Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of secret police organizations


 * 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. Perhaps a slightly controversial close decision however given the cleanup of OR and POV from the article, arguments about original research are somewhat nullified. The article seems to meet requirements in its new form. The article will also be semi-protected to limit the addition of unsourced material Seddon talk 08:29, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

List of secret police organizations

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This article contains information that that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources and much of the content contains original theories and conclusions or fringe theories.


 * Anonymous editors constantly add US organisations to the article, like the FBI and NSA, without supporting citations: many others have no citations to support such inclusion. I have only been able to properly verify a handful of obvious examples: even including supporting quotes in citations.
 * There are no references to one or many articles of literature that gives a solid non-literal definition of a "secret police", which was necessary to determine for sure which organisations meet the criteria with minimal controversy. Secret police itself lacks the crucial citations to support the article under discussion.
 * With the failure to find crucial citations, this article may never satisfy WP:NPOV or clear the WP:OR issue, hence making it eligible for a deletion discussion. Marianian(talk) 19:27, 5 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. per nom, and per the description on the article talk page: "list of domestic police or intelligence organizations in countries we don't like". Impossible to ensure completeness, impossible to ensure neutrality, and impossible to define... AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:01, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. Most of this is OR or simply opinion. It would be difficult to call some of these agencies "police". I can't see this list ever being sourced correctly or maintaining neutrality. Niteshift36 (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:17, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete There are no sources specifically about secret police, so no criteria for inclusion or any external sources for a definitive list. So it is biased "original research."  TFD (talk) 02:04, 6 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Rename/repurpose. Considering Wikipedia's culture, ethos, history, and role on the internet, it's right that we should maintain a list of government organisations who're authorised to conduct domestic surveillance without a warrant.— S Marshall  T/C 00:51, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I imagine that would satisfy LISTN regardless of our culture, ethos, history, and role on the internet. I can imagine a list of organisations that have been labelled as "secret police" by some reliable source (we allowed, after a discussion at, IIRC, one of the village pump pages a list of "weird" buildings, a concept that was admitted to be incapable of definition), or that satisfy a literal definition of that expression. The unreferenced entries are going to have to be sourced or removed regardless of the outcome. James500 (talk) 01:09, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Reply: I should point out that unlike bizarre buildings, political lists like this are a lot more controversial particularly after the surveillance scandals. It is not that Wikipedia should not cover secret police stuff but the article alone is strewn with so many unverifiable allegations that it looks fundamentally biased. --Marianian(talk) 20:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm hesitant to go along with the idea that if a "reliable source" calls them "secret police", then they are secret police. We're all smart enough to know that there are often some political interests at play in situations like this and not all reliable sources are willing to be neutral. Niteshift36 (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2014 (UTC)


 * My provisional view is that this list could be kept but stripped of unreferenced content and semi-protected to prevent the ongoing insertion of unsourced content. That would leave a list of organisations that someone has labelled as "secret police". It is not clear that would be open to any objections (apart perhaps from political sensitivity) that could not be levelled at List of bizarre buildings (which does not attempt to define "bizarre"), and we did have a discussion at village pump that suggested there was no consensus for the deletion of such lists. James500 (talk) 01:40, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Reply: It would require a fundamental rebuild even if it was to survive deletion. I see that on this occasion, citations from reliable sources, and indef semi-protection, are necessary to add a level of reassurance to why one organisation was included, and to date I have failed on many alleged entries (I am not sure about your previous attempts to verify some of them). --Marianian(talk) 20:21, 8 August 2014 (UTC)


 * If someone wants to create an alternative list article, there is still no need to keep this one. I suggest though that they may have the same problems.  Security intelligence services in Western countries, and they all have them, have been called "secret police."  And lots of Western countries (in the past at least) exempted police from requiring warrants when national security was involved.  And requiring a warrant is not a real safeguard.  The same government that hires the police picks the judges who authorize warrants.  TFD (talk) 02:22, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there some reason why Western countries should be automatically exempt from inclusion? James500 (talk) 21:08, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete, it is original research. If there is a different list with a different title and different list members, we should still delete this one. Spumuq (talk) 09:10, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The several entries that have been referenced are not, strictly speaking, original reasearch. I am going to remove the unreferenced material so that we can see what we are really dealing with. James500 (talk) 19:29, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. James500 (talk) 21:00, 11 August 2014 (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.