Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Real estate in Puerto Rico


 * 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. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Real estate in Puerto Rico

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I suggest that it may be time to blow this article up and start over. It is too full of to be of any real informational use. Trying to back out the poor contributions would be difficult if not impossible. I submit that the only salvation for this article is to delete it and start over. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:00, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * contributions by sock puppets (User:Vertical Law, User:Viral Airfair, User:Horizontal Law, User:Willy the Wimp, etc) (see related SPIs WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Plastic Beach and WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Horizontal Law)
 * meaningless gibberish (including the lead)
 * facts that are either unreferenced or whose references are no longer valid (if they ever were to begin with)
 * quotations of laws in Spanish with little or no meaningful interpretation in English,
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Puerto Rico-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:43, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * : the observations and arguments posted by the nominator are content issues that do not merit deletion per WP:DEL-REASON, WP:IMPERFECT, WP:DEV, and WP:COPYEDIT. Nominator is also reminded that Blow it up and start over is an essay, not a policy. If nominator is so concerned about the article's status he is encouraged to fix the article himself per WP:FIXIT and WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM. Furthermore, real estate in Puerto Rico constitutes an important aspect of the economy of Puerto Rico (19% when you add finance and insurance) and is an integral part of the history of Puerto Rico per  which states that "[...] the construction/real-estate sector is one of the chief sources of wealth in Puerto Rico". So, all in all, valid concern by the nominator but wrong course of action. &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 02:36, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. There is no prohibition on using foreign language sources and no reason why that material, assuming it is accurate, cannot be translated into English. There is a project page for requesting translation. James500 (talk) 07:50, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment -- This is a poorly constructed article, but I am not convinced that there is not a lot of material in this article that should be kept. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:38, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Given that almost all meaningful contributions (i.e. other than cleanup, formatting, etc) has come from User:Horizontal Law, User:Viral Airfair, User:Vertical Law and User:Willy the Wimp, all of whom have been confirmed as sockpuppets, the material that has been added has to be taken with a grain of salt. Many of the sources are no longer available (if they ever were).  Specifically, much of the information is sourced to the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, a newspaper whose very existence is in doubt.  A review of this publication's website on the Wayback Machine (see here) shows that it was essentially a static website whose content rarely if ever changed, up until the point (some time in 2012) that the original owners lost the domain and it was taken over by a Japanese forum.  The creation of hoax newspapers (including hoax websites for said hoax newspapers) to support hoax articles is a known tactic of the sock farm responsible for this article.  See WP:Articles for deletion/Merhoff Post.  WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 15:21, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm familiar with the real estate industry in Puerto Rico and can tell you that most of the information is true, although redacted poorly with a lot of unnecessary intricate details. The main issue here is that the only way to verify such information would be in Spanish which I doubt you speak? Anyway, if you really want to verify the information there are several online newspapers published in Puerto Rico that are published in English; namely Caribbean Business and News Is My Business. Perhaps you should start looking up there? Hope this helps. &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 17:06, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The Puerto Rico Daily Sun was a printed and online newspaper but it went bankrupt. Here's the proof you need from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers : "Last October, Puerto Rico Daily Sun was launched to cater for the country's English speakers. The Sun's origins as the cooperative venture of staff made redundant from the folded San Juan Star make the publication an interesting case study in alternatve business models." It was a spin off created by former employees of The San Juan Star which started the Daily Sun after the Star went bankrupt. &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 20:31, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. The essays Ahnoneemoos linked too are accurate but every case is unique. The constellation of specific issues make this article very poor and unlikely to be fixed. Meanwhile given the bad-faith editing practices of previous editor(s) we have no idea what kind of information or POV's is lurking here and being propagated. -- Green Cardamom (talk)
 * Why not cut the article down to a one line stub for now and then have all the sources checked by an editor we trust? James500 (talk) 07:25, 24 September 2013 (UTC)


 * First of all, I didn't link to any essays at all; everything that I linked to is either a policy, a guideline, or a howto, not an essay. Second, in what do you base your statement in order to say that this is "unlikely to be fixed"? What is this "constellation of specific issues"? Have they been listed or tagged with the proper template? I only see three general cleanup templates at the top of the article but no "specific issue" being identified. I also checked the article's talk page but I couldn't find any references to this "constellation of specific issues" that you mention. Finally, your prenotion that this article may have a POV is not enough to merit deletion per WP:DEL-REASON, a policy. Perhaps you should focus your time, energy, and efforts into tagging and listing the specific issues so that we can fix them rather than attempting to delete the article per WP:TPHELP? &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 14:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. The problem with this article is not that it repeatedly switches between English and Spanish, although that issue should be addressed. The problem is that even if entirely translated into English, the article would constantly be changing topics and often drifting away from its intended subject. For example, the article says, "Also known as UDAG as to Action, Urban Development Grants are managed by HUD also known as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2006, The Village Voice called HUD New York City's worst landlord and the #1 worst in the United States." Not only is New York City not in Puerto Rico, it's not even clear to me that the grants under discussion involve HUD's role as a landlord anyway. Another section of the article begins, "The US Department of Justice Antitrust Division announced the launch of a new web site in October 2007 to educate consumers and policymakers about the potential benefits that competition can bring to consumers of real estate brokerage services and the barriers that inhibit that competition." This pertains to the U.S. government's activities nationwide and has no specific connection to Puerto Rico. It is likely that a useful article could be written about this topic, but this article is not close to being one. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:33, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If this article contains irrelevant passages, that can be dealt with very easily by deleting those passages. This is not a valid argument for deletion unless the entire content of the article is irrelevant, which no one has yet claimed. James500 (talk) 10:21, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Like User:James500 said, that's a content issue and does NOT merit deletion per WP:DEL-REASON, WP:IMPERFECT, WP:DEV, WP:COPYEDIT, WP:FIXIT, and WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM. &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 10:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment I would argue (I have argued) that the entire content of the article, if not irrelevant, is questionable, based on its creation by known sockpuppets. All significant additions to this article have come from one or another of the sock farm of User:Horizontal Law, a user (or set of collaborating users) whose sole purpose at Wikipedia has been to sow disinformation.  One might argue that the article falls under the criteria of WP:CSD.  There is no argument that this topic deserves coverage.  The only argument is whether there is any salvageable content here on which to build, and I do not believe there is.  WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 11:10, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems like you missed the part where I said above that real estate in Puerto Rico constitutes an important aspect of the economy of Puerto Rico (19% when you add finance and insurance) and is an integral part of the history of Puerto Rico per which states that "[...] the construction/real-estate sector is one of the chief sources of wealth in Puerto Rico". Furthermore, "real estate by " is quite common on Wikipedia, see: Category:Real estate by country as real estate is an important aspect of all regional economies. Having said that, I already reworked the article lead which should give you an idea on how important this article is. Finally, as I have stated before, while a lot of information on the article is quite indeed irrelevant, most of the information is actually accurate. It's just redacted poorly. For example, the fact that Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States is important for the real estate of Puerto Rico, as federal laws apply in the jurisdiction (and therefore grants, subsidies, and regulations which all have significant effects on the island). &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 11:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Pictogram voting comment.svg Comment: I have removed the information that was not pertinent to Puerto Rico and restructured the article. The information presented right now is relevant to the subject but it is poorly redacted. I welcome those wishing to delete this article to instead focus their efforts on improving the information and redact it so that it portrays its relevance to Puerto Rico. &mdash;Ahnoneemoos (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I am changing my recommendation to "weak keep" in recognition of the fact that Ahnoneemoos has made an effort to edit this article including writing a decent lead paragraph. However, this "keep" is a weak one because the article still has a long way to go before it will be useful to readers. It may need to be cut down to a stub and then rebuilt. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:22, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep and fix. Afd isn't cleanup. James500 (talk) 17:55, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 21:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)




 * Weak keep - I supposed I'd be more comfortable with deleting or stubifying and starting again but the question there comes down to whether there is any need to purge any portion of the history to necessitate the former rather than the latter. Possibly not. There's clearly a place for this per Sidebar Economy of Puerto Rico which is full of red links. We can probably lose a good portion of what is there without losing much value - it seems the parts worth retaining are those that have been worked on by Ahnoneemoos. As long as that effort continues there's probably not a lot of point deleting this. Stalwart 111  23:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. Removing the current content and recreating the article from scratch can be done without having to get the article deleted first. It's an editing action that anyone, including the nominator, can perform. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:00, 2 October 2013 (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.