- Allegations of American apartheid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)
- Overturn - I question the qualification of ChrisO (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) to take an admin action because of his clearly one-sided activism
on the page in question and in related discussions. Also, I don't see how the discussion and the vote at the AFD page warrant the deletion. ←Humus sapiens ну? 23:15, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. My only edit in the article was a 2-line mention of a book Medical Apartheid. The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present. Why would this be a less scholarly & notable than, say, Jimmy Carter's opus on Israel/Palestine? For the record, I do support the proposal at Wikipedia talk:Words to avoid#Apartheid and invite others to participate at the discussion there. This would improve the climate at WP, because certain WP users insist on applying political epithets selectively. In particular, ChrisO's POV shines through in Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Apartheid and other related pages. ←Humus sapiens ну? 01:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. - At the closing time, a clear majority of contributors had proposed the deletion of this article. Humus is of course wrong to claim "one-sided activism" given that I've never edited the article in question, nor did I take part in the deletion debate (unlike Humus, who has both edited and !voted). I've never even commented on the article prior to the AfD closure and I've only very rarely edited articles on US politics, which makes claims of "activism" all the more misplaced. The grounds for the decision are straightforward and based on well-understood policies. As I explained in my closing note ([1]), the notability of the subject was not sufficiently established and the article was an unnecessary fork from another article. Several editors, including Humus, made arguments on the lines of "you must keep this article if article X exists" ([2]). As I said in closing, WP:ALLORNOTHING and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS are literally canonical examples of arguments to avoid in deletion discussions and should be avoided; to quote that page, "arguments based from side issues ... are not relevant to the issue of whether or not a page on Wikipedia should be deleted". A number of other editors expressed a preference to merge the article but gave no reasons why. To quote WP:AFD, "The debate is not a vote; please make recommendations on the course of action to be taken, sustained by arguments." If no arguments are given, the closing admin is given no reasons to justify taking the course of action recommended by an editor. This is not a show of hands; we have to decide on the basis of arguments put forward, so if you don't put any arguments forward, you're not giving us anything to go on. -- ChrisO 23:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. Please, let's not resuscitate this nonsense. CJCurrie 23:42, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure Consensus was very clear.--Victor falk 23:49, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure consensus was clear. As a further note, only slightly off topic, it is also about time that we consider "apartheid" in the same vein as "cult" as a WP:WTA, even if a notable someone or lots of notable someones uses the term to describe the event, we don't need to adopt the alleger's words as a title in the article, unless we want to have articles such as this or Allegations that you-know-who is the worst president, Allegations that guess-who is the most overrated celebrity, etc., for which several notable people could be found to have made such accusations. Carlossuarez46 00:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Consensus was not clear. Delete lost versus keeping or merging content. If consensus was clear, we live in different math dimensions. Thanks! --Cerejota 03:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. I should point out that "allegations" is also already covered by WP:WTA, though this wasn't a factor in the closure decision. -- ChrisO 00:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Wow, my ears are still ringing. :-) But it's not a vote: the arguments of keeping were weak in the extreme = consensus. Carlossuarez46 19:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Exactly. A series of invalid or non-existent arguments does not make a consensus. -- ChrisO 19:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure as properly taken. Further endorse Carlossuarez46's proposal that apartheid should be a taboo word on the order of cult or terrorism and used only in the context of specific attribution. The choice of word is clearly POV and intended to evoke particular images that may have no appropriate analog in context. --Dhartung | Talk 00:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. This was a terrible abuse of process on a couple of levels. First, User:ChrisO has been a highly involved editor in these articles, from the original Apartheid Arbitration case, in which he was admonished, to his more recent activism (e.g. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] ) on the Central apartheid discussion page, to his attempts to get similar articles deleted (e.g. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] )to his arbitrary re-naming of Apartheid articles [19] and abuse of his admin tools in forcing articles to stay at the names he preferred.[20]. Second, in the actual discussion only 50% of the votes were "Delete". Even if ChrisO were an uninvolved editor (and he clearly is not), his decision was inconsistent with the discussion on the AfD page. Poorly done and abusive all round. Jayjg (talk) 01:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. This is little more than a paragraph of ad hominem. You of all people should know that AfD is not a vote (so why are you calling it one?) and operates on the basis of policy-based arguments. Policy-based arguments were advanced for deleting the article; many of the "keep" and "merge" recommendations gave no arguments at all. The decision was an objective one, based on a close reading of the debate. I remind you that DRV "should not be used simply because you disagree with a deletion debate's outcome", per WP:DRV. -- ChrisO 07:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. Only 50% of the votes were to delete, and he is an involved editor as demonstrated above. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 02:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion and consider sanctions on the cliche that created these articles, violating WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND by creating them. When articles are admittedly created by a faction of pro-Israeli editors to antagonize others. This constitutes a user conduct pattern that should lead to blocks. That the battle continued in the AFD is even worse and possibly also sanctionable, ChrisO correctly read the policy based arguments for this discussion and deleted the article. Redirection to Racial segregation in the United States would have been reasonable, but I note that Jayjg wrongly reverted such a redirection with the edit summary of rvv (it was not vandalism), so that would clearly not have been a satisfactory conclusion to the pro-Israel faction. I have also added {{afd-anons}}, as the history of discussions involving the pro/ant-Israel factions has been one with far too much canvassing. GRBerry 02:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- As has been pointed out, Sefringle's "admission" is meaningless, since he neither created nor edited these articles. You, too, could "admit" that they had been created "to antagonize others", and it would be equally meaningless. Jayjg (talk) 02:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- As anyone with a couple minutes to look can find out on their own, Sefringle has been part of the factional battle about these articles. He has many contributions to the centralized discussion and was the nominator for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Israeli apartheid (6th nomination). When we have a faction that acts as a faction that regularly communicates about how to handle a dispute, I am willing to believe that a member of that faction has adequate evidence for their statements about the reasons for a faction's behavior. GRBerry 02:40, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- You keep going on about a "faction", as if it were something that actually existed. Sefringle is not part of any "faction" as far as I'm aware, he's an independent editor. Please avoid further factually false conspiracy mongering. Jayjg (talk) 02:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- There is actually a further problem in if I have pasred that that dif correctly it is a comment about how to make things NPOV across a collection of articles, not an attempt to antagonize editors. JoshuaZ 02:27, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- overturn, close as no consensus In addition to the concerns raised by Jayjg, I note that Chris had not closed an AfD since July 4, almost a full month ago. I'd like to assume good faith here, but given the difs and other details provided by Jayjg as well as this seeming to be a close completely out of the blue, I'm having a lot of trouble assuming good faith here. At minimum, Chris should have realized how bad this would look. I might have closed it the same way given the structure of the discussion(I'm not sure, I would likely have closed it as no consensus if I were closing), but Chris should have realized how bad this would look. Admins must be careful not only to be impartial but to appear impartial and in this case I have trouble seeing Chris as having done either. All of that said, GRBerry makes some good points and I think that both pro and anti Israel editors do need to remember that Wikipedia is not a battleground but a collobrative attempt to build an encyclopedia. Heck, the fact that so many editors feel a need to think of themselves as pro or anti is part of the problem, and it would be helpful if people could do a better job of divorcing their prejudices from their Wikipedia editing. If not, please go edit other articles. JoshuaZ 02:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure This does look bad, as Chris has been involved in the other debates. He should not have closed, knowing how it would look. However, consensus was clearly for deletion in this case, by my estimation; his intention has no bearing on this. What was it that Jayjg said about appeals to motive in AfDs?--Cúchullain t/c 02:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I fail to see how pointing out that Chriso was both heavily involved in the "apartheid" dispute and wrongly claimed that "no consensus" was actually a consensus to delete is an "appeal to motive". I haven't talked about his motives at all. Jayjg (talk) 02:43, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn as no consensus - I think JayJG is being overdramatic and borderline not asumign goof faith, however, the result is obviously no consensus. Delete 11, Keep 5, Keep or Merge 2, Delete or Merge 1, Merge 7.
- All said and done, 14 for keeping content in some shape or form, 11 for complete delete, and one I split among the two (delete or merge). Clearly no consensus by any measure.
- Not only no consensus but the admin action went against the spirit of the majority opinion (keeping content). How this was deemed a delete remains a puzzle.
- Someone really should have thought things over before acting... One would thing that being on the receiving end of the Flaming Keyboard of Wikipedia would be enough deterrent to act sloppy, but apparently it isn't. Thanks! --Cerejota 02:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn per Humus sapiens and Jayjg. This was a clear abuse of administrative powers. Overturning the deletion should be only the first of the repercussions. 6SJ7 02:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Please, let's focus on the matter at hand. If you have complaints about Chris, I suggest you take to them to RfC or ArbCom. This discussion is simply a review of the deletion. JoshuaZ 02:54, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The matter at hand is that the deletion is invalid due to misconduct. I'm not allowed to say so? 6SJ7 03:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Now we are going to witchhunt? Please WP:AGF. There is a much more valid and central reason why this was a bad delete, and that is that there was clearly no consensus. As JoshuaZ correctly states, if you think ChrisO acted in bad faith and deserves some sort of punishment, you have places where to state this. Make this about content, not people. For making it about people, WP:DR process, or WP:AN. I think your attitude and that of other editors should be taken into account in such proceedings, but for this DRV, lets focus on content. Thanks!--Cerejota 03:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and censure User:ChrisO for acting way beyond his mandate as
self-appointed demigod admin and in spite of a clear conflict of interest. In fact, this should simply be an administrative reversal, as ChrisO appears to have drawn his decision out of thin air. --Leifern 02:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn as per Leifenr. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn ChrisO is clearly involved as an editor, so he should not have closed this. Also, the vote was clearly no consensus; the article should not have been deleted. This was improperly handled from start to finish. FeloniousMonk 03:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. Given that these "apartheid" articles are involved in interrelated debates, it was very wrong of ChrisO, an active participant, to close this deletion debate. This was an abuse of tools and should not be permitted.--Mantanmoreland 03:45, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn I count this as Merge 6, Keep 8, and Delete 12. Three people favored Merge as a second choice. Remembering that "merge" is a form of keep, not a form of delete, I do not see a consensus to delete here. This should IMO have been closed as "No consensus" although a "Keep" would not have been out of line. Before people yell at me that "this is not a vote" IMO the policy based arguments were equally strong (or weak) on each side, leaving this a judgment call where the numbers do rule, and where I think a "consensus to delete" means rather more than a bare majority, or in this case a 14-12 minority. I do not address the issue of the closer allegedly having been involved in related debates and on this issue generally, but involved closers are a very bad idea indeed, and if it is held that the closer was involved, that can be grounds to overturn and relist if any judgment call by the closer was needed (no reason to overturn say a 12-0 decision clearly in line with policy, even if the closer is not impartial). DES (talk) 04:27, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn, I hardly ever edit this kind of stuff anymore (primarily due to the sort of actions that ChrisO has just taken) but this situation is just ridiculous. I find it hard to believe that so many people above have insisted that there was "consensus", give me a break, do they even know what "consensus" means? Also ChrisO not only has a long history of pov editing with regards to this subject but more troubling, he also has an equally long history of impropriety and the bending and outright breaking of wikipedia policy in order to get what he wants.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 04:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure, only 7 out of 28 people said "keep" the article in the original vote so undeleting it would be completly unacceptable and almost all the people who said "keep" made arguments that had nothing to do with the "American apartheid" article - the stated reasons for their votes were about a completely different article. "Allegations of American apartheid" is a ridiculous title and limiting the page only to references that describe modern American segregation as "apartheid" hurt its scope by not allowing the use of sources that talk about modern segregation without using the A word. American apartheid redirected to Racial segregation in the United States all along and that's where any material on modern segregation should be. -- LOTHAR
- So now we ignore those who propose merge or keep or merge? And you either pulled two people out of thin air, or I counted wrong. I saw 26 people making clear comments, 14 of which opposed delete, a clear majority. However, result should have been no consensus because the majority was thin and divided between merge and keep. Delete was the wrong call to make, by any math. Thanks!--Cerejota 06:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If (some of) those who proposed "merge" or "keep or merge" did so without advancing any reasons to do so, or offered invalid arguments such as WP:ALLORNOTHING or WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS then yes, their opinions don't carry any weight - per WP:AFD, "The debate is not a vote; please make recommendations on the course of action to be taken, sustained by arguments." Deletion debates operate on the basis of policy-based arguments, not a show of hands. -- ChrisO 07:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- We all understand this, however, what is your logic then? Based on the discussion, clearly there is no consensus either, a great number of the deletes meet the criteria for being ignored you set forward here... please provide clarity. I think you really acted in a wrong fashion here, and should revert. Thanks!--Cerejota 07:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse, per GRBerry, wikipedia is not a battleground and does not need articles created to belabour a point. Catchpole 08:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and close as no consensus. I have no opinion on the merits of the content, and I did not (as far as I am aware) participate in any of the prior discussions, but – as pointed out by Cerejota above – there is no consensus here to delete the article, taking into account the number of people that would like to have the content kept or merged, and the fact that our closure guideline states that "when in doubt, do not delete". Also, if the closer was in fact involved in a partisan manner in prior discussions, his choice to close this one was a very bad one indeed. Sandstein 08:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Weak overturn. Given how Wikipedia is indeed a battleground, it is difficult to run a genuinely instructive AfD on any of the articles in the allegations-of-apartheid series. However this time, as usual, the battleground didn't produce a consensus to delete, and I think we should respect that. As for ChrisO's decision to be the closer of this AfD, I have pretty much the same opinion of this action that I did of Jayjg's decision to close the United States military aid to Israel AfD.[21] Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 08:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Having apartheid as a "word to avoid" might be a good idea--Victor falk 12:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)--Victor falk 12:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Closure - Unless someone can point out where the policy is that precludes an admin who is involved in a topic from taking administrative actions in said topic, this sounds like a bunch of sour grapes from those that support the article. Tarc 13:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Did you note my analysis (and that of several other people here) that the closure did not properly reflect the AfD discussion, regardless of the involvement, if any, of the admin? Did you note that I, at least, have never edited the article or any related article in any way? There is more here than just the cry of "involved admin". That said, the appearance of impartiality is important. If admin A has been passionately arguing for the deletion of "G in popular culture", "H in popular culture", "I in popular culture", "J in popular culture", and "K in popular culture"; it is quite unwise for admin A, at that same time, to close the AfD on "L in popular culture" as delete on an AfD that is far from clear-cut. There are plenty of other admins -- leave it to someone more obviously uninvolved. Policy explicitly forbids closing a debate in which one has commented -- this is a fairly obvious extension. Now i haven't examined the closer's edits in this case, so i have no opinion on how much he was, or was not, involved. But the complaint, if supported by the facts, is IMO legitimate. DES (talk) 16:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn I did not !vote in the original AfD, but this is waaaayyyy out of process, both in terms of numbers, opinions offered, and, most importantly, because it was done by an admin who is deeply involved--indeed, who is a POV warrior on these subjects. I know this isn't necessarily the place for it, but a desysopping and/or topic ban for ChrisO is well past due. Enough is enough. IronDuke 16:30, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure - AFD != vote. Too OTHERSTUFFEXISTSy. Will (talk) 18:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. Seems like a perfectly reasonable close to me based on the comments in the AfD and by Chris in his close. As noted above, Wikipedia is not a battleground, or a soapbox. Good call. Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I really don't understand the problem here. The most common suggestion in the original vote was to "merge with Allegations of apartheid". Looking at that article it looks like that's exactly what has happened so why are the same people who voted for that complaining since they got exactly what they asked for? Lothar of the Hill People 19:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure and a ratcheting-down of rhetoric all around. Will is right: AfD is not a vote, so quoting percentages and parsing merge/keep votes has at best a minor role here. That's why we have admins, rather than bots, close AfD's. On the merits of the AfD itself, Chris' close, while not the one I'd have chosen, is defensible as a reasonable interpretation of policy. The article itself is a POV fork of material which could be, or already is, contained in articles on racism and segregation in the U.S. It consisted mostly of quotes in which people had used the word "apartheid", but failed to establish the independent notability of these allegations as distinct from general writings about racism in the U.S. The AfD is not the place to point out that "other crap exists"; I agree that the entire series of "allegations of apartheid" articles should be scrapped as hopelessly divisive and POV, but the AfD is not the place to make that point, and creating a set of articles to prove that point experimentally (which at least one comment has alluded to) is highly WP:POINTy. ChrisO should not, however, have closed the AfD. Given his involvement in related discussions, he should have allowed a more uninvolved admin the "pleasure" of closing this hornet's nest. I view this as a error of judgement but not a desysopping or burning-at-the-stake offense; I don't think it's abuse per se, but admins, like Caesar's wife, should ideally be above suspicion. MastCell Talk 19:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure basically as per MastCell, to prevent this debate from escalating yet further. There are clearly some issues involved which might do with a recess--a long recess; I am very reluctant to delete articles as attracting spam/POV, but this might be an exception--and even with respect to the entire series. Apartheid is a loaded word, and probably best not used as a heading outside the original context. DGG (talk) 20:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure per MastCell and because policy trumps consensus. Unless you are reporting the work of significant and recognized scholars who have written about American apartheid, finding instances of the use of the word "apartheid" by random activists and compiling them into a Wikipedia article constitutes original research. Also agree with MastCell that someone else should have done the close. Thatcher131 20:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure The numbers support the decision, the arguments even more so, as not one Keep vote challenged the policy issues laid out in the nomination.--G-Dett 21:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn, no obvious consensus (in policy or not) for deletion. I think Chris made an error of judgement here. Neil ╦ 21:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure - I see nothing problematic with the closing rationale, so no reason to second guess the closer. - Crockspot 21:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure, per MastCell and per Thatcher131. This isn't an article, it's a club being wielded in someone's battleground. --Calton | Talk 21:20, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. ChrisO should not have done this as he was involved, but I believe the rationale was sound policy. Censure the admin and move on. Cool Hand Luke 21:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn for misreading consensus, aggravated by conflict of interest. Merge or no consensus keep would have been the reasonable outcomes. Evouga 21:53, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn consensus was very unclear, and also whilst some of the Keep votes aren't convincing, equally some of the Delete votes throw around WP:POINT, WP:SYNTH and WP:POVFORK without really contextualising them. ELIMINATORJR TALK 22:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Good, well argued close, arguments for deletion well presented by the supporters of deletion, material covered elsewhere. Effectively a POV fork. Some of the keep arguments were poor: 'Keep as for all other articles with similar titles "Allegations of [your favorite country] [your favorite issue]' (that is a direct quote from the afd). Some were had potential: "the article has sourced content from notable and relevant commentators, and has recently been improved, adding even more of these". In his close, Chris takes this into account: "the topic appears to duplicate existing articles (specifically Racial segregation in the United States, which already has a section on apartheid comparisons)." Thus deletion and merge were both possibilities, though due to the neutral point of view and original research problems a merge seemed unlikely to be useful. Well within the scope of administrator discretion. If the proponents of this article want to continue working on the subject, they could do worse than to recreate it as a redirect to Racial segregation in the United States and add neutral, well sourced information to the already-existing section, "Modern segregation and comparisons with apartheid". This does not require an overturn, or even a review. --Tony Sidaway 22:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn - while I sympathise with some of the rationales for dealing with the Apartheid entries re: WTA, ChrisO should clearly not have taken administrative action in this case. Even if someone else had done it, there is still no way that 50% delete should be closed as a consensus for deletion. While I respect ChrisO, I would have hoped that he would be more careful with his tools after the last two occurrences of using them in similar, questionable circumstances. TewfikTalk 22:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: Since WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS and WP:ALLORNOTHING have been invoked here, I just thought I would point out that these are shortcuts to an essay -- not a policy or guideline. This essay contains advice, suggestions and opinions about what arguments should and shouldn't be used in deletion discussions. I think this essay provides good general advice, but sometimes there are articles that are truly similar and should be treated similarly, and the essay does not prohibit that. That's my opinion, but here is a fact: The "arguments to avoid" essay is not a policy or a guideline. The closing admin's comments above suggest that he disregarded comments that "violated" this essay. That is reason enough for the deletion to be overturned, regardless of anyone's motivation. 6SJ7 22:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- So you would suggest overturning any closure in which the admin used WP:ATA to help grade the value of comments, because it's only an essay? MastCell Talk 23:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not suggesting anything, except what I am actually saying. Actually I think admins should not have as much latitude as they currently do in deciding what comments to count and what not to count. They are all applying their own individual mix of policies, guidelines, essays and their own opinions, and it's pretty close to chaos. But I suspect I'm getting beyond the bounds of this particular DRV. :) 6SJ7 04:28, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- 6SJ7's judgment that the "allegations" articles are "truly similar and should be treated similarly" is debatable, but the grounds on which the "American apartheid" article was nominated and deleted were notability and original research issue arising from its total lack of secondary sources. I haven't known anyone to suggest that the Israel article (the referent of the OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments) suffered from this problem.--G-Dett 23:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Then you should read further back in the talk archives for the Israel article. Both notability and OR problems with that article have been noted in the past. If you haven't seen them much recently it is because people get tired of repeating themselves. At present, notability probably is not much of an issue due to the strategy of Israel-haters to keep repeating this allegation until it becomes something one hears every day -- although I still have never heard of this subject outside Wikipedia and the articles cited in it. As for OR, the Israel article is a huge pile of OR. As far as I know there is one major secondary source, and it really belongs in an article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not an article on its own. And actually the whole question of "sourcing" an opinion about what something should be called is problematic anyway. It's just one of the reasons I think that none of these articles should exist, but I also think that Israel should not be singled out. 6SJ7 04:36, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure per Thatcher and Tony Sidaway. The article is not an essay on a coherent topic (as it has to be) but a concordance of various unconnected uses of a phrase, designed to advance a particular view. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Jumping back in to say that Tony's suggestion is rather quite brilliant, assuming the editors in question are interested in adding well-sourced non-POV material that respects Undue Weight, instead of just making a point. Thatcher131 00:12, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn - conflict of interest on the part of ChrisO.--Urthogie 00:30, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. This is a very touchy/controversial subject, as can be seen by the AfD and this deletion review. Unfortunately, there is no single outcome that will make everyone happy (and this is complicated by the inter-relationship between all the allegations... articles). Being a relatively new admin, and easily intimidated (;p) by large, controversial discussions, I probably would have closed this as no consensus, or possibly closed as merge to keep the sourced content in already existing articles on these topics. But ChrisO seems to have done a careful examination of each and every comment. The arguments for deletion ARE more compelling (and valid in terms of policy) than the arguments for keep. As others have clearly stated, AfD is not a vote. Everyone will agree that an AfD for a non-notable internet meme that gets flooded by first time and anonymous voters (due to say a something awful post) is likely to have those "votes" ignored. While this situation is clearly more complex, ChrisO did weigh the validity of each vote, and came to the reasonable conclusion that the arguments for deletion are superior than the arguments for keeping. It isn't cut and dry, and people's opinion on this vary, as obviously shown from the above. The only other thing is that Jayjg makes a good argument that perhaps ChrisO should have recused from closure (as Jayjg most likely recused himself for similar reasons)-Andrew c [talk] 01:55, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure - I couldn't find a single policy-based argument to keep the article in the AFD debate. As for the "conflict of interest" - well I would have made the same decision and I've never seen that article before so... ugen64 02:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure per MastCell, Tony Sidaway, and Thatcher, though a merge may also work. None of the keep arguments leveled a single guideline, let alone policy, to support their assertions, while the side for delete uttered enough alphabet soup to feed every child for a day. Perhaps ChrisO should not have closed the discussion, but those who call for his blood should be flayed right beside him if he is so. To Cerejota: vote-counting is about the weakest arguments in DRV, as vote-counting produces a statistic, not a result. —Kurykh 03:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn, consensus clearly did not exist. Everyking 06:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. Editors who have commented here may be interested to know that another newly-created article, Allegations of Chinese apartheid, has been nominated for deletion - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Chinese apartheid. -- ChrisO 08:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse, (1) AFD is not a vote count, and (2) an encyclopedia deals with facts, not allegations. >Radiant< 14:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Why am I reminded of a certain other AfD and review? Kwsn(Ni!) 06:41, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn and Keep. It was weird decision, no grounds to delete this article and no consencus unless all allegation apartheid articles are deleted obviously. Amoruso 11:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn While I have input on keeping or not, it is clear the closing admin should not have been one involved in the debate. This should have been also clear to the admin as an obvious COI issue. --SevenOfDiamonds 20:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Any admin off the street would have closed it the same... well, maybe not ANY admin, but most would. - Crockspot 20:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I count at least 6 current administrators, and at least 5 experienced editors who are not admins, commenting above, who wanted the decision overturned, at least in part because they said that the AfD consensus did not support the decision, and who either said or very clearly implied that they would have closed differently. Given the total number of editors commenting here that is not an insignificant fraction. If this group is at all representative, it is incorrect to say that "most" admins would have closed it as ChrisO did. DES (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn if only because this decision is automatically called into question by being closed by an involved admin. That sort of thing just makes folks suspicious and increases the conflict. FrozenPurpleCube 02:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion - I agree that the AfD looks more like a No consensus than a Delete, but the Delete !voters had a much stronger argument; we don't need anything with a WP:POVFORKish title such as "Allegations of American apartheid". Any relevant content can be covered under racial segregation in the United States. WaltonOne 14:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure. It's just a bad article written by a very bad bunch of contributors. The consensus was to delete it. I just hope that it would be the same for Allegations of French apartheid which is much less notorious than Allegations of American apartheid. Unfortunately, French are not much powerful on this wikipedia and apparently deserve to be treated worse than Americans. Sad. Poppypetty 22:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion Nothing but original research. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 03:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse closure/deletion per Walton, ugen64, Crockpoint, among others. It's unfortunate that the nominator chose to make a bad faith accusation against ChrisO as the basis for this deletion review, rather than focusing on the content of the AfD in detail. I suspect that is because the content of the AfD discussion, as others have pointed here, fails to provide compelling, policy-based rationales for the retention of this article. It is easier to shoot the messenger, than examine the message. (Since it was raised however, I should mention that as someone who regularly edits on articles related to Palestine, Israel, etc., whose encountered ChrisO from time to time, I have to say that he has differed with me on proposed edits and views at least as often as he has with those of my supposed "adversaries". While I'm sure he has a POV - as we all do, even those not directly involved in these kinds of debates - it's not clearly "for" one side or the other and I don't think he had to recuse himself from this closure. He does not edit the apartheid series, and while he has contributed to the discussions at the centralized discussion page to move towards finding solution, that shouldn't disqualify him from rendering an opinion on an AfD outcome here.) Tiamat 11:32, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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