Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Women in the Americas

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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. Sarahj2107 (talk) 08:43, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Women in the Americas

Women in the Americas (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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I never nominate articles for deletion based on quality, but I'm going to make an exception in this case. This is probably the worst Wikipedia article I've ever read. It doesn't include a single useful statement about women in the Americas, and instead is just a list of all the countries in North and South America with lead sections copied verbatim from the corresponding "Women in X" articles, all of which seem to start with the inane sentence "Women in X are women who were born in, who live in, or are from X." Thanks for that insight! This article either needs to be broken up into more manageable chunks where useful comparisons and coherent themes can be elicidated (like Women in the Caribbean and Women in Central America), stubbified (so that it can be replaced with some tables and charts and useful prose), or deleted entirely. As it stands, the article is incoherent and unreadable. As there was no actually writing or research involved in making it, I don't think we would lose much by deleting it. Kaldari (talk) 05:14, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of South America-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:17, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mexico-related deletion discussions. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:36, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:36, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article does serve a purpose though, that is pointing at other similar articles. However, I have to agree that it is badly written. The problem here is that it is just not practical to write an article about "Women in the Americas" - it is too broad a topic. Instead, articles like Women in Venezuela are much more feasible. I'm just wondering, how about we create a template for Women in the Americas? --Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:35, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak agree should be deleted, unless giving the article purpose is feasible.Fred (talk) 16:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I honestly don't see what the fuss is all about. What's wrong with a list article that summarizes Women in each country and links to more specific articles for each? and BTW why was the creator of this article not notified? Ottawahitech (talk) 10:40, 22 October 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
  • Comment: if the major plus point of this article is to group together articles about women in each country in the Americas, wouldn't it be better as a category, or as a template as suggested by Lemongirl1942, rather than an article? Richard3120 (talk) 19:38, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Richard3120: Unfortunately categories are often deleted for reasons that defy logic. Ottawahitech (talk) 14:32, 25 October 2016 (UTC) please ping me[reply]
  • Delete. I'm not seeing the usefulness of an article that merely serves as a cut-and-paste pastiche of other articles' introductions. If this could actually be rewritten from scratch as a standalone article about the topic named in the title, I might be willing to reconsider this — but in this form there's really very little point or purpose to it. Bearcat (talk) 00:42, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep: Agreed that the article is written terribly, however this does not justify deletion. There are 23 countries in North America (Caribbean and Central America included) and 12 countries in South America compared to a whopping 51 in Europe. So discussing length is pretty pointless too unless we should seperate it by continent (North and South), and please not regional (North, Central, Caribbean). Savvyjack23 (talk) 16:06, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I would be in favor of merging Women in the Caribbean into this article, like how Central America redirects here. We have a "women by continent" category to serve the purpose of filling it. Savvyjack23 (talk) 16:12, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Light keep. Comparing women by country is a good thing. The criterion for comparison is currently uninteresting.2607:FB90:1E0B:E660:0:47:7857:9E01 (talk) 09:09, 24 October 2016 (UTC) This user has been blocked. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Weak Keep and Disambiguatize (err -- turn into a disambiguation page) or Draftify - I agree that as it stands as an article it's just redundant. It could be turned into a disambiguation page, though, and I can imagine ways it could be developed into a viable article, cumbersome as it may be, so sending over to drafts may be productive. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:04, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Not notable Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 04:39, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. SSTflyer 12:11, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I'd like to hear from more interested parties, who might wish to rescue or userfy this article. Bearian (talk) 20:55, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Atrocious copypasta, devoid of any substance; needs blowing up and possibly recreation from scratch as a list or disambiguation. The "keep"s don't address the article's problems.  Sandstein  22:51, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Now neutral after the rewrite. This topic still has a faintly WP:SYNTHetic feel to it - do women in the USA and e.g. in Bolivia have so much in common that reliable sources treat them as one topic? - but at least the content looks and feels like proper articl now rather than a copy-pasted assemblage of stubs.  Sandstein  07:42, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I think the Women in the Americas article should be written up more like Women in Antarctica (which I started). The Antarctic article was a little easier to work on because the history of the continent doesn't go too far back in time and there aren't countries in Antarctica per-se, but I think we can approach the Americas article in a similar way. I added a couple of external inks to the article that link to the Society for the History of Women in the Americas who are a scholarly group studying the topic. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:25, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment please see the excellent work that SusunW added about pre-history of women in the Americas. I've gone and tried to salvage any cited material and will copyedit further later. In addition, I changed the copypasta and Women in X are Women who... section into a list organized by region that I think will be more useful to readers. Hopefully this will pass WP:HEY for some. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 21:22, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • @SusunW and Megalibrarygirl: Thanks for working to improve it. I think that it would help to make clearer what the future of this page will be -- the particular subject it covers that isn't either an assemblage of subjects we already cover or a disambiguation page. For example, what unites women in pre-colonial indigenous South American cultures with women in indigenous North American cultures today with women who moved to Kansas from Europe last week and women in Central America in the 1900s? Are there sources for the subject that span across the Americas and across time? It's not required that all the sources take that form, of course, but that's what would clarify the subject, I think. All of these subjects are worth covering, to be sure, but it looks like most of the content I see there now is a compilation rather than a single subject ("women in Mexico..." then "women in Brazil..." then "women in the United States..." -- when we have separate articles for those already. What about being in "the Americas" unites them, unless we're only talking about long ago?). Part of this confusion may be my own ignorance, but this comes back to why it seemed like draftifying or turning into a disambiguation page seemed sensible. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 22:40, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Rhododendrites I do not mean to be flippant, but the future of the page is irrelevant to a discussion of whether it is a notable topic and the content is based upon RS. The women in all of the Americas share a common history, which I am working to develop in the article (and would welcome help from anyone who is willing to try to save it, rather than delete it). The comparison and contrast of how that conquest effected women is interesting both for its similarities and differences. Because all citizens shared a colonized past, laws existed throughout the region which limited citizenship of women, whether European, indigenous, or from bondage. Laws were similar in countries which had the same colonial power, i.e. Canada, the US and the former British colonies of the Caribbean have similar legal challenges, as do women living in Suriname, Guyana and the Netherlands Antilles, etc. Likewise, all of the countries in the region have indigenous populations, which have all experienced colonization/conquest. Multiple organizations and women's conferences in the 19th and 20th centuries have utilized a regional platform and the strength of developments in other nations within the Americas to address inequalities in their own societies. There are slews of academic studies on the subject, thus, clearly, it is a relevant topic with sufficient data. While extremely broad, I believe with effort the article can give a broad synopsis of the similar and contrasting experiences shared by women in the Americas and break out to individual countries to provide more in-depth discussion of specific areas. SusunW (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Rhododendrites I agree with SusunW who has explained the issue far better than I could. It is broad, but geographical areas do have shared historical narratives based on the geography and the people who inhabit the areas. These are unique to each continent. For example, The Americas has a shared history of slavery that is different from other continents. Different continents faced different issues with colonization, too. I've found several scholarly articles on the topic of Women in the Americas as a broad subject. I am also helping to clean up Women in Oceania and other "Women in..." articles. They are notable topics, but the articles are really terrible. I'm glad the nom brought this to our attention. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:15, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
the future of the page is irrelevant to a discussion of whether it is a notable topic - I brought up the future of the page not to say "tell us how you'll improve it so we don't have to delete it" exactly (which would generally be irrelevant to AfD), but rather as a way to talk about what an ideal vision of the page would look like (in order to convince those who see -- or saw, prior to the improvements -- a page without a clearly unified subject, and a page that's more than a grouping or directory of component parts that we already cover). From my perspective, while it seemed like it could be a notable subject, it was unclear what that would look like. Hence suggesting turning into a disambiguation as a potential outcome. Your responses here, and continuing to look at the added content, help to clarify the subject, though, and I've updated my weak keep/disambiguatize/draftify to just keep.
Pinging those who !voted delete prior to the additions: @Sandstein, Kaldari, Sportsfan 1234, and Bearcat:. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:27, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Adam9007 (talk) 00:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Appropriate overview article and now much improved as well. Montanabw(talk) 15:49, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep now: Megalibrarygirl and SusunW, you have done wonderful work on this article in the space of a week and it has improved beyond measure, I applaud both of you. Grouping the headings by topic area rather than by country makes a lot more sense. The article now is so different now to when it was nominated for AfD that we're not really voting on the same article, and I hope the editors who previously voted delete will review their vote based on the current version. Richard3120 (talk) 22:07, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Richard3120. There is a long way to go, but we are getting there. SusunW (talk) 22:11, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Richard3120. I think it's a good example of what we all can do when we find articles on Wiki that need work. When you let members of interested WikiProjects know about it, they're likely to get cracking on it. ;) SusunW is really good at digging up the history on these kinds of topics. :D Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:18, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Let's also not forget to thank User:AnakngAraw who tagged the tallpage of the article with many Wikiprojects that resulted in all these projects being notified of this nomination through their Article alerts. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]
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.
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