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

The result was no consensus. There appears to be a fundamental disagreement as to what constitutes notability in these kinds of circumstances. Roughly half of the participants believe that the sources provided do not demonstrate notability; the other half disagree. I am afraid that this question is not likely to be answered until some broader consensus on a bar for notability for these kinds of articles is eached. Shereth 15:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Lithuania–Romania relations

Lithuania–Romania relations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

whilst noting they have a few agreements , these are not subject to wide third party coverage, and also are pretty standard for EU member countries. Most coverage is in multilateral context . That George W visited Lithuania and Romania in the same trip does not equate to bilateral relations, neither does a football match played last year, but I know of at least 1 editor who would think this is worthy of inclusion, clearly not. LibStar (talk) 02:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

• Keep they are both EU members and close relationships into European countries. ApprenticeFan 02:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

precedent has shown that simply being EU members is not enough to establish notability, take deleted articles Luxembourg-Latvia/Estonia/Romania, Estonia-Malta, Cyprus-Belgium, Denmark-Malta just to name a few. LibStar (talk) 02:50, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

ApprenticeFan, do see EU members - there's a separate list where readers can see just who is in the EU. - Biruitorul 21:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

• Keep Plenty of verifiable and notable information available via a Google search and the diplomatic websites already listed. You also can't, as above, look at the first 10 or 20 results of 5,000 Ghits and declare defeat. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 09:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lithuania-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 03:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 03:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• I'm leaning towards delete because I don't see notability in the standard boilerplate "cooperation in economic development" kind of agreements, nor do I see EU agreements that are in place for a number of nations as being indicative as any notability between these two. But I will hold off a little while to see if anyone locates something that shows actual notability. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:30, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. —Cdogsimmons (talk) 15:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. The threshold for a stand alone article is notability, not WP:Verifiability, co-membership in the EU or other organizations, or editors' notions that sources "must" exist if only someone took the time to find them. The article cites zero independent, reliable, secondary sources, and I could not find any either that discuss the topic directly or in detail. This is the best I could find, but I'm not sure of the source's independence or reliability. Even if it is both independent and reliable, the source by itself is not enough to demonstrate notability, in my opinion. Yilloslime _C 17:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Delete - for the record, I searched in Romanian and came up equally short (mostly football matches). Even the Romanian Foreign Ministry has only this to say: "relations exist, a few visits have been exchanged either way, we trade about €32 million with each other (not exactly an impressive sum in economies of $50 billion and $264 billion), we've signed a couple of pieces of paper together, 0.07% of Romanian tourists go to Lithuania, and Romanian citizens can work there (covered here already)". The end. The Lithuanians have even less to say. Given the thoroughly routine nature of the relationship, and given the lack of independent sources on the subject (no, a party at the Lithuanian embassy in Bucharest doesn't cut it), we should delete. - Biruitorul 21:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
• Weak delete. This one is close. IMHO, it has the potential in the future to become a notable subject. For now, the specific material listed above fits better other country-specific articles (foreign relations, history, economics, tourism, sport),as it doesn't address specifically the relations. Actually, why don't we deal with this centrally? Can anybody list all X with notable "X-Romania relations". Outside Europe no more than these seem to have sufficiently notable relations with Romania: USA, Canada, Russia, China, Japan, Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, India. Even from these a couple can go. Dc76\ 02:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

  If/when it gets deleted, plese do salvage the text, though. Dc76\ 21:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

• Keep This article looks great now. Multiple bilateral agreements and visits. Well sourced. Notability should not be an issue here.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 14:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. User:Biruitorul convinced me with his excellent research. The lack of actual notability (as opposed to fabricated notability) looks apparent to me. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. What is "fabricated" about anything in the article? Once again, this is an encyclopedia, not the Guinness Book of Records or The National Enquirer, so we cover all subjects that have substantial coverage in independent reliable sources, not just the exceptional or sensational ones. I would also add that a predecessor state of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, very definitely had significant relations involving the territory of modern-day Romania over hundreds of years. Unless we are to create even more bilateral relations articles to cover every different historical entity we need to somehow pull this type of historical, encyclopedic, information together. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

• Trying to twist mundane, pedestrian functions of governments (like an agreement that boils down to "hey, let's encourage tourism, yeah, that's the ticket") into "notable" is what I consider fabricated notability. Niteshift36 (talk) 00:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
• Phil, if you're talking about something like the Battle of the Cosmin Forest, then yes, Moldavia and Poland (primarily Poland, not Lithuania) did have significant encounters with one another. But what we would need to tie that history to "Lithuania–Romania relations" is a source actually discussing them in that context, not a personal opinion that the relations of modern-day Romania with the Republic of Lithuania can have retroactive relevance to the 15th century. And contextually, that information is much better dealt with in sections/articles on the foreign policy of Moldavia and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, not in such an article. - Biruitorul 22:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

• Delete Okay, there's embassies. Lots of countries have embassies. There's state visits. Every country does state visits; they're staged well in advance. There's "relatively low" trade. The economy quakes when it moves. There's a handful of fairly typical agreements in international relations. Big deal. About the only significant thing here is the fifty-year gap in relations while Lithuania was part of the U.S.S.R., but that's not enough to carry a claim of notability. --BlueSquadronRaven 05:47, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
• Delete No secondary sources discuss these relations. Fails WP:GNG. Johnuniq (talk) 09:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
• Keep The article provides ample reliable and verifiable sources that establish the notability of the relationship. Alansohn (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Question I see that there ample reliable and verifiable sources cited in the article, but which one(s) of these establish notability by covering the topic "directly in detail", as required by WP:GNG? Yilloslime _C
    • "directly in detail ... and no original research is needed to extract the content". Can you point out the original research? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
      • What??? Who said anything about original research? I'm saying that none of the sources address the topic directly and in detail. Is that not clear? Yilloslime _C 21:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You didn't say it, Misplaced Pages said it. You truncated the definition, in full it reads "'Significant coverage' means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content." Significant is defined in the sentence as "no original research is needed to extract the content." --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Wrong. I'd appreciate if you didn't play word games. The sentence has two clauses, joined by the conjunction "and". Both clauses must be satisfied for the sentences requirements to be met. I'm saying the first part isn't satisfied. Yilloslime _C 15:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Comment After request by Richard Arthur Norton () I have found some Lithuanian sources that might be somewhat relevant:
  • A couple of articles in newspaper "Kauno diena" (, ) about trade relations between Lithuania and Romania (with Bulgaria). In short - there are some investments (listed), there is some trade, but relationship is not close...
  • An article in newspaper "XXI amžius" (). I guess it is possible to argue that it actually does discuss the bilateral relations (as opposed to, let's say, president's visit or signing of an agreement). For example, it discusses the timings of visits...
  • An article in "Lietuvos istorijos metraštis" (English abstract - ) about the relations during the Inter-War period. As it says, " until the late 1930s the Bucharest and Kaunas governments and politicians never gave any thought to bilateral relations and interests"...
• Is that "significant coverage"? Well, I guess it is more significant than the coverage in many of the sources currently cited in the article... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 17:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
• Keep The sources are clearly sufficient--just as your would expect, considering the politics involved and the relative nearness of the two countries. I can understand nominating for deletion really unlikely pairing on the assumption that no references will turn ups, even without checking, but nominating a pair like this without checking seems to me another matter.DGG (talk) 00:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

didn't you read my nomination, I gave evidence of my google news search? relative nearness of the two countries is not a criterion for notability. LibStar (talk) 01:57, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

You appear to have looked at the first 10 or 20 results of 5,300 Ghits. There is a difference between running a search and looking at the first few titles, and doing research. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:06, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

no I didn't. stop making assumptions of people. LibStar (talk) 06:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Keep per cursory WP:AFTER. If even only 10 of the 3,820 news hits dealt with the relationship, it would be enough to show notability per guideline... even if the other 3,810 of the hits did not. However, sources found by User:Martynas Patasius convince me that such definitely exist. Improving any article just takes work. That relations between EU countries might be "pretty standard" does not meake such non-notable. Pointing out that other bilateral relations articles might have been deleted does not convince me that this one should go as well. The nom's concerns inre some of the content seems a matter for discussion and cleanup, not deletion. The article as it has been improved since nomination is worthy of inclusion. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 02:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

10 hits have to be non trivial, not merely passing mentions. a lot of google searches are multilateral ie include country X and Y together with another country in the region. LibStar (talk) 02:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Indeed yes. Common sense does not allow me to conclude that 3,820 news hits would all be simply passing mentions. Common sense does not allow me to conclude that 1,650 book hits would all be simply passing mentions. And obviously, as long as included discussion of Lithuania–Romania is not trivial, guideline does not decree that sources discussing Lithuania–Romania cannot also discuss other countries... specially since it is illogical to believe that a country would have a relationship with only one other country and that they would ignore the rest of the world community. Again, kudos to User:Martynas Patasius for the diligent search, and User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) for his improvements. MichaelQSchmidt (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Common sense may lead one to conclude that with 3,820 ghits, some of those hits must more than passing mentions. But that would be sloppy research and would be wrong. Go thru the first few pages and you'll find that most of the articles contain lists countries which just happen to contain Lithuania and Romania. There is no mention of anything even remotely related to Lithuania–Romania relations. And you might find a article or two like this one which actually does discuss just Lithuania and Romania. But as it talks about only a single event (a meeting between gov'ts) rather than the more general topic of Lithuania–Romania relations and it's only 237 words in total, it hardly constitutes "direct detailed" coverage, and thus doesn't establish notability. So if you do a little more work than simply plugging "Lithuania–Romania relations" into a google news archive search, then common sense leads to the opposite conclusion--that most likely all of the 3,820 ghits are either passing mentions or non-mentions. Yilloslime _C 15:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Keep This article is now well sourced and quite informative. Multiple independent sources providing substantial detailed information have addressed notability concerns.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 13:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
• Keep per MichaelQSchmidt. Alefbe (talk) 13:35, 16 July 2009 (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 article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.