Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Media independence
- 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. (non-admin closure) Lourdes 12:53, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
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Very comprehensive article, however largely a reproduction of the UNESCO report found here, page 102 onwards. Very much written essay style, with large sections of text copied right out of the article. While the license seems compatible, neutrality or independence may be questioned as largely aligned to the one base source. The topic is also already covered in Freedom of the press and other journalism/media related articles. No doubt an important topic, however this does have POVFORK elements and the UNESCO report should be referenced in existing articles where appropriate to allow a more comprehensive overview. pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 08:16, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 08:18, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 08:18, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
- Delete per nomination. The creator of the article, Sarah GM, appears to have made it their purpose in Wikipedia to upload long texts copied from published articles and papers written by other people and create articles out of them: Human rights and encryption; Online youth radicalization; Online hate speech; Multi-stakeholder governance; and so on and so forth.
- In their own words, editor Sarah GM is a "young graduate in Political science, International relations from Sorbonne." But this is not how Wikipedia works at all. Wikipedia is not a depository of scientific papers. -The Gnome (talk) 19:58, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
- Keep the article is of a notable subject (currently has 41 references) that is a distinct subject from Freedom of the press. The fact that it has been written for another purpose before does not make it unsuitable for Wikipedia, it is the same as a single Wikipedian writing an expansive article on their own. There may be issues with tone, but this is a reason to improve the article, not delete it, I've added a tag at the top of the page to encourage people to do this. It would be very helpful if there was more guidance on how to write in Wikipedia's tone. John Cummings (talk) 09:20, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- The best sourced texts are academic papers, practically by definition. The contested article is made up of text lifted up wholesale from a specific paper. This practice has been openly declared by the article's creator, and can be found in perhaps half a dozen other articles so far, created by the same user. No matter how "well written" or "well sourced" the academic paper is, Wikipedia is not a depository of scientific papers. The Wikipedia article on "media independence," if it should exist at all, remains to be written. -The Gnome (talk) 09:22, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
- Keep Article needs amending as per MoS, but other than that it's good, notable, well referenced content and belongs here. The editor's qualifications aren't relevant so why bring them up? Battleofalma (talk) 10:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think anyone has questioned the qualification of the author - this is primarily about the closeness of the author to the topic, which in this case probably includes the vested interests of John Cummings as UNESCO Wikipedian in residence. Allow me to reiterate the main concern: the article in question is essentially a reproduction of a UNESCO report - it follows its thinking, its structure, uses the same headlines and terminology and goes as far as including entire passages or slightly rephrased passages. The addition of sources give it an appearance of being broadly covered, however, they are largely the same sources included in the very same report. If this was the work of a WP editor in the absence of the UNESCO report, this would probably fall into the category of WP:OR or publication of original essay work. Wikipedia is not the place for editors to reproduce entire works published elsewhere, especially if originated by other governments, supranational organisations, NGOs, consultants or other interest groups. This undermines Wikipedia's reputation as unbiased source of information. Yes, the topic per se is of interest and - personally - I'd like to see an article on this. However as this article is far too closely aligned to one previously published work, I believe this is a case of WP:TNT.pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 12:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Jake Brockman: If that theory was true, our coverage of US military history would have to be deleted wholesale (see the category documenting that group of content). We evaluate each article on its coverage of the topic, not by the style or source of that information. Complex concepts like media independence are probably best compiled by experts, and its is our job to incrementally improve that to better meet the expectations of the Wikimedia community. Sadads (talk) 13:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Sadads: This appears somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand you admit that the subject is complex (I agree!) and best compiled by experts, then again you state that it should be *evaluated* by the community. Clearly, this community consists of volunteers who, most likely, are not experts. How can a mere mortal ever evaluate the work of so-called experts? This is a dangerous precedent. On the one hand, COI editing is disallowed, but then we are supposed to regurgitate something published by organisations with their own agendas under the veil of "being experts". Why then don't we just hand over the articles for companies, products or artists to their marketing or PR teams? Surely they are the experts? I don't quite see the community of volunteers as the mop-up team for all this closely related original thought editing. Clearly, UNESCO (or the UN in general) is not free of inherent, systemic political bias. Whatever is published is a consensus of power structures within. Taking something systemically biased as a starting point to reach neutrality IMO will never work. Btw, I don't disagree with your point about military history articles, although I know you don't mean it. Military history tends to be written by the winners and government sources should be used with extreme caution. I'd rather not have an article than have one that is a copy/paste job from a govt. website under public license, hoping that 10 years from now someone will notice inherent errors.pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 13:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Sadads:@Jake Brockman: I think the qualifications of the editor were clearly brought up erroneously as some sort of criticism. This article has 41 citations from reliable sources. The subject is notable, and covered by a wide-range of organisations and isn't just a niche UNESCO idea, the COI is something to manage but it's being managed actively by the WiR, it needs some amendments as per MoS but other than that there's no reason for deletion. Battleofalma (talk) 13:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Sadads: This appears somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand you admit that the subject is complex (I agree!) and best compiled by experts, then again you state that it should be *evaluated* by the community. Clearly, this community consists of volunteers who, most likely, are not experts. How can a mere mortal ever evaluate the work of so-called experts? This is a dangerous precedent. On the one hand, COI editing is disallowed, but then we are supposed to regurgitate something published by organisations with their own agendas under the veil of "being experts". Why then don't we just hand over the articles for companies, products or artists to their marketing or PR teams? Surely they are the experts? I don't quite see the community of volunteers as the mop-up team for all this closely related original thought editing. Clearly, UNESCO (or the UN in general) is not free of inherent, systemic political bias. Whatever is published is a consensus of power structures within. Taking something systemically biased as a starting point to reach neutrality IMO will never work. Btw, I don't disagree with your point about military history articles, although I know you don't mean it. Military history tends to be written by the winners and government sources should be used with extreme caution. I'd rather not have an article than have one that is a copy/paste job from a govt. website under public license, hoping that 10 years from now someone will notice inherent errors.pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 13:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Jake Brockman: If that theory was true, our coverage of US military history would have to be deleted wholesale (see the category documenting that group of content). We evaluate each article on its coverage of the topic, not by the style or source of that information. Complex concepts like media independence are probably best compiled by experts, and its is our job to incrementally improve that to better meet the expectations of the Wikimedia community. Sadads (talk) 13:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think anyone has questioned the qualification of the author - this is primarily about the closeness of the author to the topic, which in this case probably includes the vested interests of John Cummings as UNESCO Wikipedian in residence. Allow me to reiterate the main concern: the article in question is essentially a reproduction of a UNESCO report - it follows its thinking, its structure, uses the same headlines and terminology and goes as far as including entire passages or slightly rephrased passages. The addition of sources give it an appearance of being broadly covered, however, they are largely the same sources included in the very same report. If this was the work of a WP editor in the absence of the UNESCO report, this would probably fall into the category of WP:OR or publication of original essay work. Wikipedia is not the place for editors to reproduce entire works published elsewhere, especially if originated by other governments, supranational organisations, NGOs, consultants or other interest groups. This undermines Wikipedia's reputation as unbiased source of information. Yes, the topic per se is of interest and - personally - I'd like to see an article on this. However as this article is far too closely aligned to one previously published work, I believe this is a case of WP:TNT.pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 12:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- Clear Keep We include work from the US Government and not reliable sources in the public Domain (such as the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica). I don't see how this is any different, and the content is probably more reliable from the UN, than from other sources. Rewriting, cleaning up, and incrementally removing content, is much better than WP:TNT. Sadads (talk) 12:47, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- We include work from everywhere, including from the US government, as long as the "everywhere" are reliable sources per Wikipedia. Incidentally, we do not use "not reliable sources" - at least we do not condone their use, which means that if we find out a source is unreliable it is discarded.
- But we include such work as a source, though. We do not use the text as an article. What the creator of this article seems to be doing is essentially uploading papers (written by others) onto Wikipedia, paraphrased of course, and creating new articles. The practice is explicitly forbidden: Wikipedia is not a depository of scientific papers. -The Gnome (talk) 09:16, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
- @The Gnome: That is actually a false set of assumptions and statements: see the category documenting that group of content using US Gov text in the article and the category for articles that use EB 1911 text. Other language Wikipedias do the same thing regularly as well. We can use source material that is appropriately and compatibly licensed, as long as they are attributed correctly, and the text is converted into Encyclopedically appropriate writing. This has been a practice since I started contributing in the community in 2005-8, and with rise of Open Access content, could be a powerful way for us to cover topics that are hard for volunteers to synthesize. That doesn't mean that the article should "stay as it is now", rather that the source text offers a foundation for us to expand, refine and better meet our audience. Sadads (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
- I made no assumptions and I fully stand by my statements. The two Categories to which Sadads linked actually support my position and run contra to what Sadads claims.
- In the first one, "Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from public domain works of the United States Government", we find articles that reference various texts published and made available by the US gov't. At random, we pick a sub-category, "Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges", where articles such as for example "Rosemary Barkett" cite that directory. Nothing illegitimate or even controversial about that! In the other category, "Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica", we find exactly the same thing: For example, the article "John Abernethy (surgeon)" cites the Britannica. Again nothing untoward.
- All the articles in these two categories (there many other such categories) are fully legitimate, and about subjects of independent notability. What we're dealing with in this AfD, though, is wholesale transformation of scientific papers into articles. And this is not the same thing at all. We can use 1911 Britannica and US gov't texts in the public domain as sources, yes, but if we start uploading verbatim texts from these sources and make them out as articles we're violating policy. Wikipedia is not a depository of scientific papers. -The Gnome (talk) 21:34, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
- These publications are not scientific papers, UNESCO publications almost exclusively secondary or tertiary sources. John Cummings (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- That may be true (though I am not sure and "almost" does restrict the statement), however no matter how this AfD ends, I feel this may warrant a broader discussion with the community. The main issue I see is how far WP:OR and WP:NPOV actually go: is something that was published as original research by an organisation/individual/government and reproduced on Wikipedia very closely to the original publication still OR (effectively OR by proxy) and if so, how does this close relationship to a previously published piece fare with independence or neutrality. If such a discussion has been had, maybe someone could post this, I did not find anything.pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 09:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- @The Gnome, John Cummings, Sadads, Battleofalma, and Sarah GM: this has now been posted on the OR noticeboard at Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Reproductions of studies or other such publications pseudonym Jake Brockman talk 09:48, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- These publications are not scientific papers, UNESCO publications almost exclusively secondary or tertiary sources. John Cummings (talk) 07:53, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- @The Gnome: That is actually a false set of assumptions and statements: see the category documenting that group of content using US Gov text in the article and the category for articles that use EB 1911 text. Other language Wikipedias do the same thing regularly as well. We can use source material that is appropriately and compatibly licensed, as long as they are attributed correctly, and the text is converted into Encyclopedically appropriate writing. This has been a practice since I started contributing in the community in 2005-8, and with rise of Open Access content, could be a powerful way for us to cover topics that are hard for volunteers to synthesize. That doesn't mean that the article should "stay as it is now", rather that the source text offers a foundation for us to expand, refine and better meet our audience. Sadads (talk) 17:16, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:57, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:57, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
- Keep. The term "media independence" is well-established, with over 5,000 exact-phrase results from Google Scholar. The article is well-sourced with inline citations from reliable sources. The license of the source material (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) makes it eligible for inclusion on Wikipedia. While the tone of the article needs adjustment, and there may be conflict of interest or neutrality concerns, neither of these issues would justify the deletion of the article, since the concept of "media independence" is notable and verifiable, and there are no licensing issues with the text. Newslinger (talk) 11:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
- Keep and rewrite. The term is fairly well known and notable enough to have its own article. However, it is not written in an encyclopedic tone, and Wikipedia still is an encyclopedia, not a collection of papers and essays. WP:OR issues need to be fixed, but that would be better than deleting an article on a topic that is definitely notable enough to have one. Tillerh11 (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2018 (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.