Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Organisation of Young Free Algerians

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. - Mailer Diablo 16:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Organisation of Young Free Algerians

At least one of the claims in this article was unverifiable and the subject of the claim complained about it (apparently), so I removed it. The other claims don't seem verifiable either. I found very few references to an organization with this name even existing through web searching. Someone de-proded because the article is also on the French wikipedia, however, that article is just a translation of this one (including all the dubious claims). If someone can find reliable sources then we can abort this AFD. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-10 01:58Z

• Delete A google search proves inconclusive evidence of the group's existence. Moreover, most of the links in this google search has similar content as the one in this article. I believe, these sites are mirrors of Wikipedia and if they are not, the article here is a clear copyright violation (correct me if I am wrong with this analysis). Even if this is not the case, the article is unverifiable at the present. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 02:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC) Changed my opinion to Abstain after considering all the facts presented by the other users, especially the counter comments made by Quarl. But I wish to add that this article is properly being referenced currently, a major improvement over the past few days. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:11, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. I agree with Siva that the article is unverifiable at present. The article is also on the French Wikipedia, but as Quarl observes (above) it was translated from the English original! Later commenters in either language seem to have improved the style (and removed one of the incidents) but not injected any new information from printed sources. Unless someone wants to read some French or Algerian newspapers or histories to get more info, I think we should delete. Otherwise we're just propagating an unconfirmable rumor.. Changing my vote to Keep. See the article from Humanité found by Emeraude (below) and the UNHCR article. *Plus* see the web site www.algeria-watch.com. Although this site has a POV they are full of pointers to actual books and articles in the regular French press. See a bunch of info that I added to the article.

IF someone can use this info to write an NPOV article then I'd say we should Keep but not otherwise. I rewrote about half the article, using references. Please improve it further if you can. EdJohnston 18:20, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Probably keep A search on google.fr for "Organisation des jeunes Algériens libres" and restricting to web pages in French only returns 65 hits (including the wikipedia article). Browsing the first half dozen suggests that the organisation did exist and was/is notable. For example: [[1]] and [[2]] both from the website of the French newspaper l'Humanité. I don't know enough about the issue to say for certain whether OJAL should be deleted or not, but on balance would suggest it is not until someone with more knowledge than I can check out some more of the references from Google.fr. Emeraude 13:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Also found this, from the UNHCR website in French [[3]]:The OJAL is a militant group that supported the army in its battle against the Islamists and which perpetrated attacks against the Islamic communities. It was founded in 1993. (My translation).Emeraude 13:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• • Okay, the organization probably exists, but that doesn't address the other unverifiability concerns. So far we'd have an article with the text "OJAL probably exists." —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-10 20:17Z

• Keep per Emeraude Cynical 14:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep but Change Subject is worthy of an article, but at present the article is a copyright violation (text taken directly from answers.com). -- P.B. Pilhet / Talk 16:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Answers.com, as well as many other sites, are copies of Wikipedia (usually legitimately), not the other way around. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-10 20:12Z

• Keep. Evidence in the French translation of the group. Sr13 06:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
  •  ?! what evidence? —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-12 06:47Z
    • Facts presented in French by Emeraude. Sr13 03:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

• The new evidence found is even more disturbing. We have one source which says the group exists, founded 1993, etc.; another says that it did not exist and was invented by the Algerian secret service as a cover-up. So now we know the organization was claimed to exist but not whether it really existed. Also the article had many unverifiable indirect claims ("OJAL killed foo who was bar", but we can't verify that foo was bar). If this article is to exist, someone will have to completely rewrite the article, spend time doing serious research, and making sure the article doesn't imply any of the claims/hypotheses are facts. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-10-12 06:57Z

Comment I agreed with your original nomination of the article for deletion, due to lack of verifiability. Now that we have relatively good sources, and don't leave our readers stuck without any resources to click on, I think we've done our job. If the quoted people, like Samraoui, disagree with one another, we can't help that. But so long as we trust that Samraoui was quoted correctly, I think we're OK. Let our readers decide from the evidence we collected what is most likely to be the truth. A diligent person could probably collect more references just by Googling on the people's names in the current article, but this may be enough. (Another option is to search Le Monde whose archives seem to be open). I encourage the reviewers who have found more references to add them to the article. EdJohnston 22:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep there is only one gnews archive result, from L'Humanité 31-Mar-94, but there is information here, abstracted from the Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, and more here (Canadian Govt: Immigration and Refugee Board). I think that the JAIMES and the Canadian Govt can be considered reliable sources. The facts of the matter may be uncertain, but cleanup and referencing can fix that. Angus McLellan (Talk) 10:35, 12 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.