Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Politics in the British Isles/Extended close

As the closer of the deletion debate, I am providing this extended rationale after being repeatedly asked to do so at DRV and on my talk page. There is a wide consensus that I should do so and I concede that I was mistaken in declaring that I would not give a detailed rationale.

This page is an extension of the closing remarks and should be taken as part of the now closed deletion debate. No further edits should be made here. Any comments should be made at the deletion review while it is still open, or else on the talk page of the article.

Scope
Everything on the AfD page was, of course, read and considered. I read and took into account the comments made at the first DRV. I also read the debate at Categories for discussion/Log/2012 May 21 and the various discussions on the article creator's talk page. Points made in these latter locations were not explicitly taken into account unless they were also made at the AfD. On the other hand, I made no effort to expunge these debates from consideration and they may have had an influence in a more subtle manner. I do not see such influence as a bad thing - AfD is not a law court where only arguments from counsel shall be considered. For an AfD close, any relevant information is welcome.

I did not read WP:BISLES beforehand because I was not aware of it at closing and it was not used as an argument during the debate. However, I believe that the ideas on this page were adequately voiced by participants during the debate and were taken into account. Consequently, explicit mention of WP:BISLES would have had no additional effect.

Naming of British Isles
This issue was raised, but there was consensus on both sides that it is was not at the core of the deletion debate. The objection to the name concerns the inclusion of Ireland under a British related name. As I said in my original close, this issue was considered, but was discounted as an argument for deletion because an incorrect name is an easily fixable issue. An alternative name for the British Isles was mentioned Atlantic archipelago which is alleged to be gaining traction amongst historians. I offer no opinion on whether or not this is a suitable name other than WP:COMMONNAME may become an issue. In any case, it is not a matter for deletion.

A related, but more subtle, argument was advanced that it is somehow demeaning to Ireland to group that nation in an article which encompasses only the UK as the only other nation. I suppose that the heart of this argument is that a grouping of the UK and Ireland gives the appearance of Ireland being subservient to the UK, just as the British Isles name does. This argument is also strongly related to the argument that the article is a fork of Ireland–United Kingdom relations, which I will deal with separately, but on this issue alone, I saw no consensus for it, even amongst those in favour of deletion.

Article is a fork
The argument advanced here is that there are only two nations in the British Isles and therefore the politics of the British Isles are entirely encompassed by Ireland–United Kingdom relations. The article nominated for deletion was therefore argued to be a POV fork. It was explicitly stated by several supporters of deletion that this was the principle argument and that did indeed seem to be the consensus in the deletion camp (but possibly not in the support camp). This argument was rather more subtle than claiming that both articles covered the same material, or one was merely copied from the other. I would articulate this argument (in a way that was never actually stated in the debate) as "if both articles were brought to FA status then they would both substantially contain the same material". This was countered by the keep camp with the argument that politics of foo is a much wider subject, and consists of more than the relations between members of foo. I have a lot of sympathy with the keep camp counter-argument but nevertheless, have not entirely discounted the delete argument since that is the deleters clearly held opinion and it is not the role of the closer to decide between opinions.

During the course of the debate, a great deal of material was copied from this article to Ireland–United Kingdom relations. It was alleged by the keep camp that this was in order to justify the argument that the article was a fork. In my opinion this action was unhelpful and disruptive. My assessment has taken no account of the results of this action.

I found the delete camp arguments contradictory at times. On the one hand arguing that the article was a fork, on the other hand naming several different articles the material should variously be moved to: as well as Ireland–United Kingdom relations there was also British Isles for instance. If the article is a fork, it is logically a fork of one article in particular. Although the vast majority of the keep argument focused on Ireland–United Kingdom relations as the fork source, a small part was discounted because of this contradiction.

I found that the delete viewpoint, while it must still be taken into consideration, had no basis in policy or guidelines. To be sure, plenty of policy arguments were advanced against the creation of POV forks, but no policy arguments why, in the context of this article a POV fork existed. That is, no policy, guideline or essay was named which indicates international relations are to be taken as synonymous with politics, or that a region of only two nations may not have an article on its politics. Because of this, the argument was given proportionately less weight.

POV
The main accusation of POV revolved around the fork argument above. However, it was also alleged that the article only reflected the view of a single author (Kearney). The viewpoint was described as "postnationalist". At this point, I need to admit that I am not exactly sure what that is, and cannot judge, nor have I made a judgement, whether or not the article does actually have this bias. However, the article author has expressed willingness to work to correct this bias, and certainly does not seem to have deliberately created an article with this POV. If the article creator had been trying to defend to the death this POV I might have come to a different conclusion. As it is, I recognise that there is a potential problem with the article (since both sides in the debate have said this) but discount it as irrelevant as a deletion argument.

The subject doesn't exist
The argument here was the subject was not covered in reliable sources since sources with this title, or covering exactly this topic, have not been identified. The subject, according to the delete camp, is therefore not provably notable. It was quite tempting to dismiss this argument out of hand, and would have been if it had not been for the keep camp repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot here. One source in particular was promoted by the keep camp:. This might well have been a slam dunk for the keep camp if only someone had actually read it to see what it says. The delete camp argued that, as a comparative study, it was not on the subject of the article. This is a dubious argument, but in any case, they had not read it either. I spent a great deal of time trying to locate a review, or even a description of the contents of this book without success. There is not even a blurb on the publisher's site. Not only that, I failed to find anyone actually selling it (with it in stock), second-hand copies, or libraries holding it anywhere world-wide. In short, other than it having an ISBN number there is no evidence that this book even exists. It is not listed by the publisher, and may well never have been published at all. I have to agree with the keep camp that the article is currently weakly referenced.

The delete camp argue that the subject has been synthesised from different sources, and that history and culture have been shoe-horned in to bulk up the article. No policy was advanced which requires a subject to be covered in totality by sources, or which prevents an article being constructed from a variety of sources, each with only a portion of the complete subject. For these reasons, the argument is accepted as the delete camp's view, but given less weight as not entirely based in policy.

British dependencies
A great deal of ink was expended on the status of UK dependencies in the British Isles. The delete camp argued that the dependencies are contained within the United Kingdom and should be covered instead in Politics of the United Kingdom. The keep camp made a great deal of the unique status of the dependencies and their formal differentiation from the United Kingdom. I have largely discounted the arguments on both sides as wikilawyering. While the exact status of the dependencies is important for article accuracy, it has little relevance to the issue of article existence. I would expect an article on Politics of the British Isles, should it exist, to broadly cover all components whether they be national, sub-national, or supranational, and the dependencies should be in it, no matter what their legal status is.

Other stuff exists
An argument from the keep camp was that articles such as Politics of Europe and Politics of the Caribbean already exist on Wikipedia. Normally, WP:OTHERSTUFF arguments are not given the time of day. However, we need to examine the reason these arguments are rejected. The reason such arguments are thrown out is usually because an equally bad article is being pointed to. The argument fails because if that other article were also to be examined with the same critical eye it would probably also be deleted/merged/rewritten. But as WP:OSE points out, there are useful and valid reasons for comparison with existing articles. Such comparisons show precedent and may be indicative of a community consensus for such articles. There is therefore some merit in the keep argument. The delete camp by and large did not argue against the existence of such articles on principle. Their argument was focused on it not being a valid article because Ireland is a nation in its own right, unlike all the other entities. This argument is summed up in the comment that it is like a "bag of apples and one pear". In other words, it is pretty much the same as the fork argument and has been treated accordingly.

The most valid comparisons for such cases are with articles that have a good quality assessment, most particularly those that have featured status. Such articles have been thoroughly reviewed by many editors and represent a consensus of the community on what a good article should look like. None of the articles held up as examples by the keep camp had any kind of meaningful quality assessment (the highest was start class) and hence their argument has been given proportionately less weight. Against this, there was no challenge from the delete camp that the poor quality of the example articles was significant to the argument. Hence the keep argument has not been entirely dismissed.

British bias
There have been some accussations and insinuations at the DRV that I chose to close this debate in order to promote a pro-British bias. This is absolutely not true. My first impression on a quick scan was that this was about yet another article from Karl on a subject he made up and it would be a quick close delete. I only realised how politically tainted the debate was after a more detailed reading and I had already committed to closing. Should I have recused at this point? Absolutley not; the idea that a British editor cannot close a debate about the British Isles is comical. I could equally argue that American editors ought to recuse because they are likely to show an anti-British sentiment. If we continue to extend that argument we might find it difficult to find anyone qualified to close the debate at all.

This paragraph is going to go a little off-topic so anyone wanting to stay on-topic should skip over it. Declaring political allegiances in an AfD would normally be anathema. But in this case, because so much suspicion on my motivations has been raised, I think an exception is justified (the second exception I have made to normal practice in this debate and with the possibility of it being just as big a bear trap). I have been a lifelong anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist. Anyone who knew me in my student days could tell you that, in the context of student politics (I held a sabbatical elected student union post at one time) I actively argued for the Irish cause during the troubles. My inclination in this context is hardly likely to be pro-British and I am deeply offended by the accusation. I do not see any contradiction between that and having a "proud to be British" userbox on my page. All that means is that I won't be supporting Ireland in the World Cup or the Olympics any time soon.

Keep/no consensus
No consensus would have been the easiest and probably least controversial option to pick. My assessment of the arguments was, and still is, for keep, but only just. This was largely arrived at due to discounting or deweighting of various arguments. The slightest shift in nuance in any one of the argument assessments is quite likely to throw it the other way. There would certainly be no argument from me if the decision were overturned to no consensus.

Vote counting
I made no count of the votes until after the assessment was made. This was deliberate in order to ensure that my assessment was not influenced by the raw numbers, only the arguments. I still have my list from the time and I made it 11-11 delete to keep. This is at odds with a claim in the DRV which has 11-10. I have not gone back to check for errors, not do I propose to publish my list of names on either side (in keeping with not singling out any individual contributor throughout this assessment). In the end, it does not matter whether the count is 11-11, 11-10 or 10-11, the assessment was not made on the count, but on the arguments, which have not changed.

Making assessment post event to fit the conclusion
Of all the silly accusations that have been levelled during this debate, that is about the silliest. If I had wanted to do such a dastardly thing, it would have been just as easy to do so right after the AfD, and with a deal less controversy.  Spinning Spark  18:57, 19 June 2012 (UTC)