Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 June 4

France – Papua New Guinea relations (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

This AFD debate, with 9 arguments for deletion and 4 for rentention, was just closed as keep by a longstanding admin (since 2003), Altenmann (talk · contribs). The article has only one reliable independent source, which notes that a french explorer was the 3rd european to land at the island, more than 200 years before PNG was independent. That says nothing about bilateral relations. The rational provided was simply "The result was keep; rescued." I would need a better rational to be convinced that there really was some "strength in argument not numbers" closure here and this just looks like another case of an admin basing a decision on his own opinion (which he was free to do by contributing to the debate itself) rather than doing his job, which is interpreting consensus and policy. Here's why he was wrong. One "keep" argument hinged on the brief visit of the french explorer 200 years before PNG was a state, and at least 150 years before one could imagine any sort of polity that aspired to being a state on the island. The second did as well (i.e. "per the excellent sources added." Since the only reliable independent source was this landing of a french explorer 200 years before independence, i presume that's what he meant). The 3rd said "you don't need secondary sources for an article," a clear failure to understand our notability guidelines for articles, i.e. "if a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." (emphasis mine). The fourth keep argument appeared to hinge on A. Insisting that independent sources are not needed to establih a topic's notability and, B. That France controls New Caledonia, which is near PNG. The delete arguments hinged on a failure of the GNG, since no reliable independent sources that discuss the topic of the article could be found, let alone multiple ones. These sorts of closes make a mockery out of good-faithed participation in this process.Bali ultimate (talk) 19:53, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I am surprised it wasn't closed as "no consensus" rather than "keep". I would like to hear more explanation from the closing editor before making further comment. Drawn Some (talk) 20:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have notified/asked the admin here [1].Bali ultimate (talk) 20:11, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by closing admin: AfD is not vote. Most deletion votes were cast before the attempt to expand the article. Expansion continues even after AfD close. The available quite reliable refs clearly show that there is communication between the two states. Hence verifiability satisfied. As for notability, this is not about relations between me and a a guy who lives next door. There are two officially recognized states. Once they relate to each other, these relations are notable, by common sense, since they affect many people. As for "keep" vs. "no consensus", I may be mistaken, but I failed to see convincing arguments in favor of deleting which remained valid after article expansion - Altenmann >t 00:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am mistaken in thinking that WP:N applies to all articles, including X-Y relations? Honestly-I'm not trying to be cute here. I've been assuming it does, and no one has directly told me it doesn't, but several people involved with these debates including admins and now Altenmann seem to be arguing that some criterion other than WP:N applies. I'm seriously confused. Yilloslime ^T_C 00:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You are not mistaken. WP:N applies to everything. However WP:N itself is not cast in stone, black/white yes/no in all cases. There is a whole spectrum. For example, on one end it is commonly agreed that all human settlements are notable, even with population zero. On the other end it is commonly agreed that you must provide an extremely strong arguments to prove that a pet of a common citizen is notable. I subscribe to a position that bilateral relations between states are notable once they are verifiable. Feel free to start general discussion in talk page of WP:N. - Altenmann >t 00:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You know I can accept that idea about verifiability being sufficient for this topic as far as you commenting in a discussion but you shouldn't close a discussion based on that opinion. I follow your line of thought however and it is not unreasonable. Still, I would say you should have closed it as "no consensus". Obviously there is a lot of leeway in an evolving situation and it's not an easy task to close some of these discussions and no doubt a lot of admins are steering clear of these so I don't want to give you a big hassle about it even though I don't agree and don't like it. Certainly you erred on the safe side of not deleting if you erred. Drawn Some (talk) 01:50, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by closing admin Let me remind you again that AfD is not a vote. Consensus is not defined by the numbers of voters but by validity of the arguments pro and contra. I explained that after expansion of the article the serious argument contra ("no reliable independent sources") became invalid. Arguments of kind "paucity of relations painfully evident" is dubious from the very beginning. It may only accepted a s a reason for "merge" somewhere. Argument "'relations' articles as a genre not acceptable" flies out of the window: we have plenty of this "genre". And so on. - Altenmann >t 15:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse the closing as Keep One editor wishing delete said "Delete with prejudice. "relations" articles as a genre not acceptable". The rest of the arguments for delete were because it lacked sources for the information presented other than the government websites. Since there is no possible reason to doubt the information on a government website -listing treaties, state visits, and whatnot- will be truthful, there is no reason to not have that count as a reference. Follow the spirit of the rule, not the exact wording. Isn't that how wikipedia works? If it was an article about a person, you would need a source for the information, other than the person themselves, since you can't always trust the information otherwise. But does anyone actually doubt the information in the article, presented by the government websites? Dream Focus 20:13, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I for one don't trust governments to report on themselves. Certainly they are not independent sources regardless of whether or not they may be trusted. You are also misrepresenting the discussion as far as the strengths of the positions. Drawn Some (talk) 20:21, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse The closer's reasoning seems quite sound - that the article was rescued. The early delete !votes were flimsy and the trend of the discussion followed the improvement of the article and the participation of the original author, who had not been notified at the outset. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• This should have been a delete, very clearly. Being extremely charitable still doesn't make it a "no consensus". "Keep" is just completely unrealistic as a conclusion, based both upon the !votes themselves and the nature of the votes. The same admin closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Team Picture as a "Keep" with the claim "seems to have been rescued" which is conceivable I guess but should more reasonably have been a "no consensus", with three Keep votes to two delete votes (and the Keep votes all being by editors notorious for voting Keep on pretty much every AFD they ever participate on -- at least one of whom was a Keep on the France – Papua New Guinea relations AFD and two of them are already endorsing Keep above -- this is gaming of the system, pure and simple, adn they do not even try to follow Wikipedia policies on notability). The admin who closed this seems to be operating with the assumption that AFD closure is some supervote that gets to overrule all other discussion. I'd strongly encourage this person not to close any more AFDs for the time being until all of the AFD closures can be examined, and in the France – Papua New Guinea relations case we should clearly have someone else put the actual Delete result there and overrule this way out of process decision. DreamGuy (talk) 20:21, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • RE "Team Picture": AfD is not vote. Arguments for deletion were overridden by "Article Rescue Squad" expanding / addressing the concerns. I don't see how the situation is different if the article were deleted and ARS recreated it in significantly expanded form. Feel free to renominate. - Altenmann >t 00:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse close as keep. AfDs are not votes and strength of arguements would be to keep; however, I a "no consensus" would also be reasonable in this case as well. The article was clearly improved during the course of the discussion and as such some of the initial deletes may not reflect these improvements that occurred as the discussion progressed, which is part of the reason why these are not votes, because in any given AfD, the first few accounts to comment can say to delete, but then maybe someone dramatically improves the article and only the final keep notices these improvements. Thus, the numbers might not reflect that actual developments, because the initial comments are not always revised based on the improvements. I can understand a "no consensus" close here, but I am not seeing evidence that Altenman is somehow biased here, so I hope that just because Docu was asked to avoid closing these as keeps, this isn't going to be a trend of going after admins who dare close any of these as keep, i.e. it's not going to be DRV after DRV (it is bad enough we are seeing renominations for deletion of ones that closed as keep a month ago). Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 21:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Houston, we have a problem. In my opinion the AfD, and this DRV, had more to do with two opposing groups of editors fighting to "beat" the other side than it did with collegial consideration of the merits of the article.

  I would like to propose a relist wherein !votes and comments from those who participated in the previous AfD are disregarded. I would also support a RfC if a previously uninvolved editor wants to start one.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 21:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• I would have closed it as "no consensus", but it's the same end result. Endorse. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:38, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly closing as "Keep" or "No consensus" preserves the article, but they're not the same thing. One one can argue sets a precedent, the other doesn't. Yilloslime ^T_C 23:19, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse as keep Despite Bali ultimate's attempt to remove the cited relevant 3rd party information he refers to in this discussion here, this page was saved thanks to good faith efforts by people who saw significance in the relations of these two countries. According to the BBC (the cite Bali ultimate tried to remove), that early contact by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville with the Islands of Papua New Guinea was a "key event" in the history of Papua New Guinea. Bali ultimate prefers to ignore the BBC and argue that it is irrelevant because Papua New Guinea wasn't a nation at the time. Besides being a perfect example of Bali ultimate's own subjective opinion regarding significance, to remove this type of information is also clearly against the trend in international relations articles, where early historical contacts between people from different places lead to significant relations between governments of countries that come later. See France-United States relations including information about relations from a time when neither the democratic governments of United States nor France existed. That information is clearly relevant to US-French relations today and I would oppose its removal. I would also like to point out that French-PNG relations exist in several spheres, economic, cultural, political and militarily and those relations were cited. Those ties could also have been found to be significant under the provisional guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject_International_relations#Bilateral_relations. I would like to thank Bali ultimate for alerting me to this discussion.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 22:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You should be embarrassed cdog that you think the mention of a frenchman having visited New Guinea, half of which became an independent nation 200 years later, is relevant to this bilateral relationship. That i didn't edit war over the non-inclusion of this piece of irrelevant historical trivia speaks rather well of me, in fact. There are still no reliable independent sources that discuss this posited bilateral relationship.Bali ultimate (talk) 22:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think if you look closely, you will see that this article is titled "France - Papua New Guinea relations", not "France - Papua New Guinea bilateral relations". They don't call it Bougainville Island for nothing. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 23:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What does the fact that a frenchmen landed at New Guinea when everyone there was wearing kotekas, there was no communication (language made that impossible) between him and the locals, and the notion of a PNG wasn't born for another 150 or so years?Bali ultimate (talk) 23:45, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much everything Bali ultimate is saying here is right on spot. I also wanted to delete the silliness about the discovery and especially the Alliance Francaise which is in more conspicuous in its absence than when present. Drawn Some (talk) 01:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You don't see a problem with the fact that Bali ultimate tries to remove the reliable sources and then tries to have the page deleted for not having reliable sources? No offense, but I trust the BBC a lot more than Bali ultimate when it comes to defining "key" moments in a country's history.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse as keep, or as "no consensus", per Dream Focus (on both points). Aridd (talk) 22:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and close as No Consensus or Delete. There was certainly not consensus for Keep. Not at 9D to 4K. Especially when some of those voting keeping obviously don't understand our Notability guidelines. (E.g.: "You don't need secondary sources unless someone has honest doubt about the primary source being valid"; " I disagree that government websites are not sufficient to establish notability." etc. Yilloslime ^T_C 22:34, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• endorse close I can see a good argument for why this should have been closed as no consensus rather than keep, but a keep seems within discretion here. JoshuaZ (talk) 23:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• endorse keep well with in discretion and the right result also. The relationship of a very major nation like France with anybody can reasonably be expected to be notable--& France has long had major interests in OceaniaDGG (talk) 00:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus –(edit conflict) Most of the reasons for deletion came before the first improvement on the article. Many of the reasons for keeping came after the first and second improvements on the article. Taking the improvement of the article during AFD in consideration and the dialogue in the AFD occurring after that first improvement, there was at the least a lack of any rough consensus. I find valid reasons on both sides of the debate otherwise; neither side "prevailed", if I may use that loaded term. MuZemike 00:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and delete - consensus was quite clearly for deletion. The stronger arguments were on that side as well. Yes, France controls some islands in the vicinity of PNG, and yes, a Frenchman once set foot on PNG, two centuries before that state gained independence. Interesting, but in no sense does that mean that any secondary sources have covered "France – Papua New Guinea relations". We can pretend they do by adducing bits of trivia designed to create just that appearance, but rather than deceiving our readers that this topic is validated by secondary sources, it's preferable to heed consensus and delete. - Biruitorul ^Talk 00:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Consensus was not for deletion. There was no consensus. You're trying to trivialise the relations between the two countries by focusing on minor aspects and leaving out their military and development relations, for example. Also, at least one of the deletion votes was based solely on an editor's view that all articles on bilateral relations (including, for example, France-UK or China-Japan) should be deleted. Aridd (talk) 06:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so they performed some joint exercises and France sent PNG some blankets. Is that any less trivial? Does that take us any closer to the actual topic "France – Papua New Guinea relations" having been covered by secondary sources? Would we ever care about such details outside this series of nonsense articles? No. - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to delete. There was 4 keep !votes, 3 arguing that govermental webpages establish notability. Essentially saying that we can forgo the requirement for independent sourcing in the case of bilateral relations. A viewpoint that is not in keeping with our notability guideline. And an editor that argues that we can base the article on the fact that a frenchman happened to stop by. Since the article in question gives no detail on relations between the two countries this is clearly trivial coverage. Taemyr (talk) 00:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. The article does give details on relations between the two countries. If you've actually read it, you know that very well. Aridd (talk) 06:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment A cursory google search quickly shows that the topic has coverage even in books: France and the South Pacific" By Stephen Henningham. ISBN 0824813057 - Altenmann >t 01:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse closure, I would have called it non-consensus default to keep but the end result is the same. -- Banjeboi 01:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and delete The arguments n favor of deletion and the number of editors calling for deletion are impressive. The comment by the closing admin of "rescued" shows amazing bias. This admin should be barred from closing afds of these bilateral articles, Edison (talk) 04:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. As the closing admin has explained, most "delete" votes were cast before the article was improved, and were simply left there once the article had evolved. Aridd (talk) 06:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The admin is making an assumption that the earlier voters aren't following the changes to the article. This is just an assumption, and is probably wrong for some voters (certainly wrong for in my case). Closing admins shouldn't be invaliding votes/arguments based on their assumptions about other users. Yilloslime ^T_C 19:45, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and delete per the consensus at the discussion. Extremely poor closure. Stifle (talk) 08:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn and delete, per consensus at the AfD. Cirt (talk) 10:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. There was no "consensus". It's misleading to imply that there was. And, as the closing admin noted, most of the delete votes were cast before the expansion of the article. Aridd (talk) 11:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and Delete After all I did do searches in both French and English and found a distinct lack of coverage. I have considered the improvements made subsequent to the nomination but they were mainly from primary sources. the French google search also found a lack of coverage from French media sources (which have well established news agencies in that country). LibStar (talk) 10:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

French media sources have well-established news agencies in PNG? Really? Which ones? This isn't an accusation; it's genuine curiosity. Aridd (talk) 11:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I meant that French media (major newspapers/TV stations like TV5MONDE) is well established and resources, whilst I can understand in PNG the media isn't as well established especially providing news sources onlines, I couldn't find evidence that in France, there was any real coverage of Papua New Guinea. LibStar (talk) 11:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and delete - poor close and a misreading of consensus in the discussion. Eusebeus (talk) 12:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse closure. Arguments of the closing admin presented above are convincing. At the same time I hope that the closing admin considers a number of comments here as a valid criticism: while he is right that AfD is not a vote, the closer must expect that when opinions are divided, the closure header must explain closure reasoning in detail, otherwise there are great chances that one side will feel injustice, and the closer will waste much more their time in defending their decision, as many other people weste their time here now. Mukadderat (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: This trend of taking every one of these that closed as keep within the past month or two to DRV or back to AfD as a second nomination is beginning to become disruptive in the sense of keep nominating or DRVing these articles until they are deleted rather than moving on or better yet working to improve them. How the same half dozen odd accounts saying to delete practically every one of these bilateral relations articles somehow is supposed to represent consensus is beyond me and a few token article creations doesn't really cancel out the larger effort here. But if we use a common sense standard of notability, certain countries' relations with pretty much every other country in the world are indeed inherently notable. France is one such country, because 1) it has a long colonial history going back centuries and as such fought every major colonial empire meaning that the colonies of those empires were involved in the broader conflicts with France and 2) France is a permanent member of the United Nations security council and as such has significant international influence. And for the record, France actually does have some colonial history here. See New_Ireland_(island)#History. From 16 January 1880 to about 1882, Charles-Marie-Bonaventure du Breuil, marquis de Rays (b. 1840? - d. 18..) established a settlement on New Ireland Island at Port-Breton called Colonie de la Nouvelle France. Brief, perhaps, but still a colonial and therefore historic relationship. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 21:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

File:SteinbeckCortez.jpg (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)

This image (which, I understand, was fair use) was - until it was deleted - the only image of the cover of John Steinbeck's book The Log from the Sea of Cortez included in the featured article of that name. On that basis, I think there is a justifiable fair use rationale to keep it.

There is a cover image remaining in that article - File:Sea-of-cortez-cover.jpg - but this is a different book, published by Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts in 1941, some 10 years before The Log from the Sea of Cortez. As the featured article explains, Steinbeck published The Log from the Sea of Cortez in 1951, after Ricketts was killed in 1948. It includes the narrative portion of Sea of Cortez, but excludes some material and adds other material. It is considered to be a completely separate work, published under Steinbeck's name alone. The article is about this second work, not the earlier one.

The image was either deleted pursuant to the FfD, or as a CSD G7 - see related discussion at User talk:Drilnoth. I'm not convinced there was consensus to delete in the FfD, or that it was eligible as a G7. In any event, I think there are good reasons why it should be restored and replaced in the article. Testing times (talk) 16:33, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from closing admin: I think I've said about all that I can on my talk page... I don't have any real opinion either way and was simply trying to determine consensus. Deleting per GiantSnowman's apparent G7 request seemed the least controversial way to close it (hmm... I guess I was wrong on that :) ), but I think that the consensus was to delete even if there wasn't a G7. I'm not going to comment on which of the two book covers should be used in the article, or if they both should, because I don't really have an opinion. I'm perfectly willing to perform and deletions/undeletions that are determined to be warranted by consensus in this discussion. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 16:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn to no consensus because there was no consensus in that debate. Permit immediate relisting because the grounds for deletion cited were fairly strong.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 18:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to keep Essentially different books. Fora a very major writer such as Steinbeck, such things are important. DGG (talk) 00:06, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse deletion per CSD:G7 and per the consensus at the debate. Stifle (talk) 08:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus. I'd like to note that NFCC 3a was not necessarily violated given the explanation by Testing times. Either way, it would seem more natural to list File:Sea-of-cortez-cover.jpg per 3a, and not the primary image used for identification. decltype (talk) 08:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn G7 is not sufficient reason to delete if the content is not harmful to the uploader if other editors think it should be included. And the information provided by testing times show that the images don't make eachother obsolete since they picture two different works. No valid reason for deletion has been given, so the decision should be overturned. - Mgm|^(talk) 08:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to Keep There is a clear reason to have it. If its considered a different book, or significantly different, then having both covers showing the name of the authors different(one of them mentioned on the first one, but not the second since they died and it got rewritten) can be valid for the article. And I think G7 is for articles, not pictures. It reads that way. Dream Focus 13:42, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: G7 is for all pages; if it was articles only it would be "A(#)". –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 15:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse the deletion: there was no procedure violations bu the closing admin: G7 is a valid reason. At the same time this discussion shows that the image indeed may be kept per fair use, hence "common sense" policy may hint that there would be much less hassle to restore the deleted image rather than to upload it again, if the original uploader will not object. Mukadderat (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn deletion the original uploader felt that the new picture was better, but it turns out it is of what is basically a different book. I'm feeling that at the least the original uploader should have been consulted to see if they were really requesting deletion or merely okay with it. In any case, while there were no procedural problems, I think it makes little sense to strip the article of a cover of the actual book. Hobit (talk) 01:43, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]