Talk:International Committee of the Red Cross

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. I'll also combine the histories. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support as nom. - Draeco 17:47, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• I'm still Opposed because separate articles create unnecessary overlapping and redundancies. As the introduction says, all parts of the movement are united through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes, and governing organs. Having said that, I recognize that this issue is sort of a general cultural rift between the English and the German Wikipedias (the German counterpart of this article, from which the English article was translated, has FA status in the de-WP). And as I consider all my contributions in Red-Cross-related articles to be in the Public Domain, do whatever you like - I will accept any outcome of this proposal. --Uwe 18:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• Tentatively support. There seems to be enough material in Draeco's article to be, if anything, a longish article in its own right, and (admittedly, after only a skim) I don't see anything in it that doesn't look encyclopedia-worthy. I don't have any strong opinion on how the articles are to be broken up; I'd appreciate hearing from whether Uwe is of the opinion that some of this material simply does not belong in Wikipedia at all. Assuming that it does, how else would one organize this without ending up with a monster article? - Jmabel | Talk 20:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support. This is long overdue, and a split is clearly warranted. The ICRC has a markedly different mandate from the national Red Cross/Crescent societies and needs separate treatment. --Dhartung | Talk 06:32, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support due to the above reasons. But I hope that the reorganization of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement will be planned too. Another thing I'm concerned about is the History of ICRC. In which article shall it be placed? --Knowhow 04:21, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
• Support, as it focuses mainly on the topic discussed. However, the separated article should have its own place in Wikipedia, all neatly reorganized. Bluerfn 08:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

• Building upon the fine work of editors Uwe, Tfine80, and company, I have created a new article for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC is a distinct organization that deserves its own article, not just mention in the Movement article. The Movement article has become too long and attempts to cover too much information; several editors have noted that, and it was one of the main reasons the article was rejected for FA status here. The new article focusses on the ICRC specifically and only mentions the other parts of the Movement where appropriate. The current Movement article is still perfectly valid, but much of its material specific to the ICRC may be redundant now. The work is based upon this revision of the Movement article from 2 May 2006. - Draeco 17:26, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• As I have researched, compiled and written the German article about the movement, and translated it to English in collaboration with User:Tfine80, 90% or so of Draeco's proposed new separate article about the ICRC is composed of parts from the article I've written together with Tfine80. So, from my point of view there's nothing wrong with the content of Draeco's proposal. My point is that I consider the current solution to be better for several reasons which I've explained before in more detail on the Talk page of the article about the movement. The current article about the movement is 67KB long, which is (in my view) not too long but well suited considering the complex matter, and it's far away from being a monster article. There are a couple of featured articles in the en-WP which are far longer than 67KB. The main reason why I oppose separate articles is to avoid redundancies which would be inescapable if one tries to write two separate articles about the ICRC and the Federation, both being complete on their own. Many parts which are common for both organizations would have to be duplicated to some extent. Most of the books which I know are either written about the whole movement, or about the ICRC with significant parts going into lengthy details about the history, the role etc. of the Federation. I know of no book which is solely or primarily about the Federation. In other words, printed books about the Red Cross either cover the whole movement from the outset, or, while primarily covering the ICRC because of it's lead role and its longer history, they also de facto cover the whole movement by including the Federation into the context of the ICRC. In other words, there is no good way to tell the story of the ICRC without mentioning the Federation to significant extent, and vice versa one cannot write about the history and aims of the Federation without resorting to several references to the ICRC. So, in my humble opinion it's still the best solution to cover both parts of the movement in one single article to reduce redundancies and duplications to the minimum. --Uwe 21:40, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
• Uwe raises some good points above; the Red Cross Movement is certainly complex and interconnected. However, my main point is that the ICRC is a separate organization from the Federation and the National Red Cross societies and therefore the ICRC should have its own article. For the same reason, the American Red Cross has its own article, even though it is also part of the same Movement and inextricably tied to the ICRC. I also disagree that the ICRC and "everything else" cannot be treated separately; the ICRC article I have presented only mentions the Federation three times outside of the "Relationships Within the Movement" section. It is true that even ICRC-centric books unfailingly include the Federation, but that is for the sake of comprehensiveness because a book cannot just "link" to another book, whereas we can because Wikipedia is not paper. Finally, I disagree with the 90% redundancy and would say that more like 60% of the original content remains. The ICRC article now contains brand-new "Relationships within the Movement" and "Relationships in the World Order" sections, a greatly expanded explanation of the organizational structure, and 27 citations. The rest is rearranged material from Uwe et al. The ICRC article does not include any history, the controversy over symbols, or Federation activities that compose a large portion of the Movement article. - Draeco 22:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.