Talk:Bhutan Times

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[edit] Name dispute

There is a dispute over the name "Bhutan Times". A section was added to this article about that dispute because it is a significant part of the Bhutan Times story and it could be useful to readers. The section addition was reverted without explanation or comment. I am adding the section again. If anyone believes there are inaccuracies in the section, please discuss them here or make changes to the section to correct any factual errors along with an explanation. -- 24.61.222.132 13:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any links regarding the dispute? I can't seem to find any. Spryde 00:36, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It's a long standing dispute -- see edit history here and on Bhutan, and some discussion at the Bhutantimes.com website. The date of registry for the website is tucows.com. --24.61.222.132 01:50, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Bramlet, thank you for responding at the incident board. As I said, yesterday was my first post to this article and I have no association with the bhutantimes.com web site. Because of the long dispute with that site, I understand why you may be a little quick to assume malace, but please do not make that assumption here.

Because of your reluctance to commingle content about the newspaper and the web site, and since the web site and the newspaper are both named "Bhutan Times", I propose creating a disambiguity page and have separate articles for each. I'll place a template tag here to solicit comments. If you have any comments, please post them here. --24.61.222.132 02:56, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The website is not notable, and an article about it has been AFD'd before.[1] Bramlet Abercrombie 11:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It appears that an expedited deletion process was used when that page was deleted. That expedited process should not be used for controversial deletions and clearly, this one is controversial. For that reason, I have again placed the split tag on this article to solicit further discussion. Please do not remove the tag until additional comments from others have been made. --24.61.222.132 13:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess my question now is :
1. Do you have reliable secondary sources that are about the dispute?
2. Do you have reliable secondary sources about the .com version of the website?
Those two things would warrant a mention in this article and most likely a split. Spryde 13:41, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Historically, the Bhutanese press has been tightly controlled, so there are limited sources available. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0430/p09s01-coop.html) The .com website appears to be the headquarters of the exiled pro-democracy movement of Bhutan within the US. I can find no other sources on the name dispute other than that documented on the website itself and here on wikipedia. However, even without the name dispute, coverage of the exiled pro-democracy movement would justify a page for it and the necassary disambiguity page. --24.61.222.132 14:06, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You may want to create an article on the movement itself then refer to that website then. You probably then want to put a note on this page to see that page about that website. I think that will satisfy the requirements of Wikipedia to get that included. Spryde 14:09, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I wrote an article at Bhutanese democracy --Darana 01:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC) (24.61.222.132)

[edit] Split proposal

This article has been tagged as a candidate for a split as discussed under the section "Name dispute" above. Please do not remove the tag while discussion is ongoing. --Darana 03:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the other Bhutan Times (bhutantimes.com) is notable; see the Google News Archive search:

• http://news.google.com/archivesearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=bhutantimes.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&tab=wn

If bhutantimes.com is not notable, then we should not split this article. --A. B. ^(talk) 21:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

A search at [| AltaVista] yields 1230 results. I'm sure many Bhutanese believe the pro-democracy movement is not trivial. Look, I don't carry any water for that site, in fact, I find some of the comments on their forum rather crude or worse. But it does appear to be the focus of the Bhutanese pro-democracy movement outside of Bhutan,

But the site in Bhutan (Bhutantimes.bu) and the US site (Bhutantimes.com) share the same name. Bramlet (apparently) seems to have some insight on the matter, but he's not talking. All we get from him are ramblings about the site being frivolous. He has a long history of edit warring without meaningful comments.

This was posted to his talk page after he was given a warning to stop disrupting and he hastily deleted it:

"Thank you, Spartaz. Bramlet, could you tell me your motivation for removing all references to that web site? Do you run that other site, BhutanTimes.bu? Did they say something you didn't like? You have stated in the past that the website is trivial, etc., however, you have made hundreds of edits over the past few months to remove every trace of it from wikipedia. I don't mean this personally, but it doesn't seem rational to go through all that effort for a site you consider trivial. Please explain your reasons. If we discuss this, I may be convinced of your position."

If there is another US site which is a better representative of the pro-democracy movement then we can put that on Bhutanese democracy and forget Bhutantimes.com. --Darana 01:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, the site may not be eligible for an article itself. However, you may be able to use it as an external link (See WP:EL for the requirements for that. Make sure you have a citation that shows that is the website of the pro-democracy movement. A whois search is not a reliable source so you can't use that as a source. Spryde 02:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Go for it. --Darana 04:33, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Even if the .bt website was second to have the name, the fact that it has a print publication (which has interviewed notable individuals) makes it notable. Because the .com one's existence is limited to online, it is much more difficult to prove its notability (as a representative of reformist forces or otherwise). And as for the dispute between the two, we do need sources; we cannot synthesize it on the basis of primary sources. El_C 21:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)