Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Presumption of guilt


 * 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. KaisaL (talk) 05:38, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Presumption of guilt

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Violation of WP:SYNTHESIS, a collection of true facts arranged in a novel and unsourced way, along with a few books that happen to have similar names. As pointed out by RFinlay72 on the talk page, this article is really "list of unfair things that have happened", which if named as such would obviously be removed as irreparably POV. Just redirect the article title to Presumption of innocence, but there isn't any content in the article worth merging over to it, hence going to AFD (+ talk page making clear a bold redirect would be controversial, there are some defenders of this article). On the off chance there is anything of value to be saved, it can be discussed as a section in the "Presumption of innocence" article anyway.

Pinging talk page contributors:. SnowFire (talk) 20:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete as, at the very least, unsalvageable WP:TNT. See my comments on the article talk page but the rest of the talk page as well, where the obvious rampant SYNTH has been complained about for ages. To be fair, here's what the article looked like when I made those comments, and some of the worst stuff has been cut since then, but it's still a bunch of random stuff, just less of it. The whole list at ==Typology== is simply ridiculous. And how on earth Jonathan Schell could be worked in as a source is completely beyond me. My god, wherever you look it's just ghastly.It's like a road accident -- I can't look away. OK, one more example then I'll stop, I promise:
 * Between 1947 and 1956, many US citizens were accused of being communist agents or sympathisers and had their careers ruined during the era of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. The McCarthyites never proved any of it in court.
 * Really? That's encyclopedic content? (And BTW, there really were communist agents and sympathizers in the 50s, and such stuff was proven in court. But the level of sophistication on display in the crafting of this article being quite low, I suppose I should rush to clarify that I'm by no means expressing approval of McCarthy, his enablers, or their tactics.) EEng 21:14, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * nb, The article creator is attempting to canvas support to oppose deletion.Pincrete (talk) 10:12, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That canvassing is very helpful, as it provided bread crumbs to two other absurd grab-bags of random OR and SYNTH that also need deletion or surgery with machetes: Miscarriage_of_justice and Victim_blaming. Looking further, in fact, there's a handy list at of what are mostly college-like essays on various subjects, which should be either deleted or cut down substantially. Start with Political_midlife_crisis and you'll see what I mean. Another favorite of mine is Speaking_truth_to_power, in which we find this:
 * Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov are among those who suffered for speaking out against the USSR. In 1936, Japanese finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo was assassinated after suggesting that Japan could not afford its planned military buildup. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, and Martin Luther King in the US, were people who lost their lives for speaking truth to power. The former world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was jailed in the 1960s for refusing to be drafted to the Vietnam war, saying; 'No Vietcong ever called me nigger...I have no quarrel with the Vietnamese people.'
 * It's preposterous. Wikipedia is not a host for someone's personal reflections on heroism and injustice. EEng 10:48, 25 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete A random selection of possible injustices, with oodles of SYNTH, OR and personal PoV. In some cases it is pretty dubious as to whether there was any presumptions of guilt involved (Salman Rushdie's fatwa?) - rather than a wholly different notion of unpardonable offence. That 'presumptions of guilt' occur from time to time, as a result of hysteria/whatever, is pretty indisputable, but whether there is any unifying concept to be written about, rather than simply a failure of 'due process'/proper public and press caution - is dubious IMO. Pincrete (talk) 10:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep --if a reader of this comment has a sense of irony, the reader might recall that AfD is one place where presumption of guilt often gets its own way--so it stands to reason that AfD contributors would be vulnerable to blindness to the merits of this article due to being stuck in the morass of presuming guilt as a way of life. I suppose the enlightened can just go to the Praduga bersalah article once this one is deleted. As for actual justification to keeping the article; I'll note it is well referenced, and that the ngram viewer results for this phrase show that it has been in regular use since the 18th century.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 02:23, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:LOTSOFSOURCES, WP:GOOGLEHITS. EEng 03:01, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * An ngram graph is not the same as a list of hits. This website doesn't really have any policies about ngram viewer stats one way or another, unlike googlehits. As for the references, the bulk are serious and in depth enough to count for notability.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 04:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * You're ignoring the argument for deletion, which is WP:TNT. No one's denying that "presumption of guilt" is a thing; the question is whether it's more of a thing than a list of unconnected random headlines (or, in one case, the title of a mystery novel) using the phrase to express ~(presumption of innocence). EEng</b> 04:35, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * <small class="delsort-notice">Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 07:09, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * They aren't unconnected; they are examples of presumed guilt such as in history, politics, or law, or examples of uses of the term presumption of guilt.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep

One only has to google 'presumption of guilt' to become aware that a) POG is a notable topic, b) that POG is possibly on the increase internationally as authoritarian governments take power in eg turkey, Russia, Brazil, Hungary. c) that this is giving rise to concerns within the MSM. Just One example, someone goes to the police saying 'I was raped' and is immediately labeled a 'victim'. the proper term under POI would be 'complainant'. comments made thus far, with my response...

"Just redirect this article to Presumption of innocence, but there isn't any content worth merging over to it, hence going to AFD (+ talk page making clear a bold redirect would be controversial, there are some defenders of this article). On the off chance there is anything of value to be saved, it can be discussed as a section in the "Presumption of innocence" article anyway." -As the definition section clearly states, POG is not the exact opposite of POI. POG prioritises 'speed and efficiency' whereas POI prioritises reliability and due process. Apples are not oranges, nor the opposite of oranges.

"'a collection of true facts arranged in a novel and unsourced way, along with a few books that happen to have similar names. As pointed out by RFinlay72 on the talk page, this article is really "list of unfair things that have happened",'"   - what else is an encyclopedia, except collections of facts. "'Unsourced'" is completely untrue. Nowhere in the article does it say that 'things that happened' were 'unfair'. That is a product of this editor's imagination.

"'....which if named as such would obviously be removed as irreparably POV.'" - And if my auntie had balls, she'd be my uncle. But alas, she doesn't, and isn't. Can we please stick to the facts, instead of dredging up hypotheticals and Wishful thinking?

"'The whole list at ==Typology== is simply ridiculous. And how on earth Jonathan Schell could be worked in as a source is completely beyond me. My god, wherever you look it's just ghastly.It's like a road accident'" - sweeping generalisations here, an Appeal to emotion fallacy. in what way do pejorative words like 'ridiculous', ghastly' 'road accident' elevate the debate or shed any light at all?

"'Between 1947 and 1956, many US citizens were accused of being communist agents or sympathisers and had their careers ruined during the era of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. The McCarthyites never proved any of it in court.
 * Really? That's encyclopedic content?" - actually, yes, properly sourced.

"'(And BTW, there really were communist agents and sympathizers in the 50s, and such stuff was proven in court.'" -It would help your point if you had a source, at present you don't seem to.

"'A random selection of possible injustices, with oodles of SYNTH, OR and personal PoV.'" -No evidence or detail is provided for this sweeping statement. It's as if The prosecutor stood up and said, 'the defendant is guilty of random crimes, oodles of violations, why waste time debating the matter?'

"'bread crumbs to two other absurd grab-bags of random OR and SYNTH that also need deletion or surgery with machetes: Miscarriage_of_justice and Victim_blaming. Looking further, in fact, there's a handy list at of what are mostly college-like essays on various subjects, which should be either deleted or cut down substantially. Start with Political_midlife_crisis and you'll see what I mean. Another favorite of mine is Speaking_truth_to_power, in which we find this:
 * Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov are among those who suffered for speaking out against the USSR. In 1936, Japanese finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo was assassinated after suggesting that Japan could not afford its planned military buildup. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany, and Martin Luther King in the US, were people who lost their lives for speaking truth to power. The former world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was jailed in the 1960s for refusing to be drafted to the Vietnam war, saying; 'No Vietcong ever called me nigger...I have no quarrel with the Vietnamese people.''"

-Why are these comments here? This is a complete Red herring or Association fallacy argument. The place for these observations is on the appropriate talk pages. They have no relevance at all to the subject under discussion, ie whether POG should delete or not. User talk: Crawiki


 * Crawiki: First off, you don't need such extensive quotes. If you respond to the substance of what is being said, that's as good or better than a point-by-point rebuttal.  To try to move this in a productive direction - if you want to contribute to Wikipedia about the decline of the legal system in Brazil, Turkey, etc., that's great!  There's plenty to be said there that can be sourced, in articles like Presidency of Jair Bolsonaro.  What you've done in this particular article is not a useful contribution, however; it's a classic case of WP:SYNTHESIS.  Please read the examples in that policy page on "synthesis of published materials" if you haven't already.  You can hopefully agree with me that it's possibly to create an entirely true, entirely sourced article that is complete and utter nonsense.  "Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge broke the Boston Police Strike of 1919, blaming it on communist agitators.  In the wake of the First Red Scare of 1919, the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in January 1920.  With Ruth gone, Coolidge also left Massachusetts and was inaugurated as vice president shortly afterward in March 1920."  Every word of this is true, it can all be sourced individually, but the implication that there's any connection between these events is crazypants.  You would need an actual, reliable source that claimed the Red Scare made the Red Sox trade away Ruth, or that it had any connection to Coolidge's governorship.  I specifically said in the AfD nom that the novel arrangement of these facts in the Presumption of guilt article is unsourced, not the individual facts themselves.  If there's some academic journal article out there on "Presumption of guilt" (and not a mere passing use of the phrase dug up by a Google Books search, which is the kind of reference the article currently uses), and the author makes the kind of connections the current Wikipedia article makes, then let's talk... although even then, what you likely have is material for a sourced section in the Presumption of innocence article.  What's currently in the article is the equivalent of my ridiculous example above - true things individually that have been arranged to write an essay.  SnowFire (talk) 17:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

<div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete per WP:SYNTHESIS. Also want to note here that the article creator has just added this article to the See Also sections of 12 not-very-relevant law-related articles. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:56, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment-the best candidate for merger, should it be attempted, would be Burden of proof (law) rather than presumption of innocence. Discussions in academia or law regarding presumption of guilt sometimes use it as a subtopic of Burden of proof. Other times presumption of guilt is regarded as the opposite of presumption of innocence, but due to the broader (such as with civil cases) applications of burden of proof, there is more to write about when considering presumption of guilt a of burden of proof concept.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 20:25, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't have any objection to either merge / redirect location. SnowFire (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. and expand. The article discusses a number of different related concepts, and would be much clearer if it were properly expanded to cover them adequately.  DGG ( talk ) 10:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. The lead and definition sections seem ok, but the rest is just the creator’s own ‘typology’, conclusions about “motivations” and presumed “examples”. Mccapra (talk) 02:48, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per . This does not rise to the level of WP:TNT. Bearian (talk) 15:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per . KartikeyaS343 (talk) 16:16, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per .4meter4 (talk) 00:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. I entirely agree with DGG that the article discusses a number of different concepts, although I'm not sure I buy how related they are.  The thing is, we already have articles on these concepts like Cognitive bias or Blackstone's ratio or Salman Rushdie (whose case really has nothing whatsoever to do with this concept, mind...).  What this article lacks are sources that suggest "Presumption of guilt" is a thing at all, or some reason to tie all these topics together.  Take one of the more on-point references in the article: this op-ed.  Well, it's filled with talking about the value of the presumption of innocence, but this again sounds like something for either the Presumption of innocence or Burden of proof article.  Furthermore, it's even talking about just as a societal thing, while the earlier parts of the article talk about it as a legal matter.  What exactly is the standard for inclusion when none of these sources have clear relevance?  Or are direct citations of primary source content, like the UN Declaration of Human Rights?  For this article to continue, it needs to have relevant references on some topic that is specifically "presumption of guilt", IMO.  But maybe someone can explain what about the current references is so compelling as to be "keepable"?  And what exactly the article should even be expanded with, considering the sourcing is so patchy as is?  SnowFire (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep the article, give it a severe pruning, and then expand it appropriately with high quality sources that discuss the concept as applied in international law, rather than in popular culture. ~  ONUnicorn (Talk&#124;Contribs) problem solving 15:23, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment. I don't believe such high quality sources exist, hence this AFD nomination.  "Presumption of guilt" is just...  not a thing (except in-so-far as it means "lack of a presumption of innocence", which can be covered elsewhere), so the sources will always be vaguely related at best.  SnowFire (talk) 17:17, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 17:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment Notability for "the principle" [my italics] is entirely lacking. Where is the evidence that there is any defined and specific principle that can support the opening statement that "Presumption of guilt is the principle that one is considered guilty unless proven innocent"? The opening statement is sourced solely to an online search for "presumption+of+guilt" within thefreedictionary.com, which gives no definition  but redirects to the ancient legal concept of presumption of innocence for which we already have an article. In a legal case, any so-called presumption of guilt would simply amount to a reversal of the burden of proof for which we already have several articles covering specific meanings. It's not possible to create an overarching "principle" out of nothing simply by searching on the words of your proposed new article title. There really is nothing here apart from a list of unconnected injustices that an editor apparently wants to bring to greater prominence.  MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I have attempted to fix the inaccurate definition and added some of the sources available. James500 (talk) 07:16, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
 * While I appreciate this is a good faith effort - I'm still not sold that any of the "new" sources actually describe an encyclopedic topic, rather than simply be occurrences of these three words next to each other in running text. The fact that an entirely new definition is now in the lede should be an alarming sign for the topic's alleged encyclopedic nature.  Again, by this kind of dredge-around-Google-Books standard, an article could be written on any set of three words - Fate of America, Presumption of justice, Denial of bail, etc.  I agree with MichaelMaggs that there doesn't actually appear to be a topic here - if there was, there'd be law dictionary definitions, journal articles specifically on the topic "presumption of guilt" (not a passing reference), and so on. SnowFire (talk) 17:35, 9 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The talk page is worth reading, too. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:SYNTH. I don't see a real topic here, instead I see a seemingly random (= someone used the Google search) collection of things that really aren't even connected to the "topic". Editors keep removing text from the page, I see Rushdie's fatwa was just removed, and I didn't understand the revelance of it either but I also don't see the relevance of a plea bargain or apocalypticism, collective guilt etc. -kyykaarme (talk) 00:10, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Clicking the Wikipedia Reliable Sources search at the top of the AFD, I see things like this: .  D r e a m Focus  03:43, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's just a saucy headline. I'm not questioning "can these three words coexist next to each other somewhere in the English language;" they clearly do in that headline, but that's it.  Do you see anything in the article itself that is Wikipedia-worthy?  Maybe, but it'd be about "(lack of) presumption of innocence".  From the article: "Importantly, the court resoundingly reaffirmed the central importance of the presumption of innocence."  The article text never contains "presumption of guilt" or suggests PoG is a legal principle.  And it's a rather abstruse, minor decision about court fees & refunds.  SnowFire (talk) 06:04, 10 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep and fix. I am satisfied that presumption of guilt is an encyclopedic topic that is not a synthesis, and that it satisfies GNG. The article is still in a less than perfect state, but it is improving and it can and should be fixed. James500 (talk) 08:33, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Japan's Justice Minister tweeted that it's a person's duty to prove their innocence in a court of law with “If he’s clean as he says he is, then he should fairly and squarely prove his innocence in the court of law.” I think this is a notable article and should be kept.--The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. It seems that the concept of "Guilty until proven innocent" did historically exist, as described here or here, also appears in Napoleonic Code and at least as an accusation with regard to law in certain countries . So, it can be regarded as a separate subject and hence we can have the separate page. My very best wishes (talk) 04:48, 12 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.