Talk:Afghan Ministry of Defense

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from VfD:

This kind of substub is moronic. There are around 200 countries in the world. Every one of them has a Defense Ministry, a Post Office, an Agricultural Ministry, and probably a few others. If someone is qualified to write an article on any of them, and wants to, he can. Great. Meanwhile, what is the point of an article that is indexed in Google under "Afghan Defense Ministry" and says in effect, "The Afghan Defense Ministry is the Defense Ministry of Afghanistan". It is verging on nonsense that could be speediable. --BM 22:36, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I disagree. We can all agree that the topic deserves an article. Obviously, this is not that article, but I don't think it's barren enough of facts to warrant deletion. Meelar (talk) 23:08, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: The article says in its entirety: "Afghan Defense Ministry is an organ of the government of Afghanistan. The name applies to both the bureaucracy and the building in which it resides. Some of its functions include overseeing the Afghan National Army." Stubs are one thing, but anybody seeing the phrase Afghan Defense Ministry knows alll this without reading the article. The only actual information in the article is that the Ministry has its own building, which is, anyway, a reasonable guess. This kind of "article" makes Wikipedia look foolish and moronic. Why don't you add an article on "Kabul Police Department" while you are at it? Here's the text: "Kabul Police Department is the organ of the city government of Kabul which oversees the police department." Good grief. --BM 23:50, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree. Delete. I believe it is completely barren of facts other than what is clearly implicit in the title.-- Robert Pendray 23:54, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment. Substubs are not nonsense, but I do believe they fall under "very short articles with little or no content" of WP:CSD. Hence, they are speedyable by admins who wish to do so. (Or so is my interpretation, at least.) Of course they are also expandable by contributors who wish to do that. Speedy or expand, your choice. What I am strongly opposed to, however, is listing these things on VfD. This is a policy/precedent discussion, not really a discussion on this specific article. BM, could you do me a favor and, in the future, consider taking this to Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion, Wikipedia talk:Substub, a vote, a village pump post, or something similar? I don't think putting these things on VfD is the best course of action. JRM 02:05, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
    • Surely anything that is speediable, as you say this is, should also be eligible for regular VfD deletion. If an admin sees this here and wants to speedy it, I don't have a problem with that. --BM 14:24, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
      • Of course it is, and I'm not saying this VfD is invalid. It's just that VfD is a whole lot more administrative overhead. And now that it has been put here, I don't think it would be wise for an admin to speedy it. For one thing, there is no agreement here over whether it should be kept or deleted. This VfD has to be taken to the bitter end, I'm afraid. JRM 15:24, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia has no size limits so hopefully one day every ministry of defence in the world will have a great encyclopedia article about it. This is just the start of one more. Dan100 10:04, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
    I think you're missing the point, Dan. People are not arguing that the Afghan Defense Ministry should not have an article, they're arguing that the current article is not acceptable, and that even no article would be better (presumably because the red links would alert people that a new article could be created). "Starting" an article is too trivial to count for anything, if you don't put in something that at least hints at a direction for expansion. (For example, see Harry Frankfurt). JRM 12:16, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
  • Delete if not expanded: not an article. Wile E. Heresiarch 16:56, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
``Wetman 17:04, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete unless expanded significantly. The current article contains nothing of value whatsoever - what is there is blatantly obvious. If this was a stub, I'd vote keep for sure, but this is a sub-substub. Give me at least one fact I couldn't tell you from merely knowing that Afghanistan exists. Average Earthman 17:14, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete, no content. --fvw* 18:37, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia should have an article about the Afghan Defense Ministry, and all Wikipedia articles are a work in progress so deleting it just because it's currently a stub is silly. Bryan 19:52, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment: Before reading the article, I had no idea that "Afghan Defense Ministry" could be applied to the Dept. or the building. Meelar (talk) 19:06, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)
    See metonymy. That "ministry" can refer to both the entity and the building it is located in is not specific to this ministry. It's not even specific to the English language. Since this is turning into an "actual" discussion, I'm going to vote. JRM 01:40, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
    True, but it's not universally true of all defense ministries, either (see The Pentagon and United States Department of Defense). I'm not claiming that this is a great article, merely that it meets the extremely low bar of having content. Meelar (talk) 20:12, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete The article has no content. - Amgine 01:26, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete, as per my comments. This substub contains no information that cannot be derived from its title and a working knowledge of what defense ministries are. We are better off with nothing and letting people know an article can be written. I don't want it deleted because it is a stub, but because it is a lousy stub. If you don't mind the pun: this is an article only in name. JRM 01:40, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC) No vote. Ld has taken the productive way out and ruined a perfectly good policy/precedent discussion in the process, all in the name of improving the encyclopedia. Bah! JRM 19:42, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
    Keep. I might as well swallow my ego completely. After all, I couldn't let my own precious edits go to waste. *sigh* JRM 23:55, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
  • Delete: little or no info on the subject. Potential candidate for speedy deletion. Mikkalai 03:57, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. If this is deleted why not delete United States Department of Defense as well? I'm sure there is a lot to be written about the Defense Ministry of Afghanistan. -Ld | talk 17:33, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    Because United States Department of Defense is an article. Afghan Defense Ministry is not. I'm sure there is a lot to be written about it. And I'd like to encourage people to do it, by eliminating the content-free substub we have now, and letting people know we have no useful article on it, none that's of any use at all. You could even put it on Wikipedia:Requested articles. Or we could leave it here, mislead contributors into thinking we have an article, and mislead readers into thinking we have something useful to them. Neither is true. JRM 17:38, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
The Defense Ministry is considered the most powerful ministry in the Afghan government. It can be expanded very easily. I have already updated it with some useful information. -Ld | talk 18:01, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Grmmblmml. I'm an idiot. Note to self: editing always goes over talking. Hang on, I'm coming over to help. Bah, what happened to the times when people would just have healthy discussions on policy and precedent on VfD, instead of all this loathsome editing? :-) JRM 19:42, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
See, there we go :) Its amazing how VfD encourages us to write about subjects we wouldn't normally care about. -Ld | talk 21:33, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, but do we really want to encourage that? No, wait, lest I make myself look even more foolish. I once proposed something eerily similar as User:JRM/Countdown deletion. Hmph. Now I'm not convinced I wasn't just codifying existing practices. :-) JRM 23:55, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
  • It's unfathomable to me that anyone would vote to delete this. Of course keep. Everyking 22:08, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Of course there is a lot to be said about the defense ministry of a country. Honestly. Intrigue 00:27, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep Not in doubt now it has been rewrittenPhilip 00:00, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

end moved discussion