Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ida Carmelitta

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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. - Mailer Diablo 11:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ida Carmelitta

Ida Carmelitta (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

I'm also nominating the following similar articles for deletion

Sarathambal (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Ilayathambi Tharsini (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Krishanti Kumaraswamy (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Murugesapillai Koneswary (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)


None of these articles, mostly worked on by the same user, meet notability guidelines. I'm sorry, but Wikipedia is not a memorial. Rightly or wrongly, we cannot have articles about every single rape / murder victim in the world. While attempts have been made to portray these as significant murders (note that most of the text is strikingly similar i.e.

  • "Ida Carmelitta... was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman... and became a cause célèbre of the Sri Lankan civil war."
  • "Sarathambal... was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman... and became an internationally known incident of the Sri Lankan civil war"
  • "Krishanti Kumaraswamy... was a minority Tamil girl ... who was a cause celebre of the Sri Lanka civil war"
  • "Ilayathamby Tharsini... was a minority Sri Lankan Tamil woman... and who became a cause celebre of the Sri Lankan civil war"),

the lack of any significant media coverage of the incidents apart from the initial crime reports, plus the lack of unique Google hits (25 ghits [1], 113 ghits[2], 69 ghits[3], 133 ghits [4] and 24 ghits[5] respectively - most of them Wiki mirrors) suggests that all five articles fail Wikipedia's notability guidelines. snowolfD4( talk / @ ) 15:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment. The so called same user as alluded above is me and I have tried to cite as to why these cases are WP:Notable. The AFD was done while I was on Wiki break by the above user who has a history of conflict with me for the last one year and he/she is in conflict mediation in at least 2 articles currently that involves me. I am really glad that these articles have bben nominated for AFD as it gives the wiki community a chance to look at them and decide for good whether these articles are worthy of keep or delete. I would request the closing admin to keep an eye on for cabal activity and look at the reasons for delete or keep only from neutral uninvolved editors and the reasons provided as opposed to simple math. Thanks Taprobanus 21:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete on the Koneswary article, Keep on all the rest. Far from "most of the text" being "strikingly similar," only the introductory paragraph is. The articles themselves (with the exception of the Koneswary article) are fairly comprehensive and fully satisfy WP:V through many references to reliable sources. The relative lack of Google hits for incidents in Sri Lanka is understandable, but when I'm seeing refs to the BBC, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, the Sunday Observer, UNESCO and the US State Department, there are no valid grounds for deletion.  RGTraynor  15:42, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I went through Ilayathambi Tharsini and found the Asian Centre for Human Rights ref[6] which is covering the 3/4 of the article was based on a www.tamilnet.com ref.[7] tamilnet.com is classified by the Sri Lanakan editors as an UnRS due to its heavy POV pushing towards the LTTE rebel group. So Traynor still you think Ilayathambi Tharsini article is satisfying you with WP:V and WP:RS :-) ??? --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ walkie-talkie 16:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment: Yes. While recognizing that the Sri Lankan-Tamil civil war is a longstanding and viciously contested dispute, I decline to take notice of pissing matches between the various factions as to which source is supposedly discredited by its alleged adherence to one side or another. Fox TV is commonly presumed to be a biased mouthpiece for right-wing ideologues, but I don't think you'd get very far claiming it doesn't qualify as a reliable source on that count.  RGTraynor  17:02, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment: ♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪, you fail to mention that (nearly) all the parts of the article referring to the Asian Centre for Human Rights also refer to another source, University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), which at its website levels extremely harsh criticism at the LTTE, and which seriously questions whether the crime was committed by Navy personnel at all. In other words, much of the basic information is supported by a source that is decidedly not pro-LTTE, and the article as a whole is not as biasedly sourced as you are trying to make it seem. (The paragraph of the article containing postmortem information was not supported by the UTHR document, so I removed the reference to the UTHR document from that paragraph. All other paragraphs referring to the ACHR also refer to the UTHR.) --Bwiki 03:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all. Most of the articles are well written and sourced and with multiple independent sources they meet WP:BIO. I also note that the nominator has not informed the original authors of the articles about this mass AfD, which I think is a breach of courtesy. Please note in the interests of full disclosure that the nominator was recently a party in this RfM [8] and also this RfM Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Sri Lankan Civil War where at least one of the article authors was also a party. While I think it's admirable that you are going through a dispute resolution process and I don't know the history and if/whether you have had a conflict with the original author - this AfD doesn't look very good right now. One last WP:SOAP point (my soapbox not yours), the more appropriate coverage Wikipedia has of important non-English speaking, non-white, non-First world topics - the better for the project. Paxse 19:15, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Wow. There's an eyeopener. Alright, I have a modest proposal: if you're a Sinhalese or Tamil supporter, consider backing away from this AfD, and let those of us who aren't up to our necks in civil war-related RfMs decide on the merits, using policy grounds?  RGTraynor  19:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Good idea, RGTraynor. By the same token you should abstain from partecipating in any U.S. related AfD, right? Or you have no opinion on what is going on around you? Stammer 19:38, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment: I certainly do have opinions on politics, yes, and in some cases strong ones. They have never yet led me to edit warring to the degree that a RfM was necessary, never mind multiple RfMs. The concept of recusing oneself where a clear conflict of interest exists is a strong issue on Wikipedia. On that basis, yes, you are absolutely right: were I in multiple RfMs on a particular issue, I would definitely refrain from filing AfDs on that issue to avoid questions of bad faith. If an article needs to go badly enough, someone else will nominate it.  RGTraynor  20:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
First of all, thanks for your polite reply. However, I object to your patronizing editors based on your perceptions of their allegiances. We are all equal here and the input of every one of us should be evaluated on its merit alone. If we start telling each other to back away from debates based on our perceptions of each other's prejudices, we'll hardly have a civilised debate. As for me, I welcome any opinion here, as long as it's expressed in a civilised way. Stammer 21:23, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm basing nothing on "perception" or "prejudices;" were I to do so, my remarks would be a great deal more pointed. I'm basing them on the fact that some editors have been involved in multiple RfMs on this topic, making for an obvious conflict of interest when they seek to delete a slew of related articles.  RGTraynor  17:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment A little more information. The original creator of all these articles is the same editor - who recently posted on her/his user page that they were taking a wikibreak - the timing of this AfD begins to look worse. There is also a second AfD on a related topic by the same nominator going on here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/State terrorism in Sri Lanka (Second nomination). Paxse 19:51, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Both of you seem to have missed the reason of this AFD. I did not dispute whether or not the the incidents took place or whether the articles are verifiable. The reason for this AFD is that all the individuals fail WP:N. Apologies for seeming crude here, but simply becoming a rape victim does not make one notable enough to have an article on Wikipedia. In this case, none of these individuals are notable for any other reason. Most crime victims will have a multitude of items of news coverage of them, but that does not make them notable. With these articles, practically all the sources provided, be they the BBC or whatever, simply report on the incident taking place, and not on the actual background of the victims. Go through the articles and you will find almost no personal information on the subjects of the articles (birth dates, family information etc)
And RGTraynor, you seem to have mistaken my point about the here. I did not mean the articles themselves were identical. I meant the attempts to establish notability for each of the individuals are almost identical. And like I said, other than been a victim of a crime, there is no other attempt in any of the articles to establish any other form of notability for the subject.
My point is, while the incidents themselves may be covered in an article like Human Rights in Sri Lanka, the subjects of these articles do not, like I said, satisfy notability criteria to have their own article. --snowolfD4( talk / @ ) 19:53, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all. The nominator stated above that the articles should be deleted, not per WP:V, but per WP:N. While it is true that none of the victims are notable by virtue of anything besides their being victims of human-rights abuses, it can be argued that the eponymous human-rights abuse cases are notable in themselves. (And it seems reasonable for articles about individual cases, as opposed to massacres, to simply have the same name as the individual in question, e.g. Ida Carmelitta rather than 1999 Ida Carmelitta rape and murder case in Sri Lanka or some similarly awkward title.)
What, then, makes an individual human-rights abuse case notable enough to merit inclusion in Wikipedia? There probably isn't any strong precedence or editorial consensus, but I managed to find Category:Victims_of_human_rights_abuses, which includes the following cases among others:
People allegedly raped and murdered by military personnel:
People allegedly murdered by authorities:
None of these people are notable for their achievements or any other circumstances not related to their murder. The latter two cases seem to be notable primarily because of their being recorded and urged by human-rights organisations, and yet they are included. For the record, I don't think Wikipedia should contain an article on every extrajudicial killing, forced disappearance or prisoner of conscience recorded by HRW and AI, but the well-researched articles on the five Sri Lankan cases demonstrate that there have been reports by (branches of) the United States Department of State, UN, UNHCHR, UNESCO, CNN, AI, HRW et al. In one of the cases an inquiry was even ordered by then-president Chandrika Kumaratunga. Doesn't all that make the cases notable enough?
--Bwiki 01:59, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all. - All of these bios have multiple sources. - Share Bear 09:42, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all. Certainly being gang raped doesn't make one wikipedia material because of personal privacy issues, but being used for political reasons because of that gang-rape, surely that can be. Everything seems well-linked. -Kmaguir1 15:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ walkie-talkie 17:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep All per User:Paxse and WP:SNOW. Taprobanus 19:31, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all I concur with other users to keep these articles. Victims of crimes are just as notable as the crime themself. Maybe not to the magnitude of Kitty Genovese, but they are important nonetheless.--Ozgod 02:27, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
  • As to that, the Genovese incident never was cited as provocation in a war.  RGTraynor  06:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep all. Lots of sources. If these people are not notable then the crime them selves are. Thus these articles are notable and should be kept. Also remember that there is a media blackout in Srilanka specially in the begining of the civil war... This contributes to the fact that there is not much media coverage. Secondly google hits do not matter. There are enough sources on this articles such that they can and should stay. These article are well written with a NPOV stance and are very worth their article. Watchdogb 04:03, 27 May 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.