Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies of Rudy Giuliani

Controversies of Rudy Giuliani

Controversies of Rudy Giuliani (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Wasted Time R has been bringing this article in line with many other biographical articles. Controversy articles are bad in practice, violating WP:NPOV, WP:Content forking, and WP:Criticism. Wasted Time also made an excelent point in that FA articles such as Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Wesley Clark, Barack Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Theodore Roosevelt do not have associated articles like this. It needs to be pointed out that articles like this turn into dumping grounds for negative material of dubious relvance and none of the material has been "deleted" or will be deleted if this AfD is successfull ... Wasted Time R has moved the material into related non attack articles.

[ A note about notification of this AfD, per WP:Canvassing recommendations to be transparent. User:Dogru144 has been doing some canvassing, which is fine by me — I'm hoping this decision gets as broad a response as possible. I have notified the editors who participated in the dismantling discussion here about the AfD, including at least one who opposed the dismantling, and also the ones who were in a very recent discussion at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton about why Giuliani had a controversies section and Clinton didn't, as I had told them the Giuliani one was now being dismantled, when in fact it will now be decided here. At User:Wasted Time R/can2 you can see where I tried to put together a longer list of editors who've been involved in this general debate in the past ... except that it's hard to go through all the talk archives to find everybody, and there are other discussions on this that I'm not aware of, and I'm not sure this would fit the bounds of WP:Canvassing anyway, so only the ones marked with 'c' in the list have I notified. Wasted Time R 00:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC) ]

• Delete as the nominator. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:49, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. This article is appropriate. "Controversies of ..." is an acceptable article subject. It seems that editors found it too uncomfortable that there was a single spot with unpleasant, embarrassing material on Rudy Giuliani. This article had been blanked by [[User:Wasted Time R. This is an inappropriate manner of addresssing anxiety with this page. Dogru144 21:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Claiming that editors are "too uncomfortable that there was a single spot with unpleasant, embarrassing material on Rudy Giuliani" shows an extreme lack of good faith, and isnt likely to win you many friends or influence people around here. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:12, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

This is an absurd accusation that Dogru44 makes about an editor who has labored tirelessly on Hillary Rodham Clinton and associated articles, managing to integrate a seemingly unending supply of controversies large and small about her, into her main article and subarticles, in addition to the other good works he's given to the HRC articles. To suggest that his applying the same method to Giuliani is somehow politically motivated - pro-Giuliani - would actually be funny, if it weren't so insulting t him and the other editors who support the dismantling of controversy articles.Tvoz |talk 00:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Weak delete While the article is properly sourced, and Dougrul makes some good points, I believe TDC makes better ones. Thanks, Codelyoko193 (T/C) 21:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. The full state of this article from five days ago can be seen at [1]: a mass of entries, some internal duplicates, some external duplicates, some incoherent, some uncited, some not "controversies" in any sense, and a fair amount of legitimate material underneath it all. Per Talk:Controversies_of_Rudy_Giuliani#Time_To_Hillarize_this_article_and_dismantle_it, I documented item by item how I pruned out the illegitimate or inappropriate material. That left roughly the article that Dogru144 is trying to restore now. I then dismantled, disbursed, and integrated the legitimate contents into the appropriate mainline text sections of the Giuliani main article, daughter articles, and other Giuliani related articles. This is documented, item by item, in Talk:Controversies_of_Rudy_Giuliani#Actual_dismantling. I then redirected this article to the main article, but left this Talk page unredirected, so people could see a record of what had been done. Talk:Controversies_of_Rudy_Giuliani#Terminating_of_page_is_vandalism then contains further discussions of all this. My motivation in all this is that I believe that such Controversies sections or articles are counter to WP:NPOV, WP:Content forking, and WP:Criticism; that as pointed out above, FA articles on political figures do not have them; and that I have seen numerous complaints and comments on various Talk pages that about half of 2008 presidential candidates' articles have them (including Giuliani until now, McCain, Thompson, Huckabee) and half do not (including Giuliani now, Hillary Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Romney, Paul), and what nefarious WP biases must be at play to produce this difference. While I think random editing choices rather than biases have been at play, the current inconsistent state of candidates' articles is indeed embarrassing for Wikipedia. The solution is obvious: dismantle, disburse, and integrate those Controversies pages or sections that still exist. Contrary to what Dogru144 states, I am not driven in this by any political agenda; some time ago I previously dismantled and disbursed the Hillary Rodham Clinton controversies page — see Talk:Hillary_Rodham_Clinton_controversies#Proposal_to_dismantle_this_article where I documented what I did just as I have here — and have very recently been working on the John McCain article with an eye towards doing the same there. Dogru144 has charged me with "blanking", but I have not, as no legitimate material critical of Giuliani has been removed from Wikipedia; rather, it has been located where it belongs, in the articles that supply the context for the criticism. People who like Controversies articles tend to be people who, as Dogru144 states, want "a single spot with unpleasant, embarrassing material on [person X]"; but it is not Wikipedia's purpose or role to supply such a spot. All of the legitimate "unpleasant, embarrasing material" on Giuliani is still in Wikipedia, but you now you have to read it within the context of Giuliani's life, actions, and accomplishments, good or bad. That's what WP:NPOV, WP:Content forking, WP:Criticism, and WP:BLP call for. Wasted Time R 22:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
• Delete It's just a political hatchet job. Wasted Time makes an excellent case for its deletion. Nick mallory 23:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
• 'Delete Almost all materials are repeated in the main Giuliani article. This article should only exist if there are so many factual properly sourced controversies about a person that it would not fit into the main page. lk 00:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and delete Wasted Time R already did most of the merging, but the notable contents of the article should be moved into either the main Rudy Giuliani or an appropriate sub-article and this article needs to be sent to the dustbin of Wikipedia's history. Controversy sections and articles are signs of very lazy and poor editing techniques. Controversy sections are used by critics of the subject as a dumping ground for every potentially negative thing about the subject, whether they are notable or not, to give undue weight to the negative aspects of the subject, while controversy articles initially started out as a section, so have the dumping ground aspect, but were generally created as a content fork that are used by proponents of the subject to expunge the main article of the negative aspects of the subject. All in all, I would like to see this discussion expanded to include the merger and deletion of all "Controversies of" articles as I have yet to find one that is not a content fork and that can not be worked into either the main article or sub-articles. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 00:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

One clarification: I believe all of the merging has already been done, so that all that needs to be done here is the delete. It wasn't all merged into the main article, as lk suggests earlier above; much was merged into subarticles such as Mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani during the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign, 2008. Wasted Time R 01:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

One echoing: I also would like to see this discussion and decision pertain to, and serve as a precedent for, all "Controversies of ..." articles, and certainly for those of candidates in the 2008 election. The arguments being made here are not Giuliani-specific, and like Bobblehead I haven't seen any cases where this kind of dismantling couldn't be done. Wasted Time R 01:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Delete [edit conflict with Bobblehead] Separate articles and sections for controversies are magnets for POV edits; they quickly become dumping grounds for any and all real or imagined controversies, giving them all equal weight which clearly they do not all deserve. This was abundantly clear on Hillary Rodham Clinton's controversy section and then separate page, which Wasted did a masterful job of dismantling, while carefully assigning each item that was noteworthy to an appropriate place in the main article, notes, or sub-article. Doing this for Giuliani significantly improved that article, and Wasted Time R should be thanked for the efforts he's put into this important improvement of Wikipedia articles about political figures. Tvoz |talk 00:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and delete - Generally opposed to "controversies" forks of BLPs. - Crockspot 02:03, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Trim, merge, redirect to main bio. Looks like it was WP:POVFORKed from the main article due to serious issues with undue weight. shoy (^words _words) 02:12, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. A reason that Wasted Time makes for deleting the Giuliani controversy section is that some articles have it and other articles do not have it. But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS#What_about_article_x.3F WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is not a good argument. I am disturbed by Wasted Time's decision to 'Memory Hole' sourced material in the name of NPOV. An article "Controversies of ...." provides a pattern of organizing information. Jmegill 02:15, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

In the case of the Giuliani dismantling, the "memory hole" recommendations were made by TDC, but in many of those cases I disagreed with TDC's recommendation and did keep and move the items. In the case of the Hillary Clinton dismantling, the "memory hole" recommendations were made by me for items that were too weakly sourced to pass WP:BLP muster or too trivial for inclusion in one of the other articles. If you have any individual objections to specific decisions that were made in either of these cases, I will be happy to discuss them with you. Wasted Time R 02:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. For glaringly obvious reasons, stated above and elsewhere, ad infinitum. --Eleemosynary 02:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

• Keep as per Jmegill --Tdl1060 04:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect or just keep. If it's all sourced and balanced, there's nothing wrong with having this. I actually searched for this article a few weeks ago after seeing Fox News mention "Giuliani's past controversies" without actually saying what they were. Crazysuit 05:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)