Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Olav Berstad

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. J04n(talk page) 00:53, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Olav Berstad

Olav Berstad (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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

Non-notable by WP:DIPLOMAT ("Diplomats who have participated in a significant way in events of particular diplomatic importance that have been written about in reliable secondary sources.")

Similar to Jostein Helge Bernhardsen (below), this is one of about 90 articles in Category:Norwegian diplomat stubs that may be non-notable. The minimal stub is apparently a translation of the one in the online Store norske leksikon. AFAIK Berstad, like most other diplomats, has never been involved in an “event of particular diplomatic importance”.

(This is a single Afd. I would be interested to know if people think biographies like this can be bundled.) Kleinzach 22:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

P.S. For the record, here is the text in the user generated Store norske leksikon: "Olav Berstad, norsk diplomat, cand.mag. I utenrikstjenesten siden 1980, underdirektør 1996–98. Ambassadør i Baku 1998–2001, deretter spesialrådgiver i Utenriksdepartementet med ansvar for Barentssamarbeidet. Ambassadør i Kiev 2006-11." --Kleinzach 05:00, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Norway-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. Permanent ambassadors should be presumed to be notable. Pburka (talk) 02:59, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Note that the nominator acknowledges that the subject appears in an encyclopedia of national biography. That's usually grounds for inclusion on its own. Pburka (talk) 03:37, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Pburka: This source you added [1] is misleading. It actually refers to the Norwegian Foreign Minister. He was the OSCE envoy, not Berstad. So it doesn't confirm the statement "he was the Norwegian ambassador to Azerbaijan from 1998 to 2001". --Kleinzach 12:53, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Misleading in what way? The source states: "The Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Norway to Azerbaijan Olav Berstad, said that he [Knut Vollebaek] would visit Armenia and Georgia, too." It at least confirms that he was ambassador to Azerbaijan in 1999. Pburka (talk) 02:17, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. I also believe that ambassadors have a presumption of notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
• Keep, Wikipedia should have articles on all permanent ambassadors for the same reason it should have articles on all national legislators, judges on national courts, etc. You can call that "inherent notability" if you like, or a presumption that GNG will always be satisfied for such individuals; I really don't care because satisfying notability guidelines (which are a good but not perfect proxy for determining what is or isn't important enough to include) should not be a concern with obviously important subjects such as this, so long as we follow the policies of V, OR, NPOV (which actually are important all the time). Or you can call it an WP:IAR invocation, because deleting articles on permanent ambassadors does not improve the encyclopedia in any way. postdlf (talk) 02:01, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
• Keep - inclusion in national encyclopedia of his country, Store norske leksikon should guide us. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:44, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
• Comment The diplomatic community is a large one. There are over 200 countries in the world — we are talking about thousands of individuals. Should they all have an automatic right to a Wikipedia article in English? Ambassadors of major countries, in major countries, will normally be well-covered by sources, but ambassadors of minor countries in minor countries — basically running visa and commercial support offices — will only be mentioned by their own official media, or in many cases, just in lists. Having looked through a largish number of these articles, I’ve found found most of the minimal, unreferenced stubs in articles about ambassadors of middle and small-sized countries, usually created by an editor going through a government list (such as Foreign Affairs International Trade Canada [2]). The problem with declaring all ambassadors notable, if that we will then have to automatically list all other unelected officials of equivalent rank. This will gradually turn Wikipedia into something like LinkedIn. Is that really the way we want to go? Kleinzach 03:59, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Comment I disagree with the slippery slope argument (200x200x197 years since the Congress of Vienna) as a concern. The problem with automatic notability is the nature of the ambassador position itself. Ambassadors do not generally perform more than ministerial tasks today, and may act as "spokespeople for their foreign offices." In the United States, President Obama "has filled about 70 percent of the posts with career diplomats and 30 percent with political appointees." A 1951 article in Time magazine says, "Today, a diplomat's freedom of action is no greater than his distance from a Teletype" . As written WP:DIPLOMAT recognizes that some ambassadors do play significant roles in world events and are "worthy of notice" – that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" WP:BIO, even if they do not otherwise meet WP:GNG. As of now, there does not appear to be consensus to change WP:DIPLOMAT. Enos733 (talk) 05:34, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

...and as of now, there does not appear to be consensus to delete this article. As I noted in the similar AFD, the DIPLOMAT guideline is inclusion criteria, not exclusion criteria, and in any event if enough of this ambassador AFDs turn out as these appear to be ending up, the guideline will eventually reflect that regardless of what's going on at its talk page right now. postdlf (talk) 17:09, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

• Keep, inclusion in paper encyclopedia (not user generated) meets WP:GNG which overrides or rather supplements any project specific inclusion guideline. Geschichte (talk) 08:21, 19 April 2013 (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.