Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of insurgent fatality reports in Afghanistan

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. While several of the arguments for keeping merely state "it's useful," I do not find the arguments for deletion to be convincing. As is, the article does violate WP:IINFO (only because of the "excessive listing of statistics" clause), but because there is an easily defined rationale for inclusion in the list, I see this as a problem to be fixed by editing rather than deletion. Furthermore, it should be noted that the article does not fail the fourth criteria of WP:IINFO ("News reports") becuase the reports included are used as references, not as a basis for an article. Malinaccier (talk) 00:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of insurgent fatality reports in Afghanistan[edit]

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

This article should be deleted as it is an indiscriminate collection of information. It was created by one of the many sock puppets User:Top Gun has employed in attempts to evade their indefinite block, and has mainly been edited by Top Gun using sock puppet and IP accounts. Top Gun's editing pattern is to hoover up random news reports of casualties in ongoing wars and create giant lists of them, including OR casualty totals. Many of these articles have been previously deleted, including the corresponding article for the Iraq War (see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of insurgent fatality reports in Iraq) and this list should join them as it is nothing but a large list of news reports. Nick-D (talk) 05:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Nick-D (talk) 05:17, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as an indiscriminate list of information; take a look at the massive "2009" section, which just goes on like the babbling brook. Note however that a summary of insurgent casualties may be useful, but I'd imagine that's covered in existing conflict-related articles. SMC (talk) 06:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
~~Partial Delete~~ as SMC has pointed out the 2009 section is a complete massive mess of reports. And as Nick pointed out it only lists individual random reports, no definite numbers are given, thus the total number provided constitutes OR and is not verifiable. However, as far as I see, the 2001-2008 sections are fairly nicely cataloged. The 2007-2008 sections contain references for totals of each year so no problem there. However, the total numbers for 2001-2006 are still OR based on partial reports, so violation of Wikipedia rules there. But the reports are mostly not of individual incidents but of specific time periods, not the whole year but time periods of several months within a year. I think two things could be done here. One: delete the whole 2009 sections which is the most blatant violation of OR and leave the article, only without the 2009 section. Two: delete the whole article but move the 2001-2008 sections in the form of a table to some other already existing article on the war. I would be more for option two, because like I said, however nice and nit the 2001-2006 section is it's still all just a list, and an article as a whole should not be just a list of these kind of things. In any case as a list of random reports, especialy in the 2009 section, this article can not stand.UrukHaiLoR (talk) 06:58, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Only the figures for 2007 and 2008 are cited. Those for 2001-2006 are uncited and shouldn't be used anywhere as they may have been invented by Top Gun. Even if cites can be found, a list of the total casualties for each year of the conflict is not a "List of insurgent fatality reports" so there's no need to keep this article. Nick-D (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that was my point, these things should not be given a whole article, like I said make a table of this somewhere in an already existing article. Like the table for civilian casualties of the 2001 Afghan war that I saw.UrukHaiLoR (talk) 08:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep but change to a redirect and merge the information (except the first section, which is OR) as a footnote. This article is an extremely valuble compendium of references and should not be destroyed in an AFD just because someone doesn't like it.Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC) Addendum: I tried this but it is technically very difficult to do. Please consider not destroying this extremely valuable compilation that has value. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 18:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Well yeah, that was also my point, hehe. :) Don't keep the article, delete it, but keep the 2001-2008 information, in a merged form with another article. I saw what you tried to do Suomi, I don't recomend that you try again to put the information into the campaignbox, but maybe you could move the 2001-2008 information into the casulties section of the War in Afghanistan article? If you want I can help you. UrukHaiLoR (talk) 20:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is one of the few articles which it is hard to !vote delete on, but which also necessitates it because it is hopelessly out of our project's scope. Obviously a lot of effort has gone into compiling these statistics, but this runs blatantly afoul of points 3 and 4 of WP:IINFO. Would Wikinews want this for any purpose? Them From Space 23:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge, into the article OEF-A. The information in the article is invaluable to the information in the infobox, and the references alone could be used in the article to back the number of listed casualties. It need not be a standalone article, or be done in list form, possibly better as a couple paragraph prose in its own section within OEF-A. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 23:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Partial Merge, I am changing my vote to merge with War in Afghanistan (2001–present) after carefully thinking about it. But like I said before I am not for a total merge but only the 2001-2008 section. Do not merge 2009 because it is too much of a blatant violation of OR. Also, do not merge the totals for the periods from 2001 to 2006 because like Nick said they are uncited, but do merge the reports of massive Taliban casualties for those years that are provided.UrukHaiLoR (talk) 01:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep. I work in a news agency and we have used this article many times to assess aproximate total numbers of casualties. This article on what is going on in one of the most importat wars in the world is far more useful than hundreds of thousands of other articles in Wikipedia that do not get deleted.--Againme (talk) 14:37, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hate to point out to you that that's an other crap exists argument. The fact that you've used it is of great interest though - perhaps we should write an article like it, but without all the OR. Hmm. Will think on that some more. SMC (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Care to provide some proof to support this claim? (eg, news stories on insurgent fatalities listing Wikipedia as a source). Given that the main editor of this article has been permanently blocked for, among other things, making up casualty figures and not applying any quality control to what they add, any news source relying on this article would be doing their readers and owners a major disservice. The argument is also an example of WP:ITSUSEFUL. Nick-D (talk) 07:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We never list Wikipedia, we list the original sources. This article has more than a hundred references, which most articles do not. Againme (talk) 03:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the stuff which is added to this article is based on random news stories from agencies I'm skeptical of your claim here - you seem to be arguing that your news agency is using a highly unreliable source to estimate casualties from reports from news agencies... Anyway, it's still WP:ITSUSEFUL. Nick-D (talk) 10:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Againme. I think this type of article (as long as it lists reputable sources) is very important for people who are researching the war. Regardless of how or who it originated from, it definitely serves as a collaborative research tool for human knowledge collection of important historical events. This particular article also adds current events and makes it much more efficient for researchers of all types. Rasmasyean (talk) 09:30, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Two reasons: 1) it is useful. Articles like these are essential, not only in and of themselves but also in improving other Wikipedia articles, such as those in the Afghanistan project. Most of the reports are well sourced. This is not random information - this is important information about people who died in an ongoing war. Furthermore, it contextualizes information in other Wikipedia articles by giving an overview of where these insurgent fatalities have occurred, the number they occur in and relative links, which is useful to a non-trivial amount of people. Furthermore, like Againme, I also use this article in gathering reports on specific parts of Afghanistan, and whether these areas are secure enough for rejected asylum seekers to return to. In improving other articles in the Afghanistan project I also repeatedly refer to this, particularly when improving issues of security in districts of Afghanistan. 2) It is not a random collection of information. Instead, it is a dynamic list of events, which although at the moment is incomplete and needs to be improved, should not be deleted. Furthermore it is not a "collection" but a list, and more importantly it is not indiscriminate, but discriminate, identifying only those attacks which were related to insurgent deaths, (see Wikipedia:DISCRIMINATE) and including valid information about the location and number of fatalities. Grant bud (talk) 12:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, it requires clean-up, not deletion. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 12:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If major clean-up is done in regards to the 2009 section than I wouldn't have any objections to keep the article despite my reservations about summing up the information from the 2001-2006 sections into unreferenced totals. You should probably point out in that case in the article that the totals for 2001-2006 are not definite and may be smaller than the real numbers of killed for those years.UrukHaiLoR (talk) 05:15, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or merge well referenced article, meets notability guidelines. Needs some cleanup. Ikip (talk) 15:21, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that there is a consensus that this article needs to be improved. Deletion tag removed, but rescue tag kept. Any suggestions as to the proper format we should put this in to improve it now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grant bud (talk • contribs) 09:44, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've just restored it, this discussion has a few days to go, and you should not be attempting to close discussions your commented on. Nick-D (talk) 09:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete — Where to begin? WP:NOTMEMORIAL? WP:IINFO?? WP:NOTNEWS? WP:OR. There would seem to also be an argument per WP:BAN. Anyone noted the WP:POV-term insurgent? Best, Jack Merridew 10:22, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't agree the article is in violation of the memorial rule since no names are listed in the article and I don't agree the article is in violation of the POV rule in regards to the term insurgent. The Taliban are insurgents plain and simple since they are fighting a guerrilla war against the Afghan government. Nothing POV about that. But I do agree, like I said before, about the violation of the Wikipedia rule on Original research and the Wikipedia rule on Indiscriminate collection of information. However, I see the violation of these two rules only in the 2009 section and the Totals section. The 2001-2008 sections are fairly nicely done. If we delete the whole 2009 section or make a major clean up of it than I think everything should be ok. Also, I am saying again to point out in the Totals section that the numbers for 2001-2006 are not definite, if that is done than I think it would be less of a violation of the OR rule.UrukHaiLoR (talk) 13:20, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

how does the no OR apply? look at all the sources sighted!Grant bud How is the `not news` section relevant to this discussion. You can't simply list a policy.... you have to explain why the policy relates to this discussion. Furthermore, as for the NIINFO, see the essay listed above about discriminate vs. indiscimrinate information. (talk) 21:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is essentially almanac type information, and Wikipedia carries out many of the functions of an almanac--they overlap with encyclopedias. It is not OR, but we did not develop the primary data, but report reliable sources. it is not SYN because collecting this together is noot a matter oftheory or interpretation. DGG ( talk ) 18:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But it is nothing but a listing of news reports and statistics, which fails WP:IINFO. Them From Space 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Wikipedia is an WP:almanac. Plenty of news coverage of this to confirm information. It is very encyclopedic to show how many people died each year of this conflict. Helps put things in perspective. Odd to see how few people were killed some years. Did the enemy take a vacation, or just get very good at running and hiding? Dream Focus 19:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Don't see this type of information as indiscriminate. It's also notable and well sourced. Perhaps the name of the article can be changed to something less vague (how about "List of Taliban fatality reports in Afghanistan"?), but that's neither here nor there in relation to deletion. --Pink Bull 23:15, 13 December 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.