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Allegations of apartheid

• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid
• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid (fifth nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid (fourth nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid (second nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid (third nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Allegations of apartheid in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

Allegations of apartheid (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Delete 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. In fact, this article's stature is so low in some circles that it's actually been parodied on non-article space (see WP:Allegations of allegations of apartheid apartheid).

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) updated 23:35, 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)
• Delete forthwith. It's a random assemblage of primary sources that happen to use the word "apartheid" in passing; these have been googled-up, huddled together, and awkwardly cordoned off with a sophomoric OR-synthesis: "Allegations of apartheid have been made, informally, against societies beyond South Africa...Apartheid has been used in compound phrases coined to compare actual or alleged forms of segregation, discrimination or disparity to South African apartheid." There are no secondary sources grouping these disparate items or observing these rhetorical trends, or even discussing "allegations of apartheid" as a topic in itself at all. This is purely a Misplaced Pages invention. The idea may be to create and sustain some sort of larger umbrella topic of which the Israeli apartheid analogy will appear as only one example, but this larger umbrella category of discourse – "allegations of apartheid" in a general sense – has not been recognized as a topic in the real world. For us to invent it is original research.--G-Dett (talk) 15:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete Not only per the nominators fantastic reasoning as to why the sources do not establish profound notability, but as to the unnotability of the topic itself. While many countries may have had allegations of apartheid made against them, I can't see any useful reason to have a topic discussing them all (each individual case can obviously be referenced on the countires article etc.), or given the quite drastic cover of definitions of apartheid in the sources, what definition it is that actual links this articles content. The article while appearing to be structured, is nothing more than a list of indiscriminate information, which doesn't even provide useful connections to other areas of wikipedia. - Jimmi Hugh (talk) 17:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete, or rather redirect to a general article on apartheid. Extended diatribes about the motives or conduct of editors, even if their content is accurate, have no bearing on the subject of this discussion, and votes (whether "keep" or "delete") based on them should be ignored by the closing admin. On point: While the individual data points used to construct this article are indeed reliably sourced, there are currently no sources provided which are actually about the topic "allegations of apartheid," ie, about the uses and abuses of the word "apartheid" in political discourse. If anybody can find a book, monograph, or even scholarly journal article which is actually about the subject (I'm mentally picturing something like a book called "The A-Word: Apartheid Rhetoric in Contemporary Ethnopolitics,") there would at least be a valid, if not necessarily convincing, case to keep this article. Absent such a source, it is clearly novel synthesis of unrelated material. <eleland/talkedits> 21:00, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and rename, presumably to Apartheid analogies or Apartheid analogy. It seems kind of strange to me that some people think it is ok to have an "Apartheid analogy" article about one specific country, which is basically an attack piece against that country, but we can't have a more general article about the "apartheid analogy" phenomenon worldwide. (The absence of any country's name from the title of this particular article means that it does not present the same POV problems that the other one does, which is why it is consistent to favor deletion of the other one but retention of this one -- in case anyone is keeping track.) As for the current structure and text of the article, it is pretty bad, but that is mostly because after the failed attempt to get rid of it the last time, banned editor Homey aka Lothar of the Hill People basically destroyed the existing article and turned it into the current piece of garbage. Maybe we should go back to the text from about a year ago and people can start improving it from there. Presumably, any sources that do not mention "apartheid" should be removed from the article. Improvement is the answer, rather than deletion. 6SJ7 (talk) 21:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

6SJ7, we've been through this many times. The reason to have the Israel article and the Brazil article but not a general article is not that Israel and Brazil are somehow the worst countries in the world, or the most appallingly racist or apartheid-like or whatever. The reason is simply that in both cases a body of literature (in the Israel case a vast body of literature) exists which discusses the meme itself – debating its merits, describing its history and attendent controversies, and so on. Meanwhile no body of literature exists that discusses "allegations of apartheid" or "the apartheid analogy" in a general sense. As a general subject, it was invented on Misplaced Pages.

By the way, you're right that the current version doesn't read as coherently as the one from last year. But the old one had a much bigger problem in that it seriously misrepresented its sources. Material focusing on the Israeli apartheid analogy was presented as if it addressed the merits of apartheid analogies in general.--G-Dett (talk) 21:57, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

This is not really the place to discuss the contents of the "Israel and the..." article, but most of the sources in that article are not of the kind you describe. They are just name-calling or taking quotations out of context. (I said "most", so don't quote me counter-examples because they are irrelevant.) As for the apartheid analogy in a general sense being "invented" on Misplaced Pages, there have been dozens of examples of the analogy being used cited in a number of different articles, though whether they are all still on Misplaced Pages after last year's Great Purge, I do not know. Some, obviously, are in this very article. Would the article be stronger if there were several books about the general use of the analogy? Sure. But that's not the test for inclusion of an article on Misplaced Pages. 6SJ7 (talk) 22:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that is sort of the test for inclusion. You need secondary sources about the analogy itself in order to establish its notability. Wikipedians' observations about rhetorical trends in discussions across sundry topics do not establish the notability of this or that meme.--G-Dett (talk) 22:28, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

6SJ7 writes: It seems kind of strange to me that some people think it is ok to have an "Apartheid analogy" article about one specific country, which is basically an attack piece against that country

My response: Israel and the apartheid analogy is not an attack piece against Israel; it's an overview of the serious academic discussions (and sustained journalistic discussions) that have taken place regarding the analogy mentioned in the title. I suspect that some editors will never reconcile themselves to the existence of an article with both "Israel" and "apartheid" in the title, but this particular debate has become extremely stale and most parties have by now concluded that the article is encyclopedic.

By contrast, keeping Allegations of apartheid alive in the hopes that Israel and the apartheid analogy will one day be merged with it is not encyclopedic.

Btw, it might be worth mentioning that four members of the 2007 Arbitration Committee voted to endorse the following statement:

"Seven editors (Gzuckier (talk · contribs), Humus sapiens (talk · contribs), IronDuke (talk · contribs), Jayjg (talk · contribs), JoshuaZ (talk · contribs), Leifern (talk · contribs), and Tickle me (talk · contribs)) voted to delete the allegations of Israeli apartheid article, largely on principle, after having earlier voted to keep the allegations of Brazilian apartheid article. Given the circumstances, the only reasonable explanation for this voting pattern is that the editors in question were attempting to prove a point regarding the allegations of Israeli apartheid article." (see Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Allegations of apartheid/Proposed decision, Proposed Finding of Fact #6)

This case eventually collapsed due to unresolvable divisions among the arbitrators, but the fact that four committee members were willing to endorse the aforementioned statement suggests that it wasn't a completely arbitrary charge. It's probably also worth noting that nine arbitrators agreed that "Allegations of Israeli apartheid" was the locus of the dispute. I would tend to think that these matters bear some relevance to the present discussion. CJCurrie (talk) 23:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Four out of twelve arbitrators. Jayjg 01:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Four out of eight who voted. CJCurrie (talk) 03:29, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The proposed finding of fact that you mention was hardly one of Arbcom's finest moment, as it sought to infer culpability without a) even asking those of us charged what our reasoning was; and b) faulty logic to begin with. --Leifern (talk) 19:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep: This does seem to be a case of keep nominating an article until you get the result you want. It's survived four deletion discussions and now there's a fifth. If it survives this, then someone will, I'd venture, have yet another go. Renaming to Apartheid analogies seems acceptable. Analogies of X to apartheid are common currency (and indeed overused) in political discourse and this article usefully draws these together. Nunquam Dormio (talk) 21:47, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Only one of the four previous nominations resulted in a "keep" vote. Of the three others, one resulted in a deletion that was later overturned, one was closed on procedural grounds, and the other ended in utter chaos. Moreover, all of the previous nominations took place against a politically-charged backdrop rooted in divisions over the status of the Allegations of Israeli apartheid article. That matter has now been resolved to the satisfaction of most parties, and I think it's time that we reviewed Allegations of apartheid with new eyes. CJCurrie (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

On the contrary, the issue of the Allegations of Israeli apartheid article has hardly been "resolved to the satisfaction of most parties". The AfDs for it were far more polluted than those for this article, with a couple of straw-man nominations by the article creator to poison the discussion right off the start, and most of the rest being various silly nominations by new editors etc. The only real AfD was Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Israeli apartheid (5th nomination), in which the !vote ended up at 30 Keep, 35 Delete. Most sensible people have mostly decided to avoid that article as a festering sore that contaminates any who touch it. And there are very few "new" eyes viewing this nomination; rather, it's the same old partisans, making the same nominations and the same tired arguments. By the way, do you plan to argue with every single person who !votes keep? Jayjg 00:53, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It's worth noting that what Jay is arguing was the only "real AfD" was precisely the one where his vote (along with that of six other editors) was determined by several Arbcom members to have been made in bad faith. See CJ's comment above.--G-Dett (talk) 01:08, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It's even more worth noting that only 4 out of 12 active arbitrators made that determination, and, in fact, they made that determination based on the statement of yet another editor, one who was assumed to have been involved in editing the related articles and therefore relevant, but in fact, had never edited them. Jayjg 01:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Four arbcom members made this determination, four expressed reluctance about generalizations, and four didn't comment. Are you saying that the first four based their determination solely on a statement by an uninvolved editor? They didn't look at diffs, weigh evidence, or exercise any other due diligence? You have experience in Arbcom; is this how things are usually done, or an unusual example of gross negligence?--G-Dett (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth noting that the most recent afd on "Allegations of Israeli apartheid" ended with 36 "keep" votes and 15 "delete" votes (refer: [[Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Israeli apartheid (8th nomination)). I agree that it was a silly nomination from an inexperienced editor, but the outcome was still rather conclusive.

Btw, Jay, I believe that some editors may regard this post of yours as proof that you've finally reconciled yourself to the existence of the Israel and the apartheid analogy article. Would that view be mistaken? CJCurrie (talk) 03:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Suggest renaming to Countries and Apartheid analogies. Amoruso (talk) 22:39, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. This article suffers from the same fundamental WP:SYNTH problem as several other now-deleted "allegations of apartheid" articles (see Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Allegations of Chinese apartheid and Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Allegations of American apartheid). It's an obvious piece of original research by synthesis, like the other articles. Looking at the sources, it's clear that the article is based not on any secondary source about "allegations of apartheid", but on little more than a Google search of a country's name plus the word "apartheid". To take two examples from a part of the world I know well, Bosnia and Macedonia, the article's flaws are obvious: "Other countries whose practices have been compared to apartheid include Bosnia and Herzegovina" (based on the word appearing in a single op-ed piece in The Guardian) and "Greece for its treatment of Macedonians" (based on, again, one source - one mention in one book). It goes on like this for example after example, giving no indication of who is making the "allegations of apartheid" (a misnomer in itself, since the word is often used as an analogy, not an allegation), often not stating even what the allegations/analogies actually are, or how widespread such views are. In effect, the article is little more than a "list of occasions when someone has used the word 'apartheid' about a country", with no regard for the due weight of that POV. This is not a viable basis for a Misplaced Pages article. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete The arguments about WP:SYNTH are compelling. The individual elements may be well sourced, but the overall article is very much a synthesis. It seems to me very similar to some of the lists I've seen removed of late. In fact, had it been a category called "List of Countries Accused of Apartheid" I imagine it wouldn't have survived long. --InkSplotch (talk) 00:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

In fact, if you go back to the first version of this article you'll see that it was conceived as an alphabetical list. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep per Jay. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 03:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep I'm not seeing the WP:NOR issue here: There's plenty of reliable sources supporting the notion, and all are obviously tied together by the "apartheid" concept. FeloniousMonk (talk) 11:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The NOR issue is specifically one of synthesis. The individual sources are certainly reliable but that's not the point. As I've pointed out above, the article has been compiled essentially by trawling Google for any occasion when someone has used the term "apartheid" in relation to arbitrary countries. This is a classic example of synthesis; to quote WP:SYNTH, "Material published by reliable sources can inadvertently be put together in a way that constitutes original research. Synthesizing material occurs when an editor comes to a conclusion by putting together different sources." In this case, the conclusion is that there is a worldwide phenomenon of "allegations of apartheid"; this has been supported by putting together different sources, none of which states that conclusion. The article cites no secondary sources that treat "allegations of apartheid" thematically, as opposed to individual mentions of the term.

In addition, as I've also pointed out, the article drastically fails the NPOV undue weight requirement in that it gives no weight whatsoever to the different "allegations" it cites. How notable is it that a Guardian journalist once wrote an op-ed piece comparing the social situation in Bosnia to apartheid? Yet the article blithely informs us of "allegations of apartheid in Bosnia" based on this one op-ed piece. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per the WP:SYNTH issues raised above.--Cúchullain /c 14:57, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. A fairly transparent POV attempt, along the lines of the prior seies of "Allegations of X Apartheid" articles, to portray what is overwhelmingly a phenomenon specific to a single country as a generic condition affecting numerous countries. Tegwarrior (talk) 17:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - this is, and should be, an article about political rhetoric, and then it is only appropriate that it covers a wide range of examples of that rhetoric. I think Tegwarrior (right above here) reveals his/her bias pretty clearly, which is a preference to single out one country by only writing the article about it. --Leifern (talk) 19:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting that the people !voting to keep so far are almost all Israel-focused editors, as is the person who created the article in the first place; your comments make the agenda here pretty obvious. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

ChrisO: What evidence do you have that I am an Israel-focused editor? What evidence is there in my comments that my agenda is anything but what I am writing? What basis do you have for making such accusations? --Leifern (talk) 19:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Fifth nomination? Someone needs to get a grip. Any article which has passed four afds has been thoroughly vetted by the community. — goethean ॐ 19:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

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