Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Battle of Abu Ghraib

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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. Please discuss merge related options on article talk. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 04:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Abu Ghraib

Battle of Abu Ghraib (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article covers two incidents at the external perimeter of Abu Ghraib prison involving US military and (for want of a better NPOV expression) Iraqi irregulars in April 2005. It raises a number of issues:

  • Only basic facts come from independent sources. The detail is from participants' accounts and US military press releases.
  • It is written from a US military perspective throughout. It also goes into excessive detail (ie weapon types, minor gallantry awards, etc) for a general interest encyclopedia and includes speculative material about a high Iraqi body count.
  • Although newsworthy at the time, there has been little or no coverage since and so is of dubious notability.
  • Clearly written in good faith, it seems to memorialise the incident and appears to have ownership issues.
  • One option is to reduce it to a stub and merge into the Abu Ghraib prison article. This has already been suggested but was opposed.
-- ROGER TALK 11:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletions. —ROGER TALK 12:17, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Clearly notable event written in a NPOV with RS sources Taprobanus 12:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep despite the POV nature of the narrative. Needs rewriting, pruning to render it more encyclopaedic and less internally inconsistent, but event undoubtedly notable and adequately sourced. Kim Dent-Brown (Talk to me) 13:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge Not notable enough as event for its own article Lurker (talk · contribs) 13:51, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to Abu Ghraib prison as suggested previously. Factual information, perhaps, although I suspect calling it the "Battle of Abu Ghraib" is blowing it a little out of proportion and lending too much undue weight to the incident. It was an attack on a prison, not a pivotal battle in a war. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:18, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge As per Arkyan, the term "battle" is not appropriate as it can be described as an "attack", "assault", "raid". Once POV statements are removed we'd end up w/ a size of a section. Therefore --> merge it. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 17:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep This isn't the place to discuss merging, so I believe everything that isn't sourced and/or properly written for wikipedia, should be pulled out of the article and bring it back down to a stub. Then we can discuss renaming or merging according to wikipedia's rules. --JAYMEDINC 22:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • A proposed merge doesn't need to go beyond the two articles' talk pages, true, but merging is a valid AFD recommendation: Articles listed here are debated for up to five days, after which the deletion process proceeds based on Wikipedia community consensus. The page is then either kept, merged and/or redirected ....". --Dhartung | Talk 23:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to Abu Ghraib prison. Our own Wikinews article described it as intermittent and lasting an hour which isn't really much of a battle. It was some unusually coordinated insurgent activity but they never even breached the walls. There's a paragraph or so here, mostly in the logistics angle. We don't need every troop movement that took place. --Dhartung | Talk 23:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep I find this well written compared to other article that I have seen here (although some pruning and cleanup would help make the article more presentable). It should stay here, if not as its own article than merged with a relevant article. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:50, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep or Merge to Abu Ghraib prison.--JForget 00:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to the Abu Ghraib prison article per the agruments above. Kyriakos 01:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, Rename then Rewrite Rename because as FayssalF says it was a raid not a battle. (Hypnosadist) 03:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete there's no evidence of notability (this was a small fight by the standards of a war) and the article lacks independent sources. It seems to have been started by an editor/s who participated in the battle and lacks perspective. At best this clash might be worth a paragraph or two in the Abu Ghraib prison article, but its not worth merging. --Nick Dowling 03:44, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep the events were clearly notable on the face of the article--perhaps the title attracted unfavorable attention, and it does seem that it might not be appropriate, but that's for the article talk page. DGG (talk) 05:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • keep per above--SefringleTalk 05:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Iraq-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 15:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - Very notable. A few citations need to be added.--Bryson 18:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: - Notability is a red herring here in that it was certainly briefly newsworthy and one man's newsworthy is another man's noteworthy. That said, notability is merely a guideline for inclusion. The real issue is that perhaps 95% of the article is unattributed, conflicting with core policies of no original research and reliable sources. Of the sources used, the military ones have a major conflict of interest. The article is written in a deceptively neutral tone of voice which conceals its very lopsided POV sub-text. --ROGER TALK 10:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge into Abu Ghraib Prison - after deleting non-attributed material. --ROGER TALK 13:09, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge as per arguments above. -- Hongooi 13:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge - I believe the event is notable, however the real interesting facts about the battle (problems with the response to the attack from supporting units) which triggered major changes in how that area was run are not public. So I would say cut it down to attributable facts and merge it. Maybe once the military releases more information on it, it can be expanded back to full article status. Hardnfast 10:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep This is good writing.EdRooney 21:03, 18 July 2007 (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.