Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Libricide

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 delete. Majorly (hot!) 00:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Libricide

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

This page is an essay, not an encyclopedia article. Not only is it replete with numerous NPOV violations such as "Burning books is not the product of healthy free societies but is the product of rampant extremism", it actually contains the text of a previous version of Wikipedia's NPOV policy. John254 16:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Neutral-Keep if improved to encyclopedic quality and NPOV violations removed It may be possible to improve this article. Right now, it is absolutely not appropriate as it is an essay, but the author has added sources to some of the NPOV material (possibly because (s)he has quoted them directly). I think that the author may be using the previous NPOV policy page as a template to rewrite the Libricide article overtop of--which I haven't seen before, but it may be that the editor is using it as a tool to write an article that is formatted in an acceptable manner. I have brought some of these concerns to the talk page of the author, hopefully I will recieve a response shortly. --Xnuala (talk) 16:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - I think this article has potential as an encyclopedic topic, it just needs a decent amount of work. It's new, the initial creator of the article is new, and it should definitely get a chance to mature. Rtucker 16:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete Hopelessly POV, disorganised essay. Fails WP:OR and WP:SOAPBOX. We already have what looks like a perfectly good article on book burning, making this an unneccessary duplicate under a term hardly anyone uses. It's not a good sign when the first world leader the author has in their sights is George Bush- rather than, say, Hitler or Pol Pot- even though Dubya doesn't appear to be guilty of any actual "libricide". Blog post masquerading as an encylopaedia article. --Folantin 19:16, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• comment It seems to me that libricide can have a much wider scope than book burning. This is not to say that the article does not need plenty of work to remove viewpoints etc., but deletion is not the solution to a content issue when the article is salvageable. --Xnuala (talk) 23:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment -- I fail to see how this article could be salvaged, as there do not appear to be any non-partisan sources concerning "libricide" specifically. The only effective remedy for this article's fundamental problems seems to be burning it :) John254 22:07, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Oh, the irony! I'm trying to look at it from an intentional destruction of cultural material, particularly written works, perspective. I think there are more sources available, they just need to be located and utilized. --Xnuala (talk) 23:20, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete Outside of the book Libricide by Rebecca Knuth, I cannot find any use of the term, so it violates WP:NEO. Every other reference on the page refers to book burning, so it should just be left at that. (I strongly think that this is just an essay based upon Knuth's book.) Phony Saint 03:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• comment Hm...most references I've found also relate to Rebecca Knuth, but the Minneapolis Community and Technical College does include it as a topic covered in one of their information studies courses. I see your point that the term may be a neologism at this point in time, but I am concerned that book burning does not adequately cover the scope of libricide (as a form of cultural genocide or ethnicide). I wonder, would changing the article to one on Rebecca Knuth and the book Libricide be reasonable in this situation? There are definitely peer-reviewed journal articles related to Knuth's research, and it leaves us an avenue to continue to explore the topic?--Xnuala (talk) 03:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Response Book burning as a form of cultural genocide or ethnicide is covered already in Book burning#Historical background. Most historical book burnings seem to be for that purpose, so I'm hard pressed to tell how book burning and libricide are different. I wouldn't mind making it an article about the book if it would meet notability criteria. Phony Saint 03:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I think the difference deals with the fact that book burning tends to be related to the content of the books itself while libricide deals with the destruction of cultural material without regard for the particular content. Either way, we can likely develop this idea in either the book burning article or an article on Knuth's book if Libricide is deleted.--Xnuala (talk) 16:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete the term has almost never been used outside the book, and it would appear that the book used it precisely for the novelty effect. The generally used term is book burning, and anything worth merging can be merged there. This is an essay. DGG 05:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep The UW Tacoma Library had an exhibit called Libricide: Terrorism and the Destruction of Libraries Description: To destroy a library is to deny a people's claim to civilization. Regimes have used libricide, "book slaughter" as an effective instrument of terror in the ideological wars of the 20th Century. Location: UW Tacoma LibraryDates: September 11 - November 1, 2004 http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/events/theseptemberproject/2004/

The film, Save and Burn is a follow-up on The Library in Crisis, [[1]] 2002 in which the author traces the history of libraries and libricides while allowing us a glimpse into the multicultural world of libraries in 5th century India. http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504&L=poetics&O=D&P=35349. Save and Burn is reviewed by Steve Fesenmaier, http://www.counterpunch.org/fesenmaier10022004.html

24.235.69.137 20:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment Neither of those make a distinction between libricide and book burning. Book burning refers to the destruction of any media, not just the burning of books. As per WP:NEO#Reliable sources for neologisms: "To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term." Phony Saint 20:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep per Rtucker; we have a new contributor adding some fresh idea's on this subject. The article reads a bit like an essay, but we have tags for that. — NEO? Please, that is rediculous. Check Worldcat, Google Scholar, Google News Archive, Worthless word for the day, OED and our very own wikt:libricide and the word can be traced back to 1856 and more than likely beyond. Books about the term? obviously ISBN 027598088X meets that criteria. This article has some NPOV issues and it focuses on more recent events (due to its sources), but it does attempt to deal with a different point of view; that of it being a crime. This is still a valid concept today, e.g. vandalizing gay books in a library was considered a hate crime, and the gent was given five years' probation. Also, at present book burning is not a great article, as it contains a jumbled list of state censorship, cancellation of art performance by protest and other symbolic book burnings, and the destruction of irreplaceable works. The inclusion of Franz Kafka to book burning would further dilute that article. Both articles need a lot of work involving a lot of discussion; that cant happen with an Afd hanging over the contributors heads. The libricide article is salvageable; it just needs some attention. John Vandenberg 19:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • WP:NOT#DICTIONARY: words in dictionaries do not automatically get articles. There is one - one - book that uses libricide as its focus. Every other source uses libricide as a negative term for book burning, assuming they even use the word libricide (aside from Libricide, every other source for this article refers to book burning). How is libricide different than most historical examples of book burning - say, Book burning#The Talmud (at Paris)? I wouldn't mind merging it with Book burning, but to have two articles on essentially the same thing is pointless. Phony Saint 20:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Many of the examples that have been called "book burning" are IMO libricide. Sadly, it seems "book burning" has become a generalisation for anything bad to do with books, whereas in fact they have quite different motivations (and so I would like to see separate articles given to each to ensure they are clearly defined):

• libricide (typically motivated by genocide, in the culture destruction sense)
• biblioclast (art, vandalism, protests — usually the latter two)
• book burning (state censorship, aka keeping the far right happy)

Both articles have incorrectly labelled some of the examples, so the two articles need to sort them out. I dont object to the two articles being merged later on, but I think that attempting to doing so early will cloud the issue. John Vandenberg 21:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You can categorize them all you want, but that still doesn't make a case for how the two are different, or how reliable sources use them. Both book burning and libricide refer to the destruction of books, and sources overwhelmingly use book burning. (Genocide? Genocide isn't involved in the majority of so-called "libricide" cases. Most book burnings/libricides are at the behest of conquering governments who want to eradicate past cultures, not people.) Phony Saint 23:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Raphael Lemkin just did a flip in his grave! John Vandenberg 23:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I misread and assumed you meant the legal definition, since you mentioned state censorship, which is also culturally genocidal (making it a bit contradictory.) A biblioclast is just a person who commits book burning/vandalism. They all refer to the same thing, but since book burning happens to be the most common term, that's the one that should be used. Phony Saint 00:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

What Phony Saint said. The distinctions between "libricide", "book burning" and "biblioclasm" seem pretty hairsplitting to me. It doesn't help the case for the defence that the chief sources for this article are both called Burning Books not Libricide. And George W. Bush describing Iraqi insurgents as "thugs and assassins" is also apparently an example of "libricide". Bizarre. Folantin 07:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 12:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 12:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - pull the other one. Come on, guys, this is an obvious POV fork/essay whose "sources" do not support any evidence for widespread use of this neologistic term. Cut away the unencyclopedic nonsense and what will you be left with? A dubious dicdef. Wikipedia is not for things a couple people dreamt up for their books one day. I mean, "Like genocide, such actions transgress civilized boundaries and constitute crimes against humanity". So kids trashing a library get the death penalty? Right. Moreschi ^Talk 20:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

What? neologistic doesnt mean what you think it means — I have clearly demonstrated that the word dates back to the 1800s. That it is a rarely considered concept outside of library studies does not make it fall short of our objectives here at Wikipedia.

btw, the death penalty would not be consider for minors irrespective of the crime; at least that's the way it is here in Australia, so your comment can best be described as trolling. John Vandenberg 14:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep per all the reasons to keep given so far. Book-burning is content-based. This is cultural genocide - and editors were able to dig up sources, so that argument to delete doesn't apply anymore. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 04:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment Nope, it's still a POV OR essay. Headings like "Symptoms of cultural pathology in figurative language" don't really help matters. Plus, I can think of several more pressing motives than cultural genocide why some Iraqis might want to burn their personal records in government security archives. --Folantin 08:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Easily fixed. I have removed the paragraph you have raised, as I listened to the audio file and it was mostly unrelated. Note that it is not the motive that defines libricide, but the effect of the loss of the items. Any large scale destruction of libraries or archives borders on genocide due to the effect of those works not being on the shelves. Where it is wilfully conducted by the state, the motive and result are both Genocide. John Vandenberg 14:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm still no clearer. So if I accidentally start a fire in a library and it burns down I'm guilty of libricide? Because that was one of the most frequent causes of unique books being lost forever in the era of candlelight. And police informers burning evidence of their past activities in Iraq is not "cultural genocide", it's self-preservation. "Cultural genocide" is an immensely loaded term anyway and I'm really not sure this article has addressed the POV issues or distinguished itself fully from book burning. --Folantin 14:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, WP:NEO, and it's also a pretty blatant POV essay. No place on Wikipedia for those. Lankiveil 09:44, 29 April 2007 (UTC).
• Delete. WP:POVFORK of Book burning, also a jumbled mess of incoherent issues, removing these yields a dicdef. Sandstein 16:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as a POVfork using a nelogism as title. No evidence the term "Libricide" is wide used. The entire article is as POV and OR. The historical examples of libricide draw no distinction between the deliberate burnging of books as an end in itself and the burning of books as a consequence of a desired event- e.g. bombing a populous area. I'm not seeing (a) a need for an article under this title (b) that the contents of this article can be neutrally grouped together in one place or (c) any content worth merging to Book burning. WjBscribe 19:01, 29 April 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.