Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United States and state terrorism (9th nomination)


 * 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   no consensus. Discounting all of the 'keep because it's always been kept' !votes, there is still no consensus to delete. That said, the article does seem to still be in a rather problematic state. The topic, as Maziotis says, seems notable... but I'd be quite tempted to go with "delete and start over," if I thought there were any possibility that would help matters. Suppose the best that can be done for now is to hope for improvement. Shimeru (talk) 22:12, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

United States and state terrorism
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

This article has been problematic for over five years. It violates WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV persistently because it is a WP:COATRACK. The solution is to delete this fork, and place any relevant content in the appropriate articles, such as those related to the incidents mentioned, or to United States history articles, or the histories of the named conflicts or covert actions. We should not be scraping up bits and pieces of different things to create unbalanced, unacademic, unencyclopedic articles as has been done here. Five years is long enough. Repeated nominations have resulted in the same old refrain that it can be fixed. We shouldn't accept that argument any longer. The article hasn't been fixed after so much time because it can't be fixed. Jehochman Talk 23:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

More prior AfDs:
 * Articles for deletion/American terrorism
 * Articles for deletion/State terrorism by United States of America
 * Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America
 * Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by United States of America (3rd nomination)
 * Articles for deletion/State terrorism by United States of America (fifth nomination)
 * Articles for deletion/State terrorism by the United States (sixth nomination)
 * Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism committed by the United States
 * Articles for deletion/Allegations of state terrorism by the United States


 * Discussion
 * Delete as I explained above and move any salvageable bits to the relevant articles. Jehochman Talk 23:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep + a vote to stop wasting everyone's time -- If I'm forced to I'll respond with the numerous arguments against this in the LAST 8 DELETION DISCUSSIONS WHICH HAVE ALL RESULTED IN "KEEP" (yes, I just screamed at you) ... but I'd really rather not repeat myself and everyone else there, again. Please stop wasting people's time here, and go and read the last 8 discussions to see why this simply is not going to happen. Spend your time improving the article (which is already pretty good, and is extremely well sourced, and only seems to cause problems with people who are pushing a POV and are unable to provide sources for any of their claims ...). Provide reliable sources when you do so. Thanks -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 23:32, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The last discussion was in 2008. Please stop yelling, and stop being rude.  That is not at all helpful. Jehochman Talk 23:40, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's rude to waste people's time with another discussion here, when you are not providing any new reasons for a new discussion. All of your reasons have been responded to several times in each of the previous discussions. Forcing people to repeat things to you from those discussions is not at all helpful either. So please go and work to improve the article. But provide reliable sources when you do so. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Can you point out any book title or section called "United States and state terrorism". How is this topic not something contrived and stitched together?  I could write an article Wikipedia and anti-social behaviors with plenty of references, but that would neither be encyclopedic nor balanced. Jehochman Talk 23:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you provide me a book titled identity matrix or Actinopterygii? Does that mean they shouldn't have an article? Perhaps you should go and read the sources for the article you are trying to delete, which all discuss (what they claim are) state terrorist acts committed by the United States. There are dozens of sources in the article, and several references for further reading. If I were to make a recommendation for you, I'd say to check out Western State Terrorism, which is one of the aforementioned resources. Your argument regarding Wikipedia and anti-social behaviors is not valid -- the problem is that there is not a large number of books which discuss the connections between Wikipedia and anti-social behaviors -- if there were, I would see no problem writing an article on it. On the other hand, there are dozens or even hundreds of books and papers which make allegations of state terrorism against the United States. But again, this has all been discussed several times already (please read the previous 8 deletion discussions)-- Jrtayloriv (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. And if you want books which contain "state terrorism" and "United States" in the title, or as the names of sections, just look at the books that are listed in the Google books results. But again, this is not a relevant criteria for judging whether or not an article should be kept. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want to keep the article, please do something to improve its quality. After five years of editing, it is still C-class.  The best way to prove me wrong would be to turn this into a good article, or better.  Start by specifying "who" rather than "some say".  Use secondary sources to show what historians think about these matters.  Accusations by one group of idiot politicians against another group of idiot politicians mean very little.  This article contains too much mud slinging, and not enough facts.  Show what the academics are saying, not the touts. Jehochman Talk 02:50, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of C class articles that don't need to be deleted, just because they haven't quickly been improved to good article status. That is another invalid argument. I am under no obligation to rush to make the article reach good article status just to prevent it from being deleted, so you have no grounds for making such a demand. Please refer me to some rule that says "If an article has not reached Good status after 5 years, it should be deleted" -- seriously, I'd love to see it. As far as the article containing "too much mud slinging, and not enough facts", perhaps you should look at the sources and verify that in fact the article contains hundreds of facts (You calling it mudslinging doesn't make it reality.) And as far as "what the academics are saying", again, please see the article and it's sources -- most of the claims are by academics, so if you want to see what they are saying, read the article. And even if they weren't saying what they are saying (i.e. the contents of the article you are trying to delete), academics are not the only sources which people are allowed to use on Wikipedia -- there are many other types of reliable sources -- take a look at the guidelines in WP:RS. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:37, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep' as most of the old AfDs are "keep" or "speedy keep", and their reasoning still applies. 65.94.253.16 (talk) 05:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC) -- — 65.94.253.16 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Speedy keep'/change title - This article is about the alleged accusation of the United States to be a "terrorist state". Given the sources, there is no reason why we cannot write an article about this subject, taking care to treating it with NPOV discretion. I have always believe it should be titled "Allegations of state terrorism by the United States of America", which is a move that you might consider discussing it separately. As for the subject itself, the encyclopedia allows the creation of artciles about this kind of specific topics. This one in particular is discussed in the field of political science in our universities. It is a notable subject. Maziotis (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep I dont like its current title, I prefer the older one which was Allegations of State terrorism by.... The article is written from that title's point of view. Is It POV?, well no because all allegations have also a counter point from a balanced perspective. The article has not improved in 5 years is also no valid argument as it has improved considerably through these years. Sections have been added and deleted and points constatly argued about. This article may or may not expose the limitation of collaborative editing that Wikipedia is built on. No doubt it is one of the most difficullt ones but I for one dont belive that we have reached the capacity of editors to work together in creating meanfull, nuanced content that relies on RS sources but also maintains NPOV. Kanatonian (talk) 14:11, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Terrorism-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per previous discussions. The fact that this article has survived eight prior AfDs is all I need to know.  IMO, this article hasn't been fixed because no one has fixed it, not because it can't be fixed.  --Cerebellum (talk) 01:50, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * keep reluctantly. As a topic, this does have independent existence. It is unfortunate that the subject matter is being hijacked by editors with a political agenda but that is, apparently, a sad by-product of wikipedia. --RegentsPark (talk) 01:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep. An article may appear to meet our criteria for inclusion - as this one appears to - and still be unsuitable in other ways. There's no rush to improve the article, as Jrtayloriv indicates - but, turn that around. You've had several years to improve this article, and the nominator correctly notes that this hasn't happened. It does raise the question of whether the topic is suitable. Sandstein's excellent close at the last AFD (when the article was indeed "Allegations of..." rather than the current title) explains many of these issues, and is persuasive - but the same concerns keep popping up again and again. I agree, there's no requirement to move this past C-class, but why wouldn't you want to do so? A cleaner, more obviously neutral article wouldn't be repeatedly nominated for deletion as this one has. I don't particularly like this article, and I think sections in relevant articles on the subjects would be better overall (and the number of "Main article" tags backs this up), but the subject is notable and sourceable - so we keep as per policy. But it's hinky. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 14:16, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep and close per WP:SNOW. --JokerXtreme (talk) 07:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * keep For all reason stated above Rammer (talk) 09:25, 16 April 2010 (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.