Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The War on Freedom

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 so kept by default. Yomangani^talk 00:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The War on Freedom

Non-notable 9/11 conspiracy cruft book. I searched worldcat and could not find this book in English in the 1.3 billion items in 10,000+ libraries it searches. The Arabic translation showed up in two libraries. I could not find any reviews or mention of this book from outside the 9/11 conspiracy movement by browsing through google results for this book and its the amazon.com page. GabrielF 16:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. --Tbeatty 16:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom.--Peephole 17:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Hello32020 17:27, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I keep my Delete comment, even with new evidence, per below. Hello32020 00:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. - Crockspot 17:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per less than 1 a billion notability. Sandy 17:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I find this book in 221 United States libraries on Worldcat[1], it has three editorial reviews at amazon.com[2], 29 hits at Google Scholar[3], three hits for a google news search[4] and six for a google book search[5]. Here's a review in the Missoula Independent. It was apparently one of a selection of books made available to the 9/11 Commission[6]. It also apparently won the Naples Prize, Italy's highest literary prize, which I learned through this article from Vanity Fair[7] and is mentioned in too many other online publications to begin to list. Thus, appears manifestly notable and meets multiple bases of inclusion listed at WP:BK. I am personally repulsed by the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense but that's not a proper basis for deletion.--Fuhghettaboutit 18:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. If kept, the article should be moved to the full name per convention. I am betting that the nominator's lack of search results is an artifact of searches conducted using the shortened article's title, rather than the full title set forth in the text.--Fuhghettaboutit 19:33, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • You can't speedy keep after multiple delete votes have been registered. Guy 22:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Fughettaboutit makes a good effort but he really hasn't established notability. Please note that WP:BK is a proposed guideline, not policy, and in the opinion of many it is way too inclusionist. 221 libraries out of 10,000 is still next to nothing, probably millions of books fit that criteria. I noticed the editorial reviews at Amazon, they all seem to be from within the 9/11 conspiracy community. Same with many of the google scholar hits. I see 99 books listed as those made available to the 9/11 commission - I'm guessing the national archives included every book on the subject of 9/11 in this list regardless of notability or quality. The Vanity Fair article is a one-line mention. That leaves what, the Missoula Independent? GabrielF 01:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Fughettaboutit makes a strong case and demonstrates the weakness -- indeed, the outright falsity -- of the case you made for deletion. Nitpicking about the number of libraries is a bit absurd at this point. I have seen this book cited in numerous other works; it is certainly notable enough to meet the criteria we have at wikipedia. I sense this was nominated for POV reasons (and there seems to be a pretty organized movement of the same group of editors to delete books on this specific topic, something very problematic in Wikipedia terms, I think).--csloat 00:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Per Fuhghettaboutit. He has established it meets criteria. · XP · 20:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per negligible Google presence and lack of objective secondary sources for an article. Can anyone point me to the reviews in the Times Literary Supplement or the New York Times? Guy 22:39, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Guy. Valrith 23:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Fuhghettaboutit makes it quite clear that it is infact quite notable. How can people vote delete after seeing the links he posted? AmitDeshwar 23:32, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete because I'm dense enough that its notability still isn't at all clear to me. GassyGuy 02:36, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. And many label me a deletionist! If any of you think WP:BK is too inclusionist, please drop by the talk page and make some suggestions. We have been struggling against a tide of inclusionists railing that the criteria are too stringent and suffer from a lack of feedback. Okay, back to the matter at hand. Discounting everything else I posted, the Vanity Fair article, while it is not a detailed treatment of the book itself, is a very reliable source indicating that the book won Italy's highest literary prize. Do you dispute the reliability of that fact? If not, isn't a book which wins a country's most prestigious literary prize notable on that basis alone? In any case, as for more reliable sources, how does England's Guardian Unlimited strike you. In that article they indicate that Gore Vidal's essay, Dreaming War is an overview of this book and quote him referring to it.--Fuhghettaboutit 06:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The Guardian piece appears to be a letter to the editor. Gore Vidal is himself notable but the sources that he uses are not necessarily so. GabrielF 12:11, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok let's get this one straight. Gore Vidal wrote an article for The Observer, London, Sunday 27th October 2002 and available here, here, here andhere. In it he praised The War on Freedom as "the best, most balanced report" on 9/11.

For further praise ripped from reviews see here - note you do have to scroll down to the bit that says "Praise for The War on Freedom". Mujinga 19:35, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete NN--MONGO 11:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Emeraude 12:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per JzG. In spite of what's been said, the Premio Napoli is not "Italy's highest literary prize" (that's the Strega I believe). See Category:Italian literary awards and the Italian version for a list of prestigious awards, no Premio Napoli there. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Keep per Fuhgettaboutit's !vote and comment above. --Storkk 14:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Reluctant keep I'm not too keen on the 9/11 conspiracy content but Fugh makes a strong argument that it indeed meets the WP:BK criteria which I helped shape! Pascal.Tesson 23:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Violates WP:BK. Morton devonshire 00:29, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete. From the above discussion, it seems to me that the only serious claim to notability is the Premio Napoli, the prestigiousness of which remains unclear. The media mentions are still a bit too brief to really establish notability. Sandstein 07:14, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete not notable enough. WP:BK is not yet agreed upon, only a proposal at this point. I have weighed in on the proposed guideline talk page with my concerns that it it too inclusionist. The articles on both authors are only stubs. I think mention of this book on the authors' pages suffices. --Aude (talk) 15:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - suggest first five delete votes are discounted unless those users indicate they are aware of the later debate, which included new evidence. Carcharoth 23:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC) Retracting this comment, as three of the five (as of time of writing) have indicated they are aware of the new evidence. Carcharoth 10:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Excuse me? You don't have to decide for others. The articles still doesn't indicate any notability. Only one review has been listed in this afd.--Peephole 00:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
    • I was not deciding for others. Please don't misrepresent what I said. Carcharoth 10:02, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • DeleteSuper-Strong Extra Delete based on the later debate and continuing lack of evidence. --Tbeatty 00:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - notable book that has been frequently mentioned and cited in other sources; certainly meets WP:BK, and appears to have been nominated for AfD for pure POV-pushing reasons. I have strong disagreements with the POV of this book, but it is clearly notable.--csloat 00:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - per JzG above, there are too few secondary sources. I see the review in the Missoula Independent, but that is the only reliable source for anything about the book beyond the fact of its existence. Our primary source for anything in the article would be the book itself. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Note on Premio Napoli: See Italian Press coverage for questions regarding notability. Yes, this is the English Wiki, so keep in mind the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, which "is one of five government cultural agencies established in the United States by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs" is involved in giving this award. The award has been presented for 52 years. Lack of a wiki entry does not make it any less notable. It should have one as well. Therefore...

  Keep *Sparkhead 01:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Googling for the phrase "Naples Prize" (ie., with the double quotes) finds one hit at the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago (http://www.iicch.org/NewsletterFALL2004ENG.pdf) and lots of pages saying how wonderful Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and this book are. Note also that that PDF reveals that the topic for the 2004 Naples Prize "is Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality in the World System", which suggests that hostility to the Bush 44 administration might not be totally absent from the decisions about this prize.

Re two of Fuhghettaboutit's claims for notability: that a Blame-Bush book got some "editorial" reviews is not significant. That the only newspaper to review this book was the Missoula Independent is significant. CWC(talk) 08:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• It's a good idea to review the article up for deletion before commenting, as one of your above statements is easily provably false. Regarding the Naples Prize, if you search for "Premio Napoli" -ahmed (to get hits not including this author), you get 28K hits, approx 700 unique. Searching on "Fondazione Premio Napoli" (a more precise name) gives 133 unique hits. Even "Naples Prize" -ahmed, a more restrictive search than what you state above, gives hits beyond just the Institute's Chicago website. *Sparkhead 12:21, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: Sparkhead, it's a good idea to read comments before replying, to avoid making yourself look foolish. My point is not about the (non)notability of the Naples Prize. Do you deny that there are a lot of English-language pages which mention that prize and are apparently intended to promote this conspiracy theorist and his book? This is called Search engine optimization. There are professional search engine marketers who can make money by getting their client's stuff into Wikipedia. There are also amateur Search Engine Optimizers who desperately want to promote various conspiracy theories and will happily abuse Wikipedia to do so. Our rules about notability etc are (among other things) designed to ensure articles don't get created just for SEO. My point is that someone has put a lot of effort into SEO for this book, and that people should take that effort into account when assessing its (lack of) notability. I assumed that everyone reading my earlier comment would understand this; clearly I was wrong. CWC(talk) 18:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for the tip, you might want to review WP:CIVIL, as well as take your own advice. As you state, clearly you were wrong. Your demonstrably false statement: "That the only newspaper to review this book was the Missoula Independent is significant." Read the article. Note the Palm Beach Post review, easily verifiable, and the Playboy one, which is less so. Regarding search engine optimization, I ran a more restrictive search than you, and came up with hits from the Italian Cultural Institute's websites for Chicago and Los Angeles, hosted at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs web domain. Not talking about fringe websites, these are institutions created by the Italian government. If you took the time to run the searches I detailed, you would have seen these results on the first page. *Sparkhead 19:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Responses:

1. The only copy of that column we who do not subscribe to the Palm Beach Post have comes via http://www.waronfreedom.org/, run by people who just might have an agenda.
2. That Palm Beach Post column is an op-ed, not a book review. Real book reviews list the publisher's name and usually the ISBN. They do not spend several paragraphs describing the publisher, nor do they give helpful hints on how to purchase the book.
3. The PBP op-ed itself says explicitly that the book got only one review.
4. The Playboy article (again, not a review) was titled "A Roundup of Ridiculous Theories". 'nuff said.
5. I did ask Sparkhead a question; he did not even try to answer it.
6. Nor has Sparkhead addressed my point about SEO. Whether some Italian bureaucrats have set up some websites about the Premio Napoli is completely irrelevant to my point: someone has done a lot of SEO for this book. Implication #1: Google searches etc will inflate the book's significance, and we need to take that into account when assessing the results of such searches. Implication #2: whoever did (or is doing that SEO) will greatly desire Wikipedia to retain this article, and may well participate in this debate.

OTOH, we should keep the Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed article and cover this book there. Cheers, CWC(talk) 22:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• Again, check the article. There was a link put in there to the PBP archives before you posted that contains the opening paragraphs, which validates the article exists at PBP. Semantics aside it's an article that talks about a book - i.e. a book review in a mainstream paper. A reference from a reliable mainstream source, regardless of how you wish to label it. I addressed your point about SEO by noting it's irrelevant. Note in some of my searches I took out the author's name to reduce hits. It's also irrelevant that the Playboy article called it ridiculous. What's relevant is the mention. I see nothing new from you here, so I'll bow out of this exchange. *Sparkhead 14:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - per the above arguments. Not notable enough for its own article. Suggest it be used as a source in articles on the relevant topics. Carcharoth 10:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC) - retracting my vote, changed my mind. Carcharoth 00:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per excellent points made by User:Commodore Sloat and User:Fuhghettaboutit. The article needs expanding of course, but that comes next. Mujinga 18:49, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Actually going over the criteria for a book's notability here, I'm a bit surprised this is even nominated for AfD, since criteria 1, 3 and 5 are clearly satisfied. Mujinga 19:42, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It appears to have been nominated for pure POV reasons. There is a group of editors putting out AfDs on all books or bios dealing with this particular topic; Morton devonshire (talk • contribs) keeps a running list of successful hits on his user page. I think some of the stuff they have been successful in removing needed to be removed, but a lot of it appears notable, and was nominated for AfD only because of the topic. I think this is especially problematic, as the reasons given for deletion are usually items that should be addressed in editing -- things like POV and WP:RS, better addressed through tags and discussions than deletion votes. I think an organized attack on articles about a particular topic like this is totally inappropriate in Wikipedia, even though I tend to agree with the group about these conspiracy theories being false.--csloat 21:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• keep: Per Fuhghettaboutit, Commodore Sloat, et al. A review of the escalating 9/11 truth cleansing here at the Wiki seems in order, since the systematic scorched Earth campaign has become as frenzied here as it became at the WTC crime scene itself (where all the evidence was removed, shipped overseas, or otherwise cleansed, with the willing and eager assistance of the 9/11 omission commission). Ombudsman 21:45, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I think the book is notable enough. I think the subject matter of the book is pure bullshit. I watched the second plane hit from across the river (Brooklyn) and the towers fall. All this conspiracy stuff is nonsense. Do you have evidence to back up the allegations of a cleansing campaign here? From what I've seen, the article that have been deleted on this subject have been because they failed to establish notability and not because of "big brother."--Fuhghettaboutit 23:14, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It;s not an issue of big brother - it's an issue of an organized campaign against articles about these theories (which, I agree, are bogus). Look at the AfD on Bill Christison - it's likely to be deleted because of a horribly misleading "google" count thanks to an organized crowd of deletionists engaged in what appears to be a form of groupthink. While there are plenty of articles on this topic that should be deleted, there should not be a group of editors systematically targeting specific pages just because of their POV on the topic. It is especially troubling that several of the pages have been deleted for reasons that are better addressed as content issues -- citations, POV, etc. Personally I agree that any claim that the Bush Administration was behind 9/11 is totally false and probably easily disproved. But the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are a notable and growing phenomena, and for Wikipedia to pretend they don't exist because of a handful of editors is ridiculous.--csloat 23:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well now, isn't it interesting that I went to bat for this article becaue I found what I thought were enough sources but voted to delete the one you're citing because I didn't? Doesn't this take me out of the cabal you are alleging, and by inference, suggest that others are equally operating in good faith?--Fuhghettaboutit 00:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I said groupthink, not bad faith. I don't think there is a cabal operating in bad faith. I think there is an organized effort to target certain articles. It's not a cabal; it's operating pretty openly - look at Morton's and GabeF's talk pages. And I support some of the goals of it - I too think there are a lot of dumb things on Wikipedia (why does this article keep surviving AfD, for example?) and I don't have a problem with public attempts to delete such pages. But I do think it is problematic if it is being done solely based on POV issues. I also think the bandwagon approach that some people take supports my point about groupthink.--csloat 06:03, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per Guy, GabrielF and CWC. --Aaron 02:09, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete' per nom. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 02:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep WP:BK suggests that a minimum threshold for notability of a book is the appearance in about a dozen libraries. This one is in 222. WP:BK also suggests that books by notable people are notable; Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is. I can see no policy-based reason not to keep this. --Hyperbole 02:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC) (note: revised WP:BOOK to WP:BK per Fuhghettaboutit) --Hyperbole 04:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:BOOK is a wikiproject on books. If you are referring to WP:BK, that is not yet guideline, but please note that the treshold there of a dozen or more libraries is an exclusionary standard--it means that if a book is in less than that, is highly unikely to be notable--that's certanly what I meant when I drafted that section; the contrapositive was not meant to be suggested and in fact that section states that "...these are exclusionary criteria rather than inclusionary; this does not mean that a book which meets these criteria is notable, whereas a book which does not meet these threshold standards most likely is not." The first standard you refer to explicity states that the author must be notable for their writing, and may need to be tightened. It's the Naples award that sticks in my craw here--Fuhghettaboutit 03:45, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep One of the first and best researched books on the subject of 9/11 as inside job. This AfD is more POV campaigning by editors targetting anything that claims 9/11 was an inside job. I would like to be able to spend my (these days dwindling) wikipedia time on actually improving content rather than having to defend against all these AfD motions. There are subjects much less notable than this book that exist on wikipedia. If you want to be part of a civil online community, why don't you stick to improving content rather than policing (or repressing) it. For example, I only had to click on random article twice to get Guano Islands Act with this highly notable piece of text: "The Guano Islands Act was federal legislation passed by the U.S. Congress on August 18, 1856 enabling citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits. " One of you folks want to write an AfD for it? I didn't think so. I guess 1856 legislation about guano is more important than researching 9/11. Kaimiddleton 05:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and others, the fact that the book is not carried in any english libraries apparently and the prizes its won are non notable in themselves. --NuclearZer0 12:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

  Comment The book is carried in 222 American libraries according to WorldCat. I wonder how you came by the impression that it wasn't in any. And if you meant "libraries in England," it appears in those, too [8] --Hyperbole 17:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete not notable enough. Brimba 17:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - "Nitpicking about the number of libraries is a bit absurd at this point." Pretty much says it all. bov 17:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Some good debate here (along with some unnecessary finger pointing). Fuhghettaboutit convinces me that this book squeaks in on notability.-Kubigula (ave) 01:37, 15 October 2006 (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.