Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Waterboarding in the 21st century (2nd 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   delete. JForget 00:36, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Waterboarding in the 21st century
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

An illegitimate fork of Waterboarding. It is at least 90% overlapped with the main article. Why double our trouble by having two articles. Prior nomination was withdrawn after the creators asked for a month to fix it. It's been about 9 months and there's still no progress, because such progress is not possible. Jehochman Brrr 21:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Far to similar to main article, too much overlap. Splitting should be agreed by consensus first in this area due to the controversial nature, and this probably isn't a good topic for a split should one be needed. Verbal chat  21:49, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Duplicates content from original article - not necessary to keep. Wikiwoohoo (talk) 22:16, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete as per above. Once there is an agreed structure for the main article we can consider forking if necessary.--LexCorp (talk) 22:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep -- My contribution to this article is recent, and I was unaware of previous afd. My contribution to this article is "legitimate" thank you very much, and does not duplicate anything in Waterboarding.  I read Talk:Waterboarding in the 21st century.  There is zero sign on the talk page that the article was under a deadline, and needed to be fixed, and would be deleted if it weren't fixed.  There is zero sign the article was previously nominated for deletion.  Neither are there any top-matter tags, indicating that some editors have concerns over the article.  While I am not unsympathetic to anyone who thought a promise was made nine months ago, and feel impatient that the promises wasn't kept.  However, no offense, I think those who think a promise was made to them had a responsibility to indicate to contributors to the article who didn't participate in the discussion nine months ago that they thought the article had issues.  Geo Swan (talk) 03:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note, the contributor who requested time to work on the article has retired from the project. Since he or she seems to be the only person who was aware some other contributors thought the article was under a deadline I suggest the impatience expressed above should be curbed.
 * Comment No one questions the legitimacy of your contributions to the article. What we question is the legitimacy of the article itself given that it mostly overlaps "waterboardimg".--LexCorp (talk) 06:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * So then why shouldn't we simply move most of the material on the recent use of the technique from that article to this one? Geo Swan (talk) 20:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Because policy tell us that content fork must have a compelling reason before implementing it. The "waterboarding" article quality is awful. Content forking before an article is mature and stable only serves to split the editorial contributions and thus diminishing the quality of both articles. Why not concentrate in cleaning up the main article and then, after that work is done, if the length is deem to large we can implement the forking with no problems.--LexCorp (talk) 22:40, 27 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment -- WRT the concern that articles have considerable overlap... this is a legitimate concern... overlap is a maintenance burden, and can lead to divergence where related articles contradict one another. But I strongly suggest that an immediate jump to a nomination for deletion is overly hasty.  Four years ago both the articles Military Commission and Military Tribunal overlapped, in an uncontrolled manner, both contained a lot of material related to Guantanamo.  The concern that the articles overlapped was a legitimate concern -- but it was resolved following a talk page discussion.  A couple of us decided that the military commissions should be renamed to Guantanamo military commissions, and barring a paragraph or two of context all content related to the commissions should go there -- while all general discussion of the general history military tribunals and commissions should go in the military tribunal article.  Could a similar agreement resolve the overlap problem here?  I don't know.  However, I think it is clear that no one has tried suggesting an agreement over how to divide up the overlapping material, so it no longer overlaps.  The nomination says: "...there's still no progress, because such progress is not possible..." as if this were an established fact.  I don't question that this is a legitimate concern, but I will not agree that it is an intractable problem.  And I repeat that I am disappointed that no one seems to have even tried to discuss this concern.  Geo Swan (talk) 04:56, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Terrorism-related deletion discussions.  —Geo Swan (talk) 04:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  —Geo Swan (talk) 04:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. Wikireader41 (talk) 21:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. I don't care whether this is a content fork or a premature attempt at splitting the article, but it's definitely not helpful. Hans Adler 07:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per LexCorp. --John (talk) 17:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment -- Here is a strong argument for continuing to have two separate articles -- the log page for "Waterboarding". Waterboarding is such a controversial topic the waterboarding article has been protected over a dozen times.  Claims above that "90% of the articles overlap" is an instance of 90% of statistics being unreliable.  Forty percent of the Waterboarding article concerns the use of the technique prior to the 21st Century -- so not an overlap.  The 40% pre-21st Century material is not controversial.  The waterboarding article has been a frequent target of vandalism, and the site of uncontrolled edit-warring.  We should anticipate similar problems in the future.  If and when the controversial material triggers further edit-warring, good faith contributors can continue to work on the pre-21st-Century material without interruptions.  Geo Swan (talk) 13:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * As above -- If the articles remain separate readers can choose to place one article on their watchlist and not the other. Geo Swan (talk) 13:43, 4 March 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.