Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh


 * 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.  I am not insensitive to the cogent arguments given both in support of keeping this article and in support of merging its contents elsewhere. It is true that WP:ONEEVENT is mis-applied at times, but that doesn't mean this is such a case. It is also true that the information could be kept elsewhere. However, I find the arguments for deletion more convincing when looked at in context of the article itself and the subject himself. Even after a good bit of discussion (I wouldn't call it lengthy, but it's certainly more than trivial), the most the article can come up with is "it has been reported" and "previously unknown" and "only a hint" - phrases which either are or come perilously close to WP:WEASEL words. I'm not using WP:WEASEL to support deletion, but the normal response to it is to fix it - the problem is that when you pull out all of that, what you get is an article about an alias of a Lebanese man who died while building a bomb - and that's not the stuff of which encyclopedic articles are made. That he may have been intending to kill a notable person associated with a notable scandal - an assertion which does not appear to be well-supported in reliable sources - does not make him notable. This is a recurring theme in the discussion below, as evidenced by comments (on both sides of the debate) citing WP:V, "little hard information", "trivial coverage", etc. Frank  |  talk  16:39, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh

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This article would normally be a clear candidate for deletion under WP:ONEEVENT. However, per WP:PRESERVE I propose that it is renamed February 2009 Salman Rushdie assassination attempt and the text reworked in line with this new title. SP-KP (talk) 10:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Terrorism-related deletion discussions.  --  The  left orium  15:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, the WP:ONEEVENT is one of the most commonly misused and misunderstood policies on the site; Ziad Jarrah is only notable for one event, so is Jack Ruby, so is the Blessed Virgin Mary. The policy is clearly is not against the inclusion of individuals notable for a single action (in this case, a failed assassination attempt...we have almost 50 of those biographies on WP, they all belong), it is against the inclusion of an article like "Joshua Smith is the man who ran over Paris Hilton's dog on June 24, 2004..." or "Jeremiah Saltre is an American who robbed a convenience store, taking $70 in cash...". Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 15:57, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand what you're saying but this individual has no historical notability of his own. Any information about the attempt should be covered by the actual sources of notability: Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses or The Satanic Verses controversy. — Rankiri (talk) 16:16, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with Sherurcij here. The justification for not covering one event individuals is that there is one and only one reason readers would ever want to read about them -- in the context of that one event.  But with assassins -- bona fide assassisn -- there are at least two possible reasons people would want to read about them.  (1) the assassination(s); (2) the cause that triggered the attack; (3) their assassination in the context of  assassinations in general.  Killers without a cause aren't assassins.  Please consider the serious disservice a merge would be for readers interested in trying to study the motivations of those who share that cause, but who aren't interested in Salman Rushdie.  Geo Swan (talk) 07:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete: WP:ONEEVENT, WP:V problems(see below). The person is only notable for one case of attempted murder and Salman Rushdie already covers the incident in detail. — Rankiri (talk) 16:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel statements like "There is a shrine in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was "Martyred in London, 3 August 1989" do not belong in Rushdie's article though...they deserve to be forked into an article on Mazeh; otherwise it is WP:UNDUE - why should an article about an author discuss the gravesite, birthplace or parents of a man who once tried to assassinate him? Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 16:24, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (English) Google News shows only one source that mentions the shrine. It also says that the shrine's epigraph is the only factual clue that can link the deceased to Salman Rushdie. From the source: Yet all that is known about Mazeh is that he met his death priming a book bomb in a Paddington hotel room . . . The real identity and mission of Mustafa Mazeh may never be publicly known. — Rankiri (talk) 16:32, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Then isn't that a reason to vote for "Rename", not "Delete"? Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 16:49, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a reason not to merge or rename. We can't rename it into Salman Rushdie assassination attempt since the information is unconfirmed, and, according to the above article, the attempt has never been admitted by the British security services. We also don't have Wikipedia pages for every unlucky bomb maker and every suicide bomber. Aside from the mentioned Times article, none of the references offer nontrivial coverage of the subject, and Google News shows no additional signs of notability. — Rankiri (talk) 17:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete and Redirect: Replace it with a redirect to Salman_Rushdie. Some people might actually type the name into the searchbox. Lead them straight to the section in the article. Same for "Mazeh" in case someone looks up last name only. Seb az86556 (talk) 17:21, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No offense, but wikilinks to section headings within another article are a really bad idea. Maybe some future version of the wikimedia software will fully support wikilinks to section heading.  The current version of the wikimedia does not fully support this kind of link.  The "what links here" feature isn't supported.  Redirection isn't supported.
 * If a topic is worth linking to, then it is worth having an article of its own. So the topic is related to some other topic?  Fine, we have lots of good tools for tying topics together.  We have regular wikilinks, transclusion, and the see and main templates.
 * Like a database, most of the usefulness of the wikipedia comes not from the information it contains, but from the links through which it is organized. Excessive merging of articles that could stand by themselves unnecessarily erodes the usefulness of the wikipedia.
 * Transparent and reliable redirection of links is an enormously powerful feature of the wikimedia software that really distinguishes wikilinks from the plain old unreliable links of the world-wide-web. If you write a web-page that links to somebody else's page, and they change the URL of that page -- even a little bit -- even just to correct a spelling error, and the link is broken.  The author of a world-wide-web has no good way of knowing how many other pages point to their page.  When our articles use well-behaved wikilinks we do know how many pages link to the current page.  And we do know they will keep linking to the current page, even if we change the article name, even if we change the name a bunch of times.  But when the target of a wikilink is a section heading within an article, a change of the section name breaks the link -- just like bad old world-wide-web links.  The use of badly behaved wikilinks in article space, that link to section headings, squander
 * Many people don't understand what a powerful tool the "what links here" is. I won't explain its power here.  It is an extremely powerful feature.  There is no "what links here" for wikilinks to section headings.
 * There is a long tradition of using wikilinks to section heading in the "Wikipedia:" namespace. For various reasons this is not as much of a problem as their use in article space.  Geo Swan (talk) 09:33, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete - There is only trivial coverage of this person. If we had an article for every person who tried to kill Salman Rushdie we'd have a lot of articles. Especially ones where the attempt is unconfirmed! PanydThe muffin is not subtle 20:46, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete and Redirect: to Salman_Rushdie per Rankiri and Seb az86556 Iqinn (talk) 04:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment, I have now added two new book sources; a simple search of Mazeh+Rushdie on Google, Google Books, Google News Archive, shows that this man (and his attempt) were clearly considered notable; despite people here echoing the Wiki article "there's nothing known about him except that some Muja claimed he died planning to kill Rushdie!". Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 03:37, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Considering that the Iranian government is infamously known for its propagandist, factually incorrect statements ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals," comes to mind), I wouldn't count Echo of Islam, published by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, as a reliable, independent source of information. As I said earlier, all book and newspaper coverage appears to be extremely trivial. It's filled with fleeting, uncertain statements like "A previously unknown group claimed [...] that a man killed in a London hotel explosion had been preparing an attack on British author Salman Rushdie" and "Mustafa Mazeh, who was killed by a bomb explosion in London in 1989, which Iranians believe was intended for Mr Rushdie". Even if we could somehow agree that the person is sufficiently notable, there are also the issues of WP:V and WP:NPOV. The Times article clearly says that Mazeh is merely an alias, and that all that is known about Mazeh is that he met his death priming a book bomb in a Paddington hotel room. The page, however, tries to describe Mazeh's death from the Middle Eastern perspective and barely even mentions the fact that both his biographical details and the exact nature of his death remain unconfirmed to this very day. — Rankiri (talk) 14:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ~ mazca  talk 13:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Comment - while this debate's far too long for a normal relist; it does appear that the article's been improved since most comments were made so I have done so anyway. A few uninvolved editors evaluating whether the improvements solve the problems would help the consensus here be more reliable. ~ mazca  talk 13:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to The Satanic Verses controversy with redirect. There are enough mentions floating around to make the name a plausible search term, but very little hard information. Seems appropriate to briefly discuss in the "Intimidation" section as a possible attempt on Rushdie's life, but very conservatively phrased. Given the lack of confirmation, I think the treatment in the Rushdie article gives the incident undue weight. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. It is a well-sourced article about a significant incident.  Also for the reasons per User:Sherurcij.  The problem with merging it into  The Satanic Verses controversy is that that article is already quite long, and if all subsidiary articles like this one were merged into it it would become unwieldy, and much useful and appropriate information would have to be purged from this article to keep the length reasonable.   Would-be assassins of notable people are article-worthy.Historicist (talk) 11:28, 17 August 2009 (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.