Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Bilateral international relations

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force and Completed pages

Initial discussion

Recently, a bunch of articles describing relations between country X and country Y have appeared. Most of this articles contain the fact that one country has embassy in the other country and nothing else. Unsurprisingly, several of those articles have been nominated on AfD, some were deleted and some not. Discussion took place at WP:AN, WP:DRV and other. I believe it is time to decide when relations between two countries are notable enough to merit a separate article. The other option is to include the facts in Foreign relations of X country article. Rationale for the debate is the following: let's say we have 200 countries. This would by default mean we get (200*199)/2=19900 articles X-Y relations. While it is evident some of those are certainly notable - for example, North and South Korea, USA and Mexico, Greece and Macedonia (random pick of articles that would have more significantly more content than X has embassy in Y), one can not say the same for Mongolia and Tuvalu, Estonia and Uzbekistan or Croatia and Peru (random pick again, maybe I chose bad examples but the idea should be clear). We should decide whether mere existence of diplomatic relations (or non-existence of them) is enough for a separate article. If so, we get around 20000 articles by default. If not, we get some articles that have actual content and the existence of other bilateral relations is covered in Foreign relations of X article. I invite you to present your opinions on the topic - and if you are against separate articles, what would be the criteria for significant examples? --Tone 15:16, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• To help the community establish where any consensus lies, there are two sections below where editors can vote to indicate 1) a general preference for or against having separate articles on bilateral relations, and 2) to vote for or against having a specific notability guideline for this class of article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:31, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

If there is any significant historical or commercial or political relationship between the two countries, there always will be material, about recent or past events. Its unfortunate that people are putting in stubs that do not indicate this. Having ambassadorships is not really enough, and these articles have prejudiced the discussion. As predictors of whether there is significant relationships of these sorts, there always are between countries with a common border, or engaged in a war against each other at any time in their history. I'm not sure that being the same large alliance or group is really enough, nor signing routine international treaties. DGG (talk) 15:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

I would not include historical relationships as a notability factor for bilateral relationships. I mean does whatever relationship the Austro-Hungarian Empire had with the Dominion of Canada really impact bilateral relations (or the notability thereof) of Hungary and Canada. If a historical relationship was notable it should either be noted in a separate article on the historical entities, or in a separate article altogether on the notable event(ex. Austro-Hungary and the Dominion of Canada were on separate sides of World War I, this can be noted in the WWI article.) In my opinion any criteria that we establish should include the stipulation that the events must have occurred after independence was gained. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:16, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

• I would be of the opinion that articles like this should not exist unless reliable sources have written about the interaction between the two countries in question. Mostly, all we're getting is each country's embassy/consultate/mission in the other country, which violates WP:NOTDIR. Stifle (talk) 16:08, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
• The problems with this type of article are similar to those with very small villages in remote areas without roads (or internet): People like to create such pages because it's like putting a rare stamp into an album, but then nobody is interested (or able) to turn them into proper encyclopedia articles. I think we should have a general policy saying that relational articles such as "International relations between France and Spain", or "List of recipes containing coriander and spinach", or "Public transport connections between Singapore and Teneriffa" may only be created as spin-outs from articles such as "List of recipes containing coriander". --Hans Adler (talk) 18:26, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
• I've been following these discussions for a while now, and participating in some of them, and there is a rather severe problem indeed. On one hand, there seems to be a group of editors, who create articles on bilateral relations, that only contain an illustration and the location of embassies/consulates. This is clearly not enough, and those articles often get (duely) deleted. On the other hand, as it is such common practise to delete articles of that kind, some editors seem to overlook the details of each particular case, and just use the arguement: "delete this, as it is similar to *another one*, that was previously deleted.", which is of course similarly problematic. I reckon that by large, such articles can be divided into three categories:
  • Ones that have no other content than embassy locations and no sources to provide additional information that can be used to improve the article to more than two or three sentences. These should be obviously deleted.
  • Ones that have a large number of sources with plenty of relevant information etc etc, which most obviously should be and will be kept.
  • Ones that have information other than embassy locations, often about the economic relations between the countries, meetings of heads of state, etc, with enough sources to verify the content, yet which will probably never become very long articles, as, although the relations between the two countries exist, they are not very intense, and will probably never become such. These are the problematic ones, yet I reckon they should be kept, provided There are no problems with the verifiability of the information provided, that is, no issues with unverified claims, original research, NPOV, and so on.
• My reasoning for that would go as follows:
  • Deleting an article on the foreign relations of two countries based on the arguement "they are not notable" seems slightly inappropriate, as long as the countries involved themselves consider these relations important enough, to spend money on keeping these relations going, that is, financing embassies/consulates. Notable enough to regularly use the tax-payers money, yet not worthy of a mention in wikipedia? This on it's own is not enough to justify an article, yet it is a point worth mentioning.
  • Deleting an article on foreign relations, if there are 4 independent sources covering the topic, yet keeping an article on a pop-band, if there are 10 independent sources providing information about them seems flawed. We must realise, that accounting for notability purely based on the number of sources is not valid when comparing things of different kinds as some areas of life are more widely covered in media than others. (Which doesn't essentially make them more important or notable.)
  • What has been suggested several times is that if there is not enough information for a long and thorough article, the information that IS available, should be mentioned in the "foreign relations of x" and "foreign relations of y" articles instead. This is problematic for a few reasons. Firstly this would mean that every time any new relevant information becomes available it should be updated at two locations, which means more work for editors and a high probability of inconsistentcy between articles. Secondly, a country like, say, France, might have such "on-the-limit" relationships with say 30-40 countries. Having 30 extra articles on wikipedia would not be much of a problem (we already have a few million...). Having a few sentences crowded with information (embassies, ambassadors, trade balances, meetings) for each one of those 30 countries in the article "Foreign relations of x" would massively crowd the article with rather unrelated information, which is probably not of interest for your average person wanting to know about the foreign politics of a particular country.
  • To avoid the problems I pointed out in the previous paragraph, when bilateral relations articles are deleted, the information present in them is usually lost together with the articles themselves. This means that content is lost from wikipedia, which... well... is bad... for reasons that are self-explanatory. And even worse, there is often no place for such content left in wikipedia, as including it in the "foreign relations of x" page might be considered giving less important stuff undue weight. So we are set for a situation where articles of foreign relations can no more be expanded, even though verifiable relevant information is available. Or are we?
• I hope that you appreciate my desire to improve the encyclopedia, and realixe that I do not expect any bilateral relations article to be considered necessary, but I just think that requiring two nations to have had a war, to be neighbours, or one to have been the colony of the other for their relations to be notable is pushing the "notability" concept way too far and completely missing the point of "wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia". DubZog (talk) 21:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
  • If four independent and reliable sources have covered a subject in depth, then an opinion to delete an article on that subject in the face of those sources is not an application of notability at all. So arguments about notability having to be "different" are moot. The editor making such an argument simply hasn't applied our notability criteria in the first place. The Primary Notability Criterion, as set out in Wikipedia:Notability, is in-depth coverage by multiple independent sources by people with good reputations for fact checking and accuracy. The only problem that you have really identified is that some people don't apply the criteria. This is a known problem. But it's a problem of editor education, not a problem with the concept of notability.

    It's a problem that occurs in the converse situation, too. Sometimes people will argue that something is notable, even when no-one, themselves included, has been able to find in-depth coverage of the subject in any independent reliable sources at all. Again, this is not a problem with notability. It's a problem of not putting it into practice. It's a matter of editor education, and a problem of editor unwillingness to actually put policies and guidelines into practice.

    The sad fact is that the times when editors don't put policies and guidelines into practice, by searching for sources and looking at their depths and their provenances, are when AFD and similar processes go badly wrong. One of the most prominent examples of this is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Talk page, and the action that resulted from it. Almost no-one presented a policy-based argument. As a consequence, we gained a cross-namespace redirect from article space to project space in place of an article — the result that no-one actually wanted.

    When policies and guidelines are not put into practice by editors, AFD and its ilk produce the worst results. Whereas they are at their best, coming to conclusions that we can have high confidence in being the right ones (whatever they may be, keep or delete), when multiple editors all put our policies and guidelines into practice, collaboratively searching and reviewing what sources (if any) exist, double-checking one another, and discussing. Uncle G (talk) 23:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

    • I agree with Uncle G that editors should make an effort to google beforehand, and that articles which have independent and reliable sources should not be deleted, although it might be possible to merge them. Editors who are not following these recommendations risk creating a certain amount of disgruntlement among other editors who find themselves at the wrong end of their deletion nominations and votes. MyDog22 (talk) 10:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Uncle G, you're just citing yourself. Why don't you create an article about notability? Would it even pass your own "PNC"? Or would we end up with a nonsensical result with people saying notability is not notable? Coverage is one of several indicators of notability, but it is not the only indicator. And I actually think that AFD produces its worst results when editors blindly follow whatever's written on a page with a policy or guideline template at the top — like staring at a GPS unit in their car and driving into a river. --Pixelface (talk) 20:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
  • In many cases, Dubzog, the countries have not put money into international relations with each other. Examples: Cyprus–Iraq relations (neither country has an embassy in the other), Colombia–Cyprus relations (indicates the nearest embassy of each country to the other). This puts us at risk of being a directory of embassies, which fails WP:NOTDIR. Stifle (talk) 08:56, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Votes on whether you broadly support separate articles for bilateral relationships

• Voting to support does not imply you'd support articles where no reliable sources at all could be found to establish the relationship.
• Voting to oppose does not imply you'd want to merge or delete articles where several scholarly or journalistic sources are available dealing specifically with the relationship.

Strong support: Such articles are useful for dozens of possible reasons. E.g. merchants considering which of several possible international trade fares to attend, where they might want a quick view of the relations between their host country and their potential foreign partners. Buyers wanting to narrow down a list of possible alternative international sources. Merchants seeking info on government schemes they could take advantage of to facilitate trade with a particular partner (not always easy to find on the government web sites!). Hosts preparing an international conference when they have to consider different relationships in order to optimise the chances of reaching mutually beneficial outcomes. Etc etc By providing this useful information we can help economic and political actors collaborate to achieve outcomes beneficial both to global prosperity and world peace! FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOT - we're not here to help merchants plan their schedules; we're an encyclopedia seeking to disseminate knowledge covered in multiple, reliable sources. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. A relevant line seems to be there is no practical limit to the number of topics it can cover, or the total amount of content, other than verifiability and also as a caution against cramming information on various relationships into existing articles Keeping articles to a reasonable size is important for Wikipedia's accessibility, especially for dial-up and mobile browser readers. Im missing any section saying we cant provide information of use to merchants? Thats only one of dozens of possible uses for these articles, though its worth noting their are hundreds of thousands of resellers who source internationally - even part type ebay merchants do it. Naturally we should insist on reliable sources, but a point of contention here is that some editors are insisting government web sites and the like verifying a 2way relationship are primary sources and ought not to count! FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Wikipedia is not a directory. Instead of 20,000 articles, most of them permanent stale robostubs, which are based on the websites of the foreign ministry of the countries, why not start with a section or article on "Foreign relations of.." in the article on the country. There there could be a link to the ministry's accurate and up to date listing of which countries it has relations with and where the embassy is, or who handles the relations in some third country. The robostubs will quickly become stale and outdated. Even if there were standalone articles, it would amount to 203 sovereign nations' articles rather than 20,000. Edison (talk) 17:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Most bilateral relationships have no prospect of ever being dictionary terms. I guess theres one or two exceptions where a special word is termned, as for the US – China relationship, which Nial Ferguson calls Chimerica. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support - within reason - and I have created my own standards here. Bearian (talk) 20:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support in principle, oppose mass creation. Such articles make sense if and when they are filled with relevant, noteworthy information that makes up a decent article. Unfortunately, what happens instead is that some people mass-create them off a list, with completely insufficient content. Thus they are forcing others to work on them, or to get into time-consuming fights at AfD. This is possible because it's almost impossible to delete an article because of its content (unlike at the German Wikipedia, which simply deletes without prejudice when there is no usable content). It is something I can tolerate up to a certain point, but not when people think big and exploit this weakness as shamelessly as has happened recently. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Not opposed to some I believe that clearly defines my position - the ones that are notable for having been studied, the ones that don't become "notable" through a process of WP:SYNTH and through the addition of mind-numbing trivia, and the ones that clearly abide by WP:GNG (all aspects of that considered) or, if need be, a rule that would reflect how GNG applies in their case. I strongly oppose keeping any article that does not meet these basic requirements, and, despite all the "let's rescue them hype", most in existence don't appear to. If no valid solution is found to state this difference, since I this type of juxtaposition is an evidently imperfect way of organizing information, and since many articles on notable subject may still be redundant, I would support deleting all bilateral relations articles in case consensus for this were pursued. Dahn (talk) 22:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support - including a "directory of embassies". Not everything on Wikipedia is "notable" and supported by multiple academic sources. We have stub articles on every town and airport in the US. We may need guidelines though. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 04:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Support For many cases. International relations are important. If we have hundreds of thousands of articles on pop bands and athletes, then we can have it on international relations too. That an article is currently very short is not a reason to delete. Short articles invites expansion, deleted ones do not. Some country combinations are truly insignificant, but just because you cannot see any connection between say Slovakia and Burma, doesn't mean a person from one of those countries would agree. --Apoc2400 (talk) 09:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose If a bilateral relation is notable when compared to most other, normal, non-notable bilateral relations then it should be included, otherwise, no. The whole point of having a notability standard is to put an upper bound on the scope of what may be the subject of an article. Notability generally means notability when compared to the average thing of that type. What is being asked for here is 100% coverage for all the mundane bilateral relations, and would be an exceptionally low bar for notability when compared to other genres of article. Gigs (talk) 23:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose unless the article is created per WP:Summary style. hmwithτ 15:32, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
• I don't see why we need any specific policy or guideline on this. This problem seems to have stemmed from just a few editors, and most of the more worthless articles are gone now. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:11, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose Do not have these articles just for the sake of having them. Only create an article if it will have a substantial amount of information.
• Support Even as a simple stub, with nothing but when the countries started relationship with each other, should be acceptable. Usually though, if you speak the language of one of the two nations involved, you can search their newspapers, and find notable events concerning both of them. It is unfortunate that peaceful diplomatic world events don't get the coverage of other things, however for an encyclopedia, it is perfectly valid content to have. Dream Focus 03:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - Wikipedia can only cover notable topics. Not every relationship between nations is notable. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 07:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support - the caveat at the top of this vote, that reliable sources must exist, is important. However, if reliable sources do exist that demonstrate a relationship, then having an article seems fine. Smile a While (talk) 15:19, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose With about 4K possible articles, and considering the actual usage thereof (nil for many I actually checked using stat tools), the whole matter verges on Beckett. For the content of many of the stubs, we could just as well have a 200 by 200 table showing who recognizes whom. And be a lot less agita inducing. Collect (talk) 12:01, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Broad support? Absolutely opposed. We don't need Eritrea-Mongolia relations just because it might possibly exist. Nosleep ^{break my slumber} 06:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• Absolutely support. As for notability: just because nothing has happened in the last few years for Google News to pick up doesn't make the relations between countries 'non-notable' -- the lack of any relations is also a circumstance worth noting between two countries, and I guarantee the topic of relations between these two countries is notable for residents of each country who happens to be living in the other or people who want to travel between the two. We're not short on space: if someone is willing to create these articles and willing to reference them they should be at liberty to create every combination of interest that can be referenced, with perhaps a bias towards summary articles ("foreign relations of..."). Each of the dozens of different countries in these various articles that are being AFD'ed have their own history and circumstance; I would not presume to judge their foreign relations inherently "non-notable" based on a stub article! Again, we're not short on space; everyone should calm down a bit about this. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 06:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
• Generally, Oppose but for, say, United States-United Kingdom relations, that would be fine. For the small time ones, just merge them into a main foreign policy of <country X> article.
• Oppose with the following exception: When two countries say UK and USA have a notable bilateral relationship there should be two articles. UK-United States Relations and United States-UK relations, where each article would be written from the perspective of the country listed first in the article. Otherwise it becomes POV and we would have a situation where wikipedia could have articles about the relation of everysingle thing with everyother single thing.
• Oppose with every fiber of my being, for the reason that the tens of thousands of articles that can be generated is ridiculously unmanagable, and will be mostly terrible and non-notable articles. Everyone can agree that the USA-Cuba, China-North Korea, etc... articles are notable and should be kept I think, but I don't think people quite have the experience in combinatoric math to understand how terribly out-of-hand this can get. There are tens of thousands of combinations of countries, and it is rediculous to say that they are de-facto notable. I think we need a guideline on not making articles generated in some way (like by combining two things, every whole number in existance, the properties of every combination of elements into a molocule, etc...). One article for each country covering all of their major forign relations, and an article for each relation which passes strict notability guidelines, and THATS ALL. Habanero-tan (talk) 04:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Support, and here's why. After reviewing quite a few of these articles it has been fairly conclusively proven to me that nominations for their deletion in the vast majority of cases were based on inadequate preliminary research. Almost all of these articles reflect actual bilateral relations between countries in the form of treaties, military conflicts, or humanitarian aid which are usually covered in the press, and when they are not, in my opinion, should be. I also have a fear that the deletion of these articles could (and I'm not saying this is the case) be a result of individual editors' xenophobia, or at least a bias toward the importance of their own countries' foreign relations (I don't see any U.S. or U.K. bilateral relations articles being deleted or even being nominated for deletion. Coincidence?). That would clearly be against Wikipedia policy. I do not think that a situation in which countries have absolutely no relations deserves an article, but I think this should be looked at with a historic and liberal eye. For example you could say that the United States and Cuba and the United States and North Korea have almost no diplomatic relations currently, but they obviously do historically, and I think the Cuba-United States relations and North Korea-United States relations articles are important additions to Wikipedia. Finally, I think that these pages have been pigeon-holed a little bit. They aren't called "Bilateral" relations. They are called relations. That includes multilateral relations, such as through the U.S.-North Korea six party talks, or regional relations such as ASEAN, NATO, or NAFTA. Even the UN provides an important forum for nation states to discuss and improve relations (just look at the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the cold war). There is plenty of room on wikipedia for these articles and those that claim they should all be condensed onto one page are basically asking to turn nice little packages with potential for improvement into massive, slowly loading, behemoths that no one wants to read or contribute to.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't speculate about the psychological or other motivations of other editors. The fact that a possible World War III either has been, or may be, associated with U.S. relations with Cuba and North Korea is probably adequate explanation for the articles you mention. Also, note that many things exist; only notable topics are suitable for encyclopedic articles. Johnuniq (talk) 00:18, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think its speculative to think that systematic bias plays a role in people's editing (in fact I would say that it is an objective fact). I'm not the only one who thinks so and it has been brought up a number of times on this page by other editors. Wikipedia even has a Wikiproject devoted to countering that bias, Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Interestingly, the international relations pages that always seem to be kept as being "notable" happen to correspond fairly well with the makeup of Wikipedia's editors (Western, English speaking, Christian, White, developed countries). The others get deleted for not being "notable". Coincidence? Also, it seems somewhat speculative that North Korea or Cuba are going to cause WWIII. A better reason to think those articles exist is because there have been historic relations that no longer continue today which are "encyclopedic".--Cdogsimmons (talk) 14:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

From WP:AGF: "If criticism is needed, discuss editors' actions, but avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence." I'm sure that in general your point about bias is valid, but you might want to reconsider your view for this particular discussion because I think you are avoiding the notability questions raised by many editors on the Afd pages. I won't rehash them here but will invite you to seriously consider this demonstration of how two notable entities and a relationship does not necessarily equal a notable article.

Given the results of this extremely interesting (U.S. news awareness) quiz, it may be necessary for me to spell out to readers why the two examples given above really are notable (without bias!). There is a lot of material to support the notability of Cuba – United States relations; I'll just mention that a U.S.-backed force tried to overthrow the Cuban government, and that the world was extremely close to a nuclear war due to events in Cuba. I support the creation of a suitable article for any case where country X invaded country Y, or where there was potential for a nuclear war.

Re North Korea – United States relations, a major war with potentially world-wide effects was based on N.K. vs U.S. differences (although of course it was actually about the USSR and China vs the U.S.). Recent events show that the relations again have the potential to involve nuclear war – there is no bias in saying that the relations are notable. Johnuniq (talk) 02:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Did I accuse someone of bias? No. I said I feared that xenophobia and bias could be a motivating factor in people deleting articles that have to do with countries they've never heard of. Let me address your point about notability since it comes up all the time. I totally support wikipedia's notability policy. I think things should be well sourced. I think that some leeway might be given to these articles based on the fact that government sources are usually reliable and there are arguments that we have to find independent sources to ensure notability. There's certainly a strong argument that these articles are comparable to populated place articles (not biographies though, I think your example is misplaced). But for now we have a policy and I think we should stick to it. However, I agree that we should all be out looking for valid 3rd party sources. With articles like this, they almost always exist if you look hard enough (which is why I'm disappointed these made it to an Afd instead of being worked on). The reason these pages are getting deleted is because we would rather make ourselves sound important creating an enormous diatribe by arguing about whether these pages are important enough or not to be in "our" project. There's a real lack of humility. If half the effort had gone into improving these articles that went into trying to delete them, we would have a bunch of well researched, enlightening articles. Instead, a bunch of those articles have been deleted. As far a Cuba and North Korea go, I was illustrating the point that history of people matters as much as the history of nations. There have been several arguments that articles detailing the relations of recently formed nations (such as Kosovo) should be deleted because most significant relations took place before the "nation" gained recognition by the international community.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:BIO just shows that in some areas we have policy/guidelines, and it might be desirable to have something similar for relations. Consider Bahamas–Russia relations where there is simply a list of facts: accords signed in 2004, members of UN, aid was sent in 1941, a politician encouraged tourism. You seem to be relying on sources to say facts are true, whereas I believe articles need a source with at least some analysis indicating that the facts have significance. Why should we think Bahamas–Russia relations is notable if there is no independent source that writes about it? A large country like Russia will have some kind of connection with every other country; those connections will sometimes be non-notable. Johnuniq (talk) 05:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Idea: form a working group

I have an idea. Why don't we form a working group to examine extant bilateral relations articles? The way I see this working is:

• The group goes country by country. Say we start with Template:Foreign relations of Europe templates. We'd look at Albania, then Armenia, and so on. Then at Africa, South America, etc. For each country, the group would investigate notability for the bilateral articles and sort them:
  • Prod - group consensus that the articles lack notability
  • AfD - mixed consensus
  • Keep - consensus the articles are notable

This would have two benefits: it would ensure several editors had closely looked at each article, while preserving the notable ones, getting rid of the non-notable ones, and opening discussions on the rest. The guideline could be helpful, so I wouldn't mind adopting one now, but it's not absolutely essential for the working group to go forward. Thoughts? - Biruitorul ^Talk 22:08, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

You forgot to sign ;-) I just went through Slovenia-related articles. Let me give some examples. At present, Belarus–Slovenia relations is nonsense, since the countries even are represented by embassies in third countries. Ireland–Slovenia relations has no content apart from embassies and the fact that both countries are in the EU. On the other hand, Macedonia–Slovenia relations is useful because of a part of shared history, economic cooperation and one country supporting the other to join the EU. And of course, Croatia–Slovenia relations that needs to be expanded since most of the content is presently in foreign relations articles. I support the idea to group the existing articles by level of notability but in another way that is presented above. It should be:

• countries with no relations
• countries with embassies in third countries
• countries with embassies in the country
• countries that actually have prominent relations, such as strong economical relations, shared history, open conflicts, significant minority of one another or something like that.

And then I would suggest to leave only the ones that are in the last group. In the time of globalization, it is easy to find examples of trade between two random countries but this is not the same as relations. And the fact that two countries are in the same international organization is not the same as having prominent relations. While finding sources that two countries have some minor contact is not too hard, the problem is that those are usually not really notable per se. It would be nice if someone could compile a list of articles existing so that we have approximate an overview what we are dealing with at the moment. Any by the way, I am putting a link to this site to open AfD debates in order to get some more opinions. --Tone 21:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Just adding, I believe that the foreign relations articles should contain a list of counties that one country has embassies in since this is the very idea of having foreign relations. But in prose, not in table form. For some cases, we have articles dedicated to foreign recognition of Kosovo, South Ossetia or Abkhazia and this is just fine since they are relevant topics. For some other curious cases, we have a FL, List of states with limited recognition. And I believe this is enough, WP really is not a directory. --Tone 22:13, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

"While finding sources that two countries have some minor contact is not too hard, the problem is that those are usually not really notable per se." You see, here is the problem: you say "minor contact", yet how major does this contact have to be, to be notable? Two countries playing a regular football match is probably really not notable enough for inclusion in an article on politics, yet what about information on the annual trade balance between those two countries? Is the (large or small) extent of foreign trade really so irrelevant it's not even worth a mention in wikipedia? Or do we mention it in the "foreign relations of x" articles and end up with the problems I pointed out in my previous post? Is the fact, that several ships owned by businessmen of country x are registered in country y really not worth a mention in wikipedia? Or indeed that one country is represented in another, if not by an separate embassy, by an embassy in a third country? All of this information is official and can be documented, and is almost certainly a lot more relevant to real life than loads of information on games, artists, theories etc that all has its place in wikipedia. DubZog (talk) 00:01, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's not simple enough to just go through each article. As the initial poster said, there are over 18,000 possible articles of this nature. I fully agree that the current notability guidelines are sufficient to handle the underlying issue, but I do think there is some value to a policy solution that is quicker than AfD, or at least alternative to it, for these articles. This is also an issue with a newly occuring type of article: the "x-nationals in x country" style article. New Zelanders in Iceland style articles. I don't know the answer. Perhaps a CSD criteria: "non notable connection between two otherwise notable topics." Shadowjams (talk) 05:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

You make an interesting point, and I wonder if it might be helpful to set up a negative notability criterion (something like "bilateral relations are presumed not to be notable if elements A, B and C are lacking"). Then again, both that and a positive one ("presumed notable if A, B and C are present") seem awfully like instruction creep to me. We've been doing these discussions for a couple of months now, and so far, almost no one has expressed confusion at what is or isn't notable. The notability guideline seems almost like a solution in search of a problem. - Biruitorul ^Talk 06:34, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm biased against these types of articles. Most of them are not about the history of relations between the two countries, so past wars etc. are not fully relevant. Most seem to focus on current diplomatic relations and current trade/immigration/etc, disagreements. The historical material can easily be covered at either country's page or in special cases by a page one the history of relations between two countries (as might be meaningful with England and France, or Japan and Korea, or the U.S. and Canada). Current affairs are precisely that--news, or if they rise above that standard, something worthy of its own article. These articles tend to catch o a lot of news-like items that would individually fail WP:NOTNEWS. Since two randomly chosen countries almost surely either have a direct exchange of ambassadors or have made some arrangement for another country's embassy to represent them, adding in the fact on a case-by-case basis seems silly. It's adequately handled by something like Diplomatic missions of the United States or Foreign relations of Nauru. I'd like articles like Denmark-Paraguay relations relations to be relatively rare and article like Foreign relations of Russia or sections like Foreign_relations_of_Bermuda#Role_in_international_relations to be the main way of handling these matters. Most of the Georgia–Iceland relations are vastly inferior ways of handling the non-news portions of these relations. What would be gained by recapitulating part of the history of WWII in the article on Germany – United States relations? That's actually a relatively high-quality example of one of these articles, but it mostly collects immigration info. from German American, some WP:OR on comparisons/contrasts between the two countries, and some trivia from elsewhere on the site. It could easily be replaced by an expansion of Germany_–_United_States_relations#Military_relations as a stand-alone article focusing on the current American troops stationed there. (In fact, I was surprised I couldn't find such an article.) In summary, I favour a strong bias against "X-Y relations" articles. JJL (talk) 22:07, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Agreed. But they're there now, and it's up to us to decide what happens to them. What Tone and I are proposing is a way of streamlining things - let's have a group of us looking over these, selecting ones to be discarded quickly by prod, some that are bound to raise some controversy and thus need AfDs, and others that have some legitimate, demonstrable notability to them (Cuba–Venezuela relations, France–Thailand relations), keeping those. - Biruitorul ^Talk 22:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
  • OK, I see the practicality of this. JJL (talk) 23:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Now look at the last section of the Foreign relations of Nauru article, and imagine, if someone decided to improve the encyclopaedia by adding relevant information about the embassies/ambassadors; trade relations, including the form of taxiation of trade between the countries, amounts of trade, forms of trade etc; past meetings of heads of state etc etc for each country listed... now for Nauru it might not end up too badly, yet what if someone did the same, say, in the article about Greece? Sooner or later the article would be way too long for good readability, and someone would suggest splitting the article up, to solve the problem. And this would be of course easy to do, by keeping only the most important information in the "foreign relations of x" article, and having everything else in the articles about bilateral relations of x with a, b, c, d, and so on. No matter what we do now, this looks to be the direction we're heading in, so it seems foolish to try to fight those, who are creating articles on bilateral relations at the moment, AS LONG AS THESE ARTICLES COME WITH SOME MORE VERIFIABLE CONTENT THAN JUST EMBASSY LOCATIONS. (As embassy locations really just prove, that bilateral relations exist, yet don't say much else about them.) DubZog (talk) 00:17, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• I go both ways in this debate, often however people choose to just throw these articles up for deletion without first checking for sources and improving it themselves. This causes stress on the afd system, I can't even begin to count some of these many x-y articles that myself and others have saved using easy to find sources. If we are going to tackle this problem in an efficient manner we need to first address forming a policy on this sed topic. -Marcusmax(speak) 00:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I strongly agree with Marcusmax, as with most articles, these editors are making zero effort to see if there are references first before nominating other editors contributions for deletion. Ikip (talk) 00:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Idea: only create articles as spinouts

An idea I'm not sure about this one myself, but what could be done, is that in cases where articles of the form "foreign relations of x" start getting too long, or if several very short articles of the form "bilateral relations between x and y" appear, they could be split/merged into "bilateral relations between x and countries of continent/region z" articles. So that we would end up with a "foreign relations of x" article, that would contain only the most important issues; "x-y relations" articles for only the cases, where plenty of notable information is present, and "relations of x in Africa" (for example) kind of articles, which would provide more specific information on the relations between x and African countries. However, if x already had a separate bilateral relations article with one African country, then the information there should not be doubled in the "relations in Africa" article, but instead there should be a link directing to the bilateral relations article, together with perhaps one or two sentences highlighting the importance of those relations.
But then again, it might be making the whole thing too complicated, dunno. DubZog (talk) 00:35, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

• I have two cents here also, and I've also been involved in a number of these AfDs. First of all, for practical purposes (since this discussion came partly as a result of an overwhelming number of AfD candidates), it might be useful to know where we stand. How many have come up at AfD, and how man are left? I'm going to assume that those that got deleted were deleted correctly, for a moment. If there aren't that many left, this won't be so stressful.

  Secondly, isn't WP:N enough, generally speaking? Uncle G mentioned policy, and policy is a nice handhold here. I see a problem there, though--"in-depth coverage" of the very relations can be hard to come by. Somewhere--Australia-Argentina?--we saw a number of incidents involving the fisheries in Antarctica. One incident, that's simply one incident, but a string of them, that means there's something going on, when embassies and governments get involved, etc. That suggests to me that the relations between those two countries are notable and relevant, even if the relations themselves in those articles are only hinted at, or mentioned, not necessarily discussed. Also, between Netherlands and Belarus (also at AfD), there is little in the way of direct diplomatic relations--but there's a whole bunch of stuff going on, involving their governments, the EU, citizens' groups, etc. So, even in the absence of diplomatic relations there can be notability for relations in general. I think what I would like, as a general policy, is a bit of leniency. OK, having an embassy is not enough, but there's a lot of independent coverage of news items that does not directly analyze the relations, let alone the diplomatic relations, between two countries; I opt that WP editors take such into account. Biruitorul and I have butted heads over the very meaning of such coverage a bit (hence my headache, B? ;)) and I think that reasonable editors can come to an agreement, as (I think) we did.

  So, apart from a. logistics (sheer volume) and b. what constitutes coverage sufficient for WP:N I think there isn't that much of a problem--though there is some antagonism and a lot of discussion. Drmies (talk) 01:10, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

  Comment, re above see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australia–Uruguay relations.--Grahame (talk) 02:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

As of now, Category:Bilateral relations has 81,234 articles in it. I've found about 118 past AFDs on the subject and listed them at User:Pixelface/AFDs bilateral relations. 46 are currently redlinks (39%) and 72 are currently bluelinks (61%). I have not yet checked if any are redirects, but currently it appears that 3 out of 5 of the articles are not deleted at AFD. I also see there is a the village pump thread about this subject. --Pixelface (talk) 19:55, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment on the numbers issue, two cents worth Hi, I hope this makes some sense: From a working standpoint, it could be good to firstly keep and create most of the 19900 articles, status quo, and to then concatenate (merge) obvious groupings to 1| regional articles (Viz "Mexico-Oceania relations") and 2| Remote-pairing omnibus articles viz "Miscellaneous Mongolian bilateral relations" and 3| other configurations. There is plenty of available support structure, like categories and simple disambiguation information, for this to work easily. But maybe I think the articles should be created, written and edited first, w/o topic (pairing) restriction or time-sink deletion discussions, so "we can simply see what we have", like categorizing an inventory.... (In re: remote pairings: I'm sure any Wikieditor may agree that for surprisingly many of these seemingly mildly unlikely combinations there will be a surprising amount of unknown and interesting information compiled and published here as time goes on, no matter what one's superficial impressions may be of any one pairing.) --Mr Accountable (talk) 04:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Bilateral relations task force formed

Exciting announcement - I've just started Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force. If you look at the talk page, you'll see how I see this playing out. Please do join and let's move forward with this, shall we? - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

• Joined - I have joined and think that this is a great opportunity to collaborate in one unified place so we can address the issues regarding these articles. -Marcusmax(speak) 03:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• Joined - Let's see what happens. I reckon we should start off my simply going through a few examples and then if we know what we're doing, try to arrive at some guideline. DubZog (talk) 18:20, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• Joined - See my standards. Bearian (talk) 21:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
• Joined - Hopefully we can review a significant number of articles and work to arrive towards a guideline. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
• Joined - These have shown up a lot on AfD, and, maybe some of them should be merged instead. Definitely a need for the moment.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail} 12:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Active AfDs

I've noticed quite a number of active AfD's in Pixelface's list: User:Pixelface/AFDs bilateral relations. These ought to be suspended until some guidelines are developed. I've been involved in a few AfD discussions that have resulted in a keep. The shear volume of these AfDs makes it a pain in the ass, because in many cases there are references available that makes the relationship notable, but who has the time to search when there is time pressure introduced by it being AfDed. Many of these articles have useful content that could be merged into Foreign relations of Xxxxx if some of them prove to be insufficiently notable as a stand alone article, but would be lost if deleted. Some consistent guidelines are needed here. Martintg (talk) 04:47, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

• Actually content from some of them was merged before they were deleted, so it wasn't lost. Canvasback (talk) 07:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
  • That is not the case generally. Martintg (talk) 01:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Are we being a bit too complicated on this one? I see one of these stubs popping up in AfD. I am inclined to think relations between two countries are likely to be worth an article, so may check to see if there are sources discussing this pair. If I find enough I add the content to the article and recommend keep in the AfD discussion. If I don't, I recommend delete. But this is the same as any other type of AfD discussion. The article is valid if there is enough content with good sources to make it more than a stub. Do these ones need special rules and guidelines? Some of the stubs that have potential are likely to slip through and get deleted - no great loss if they are just stubs. They can always be recreated later. I assume the AfD process will rarely delete an article that is more than a stub and has good sources. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the lot of active AfDs should be suspended. I'd prefer most if not all stubs of the style X-Y relations be kept. My initial arguments would be: these articles are easily sourced; they can and will be developed anyway as the world is moving, anyway, in one direction: towards greater cooperation and openness; Wikipedia already has enormous quantity of obvious trivia, e.g. cartoon characters, pop music artists of marginal notability, (odd) Japanese sexual practices etc etc. The relations of two ostensibly random countries still aren't as trivial as that. Miacek (t) 16:19, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

True, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, but that doesn't mean this particular set of articles shouldn't be subject to the usual rigor of WP:N and WP:RS and no, sourcing is not that easy for the more random of these pairs. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree that a few editors debating here is a reason to suspend AFD, thereby giving an automatic "Keep" to every properly filed AFD about these bilateral relations articles. I have seen such discussions drag on for months followed by "No consensus." Edison (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I oppose suspending the AfDs as well. Right now the AfDs are leaning toward being inclusionist rather than deletionist, only deleting the clearest cases. If the AfDs were primarily heading toward delete, then I might be of a different opinion about this. Gigs (talk) 00:34, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not convinced that any of these need to go to AfD at all. If there aren't sources to flesh out an article of the form A-B relations, just merge or redirect it to Foreign relations of A, an article that will almost certainly have adequate sources. The pairings all seem to be reasonable search terms.

(It should be noted, though, that each country pair appears to be in alphabetical order. Logically, if a bilateral article is kept, a redirect with the order reversed, i.e. B-A relations should have been created, and that one should point to Foreign relations of B.) Rklear (talk) 22:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Where to redirect has long been a thorny issue. My own preference is (as a general rule) for the smaller country, on the logic that the relationship will impact it more than the bigger one. For instance, "US-small African country" will always be more important for the small African (or Asian, or Caribbean) country than for the US. - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability criteria

What we need are some clear additional criteria for notability of bi-lateral relations similar in spirit to WP:POLITICIAN or WP:ATHLETE, where just the fact of political office or competition at professional level is sufficient to establish notability. I propose something like the fact of the existence of a bi-lateral agreement or treaty between two countries as one such criterion. Martintg (talk) 02:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Two points. First, those two policies have given us stuff like Ngor Sovann or Marius Barbu - worthless permanent stubs that can't be deleted now because AfD voters will cry, "but he meets the guideline!" (despite the minimal chances reliable sources will be found and an actual article ever be written on them). Second, I'd like to propose a higher but (in my opinion) more logical standard - if works (articles, books, sections in books) exist that discuss the relationship, then let's have the article. If not, we veer into a breach of WP:SYNTH, wherein Wikipedians decide a treaty or what have you (no matter how trivial) constitutes evidence of a notable relationship, regardless of the utter lack of reliable works that actually discuss the relationship in question.

Thus, relations that scholars have decided are notable (ie, Anglo-French, Indo-Russian, Sino-Israeli) get articles; those where a mere treaty exists, but no scholar or even journalist has bothered studying the relationship, do not. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:14, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Let's not get too hung up on whether scholars have studied the subject, or get judgmental on whether the article is worthwhile. I don't see any scholarly theses cited in the article on Paris Hilton. I prefer to stick to "reliable independent sources". If there is a reasonable amount of relevant content backed up by good sources, the article is acceptable. If not, scrap it. In the end, that is how the decision will be made. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Doctoral theses aren't reliable sources anyway, and also note my proposal allowed for "articles" as reliable sources; but more importantly, I take issue with your argument on two counts. First, we're dealing with different classes of articles: one is a person who verifiably exists and has had extensive coverage published about her in (more or less) reliable sources; the second are relations that very often have not been the subject of such coverage (and in any case are far more intangible than individuals, and thus less obviously suited for articles). Moreover, some bilateral relations have been the subject of scholarly or at least journalistic attention, and we shouldn't hesitate to hold all of them to that standard. Second, it depends on how you define "relevant content". If it's odd bits of news strung together by you or me and to appear to be notable, then no, that says nothing about the relationship as such. But if it's, say, this + this (journalistic + scholarly), then yes, no problem. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
• We need to have some kind of bar to filter the wheat from the chaff, a bar that is not open to interpretation, like what is a "reasonable amount" or what is "relevant content" or what constitutes a "good source". 99% of all content disputes have been precisely over the interpretation these of terms in my experience. Something like the fact of a bi-lateral agreement would filter out a large proportion of the 20,000 random pairings. Sure, we will get the odd article like Ngor Sovann or Marius Barbu, but nothing is perfect. Recently Iceland–South Korea relations was deleted with an almost snow-ball "Delete", yet these two searches, "South Korea and Iceland" and "Iceland and South Korea" reveal they have a significant relationship when it comes to whaling. Martintg (talk) 03:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• The problem with that is if the only notable facet of a relationship is an agreement, it really isn't enough to make an article out of, and also violates WP:PSTS - we are taking a primary source (an agreement) and declaring that (without a scholarly filter) to be evidence of notability. As for Iceland-SKorea: it seems those sources mention them as both taking the same position on whaling, not as having a relationship centred around whaling. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• A primary source is okay if they have been reliably published (is a Government press release about an agreement a primary or secondary source compared to the publication of the agreement itself?) so long as it is used only to make descriptive claims. A single agreement may or may not be sufficient to sustain an article, but it certainly would be sufficient to ensure deletion of articles like Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations. To have the same position on whaling would require some co-ordination, hence a relationship must exist. Martintg (talk) 05:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Primary sources should not be used to establish notablity for a supposed relationship. If it's a notable bilateral relationship, the relationship itself and its significance will have been covered in multiple, reliable sources independent of the subjects and at non-trivial depth. Proving that some some of relationship exists is irrelevant to notability. It would probably be impossible to find two countries that have never had some sort of contact (if only junion diplomats shaking hands at a DC cocktail party) but that's of little relevance.Bali ultimate (talk) 19:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Biruitorul, your proposal fails due to systemic bias: scholars tend to study topics for which there is funding. Thus one can find a library of printed works on French-American relations, yet when it comes to a less funded topic area, say Ethiopian relations with any non-G8 country, the material is far harder to find -- even if the relationship exists, for example between Belgium & Ethiopia, or Sweden & Ethiopia. (For example, both European countries have historically provided a substantial level of military training & aid to Ethiopia.) The reliable sources to satisfy Wikipedia standards often do exist, but it requires time & effort to scour the secondary sources, as well as a familiarity with the history of the two countries, in order to provide the sources. One can't simply look at the pairing, decide "this makes no sense", & delete them. -- llywrch (talk) 20:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Agreed. WP:BIAS should be mandatory reading. Just took a look at Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations and I thought, hmm, sort of interesting, and added some content. I imagine the subject is very important to the South Ossetians, and quite controversial in Nicaragua. Which led me to Nicaragua–Russia relations which I expanded considerably. What can you do with editors who think that almost everything is interesting? :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 20:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the issue of WP:BIAS. It takes time to find such sources and the AfD process doesn't really allow enough time to rescue articles such as Iceland–South Korea relations. BTW, the sources you added to Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations discuss the act of recognition, no mention of the "establishment of diplomatic relations", so I fixed that bit of synthesis up here. Martintg (talk) 21:34, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Encourage them to keep contributing to Wikipedia? ;-) -- llywrch (talk) 21:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia's policy implies that if an article fails the notability guidelines, the first option is to merge the article into another, rather than deletion [1]. Given that where some bilateral agreement exists, there is scope for future development. So even if a particular relationship is deemed not sufficiently notable at this point in time, the existence of such a bi-lateral agreement should at least qualify that article for merging rather than outright deletion. Re-directs are cheap. Martintg (talk) 21:50, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't mind redirects at all, but the question is where? For X-Y relations, do we redirect to X or to Y? - Biruitorul ^Talk 21:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
    • One way to deal with these country pairings:

1. no bilateral agreement and otherwise non-notable-> delete
2. bilateral agreement exists but otherwise non-notable -> merge, retain redirect to the larger country which has an article Foreign relations of Xxxx

--Martintg (talk) 22:03, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

• Cover the relationships in the articles on the resident ambassadors. This would mean two articles, so we may end up with a disambiguation page. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Embassies are notable. An embassy or a full time resident ambassador in in ether country will make the relationship notable. Other relationships can be merged and redirected to other articles. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:19, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

But if there's nothing aside from an embassy, we have a full set of articles on diplomatic missions: List of diplomatic missions in Belgium, List of diplomatic missions of Belgium, etc. If all that can be said is "X and Y have embassies with each other", then that information is already covered. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:26, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Embassy of Nicaragua in Moscow

We do not need scholarly opinions on the notability of the relationship, if it can demonstrated by simple physical existence of the relevant artifacts. If an embassy exists, we should cover its history and architecture. Even small countries can have purpose-built embassies. How many embassy buildings are there in the world? A 1,000? More like 10,000? A minimal article would contain a list of ambassadors. State visits are also notable and should be listed in the article. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Some embassy buildings are best forgotten (see right). I agree that a list of ambassadors and state visits belong. Maybe not notable if the papers do not cover them, but verifiable which is the main thing. I suppose Wikipedia is not news, not a directory, but maybe a reasonable starting point for anyone interested in Lilliput-Blefuscu relations. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

This sort of article is not excused from WP:N - we do need "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Reasons for ignoring this, or why coverage cannot simply be provided by extant lists of embassies, or why state visits receiving no additional mention than short news bulletins should be conferred with notability, have also not been supplied. Lists of ambassadors are a slightly different matter, but for those the established practice is separate lists; see Category:Lists of ambassadors. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:25, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

This is the crux of it. I'm not sure why so many people are advancing "but XXX is inherently notable" arguments for these. As a synthetic example, what if I were to argue "every zip code is notable"? Each zip code has a dedicated post office, and a postmaster, just as every bilateral relation has an embassy and an ambassador. Some post offices with unusual or historic architecture are notable, the vast majority are not. To me this is exactly like that. There is nothing inherently notable about an embassy or an ambassador. Gigs (talk) 00:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Systematic Bias

Please, please let's not pull the "systemic bias" canard out of the hat -- it's simply impossible to falsify. Yes, it is possible that, lying on the shelves of the National Library in Addis Ababa, there are half a dozen books specifically about Ethiopia's relations with Sweden. But: a) those books are in Tigrinya b) they are thousands of miles away from 95% of Wikipedians. And even if we have a single editor in Addis Ababa, I submit to you that his country's relationship with Sweden is among the last things he's interested in writing about. Now: if someone fluent in Tigrinya and English does decide to take those books and fashion a full-fledged article out of them, more power to him - I'm certainly not standing in the way. It's just highly unlikely.
Countering systemic bias is a worthy goal. However, not at the expense of standards. WP:V, WP:N, WP:RS, WP:SYNTH, WP:PSTS and so on apply in equal measure to Gabon-Malawi relations as they do to Franco-German relations. So yes, we still need works (articles, books, sections in books) that discuss the relationship as such - and until those exist and are written up in proper article form, we can't have an article. We can't sacrifice quality and scholarship for the sake of bean-counting. - Biruitorul ^Talk 21:53, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Llywrch, what is it you're saying? That we should actively start covering subjects which no one else covers because they're not covered? That strikes me as contrary to both WP:NOT and WP:OR. What's more, citing what the guys over at WP:BIAS have to say about their goals strikes me as a futile exercise - yes, there is a systemic bias, but it is often an unavoidable fact. And no, citing how scientists get their funding as a negative thing will not make it a negative thing: that very fact is an indicator of notability, and a tool for establishing notability. Their priorities are out priorities, for better or worse. The argument is also pretty amusing, considering that this world is home to more academic specializations than ever before, that the academic environment has been repeatedly accused of pumping money into projects of no relevancy and that there are several takes on all major topics in humanities (many of them verging on the obscure). If something of relevancy isn't covered by now, it will never be.

I'm sorry, but the argument about Ethiopia and, say, Sweden is a fallacy, pure and simple. Let's weigh in the supposed reasons why Ethiopia's supposed relationship with Sweden isn't "yet" covered: the Ethiopian economy, even though it provided for a fast pace of modernization during brief intervals of its history, did not traditionally provide for a consistent literacy level, and the social investment in that literacy level is likely to have been diverted back into traditional occupations and a rural structure. Blame Italian colonialism, blame civil strife, blame the present-day living standards, blame whatever, but the fact is that Ethiopia simply doesn't have the luxury or the interest to produce, on its own, ample coverage of its own history. Sure, we can say (as you do) that this means there is "less coverage" of Ethiopia's history made available to us than there should be. But that's saying only half of it. The other half which is optimistically and blindly omitted is that, for these very causes, Ethiopia has less of a literate history to cover, and less diplomacy to speak of, and less resources to consider partnerships with far away lands. I don't think I produce any controversial statement when I say that, aside from being often motivated by sheer subsistence (something most European regions at the top of the "food chain" didn't have to worry about in the last 2 centuries), African realities have made much of the continent's history a blank spot, which can only be covered tentatively.

Nevertheless, if I want to find sources on virtually all relevant aspects of Ethiopian history in any post-literate period, in whatever of the languages I speak, I'll have no trouble at all.

So it's terribly counterproductive to keep a worthless article because we could speculate about what relationships Ethiopia "may" have (the sound of a falling tree). So is urging editors to find more Amharic sources on something that almost certainly doesn't exist at all.

Before you think this argument only applies to Africa or the underdeveloped world, let me give you a parallel. I am a citizen and inhabitant of Romania, a country which has its own thousand-year blank spot of non-literate history that several have tried to fill creatively. Your "solution" would tolerate such speculative filling, because, hey, there "might be" more than nothing on that thousand of years, even where no source attests it - sources may pop up tomorrow... This is not a positive thinking seminar, it is a reflection of coverage things get in the real world. Dahn (talk) 21:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I seem to have hit a nerve with "systemic bias" -- & I was hardly aware that it was overused & unfalsifiable. Unfortunately, it is very much a fact: we can't research & write about what we don't know.

First, while there are probably works on Ethiopian-Swedish relations at the National Library in Addis Ababa, they wouldn't be in Tigrigna, but in Amharic, English -- & Swedish. And I am sure that copies of most of these works would be available at research libraries in New York, London etc. The trick is knowing which ones they are, especially if the articles & sections are not obvious to a quick Google search or a look thru the index.

In broad terms, Ethiopian-Swedish relations involve:

• Missionary work in Ethiopia towards the end of the 19th century. This included educating the two people -- Onesimos Nesib & Aster Ganno -- who translated the Bible into Oromo.
• Significant military training & modernization of the Ethiopian military, including the Air Force (Sweden also sold/gave Ethiopia some of the first airplanes), & setting up one of the two military academies in Ethiopia.
• Foreign aid. (I'm still compiling examples of projects Sweden funded, but one is Chilalo Agricultural Development Union.)
• Educational connections. A number of Ethiopians come to Sweden every year for college & post-graduate education, & these often end up in leadership roles in Ethiopia.

And possibly more. However to identify these, one has to go past the CIA World Factbook, embassy press releases, & news reports.

As for Dahn's comment, "If something of relevancy isn't covered by now, it will never be" -- I assume that he's speaking of Wikipedia. (If he's talking about the published literature, both online & off, then I don't know how to begin to answer that.) It may be hard to believe this, but there are still a lot of topics Wikipedia hasn't covered. I can think of a dozen individuals in Ethiopian history, for example, who still need articles written (e.g., Dejazmach Wube Haile Mariam, Ras Alula Engada); the reason they haven't been written is simply because I haven't written them. I'm not boasting here, just stating a simple fact. (And I'd be very happy if someone else wrote them; I have enough to do as it is.)

As for his other comment, "Ethiopia has less of a literate history to cover, and less diplomacy to speak of, and less resources to consider partnerships with far away lands", have a look at Ge'ez alphabet, & Ge'ez language#History and literature -- Ethiopia is an ancient land, on par with Iran, Thailand or Japan. (As for Ethiopia & Japan, have a look at J. Calvitt Clarke, "Ethiopia's Non-Western model for Westernization: Foreign Minister Heruy's mission to Japan, 1931", a paper I only found a few months ago -- although I long knew of this connection.) Sheesh, Dahn's entire response simply demonstrates the problem Wikipedia has with systemic bias: we don't know that we don't know anything about some subjects, & so we assume that the subjects either aren't notable -- or don't exist. And so we don't look for information about them. -- llywrch (talk) 06:02, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

One: several of the things you attribute to Sweden in its supposed relationship to Ethiopia are attributable just as well to individuals who happened to be Swedish. The final point in that looks like an invitation to yet more trivia.

Two: "I assume that he's speaking of Wikipedia". Stop right there: no, I wasn't; it's quite clear from the context that I was talking about, and answering to, an argument made about scholarship.

Three: I know very well how ancient Ethiopian culture is (and have read significant material about Ethiopian history in the past), but that is simply not the issue: entire eras in Ethiopian history are sketchy and covered only by legend, even though by African standards they may offer a more complete image. No, I never said those eras are not necessarily consecutive - as I imagine you interpreted my answer, assuming that I illustrate the cliché with which you do battle in the final part of your post. They are nonetheless there. What's more: as literate as the elite was from ancient times, Ethiopian culture went through dramatic highs and lows, lacked in direct continuity (for all the proliferating mythical aspects about tradition), and, while providing room for a rich oral culture, did not extend to the mass of the people before the 20th century (and, even then, it mostly came as a process of Westernization or novel Panafricanism, not as a reaffirmation of that ancient cultural identity). And if somebody would come to me and say that 15th century Moldavians and Wallachians were representatives of a literate culture just because manuscripts survive in a language most probably didn't speak, and that we therefore have an in-depth and trustworthy depiction of local culture at a times when other regions were going through something called the Renaissance, I'd be much amused. And, no, I'm not constructing the argument that western countries are superior, let alone innately superior. What I am saying is that the Renaissance, through this, this, this, this and other stuff, gave a coverage and voice to a wider specter of society, and created much more recordable reality, as well as an influential and ultimately dominant cultural model. Dahn (talk) 06:23, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

And btw, I can't stress this enough: my entire comment was not about the complete lack of notability in Ethiopia's foreign relations, and not even one on its relationship with Sweden. It was sparked by the fact that we bring WP:BIAS up every time we decide to compare something potential with something existing, in this case comparing Ethiopia to, say, the US. They can't be compared, as ancient as Ethiopia's culture is; while some articles about both countries' foreign relations will never be notable, all other articles on the US' will be more notable than all those on Ethiopia's. Now, you may construct an article on Ethiopian-Swedish relations and, for argument's sake, it may turn out be valid, welcomed and needed. But to assume that not having one or voting against having one is an an issue of "bias" is ridiculous, and so is the argument that there are other such articles. If there is any reason why such comparisons are flawed, it is that Ethiopia is Ethiopia, just like the US is the US. As said above here (and expanded upon elsewhere), this is not an American's argument; I have made the exact same point about my country, Romania, and expectations that it could and (what's worse) should be "covered" on par with, say, the US. And again: many articles on the US' relations with X country are not notable. Dahn (talk) 06:42, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

One one hand, yes, bilateral relations of minor states are perhaps not notable. On the other, where do we draw the line? And yes, systemic bias is of some importance here. Would anybody argue that any bilateral relation of United States is not notable? Sure, US is important. But what about UK? Spain? Argentina? As I cannot see where we the line should be drawn, I cannot support the deletion of such articles. At the very least, instead of deleting such articles, we should merge them into the "foreign policy of state x" page. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a false choice being presented. If a relationship is found not to be notable through lack of reliable sources discussing the relationship, then deletion (or at best redirecting) is the proper answer - no different than for any other article. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

To Piotrus: "Would anybody argue that any bilateral relation of United States is not notable?" Yes, I would. I did so in the above. For instance, the relationship between the US and Andorra is most likely not notable. As for setting objective criteria, and bypassing the issues of country size et al. altogether: I would picture articles on relations (of US, Argentina, Poland, Mongolia and whatever) that don't include resident ambassadors are as a rule delete material, unless they (the relations) are amply covered by secondary sources. For example, two states may have cut off diplomatic links with each other, but nevertheless, and perhaps even because of that, they may still have a notable relationship - and the AfD would have to prove that those relations, not something linked to them by conjecture or fallacy, are covered by a significant number of sources; this is, roughly, what all AfDs do. I would also hold the "resident ambassadors" articles accountable to ample coverage in secondary sources, or else merge them back in their mother articles ("Foreign relations of...").

Let me add that I still think the entire "bilateral relations" articles system is inherently flawed, and the discussion above offers enough proof of why that is. But I am ready to accept my view is a minority one, and will work within just about any framework that gets rid of the obviously nonsense articles among those in this series. Dahn (talk) 03:20, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Countering systematic bias

Systematic bias will be a problem when implementing a notability guide for bilateral relations (which I'm not against). One thing I would ask is that we need a way to ensure there is a good-faith search for reliable sources done in the common languages of both countries involved, not only a search in English. — LinguistAtLarge • Talk  23:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

A noble idea, perhaps, but what about, say, Somalia-Tajikistan relations? Do we really expect searches in Somali and Tajik? - Biruitorul ^Talk 00:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Before claiming that no reliable sources about this relation exists, yes. --Apoc2400 (talk) 12:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

This is getting absurd. If there are enough obscure sources to build an article on, then the article can be created once somebody gets around to using them. But when someone starts mass creation of History of kitchen sinks in 12th century Swabia, History of kitchen sinks in 13th century Swabia, History of kitchen sinks in 14th century Swabia, Use of vacuum cleaners in the 1990s in Hubei, Use of vacuum cleaners in the 1990s in Henan, Use of vacuum cleaners in the 1990s in Shaanxi etc., then it must be possible to clean up this idiocy/POINT violation/whatever without digging up editors who can read the local languages involved, travelling to the libraries in remote places that are most likely to have material on the topic, or jumping through any other unreasonable hoops. A sane person creating something like Somalia-Tajikistan relations either knows sources that can make this a reasonable article, in which case they should write the article themselves because the odds are nobody else is going to do so in the next ten years. Or (much more likely) they create the article because they believe against consensus that any X–Y relations article is automatically worth having. --Hans Adler (talk) 13:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Well said! - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment I agree with the sentiment; a good enclyopdiea should be selective and written from a particular point of view. (Pure neutrality is a bland grey mush.) However the absolute mandate of the equal ultimate validity of all view points means we will eventually get to History of kitchen sinks in 12th century Swabia.--Knobbly (talk) 02:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Only if someone writes their Ph.D. thesis on it. --BlueSquadronRaven 04:03, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Basics

We are discussing one class of article: Country X/Y relations. There are many other classes of article such as high schools, villages, football teams, bus routes, silly lists, rock stars, insects etc. Wikipedia is based on simple, clear and well-defined policies that apply to all articles: neutral, no original research, verifiable. Then we have added guidelines on things like notability, size, content forking etc. In practice, most AfD discussions get decided on conformance to policies and notability. If we try to introduce yet another guideline for this particular type of article (which is sort of obscure), will the editors expressing opinions in the AfD debates be aware of it, or pay it any attention? Aymatth2 (talk) 01:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Even without the guidelines, most of these articles don't pass the existing mark. I for one have pointed that out whenever you have claimed the contrary, and I also tried to move such conversations beyond the tiresome "other stuff that exists" argument. The fact that it's being repeated over and over despite objections looks as an attempt to stir up emotions, and I for one will henceforth dismiss it as demagoguery. Dahn (talk) 01:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sure we have the basic notability criteria: significant coverage in secondary sources, but there are also alternate criteria for establishing notability. For example in the case of non-commercial organizations, it is sufficient to prove notability if:

1. The scope of their activities is national or international in scale.
2. Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by third-party, independent, reliable sources.

In the case of academics, is is sufficient to fulfill any one of the following alternate criteria, so long as it is verified in reliable sources:

1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.
2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.
3. The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g. a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g. the IEEE)
4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.
5. The person holds or has held a named/personal chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research.
6. The person has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution or major academic society.
7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.
8. The person is or has been an editor-in-chief of a major well-established journal in their subject area.
9. The person is in a field of literature (e.g writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g. musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC.

In the case of people there are both basic and additional criteria, and if an article fails the basic but passes the additional criteria, then that guildeline advises merging of that article, rather than deletion. I think we need such a set of alternate criteria to be developed in the form of Wikipedia:Notability_(bilateral relations). We could start by defining the basic elements of what constitutes relations between two countries, then define measures for one or more of those elements. For example: bi-lateral agreements is one element, while X number of agreements would be a measure. Bi-lateral meetings is another element, a measure could be Y number of meetings at the level of Z (e.g. foreign minister) or higher. Trade, a measure could z% of GDP. Shared cultural events at national level. And so on and so forth. Other guidelines have been proposed here. The aim is to set the bar at a level that would filter out most of the odd-ball articles while reducing the number of acrimonious AfD debates. Martintg (talk) 04:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

What's the matter with WP:N?

I've been following (and participating) in the AfDs for these articles, and haven't yet seen one where WP:N wasn't sufficient. The criteria for speedy deletion have deliberately been set to strictly limit what can and cannot be deleted (in short, only non-controversial topics where notability is not asserted can be speedy deleted, and even then there's strict limitations) and there's little chance of having them amended for bilateral relations as the creation of these articles is an implicit claim of notability and some aparantly hopeless cases have turned out to meet WP:N (Australia–Uruguay relations for example). It takes a lot of work to develop a new notability guideline, and I frankly don't think that one is needed as WP:N seems to be working well - the AfDs all seem to have ended in reasonable outcomes and articles on topics where no significant coverage is apparent have been deleted when appropriate. Moreover, if there's no speedy deletion category then nominations for deletion against the new guidelines would still have to go through AfD so nothing would be gained from creating the guideline. As such, instead of developing new guidelines I'd suggest that the problem of the mass produced articles be approached as a clean-up job as suggested by User:Biruitorul above. Nick-D (talk) 10:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I agree we shouldn't be trying to hammer out a new guideline which establishes arbitrary thresholds like "all relations with X% of GDP as bilateral trade", "all relations with X number of treaties", "all relations between members of X group"" or even "all relations with resident ambassadors". But even if you fully accept WP:N, the question tends to be one of interpretation. Unless you have a screamingly obvious book entitled "The History of Elbonian-Kneebonian Relations" printed by Important University Press, then it becomes a question of what qualifies as:

1. "significant coverage" (newspaper articles? book chapters? doctoral dissertations?)
2. "of the topic" (do sources about refugees/investors/visiting ministers/visiting art troupes/one country's students studying the other's language count as being on the topic of a "relationship"?)
3. "independent of the subject" (e.g. the ubiquitous foreign ministry pages and government news agencies)

The other main problem is people cursorily throwing the two country's names into Google News (which invariably gets you thousands of GHits) and claiming it's a clear demonstration that no sources exist. cab (talk) 11:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

To address your main point, if I may: yes, the issue would become one of what "significant coverage" etc. mean. Debates around that won't be canceled in existing or subsequent AfDs, prods etc. (indeed, such debates almost never are), but we would know what we are discussing, instead of the usual barrage invoking "WP:BIAS", "other stuff exists", "I googled the two country names and x results came up", "the two national governments once mentioned each other" etc. Instead of that, the discussion would focus on coverage, and decisions would be taken based on that sort of proof and nothing else. Now, I'm not saying that such coverage should necessarily be specified as a special guideline (and I would challenge that, in generic terms of WP:N etc., it already is a guideline); I'm saying that, if we really need a guideline, such coverage in outside sources would have to be its main demand. Dahn (talk) 15:58, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Nick-D cites Australia–Uruguay relations as an apparently hopeless case that has turned out well, while "topics with no significant coverage have been deleted when appropriate". Well that is the nub of the problem. Articles where one of the countries is an English speaking country, it is easy to determine whether a relationship is notable enough, as Australia–Uruguay relations demonstrated, all the sources are Australian. In the days that the AfD was open, it was easy for dozens of Australian editors with some familiarity of the topic to expand that article to a point that it fulfill the basic notability criteria. But what of the case when both countries are non-english speaking? Iceland-South Korea relations was recently deleted because of an apparent lack of sources, yet a relationship does exist through whaling, where they share and coordinate a common position in this area. Is that notable? Perhaps if there were more Korean or Icelandic speaking editors, perhaps they could have expanded that article to a point that could have saved it from deletion, using their native language sources. If dozens of these articles were to be put AfD every day, who is going to thoroughly check the sources, and will the other editors consider it notable according to their english language centric world? Are we entrenching WP:BIAS into this process? We need guidelines so that at least some of these articles can live as a stub until they are expanded. And if they are not expanded within several months, then AfDed. Martintg (talk) 12:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Good point – there are several issues specific to this particular class of article that point to the need for a specific notability guideline. Thanks for voting! FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's true at all. The South Korea-Iceland was the typical no-content stub; should Korean or Icelandic editors find sufficient sources to write an actual article on the topic, they are free to re-create it. There's no tragedy from deleting re-creatable three-liners. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not a tragedy, but it's a discouragement. When there is any reasonable indication that an article is expandable, it is worth keeping as a stub. for one thing, ips can expand it, whereas they cannot start articles.DGG (talk) 21:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that depends on your definition of "reasonable". If we're talking about freely viewable pages on Google Books or books widely in circulation in the US and the UK, sure. If it's more along the lines of "there might be sources somewhere at the main library in Kinshasa" or "I'm sure the right documents are at the NATO archives in Brussels", then that's not so reasonable. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:56, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Votes on whether we should have a separate notability guideline for bilateral relations

• see also the comments in Notability criteria above

Strong support: we should have a separate guideline for this class of article, e.g. as we do for articles relating to music ( WP:MUSIC ). In the absence of a specific guideline, deletionist editors are free to argue that even well sourced arguments are essentially only establishing notability by synth – they can dismiss government web sites as primary sources and insist a relationship is only notable if we can prove it has been the subject of several scholarly or journalistic studies. To illustrate this, consider that in the absence of WP:MUSIC , deletionists might have been able to argue that chart rankings and the like should count as primary sources - because of the specific policy they cannot and as a result important articles are saved. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Strong support, per FeydHuxtable. Martintg (talk) 13:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - and personally, I resent how the deletionist bogeyman is being raised to highlight the "urgency" of the matter. I for one am evaluating each case on WP:N principles - and that has proven sufficient so far. There is no urgent need for a guideline: right now we have perhaps 5,000 of these, of which a good portion are already clearly notable to anyone and won't be nominated for deletion. Some of the rest can also be done by prod to streamline things. The whole evaluation process shouldn't take more than a few months longer. If we do get a guideline, it's bound to leave a majority unsatisfied and let plenty of bad articles through that normally wouldn't pass WP:N. At AfD, the vast majority of participants seem fully able to reach a decision on notability without a guideline - they may reach a dreadfully wrong decision, but that's just my opinion; the salient fact is that they do have the ability to decide without reference to a guideline.
• And again: WP:MUSIC has let a lot of junk through, but even more of a train-wreck has been WP:ATHLETE. Have a look at Gabriel Abraham, Călin Albuţ, Victor Aldana, Bogdan Aldea, Denis Alibec, Andrei Prepeliţă, Catalin Anghel, Iulian Apostol, Vasile Avădanei, Alexandru Avram. "This guy plays football for some team." No need to assert further notability - being 19 years old and kicking a ball around for even five minutes while under contract to Gloria Bistriţa earns you a spot in the encyclopedia. Because in the event I do take any of these to AfD, I'll get half a dozen "Keep - passes WP:ATHLETE" votes, with nary a thought to whether this actually improves the encyclopedia or is notable under the normal rigors of WP:N (multiple, independent, in-depth sources). If that's what this type of guideline brings us, then there's reason to avoid it in the future. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Those athletics examples make your point well but we can avoid that sort of issue by wisely choosing the criteria. Recently there have been large numbers of deletions for international relations examples coming through at once and inclusionists editors don’t have time to catch all of them, as we have to work harder. Another reason why we need a specific guideline. Deletionist is an indispensable term for describing a certain common behaviour on here, its not meant to be prerogative - sorry if it offends anyone. The project needs all types of editors to be the best encyclopaedia it can be. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:18, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not that I'm offended, just that the label doesn't seem to carry much relevance here. Anyway, I have two points. First, of the articles that have been deleted, all were extremely short and, if valid sources turned up later, could be recreated at a later date. It's not like someone put in months of work on these. Second, and also in relation to Dahn's comment below, I too would support a "negative" guideline. In other words, not "an article will automatically be kept if it meets A, B & C", but "an article will generally not be kept if it does not meet at a minimum A, B & C". Would you entertain such an idea? - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, but you get a warning message if you try to recreate an article that's been deleted , and the original deletion sets a precedent that can still count against articles even once the case for keeping them becomes more apparent. Secondly – yes Id be willing to compromise. If we agree to create a guideline I feel its inevitable it will describe a minimal threshold for inclusion – though Id prefer it to have positive criteria to. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:51, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there really a difference between a negative and positive guideline? I can't see any difference between "an article will generally not be kept if it does not meet at a minimum A, B & C" and "an article will generally be kept if it does meet at a minimum A, B & C". What's the difference? Notability guidelines are generally written in positive language, but if you prefer negative language, that's okay with me. If you support "negative" guidelines, then support this proposal. Let's make some progress. You cite the WP:ATHLETE as an example of a problematic guideline. However WP:ACADEMIC is a guideline that works. The difference between the two is that WP:ATHLETE is too brief, adding "competed for at least one full season" would filter out all those 5 minute wonders. FeydHuxtable makes a valid point, a stub that is deleted taints the article which may discourage re-creation. Martintg (talk) 22:50, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Since part of this was sparked by my point, allow me to clarify the difference. It is one thing to design a guideline as ATHLETE was designed, i.e. "a special tool for keeping those articles that do not meet basic criteria outlined by WP:N". It is another thing to go with a PROF system: "a tool outlining what WP:N corresponds to in this case". Dahn (talk) 08:35, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm now neutral on this. I still think this class of articles is too small to really need a guideline, which hasn't been needed so far; I worry about what a guideline might say; and I think WP:N is sufficient. However, I'm willing to give it a try. WP:PROF has indeed been far more of a success than WP:ATHLETE, and if - a big if - we can come up with something that good, I don't see why not. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Whatever I don't necessarily oppose a separate guideline, since it could just as well specify and clarify the reasons for not having most of the "X-Y relations" articles. In other words, it could codify not that "we keep you even if you don't meet the usual criteria", but that "if your article is not verified by this, this and this, we're not even considering keeping it" (where "this, this and this" is a way of saying how the general notability criteria should translate in the special case of "X-Y relations" - ample coverage in secondary sources, a certain level of permanent diplomacy etc.). That said, I share Biruitorul's concerns about how these special guidelines have traditionally been positive discrimination venues for trivia, and I find it particularly telling that this entire proposal is for a guideline "against deletionists" (aside from the irritating label "deletionist", with which I refuse to be identified just because I question the flood of trivia, this whole thread strikes me as a canvassing attempt at keeping the bar and the expectations low in the case of "X-Y relations"). Dahn (talk) 16:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Follow the white rabbit, that is, WP:RS. Attempts to circumvent RS and WP:N with surrogate workarounds (like ATHLETE) may work, however, the topic in question has far less critical mass of experience than ATHLETE (the latter, as many have proven, isn't infallible either) - I am not convinced that the present thin "consensus" will generate a working solution (look at the inaptly named WP:FICTION to see what I mean). NVO (talk) 19:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• At least try I think the topic has enough attention here that it might work, and I do not think any of the participants are quite as devoted to one view as in fiction, where there is basically a disagreement over what depth fiction coverage should be, not just individual articles. WP:FICT failed because people there refused to compromise. Other guidelines , like WP:PROF, have had success. I can;t really see why anyone would not want to try. DGG (talk) 21:39, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support experience strongly suggests that this is needed. JJL (talk) 01:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per my above post - there's no need for a separate notability guideline as WP:N works fine for these articles. I suspect that some of the editors who support developing a new guideline are unaware of the amount of work required to develop a guideline and gain community endorsement - it's a VERY big project and has little chance of success unless there's a clear need for the guideline and its goals are clear, neither of which is the case here. Nick-D (talk) 08:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The current guidelines and policies work fine. If something gets deleted because people discussing the deletion can't find foreign language sources, I won't shed any tears. It's the creator's responsibility to share those from the word go. - Mgm|^(talk) 11:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Does the current guidelines and policies really work fine? Here we have five straight "delete" votes in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Belarus–United Arab Emirates relations, until someone at the 11th hour pointing out that a search in cyrillic reveals quite a few sources. D'oh! Martintg (talk) 12:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a highly generic problem of the AfD process in both directions—people completely ignoring foreign language sources (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kelvin Kwan) or people screaming that "foreign-language sources definitely exist!" even when this is blatantly unlikely (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hope Academy of Bishkek). The most helpful thing to do in this case is deletion-sorting, since that will attract the attention of editors who actually speak the language in question ... in my wild-eyed opinion, deletion sorting should be made mandatory (much more useful than that stupid one-letter category system built into the {{afd2}} template), but again, this is something that needs to be addressed at a much higher level than a topic-specific guideline. cab (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't speak Belorussian, not several other languages that were invoked in such arguments.However, it appears that such sources only confirm that trivia is available in several languages, a fact which we knew already. And, again, it's up to supporters of the articles to prove that the info is relevant, not that it exists. A mention of a visit in a newspaper article that makes it its goal to cover everything is not necessarily an indication of notability, otherwise we would welcome articles on hit and runs, the world's largest pies, sewage problems and the likes.

And then, as was said many times by now: the fact that there were visits does not in any way justify the existence of a separate article on relations, and the notion that it does is solely an editorial deduction. Btw: we most likely wouldn't cover the visits at all were it not for their "necessity" in this article. Most state visits won't even belong in the articles on the visitors themselves (does anyone seriously imagine all of Bush's visits being mentioned in his bio article? if they're not important there, why would they be important anywhere else, and how would covering them elsewhere not constitute an anomaly?). It seems to me that, unless a visit is notable for something other than simply being a visit, it's not worth a mention, let alone an article around it.

And, btw, the "there were state visits" type of argument is yet another proof of ill-conceived positive discrimination, around the same old WP:BIAS claim (which is still abusively used as a guideline). Let's assume that we set the bar low enough for state visits to be an acceptable defining characteristic of articles on "X-Y relations". Can someone imagine tracking down all reciprocal France-US state visits and including them, or even the not completely routine ones among them, in the corresponding article? Would they not be [justly] viewed as trivia there? What's more: in order to justify one of these X-Y articles, which was and is going nowhere, an editor has recently added non-encyclopedic info on two national teams having faced each other in some game. Can anyone imagine applying the same standard to, say, France-UK relations, and adding info on any game in any sport where the two corresponding national teams faced each other? No, we only do it where there's not much else to say. At long last, don't that look like a different and surprising form of bias is being introduced? Dahn (talk) 13:07, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This notion that a state visit is not inherently notable, where does it come from? I have yet to experience a visit by a head of state to where I live, Australia, that remains unreported in the media. So state visits are certainly notable. We are talking about a minimum bar for cases where notability is contested, I really don't think we need to investigate the number of state visits between France and the USA, no one is contesting the notability of that relationship. But for the thousands of random country pairings, a state visit wouldn't be routine it at all. It would be an effective filter. Martintg (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

"I have yet to experience a visit by a head of state to where I live [...] that remains unreported in the media." Exactly my point why we shouldn't necessarily take that coverage as indication of notability justifying a separate article. In fact, I since noted that WP:GNG cautions against using coverage in the press as an automatic indicator of notability, and this stands to logic. To this, you can add the following: state visits aren't reported by default in articles on the persons involved (and they aren't, and, no, they shouldn't, unless we turn those articles into blogs); why should they suddenly become notable in articles that aren't even supposed to be as detailed? It's really what I have said in my earlier posts, including the one above.

Now, I don't believe my point about France and the USA was that obscure, but you seem not to have noticed it. Okay, here it is. Let's assume we're dealing with the [hopefully] hypothetical article on "Tajikistan-Vanuatu relations" (credit due to the user who came up with this paradigm), and assume it turns out that the PM of V once visited T, and this received some coverage in Kurer Tadzhikistana. And assume one user says: "aha, notability!" Okay then: if this criterion is supposed to validate anything, the article on France-US relations should eventually include trivia on all visits payed by any relevant official from either country to the other, from the 1770s to this day - not one of them went unreported, even though few are remembered. Or are we creating a special systemic bias in favor of Tajikistan and Vanuatu? (Btw, this is reductio ad absurdum, not an invitation to stuff one's underpants with tsetse flies.) Dahn (talk) 21:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Comment: Existing guidelines are sufficient. My bias is towards thinking that diplomatic/economic relationships between most pairs of countries are likely to deserve an article, but only if there is well-sourced material describing the relationships. There presumably are some (maybe Tajikistan-Vanuatu - don't know) where there really is nothing to say. AfD discussions should weed these out. This debate was triggered by one editor who created a bunch of stubs with no sources. Some have been fleshed out and will be kept, some will be deleted as they should if nobody adds good content. They can always be recreated, although the barrier to entry is higher. That doesn't really bother me. If an editor decides there is a need for an article on Tajikistan-Vanuatu relations, they have to be prepared for some skepticism and have to provide good sources. If they do, they will have added knowledge. But the decision should be based on verifiability, neutrality, notability etc. No need for other criteria. Aymatth2 (talk) 15:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Add a line to existing guidelines, which are probably sufficient. Some wanting a new guideline would doubtless like inherent notability for the truly unencyclopedic robostubs, like has been gained by fans of highways and hamlets. Take it to WP:N. See if there is consensus to add a line about these articles. "Binary pairings of notable entities or properties are not necessarily notable" might be a start. Edison (talk) 18:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• I like that phrasing. Then something like "For example, countries are always notable, but the formal relationship between two countries is only notable if the relationship itself meets notability guidelines" Aymatth2 (talk) 21:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• But we are still left with the question of what makes a relationship notable, which is the whole point of this discussion. Martintg (talk) 21:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• To me, WP:N is a good guideline. I thought about: "Binary pairings of notable subjects are not necessarily notable. For example, the relationship between two notable people or countries is only notable if the relationship itself meets notability guidelines". But then I thought no, guidelines should be as clear and simple as possible but open to the application of common sense. If we add too many layers of qualification and exception it just gets impossible. The rules we have work well - Wikipedia has become immensely valuable within the existing rules. I think the outcome of almost all AfD debates is reasonable. Usually the choice is obvious to most participants. The cases that generate the most heated discussions are probably the ones where the decision is least important - they are borderline. I say, it ain't broke, so don't fix it. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you are misrepresenting the discussion here. Nobody here is advocating the retention of truly unencyclopedic robostubs. I agree that most should be deleted. However the danger is that some of the wheat will be thrown out with the chaff in our zeal to eradicate these robostubs from Wikipedia. The intent of these guidelines is to ensure that we deal with the potential 19,000 stubs in a consistant manner. Nor is a separate guildline a goal either, when a couple of lines in WP:N would do perfectly well. Martintg (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Id still prefer a separate guideline myself, as there are quite a few possible criteria that could be listed as establishing notability, similar to wp:music or the guideline for academics you posted above. It would be good to specifically define each indicator. But I guess a few lines in WP:N would be ok as long as they make it clear that reliable sources don't have to be focussing on the overall relationship rather than individual indicators like state visits or volume of trade. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• I am also irritated with the rapid introduction of all these country X/Y stubs, which the editor apparently had no intention of expanding. Probably a number of ones that could be the basis for valid articles will be deleted. An editor who feels the urge to start one will get the usual forbidding warnings: This article was deleted. Are you sure you want to create it again? Do you understand the consequences of this action? Are you really sure?. Some editors, particularly new ones will be intimidated and draw back from recreating the deleted article. But if the subject is really real, good sources, worth covering, eventually it will be covered. I am an optimist. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Its reasonable to predict the truth will out on specific issues that are getting sufficient attention. Generally though there’s whole unread libraries of truths that never see the light of day. The truth is changing all the time , it doesn’t all get captured, especially when some folk for whatever reason try to dim the lights. A consequence of this in the field of international relations is that misunderstanding develop, opportunities for mutually profitable trade are missed leading sometimes to needless conflict and deprivation , affecting hundreds of millions of souls. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

In the unlikely event someone will actually pick up those articles (most often supposed to be based on sources which we still don't have any proof could exist), am I to assume that, once they stop shaking and sobbing at the sight of the mention that the article was deleted, it's impossible for them to ask advice, sandbox the text, or add the info to the "Foreign relations..." article or whatever until a split is proven necessary? In that unlikely event. Dahn (talk) 00:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• My guess is that most of the pairs that are deleted will stay deleted. Perhaps a Tajikistani who knows a lot about the deep and unusual relationship between his country and Vanuatu will hesitate before communicating his knowledge to the world when he sees the red flag. He may not know about the ways he can seek advice from editors like you and me on whether he should proceed. But if he feels strongly enough about it, and can muster up good sources that attest to the relationship, we should at least give the article a fair hearing. Again, I am not too concerned about the red flags from the Country X/Y articles that have or will be deleted. The truth will out. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP:N is entirely sufficient.  Sandstein  22:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
• Ambivalent On one hand, having a guideline in this case would end this conflict over deletion. On the other hand, there are a finite, although a very large number, of possible X-Y relationships: 19,900 to quote the number Tone threw out above. So once a given number of relationships are identified by whatever method, then the guideline is redundant. (New relationships would be added or removed on a case-by-case basis.) And a first cut can be performed if we look at whether or not two countries have formal diplomatic relationships -- or have a relationship which prevents the exchange of diplomats (e.g. U.S-Cuba, Eritrea-Ethiopia, PRC-Taiwan). Take that into consideration, & between half & two-thirds of the possible relationships immediately are off the table, leaving us 9900 - 6600 possible articles. Then we can look at what makes up tangible evidence for an international relationship. This has been the issue I've been trying to raise all along: far too often, the AfD nominations have been based on what looks unlikely at face value, not on a study of the histories & economies of the two countries. I brought up the example of Ethiopian-Swedish relations above, & was confronted with the question (in effect) of how many trees does one need to make up a forest? (Or, to put it another way, does having a few thousand trees mean you have a forest?) There are certain criteria which clearly demonstrate one country is interacting with another, & not just a collection of unconnected people cherry-picked to make a point. (For example, private individuals never provide foreign countries with military weapons like fighter planes without the explicit consent of their governments -- & Sweden provided military aircraft to Ethiopia.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Call me lazy, but I think the effort in creating a guideline (even if it is just a couple of lines to WP:N) that can only be applicable to 19,900 potential articles and then becomes redundant is a lot less effort than debating potentially 19,900 AfDs. With a guideline there is no longer any debate. I guess it is the difference between having one centralized debate with the outcome applicable to 19,900 articles, or 19,900 debates sprayed across 19,900 AfDs. Martintg (talk) 00:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I doubt it will be 19,900 AfD debates; maybe 19,800. ;-) But in any case, unless we can find something to agree on, we will be facing over 19,000 articles to debate AfD nominations over -- whether the consensus is a formal, or informal, one. So far, we haven't even agreed that there is anything we can agree on. -- llywrch (talk) 04:27, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, could I just clear up a misconception? It's not 19,000 at present - many categories are nearly empty, and as redlinks like these show, Groubani was nowhere near finished with his mad project. (Interesting thought experiment: if he had gotten to, say, Germany–Spain relations, I'm sure it'd be well-nigh impossible to delete, but does anyone really care about or notice its absence today? Is anyone really arguing the relevant content can't be covered at Meeting at Hendaye, Spain in World War II, and so on? Not that I want to give anyone ideas - I'm just sayin'.) And I think we're all agreed that if someone started doing mass stub creation again, he'd be swiftly blocked, not coddled and commended like Groubani was.

If there are (let's say) 3000 of these, a small number have gone through AfD already, while a somewhat larger number are pretty clearly notable. That leaves another group - say 1500-2000 - for AfD and prod. (I hope we're agreed there's nothing wrong with prodding clearly non-notable ones like, oh, Croatia–Tunisia relations.) So it's still a serious situation, but not that serious. - Biruitorul ^Talk 05:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Why would I want to sift through Meeting at Hendaye, Spain in World War II, etc, etc, when I could get a quick overview of Germany–Spain relations in one article. In fact I never heard of Meeting at Hendaye, so if there was a Germany–Spain relations article, I might have discovered Meeting at Hendaye and read it in greater detail. You may have a ton of time on your hands, as you are evidently prepared to put 1000 or so articles through AfD, but I and many others don't. Martintg (talk) 06:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

(Also the Condor Legion - it slipped my mind.) Two points. First, outside the 1930s and '40s, Germany and Spain have not had significant relations (yes, they're both prominent EU and NATO members, but links are not that important otherwise; see [2] & [3] if you don't believe me) -- any article would inevitably end up being a coatrack about that period. Second, there's a very elegant solution: a category without necessarily having a main article. For instance, have a look at Category:Germany–Poland relations. The article on German–Polish relations is pretty dismal, but well over 100 articles on this intersection are easily locatable by looking at the category. And someone interested in German–Polish relations could probably do very well without that article too (at least in its current form). So I fully encourage the creation of a Category:Germany–Spain relations and the inclusion of those articles there. - Biruitorul ^Talk 06:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking at Category:Germany–Poland relations it is difficult to get a sense of that relationship, all the articles listed in that category are presented in equal weight in alphabetical order, while a chronological order of selected major events and other pertinent facts would be more user friendly for the average Joe reader pressed for time. Martintg (talk) 06:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

That's something to be addressed within the category structure, not necessarily by authoring a new coatrack article. For instance, see Category:History of Australia by period - we could use that model for Category:Germany–Poland relations before 1918, Category:Germany–Poland relations (1918-1938), Category:Germany–Poland relations (1939-1945), Category:Germany–Poland relations (1946-1989), Category:Germany–Poland relations since 1990. (Of course, that's a little messy, because there was no Polish state for a long time before 1918, and none really during WWII, and two German states with whom Poland had very different sorts of relations during the Cold War -- but subdividing is doable.) - Biruitorul ^Talk 07:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose From what I have seen in the debates on the individual articles, it all comes back to WP:N anyway, and that's a good thing. Where the article itself does not show anything that would suggest that there is anything notable about a relationship between Nation X and Nation Y, I have seen editors take up the challenge of trying to establish notability. Some combinations that, at first glance, seemed unlikely, turned out to have merit -- memorable examples have been Argentina–Pakistan relations; Chile-Estonia relations; Cyprus-Pakistan relations; Romania–Singapore relations; Ireland–Zambia relations; Brazil–Vietnam relations; Thailand–Ukraine relations; Canada-Haiti relations and Bulgaria–Sudan relations. Some of these were kept by default because of no consensus; but none of them would have been kept had it not been for someone falling back upon the tried-and-true principle of trying to show "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Suggestions for proving notability are a good thing; inherent notability isn't; a checklist is not. With nothing to guide us but WP:N, we're seeing a better quality of articles than we would otherwise. Mandsford (talk) 02:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose No real grounds for abrogating Notability have been shown. Collect (talk) 12:05, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support It's fundamentally a good idea, but it seems it would be very difficult to make workable. The argument that "WP:N is enough" is not really a good one; WP:N should be "enough" in every case, but if were, we wouldn't have the myriad of specific notability guidelines that we do have. Nosleep ^{break my slumber} 06:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Votes Discussion on whether we shouldn't be voting

There's a long-standing tradition on Wikipedia about voting, and that's that it generally doesn't happen (see Wikipedia:Consensus, Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion, and m:don't vote on everything. Stifle (talk) 14:10, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Support now 2 to 0. cab (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Still in favour of votes – they help keep the discussion focussed. I didnt know about those previous discussion though, so thanks for that. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Comment The sort of "voting" that people are doing on this page is highly appropriate. A vote with a decent rationale after it is a fine and productive way to share opinions in a less-confrontational way than a straight discussion, which often derails when two participants begin back and forth bickering. Gigs (talk)

State visits, and other criteria for notability

I've yet to experience a visit by a head of state that goes utterly unreported in the media. Therefore these events indicate an inherently notable relationship, no? Martintg (talk) 21:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Should I now paste here my reply to your question above? Dahn (talk) 21:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've done it for you. Martintg (talk) 23:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

"I have yet to experience a visit by a head of state to where I live [...] that remains unreported in the media." Exactly my point why we shouldn't necessarily take that coverage as indication of notability justifying a separate article. In fact, I since noted that WP:GNG cautions against using coverage in the press as an automatic indicator of notability, and this stands to logic. To this, you can add the following: state visits aren't reported by default in articles on the persons involved (and they aren't, and, no, they shouldn't, unless we turn those articles into blogs); why should they suddenly become notable in articles that aren't even supposed to be as detailed? It's really what I have said in my earlier posts, including the one above.

Now, I don't believe my point about France and the USA was that obscure, but you seem not to have noticed it. Okay, here it is. Let's assume we're dealing with the [hopefully] hypothetical article on "Tajikistan-Vanuatu relations" (credit due to the user who came up with this paradigm), and assume it turns out that the PM of V once visited T, and this received some coverage in Kurer Tadzhikistana. And assume one user says: "aha, notability!" Okay then: if this criterion is supposed to validate anything, the article on France-US relations should eventually include trivia on all visits payed by any relevant official from either country to the other, from the 1770s to this day - not one of them went unreported, even though few are remembered. Or are we creating a special systemic bias in favor of Tajikistan and Vanuatu? (Btw, this is reductio ad absurdum, not an invitation to stuff one's underpants with tsetse flies.) Dahn (talk) 21:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Since when did "Head of state" become "any relevant official"? Or an indicator that a stub has potential for expansion become an editorial issue of what to include into an article about French-American relations? Taking about "Tajikistan-Vanuatu relations", no need to be hypothetical about it, we can us concrete examples: when has the President of Tajikistan ever visited Vanuatu on a state visit? Martintg (talk) 23:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, my argument would also apply if restricted to heads of state, though not necessarily for France-US. And, in nay case, for most countries it would also have to apply to heads of government, if not heads of the foreign ministry. But yes, any relevant official, since I suppose nobody would dispute that the US Secretary of State, or even the US Secretary of Transportation, will pay "more notable" visits than, say, his/her Tajik or Algerian or Romanian counterpart. Also note that visits by some low-ranking officials have been invoked in "keep" votes on various AfDs so far.

"Or an indicator that a stub has potential for expansion become an editorial issue of what to include into an article about French-American relations?" Now, let's not mislead readers of this page. For one, during the course of AfDs, "rescuers" of articles have already been pushing mentions of state visits in articles don't have much content, particularly where there's no indication that they could ever have more content. It's by no means the most trivial info introduced in this process of artificial growth: as stated, some articles have become coatracks for random sporting events and the likes, in what i can only interpret as an attempt to fool casual voters into voting "keep" based on the volume rather than the encyclopedic nature of a text. Secondly, the implication that state visits can be used to support a claim that other info must also exist is entirely your deduction, which I for one cannot swallow. In the unlikely event of more sources being found on various seemingly nonsensical articles, let users go ahead and re-create the deleted articles; until then, we don't go with "potential" new sources, we analyze those that have been shown to exist.

"no need to be hypothetical about it, we can us concrete examples: when has the President of Tajikistan ever visited Vanuatu on a state visit?" As said, there are several active AfDs where you will find exactly this type argument being invoked in "rescuing" attempts. Obviously, not in the Vanuatu-Tajikistan scenario, since it's a hypothetical scenario, a metaphor. For one concrete example of what has been attempted so far, check it out. Dahn (talk) 23:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

And Martin, here's an extreme real-life example. Romania–Singapore relations was kept exclusively because of this - the President of Romania made a one-day visit there 7 years ago. Your thoughts? - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:57, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Your example shows why we need some guideline for consistency here. Some articles are kept because one state visit is deemed notable enough, others are deleted because one state visit is deemed not notable enough. Some articles are heading for retention because they were first to recognize a country (but no relationship actually exists), while the notability of other relationships are questioned even though they happened to be the first to recognize the country (and have an ongoing relationship with several state visits). It is a total mess at the present. Martintg (talk) 00:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The reason for that being the following: state visits are not inherently notable, and, if they were, ridiculous articles such as the one pointed by Biruitorul would survive against all common sense. There is another thing: the article in question refers to Romania, and both I and Biruitorul speak Romanian. To debunk the notion that "once we find a state visit, local sources are destined to pop up", lemme tell you: no, at not least from one side. Googling whatever Romanian combination will only produce a couple of references to the visit (which tend to veer into trivia about the diner menu etc.) and the minimal mentions of a Romanian embassy in Singapore, incidentally on sites which don't pass WP:RS. Dahn (talk) 00:44, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you and Biruitorul being Romanian speakers make you best qualified to judge the notability of Romania–Singapore relations, and it is a pity that the closing admin in that debate did not attribute more weight to your views. However your lack of Belorusan language skills doesn't seem to inhibit you passing judgment on the available sources in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Belarus–United Arab Emirates relations. Martintg (talk) 00:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The "sources" there so far are one, and you may read above why I don't take it into account. Here it is again: news about a state visit does not automatically make relations notable. And no, it didn't stop me, because the burden of attesting notability doesn't fall on me, but on the person who claims it. Dahn (talk) 01:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

That is your opinion, but it seems many people who voted "Keep" in Romania–Singapore relations think otherwise. Who is right, who is wrong, you or them? Martintg (talk) 01:53, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Are you seriously asking me if I think I'm right? I think you already know the answer to that. Not that this latest post of yours has anything to do with your earlier inquiry about my ability to assess non-existing Belorussian sources or the sound of falling trees. If you want to talk something more substantial, I rely my arguments not on my personal opinion about a google search, but on more evident items. One, which has been persistently ignored, is that of positive discrimination - info considered relevant in just some articles, because we are supposed to have a special "need" for them. The other is that, even as we stand, WP:GNG has been quoted ad nauseam to support the notion that state visits are notable even when based solely on primary sources, when what it actually says is stuff such as: "Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability"; "[independent coverage] excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject"; "Several journals simultaneously publishing articles in the same geographic region about an occurrence, does not always constitute multiple works"; "coverage in reliable sources establishes a presumption, not a guarantee, of notability" etc. So, yes, I am right, otherwise I wouldn't be here stating how right I am. Dahn (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I don’t think anyone’s questioning your knowledge or logic Dahn, it comes through very clearly that you know what you’re talking about. Martin’s question was likely rhetorical to highlight the need for a guideline. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

[od] And while you were here debating why WP:GNG is perfectly adequate and we don't need further guidelines, this debate Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations was closed "no consensus" on the basis of a single act of recognition; no state visits, no bi-lateral agreements, no embassies, nothing to indicate a relationship beyond this single act of recognition. So does this set the precedent for notability? Martintg (talk) 02:23, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

No. Not technically (no consensus may be equivalent to a keep in practical terms, but I can easily see this getting deleted on a second nomination), not logically (since this sort of reasoning would validate almost every article conceivable, as long as two states don't object to each other's existence - and I do believe no one but Groubani expects this outcome). Dahn (talk) 02:39, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Except that Groubani never created Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations. Martintg (talk) 04:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

And? This only highlights an existing problem: a user creates an article around special criteria, does not imagine what applying the same criteria in other articles would imply, and we end up with an outcome that only Groubani could expect.

Now, I'm getting quite annoyed by this habit of taking out of context a point in each of my posts and implying that I'm contradicting myself. Please stick to the point. Dahn (talk) 12:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

And Groubani clearly isn’t the only one who want this outcome. I may not exspect it but Id certainly prefer these relationships be allowed their own article, unless there’s no reliable sources available to confirm they exist at all. With musicians and academics we don’t require press articles that make them the sole subject of articles, as long as certain well defined indicators of notability can be confirmed. Why are we setting the bar higher for bilateral relationships?

A wikki article on a moderately obscure musician is generally going to be interest only with little real world impact. A wikki article on a moderately obscure bilateral relationship might very conceivably lead to greater international commerce, facilitate peaceful international relationships, as well as aiding scholars and journalists. For example with a high profile from country Z might say something about country Y, and with an article available folk can quickly put it in context with the overall relationships.

With over 20,000 permutations few other one stop shops for these relationships are ever likely to come into existence – we wont be able to do it perfectly but who else but us would even attempt it? FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

My comment doesn't exclude the possibility that other users may also want what Groubani wanted. It is, however, irrelevant, since it is irrational. Note how even this page revolves around a consensus: that the simple existence of a relationship between two states is not a matter for an article. I refer you to Martin's statement above: "Nobody here is advocating the retention of truly unencyclopedic robostubs. I agree that most should be deleted. However the danger is that some of the wheat will be thrown out with the chaff in our zeal to eradicate these robostubs from Wikipedia."

Follow this thread carefully. In my reply, I am referring to Martin's claim (incidentally a self-contradictory one) that mere recognition can be seen as grounds for an article. So no, we are not talking about "moderately obscure bilateral relationships", we are talking about the possibility that any two states will have an article on their relationship.

The rest of your post is, frankly, misleading.

For one, nobody is advocating special criteria for deleting the articles in question (the ones you call "moderately obscure"), and you yourself seem to be advocating special criteria for keeping them. In fact, my objection to keeping such articles is grounded in WP:GNG, where I simply don't see indication that these articles are notable by default, but quite the contrary.

Secondly, what may happen in the future is not only speculative, it is of no interest to wikipedia (see WP:CRYSTAL). The notion that it would help scholars is rather amusing - not only because of the ridiculous expectation, but also because wikipedia builds itself on outside scholarly sources; where these don't exist, it doesn't "help create them". Other sections of WP:NOT, quoted to death on various AfDs, will indicate why wikipedia does not guide itself by what journalists etc. may find "useful", but on what is of encyclopedic nature.

I have repeatedly answered why I find the notion that "other stuff exists" a piece of demagoguery. You say: "With musicians and academics we don’t require press articles that make them the sole subject of articles, as long as certain well defined indicators of notability can be confirmed." No, what we have there is a very strict set of criteria (WP:ACADEMIC, WP:MUSIC), whose application renders your comparison flawed. They certainly don't compare with what has been attempted here. The solution for keeping articles was not material outlining a relationship, but the odd news bulletin, often sources only with primary sources, talking about a subject which the reader has interpreted as relevant. In fact, such coverage of the relationship has not failed the "special rules" you claim one would try to enforce here; it has created its own special rules which are not even necessarily compliant with WP:GNG. As I have repeatedly shown, it is actually the keep votes who have applied special criteria, criteria which in the long run would prove their absurdity. Criteria such as "the two countries recognize each other", which, if you want a comparison with WP:ACADEMIC, is like saying that a researcher should have his or her own article because he or she has a diploma.

"With over 20,000 permutations few other one stop shops for these relationships are ever likely to come into existence – we wont be able to do it perfectly but who else but us would even attempt it?" Nobody, not even us, should. This is not an experimental approach into textbook writing, and the notion that nobody else has is reason exactly why we shouldn't do it ourselves. Dahn (talk) 13:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are misrepresenting what I said. I never claimed that mere recognition can be seen as grounds for an article, I don't support such a thing, I merely reported that an article was in fact kept on the grounds of the mere fact of recognition. If the trend is that the "keep" votes are applying a "special criteria" resulting in the article being kept, then that indicates that a consensus may be forming on what constitutes notability in a particular range of topics, a consensus for a "special criteria" that could be enshrined in a guideline. Even some AfD nominations are mentioning that the article in question "doesn't have resident ambassadors, significant trade or major agreements", there by implicitly supporting "special criteria" within the text of their own nomination! I get the impression that you would rather abolish guidelines like WP:ACADEMIC and WP:MUSIC altogether and stick with the fundamental purity of WP:GNG. Martintg (talk) 14:01, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes you're right Dahn Im advocating special critera for keeping these articles. Like Martin I wouldnt want robo stubs where nothing more can be said than 'Z-Y relations are the relationship between Z and Y!' - even if we could establish formal recognition has taken place but nothing else. However I would like us to save articles where various miscellaneous sources documenting evidence of the relationship can be found, like state visits, joint diplomatic initiatives and evidence of substantial trade. I don’t think we should require independent journalistic or academic studies of the overall relationship. As you say keep votes / decisions in recent ADF discussions havent necessarily been consistent with existing guidelines, so Id like them amended accordingly, with specific criteria about what sort of source establishes notability for these relationships. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, you're proposing to override WP:PSTS (claiming the ability to deduce a notable relationship where none has been documented) and WP:N (suggesting we thrown WP:GNG out the window for these cases). - Biruitorul ^Talk 14:44, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not being entirely clear. I mean Id like us to have a dedicated guideline setting out the notability criteria for bilateral relations articles , just like we have for WP:ACADEMIC and WP:MUSIC . FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Gentlemen, what is at stake here? We have already established that you endorse a separate guideline, and, as stated (and contrary to the speculative claim made by Matin above) I don't oppose that. Whether we have one or not is ultimately irrelevant. Either way, if having a separate guideline is a means to lower the bar and be in explicit contradiction of the general guidelines (NOT, GNG, PSTS etc.) for the sake of unsubstantiated concerns such as BIAS (or, what's worse, the repetitive question "why not?"), a constructive user will have to be, I suppose, indignant. Now: I, Biruitorul and several others (here and elsewhere) raised the concern that the analogy between the "let's keep them" argument and, say, WP:ACADEMIC is false, since the latter confirms and clearly upholds the GNG, PSTS etc., whereas the former proposes to discard them (in part or in all). One: so much for consensus (consensus on what?). Two: Where do you stand in relation to existing guidelines, and why should it be assumed that those guidelines go to the dogs once another one is adopted? In other words, as I have said over and over: why is it assumed that a guideline should be created for the survival of articles that have no chance of surviving, and not for confirming that they have no chance of surviving? Neither WP:ACADEMIC or WP:MUSICIAN clash with the other guidelines, even though WP:ATHELTE does (it being the anomaly). For example, both of them plus GNG clearly state that you cannot use primary or trivial sources to assert notability, even though, in several cases of "bilateral relations" articles, this simple and obvious requirement has been discarded and explained away by the keep voters. Dahn (talk) 15:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Whats at stake is 1) an opportunity to substantially reduce the amount of constructive editing time diverted to ADF discussions. 2) the survival of articles providing readily accessible information which have the potential to boost trade and facilitate peaceful international relations. Point 2 is given added weight if you accept the world is likely to suffer from increased population pressure and resource competition for at least the next 40 years, and therefore will likely have increasing need for this sort of information. I dont want to over dramatise the point as granted it ought not be hard to show the most significant relationships meet our existing notability criteria and anyway God ultimately turns all things to the good. Still it seems to be worth a shot! Moving to your question on existing guidelines, I've a lot of respect for them , they represent considerable distilled experience on what generally helps makes wikki a great encyclopaedia. But clearly myself , Martin and others feel there are times when the guidelines can be expanded to offer specific guidance on certain classes of article. Do you feel we'd be diluting established guidelines like WP:GNG if we added a few lines for BR articles or created a dedicated sub guideline? Im not sure anyones assuming a guideline should be created for the survival of these articles, though that's certainly what Im hoping for! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so you want a special guideline to protect articles you like, regardless of whether they are encyclopedic or not. And no, let's drop the euphemisms: you don;t want it "expanded", you want it "diluted", because you realize that the articles in question do not in fact comply with the basic rules. You also claim that this is what has been done in the past, but it clearly hasn't - with the possible exception of the controversial WP:ATHLETE, no such guideline protects non-notable stuff. I refuse to give any attach any sort of importance to the tiresome speculation about how the future (or, in the case you make, God) will provide the info we lack "just because it must be so".

I'm done assuming that there's anything constructive in such approaches. They are the sort of arguments that get disregarded in all closed AfD debates, since they care not about the merits of the articles, not strive to verify themselves with the core guidelines. They are an extended version of WP:ILIKEIT, "supported" only by immature suppositions and circular logic. I frankly regret the time I wasted taking them into consideration. Dahn (talk) 18:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

A specific example might help illustrate the point, even if you yourself have lost interest. Beacause of WP:MUSIC for example, a musician can count as noteable if she "Has had a charted single or album on any national music chart." - whereas without the specific guideline editors might have argued she wasnt notable if she wasnt the subject of of "multiple non-trivial published works". Unless they're badly written, specific guidelines dont protect non-noteable stuff - they help establish noteability for interesting borderline cases that would otherwise be points of contention. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hello-- Tomorrow marks 14 days since this discussion started. Has anything been accomplished? Take as long as you want, but please don't ask that any other discussions be kept waiting while this goes on. Thanks. Mandsford (talk) 12:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello there - I think its fair to say we've established there's some disagreement, including about what we're disagreeing about! :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Nothing's the matter with N. It's a fine criterion that answers "Do professionals think it is important?" and "Can we find some information on the subject?". What else is there? But not everyone accepts N, so we have to keep doing the same song and dance. WilyD 14:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

A "state visit" does not prove notability of a relationship between countries. Those things are a dime a dozen. The key thing is, have books and articles in reliable sources been written about "The relationship of X and Y," not whether a Wikipedia editor thinks that the President of X visiting the King of Y makes the relationship notable, or X and Y exchanging ambassadors, or X and Y belonging to the same organization. Consider notable people: Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had a close friendship in their old age. This is not just shown by some listing of facts: they went on vacation trips together, they visited each other, they bought adjacent vacation homes, but by the fact that there are books and articles about the friendship, such as "Uncommon friends" by James Newton (Houghton Mifflin, 1989). There are lots of books and scholarly articles about diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia, or Great Britain and Russia, of Great Britain and the U.S in the years immediately before World War 2. These were notable relationships, and not just because we tick off that Roosevelt visited Britain and Churchill visited the U.S. They have been recognized by reliable third party sources as notable relationships. There is no need for a new guideline, especially if it has a "can't-fail notability" checklist of ho-hum things like state visits or trade agreements to skirt the general notability guideline. Edison (talk) 20:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I actually think that a visit to another country by a head of state which is covered by independent media should qualify as an indication of notable relations between countries. It may only be a prelude to establishing formal diplomatic ties but it passes the notability test. Visits by tourists, no. Visit by heads of state, yes. Visits by lower ranking officials, maybe depending on their importance (Kissinger's secret visits to China before relations were formally created were obviously notable). By the way, if you think Nixon's visit to China was important enough to merit recognition, but Estonia's president's visit to Pakistan isn't (just an example), I think you should look at the policies on Systematic Bias again.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

We have an article on Mick Jagger. In the interests of countering bias, should we also have articles on all singers in all countries? No – only the notable ones. Johnuniq (talk) 00:23, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

"Foreign relations" for dependencies, territories, protectorates, etc.

I know this might come-up especially in the Caribbean and Latin America, however it might be likely in many other places where a "nation-state" actually exists as a part of a larger country. Generally, a territory cannot enter into foreign relations on it's own. Usually it needs the ascent of the country it is a part of to entire into bilateral relations. (E.g. Aruba cannot for example initiate dialogue with say the United States to seek a Free Trade deal without the Netherlands' ascent due to the Dutch being in charge of Aruba's national defence and foreign relations. So I think this could the question, would/should a territory's foreign relations be under a subcategory of the main country which it is a part of? (For Aruba -- "Foreign relations of the Netherlands" or, is it sufficient to be under the territory's own name?

Possible friction to my mind I think my come up.

• Taiwain. (P.R.C. China - or "The Mainland" claims the Republic of China (Taiwan) as a part of it. But it is arguable that for many years The West has viewed the island of Taiwan as distinct from the mainland, even in terms of trade policy.
• Hong Kong SAR ("Special Administrative Region") of China. Similar to Taiwan, Hong Kong was given a relatively free-hand for foreign relations in the past what should be the view now?
• Macau. Another portion of China.
• Tibet. It is a disputed regiong. The Dali Lama has had a free-hand somewhat in the past can it too be considered as having Foreign relations?
• Martinique, Guadeloupe are ofcourse considered parts of Republic of France, it is complicated but it is similar in some ways as how Hawaii or Alaska are parts of America even though they're distant. To my mind Martinique, Guadeloupe should they be under "Foreign relations of France"??? (no?)
• Speaking of Hawaii and Alaska, should Puerto Rico be under "Foreign relations of the United States" since it too can't enter into bilateral negotiations without the United State's acknowledgement?

Anyway, I look forward to hopefully hearing some feedback on a global concensus decision on this because I know it very well might come up in the Caribbean but other areas might also benefit from this too as clear WP:English encyclopaedia-wide policy. I'm going to be a bit busy with school due to study/finals coming up, but I will try to peek in every couple of days and weigh in whenever I can. CaribDigita (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Personally Id not be in favour of articles on relations where at least one parties independence is unclear, though if the relationships are clearly noteable I guess we should have them. If we do agree on creating a guideline for bilateral relations we should say something about the need to respect both sides of any disputes over sovereignty - I know thats implicit in existing guidelines but it will be worth highlighting. Having the notable relations of a territory under a sub heading of the hosts article sounds a good idea. Good luck in the finals!FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment ? Generally, a territory cannot enter into foreign relations on its own. - Simply not true. It's a free world, in the US there is such a thing as states' rights, and governments tend to do what is in their best interest; if the government of Sao Paulo State wants to invest a lot of time in talking to the government of New York City on an official, permanent basis, it will simply go ahead and do so. If the government of a territory, state or province has a need to talk to a sovereign national government and fails to do so, it will definitely be replaced by the populace, for non-performance..... Texas-Mexico bilateral relations, London-Hong Kong bilateral relations, Maine-Quebec bilateral relations, Florida-Cuba, Hawaii-South Korea, all probably very easy to document and write.... One could probably start with consulate, and the list of US consulates at http://www.usembassy.gov/ , with consulates having varying degrees of autonomy and importance, to see the issue. --Mr Accountable (talk) 14:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Oh, let's not start that again. Foreign relations are exclusively state functions and carried out at the national level. Try writing "Texas-Mexico relations", and see how fast it will get deleted. - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
    • The topic is definitely not foreign relations, it is bilateral relations, and probably includes sports relations as well. As foreign relations is the primary part of the topics, consulates are top-importance state functions. Foreign relations are not exclusively state functions, and they are carried out at a diplomatic level with trade and culture as keys. The editor is vaguely, authoritatively and deletion-mindedly creating rules for this vast, rich field of knowledge; and Texas-Mexico relations are quite a topic if one looks into it, more important than one knows. --Mr Accountable (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
• I would like to add to the mix the concept of Sister cities in which two cities in countries around the world twin with one another. Perhaps this should add to the importance of relations, as it goes beyond the level of embassies or consulates, but instead the cities have real relationships that may escalate to the state level. Valley2city^‽ 04:18, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Sounds good, I would add sports relations and cultural relations (cinema, pop music, museum work) as well. --Mr Accountable (talk) 22:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
• The foreign relations of Taiwan, Macao (Aomen), Tibet, some Ethiopian regions, Sri Lanka/Tamil Nadu, Fiji and many more, all are more or less newsworthy and notable. All deserve serious attention. As far as the vast area of non-notable bilateral articles is concerned, why not concatenate various non-foreign affairs-minded foreign affairs department countries' foreign affairs articles to easily manageable omnibus articles? For the time being? --Mr Accountable (talk) 23:24, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

What's the problem

If there's something to write about, write about it, if there isn't, don't. Isn't this a fairly finite group of articles? Would it be possible to listify, so have a list of bilateral relations for each country, and split off to main articles when length warrants it? Would that work? I don;t think this needs to be about notability as much as it needs to be about doing the right thing. We don't enforce rules just for the sake of enforcing rules, after all, and in the balance of probablilities, the harm in having an article on all current bilateral relations is very small. Hiding T 11:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem (which I think has been lost) was the mass-production of short articles on non-notable bilateral relationships. Most of these articles were started by an obsessive editor who didn't even attempt to demonstrate that WP:N was met and never explained what their motivations were. As such in my view this is a clean-up job to determine which articles should be kept (and expand them so that WP:N is demonstrated) and which should be deleted or merged. Nick-D (talk) 11:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Add to Nick-D's apt description that some editors have been a bit too zealous in purging these stubs -- which is why a number of us have opposed some of these deletions -- & that's the problem. A few months back I foresaw the problem that many of these pairings involving Ethiopia were not worth the effort to write about, so I did some research & modified an existing template to include only the pairings that I felt could be justified. However, Biruitorul decided to slash out these entries, claiming most of my proposed pairings could never be written about, & that this "red-link farm was rather unnecessary". (And now LibStar feels compelled to hack away at the "non-existent" relations.) In short, proposals to seek a consensus were rejected out-of-hand. Thus the issue remains in a deadlock. -- llywrch (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's not show only one side of this: once you restored the redlinks, I made no objection. (Well, I still think the redlink farm unnecessary, but that's an opinion, not something I'm about to act on.) - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

In re: "I still think the redlink farm unnecessary", please try to imagine that some knowleadgable people are actually toiling to create some good material here. (I ought to know.) Academics, professionals, serious students, it takes a lot of care to make sure the article or wikiarea is good. --Mr Accountable (talk) 22:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment -- What's the problem?, I have to say, after helping save Chile-Israel, Japan-Venezuela and Serbia-Libya, is that saving documentation for any country's foreign affairs department will primarily be in Hungarian, Gujarati, Viet, Shquip, etc, and it may be quite an inconvenience for a concerned party to rustle up the necessary solid refs, on time, for WP:DELT. I would say that improving the article is the prime directive in this case, and tho' it may take a very long time to suss out this mountain of notability, it would be conscientious to do so, google session by google session, researchwise, Wikitime. It may take some interwiki foreign language help to do so for many ephermeral articles, but it would probably be worth it. --Mr Accountable (talk) 22:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Existing Guidelines

Wikipedia:WikiProject_International_relations#Bilateral_relations

I like these guidelines from the WikiProject:

All articles regarding the bilateral relations between two countries should roughly have met any of these criteria in order to meet notability for the bilateral relational articles.

1. They have been engaged in a war.
2. They engage in significant trade.
3. They have been/are in an alliance.
4. They share a border.
5. They have been engaged in a significant diplomatic conflict.
6. They have been engaged in a significant trade dispute.

These seem to be well thought out to me. Can't we just agree to use these? Gigs (talk) 08:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I think these are OK with one addition: if the two countries have had a significant relationship of some other type: intelligence sharing, small state/small state, non-aligned/non-aligned, are three possible ones. Buckshot06(prof) 11:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Buckshot06. Ideally Id prefer all relationships to automatically count as notable as long as we can provide some reliable evidence that they exists, and this could be as little as them each having a diplomat formally accredited to recognise the other, even when the diplomat is shared among multiple relationships (we ought not to discriminate against states not able to afford 200+ diplomats). But Id be willing to compromise and only have articles where theres evidence of cooperation on at least one issue, or where one of the factors above apply. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The main problem with this formulation is that it is terribly ambiguous. The plain words only say that articles not meeting one of the criteria are likely not notable. But this will be interpreted as saying that anything meeting one of the criteria is notable – which would be wrong in my opinion. E.g. the existence of the Commonwealth of Nations with its 53 members is a reason to have an article Commonwealth of Nations. By no stretch of the imagination is it a sufficient reason for 1378 articles of the X–Y relations type. That would include Malta–Nauru relations, Barbados–Swaziland relations, Tonga–Uganda relations. Similarly for the participants in World War II. (Some examples: Bahrain, Fiji, Iceland, Macau, Nauru, Nepal, Tonga.) Even with multilateral relations involving only 3 or 4 states it's still better practice to discuss the war, trade conflict or alliance in one article (using WP:Summary style where and as it makes sense), rather than create POV forks that stress specific country pairings. --Hans Adler (talk) 14:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all, I just noticed these guidelines and I strongly object to efforts to circumvent by creating separate guidelines outside this discussion. As for the proposals themselves, absolutely not. Take NATO (an alliance), for example: Iceland can hardly be said to have notable relations with more than a handful of NATO members. Or how do you define "war"? For instance, Nicaragua had a few hundred troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004; can that information not be covered at Multinational force in Iraq, assuming that's the only facet of the Nicaragua-Iraq "relationship"? How does one define "significant trade"? Is it a certain percentage of GDP? If a trade dispute is the only interaction two countries have had, and if it's that significant, doesn't it simply deserve its own article? And so on. No, these guidelines cannot substitute for in-depth independent coverage. Back to the drawing board. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

As another objection, I would add from the opposite side, that the application of these rules will lead to deletions of otherwise notable relations. Some countries are lucky enough to have no record of war against each other, no common border and whatever diplomatic disputes they had in 1730s seem totally insignificant today. So what? NVO (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This makes sense, although I think "should roughly" is sufficiently weak for the few articles worth preserving but failing this guideline to sail through with no effort. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:10, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I would add:

1. One has a history of colonization of the other.
2. The relationship itself can pass the criteria of WP:Notability, completely independent of the notability of the two countries.

Habanero-tan (talk) 04:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I would also add the provision of significant humanitarian assistance by the government of a country.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Opposition to inherent notability for being "in an alliance"

• It's a good start that some signs of notability have been identified, and most of these are good (They have been engaged in a war, They engage in significant trade, They share a border, They have been engaged in a significant diplomatic conflict, They have been engaged in a significant trade dispute.) But giving inherent notability, a bye, a pass, because "They have been/are in an alliance." is inclusionism at its very worst. Say that a Groubannawannabe made a stub called "Albania-Iceland relations"; normally, that would fail to locate any thing noteworthy at all, but it would be automatically entitled to an article because they're both among the 28 nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That's 392 articles right there -- (28 x 28)/2 -- even though common sense would dictate that not every one of the NATO members is going to be having a dialogue with another. We have to be careful about giving free passes, and although some are obvious, such as sharing a common border, most are debatable. That's my $0.02 worth. Mandsford (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It depends on the size of the alliance, and NATO is in my opinion borderline. (The original membership, (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France , UK, US, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark & Iceland) was certainly significant in political terms at the time; similarly I think relationships between any pair of the 8 Warsaw Pact members were always notable, as there was a close political relationship expressed in international affairs. But lets look at that 288. The relationships of France, Germany, the UK, and the US with any country are certainly always notable. and probably also for Italy. Spain, and Canada The relationships of the various Balkan countries with each other are notable. The relationships of the more northern E European countries with each other are notable. Between them, this makes up half the articles. Of the others, probably we could show significant trade or military relationships for at least half of them, leaving less than 100 questionable articles. The most problematic articles are Luxembourg and Iceland, both with populations of under 1 million, which might be a distinguishing feature. Is it better to keep the general rule despite the few exceptions ? I think so. We want to keep this simple. DGG (talk) 21:51, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Why exactly are all relations of the UK, the US, France, Germany, and "probably" Italy, Spain and Canada to be presumed notable? I can certainly see why we'd err on the side of presuming notability, but a great case can be made that Andorra – United States relations lacks notability, not to mention Germany–Uruguay relations, France–Paraguay relations (or the deleted France–Nauru relations), Colombia – United Kingdom relations, and so on. (See also 1, 2 & 3 for deleted Canada bilaterals.) So yes, more likely to be notable; automatically notable absent significant documentation, no. - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:49, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a test case now at AfD for São Tomé and Príncipe – United States relations, where, not surprisingly to me, another ed. had found substantial material. As for the others, I think we'll end up keeping or restoring them. DGG (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Idea: make bilateral relations articles into subpages, then transclude them into a larger article

I just had an idea about how to deal with these articles:

• Create subpages for each of the country pairs: e.g. International relations/Bar-Foo relations.
• Create a page Foreign relations of Bar and Foreign relations of Foo and transclude International relations/Bar-Foo relations into both of these two articles.
• The reader actually sees only two articles (Foreign relations of Bar and Foreign relations of Foo), and not every individual component (subpage).
• However, the content on the Bar-Foo relations can be edited in a single place, while changes (references, etc.) are visible in two places.

See e.g. List of minor planets/1–100 and List of minor planets: 1–1000 for an existing implementation; the former is a subpage that is "not meant to be viewed directly", while the latter is actually made up of ten subpage transclusions. GregorB (talk) 18:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe the main problem with this approach is that someone watching the parent pages is not notified when one of the transcluded pages changes. This makes it likely that most of the more obscure articles will still be neglected. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

True. In this example, e.g. Foreign relations of Bar would not change at all, only the underlying pages would change. But whether this would lead to "neglect" or not is open to question - at any rate, the summary article would appear to the reader as if it was made "in one piece". GregorB (talk) 21:42, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This might work for countries with relatively simple F.R. structure and little history behind it. Otherwise transcluding all relations of a country in a single page will be a mess. Some are one-line understabs, some are long articles with spinoffs. Consider, in case of Greece, Greek-Kenyan relations vs. Greco-Turkish relations. Having them both on a single page? NVO (talk) 22:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a good example: Greek-Kenyan relations would simply be transcluded, while Greco-Turkish relations would, of course, remain a standalone article, pointed to from the appropriately named section by the {{main}} template, as is customary. So, I don't think that kind of setup would be a mess; the question is whether all this is worth the trouble (i.e. why not create a regular article and be done with it) GregorB (talk) 22:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Transclude - where to? Foreign relations of Greece is already quite long and structured to present what is significant to the Greeks, starting with Turkey. Adding fifty-something subsections - maybe a table or list will do, but not transclusion. List of diplomatic missions of Greece is narrower in scope. It actually provides just as much as the "Kenyan stubs". NVO (talk) 05:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Also true. Transclusions would create long, list-like articles, not necessarily always an improvement over existing ones, such as Foreign relations of Greece. Oh well.. GregorB (talk) 12:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Greece and Kenya have had diplomatic relations in the form of treaties going back almost a century. They have also had recent diplomatic conflicts over the Greek ambassador to Kenya's attempt in 1999 to shelter a Kurdish fugitive. The Kenyan Special forces took part in an operation to arrest him, allegedly in cooperation with United States Central Intelligence Agency. That doesn't look a very good example of transcluding to me. Of course I wouldn't have known all that if I hadn't actually taken the time to look for the information in an attempt to save the page from deletion. But it just goes to show you. You can't judge a book by its cover.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• I would welcome this idea particularly for smaller countries, but why not have say eg Estonia-Africa relations or Iceland-Africa, Japan-Baltic states etc. that way we can capture multiple countries in one article, and retain a few notable sentences per country pairing. This would allow spin off into a separate X-Y article if the need further arises. LibStar (talk) 04:24, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I suppose you could create articles that deal with relations regionally. But I would suggest that those articles should be separated by national alliances that already exist, like ASEAN or NATO. I think we should also be cautious because to suggest that countries should simply be lumped together on the basis of their size could be interpreted an insult to the national integrity of nation states. Making a page for Mexico-Guatemala/Nicaragua/Costa Rica relations would denigrate Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 21:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• This is certainly a worthy idea; see Sino-Pacific relations for how this might look. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:35, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, this is exactly how this topic needs to be handled in most cases. And if an X–Y relations article has to be spawned off from such an article per WP:Summary style nobody has a reason to contest it. --Hans Adler (talk) 06:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

As long as folk searching for info on a particular relationship can find it, Ive no objection to it being in a longer article until the long article gets to big or there's a lot to say on the one relationship. Lets hope others agree to this compromise! FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:40, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Also redirects could handle the smaller relationships eg Estonia-Ethiopia could be redirected to Estonia-Africa. etc. etc. I think we are getting onto a good idea! LibStar (talk) 07:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Userfication: Getting all of these articles undeleted, and moved to someones user page

Has anyone discussed userfication here? Getting all of these articles undeleted, and moved to someones user page, so we can all work on this together?

All the information on how to get these article undeleted is in my template:

		The article you created was just deleted?
		All is not lost. Here is what you can do right now:
		Many administrators will be happy to give you a copy of your deleted article, either by putting it on a special user page for you (a process called userfication) or by e-mailing you a copy. List of administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles‎ (empty) no pages or subcategories

Ikip (talk) 03:34, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

And what good would that do? It's not like (m)any of the articles deleted had any realistic chance of being expanded into something meaningful, and while I'm grudgingly willing to debate Greece-Oman relations once, twice is asking a little too much. Anyway, none of them had much content to begin with and can easily be recreated in the future. Let's try to move forward, not fight the same sterile battles endlessly. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:47, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

All of these "battles" are battles which you, yourself began, or supported Biruitorul, for example you nominated today:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ethiopia–Romania relations (edits before AfD tag: 0)

There are so many of these articles which were deleted, with no efforts by yourself or other nominators to fix the article before, ignoring the policies WP:PRESERVE and WP:BEFORE, making no efforts whatsoever to look for sources, that it is possible that notable articles worthy of this encyclopedia were deleted. If these articles are userfied, I invite you, for the first time, to help contribute sources for these userfied articles, and work in a collaberative not a adversarial setting, which you have created again and again.

But please don't ever blame me again for your own battle behavior. Ikip (talk) 04:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Wait a minute. Have I participated in all bilateral relations AfDs? No, so that's an incorrect assertion. Have I ever strayed from policy in arguing for deletion, or made out-of-process maneuvers? Again, no: I've simply argued for application of policy. And yes, I nominated Ethiopia-Romania relations because it's junk worthy of deletion, and no, I don't edit nonsense articles in general. As I said in the discussion, the relevant information about that subject is much better presented in its proper context in other articles. There's nothing there to "fix", no "sources" worth artificially sticking in there. Same goes for the lot of them.

And no, I'm not about to waste time "expanding" any of this absurd series of nonsense articles: there's simply nothing to expand in the vast majority of cases for those that have been deleted, and for many yet to be deleted.

Finally, I "blamed" you for nothing: I simply said I'd rather not fight the same sterile battles endlessly, instead moving on to consideration of yet more articles in this silly series. - Biruitorul ^Talk 05:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Ikip, kill them all starting with United Kingdom – United States relations, enough of this atlanticism. Now, who will volunteer to AFD it, huh? NVO (talk) 05:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Demonstration of the fundamental problem

The fundamental problem, which is really what makes me angry about mass creation of these articles, is creation of articles about the relations between two topics, based essentially only on the undisputed notability of the two topics. Mass creation of articles connecting two notable personalities would be just as disruptive. To demonstrate the problem, I started with a factoid that I think used to come up in newspapers quite often: Helmut Kohl at some time claimed to love Kurt Tucholsky's works, which was a bit of a paradox because they would have been at opposite ends of the political scale had they been contemporaries. I didn't even find a good source for this factoid; but I found enough for a bullshit article. Here it is:

Relations between Helmut Kohl and Kurt Tucholsky

The sad thing is, if I moved this nonsense into article space it would probably survive. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. A juxtaposition of two notable entities need not itself be notable. In general, when there are such connections, they can easily be covered in other articles (indeed should be), from both subjects' perspectives. To take your example a step further, how about Jesus-Mary relations? It's among the more notable relations in history, but we do just fine covering it at Jesus and at Mary (mother of Jesus). Or, for a slightly more modern example, what about Hemingway-Fitzgerald relations? Whole books exist on the subject, but we're content (and should be) dealing with it in their respective biographies. Countries, particularly those were the relationship is slight, should be treated no differently. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:05, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Three points. 1) relationships between historical figures are static, they're not so much crying out to be captured in an online encyclopaedia as are the dynamic relationships between an ever changing set of states. 2) With bilateral relations each state has at least 193 relations, which adds up to far too much info to capture on one page. As per policy we're meant to cater for folk reading on mobile devices. 3) Understanding life is about understanding relationships , I really dont see why we couldn't have articles about significant relationships between people, the Kohl – Tucholsky article seems most interesting. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

*Sigh* If there is too much info in the articles where it belongs, then per WP:Summary style it can be moved into subarticles. There is no excuse for creating the subarticles half a century (or let it be just 5 years) before they are likely to be needed. – "The Kohl – Tucholsky article seems most interesting". No it isn't. The "relation" might barely survive as a single sentence in the Helmut Kohl article. Everything else is extreme undue weight. And Wikipedia is not the place for high school level homework-style essays. Give me any other similar factoid connecting two article subjects, and I will write you another bullshit article of this kind. If we allow this kind of thing that's a huge loophole, and Wikipedia will be full of original research in no time. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:12, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Could we also dispel this notion that each country has relations with every other one, not to mention notable ones? Bhutan, for instance, has just four embassies, it probably has diplomatic relations with half a dozen, and only its relations with China (with which it actually doesn't have bilateral relations, but with which it shares a border and a history) and India are actually notable. Even many European countries don't have too extensive a diplomatic network, and many of the more exotic pairings (Italy-Gabon, Denmark-Ecuador, and so on) are bound to be devoid of notability. - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Hans Adler has raised an important point. It's impossible to have an article on every single object in the world let alone every single relationship between every single object. Why not have articles on countries with notable bilateral interenational relations that as per my suggestion at the bottom of the page reflects the value each nation places on that relationship?Knobbly (talk) 01:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• • The argument is similar to saying we can't have articles on townships, it would be like creating an article on every person on Earth. You can't compare the inherent notability of geography found in almanacs and gazetteers with a phone book. The comparison doesn't work. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Offer to help

From User talk:MarshalN20:

I also agree with this rescue of the many country relations articles being proposed for deletion...I'd be available to help out with any Spanish-language relations that might need verification; recently, I was able to find Spanish-language information that helped save the Peru-Bulgaria relations article that was about to die due to the lack of search that the people proposing and supporting the delete did.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 16:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Ikip (talk) 16:56, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

For the record, the "sources" unearthed were trivia of the worst sort. As I noted at the time, "Bulgaria-Peru relations" (just think for a moment of the absurdity of that notion) is bound to remain a small string of disparate bits of news. Especially troubling is that the relationship itself is covered nowhere, only transient interactions between the two parties that an editor has decided constitute notable facets of the relationship. But of course, you'll never find a paragraph in a book or even a newspaper article actually discussing "relations between Bulgaria and Peru" as a discrete topic: no one has deemed it worthy of scholarly or even press attention, and neither should we. We do ourselves no service by validating trivia such as this. It's stuff we'd never, ever mention outside this series of nonsense articles that some editors feel compelled to "fill in" with meaningless "details". - Biruitorul ^Talk 17:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that Wikipedia should not cover Bulgaria-Peru relations in a separate article, or not at all? GregorB (talk) 18:03, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This is an Internet encyclopedia, not a paper encyclopedia. The Bulgaria-Peru relations are relevant enough for them to be part of an Internet encyclopedia that does not have to worry about length, ink, paper, or publisher money when having such type of entries. I can understand that there are international relations articles that are completely irrelevant, but the major current issue with the AfDs being made for the majority of them is that people are not bothering to look for sources that can validate a keep either because they are too lazy or because they don't know the languages of the nation articles they are deleting. In the case of Peru-Bulgaria, barely anybody there bothered to check Bulgarian or Spanish sources; English sources won't cover their international relations because the anglo-speaking world might not deem it notable, but there is always the chance that the other language spheres of the world know and have notable aspects on the relations of their countries (which would be valuable for a person interested in reading about that topic). Take that into account for once.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 18:39, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

GregorB, to the (minuscule) extent that Bulgaria-Peru relations are notable, Diplomatic missions of Bulgaria and Diplomatic missions of Peru can cover them (perhaps a section on the countries with which each one has relations, but not embassies). MarshalN20, let's not pretend the sources you found constitute anything less than out-of-context trivia that could never be used to write an actual article, or that they somehow satisfy the "significant coverage" requirement of WP:GNG, or that anyone has ever written anything about "relations between Bulgaria and Peru" as such (as opposed to bits of news you happen to think constitute Bulgaria-Peru relations, without secondary sources to back that up). - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:49, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

With all of the information that was provided in the discussion for the keep of the Bulgaria-Peru relations article, plus some more information that could be found if anybody who knew Bulgarian had searched, a decent article could be made. Just because nobody has ever written anything under the title of "relations between Bulgaria and Peru" doesn't mean that their relations are not important. It would be like expecting for every single relations article to have a specific research dedicated to the relations of X-Y nation, which is completely unrealistic. Additionally, the information I found for the relations of both nations came from El Comercio (Peru), which does much more than simply post "random bits of information" in their news articles.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 11:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

More to the point, this is what you wrote in the discussion priorly held: "They have relations! And Bulgaria supports Peru over Tisco! And they had a tiff over weapons transfers! And Bulgaria is one of 9 EU countries to have more trade with Peru in 2008! The end." For one thing, you agree that they have relations. Following that, you mention that Bulgaria supports Peru over its claim of Pisco, which is a highly important item of business in the Peruvian marketing agenda. Next, you lesser the weapons transfer which the El Comercio article states could be linked to a large Mafia that is, in turn, aiding FARC in Colombia and terrorists organizations within Peru. Finally, increased trade is once again mentioned, which is important due to Peru's current position as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But, of course, since you currently are "pretending" to look at things from the top of your pedestal, you must have obviously overlooked these notable aspects.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 11:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Groubani the visionary

Theres been some negative talk concerning Groubani and it might be worth presenting the other side, as its highly relevant to this discussion. Until WWII serious involvement in international democracy was largely reserved for a handful of great powers. Although the equality of sovereign states had been talked about as early as the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia , in reality the great powers were first among equals in all ways – for example with a few exceptions only they were allowed to have diplomats with the rank of ambassador. Only after WWII did the equality of states emerge as a genuine principle of international relations rather than a empty phrase, being formally ratified by the UN charter. A consequence of the equality of states is that each interstate- state relationship is in a moral sense of equal significance.

For that reason alone we should have an entry for each relationship – if that isn't convincing enough theres the fact that a great many relationships will have important implications for global trade, for world peace, for international efforts against terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, international smuggling of immigrants and refugees, for mutual cooperation on matters relating to climate change, communication and human rights. The list goes on and on. With about 20,000 relationships to deal with there's too much work for any other single information provider to complete. ( There's actually 18,721 relationships if we limit ourselves to the 194 widely recognised independent states; 20,503 if we work with the 203 counted as sovereign on wiki) . Only wiki where millions collaborate from all over the world is up to the job!

It will be challenging enough as its is, which is why it was beneficial for Groubani to embark on a programme for the systematic creation of stubs in a uniform format, to make it easy for IP editors to contribute to relationships they know about. Groubani and Groubani alone has the vision to see the value of a complete list of these relationships, and the drive to do so something about. Its his tragedy that his work attracted the attention of determined crew of deletionists, was forced to sock because he lacked the English skills to argue his case and was eventually banned. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, please. The man had obviously never read WP:N and WP:NOT, and had no desire to help the project by writing actual articles. Not that this thread is relevant at all to what we're trying to do (possibly craft notability guidelines), but the fact is that he was very much a net negative to the project, and it's a good thing his thoughtless stub creation is over. - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that. He intended to help the project by contributing stubs for others to expand. Now, the way he did it was not very wise, and has caused a great many problems,but I see no reason to assume he had other than good intentions. And the argument that most independent states do have notable relations is quite a reasonable one. DGG (talk) 20:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Should contributors be discouraged from creating large numbers of stubs for others to expand? There could be some advice that – without being aggressive – suggests that a new article contributor is expected to stay involved in article development, and that before creating a tidal wave of articles around one theme, it would make sense to help take an example article to B class just to see whether the concept and structure are effective. Wouldn't that help? - Pointillist (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Every article he created mentioned when diplomatic relations started, and where their embassies were located at. That is enough information to verify the existence of the subject, although it should be common sense. Many of these articles now up for deletion, have in fact been expanded to have other information. And whether the base article remains or is deleted, depends on whoever is around at the time to form a consensus in the AFD, some saved, and some not. There is no possible reason to be going around deleting stubs for perfectly reasonable article subjects anyway. This is encyclopedic material, which belongs in the wikipedia. Dream Focus 22:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi DreamFocus, were you replying to me? I wasn't saying the articles should be deleted (that's another debate). I was asking whether it would help to have a non-confrontational guideline that advises against creating a large number of articles without first trying to bring an example to reasonable standard. How do you feel about that? - Pointillist (talk) 22:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure there is reason for deletion in certain cases - lack of notability documented through multiple, reliable sources. - Biruitorul ^Talk 22:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Defending a indefinetly banned user takes real bravery. I gave you a barnstar FeydHuxtable. nice job. Ikip (talk) 23:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=5000&target=Groubani Groubani was around for years, creating these articles. He was banned for being a sock puppet? Was he voting in AFD as different people? What page keeps track of the discussion about someone who was banned? Dream Focus 01:20, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • User:Plumoyr (not banned) was his sockpuppet. He was told he can come back as Groubani, but then Plumoyr would have to be banned. Regardless, he's not attempted to edit since Groubani was banned and Plumoyr blocked for three days. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
• Groubani was banned twice for excessive stub creation by 2 different admins, each time he came back along the same path. Some people have accused me of not applying WP:BEFORE before nominating for deletion, the same could apply to Groubani. The problem is whilst many of his stubs are notable, many are not, and he had a particular thing for Estonia, Serbia, Uruguay and Iceland. don't ask me why. he also missed many notable combinations, I've created 6 recently and intend to create more when I have the time. LibStar (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
• Indeed, Groubani was rightfully banned for being the serial stub creator he was, and I agree whole heartedly that there should be a type of WP:BEFORE for article creation. Lacking the feasibility of this, or in combination with it, I would also like to see out of this come a new criteria for speedy deletion: Ill-referenced or otherwise notability-challenged stub articles not significantly expanded after a lengthy period of time following creation. --BlueSquadronRaven 20:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Losing the plot

Instead of writing paeans to banned users and thinking how we can resurrect deleted articles, let's try and focus on what we're here for: deciding if we should have guidelines on bilateral relations articles, and if so, what those guidelines should be. In the interest of sparking some debate, I'd like to zero in on a criterion people have been throwing around a lot in debates: trade. What precisely constitutes a "notable trading relationship"? Some obvious examples would be, for the US: Canada, Mexico and China; for the UK: France, Germany and Ireland; for Japan: US, China, South Korea. OK, but other than such cases (which in any case can generally be covered at "Economy of..." articles, but that's a separate issue), how is notability established? Percentage of GDP? Number of trade agreements? A few news articles announcing the countries' intentions to "foster stronger commercial ties"? Or is it case-by-case? - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

good point. in some cases, trade is very one way particularly between developed and developing countries. but I think generally speaking a few million USD is not notable. you have to consider that some individuals do more trade than some of these small countries. I think the first criterion is a free trade agreement then any other formal trade agreements. to me, that shows official intent to have a real trade relationship. Given that Japan and China export to almost every country in the world, simply trading is not a criterion. LibStar (talk) 04:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone interested in finding information about the trade between two countries, would find that information useful. Listing treaties between the countries, meetings between leaders or other important people of those nations, embargoes and other restrictions one nation places on another, current state of warfare(if at war with each other), whether the nations acknowledge each others as an independent nation, etc. Whether or not the nation can afford an embassy in every nation it has relationships with, or feels the need to bother, isn't a reason to not have an article on them. Dream Focus 07:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I never said having an embassy or not is the sole indicator of notable relations, but if a larger developed country doesn't have an embassy, it does give some indication, I've found some countries have non resident embassies in a different continent. however, notable relations still must satisfy WP:GNG. LibStar (talk) 07:32, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

On the basis of the above discussion I think it's fair to say that there's no consensus that a guideline is needed. This pretty much kills of any chances of such a guideline being adopted (WP:SCHOOLS and WP:FICT are recent examples of failed attempts to develop notability guidelines in situations where there wasn't a consensus for the guidelines being needed). That said, if you think that guidelines would be helpful and worth the effort I'd recommend that you draft an initial version of the proposed guidelines and seek comments on them - further discussions here are unlikely to be productive. Nick-D (talk) 06:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

As Biruitorul and Libstar seem to be coming round to the idea of a guideline its possible consensus for it would develop. But maybe we wont need one if folk agree the less notable relationships can initially be hosted in an umbrella article? If we do end up needing a guideline it would be a good idea to write a draft, and Id be happy to do that if no one else does first. Moving to Biruitoruls question, Id say foreign trade worth 1% or more of total foreign trade for either country should be enough to establish notability . And as LibStar says any formal trade agreement.FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with everything but I'd rather get more consensus than the 1% figure. in some relations, the trade is very one way, like maybe 2% one way and 0.001% the other way. do we mean 1% each way. Happy to discuss. LibStar (talk) 07:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Guideline for - unconditional keep or unconditional delete? NVO (talk) 11:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'm still neutral on the need for a guideline. And a lot still depends on the wording. "All states with combined trade flows of >3% are presumed to have a notable trading relationship" I'd object to; "All states with combined trade flows of <3% are presumed not to have a notable trading relationship" would be better. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Any guideline will be faulty <g>. My own personal suggestion would be to have major articles on the larger countries detailing relations with other countries, so that a minimum number of articles would be needed, rather than have every possible combination be presented. If a person wanted to find about "Liberian Monacan relations" he could look under "Liberia" and find a subarticle if needed. Collect (talk) 11:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

A guideline with a presumption is a good idea; we have those in music and it's worked well. Whether trade level thresholds are the correct measurements is another matter - I would expect that US-Iran and US-North Korea and Israel-Syria and Israel-Iran would all fail that measure, as may UK-Argentina, Serbia-Croatia, Turkey-Greece, Turkey-Armenia, India-Pakistan, North Korea-South Korea, Colombia-Venezuela, and UK-Iceland, but all probably have sufficient material and notability to sustain articles. Regardless of whether we have a trade-based presumption, I would add three other presumptions along the lines of:

• All states with common borders, land or sea, are presumed to have a notable bilateral relationship
• All states with conflicting territorial claims are presumed to have a notable bilateral relationship
• All states in a state of war with each other are presumed to have a notable bilateral relationship

Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:36, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

The last argument is weak. States in a state of war today are very few, and it's too fluent to be taken as a criteria anyway. States in a state of war ever in their history is too far-stretching (World War II will spawn Cambodia-Honduras relations etc.). Besides, it gives an unfair advantage to older establishments. United Kingdom was at war with Austro-Hungary more than once, but independent Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia haven't been at war with anyone, ever. NVO (talk) 19:21, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Territorial disputes usually imply common borders too, correct? And if not, the dispute is usually significant enough for its own article, and so is the relationship outside the dispute (Navassa Island, Sovereignty of the Falkland Islands). So I guess it's a good indicator of notable relations. Common borders are even better, while war is a weaker standard, as NVO points out. - Biruitorul ^Talk 22:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Deletion review

I opened a deletion review at WP:Articles for deletion/Colombia–Croatia relations. This is not really about the article; nobody even tried to defend it on the merits. This is about the procedural argument that all bilateral relations AfDs should be suspended while we are discussing whether we want a specific guideline and what it might look like. See also WT:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force#Moved from main page: can AfD's be suspended. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:51, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Hans, I agree with the deletion review. LibStar (talk) 02:09, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Trade agreements

I found a page listing free trade agreements, one aspect of bilateral relations.[4] Fences and windows (talk) 01:28, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Multilateral agreements, however, do not necessarily mean that all permutations of two countries in the pact necessarily have notable relationships. Collect (talk) 18:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Lazy AfD nominations

I'd encourage editors who wish to nominate articles on bilateral relations for deletion to consider the criteria they're nominating the article against before they do so. Nominations based on your personal views about what constitutes a significant relationship (eg, ambassadors, treaties, trade, etc) aren't a good idea as these are examples of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which is an argument to avoid in all AfDs. Nominations based on the article not meeting WP:N require evidence that the topic hasn't received significant coverage in reliable sources. As such, these nominations should only be made if a search for references produces no results - at very least search Google, Google News and Google Books before nominating the article and if you think that the resulting hits aren't sufficient post links to the results of your searches in the nomination and explain why they show that notability isn't established. Some of the current nominations are a waste of everyone's time as they're based on nothing but the nominating editor's personal views and once other editors start to comment it becomes clear that there was no serious search for references. Nick-D (talk) 23:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I always do a google news search and check foreign ministry websites (if they exist) of the relevant countries. I also never nominate if there is a trade agreement between 2 countries because this indicates a significant high level government commitment to economic relations. LibStar (talk) 06:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Doing a Google search and looking at the first 10 results in 10K is not researching the topic, its well, "doing a Google search and looking at the first 10 results". There is a big difference in time and effort between the two. I have not seen any effort going to searching before nominating for deletion. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

good stuff Richard, whilst you have saved some articles I've nominated, you haven't saved all. I don't simply look at the first 10 results. If your statement is true, then every bilateral article I've nominated could be saved, which is clearly not the case. and on some occasions you don't even care to vote or add references...how is is so if you believe no effort has been made for searching? LibStar (talk) 06:35, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I learned that 1+1=2 in math, but not sure how my statement leads to "If your statement is true, then every bilateral article I've nominated could be saved, which is clearly not the case." I never learned that in a math or logic class. Sorry, but that defies comprehension. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:28, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

that's right no effort has been made to search before nominating for deletion. what a false claim. LibStar (talk) 07:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, you did type the names into Google and hit search, and that is by definition an "effort". But, I have not seen any evidence of going beyond the first 10 results, maybe 20. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Belgium–Mexico relations as an example. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

effort includes reading several articles that comes up in the search, I do that always. and also use google news search on several pairings that I choose not to nominate. your choice of Belgium Mexico is true strawman fallacy, so out of over 100 I've nominated for deletion you choose one of the weakest example. most articles I nominated get deleted. LibStar (talk) 07:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I can only speak about ones that I have participated in, and even if it was limited to just the 5 I expanded, then the nomination for deletion in those cases was egregious. The only conclusions I can reach, even assuming good faith, is that you either lack basic research skills, or you have those skills, and are being deliberately deceptive. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

what a thinly veiled personal attack, the diff has been retained. LibStar (talk) 05:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The relentless AFD nominations probably need to stop. Yes, the overwhelming majority of these articles probably don't need to be, but 1) Are more new ones constantly being created? and 2) The world will not end in the few weeks it takes to hammer out which are necessary and which aren't. At that point, there should be a nice, clear consensus to make it plain that Cambodia-Mozambique relations is an article unfit for Wikipedia. Nosleep ^{break my slumber} 09:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the relentless creation by Groubani (talk · contribs) needed to stop too. The argument to wait was posted 4-6 weeks ago saying that a new guideline would be developed. This could take months. There is already a minumum guidline of WP:N. LibStar (talk) 04:20, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

It already stopped, he not making any new ones since February. And seriously, what could it hurt to just leave them alone? Anyone not interested in the subject, won't be likely to find the article to begin with, there is no shortage of server space, and some would find it useful or interesting to read. Note how many of the nominations which people had time to get around to checking into, proved quite notable. But few are going to spent the time to check every single one of these articles. And many of us would like to keep all of them. Even if they do nothing more than list where the embassies are at, that is something. Dream Focus 15:46, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOTABILITY is a core principle of the encyclopedia. This is an artificially generated list of topics we are talking about here. Nobody ever googled "El Salvador-Estonia Bi-lateral Relations," this project is filling the encyclopedia with articles that do not and will never meet our high standards. The harm here is the exact same harm the founders discussed when they wrote WP:N, which I'm sure has more philosophical arguments than I can list. Habanero-tan (talk) 08:43, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Why do we have an article on every non-notable township in the United States? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 07:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree that many non-notable places have articles, and it seems from WP:Notability (populated places) that there is no specific guideline for a town, so WP:GNG should apply. At least there is a limit to the number of towns, whereas there is effectively no limit to the number of X–Y relations articles where X and Y are two notable items, as shown by Relations between Helmut Kohl and Kurt Tucholsky. Please consider seriously thinking about the Kohl–Tucholsky example: Should it be an article? Why should there be a non-notable X–Y relations article? Johnuniq (talk) 12:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Every non notable place has a place in Wikipedia, not "many". That is because a Wikipedia pillar is that Wikipedia contains almanac and gazetteer elements. While I do envision an almanac containing relations between countries, I have never seen a relationship between people article in one. It is an imaginary construct in almanacs but is seen in many books, for example any parallel lives type book as in "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives". That is the difference between and almanac and an encyclopedia, an almanac is complete and doesn't exclude entries for particular countries. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Sufficient numbers of your so-called "almanac" entries have been found non-notable by consensus and deleted. I think you need a new broken record. --BlueSquadronRaven 20:54, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Any of the lesser read articles can be deleted with sufficient manpower and strategy. Good articles are deleted every month as some new deletion craze begins, similar to the iconoclasts, that destroyed art. A zeal develops, and of course, it is easier to destroy than to create. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:55, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

yes sufficient manpower and strategy is something Richard is good at. for example choose an "innocent" message about a bilateral article currently at AfD eg "what do you think of X-Y relations" post this message only to editors who always vote keep...and hey presto they appear on the AfD voting keep. and Richard I notice you only do this to articles actually at AfD. LibStar (talk) 05:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I contact people who have edited the bilateral articles, or edited one of the country articles. I offered to contact you when I find an article that needs help finding sources, but you rebuffed my offer. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, how do you reconcile your above statements with your definition of almanac entries as you described here? --BlueSquadronRaven 21:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would I care that someone created a redirect a month ago called NOTALMANAC to the text that reads "Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader. In cases where this may be necessary, (e.g. Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008), consider using tables to enhance the readability of lengthy data lists." May I ask what that has to do with anything? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: You're contradicting yourself. Feel free to continue. --BlueSquadronRaven 16:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not following your reasoning, can you point out my contradiction here? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:24, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Since I am well aware of your ability to twist words into any meaning you choose, I will not. I will instead leave the above links in place for others to come to their own conclusions. --BlueSquadronRaven 22:38, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, still not following you .... If someone else can follow the logic and can point out the contradiction please let me know. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no contradiction, and the terse replies above are inappropriate. The two things you say about almanac entries are that they are de-facto notable, and that they are not just raw statistics. I don't agree with the statements, there's active debates on those topics, but they don't contradict eachother. Habanero-tan (talk) 06:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding: "The relentless AFD nominations probably need to stop" I am confused. If we do not make AFD nominations for every non-notable article, what is the alternative? Is there going to be a mass-deletion of thousands of articles without AFDs? It seems to me that the only way to clean this mess up is to flood the AFD board with nominations. Is there some other channel these articles will go through that I don't know about? Habanero-tan (talk) 11:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Test cases

We had a similar issue over at Talk:List of South Park episodes/Archive 3 recently (it turned out they were notable if you had someone with LexisNexis style research sources). What we did was pick some episodes, and see if any could have their notability established to the point of making a GA. I suggest that an uninvolved editor pick 5 or so BR articles at random, and see if editors can establish notability or make a GA out of them. With the results, we can estimate if all should stay, half should stay, or very few of them should stay. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:15, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that would work. All South Park episodes are pretty much the same (they run for about 30 minutes are shown on the same TV channels, etc) and hence can be expected to receive the same amount of coverage in reliable sources. Because countries differ hugely in size, geographical location, culture, political system, etc the same doesn't apply - for instance Australia-New Zealand relations (very notable) can't be assumed to have received the same level of coverage as Togo-New Zealand relations (not notable at all). The results of the AfDs to date indicate that unlikely-looking combinations can in fact be notable (Australia-Uruguay relations being a good example) so one size doesn't fit all and these articles need to be considered on their merits. Nick-D (talk) 07:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Fortunately with the exciting new development at WP:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force#Moved from WT:Article Rescue Squadron it looks as if the problem may be solved now. But it really depends on how others on both sides react now. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:28, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

• The South Park episodes are all notable to their fans, and no attempt to delete them has ever, or will ever succeed, whether they have proof of notability or not. Totally different situation than what we have here. Dream Focus 15:48, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

How to find references for these articles

• Go to the official websites of both countries involved. Most nations have an English version of their site, since that is the international language. Search for the name of the other nation there, as I did recently(like 10 seconds ago) here: All articles on the official Belarus government website, related to Croatia. That will help find results.
• Find out what the major newspapers are in the nations involved, and search through them for mentions of the other.
• At times it may be difficult to find anything, if no one speaks the language of the nations involved. Dream Focus 03:36, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Many of those sources found above are multilateral not bilateral relations. Some of them are even Eurovision which is zero evidence of bilateral relations. LibStar (talk) 03:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Useless: deletionados will discard anything "self-published". And if there's nothing apart from govt sites, maybe they are right. NVO (talk)

most will be multilateral. Not all of them will be. DGG (talk) 03:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

I opened a discussion thread on the main project talk page at WT:WikiProject International relations#Adding .7B.7Bprimarysources.7D.7D to various articles, including Estonia–Luxembourg relations. I started it there, as it's not primarily about deleting or merging articles. 08:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion

What if instead of having articles for the relations of every single country with every other country in the world which would create a precedent for creating articles for the relations of every single thing with every other single thing. How about instead if the relations between two countries meet standard notablity requirements, we created two articles?

Random example:

• Nicaragua–South Ossetia relations
• South Ossetia-Nicaragua relations

Real Example:

• United Kingdom-United States relations
• United States-United Kingdom relations

Each article for would be written in an objective way from the perspective of the first country listed in the article. So the American persective would concentrate on this significant to the American viewpoint and vice versa.

(This gets around the problem of bias, which cannot be avoided if one country is listed first.)Knobbly (talk) 01:51, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

First off, one article is always better than two. If the two countries involved have notable relations, there should be only one article and a properly written article will have material covering both sides of the relations. A redirect may suffice for one of the two suggested titles but as it stands, most of the articles in this format are not named due to any bias for or against one country, but by listing the two countries involved in alphabetical order. --BlueSquadronRaven 23:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

No sometimes two articles are better. The problem with having only one article is that the bilateral relationship means different things to the different countries invloved. This way the articles would actually reflect the real size and notability of the relationships. For example the Australian-United States relationship means more to Australians then the United States- Australian relationship does to Americans. Having one article simply mashes these distinctions together.Knobbly (talk) 01:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Again, a properly written article will show both sides without bias. I think you'll find your view is in the vast minority. --BlueSquadronRaven 03:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You provided quite benign examples... in less serene circumstances your proposal legalizes nationalist POV forks. Armenia by Azeris and Azerbaijan by Armenians - no thanks. NVO (talk) 06:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Guideline

Articles on X–Y relations should not be created until:

• The X article contains material that indicates the importance of relations with Y, with at least one secondary source that discusses the importance of Y to X.
• The Y article has similar material indicating the importance of relations with X, supported by a secondary source.

X may be a large world power, while Y is a minor country. So X may be important to Y, while the reverse is not true (X may not regard Y as important). In such a case, there should not be an article on X–Y relations.

Stub articles on X–Y relations should not be created until the guidelines above are satisfied. In addition, stub articles should not be created until some significant material is available for the article. The fact that X has an embassy in Y, or that a leader of X visited Y is not significant (the proposed article is about the relations). There should be a secondary source that discusses the significance of the X–Y relations.

From the above discussion, we do not seem to be applying the existing guidelines WP:WikiProject International relations#Bilateral relations. I have therefore suggested the above. Johnuniq (talk) 05:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Johnuniq, the above has some merit. I agree simply having an embassy is not enough, or one double taxation agreement. I note that a lot of countries have cooperation agreements or memos of understanding, both of which are quite weak non enforcable forms of agreements. agreeing to cooperate does not mean actually will cooperate. LibStar (talk) 13:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The first part (No XY until X and/or Y) is impossible to enforce. Supppose I do create a thoroughly referenced X-Y relations that is uncontroversially notable without wasing time on either X or Y. What would you do? Block? Shoot? NVO (talk) 06:30, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As a guideline, it provides a recommendation. If an editor does not notice the guideline (or ignores it), and they create something worthwhile anyway, of course we would welcome it. Can we agree that if X–Y relations is a worthwhile article, that would be because X is important to Y and vice versa. In that case, naturally the X article should at least mention the importance of Y, and the Y article should talk about X.

The relationship does not have to be very important, just notable – of some generally-acknowledged importance. If people in other countries publish articles discussing the X–Y relationship, then it is notable. Otherwise, it's not. Johnuniq (talk) 08:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

What do "people in other countries" have to do with XY? You're taking independent of the subject clause too far; following this logic, "people in other countries" are not neutral/reliable either, because they speak for their nations' interests. A different bias is still a bias. NVO (talk) 09:06, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Another word that caught my eye: there is no worldwide generally-acknowledged importance beyond a few burning war zones. Generally acknowledged where? Harvard? Sorbonne? Tabriz madrasa? Will Africans or Americans really care about Australia-New Zealand relations? NVO (talk) 09:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

And another point, returning to XY-X,Y rule. What about wiki-relationships that already have three-tier structure, i.e. there's Latin America – United States relations between the U.S. and Costa Rica? NVO (talk) 09:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

By "people in other countries" I mean academics and journalists who study international relations (I certainly agree that Homer Simpson is not the arbiter of what is notable). There are academics and journalists (and politicians and business people and think tanks) who write about international relations. It's possible that they might miss some important issue between a particular pair of countries. Are we then supposed to perform original research and decide that the relationship is important, despite the fact that we can't find any reference from a significant person in a third country, who agrees? I don't want to take this too far. If a couple of notable people in X or Y say the relations are important, that would support creation of an article. But not simply a politician making a bland statement at a photo-op (opening an embassy to promote trade or tourism is not notable). Johnuniq (talk) 09:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Point is, demanding third country opinions is an unwarranted tightening of existing rules. An article must be properly referenced to justify general guideline, nothing more. Unless we deal with totalitarian states where govts control all the media and academics on both sides, there is no reason to dismiss domestic authors. Who should be, by default, better informed on the subject. PS. Editors' decisions (unlike statements in articles) are not OR. They are just ... decisions. NVO (talk) 10:05, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I have misled you because I do not mean what you appear to be concerned about. First, my proposed guideline above does not mention the words we are debating ("people in other countries"). Second, my remark about the other-country people was intended as a sufficient test of notability. If an independent author in country Z writes about the X–Y relations, that is sufficient evidence of notability. In the above, I mistakenly said "Otherwise, it's not" (that's too strong). I stated my actual belief in the last two sentences of my 09:57 text.

Re your last comment about editor's decisions not being OR: We just need a guideline (not a compulsory policy) recommending what is notable, so editors can decide each case (of course there will be exceptions, and WP:IAR applies). One person might think an embassy and a leader's visit is notable. Another might say that US$10 million annual trade is notable, or a shared border is notable. I'm just suggesting we need a guideline for what notable generally means for bilateral relations. Johnuniq (talk) 11:40, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

We recently discussed the question of appropriate sourcing on the project's talk page (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations). The discussion used a sample with specific references for various elements. The conclusion of the discussion was that the sources (including primary ones) used there were appropriate in their context. -- User:Docu 11:26, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore I see no need to require it to being country Z., If people in country X write about their relationship with Y in significant ways, that's sufficient to show notability. Of course, NPOV requires the inclusion of all available significant views, but that;'s something else. If the people in one country consider their relationship with another important to write about that's significance and notability. Even if its the government. "Independent" in WP:RS is not meant to deal with the situations where the obviously reliable authority for a POV is the one to express it. Some countries a foreign department will not bother dealing with in a significant way, but with those it does, the relationships are notable. DGG (talk) 19:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree! Note that "Z" does not appear in my suggested guideline, and I am not trying to incorporate mention of a third country into a guideline. In the above discussion, I was trying to express an opinion that almost any mention in Z of X–Y relations would indicate those relations are notable. A single statement by a prominent politician in Z may be sufficient. By contrast, an isolated statement in X like "I'm visiting Y next week to open a new trade office" is not an indication that the relations are notable. Johnuniq (talk) 02:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, adding a third country isn't going to advance us much as people in other countries are unlikely to be interested in the topic. I think your proposal brings up an important point: relations between some countries, e.g. Wikipedia:PIIR/C#Current powers or countries that cover entire continents (e.g. Australia) are somewhat different than others. In any case, there seems to be some confusion about the scope of the articles. The sample article (not necessarily significant) on WikiProject International relations "Australia – United States relations" focuses mainly on military and state visits. It even omits basic details in line with the main scope of the project, e.g. List of Australian Ambassadors to the United States isn't even linked today (May 29, 2009). -- User:Docu 10:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Estimate of the Number of Articles

I tried parsing the list in Excel, and estimate there are currently 5,000+ articles solely about the relationship between two specific countries. Theoretically, let us consider the 192 UN Member States (although there are actually ~245 countries in the world). The number of unordered combinations is "192 choose 2", or 18,336 articles on binational relationships (in theory), double that if we made two per pair (A-B and B-A). Habanero-tan (talk) 04:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

How many still need to be created? -- User:Docu 06:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I'll let you figure that out, but my intention here was to quantify the ridiculousness of this project. Habanero-tan (talk) 23:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Simple: None. --BlueSquadronRaven 22:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Better question is how many Groubani made? LibStar (talk) 07:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Bilateral Treaties

Can we at least agree that bilateral treaties that are covered by 3rd party independent sources provide notability for two countries' relations?--Cdogsimmons (talk) 02:20, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

provided it is significant or wide coverage. not just 1 or 2 articles. LibStar (talk) 09:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I think we need an example to decide what "covered" means. For example, a third-party list of treaties (A has treaty such-and-such with B, C, D, ...) would not indicate notability. By contrast, two paragraphs of editorial comment in a substantial newspaper from country C that discusses a treaty between A and B would probably indicate notability.

Please consider Hans Adler's example. While it is all true (and interesting) it somehow lacks what it takes to be an encyclopedic article. That's how I feel about many of the X–Y relations articles. A country with a few million people is going to have some sort of relation with almost every other country, but an article based on those relations might just be a trivia collection. Johnuniq (talk) 10:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

and on this point there are a variety of bilateral agreements from memos of understanding, "cooperation" agreements, actual agreements in increasing scale of importance. memos and cooperation agreements are relatively weak and not usually legally binding. LibStar (talk) 10:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It all depends on context, I suppose. If the notability of a relationship is immediately apparent by multiple independent sources covering it, then naturally, those sources will talk about relevant treaties. Here, unsurprisingly, we find discussion of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, treaties signed during the Essequibo River arbitration, the NATO treaty, and so on. Here we find mentioned an 1828 US-Brazil Navigation and Trade Treaty, a 1952 military assistance treaty, and so on. In the context of a thorough examination of US-UK and US-Brazil relations, mentioning treaties is necessary (indeed it would be odd not to).

But once one leaves that context, it becomes a case of special pleading to say discussion of a treaty validates discussion of an entire relationship, when such isn't covered anywhere. Let's say, hypothetically, the New Zealand-Uruguay Treaty of Friendship has one chapter in each of two books on friendship treaties. Fine, that may allow us to write New Zealand-Uruguay Treaty of Friendship. But it would not allow us to write New Zealand - Uruguay relations simply on that basis. For that, treatment of that relationship remains necessary. - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Biruitorul. The notability guidelines are quite clear. The subject of an article itself must be notable. Drawn Some (talk) 21:44, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

In a word: no. The types of treaties usually entered into by two countries are usually commonplace agreements of co-operation, visa requirements, extradition treaties... things that are now commonplace. If you want to make an argument that treaties make for a notable relationship, one of them had better be a peace treaty, and a relatively recent one at that. --BlueSquadronRaven 22:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)