Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Foreign relations

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep due to withdrawal from the nominator. This is a non-admin close. Greeves ^{(talk • contribs • reviews)} 21:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Foreign relations

I think that this project simply hasn’t been thought through well enough. Here are some of the insurmountable problems.

1) Definition of states. Will Wikipedia recognize the TRNC, Taiwan, Somaliland, or other countries on this list within the scope of this project? All of them have international relations, none of them are UN members, and in many cases to recognize or not recognize is a political decision that involves POV. Which leads us on to…

2) POV magnet. Articles on bilateral relations sound inoffensive when talking about Andorra-Tuvalu relations, but start throwing Greek-Macedonian relations or America-Iraq relations in there and I it would be simply impossible to write an entirely balanced and POV neutral summary. Which leads to…

3) Original thought – it will be impossible to synthesise foreign relations without a great deal of both original thought and original research.

4) Finally, I think there is a problem with any one project attempting to take on as much as this one is, without having a great deal of members. There are already project boards dealing with, for example, Greek-Turkish relations: is this project going to supercede them?

Withdrawing nomination and request admin closes debate. Xtifr's reasonable argument is convincing. I will sign up to this project and hope to do good work for it. I suggest that some of the commenters here have a look at WP:FAITH and WP:BITE, as well as take some manners classes. Vizjim 04:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• If anything is ill thought out, it is this nomination. The problems you list have no applicability to this project, and seem to be more an objection to the concept of foreign relations itself. I wonder if the nominator is aware that foreign relations articles, and indeed bilateral relations articles, are already present and of encyclopædic merit. All this project aims to do is improve and organize these articles, and fill in gaps elsewhere. So keep the project and let it get to work. The nominator can raise his concerns at the project discussion page, certainly a better place to hash them out than a deletion debate.--cj | talk 05:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• keep project, despite bad faith nomination. These issues could have been discussed on the project's talk page, and I have reservations about the nominator's own POV. Chris 05:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I do not appreciate the accusation of bad faith. Please explain your reasons for this. I believe that the Project is fundamentally flawed and contrary to policy, as laid out above: if community members disagree with me then my nomination will be rejected. Where is the bad faith? Vizjim 06:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Gladly. For you to nominate for deletion a project less than a week old that members are joining at a decent rate, each asking what needs to be done and setting parameters and guidelines, and actively building, and for which you yourself have not contributed to any of the discussions, fairly drips with WP:POINT. Chris 06:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

You are simply wrong on that score, and failing to assume good faith. I am not nominating this project for deletion to prove a point, I am doing so because I think that its very basis is wrong, which is not something that could be cleared up using the discussion page. Please do not assume that you know what I am thinking. Vizjim 06:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. The reasons provided by Vizjim are reasons to clean up articles (that don't even exist yet) with any such deficiencies, not to delete them, let alone the WikiProject. It's perfectly possible to write a neutral, encyclopedic article on Greek-Macedonian relations. Deleting this project will not prevent such an article from being written, and any standards to be established by this project will likely make the article better. Sandstein 06:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I agree that this project may run into difficulties, but I think it has a good chance of improving the articles in its focus. Let us assume good faith and give it a chance. --Bduke 07:33, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Bizarre reasons for nomination. Having created and written several foreign relations articles myself, I can testify that none of the problems claimed in the nomination have ever arisen.-- Zleitzen^(talk) 11:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I have never written a foreign relations article, but if I wanted to, or to critique an existing one this sounds like a very useful project to turn to. Re definition of states - the world does not come in a box, and making sense of the inconsistencies and complexity is surely half the fun. Ben MacDui (Talk) 13:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - The reasons given by the nominator are exactly what the WikiProject is here for! A Project is here for collaboration, and any mistakes in our procedures should have been brought up to our talk page. This project is gaining a steady amount of members every few days, and the chances of this project improving are steadily increasing. I created this less than a week ago! Shouldn't we be giving it a chance to form itself?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 13:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. The arguments you have describe almost all Wikiprojects. And they're the things that Wikiprojects are supposed to help fix. For that matter, your arguments justify deleting all foreign relations articles... -Amarkov moo! 14:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - am adding the project to the list on the community portal to try to get it to both receive more members and to possibly draw improvement of the project page. John Carter 00:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, most of the nominator's reasons sound like arguments for keeping this. Yes, all those political issues are potential problem spots. But they are problem spots whether or not there's a Wikiproject, and having a Wikiproject is probably the best way we've got to centralize the discussions and try to deal with such issues. And as for the issue of potentially conflicting Wikiprojects, that's no different than the problem of conflicting editors. We resolve conflicts when they arise. We don't stop people from working together simply because they might come into conflict with some other people working together on something else. I'm willing to assume that this was a good faith nomination, but it certainly seems to be a confused and misguided one. Wikiprojects work by general consensus, just like everything else on Wikipedia. Xtifr _tälk 12:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Fully aware that I'm on a hiding to nothing here, but wanted to comment on your point. This project gives one of its aims as being to actively create bilateral relations articles: in other words, to create what I argue are troublespots. Vizjim 13:43, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• So no one should have created George Bush's article, or Global Warming controversy or other more troubled, turbulent, and volatile articles? When POV and OR arises in an article, the project will try to fix it. Berserkerz Crit 14:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Ok, that does make your nomination make more sense to me now. But I still don't think it comes anywhere close to being a reason for deleting the entire project. Anything related to politics or religion is a "potential troublespot", but we still allow (and, in fact, encourage) the creation of political and religious wikiprojects. Xtifr _tälk 15:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep, with this project, hopefully Filipino-American relations will be created. And POVs and ORs will be a problem, but good editors and consensus will thresh it out eventually. Berserkerz Crit 14:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Amarkov. Acalamari 18:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Xtifr - 52 Pickup 07:52, 11 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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.