at least as many such armed and unregulated groups in the U.S. as well (and the U.S. Constitution, NRA and the Bush administration even actively protect their rights to bear arms that may include assault weapons). Calling them terrorists is definitely state-sponsored POV. Otherwise, you may want to call them freedom fighters. -- Toytoy 01:00, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Rename/move. Whenever one goes through an article and a group is called terrorist, the US State Department list is what is used as an authority 100% of the time that I've seen.  Thus this becomes people the 51% of Americans who just elected a new executive don't like.  The American definitions are ridiculous as well - until the 1970s, the US considered the KMT in Taiwan to be "China", with the existing Chinese government from 1949 on presumably just being a terrorist group in power for several decades.  I can think of other ridiculous examples as well. Ruy Lopez 09:09, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Those who are deliberately targeting civilians are terrorists. There is no other name to that. This list is valuable and important. MathKnight 11:41, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * There's an easy Israeli solution to that dilemma. Just label the civilians you kill "terrorists" and then you can kill them and any other civilians around them and pretend you aren't a terrorist yourself. --Alberuni 05:29, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep. This has too many words for it to be deleted. Cordell Walker 05:24, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep and Clean. There are too many questionable entries. Esp additions to the religious terrorist section. Anon user has included many groups that are legitimate political, social, religious groups. I think wiki should stick to official government lists. --The industrialist 16:17, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Keep. This is a very usefull list as it highlights the people who want to threaten our way of life.


 * Rename. How about 'List of groups that have been considered terrorists'. That way nobody would be actually claiming that these groups are terrorist. --Victim Of Fate 11:00, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.