Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Operation Phantom Linebacker

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. Randykitty (talk) 08:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Phantom Linebacker[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Notability, verifiability, only source cited is a dead link to an MNF-I page RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 21:56, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Military, Iraq, Syria, and United States of America. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 21:56, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Fails WP:GNG and the sole reference is no longer a working link. Doing a quick search only found 2 articles making brief mentions of Operation Phantom Linebacker. Even if it had proper references I’m not sure if this is notable enough for an article but am open to be swayed in discussion. 2 kewl fer skool (talk) 23:24, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of South Korea-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 22:47, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: There are not a lot of web results for this, so I was sbeginning to suspect it was completely made-up, but this news article (2004-08-15) predates the creation of ours (2004-08-18) by a couple days, so at least there's that. Also this from the Associated Press via Boston.com and this from the Los Angeles Times (the latter of which is entirely about this operation). I think this swings me to "keep". jp×g 08:09, 4 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That takes care of verifiability as far as the existence of the topic is concerned, but…

One AP brief (plus a local news article directly based on it) and a single brief article in a major newspaper just don’t pass GNG. The topic is not notable enough, unless there is a large body of analysis on its success/failure that has yet to be declassified. Anyone want to make a FOIA request? ;) RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 08:57, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@RadioactiveBoulevardier: It looks like WP:THREE to me, but I will be totally honest with you: I'm probably not going to improve the page myself, and I don't have a strong opinion. Do you really think it is a dud? If so, I suppose I am fine with deleting it. jp×g 15:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think it fails GNG. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 03:10, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗plicit 23:38, 9 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per above. Might be notable when related documents were declassified, but for now not much can be written about the subject. Tutwakhamoe (talk) 02:05, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: agreed that it's not a great article at the moment, but topic seems to pass WP:GNG; a start-class article could at least in theory be written from the AP and LA Times articles, and there's a passing mention here and here. Another article here discusses the Saudi response to the operation. Mindful of WP:DINC that the article's quality shouldn't have a bearing on whether it's deleted. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 13:19, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mind setting forth in more detail why the topic passes GNG? RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 20:40, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sure: the core of WP:GNG is a subject is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. That's a judgement on the quality of the sources that exist, not a judgement on the article as it is currently written.

The meaning of significant coverage is important: the bar to clear here is Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. As long as we have "more than a trivial mention" of the operation, then, the source counts towards GNG, as long as the source itself is reliable. Since military operations don't themselves run press operations, we can discount "independent" in this context, though I can't see that doing so changes anything here.
We have:
This article in the LA Times: a fairly unimpeachable HQRS, 800 words or so (hard to argue that's not WP:SIGCOV!), entirely about the operation.

This article indirectly from the AP: again, unimpeachable source, SIGCOV, including the operation itself, its context, the motives for it and the international reaction.

this article from Dawn, a major Pakistani newspaper of record: not a huge article, but significant coverage within the meaning of WP:SIGCOV above. Useful for the international (Saudi) reaction to the operation.
A commonly-used informal standard is WP:THREE: if the three best sources available on the topic stand up, it should stay; otherwise, it shouldn't. To me, this is a pretty clear pass on those grounds: it also meets the multiple requirement of WP:GNG; strictly speaking, THREE is a higher standard than GNG.
Further sources don't necessarily need to have WP:SIGCOV, once GNG is met, but have useful information:
this book talks about the operation in light of its long-term aftermath, and how it fitted into an evolving US strategy for policing the border (specifically, that they decided to us US border control officers rather than Iraqi soldiers)

This book is by the same author as the first; I can't read it in full and it seems to cover similar material (specifically, linking the operation to the evolution of border control within the US), but it helps to show us that this topic has been covered in reliable, mainstream, published sources.
UndercoverClassicist (talk) 21:02, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. But as there have been one or two delete votes, I believe this would have to stay open even if I were to withdraw. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 01:33, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're completely right (though if you've changed your initial assessment, you should ~~strike it~~ to help the closing administrator establish consensus). I'm involved in another attempted AfD rescue at the moment, but , assuming this one does pass, I might have a go at putting something together from those sources. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 06:16, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Admittedly an edge case as discussed above, but in those cases I'd prefer to err on the side of inclusion. There have now been enough RS unearthed to add proper citations to the article, even if it probably won't ever make it far beyond start class. --Tserton (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough.

To be honest, my views on notability may be impacted by WP:BIAS. It would be extremely helpful if someone with the know-how to find archived Arabic-language news and RS (which had far less of an internet presence in 2004) could search around a bit.

In any event, the article has serious issues and I’m glad I managed to attract attention so that it can hopefully be improved. RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 20:48, 15 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per UndercoverClassicist's research. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:41, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – republication of the AP brief results in an amplification the apparent amount of coverage using Newspapers.com (51 matches in U.S. newspapers), but the sources identified by UndercoverClassist satisfy the significant coverage by multiple independent sources needed for WP:GNG (in addition to offering international perspective). I would also like to note a subsequent LA Times article and George Mason University working paper briefly referring to the operation. Unlikely to be anything more than a skeletal article, but appears to be a marginally notable and verifiable topic. –TheAustinMan^{(Talk ⬩ Edits)} 22:00, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[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.