Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Western support of dictators


 * 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. Consensus is that WP:SYNTH applies.  Sandstein  10:45, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Western support of dictators

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Delete. This is yet another essay by, comprising large amounts of material copied without attribution from other, better Wikipedia articles and held together via a liberal amount of WP:SYNTH. To be fair, Noam Chomsky may connect many of the incidents in question, but a Wikipedia article should not be based almost exclusively on the views of just one author, especially when the details of the abuses committed by the authoritarian governments in question come from sources that discuss each regime individually without addressing the putative topic of "Western support of dictators". (Additionally, the only examples of Western support for dictatorships listed refer to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, in keeping with the views of the current authoritarian government of Iran; although this is certainly permissible on Wikipedia, Ghazaalch is an Iranian editor whose edits are generally pro-regime and anti-MeK, creating an appearance of selection bias.) Finally, while the content copied without attribution from elsewhere on Wikipedia is largely factual, the portions written by Ghazaalch himself contain several notable errors that betray a lack of familiarity with the underlying sources, for example misgendering Jeane Kirkpatrick and consistently confusing the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor (Ghazaalch writes that "Over one million Indonesians were systematically killed" during the occupation of East Timor, until "Clinton finally ordered the Indonesian generals to stop and the conflict ended within a day, which according to Chomsky could have been stopped 25 years before it").TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:26, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: This article was published today and could be improved little by little but nominating it for deletion is not very constructive. As for misgendering Jeane Kirkpatrick, and confusing the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, I fixed them. Concerning borrowing some sentences from other articles, could you tell me how should I attribute them in this articl? And please avoid personal attack. MeK is a cultish group that was designated by United Nations and other countries as a terrorist organization and committed many assassination including some American citizens. So apposing MeK does not entail that I am a pro-regime and my writing is biased. Ghazaalch (talk) 04:40, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You can add an attribution notice via an edit summary like this.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:47, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

I created this article in my sandbox then copy-pasted it here, so it was of no use to write an edit summary for it there, because it is not visible here. Ghazaalch (talk) 03:46, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete - I can't see how such an article could ever be neutral. JMWt (talk) 09:32, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete The term dictator itself is non-neutral, so the article is inherently POV. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 21:43, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

What if we use "authoritarian" instead of "dictator"? Ghazaalch (talk) 02:50, 18 October 2022 (UTC)


 * That's a tough one. It depends on whether the topic meets WP:GNG to support an article not based on novel syntheses. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 02:55, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I used the material from other articles mostly as introductory or footnotes, but the main body of the article is novel and could be an independent article. Ghazaalch (talk) 03:39, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
 * unapproved move Note user:Ghazaalch renamed this article during the time of the AFD. This is not acceptable as the scope is very likely to change with a title change. So is this article supposed to be about "support" or "allegations"? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:30, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Per above comments, I changed the title from "Western support of dictators" to "Alleged western support of dictators" to make it more neutral. Ghazaalch (talk) 07:49, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Can you show me the sentences you are saying I copied from other articles without attributing? Ghazaalch (talk) 03:40, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * No, I don't have the time to identify and list every example, especially when you should be keeping track yourself, but it's plainly obvious, to give just two examples, that the content referring to "historian John Roosa" and "Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA" was lifted (along with the supporting citations) from Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, with very little modification.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

You are saying that you didn't have enough the time to identify and list every example, but you are asserting that "the content copied without attribution from elsewhere on Wikipedia is largely factual". Even in the examples given by you, there is no "copied" part except for the names of the historians and a part of a quotation that could be lifted from the original source. Ghazaalch (talk) 04:01, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Ghazaalch, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with copying within Wikipedia. You just need to provide attribution, to supplement the revision history by directing readers to the edit history of the original article(s).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:49, 21 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Weak delete. Yes, Western powers supported every dictator on the Earth, from Hitler to Putin. However, one needs multiple RS specifically on this general subject, rather than sources about support of specific dictator by specific USA president. If there are such sources on the general subject, then this page has right to exist. But if not, this is WP:COATRACK. Looking at the sources currently on the page, some of them are indeed about more or less general issues, but not clear cut on the "Western support of dictators", so the page does look to me as a personal essay, and "inherently POV". My very best wishes (talk) 23:51, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Since this article is mainly about United States and its allies and since it not very clear who are the allies, I could change the title of article to "Alleged United States support of authoritarian governments". The sources given for this allegation are good enough, because the new title is not about "support of authoritarians" but about the "allegation of support". Moreover it is no longer a general subject. here are more sources for the new title. What do you think? Ghazaalch (talk) 03:20, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That may be seen as an attempt to recreate List of authoritarian regimes supported by the United States, which the community found consensus to delete in February 2018, under a slightly different title. I doubt that simply adding the word "Allegations" would rectify the WP:SYNTH and other concerns that were identified at the time.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:49, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed. My very best wishes (talk) 02:24, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Could you make some examples and explain how WP:SYNTH apply for this new title("Alleged United States support of authoritarian governments")? There are many sources talking about "United States support of authoritarian governments", so I am not combining material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source. Ghazaalch (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The original article, which purported to be a comprehensive "list" of each example, was determined to contain a liberal amount of WP:SYNTH by the Wikipedia community. Since you haven't (yet) recreated it, it would be impossible for me to point out the WP:SYNTH in a hypothetical draft version that currently exists only in your mind, but I would caution you against further unapproved page moves/scope changes in the middle of a deletion discussion that is not trending in your favor. Certainly, the scope would have to be narrowed considerably for the page to survive a deletion challenge; again, without presenting an exhaustive list of the potential pitfalls, the aforementioned content about "historian John Roosa" and "Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA" would be WP:SYNTH unless you could show where those authors wrote specifically about the putative topic of the article (whether "Western support of dictators" or "Alleged western support of dictators" or "Alleged United States support of authoritarian governments" or whatever the case may be).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:13, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I am not talking about the "list". I am talking about the existing article that can be turned into an article about the United States with a few lines removed. Concerning the WP:SYNTH I should say that even if as you say the content about "historian John Roosa" and "Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA" would be WP:SYNTH, we could omit the three or four lines from the article. Why did you nominate the whole article for deletion? Why do you nominate every article I write about the United States? Ghazaalch (talk) 08:22, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Ghazaalch, you are continually moving the goalpost and WP:BLUDGEONing this discussion, which is unhelpful. This article will be deleted or kept based on community consensus, not individual editor opinion alone. You need to take a step back and let the process play out. Further unapproved moves and personalization of content disputes will not change the outcome.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 08:27, 22 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I am not moving the goalpost. I am just trying to modify the article in order to satisfy you but you are never satisfied. You first said that I am comprising large amounts of material copied without attribution, which I showed that it is not the case. You then said that the article is not addressing the putative topic of "Western support of dictators". I proposed to change the title of article to "Alleged United States support of authoritarian governments". You then wrote that the article contain several notable errors such as misgendering Jeane Kirkpatrick and consistently confusing the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, then I fixed them all. Then you said that the aforementioned content about "historian John Roosa" and "Geoffrey B. Robinson, a historian at UCLA" would be WP:SYNTH unless you could show where those authors wrote specifically about the putative topic of the article. I answered that even if the aforementioned content is WP:SYNTH, we could omit the three or four lines from the article. Now you are accusing me of personalization of content disputes while you yourself wrote that Ghazaalch is an Iranian editor whose edits are generally pro-regime and anti-MeK, creating an appearance of selection bias. You are talking about consensus but you cannot give me a reasonable answer why you nominated this article for deletion. And consensus, as you know, is not acquired merely via voting. The policies say The deletion process is really a discussion. Wikipedia has particular standards for deletion and editors explain why they believe certain rules apply...Users sometimes try to sway the discussion by trying to vote several times or by getting friends or other users to vote with them. This usually backfires and violates the Wikipedia policy. Administrators can tell how many previous edits a user has made and discount these "votes". The effort may draw negative responses from other editors who dislike these methods of trying to influence the outcome. Also, making multiple accounts to all vote for a certain position is sockpuppeteering and violates policy.
 * Now what is the problem? If we have a section like Support of dictatorships and state terrorism in this article, why shouldn't we have an expanded version of the section as a new article? Ghazaalch (talk) 09:50, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Delete Definitely a violation of WP:SYNTH. X-Editor (talk) 04:32, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Did you read above discussion? I also encourage you to read this discussion.Ghazaalch (talk) 03:34, 23 October 2022 (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.