Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2013 July 13

Murder of Shaima Alawadi (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Although there was a consensus during the AfD for the article in question, I believe that if due diligence was carried out, in accordance with deletion policy, that the AfD would not have began in the first place. I would have contested the AfD while it was active, but unfortunately real life (including work) got in the way. The reasoning for the AfD was WP:PERSISTENCE, however if we look at WP:EVENT & WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE, I believe that I can show that it meets notability as required by WP:EVENT. The event which is the subject of the article in question occurred in March of 2013, significant coverage was received by the event from multiple non-primary reliable sources, including internationally, thus the event meet notability as required by WP:GNG. Even after the first month passed, significant coverage was received by the event including by NBC News, ABC News, and the Associated Press. As I stated at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion#Murder of Shaima Alawadi, the last major coverage of the event occurred in January 2013, and the possible reason why no further coverage has occurred since then, is cause the next hearing regarding this case doesn't occur until 25 JUL 2013. And since notability does not degrade even if the event doesn't receive as much significant coverage as time passes, it has no effect on level of notability that the subject has already received. The closing Admin, has contacted me on my talk page, and has suggested I open this review rather than the request for undeletion. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I've restored the article's history for reference. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:14, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• If I recall, there was relevant discussion on the talk page of the article, too.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Undeleted, as well. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:23, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:51, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Obviously I'm involved in every possible capacity except administrative (I created the article and also nominated it for deletion) - I endorse the deletion. I don't think there was anything irregular about the discussion - the participants simply have a more stringent interpretation of WP:EVENT than RCLC does, and that's okay. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• What metric did you use to decide that Persistence had failed?  Was your nomination argument intended to be a WP:NOT deletion or a WP:N deletion?  Unscintillating (talk) 04:32, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I ran searches and found only routine coverage, of the sort that one will find about any news story because journalists have got to make a living somehow. The most recent RS coverage of any kind seems to have been in November 2012, when her husband pled not guilty and we got three sentences of new coverage (plus a re-hash of the whole case for people who had forgotten, but I'm not sure that says much), in one AP story. One or two more sources had picked up the husband's arrest a few days earlier but apparently didn't even bother to follow up. The argument here is a failure of WP:EVENT and specifically its WP:PERSISTENCE requirement, EVENT being a subset of our WP:N notability guidelines. WP:NOTNEWS has a headnote to event notability for a reason. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:43, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with this interpretation of WP:PERSISTENCE, I don't think that any one could argue that the even received significant coverage within the month that the event occurred. The contention between Roscelese and myself appears to be what continuing coverage of the event, and its outcome warrants continued coverage. As shown by Roscelese is that coverage occurred at least until November 2012, and I have shown above how coverage continues into 2013. Now the event itself does not fall under what we find as a list of examples in WP:ROUTINE, and furthermore the event and the continuing coverage is not a brief mention in a crime log or pre-scheduled event, but rather in-depth coverage of the unfolding outcome of the event as stated in WP:ROUTINE, and therefore gives the event non-primary reliable sourced in-depth continued coverage. This meets WP:EVENT & WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE IMHO.

As shown below the subject of the event, and its coverage, received in-depth coverage in Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance where there is a section called "Campaigning for the Victim?", which likened the killing (when it was thought to be a hate crime) to the death of Trayvon Martin.

Sure it was mistaken as a hate crime initially, which lead to a large part of the initial coverage, but as Richard-of-Earth said in response to an IP's call for deletion of this article.

When the murder hit the newspapers it was thought to be a hate crime, so it gained notablity. See WP:NTEMP. People who still think it was a hate crime can come here and get the correct, cited information.

— Richard-of-Earth, 31 March 2013

A better question is why delete this article, now that it has been shown/dis proven that the event is not a hate crime, as it was originally believed? As stated by the above editor in the initial statement of the AfD, the article was created because the editor thought it was a hate crime, and that since that is no longer the case, that it is no longer notable? It shouldn't matter whether the event was a hate crime, or not, the question is does it meet WP:GNG, WP:EVENT, & WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 19:11, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I see no problem with the AfD. That said, there is plenty of coverage, including in books ([1] has some pretty detailed coverage). Even in the last 24 hours her death has been mentioned in the press (not English, so I'm unsure how much is really there) [2]. The number of gnews hits is quite large, including detailed coverage from the NYT, BBC, etc. I'll go with endorse closure but IAR relist as I believe this is well above our notability bar and given that it is still being referenced in the news, meets WP:EVENT and the like. Hobit (talk) 16:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse and relist per Hobit. Parroting what others have said: there's clearly nothing wrong with the AfD, and consensus was properly judged, etc. But it was low participation, and I think there's good reason to suspect this topic may be deemed notable with a bit more digging, such as what Hobit's done above -- particularly given the sort of secondary narrative of how this case went from being called a "hate crime" to being, well, not at all a hate crime. The book Hobit sources above appears to be discussing the manner in which this case' depiction in the media changed, which makes the case more interesting as a Wikipedia article, IMO. Put another way, if I saw this at AfD, I'd vote keep, so while I know we're only here to determine whether consensus was properly judged in the AfD -- and it was -- I'd like to see this close endorsed and still give the article another shot. Or, you know, just "per Hobit." :) ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 21:56, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

1. Carl W. Ernst (2013-03-20). Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-137-29008-3. Retrieved 2013-07-14. The Alawadi murder...became a poster child of Muslim honor killings and violence against women.... The link to family violence, not proven so far either, gave fodder to the Islamophobic propaganda machine...

• The general issue with WP:ROUTINE is that the topic easily passes WP:GNG, which means that the topic passes WP:N without regard to other notability guidelines.  So it is necessary to turn to WP:NOT#NEWSPAPER to obtain a policy basis for the removal of such material.  Some may have the idea that WP:GNG notability is somehow reduced by being an event, but this is not to my knowledge something in the guidelines.  In general, WP:ROUTINE means that we don't cover events that are more statistics than history.  By the essence of the concept, books are not newspapers, and events that appear in books are not routine.

I argued at AfD2 that the wp:geoscope for this topic was worldwide.  I am now satisfied by the Ernst book of March 2013 that the topic satisfies WP:NOT.  On the other hand, the current article somehow does not bring out the aspects of this case that have attracted so much attention, which may explain the current result more so than any policy or guideline page.

In the current AfD, the closing admin provides no explanation for the closing, doesn't mention two drive-by !votes, says nothing about the relationship between WP:N and WP:NOT#NEWSPAPER, and says nothing about the absence of comments about the previous AfDs and the talk page discussion.  Editors are left not knowing the result of the AfD.  There is a presumption that the result was obtained by vote-counting. 

Incubate  What would be practical is to move the article to the incubator until at least July 25, when the next hearing occurs in San Diego.  This would provide time to update the article with the Ernst book, and would procedurally allow for a new AfD when the article returns from the incubator.  I am also not opposed to an overturn to keep, or overturn to wrong venue as per WP:Merging.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• What we've got here is a good close by Mark Arsten, but a defective discussion, in that the AfD failed to unearth the sources that have come to light in this DRV. We shouldn't get into an in-depth analysis of those sources here because that's not DRV's role. We need to send it back to AfD for a closer look.—S Marshall T/C 01:22, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• You've got three AfDs and a merger discussion on the talk page, how close a look do you need?  Requiring another AfD discussion is related to forum shopping because you didn't like the last result.  How does incubate until July 25 not solve all of the problems?  Unscintillating (talk) 03:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I think that what we need is an AfD that examines the sources. The way Wikipedia is at the moment, it might take quite a few. I strongly agree with what Jclemens says below about running off all our inclusionists. It leads to defective AfDs.—S Marshall T/C 09:12, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn as achieving the clearly wrong outcome, per Hobit and S Marshall. WP:NOT#NEWSPAPER provides no reason for exclusion of material covered in so many venues. For some reason, the AfD just wound up with a clearly wrong result. Have we run off all our inclusionists such that no one even bothered to check for sources during the AfD? It sure looks like it, and I'll admit my own fault in not following AfDs closely enough to notice this one. Jclemens (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn I do not mind deletionist's zeal, but really? A contested AfD that doesn't examine sources and sourcing validity is a pro-forma rubber stamp, exactly what AfDs shouldn't be. I do have a problem with "Murder of" articles in general as a title - they are an unencyclopedic loopholing of BLP/BIO/EVENT requirements - but not with the content. I haven't looked at the article, just the AfDs, but damn, does sourcing even matter anymore? TL;DR: agree with Hobit, S Marshall, and Jclemens. --Cerejota (talk) 16:56, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn AfD3 without prejudice and relist. Fails WP:EVENT and WP:PERSISTENCE (AfD3) but passes WP:GNG (AfD2, I see independent secondary sources). AfD was too poorly attended and more attention is needed to develop a consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:06, 17 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]