Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Western Iraq

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 speedy delete three per G5, restored original content for the remaining two per WP:DENY. ✗plicit 23:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Western Iraq[edit]

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A user has created several articles about geographical regions of Iraq which entirely lack proper sources. It is certain that the terms 'western Iraq', 'Northern Iraq' etc. have a generally understood meaning, but they are not government units or standard statistical areas. Instead, the article creator has simply imagined them and concocted a lot of fake references which don't support them. In this bundle of articles I have found some sources which refer to a particular governorate of Iraq and happen to mention its geographical location; other sources don't mention any governorates at all and are lists of cities; some sources are just random junk that don't support anything at all. The kindest thing I can say about these is that they are original research. To be clear the issue is not that these regions exist in reality but the articles are badly sourced; they do not exist in reality and sources that purport to show that they are, are fake. Mccapra (talk) 21:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update I’ve added two more articles to the bundle. Also I forgot to say in my original nomination that while the concepts of the article subjects (i.e. distinct “regions” of Iraq) are OR, the article content just consists of forks from the existing articles on individual governorates. Mccapra (talk) 06:55, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Iraq-related deletion discussions. Mccapra (talk) 21:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Mccapra, was your decision to not bundle Northern Iraq with these intentional? I came across that article a few days ago and had many of the same concerns you are presenting here. For Northern Iraq, my call was that there's enough GScholar coverage referring to it as a region such that GNG is almost certainly met, state of the article notwithstanding. But that may not be the case for the other geographical regions, and I could also see the case for deleting even the Northern article. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 23:14, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No I just didn’t see that one as far as I recall. It’s not a new article so I guess it didn’t show up at NPP where I found the others. Mccapra (talk) 23:31, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Any thoughts on bundling? I suspect that due to the Kurdish region, Northern Iraq could potentially be a more salient category than the other cardinal directions, but as I said that article suffers from OR issues too. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 23:36, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I’ve looked at it properly, I agree. The same issues exactly. While the term “northern Iraq” has a more commonly accepted general meaning, it’s still not any kind of official, statistical or other region, none of the “sources” support the definition, and the content isn’t even about a supposed entity of northern Iraq, it’s a cut and paste assembly of info that already exists in the individual governorate articles. I will add it to the bundle, along with Central Iraq, which I’ve just discovered. Mccapra (talk) 06:49, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 00:27, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect all to Geography of Iraq. To the extent that any of these cardinal divisions of Iraq are salient geographic entities, they should be described there (currently they are not). The current revisions of these articles are OR, and magnets for coatracking. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 07:06, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Article creator now blocked as a sockpuppet. Mccapra (talk) 21:18, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Delete as G5. No need to preserve content in a redirect. Pikavoom (talk) 07:12, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Delete created by a sockpuppet Shadow4dark (talk) 11:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any need for speedy deletion though? These are usable as plausible generic redirect titles. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 13:35, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Deny recognition. Redirects can be created after the content is deleted. Why keep the sock's contributions in the history? Pikavoom (talk) 16:59, 1 December 2021 (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.