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Revision as of 15:05, 8 July 2008

Allegations of apartheid (fifth nomination)

This article has long been a source of controversy, and is regarded by many as a WP:SYNTH violation consisting mostly of original research. Most of the articles cited in the footnotes contain only fleeting references to the term "apartheid", and I do not believe that any make formal accusations that particular countries are guilty of the Crime of apartheid. (The Bosnia reference is especially weak, as it refers to "apartheid" solely in terms of rich and poor ... normally, there's some reference to class, ethnicity, gender or religion as well.)

For those curious, the first afd ended in utter chaos (the closing admin's comments must be seen to be believed), the second ended in a deletion that was subsequently overturned, the third resulted in a "keep" vote, and the fourth ended with a procedural closure. In other words, there is no strong historical precedent that this article should be retained.

I should also note that the previous four nominations took place against the backdrop of controversy over the page Allegations of Israeli apartheid. As this page has now been retitled as Israel and the apartheid analogy, and all of the other "Allegations of Apartheid" pages have been removed, there seems little reason to retain this article. CJCurrie (talk) 03:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep, of course. These kinds of allegations are made by many reliable sources, referring to specific types of (perceived) institutionalized discrimination with a great deal in common - which is why, of course, people use a common term for it, "apartheid". What has marred these discussions are the contributions of a specific banned editor, and his 20 or more banned sockpuppets, who have collectively done little but create heat rather than light on this specific topic - including creating the original "Israeli apartheid" article, and then creating strawman sockpuppets for the purpose of fake AfDs, which would then ensure that articles he preferred were retained. On this article alone he has deleted most of the content, deleted what little was left, put it up for deletion, deleted even more, then deleted even more again, all in a desperate attempt to make this article deletion-worthy. While the allegations against some countries (e.g. Israel, Brazil, Cuba, France, China) have received more attention than others, what should really be done with all of these "apartheid" articles is that they should be merged into one main article - this one - and this article should cover the whole topic to the extent that it deserves. And if CJCurrie's issue is with the phrase "Allegations", there's no reason why this article couldn't be renamed "Apartheid analogies", in line with the other article renaming. Jayjg 04:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment I suppose I was naive to hope this could be drawn to a quick resolution.

In response to Jay's statement, I should note that this particular controversy actually predates the creation of the Israeli apartheid page. To the best of my knowledge, it began with the creation of this subsection of the "Apartheid in South Africa" article on 15 November 2004, which in turn led to this retitling less than an hour later. This material was later spun off to "Apartheid Outside South Africa" (which, in turn, was later retitled as Allegations of Apartheid) via this edit and this edit on 10 June 2005. The section on Israel was removed in February 2006, and the article was reduced to a redirect later in the same day. It was only expanded again on 5 June 2006, when Jayjg tried to merge Israeli apartheid (phrase) into a larger article.

I'm quite aware that Jayjg has never accepted the legitimacy of an article on Israel and the apartheid analogy, but that matter now been resolved to the satisfaction of most parties, and Jay's suggestion that all of the "allegations" should be merged into a single article is a complete non-starter. The partisan gamesmanship that's taken place on both sides of this debate has been one of Misplaced Pages's least edifying spectacles of the last few years, and I think it's time we all moved on from this. Retitling Allegations of Israeli apartheid was a good start; deleting Allegations of apartheid would be a good next step. I could add that past situations involving now-banned editors are not germane to the present discussion.

My question to Jay: how is this article not a violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:NOR? Our standards have improved somewhat from 2005, after all. CJCurrie (talk) 05:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "that matter now been resolved to the satisfaction of most parties"; a series of mostly strawman AfDs doesn't particularly resolve anything, and it sometimes takes the community quite a few AfDs to come to a decision - see, for example, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Daniel Brandt (14th nomination). I note that the article you refer to is, after 4761 edits, still an unreadable, edit-war riven, unholy mess. As for "The partisan gamesmanship that's taken place on both sides of this debate", your nomination is hardly "moving on", but rather is just one more example of it. Can anyone honestly say that Misplaced Pages wouldn't be better served by including all of these similar types of analogies/allegations into one comprehensive article? As always, I'm willing to abide by whatever standard Misplaced Pages wants to set for its articles, but I'm hoping we'll give common sense a chance for a change, rather than trying to destroy any possibility of it. Jayjg 05:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Israel and the apartheid analogy could stand a bit more polishing, but there's now a general agreement that the subject matter is encyclopedic. Given the growing number of former Israeli politicians who have weighed in the matter, one would think this particular controversy should be at an end.

In response to your question, I think that Misplaced Pages would be best served by having individual articles on apartheid analogies (as applied to countries other than South Africa) when these have been the subject of serious academic and sustained journalistic discussion. In practice, this means that we should have articles on Israel and the apartheid analogy and Social apartheid in Brazil; one could possibly add Tourist apartheid in Cuba to the list, and, who knows, there may be some scholarly legitimacy to the Chinese apartheid analogy by the time the 2008 Olympic games are over.

Misplaced Pages is not served well by Allegations of apartheid, the sources for which mostly consist of passing references to apartheid comparisons in standalone articles.

And I doubt that anyone regards the Daniel Brandt situation as a stellar example of how Misplaced Pages articles should be managed. CJCurrie (talk) 05:47, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep - this article is just the thing for a high school student doing some research for an essay. None of the related articles (such as racial segregation) quite address the exact topic that this article is about. The article is heavily referenced (the list of references is longer than the main text of the article), it is written from a neutral point of view, and it is thoroughly wikified. Keep! - Richard Cavell (talk) 05:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Comment I can understand this position, but I don't think it's the right standard by which to measure this article. The problem with Allegations of Apartheid is that it's based almost entirely on original research and synthesized research: most of the citations are taken from scattered references in unrelated primary sources, and these do not amount to an encyclopedic article when considered together. CJCurrie (talk) 05:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

• Delete. It is true that nearly each sentence or information has its reference. Sometimes it even has several ones. This is a good point. BUT the whole topic seems to be a synthesized research. INDEED, who are the scholars (here sociologists or political scientists are expected) who studied, as a whole, the allegations of apartheid carried against the different countries or regime around the world ? If the topic was physics, and if somebody would have gathered different experiment results or comment to point out an hypothesis, it would certainly be speedy deleted. Here, because the topic is (also) political, it seems to me other standards apply... Ceedjee (talk) 07:03, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per the well argued nom and the wel argued deletion vote by Ceedjee above. They have basically argued all the objections I have to articles like this. Viridae 07:29, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep, but rename to Apartheid analogies. -- Olve Utne (talk) 15:05, 8 July 2008 (UTC)