Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Khachkar destruction (second nomination)

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 - there is no consensus to delete. I'm ignoring the politics behind this article and its editing history. The article clearly satisfies the broad policy requirements for inclusion. - Richard Cavell 00:38, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Khachkar destruction

Khachkar destruction (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is becoming a POV mess between Armenian and Azerbaijani editors. Both sides have expressed a desire for this article to be deleted once and for all. This article was nominated for deletion earlier with a conclusion of keep. It also lacks links to other articles, aside from discussion pages and redirects. -- Aivazovsky 22:19, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Nomination withdrawn. This article has been redirected to Julfa, Azerbaijan (city). Decided to continue AfD. -- Aivazovsky 14:25, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Not acceptable. I appreciate you being bold, but there isnt any call for you to "fix this mess" on your own. The only way a nominators withdrawal would be reason to close is if the article is left in the original state before the Afd. The consensus so far is that this article should be kept as-is. John Vandenberg 22:06, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, can I withdraw my nomination first and after this AfD is closed, then can the article be redirected? -- Aivazovsky 22:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Withdrawing your nomination indicates you are happy for the article to remain in its original condition before you nominated it. The admin can still close it as "keep" or "no consensus" or whatever they feel is appropriate. Withdrawing your nomination will probably have little bearing on the admins approach to closing this Afd. If the admin decides "keep" then it would be a brave person to redirect the article soon thereafter, effectively overriding the closing admins decision. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Afd process, but typically if a redirect is an appropriate outcome for the Afd, people will vote/comment along the lines of:

"Redirect to Article, reasoning".

If others agree, that is usually what the admin will do when they close the Afd. If you think that a redirect is the appropriate outcome, you need to suggest it on this Afd (down the bottom please) with a good reason for doing that, taking into account what Atabek has mentioned at the end of this Afd. All discussions regarding the outcome of this article should be discussed here; not on some talk page somewhere. John Vandenberg 22:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Strong delete - The article does not need to be created, POV etc. Artaxiad 22:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Note to administrators: Artaxiad created this article. -- Aivazovsky 11:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

*Delete - As long as AdilBaguirov and Dacy69 will be on Wikipedia, such articles will be sabotaged. This argument is not proper and unusual argument to delete per Afd main, but this article will only create edit wars. Fad (ix) 22:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment - I was not initial contributor of that article or in anyway substantially edited it. See 'History" - I just once restored deleted important information. You clearly show you racism and bias on every page falsely accusing me and Adil. You barely talk on the substance of editing rather than the same groundless accussation over and over again. It is indeed funny - people who voted for keeping that article week ago now want its deletion because they have lost their arguments.--Dacy69 14:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

So racist of me. Fad (ix) 21:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per Fadix, it's pitiful to see that these articles written on an informative basis always have to have some POV inserted into them, diluting their purpose and just creating one entire mess.--MarshallBagramyan 22:33, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Armenia-related deletions. --   ⇒ bsnowball  09:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Azerbaijan-related deletions. --   ⇒ bsnowball  09:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Afd is not for content disputes. The previous nomination was less than a month ago, and many people thought the article should be kept as informative. John Vandenberg 10:03, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. This AfD is a violation of wiki rules. Previous AfD on this same article was just 5 days ago, and all those people who vote now for deletion of this article voted to keep it. I see no reason for another AfD less than a week after the previous one. This AfD should be closed as an obvious attempt to use this procedure to avoid discussing the problems and reaching a compromise on talk. Grandmaster 10:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that you changed "comment" to "keep". This action seems to invite other Azeri editors to vote "keep" so to "give the Armenian editors a dose of their own medicine." The sad thing is that this will probably happen too. -- Aivazovsky 14:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Ottoman casualties of World War I was nominated for deletion twice and nobody made an issue out of it. -- Aivazovsky 11:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

How many times can the same article be nominated within 1 week? Grandmaster 11:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure, but this has just become a huge mess. It's not helping anything when it comes to relations between Armenian-Azerbaijani users. Even the creator of this article wants it to be deleted. -- Aivazovsky 11:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Why then he voted to keep the first time? Grandmaster 11:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea, though I convinced him later that keeping it wasn't worth it. -- Aivazovsky 11:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

You yourself voted to keep it. Grandmaster 11:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but that was because my vote would not have made a difference anyway. By the time I voted, "keep" was already gaining a clear majority. -- Aivazovsky 22:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait, are you saying that you didn't express your actual feelings and just picked what you thought was going to be the 'winning' side? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the AfD was due to close soon anyway and the vote was inevitable. -- Aivazovsky 01:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

That's terrible. How can you expect anyone to ever take you seriously again? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 01:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

If the current editors are unable to work on this without keeping daggers in their pockets, why not agree to write a short stub (keep the images in gallery on the article so they wont be deleted as orphans), and then walk away from the article, leaving new editors to deal with it. John Vandenberg 12:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

They will edit war what to include in the sub. Fad (ix) 15:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Delete There should be an article about the destruction of khachkars in the Azeri occupied province of Nakhichevan. The current article is just a total mess.-- Ευπάτωρ ^Talk!! 15:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep First articles about disputes between ethnic or political group have a very strong presumption to remain in WP. WP is not an ideal version of the United Nations, in which such disputes could be settled, or the issues definitively clarified. Our role is to provide a neutral forum in which all such allegations can be discussed.

When people want to suppress such an article, it can either be dissatisfaction that one's own side is not being treated fairly, or a realization that the fair treatment of one's own position will lead to conclusion contrary to one's own interests. Neither reason is valid. There is no subject which cannot be properly edited, if necessary by a third party. If both sides think a neutral article unfair, this can be seen as a demonstration of prima fascia NPOV. And if a fair article does in fact show one party to be unambiguously in the wrong--as is sometimes the case--then there is all the more reason to prevent the persecution from extending here. WP is not censored, and this does not just refer to sex. The majority of the editors here will not be personally involved in any one ethnic controversy, and an article fairly edited will express what will usually be a fair view of the range of public opinion. Let each side say in the article what it can, with opinions expressed in 3rd party quotes supported by references. The reader will judge. (And the reader will get some guide to judgment from seeing who it was that tried to prevent the article from appearing.)

Second it is an abuse of process to renom articles indefinitely or at short intervals in the hope of getting a favorable verdict eventually--and the recent case of the D.B. article exposes the absurdity of our continuing to permit it. There is no written policy preventing it specifically; perhaps there should be. Personally, I would extent the general idea of 3RR to at least a limit to three tries a year at no shorter than three-month intervals, or--much better-- 1RR, one try a year. But policy is made also by the community in its decisions here, and it should refuse to entertain quickly repeated tries. Without reference to the particular parties here, I would say that a nom this quickly is often indicative of bad faith. WP:VAND defines Vandalism as editing content in such a way as to disrupt WP. Common sense would interpret this as including any attempt to disrupt WP by deleting content through the use of the WP processes. Until such behavior is accepted as appropriate for a RfA, we can at least discourage the behavior by voting keep on repeated noms unless there is truly reevaluation of the evidence or obvious injustice. It is good to see the many eds. already saying this.DGG 18:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Requesting for deletion can be done by using common sense, in this case the initiative was taken when I said that it would be better to delete it. This was not done in bad faith. There is an ungoing Arbitration case involving Armenia-Azerbaijan. This article was created during the case and involve it. My reason into proposing it, which resulted with the proposal itself, was that the creation was innapropriate. The timing is innapriate. What was supposed to be Khachkar destructions, which was reported in various notable publications such as The Independent [1], The Times [2] or the Archaeological Institute of America. [3]. But what happened was that Adil and Dacy started toying with the article, disturbing it. I have proposed their banning on the Workshop and believe that until proper measures are taken by the Arbcom, it is better to delete this article to not cause further disruption. Fad (ix) 19:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Deleting the article isnt the appropriate way to achieve consensus. Read Wikipedia:Deletion policy; specifically Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Renominations and recurring candidates: Please ensure that nominations to delete an article which was previously voted "keep", are carefully considered, and are based upon policy. On what policy are you basing this request for the article to be deleted? The topic meets our inclusion criteria. If there are editing issues, Arbcom is the right direction to take things. Afd should not be making those types of decisions. John Vandenberg 19:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I was using common sense. [4] But it seems this whole thing is creating another type of conflict, which is against the purpouses of my proposition, so for this reason I will remove my vote. Fad (ix) 21:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that is in general, you really need to monitor Armenian-Azeri articles than you will learn a comprise will be reached not anytime soon. Artaxiad 21:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Then all Armenian-Azeri articles should be deleted? I realise you dont mean that, but that is what will happen over time. If this article is deleted based on content issues, you will soon find that you are spending more time commenting on Afd that contributing useful information to Wikipedia. Arbcom has accepted the case, so they will help some people learn to compromise; that is their responsibility. And, I have just now added all articles mentioned on the case to my watchlist so hopefully I can help be an impartial influence so the articles move towards a NPOV. John Vandenberg 21:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No, doesn't compare, as it was a new article. Anyway, like I said, I'm going to retreave my vote. Fad (ix) 21:42, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sick of this. It seems that nobody has any idea about the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict here on Wikipedia. If they did then they'd vote for deletion of this article. Here we are debating the validity of deletion even after Artaxiad, this article's own creator voted for its deletion (that has to count for something). -- Aivazovsky 14:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It does not count, because once the article is created it belongs to Wikipedia and the creator has no ownership on it. Grandmaster 14:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, I think I can find a way out of this mess yet. -- Aivazovsky 14:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The article does not meet the criteria it doesn't even have reliable sources. Artaxiad 15:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

And who created this article? It is you. You, guys, have excellent sense of humor. --Dacy69 19:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - The article, claimed by Artaxiad as POV, was created by him. I don't see a reason why it should be deleted after the evidence of destruction in Armenia is included as well. Obviously, by first creating the article and now trying to delete it, Artaxiad does not hide the agenda of creating the article with a sole purpose of attacking Azerbaijan. Aivazovsky's forwarding to Julfa is also unacceptable (although I am sorry for him "getting sick" over it, as he stated above), because Julfa is the territory of Azerbaijan, while destruction of khachkars is alleged on Armenian territory as well. So this is obviously issue separate from the topic of Julfa. Atabek 21:47, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. The article was redirected to Julfa, Azerbaijan (city) twice by Aivazovsky, apparently in consultation with Grandmaster according to the edit log. Dacy69 and I have each reverted the redirect once; my reason is that someone should have mentioned the redirect here first in order to gather consensus. This is a sensitive issue, so the right thing to do is stick to the book and move slowly. John Vandenberg 21:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Redirect was not agreed with me, I just did not object to it on a certain condition. I agree that I should not have discussed this in private, and all the discussion should be on this page or on talk of the article. Grandmaster 22:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to Julfa, Azerbaijan (city) on the condition that an article specifically on this topic will not be created again. Let's make it public then. Is that agreeable? -- Aivazovsky 23:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, if the current Khachkar destruction pertains to destruction in Armenia as well, then redirect to Julfa would confuse the issue and limit it to Azerbaijan only. So the answer is no, it's not agreeable. Atabek 00:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay then, what if the article was deleted with the condition that an article specifically on this topic will not be created again? Would that be acceptable? This article is becoming a major headache (and I'm sure there are others, both Armenians and Azerbaijanis who agree with me on this). -- Aivazovsky 00:34, 20 March 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.