Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of insurgents killed in Iraq


 * 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 but rename There clearly was no consensus for deletion. The proposals for a partial merge, losing the detailed info, were correctly answered that that removes the entire point of the article, as it destroys the referencability of the data. Those favoring a complete merge were out numbered by those favoring keep, and offered no indication of why this content would be better inside another article, or how to avoid the problems that existed before this was spun off. Proposals for renaming first emerged late in the discussion, but had strong support thereafter, and the current name is misleading. The main argument for deletion is based on WP:NOT. But that says that "Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers while this seems quite clear, and is long but not sprawling. It is also not an indiscriminate collection of information, it is indeed a narrowly focused collection. The point was also raised that time patterns in the data can be highly significant, and have been the basis for extensive public comment, thus indicating notability. WP:NOT also says: "articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader." This provides clear context. In short, the policy-based arguments for deletion have been answered, at least enough that they do not trump the clear lack of numerical support for deletion. DES (talk) 01:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

List of insurgents killed in Iraq

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This is a completely non-notable list. The number of insurgents killed in the war is an important fact which should be kept in the article on the war itself; however, having a month by month break down of this is completely ridiculous. This article is a violation of WP:NOT and an example of systemic bias - do you see a month by month list of casualties in any other war? No (if you do see one, then please nominate it for deletion too). D 4 g 0 t h u r 08:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge This amazingly well researched and cited list, is err.... not really a list. It's a tally of numbers. It fails to be a navigation guide to other articles and the raw facts (for example x insurgents were killed during June 2006 - Decemeber 2006) could probably live here Pedro | Chat  09:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree; it seems a waste to have all the work that went into this article lost. As I said in my initial appraisal, these figures belong in Post-invasion Iraq. D 4 g 0 t h u r  09:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with both of the above. We're talking about an article with 585 references, and which someone has worked extremely hard to get it as it is now. If that was my article, and I'd just made a few misunderstandings, I'd expect it to be put to right by a more experienced Wikipedian. If it was deleted, I would do something dangerous... It needs to be merged, like what was said above, although Post-invasion Iraq is already a large article.  Lra drama 11:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Do not delete I don't really know what should be done with it, but it has clear encyclopedical value--Victor falk 11:42, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Wow, the author should work for the army. On a second thought, he probably does. I don't see the point of an inventory of anonymous cannon fodder. And am I the only one who feels this looks like a list of trophies? Like marks drawn by fighter pilots on their planes after they've brought down another "enemy" plane? Not only is this patent listicruft, it just plain feels wrong. Maybe I'm too sensitive. --Targeman 11:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're too sensitive. And that's a polite word for it.  Nick mallory 12:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, having close relatives killed in a war does that to you, I guess. --Targeman 12:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as what to do, I really only see four options: Just my 3 cents. Publicus 14:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I think that AFD regulars are so used to seeing loose, unverifiable or originial research listcruft that when we encounter something so well referenced we have to pause. The problem is that despite the opening lead and hundreds of references this can all be boiled down to a few facts (specifically the number of people who have died in a given time period). Now we could get someone to create a bar chart with this data, or add the figures in to a number of other articles, but as an article in it's own right I can't see the value. Pedro | Chat
 * Keep. I echo previous comments in saying that this list has clear encyclopaedic value. Merging into Post-invasion Iraq is not an option, as that article is already very large.  The best solution is therefore to keep it in it's own article. &mdash;gorgan_almighty 14:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * How is a month by month report of insurgent casualties in Iraq encyclopaedic? This is more like a military report than an encyclopaedia article. Obviously it is just excessive; this is why, having thought it through more thoroughly, I suggest, rather than a merge, a smerge, as the article's topic deserves mention in Post-invasion Iraq, but only so far as having the total number of insurgents killed (maybe with yearly subtotals). This solves the problem of a merge making Post-invasion Iraq too big. D 4 g 0 t h u r  14:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It is encyclopaedic because it is a NPOV article detailing previously published information and citing it properly. It would be nice to have some more actual text in the article, but that doesn't stop it being encyclopaedic.  You cannot simply cut it down to a "total number of insurgents killed (maybe with yearly subtotals)".  Why? Because the majority of the article is taken up by the references, and you can't remove those references without it becoming an un-cited, disputable list. &mdash;gorgan_almighty 16:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge - great ammount of information which is well researched and encyclopediaec. Not completely sure where it should be merged, though. Jackrm 14:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep or Merge The whole point of this article was to provide a place where frequent editors of the Iraq war could list the number of insurgents killed, with full references. If you look back to the edit history for January/February 2007, you will see that we were running into a problem reporting any verifiable number of insurgents killed. It seemed that every time an editor put an insurgent casualty total in the Iraq war info box, it was either deleted or had a added afterward. So to solve the problem of verification, I created the article as basically a really ugly list article (or link farm if you prefer) in order to; 1) show all the various incidents and tally them up 2) keep the tragically long list on a separate article from Iraq war article where the now 585 links would have created other problems. So, that's the background on the problem this article was trying to solve.
 * 1) Nothing. Leave the article alone until the media reports or someone uncovers a verifiable number that we can just link to in the Iraq war article and then this article could be deleted. A website such as, except from the insurgents' perspective, would be a perfect solution. Keep in mind, without the folks at  tracking coalition casualties would be much harder than it is--and perhaps some editor would have created a similar article to provide a verified source of coalition casualties.
 * 2) Merge it into another article tracking casualties of the Iraq war, such as Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003. Of course, that would still create other problems such as the huge number of links that would be moved into another article.
 * 3) Delete it. We could also delete this article, however that would bring us back to Jan/Feb 2007 in terms of having a verifiable number of insurgents killed. Also, at the moment I have been unable to find any other publicly available, verifiable number of insurgents killed. As such I would not support a deletion.
 * 4) Change it in some way to satisfy critics. I suppose there could be some way of modifying the article's appearance to suit those who don't like the link farm look. I'm not sure what that is, but editors are a creative bunch.
 * Would this be more appropriate on any of Wikipedia's sister projects, say Wikinews or Wikisource? I'm only really familiar with Wikipedia and Wiktionary so I'm not sure whether there is another place for it or not. If not, perhaps we should just keep the article on a temporary basis, deleting it if and when an alternative is found. D 4 g 0 t h u r  15:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not familiar with any of the other "Wikis". Publicus 18:02, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Partial merge as suggested above. The information is verifiable and useful, but this article cannot stay - it is a clear violation of WP:NOT, as it is nothing more than long and sprawling list of statistics.  This is almost a word-for-word example of what Wikipedia is not. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Great respect to User:Publicus for his statements and not taking owndership. No one so far doubts the quality of the referencing (how could they!) or that the subject matter is notable, it's just where to put the information in a more condensed form. If a number of editors are using it as a "tool" could it not be kept as an extension of someones user or talk page, noted on talk pages of the various articles, for those editors who use it ? Just a thought Pedro |  Chat  15:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Since it is a wealth of information, but not properly an encyclopedia article, would it be possible to flesh it out with context, meaning, and significanceas in why the numbers for each month are significant? I think this would take a fair amount of expertise on the war, but figured I would throw it out there for brainstorming, if it could be useful above and beyond existing articles about the war. I must echo the sentiment that completely discarding this article seems a waste. Eliz81 15:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the simplest solution would be to move it to a subpage of Talk:Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present; maybe Talk:Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present/List of insurgents killed in Iraq. Any takers? D 4 g 0 t h u r  16:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep I see no basis for automatically deleting referenced accounts of the violent deaths of thousands in a war or military occupation, while keeping articles about the violent deaths of individuals, such as the Keep results for Articles for deletion/Jennifer Ann Crecente (2nd nomination), Articles for deletion/Murder of Danielle Jones , or Articles for deletion/Murder of Anthony Walker. The month to month trend of the war/occupation of of immense importance, as witnessed by debate in the US Senate, with some opponents of a quick pullout saying "wait until September and see if it is going better then before deciding on a pullout or redeployment". One thing to note in the article is the dubious accuracy of body counts, which the US military misrepresented in Vietnam , and said they were not going to report at all in Iraq, then started regularly reporting in Iraq. Satisfies WP:N and WP:A. If length permits, it could certainly be merged into the article on Post-invasion Iraq , but others have said that article is already too long. It seems to have a double standard to have a speedy keep for articles about terrorists burning cars in the UK without injuring anyone but themselves Articles for deletion/2007 London car bombs, and to delete an article about thousands of insurgents being killed or blowing themselves up in an actual war or contested occupation. Edison 16:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It is unfortunate that people should die; however, no matter how sad something is, it doesn't make it encyclopaedic. Further, the argument of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is invalid. D 4 g 0 t h u r  16:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I did not make an "OTHERCRAPEXISTS" argument. Rather, I noted the defacto policy of Wikipedia as expressed by recent AFD results, since these represent the consensus of what sorts of things belong in this encyclopedia. AFD results commonly cited as a basis for guidelines representing or not representing consensus. Edison 19:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep I am the user, 87.116.171.227,that has been editing this article, and I want to say a few things:

1.This article had already once before been nominated for deletion and survived the nomination with overvhelming majority. Here is a link to the PREVIOUS DISCUSION.

2.This article needs to stay because currently it is the only known source with an almost exact number of the insurgent dead during this war. No other source currently exists. Yes there are a lot of lists of coalition dead even the Iraqi army and police, but what about these guys. How can we edit the Iraq war articles without information on this very important source. What? Do we have to, when the war ends, put in the infobox number of insurgents killed unknown. If we put any number that we want to then without a reference it will only be deleted. This has to stay. The guy that nominated this article for deletion said on the discusion page of this article that a list of insurgents killed in any war is not appropriate for an encyclopaedia. Why not? In that case maybe I can say that a list of american soldiers killed in any war is not appropriate or maybe canadian soldiers at that I know, we have an article on wikipedia with a list of both british and canadian soldeirs killed in Afghanistan, is that not appropriate too.Top Gun
 * By all means, if you find any similar lists nominate them for deletion too. Reams of statistics, no matter how well researched, do not constitute an encyclopaedia article. I've already suggested a compromise (as it seems the statistics are needed for the article Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present) by moving it to a subpage of Talk:Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present. This way it can still be used to keep track of the number of insurgents killed, but it would not be in the article space so the fact that it is not encyclopaedic wouldn't matter. D 4 g 0 t h u r
 * Tell me how it is not encyclopaedic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Top Gun (talk • contribs) 08:06, 21 July 2007
 * Read through What Wikipedia is not and you'll find that (under the heading "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" (see WP:INFO)) "Articles which are primarily comprised of statistical data may be better suited for inclusion in Wikisource as freely available reference material for the construction of related encyclopaedic articles on that topic." This is why I say that this article does not belong on Wikipedia. I think the article is well written and well sourced; however, that doesn't make it an encyclopaedia article. D 4 g 0 t h u r  08:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep and Rename The name doesn't reflect properly the article, and its too big for a merge. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 20:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * So, uh, who wants to fix 500-odd references? --Haemo 23:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge or rename. Looks like appropriate content, but it has a misleading title. Bart133 (t) (c) 23:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment If we are to rename my thoughts include Data on the number of insurgents killed in Iraq or Approximate Number of Insurgents killed in Iraq or maybe Reference Data for Insurgent Deaths in Iraq or Statisitcial information on the approximate number of insurgents killed in Iraq - but I have to admit none of these grab me all though they are more accurate than the word "List" which implies a name by name sort of thing, wheras this is currently really just the numbers. Pedro | Chat  07:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak delete While like many others I'm impressed with the prodigious research and citation, I'm also uncertain it's encyclopedic as it appears to breech WP:NOR and, more probably, WP:SYN. It looks like something a Wikipedia article on the Iraqi insurgency should be linked to, not an article in its own right. Neither does it satisfy various requirements for lists in Wikipedia. It also has several problems with verifiability, such as vetting that each person cited actually was an insurgent, hasn't been double-counted, and the reliability of the sources doing the reporting (particularly since enemy dead tend to get over-reported by one side and under-reported by the other).Askari Mark (Talk) 17:53, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:SYNTH states "Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to advance position C."
 * This article is not a violation of WP:SYNTH because there is no position C that it is trying to advance. &mdash;gorgan_almighty 13:10, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak delete per Askari Mark. -- R OGER  TALK 06:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would love to have something to link to for a source on insurgent casualties. And I'm sure TopGun would also be happy to stop adding all these sources. However, there isn't anything to link to--I've looked and looked but no one has any publicly available verifiable number of insurgent casualties. Publicus 15:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps List of reported insurgent fatalities in Iraq would be more accurate. -- R OGER  TALK 06:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I like that. And given the citation "reported" seems a good word. Pedro | Chat  14:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If it is kept, I think the title should be changed to that. D 4 g 0 t h u r  14:56, 24 July 2007 (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.