Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Romania–Singapore relations

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. MBisanz ^talk 03:12, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Romania–Singapore relations

Contested prod. Only reason given was "rm silliness." One side doesn't even have an embassy. No real relations of which to speak. Jd027 (talk) 15:41, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Fails WP:N--I could not find non-trivial coverage of this topic in independent secondary sources. Consensus at previous AfDs is that the mere existence of diplomatic relations does not constitute notability. See, for example this, this, this, this, this, etc. Yilloslime ^T_C 16:52, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Easy keep - the only way to not find nontrivial coverage in independent secondary sources is to avoid looking.[1][2][3][4] and so forth. Wily D 18:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Those articles are indeed independent and secondary, but they're coverage of the topic of international relations between Romania and Singapore is trivial at best. Yilloslime ^T_C 18:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not for any reasonable definition of the word trivial. Wily D 14:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would also note that none of the sources or references found by WilyD have yet made their way into the article, nor has the one external link present in the article right now been referenced in any meaningful, contextual way to the text of the article. --BlueSquadronRaven 17:55, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, all they do is serve to establish that the subject is appropriate for inclusion as an article. Wily D 11:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - a one-day visit by Romania's President on a five-country tour 7 years ago doesn't give us much to write an article about. Also, both countries have GDPs of well over $200 billion, so $15 million in trade is a drop in the bucket. Other than that, this is the typical no-content, non-notable bilateral relations article, and should be deleted as such. - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:54, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete for the same reason that I used in the Romania-Uzbekistan deletion debate, replacing "Uzbekistan" with "Singapore". DitzyNizzy (aka Jess)|(talk to me)|(What I've done) 19:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep with the addition of the news items referenced by Wily D. Although I understand the drop in the bucket argument (15 mil is less than 1/1000th of $200 billion) I cannot imagine, by analogy, that we would delete any of the articles on "United States and ______ relations" by comparing amount of trade to the combined GDP's of the U.S. and the other nation. Mandsford (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I'm tired of repeating myself, but the same arguments I emphasized in about ten identical precedents so far should also apply here. Dahn (talk) 20:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Good work by WillyD to find the sources. A Presidential visit is a big deal in the diplomatic world, even if he visited other countries at the same time, and the trade is significant if not enormous. Cool3 (talk) 23:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. WilyD's saved it, I think.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 23:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep WilyD to the rescue, confirming notability (though someone should put the references in the article). Pastor Theo (talk) 02:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - world leaders love to travel. Yes, state visits make the news, but they're not evidence of particular importance in a relationship. Nothing indicates that President Iliescu did anything more in Singapore than shake a few hands, sit down for a dinner, and sign a few pieces of paper affecting very few citizens of either country. Note especially that in the seven years since the visit, nothing newsworthy has happened regarding the relationship. (Well, Loredana Groza did sing there in 2007 to commemorate 40 years of relations, before the French, American, British, Saudi and other ambassadors, and kicked off a "Romanian month", but after all, the embassy does have to do something to justify its existence.) So I continue to argue that one visit, even by a head of state, doesn't do much to change the equation.
Regarding bilateral trade: the US (officially) has zero trade with North Korea, Cuba and Iran, but of course those relations are highly notable, more for their adversity than anything else. I'm sure, though, one can find a handful of US-X relations where very little trade occurs and where one could claim a lack of notability based on that and the absence of other notability-creating factors. São Tomé and Príncipe – United States relations, Netherlands Antilles – United States relations (the Netherlands Antilles aren't even a state, so that really should go), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – United States relations come to mind. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Notability isn't inherited from brief visits from senior politicians or generated by tiny amounts of trade. In-depth sourcing is needed to meet WP:N, and that's not the case here. Nick-D (talk) 08:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, your personal opinion of whether these things are notable or not is irrelevant because they have been the subject of substantial coverage in reliable sources so tough luck. Hilary T (talk) 19:28, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

— Hilary T (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - a) just because an article can exist, doesn't mean it should; b) "X has relations with Y and, by the way, the President of Y visited X for a day once" isn't really an article. There's no evidence a comprehensive article could be created out of this subject. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The article is sufficient so that right now it holds value as a piece of a reference encyclopaedia. The plethera of sources suffice to show that a decent article can be constructed, which's really what's necessary. Wily D 19:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What the "article" now contains (and no, it's not an actual article, nor can it be one) is precisely recorded at the respective "Diplomatic missions of..." articles. - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's difficult to respond to statements not grounded in fact. It's transparently an article. That's it's stub/start class is not a criterion for deletion, but expansion. Wily D 20:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, even a single sentence can be called an article (not that this has much more). But actual articles (as opposed to bits of text masquerading as such) have some actual content, say 3-4 paragraphs at a minimum. One can't get there with this subject, which is in fact a good reason to delete it. Mentioning a one-day visit that had no impact isn't going to help much - that's essentially trivia, not evidence of any sort of meaningful relationship. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Three to four paragraphs is a fairly high standard, and one that flies in the face of standard practice. Someone who spoke Romanian or ... Cantonese?(What's the main language of Singapore?) could probably expand it without much difficulty, especially if they lived in one of the countries and could easily access bigger libraries which'd have relevent local content. Wily D 20:58, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what "standard practice" you're referring to: every article should at least in theory have the potential to reach FA status, and that could never happen here. Romanian is my native language and no, I haven't found anything except that one story on Loredana Groza singing at the embassy. The "sources might exist, so let's wait for an industrious editor to make his way to the Romanian National Library just to embark on a probably fruitless search allowing this article to expand" argument is a) improbable and b) irrelevant, since the burden of proof lies on those defending the article to find sources showing clear notability, something which has yet to occur. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep If diplomatic relations are not notable, then why have Template:Foreign relations of Romania and Template:Foreign relations of Singapore? As long as Category:Bilateral relations of Romania and Category:Bilateral relations of Singapore are populated with articles, I don't see why this particular one should be deleted. I am in favor of creating a consensus on what "relations" articles are appropriate, but not of deleting them on a case by case basis with no standard. — Reinyday, 01:41, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Keep per WP:N RenegadeMonster (talk) 16:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. The three lone facts in this article (date of establishment and location of embassies) can be more than adequately covered in the "Foreign Relations of" articles listed in the "See also" section. Any major diplomatic incidents between the two countries would be more appropriate for history articles for each nation. If there were more to relations between these two countries than would be conceivably covered in existing articles, it would have surfaced since the article's creation. --BlueSquadronRaven 23:24, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep, another one by WilyD? Please do some research guys! --can dle •wicke 23:44, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, I'^mperator 01:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Singapore-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think merging should be considered for these things, with a disambiguation page left behind. In my opinion this topic passes WP:N but I'm not sure about how many events we have to talk about. Being generous: establishment of relations = 1, presidential visit =2, tax treaty=3, but judging from the sources it's never going to be so big it wouldn't fit in a list of relations. Nerfari (talk) 21:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or merge. I'm on the fence on this. There are 200-some countries and territories so do we need a "relations" article for every combination? I'm sure there is some documentation for all of them somewhere but is there enough to justify an article or should it grown in the parent article(s) instead? -- Banjeboi 07:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete non-notable bilateral relationship about which there is no meaningful commentary or sourced coverage anywhere on the planet. Nothing encyclopedic established.Bali ultimate (talk) 20:16, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- What about the meaningful commentary and sourced coverage already discussed in this discussion? WilyD 21:08, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I look at those "sources" and see nothing as to meaningful commentary or sustained analysis of this irrelevant bilateral relationship. I understand that you apparently see something very different. I can't help you with that.Bali ultimate (talk) 22:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Well, for one thing, the four articles you sourced cover the same single event - A presidential visit by Romania to Singapore. Hmmm, there was a tax treaty announced at that meeting... which was likely hammered out months in advance by junior ministers and bureaucrats in both countries and had nothing to do with the visit except for staging the announcement. So, thank you for providing coverage of the 2002 presidential visit to Singapore by Ion Iliescu. You could write an article about that from this, but since many people probably fell asleep when this came on the news in 2002, who'd read it? How many times do things like this happen between countries in a year? It's darn near routine. Are they always so Earth-shattering and world-shaping as this? Can you get something out of more than one year, so as to give us something that even resembles ongoing, long-term, third-party coverage? This doesn't even scratch the surface of WP:N. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Two stories makes it more than one event. They don't have to be WP:INTERESTING to pass WP:N. I still recommend merging however. Nerfari (talk) 21:42, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - There just isn't an appropriate merge target (nevermind that folding every set of bilateral relations of a country into a single article would result in articles that'd take weeks to download over dialup modems.) Wily D 11:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        For all the substance of them, I'm guessing not so long. --BlueSquadronRaven 16:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        
        I suggest creating Bilateral relation of Romania and/or Bilateral relations of Singapore. Anything which is short and lacks potential for expansion could be merged there, (whether or not it technically satisfies WP:N) while longer articles could be or those with potential could be linked to in a summary style. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think a perfect solution exists for a set of subtopics which fall in-between two main topics. Nerfari (talk) 19:09, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        New articles do not need to be created for that. There is already Foreign relations of Romania and Foreign relations of Singapore. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Romania has an ambassador in Singapore, which indicates a serious political interest. (Precedents about ambassadors not proving "notability" only demonstrate an unwise decision & should be ignored.) -- llywrch (talk) 17:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- That fact is duly noted at Diplomatic missions of Romania. - Biruitorul ^Talk 17:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - And is that list the appropriate place to explain what duties & interests the ambassador has in Singapore? If one answers that question, I believe one begins to turn this article from a stub to something useful. -- llywrch (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Do those duties & interests differ in any significant way from those of Romania's many other ambassadors? - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:10, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article's topic is fine, and may grow over time. Dream Focus 22:42, 10 April 2009 (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.