Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The formation of Malaysia

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 no consensus, defaulted to delete. Whereas I do not see any consensus in the discussion whether an article on this topic can exist as standalone, the current article is 100% copypasted. Therefore I delete it without prejudice for recreating another article with the same name, but without copyright violations.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The formation of Malaysia[edit]

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Born as an unattributed copy/paste of material we removed from the history of 20-point agreement, this 'article' is, basically, a content-fork - the work of User:Omdo.

User:Omdo, it would be fair to say, is pretty much an WP:SPA, concerned with adding 'content' slanted towards the 'rights' of Sarawak and Sabah. Thus we have what I can only describe as a copy/paste to 'save' the discarded material, followed by brief, disjointed, often unintelligible 'points' on subjects this user finds important, or relevant to the 'cause'. Anything remotely useful in the article is a duplication of content, the rest is the 'thoughts' of one editor, not known for neutrality on this subject, as evidenced by the bizarre 'UN' decolonization section, and the choices for inclusion of tangential material slanted to the POV.

This 'article' is not of any value to wikipedia, and will not become useful. I know xFD regulars insist on policy based arguments, so I'll link WP:SOAP, WP:NOTESSAY, and WP:CONTENTFORK, but I'd much prefer that commenters read my arguments and related talk pages etc, to form a view.

Now you are all going to tell me, "but there could be a nice little article there...", and indeed there might be one day, by the natural expansion of content from History of Malaysia#Towards Malaysia, but this is not the way to do it. This will not be developed in that way, by this editor, who has refused that kind of discussion.

Editors inclined to vote 'keep' because this could be 'cleaned up' need to consider who will do the cleanup (I contend that nobody is likely to), and how much damage having this 'mess' there does to our credibility in the meantime. Begoon ^talk 22:57, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. —Mike moral ♪♫ 22:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Malaysia-related deletion discussions. —Mike moral ♪♫ 22:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to History of Malaysia#Towards Malaysia per this discussion, and also as a potential search term. Ansh666 01:09, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment (much more detailed analysis) - I've read all of History of Malaysia#Towards Malaysia, 20-point agreement, and The formation of Malaysia. One issue is that, as marked on the page up for deletion, it is a complete copyvio of an old version - which is fine in itself, as this can be fixed by editing. However, the latter two articles I've linked here are quite messy, especially the last, the one up for deletion here. The topic of the title in itself is notable, but the real question here is whether or not the article actually discusses the topic of the title as its main subject - Begoon doesn't think so, and hence the deletion discussion (Warden below may have misunderstood this element - Warden, it may do you well to read the nomination and the articles carefully instead of just voting keep citing half-relevant policies - and yes, I mean vote, not !vote). In my opinion, the article only briefly touches upon the actual process of the formation of the country, and much more on bases for which the country should not have been formed as it did. For this reason, I suggest a WP:TNT redirecting. Hopefully that made sense. Ansh666 04:35, 13 June 2013 (UTC) (Also, on a tangential note, I can't help but notice that 20-point agreement isn't linked to from History of Malaysia#Towards Malaysia.)[reply]

Indeed it was not linked, I think it once was, but thanks for pointing out that omission - fixed here. Cheers. Begoon ^talk 05:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The current title for the topic seems more natural and sensible than the rival ones such as 20-point agreement, which is a poor title contrary to WP:PRECISION. The topic is notable as there are entire books written with this or similar titles — The Formation of Malaysia; Australia and the formation of Malaysia; Ghazali Shafie's Memoir on the Formation of Malaysia; The Formation of Malaysia and Secession of Singapore: 1963-1965. If the topic is disputed then that's a matter of ordinary editing and dispute resolution. If there's a problem with a particular editor then that is best dealt with elsewhere. Warden (talk) 09:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think you may have misunderstood a little, my fault for trying to be brief. I'll explain a little more. 20-point agreement is an article on a negotiation process which was a relatively small part of the process of the federation of Malaysia. It's an ok little article, but it's certainly not a 'rival' for any putative 'Formation of Malaysia' article. It is, however, the article which the POV irrelevant content used to start this 'article' had previously been removed from. There are no 'rival' titles.

I take your point about dispute resolution, and I understand you are far more experienced around these parts than I am, so I'll ask for your advice: what is the correct procedure when an article is created at a location at which it is valid to have an article, but the content is unusable as an article, and no other editor has yet seen the need or found the time to create such an article building on the perfectly valid content we already have in other articles?

If the accepted answer is - we just leave it there, as a confusing duplication and WP:COATRACK, until someone does have the time - then I'll shake my head and move on. Really. Begoon ^talk 09:17, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disagreements about the developments of articles are routine but AFD is not cleanup. There are numerous alternatives to deletion and you had already started a merge discussion for this page, which has not yet closed. This is clearly a complex topic and we might expect resolution to take years. Wikipedia is a work in progress and if you think there's a problem which you are unable to fix immediately then a cleanup tag is commonly used. Warden (talk) 09:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, well, I'll hold to my belief that displaying misleading, unreadable junk like this for days, let alone years, is damaging to the encyclopedia, and the fact that a feasible title has been chosen should have no bearing on retention of such an 'article'. Presenting this 'article' as a result of that search term cannot be good for wikipedia, when we have good content on the subject in other articles. Perhaps you're right, and I should not have started the discussion with a merge/redirect discussion still open, but I did so out of a firm belief that the longer we leave content like that visible and prominent, the worse the encyclopedia looks. It's fine to have a long-term plan for how a series of articles might be organised in future, but leaving bad and misleading content as a 'place-marker' for possible future articles? No thanks. The article, if and when it is written, needs to be written properly, from existing and new content, and this is no step on that path. Begoon ^talk 09:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We have over 4 million articles and only about 1% of them have been rated good. That means that the vast bulk of our content is not good. Leaving it there in the hope that it will be improved is the way we operate and that's policy. Warden (talk) 12:10, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your time. You've been helpful. I respect your position of "defending" articles, and I know you do good work (both serious comments). Nevertheless, if this discussion ends by supporting your position on this 'article', then it will be a sad process of disillusionment to me to learn that we we would rather disinform than inform our readers. Incidentally, the link to an essay you gave me above also says: "With that said, if an article is so bad that it is harmful in its current state, then deleting now, and possibly recreating it later, remains an option" and I at least agree with that. Let's see what other editors think... Begoon ^talk 12:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your understanding. What's not clear to me is what you think is misinformation here. The main faults seem to be that the content is unpolished and incoherent. What else, please? Warden (talk) 13:05, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Heh... I can actually understand why you ask that. The point of view is presented so poorly it is hard to understand. The material included has been selected to 'support' the minority opinion that Sabah and Sarawak deserve greater status and independence than they currently have. Hence the emphasis on those 2 states, and matters of barely relevant international UN treaties, anything to tangentially support the position... The basis for this belief is that 'promises' made at the time of formation have not been 'kept'. Proponents of this idea have an 'equation' in mind that Malaysia was supposed to be formed as (existing Malaya + Sabah + Sarawak + Singapore), so for instance Sabah should = 1/4 of Malaysia in importance, and not just one of 14 states as was actually the case. This is a bugbear to them. They might even be right to some degree. This article was created as a copy/paste of material originally contributed to a different article to support these views. Malaysia articles have suffered from this kind of POV editing for a long time, and regular editors in that area are quite familiar with it. I hope some will comment.

Now sure, minority opinions need coverage, but balanced coverage, and I contend that there is no way to "fix" this article without WP:DYNAMITE and a lot of work. At the moment it's a slowly developing WP:COATRACK that nobody is likely to improve. Improvement may happen sooner, but probably later, and possibly much later. In the meantime the article damages the encyclopedia with its innaccuracy, incomprehensibility and omissions to the extent that we would be better with nothing than we are with it.

Here's the important thing - it's worse than the coverage we had before it existed, because it actively gets in the way of people searching for our existing good content. I've rewritten a couple of smaller Malaysia articles that have been in this state, with other editors, and I'd write an article over the top of this if I had time, but it would need to be a sizeable article to supplant our existing good content and I shouldn't need to do that to get this removed in the meantime. Begoon ^talk 13:39, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete along the lines of WP:dynamite. Sure, an article on this topic could probably be written, but at the moment readers are far better served by being directed to the main history page, which unlike this page wasn't made as some poorly written attempt based on interpretations of primary sources to push a fringe POV. Focusing on a merge is pointless, as most of the page was copy pasted from other areas anyway, and most of the sources are as noted primary ones that have been interpreted to fit a viewpoint. There are few editors in this area, and they shouldn't be forced to 'clean up' something that has to be rewritten from scratch. CMD (talk) 14:28, 12 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I dont see much of what you say selective inclusion of materials to support the fact that Sabah and Sarawak deserves greater rights. Would appreciate if u could point them out. Further, I dont see why inclusion of such materials would warrant deletion of the article, or even mere removal of it from the article if the material is relevant to the article. Surely any such objections or demands made by Sabah and Sarawak prior to merging with Malaya is relevant to this article? Provided of course they are true and sufficiently cited. CAveat: I do personally support greater Sabah/Sarawak rights in respect of its position within Malaysia, so I might not be entirely objective here. But i do hope i made some wikisense ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 02:43, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kawaputra, lots of wikisense, thanks. Of course the views are relevant. I thought I'd tried to point that out in my comments above. I very much believe that a section properly dealing with precisely that issue should be included in any article we write on the formation. It's probably under-represented right now in our existing articles.

There are really 2 significant problems - I actually think this first one is the most important - that the content is so poorly written and incomprehensible that only a complete rewrite would save it. That would be ok if we didn't already have good content on the subject elsewhere. As it is it just serves to obscure that content in searches, and confuse the reader. Leaving it there until someone rewrites it therefore damages our coverage of the subject, and because it is so poor, slanted and incomplete, that damage is significant.

To me, it's obvious that the author has selected material to support this POV only. The incoherent UN decolonisation treaty material is a good example of this, in that it takes a primary source and attempts to interpret it to suit. The rest of the article is a mish-mash of things the author feels can support the POV. The funny thing is, it's so badly written the POV itself is almost unintelligible. In the very few places you can actually find a coherent sentence in it, that's because it's copy/pasted (with no attribution) from other websites or other wikipedia articles or their histories. CMD seems to see it much as I do, but I'm struggling to explain much better if you don't. Anything else I'd add would be repeating the (too much) I've already said here. Thanks. Begoon ^talk 04:49, 13 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Author and main editor User:Omdo has been blocked for 1 week for copyright violations. Ansh666 02:28, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L Faraone 03:46, 19 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep but needs major work -- I consider that we should keep an article like this but it needs heavy pruning. Redirecting to History of Malaysia#Towards Malaysia will lose us valuable content, and that section looks poorly presented. This article should instead be lined there via a "main" template. Conversely, the copied material from 20-point agreement should be removed, with a summary being left and a "main" template linking to that article. Thus we end off with a hierarchy of articles going form the general to the detailed. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't want to comment again here, because I'm conscious that I have already said a great deal, but I do need to respond briefly to this. I completely understand that you feel that an article at this title would be valid. The problem is that by the time one removes the copyright violations, irrelevant material, POV interpretations of primary sources and purely unintelligible content, there is very close to nothing left. So your recommendation amounts basically to starting from scratch. In the meantime, this "article" masks our current, acceptable content from search, and thus damages the encyclopedia significantly. That, to me, does not seem an acceptable solution, especially bearing in mind, as CMD points out above, the very few active editors in this area, and the considerable amount of time the "fixing" of this article to a point where it is at least as good as that existing content seems likely to take, assuming that any editor wishes to take on such a task in the immediate future. Begoon ^talk 15:12, 22 June 2013 (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.