Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 May 30

30 May 2012

Politics in the British Isles

Politics in the British Isles (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

This was a close call.

1. While I understand it's not about vote counting, I counted 7 delete to 5 keep votes, so there wasn't a clear consensus to delete.
2. At least two of the delete votes mentioned me by name, and one of the delete votes called the creation of well-sourced and (as some have said [1],[2]) useful content POINTY, so there were potentially some personal issues at play in the !votes as well.
3. The closer's statement felt a bit like a vote; he claims that the article itself was OR or SYN (although everything was clearly sourced, several books on the topic, and absolutely no new conclusions drawn), and that he was felt all of the material could be covered in bilateral articles.
4. This is obviously an emotive topic for some, but WP:NOTCENSORED and just because the existence of an article offends is not a good reason to delete. In further discussions on the closer's talk page, he again noted the potential for 'drama' around this article because of the name, so I can't help but wonder to what extent the name of the article weighed in the decision to delete (I had proposed a rename at several points in the discussion - IMO the name should not be at issue, what is at issue is the scope and notability of the topic).
5. After further discussions on the talk page, the closer seems to suggest that the crux of the issue is that the article "was trying to do too many different things at once and was completely unclear about its goals in the process. The result was something of a nightmarish mess." I respectfully disagree. I've preserved a copy of the article here (renamed slightly, so as not to offend): User:Karl.brown/Politics_in_the_atlantic_archipelago; I leave it to you to judge whether it was a "nightmarish mess" as claimed. Please do note, this is an article on a complex area, that had only existed for 3 days, and much time was wasted defending it from deletion, so one should also not judge the current contents *too* harshly. I also note, as repeated on the closer's talk page, that several people opposed to this article (e.g. RA, Snappy) copy/pasted it to the bilateral article, and edit-warred to keep its full contents, carefully [3],[4],[5] maintaining a duplicate copy in Ireland-United Kingdom relations during the whole course of the debate, so they obviously thought the content was worthwhile (just in the wrong place); unfortunately as a result, improvements that were made in good faith by editors to the content only ended up in one place.
6. Finally, as to the debate itself, I think IMO the crux of the debate and the real deciding question between the active editors hinged on the argument that this article was a fork of Anglo-Irish relations: "Much meal is made of, for example, the multilateral nature of the British-Irish Council, without considering that the only signatories to the Agreement Establishing a British-Irish Council are Ireland and the United Kingdom. The latter point underlines the reality that UK-Ireland politics is, in reality, the politics of the archipelago as a whole. Those two political entities hold responsibility for political relations of the archipelago as a whole." (RA) I disagree, and I provided multiple sources, including some just before deletion, showing that
   1. other types of political relationships in the archipelago exist
   2. relationships between non-sovereign entities is not always subservient to relationships between sovereign ones
   3. Irish-Scottish or Irish-Manx or even Irish-Scottish-Manx-Northern Irish relations are *not* simply a subset of Irish-UK relations
   4. Multilateral relations between all the countries in the isles is *not* the same things as bilateral relations between the two sovereign states
   5. Many scholars have used the creation of the British-Irish council as a starting point for a different kind of political analysis archipelagic studies) that is not simply Anglo-Irish (e.g see p2: [6] "So reviving the links with both Irelands will be made easier with the advent of the 'Council of the Isles' (in Strand Three of the Easter Agreement). This spells the end for the convention that dealings between London and Dublin account for the totality of 'east/west' relations.")
7. Finally,as one result of this discussion, you may find it interesting that since it's creation, Anglo-Irish relations never once mentioned their poor stepcousins, the Channel Islands or Isle of Man, nor Ireland's connection and dealings with same. Now, however, because their "fork" position required it, those opposed to this particular article now diligently work to *keep* mention of Irish-Manx relations in the Anglo-Irish article ([7], [8]); otherwise, their fork argument holds no water. (get it... fork... can't hold water... sorry... :) KarlB (talk) 20:45, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Overturn to no consensus I'm just not seeing the consensus here. Several of the delete votes were citing OR and SYNTH and, after reading the article, I felt and feel like they didn't read it at all. I'm not seeing either of those two things in this article and most of the push for deleting it seems to be because it has British Isles in the title. And, as Karl says, the closing admin statement reads like its own superseding vote by itself. Again, i'm not seeing any sort of consensus here, let alone a consensus to delete. Silverseren^C 21:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the article, the synthesis is in the attempt to combine existing articles into this single article. It is in fact a complete mismash and completely OR in it's construction. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:40, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

What information from existing articles? Make sure you're not confusing info that is from this article that was copied to others in an attempt to de-legitimize this article. Silverseren^C 02:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Devolution section, Main article: Devolution in the United Kingdom, Culture (I don't see what this has to do with politics, more synthesis to the topic yet again), Main article: British_Isles#Culture, Immigration and emigration, main article:Irish migration to Great Britain. The Joint projects section is a synthesis of topics. Look at the top of most sections, they point to the main articles. For example the section on bilateral relations has: 'The relationship between the two sovereign states in the Isles, Ireland and the United Kingdom, has a long and complex history, outlined in Ireland–United Kingdom relations, just summarizes that article. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

IRWolfie, I suggest you read WP:SYN: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Summarizing is *not* the same thing as synthesizing - and all of the points you make above are about how the article summarizes, not how the article comes up with new conclusions based on things not stated in the sources.

Also, if you don't know what culture has to do with politics, I suggest you read one of the many books here: [9]. Culture has a huge impact on politics, I don't even know why this is up for debate. --KarlB (talk) 12:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You appear to misunderstand what I am saying. Summarizing multiple articles and placing them into the same article all together is a synthesis. You are also at times summarizing multiple topics in a single section as if they are related, that is a synthesis unless reliable sources do it. Your novel combination into this article is not discussed in reliable sources. No reliable source makes the connection about culture in this topic and that you have so is original research on your part once again; your rebuttal itself was original research. Pointing out that culture has a connection to politics and that therefore an article on politics within the British isles should have a section on culture, is inherently original research. You have arbitrarily decided that culture was a significant enough issue to mention. What does Rugby have to do with Politics in the British Isles? Your text on the Celtic league fails to mention that it isn't on a British Isles basis but also includes Brittany and does not include most of England. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

No, summarizing multiple articles and placing them in the same article is summary style. There are thousands of articles in wikipedia in Wikipedia:Summary_style. No reliable source makes a connection between celtic culture and politics in the British Isles? Did you even read Pan-Celticism? Here's another ref: [10] I'm not even going to bother to provide more here since this is not AfD - in any case, read WP:SYN again - it's about original conclusions being drawn, which was not done. Sorry.--KarlB (talk) 14:29, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't see where Pan-Celticism mentions politics in the British isles (except for the categories you inserted: [11] but which were removed). A section which is a summary of an article needs to have a direct connection to the article it's being placed in. Otherwise this would allow for random sections to be inserted into articles with only the most tenuous of connections. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Let me help you: "Political groups such as the Celtic League, a notable Pan-Celtic political organisation, along with Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party have co-operated at some levels in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and Plaid Cymru has asked questions in Parliament about Cornwall and cooperates with Mebyon Kernow. The Regional Council of Brittany, the governing body of the Region of Brittany, has developed formal cultural links with the Welsh Senedd and there are fact-finding missions. Political pan-Celticism can be taken to include everything from a full federation of independent Celtic states, to occasional political visits. In 1972 the Provisional IRA adopted a policy of not mounting attacks in "other Celtic countries" - i.e. Scotland and Wales - possibly due to the influence of its chief of staff Seán Mac Stíofáin, a Pan-Celt.[7]" Do you still not see the connection? Of course more exposition is needed, but pan-celticism (and celtic identity) is clearly related to politics in the British isles - Scotland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Cornwall and Wales are *all* members of the Celtic league, a political organization - one (admittedly fringe) goal of some pan-celtists is a federation of celtic states - that is an essentially political goal. As for your comment about rugby, you may want to look here Politics_and_sports; or here, where the original content I wrote has been expanded, and there is now a picture of rugby added to the article Ireland–United_Kingdom_relations#Culture; I'm not sure what definition of politics you are using - the interpretation I've learned is that politics reflects culture, society, history, and relations between peoples, so it is in fact your suggestion that sport and culture are somehow *not* related to politics that is need of sourcing.--KarlB (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The issue is that the links to the topic aren't directly there, instead you are inferring them. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm done talking about this. I've given you books, citations, quotes, but you continue to refuse to see the evidence in front of your nose. If you're trying to say "it doesn't say "politics in the British Isles" I'm sorry but that's not a fair argument; if we can establish that a certain movement has important political impact on 75% of the regions in the British isles, then it is clearly relevant!! Your continued ignorance of that fact doesn't change the correctness of the article on that point. --KarlB (talk) 19:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• WP:TLDR. Let's not rehash the 25 pages of discussion leading to the decision to delete into a review, plus the discussion initiated at the closing admins Talk page, plus the discussion an AN/I, and now this. Also I'd like to point out that Karl notified a hand-picked selection of editors (who share his opinion to Keep or try to Salvage this article) and failed to notify any editor who disagreed. Clearly, this editor does not understand or accept any of the arguments presented during the AfD process, and seems more intent on keeping an article (any article) at his selected title and is now fishing for content to fit the bill - all of which, in turn, may also fall under WP:OR. --HighKing (talk) 21:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Karl and I have been discussing this in good detail on my talkpage, which you may wish to refer to. Essentially, I thought the delete !voters (who I hope have been notified of this DRV...) made better arguments as regards scope, synthesis and bias, but I'll leave it up you people from this point. I am not opposed to a recreated version with a different title, though, as there was definitely some material worth preserving here. Moreschi (talk) 21:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I was aware he continued discussing it. He did not notify the !delete voters. He should summarize any *new* points above if he wants anybody to actually read it - otherwise he's simply polling for more editors and failing to observe consensus. --HighKing (talk) 21:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi HighKing. You will note that one of the first people I notified was RA, who was one of the biggest contributors (and a delete voter). In addition, I only created this a short time ago, and was polishing the result before notifying more people. I have since notified everyone I could find in that discussion. Go easy on the unfounded accusations, of what I'm doing, and why. --KarlB (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

@Moreschi - I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on this notion of 'bias'. Can you explain what specifically about the article you found biased? --KarlB (talk) 22:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletions discussion are not merely a count of !votes. It is the arguments put forward that are measured. In this case, the arguments put forward by those wanting to keep the article were unconvincing. For example, of the four !votes to 'keep' (aside from Karl), two cited a book on the Politics of the British Isles in the 12th—15th century as a reason to keep an article on contemporary politics of the region. Aside from raising the question of whether they even fully read the title of the book before citing it, we already have an article on the History of the British Isles. A third said it should be 'kept' because, "There are political organisations that operate in both countries of the British Isles". ... " Indeed, and we already have an article on Ireland-United Kingdom relations (i.e. "both countries of the British Isles").
  Substantively, the the reasons given for 'delete' !votes was that the article is a content fork of Ireland-United Kingdom relations and seemingly a coat rack for a finge POV on the subject. --RA (talk) 22:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
• comment Here is a summary of some of the less useful delete votes: 1) pure OR / another of Karl's pointless cats/articles 2) The Republic of Ireland is an independent country (um, ok) 3) NPOV and the term British isles is politically unacceptable (sorry, WP:NOTCENSORED) --KarlB (talk) 22:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse Uninvolved editor, commented at ANI here Wikipedia:ANI#Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FPolitics_in_the_British_Isles. Much of the points raised by KarlB appear irrelevant to saying the close should be overturned and appear to mainly be a restart of the AfD itself. Only points 3 and 5 appear to be directly relevant to that. On point 3, Editors claimed in the AfD that the article was an original synthesis. It was also argued in the AfD that the material was already covered by multiple separate articles, hence this is not an original point by the closer either, for example see the sentence beginning Delete As a POV fork redundant content fork.... . The closer is expected to weigh up the different arguments made during the course of the AfD through the lens of policy and guidelines, if arguments are not convicing they should be given the appropriate lesser weight in determining the consensus. On point 5, from the talk page it is just a further clarification of the multiple separate articles mentioned in point 3. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The article also wouldn't have a WP:SNOWBALLs chance of passing an AfD. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:00, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I notice that some of the proposed references don't even verify the content so I would suggest people to be skeptical about them as well if they are looking at the article. Here is an example of some OR with a reference that does not verify the content: E.g [12] which is meant to verify There are no major political parties that are present in all of the countries, but several Irish parties such as Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail have won elections in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and both of these parties have established offices in Britain in order to raise funds and win additional supporters., Firstly I'm fairly sure it's wrong since Fianna Fáil have not won elections ever in Northern Ireland, see the Fianna Fáil article and secondly, the source does not mention anything close to the text "there are no major political parties that are present in all of the countries", it appears to be inferred. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks IRWolfie. You're right that that sentence wasn't phrased well; what was meant was have won seats in elections (Fianna Fail won a seat in an early election of the Parliament of Northern Ireland). I recall there was another source that mentioned that there were no common political parties across the countries, but I neglected to add it, so I'm sorry about that. But calling it OR is a bit extreme. I don't think one under-referenced sentence is a reason to disparage a whole article; look at Republic of Ireland - there are plenty of entire paragraphs without references, but we don't disparage that whole article on that basis.--KarlB (talk) 02:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

No. Fianna Fáil haven't won a seat. In the same section there is another reference that does not verify it's content, instead there is OR with a citation that does not verify it, i.e the sentence beginning: The converse of unionism.... Here's another original combination of topics in that same section Identity is intertwined with politics, especially in the case of nationalism and independence movements. Details on identity formation in the British Isles can be found at Britishness, Scottish identity, Irish_people#Irish_Identity. It's hardly suprising the closer fond the synthesis arguments persuasive considering the shoddiness of the article. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:29, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"Fianna Fáil haven't won a seat" That's your opinion, but unfortunately it's not backed up by FACT. see bottom. Please stop casting uncertainty on this article based on one claim which doesn't hold up. Your accusations of OR hold little weight, and in any case, a single sentence or section that *was* OR would not thusly merit deletion. Finally, the claims of OR/SYN were not backed up by any of the discussants in the AfD; no alleged "evidence" as you have attempted but failed to provide was given in the AfD.--KarlB (talk) 14:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The question of whether or nor Dev used a Fianna Fail label in South Down in 1933 is a minor point of historical fact relevant to those 3 articles, but not to this one. Just as Sinn Fein operates on both sides of the Irish border, this is an issue relating to all-Ireland politics; it is irrelevant to any discussion of whether to view the politics of the islands of Ireland and Britain in a bundle with the politics of the 3 crown dependencies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying the politics of the 3 crown dependencies (and relations of Ireland to same) *should* be bundled with British-Irish politics? Or are you saying they should not be? In any case, IRWolfie attacked a single statement as being false, he was wrong, I provided a source, end of story.--KarlB (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You still seem reluctant to engage with the points being made by others. One of the points which I have made repeatedly is that the article which was deleted was not about the "politics of the crown dependencies", nor was it about "British-Irish politics". The deleted article was overwhelmingly about the international relations of one sovereign state (the ROI) and another (the UK) along with the relations between Ireland the dependencies of the UK's monarchy.

Labelling that as a common "politics" rather than as international relations or bilateral relations is a POV advanced by the postnationalist school of which you seem to be an adherent, rather than a neutral summary of the topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. Did you even read the article on bilateral relations? What does the first sentence say? Did you notice the big box on the side of the International relations article? it says "part of a series on POLITICS". You have a very strange and uninformed understanding of international relations and politics; the article as framed was primarily a survey coupled with discussion of the multilateral bodies and a focus on cross-island cultural and political movements. It purposefully did not focus on the obviously dominant Anglo-Irish relationship.--KarlB (talk) 23:01, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Comparing apples to oranges Since IRWolfie was disparaging the lack of sources for one sentence in the deleted article (and suggesting one should thus be skeptical about the whole article) and others have (elsewhere) attacked the content of Politics in the British Isles, I'd just like to share this link [13] - this is the Ireland-United Kingdom relations article, 2 years after its creation. You will note that it has zero references. None. Zilch. Nada. In fact, it wasn't until around August of 2010, 4 years after its creation, that the article actually got more than 1 reference [14]. How do you think it compares to this one, 3 days after it's birth: User:Karl.brown/Politics_in_the_atlantic_archipelago And as mentioned above, it wasn't until a few days ago, after the creation of Politics in the British Isles, that anything about the channel islands, isle of man, or ireland's relations with Scotland or Wales started to be considered part anglo-irish relations.--KarlB (talk) 03:31, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse - The AfD discussion seemed to assert that the scope of the topic was so wide relative to available reliable source coverage that the combination invited original synthesis/research to fill in the wide gaps as fuled by all the drama surrounding the loaded term "British Isles" topic. The closer recognized something to this effect. The closer interpreted the discussion correctly. FYI, just about all Wikipedia articles related to "Politics in ..." are redirects,[15] with the preferred title beginning with "Politics of ...".[16] There's Politics of Ireland (two sub articles) and Politics of the United Kingdom, but of which seemed to have good input from Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics. However, the development of this Politics in the British Isles topic seemed to lean towards Politics of Australia and Canada compared, only much more troubled. The closer was correct, so endorse the close. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 06:07, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Overturn: Per Seren. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 06:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Overturn and relist. In any case where a plausible search term gets turned into a redlink, neither the debate participants nor the closer have thought it through properly.—S Marshall T/C 07:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Overturn to no consensus - quite simply, there wasn't one. WaggersTALK 09:04, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Overturn Blatantly improper supervote. There was no consensus to delete and it seems quite outrageous that an opinionated close should override this outside of the normal AFD process. Warden (talk) 09:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

For the above, there was no supervote as I have already argued about above. Declaring that there was and that there was no consensus in your AfD doesn't make it so. IRWolfie- (talk) 09:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse Good interpretation of discussion by closing admin. Mo ainm~Talk 10:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse: I think that the closer's statement was perhaps unfortunate, in that it read like opinion and therefore could be characterised as a supervote, but nevertheless his rationale was sound. He says, "BHG's reasoning is compelling". Obviously, then, he did not feel that the quality of the arguments on the "keep" side was sufficient to close it as a "keep" or "no consensus". The grounds for closing as "delete" were good. As a general observation, however, I would prefer if closing statements remained focussed on policy, and clearly cited the arguments that are being summarised, and did not wander off into personal musings. Scolaire (talk) 10:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse. The closer correctly weighed the crucial points in the debate, which were a) the huge overlap with topics which fell more naturally under Ireland–United Kingdom relations; b) the lack of evidence of scholarship which explores contemporary politics from a British Isles perspective (as opposed to the historical issues covered in History of the British Isles), and the resulting synthesis; c) the problems inherent in using the loaded and contested term geographical term "British Isles" in a political context.
  Other factors which were not stated as part of the closing rationale, but which would have reinforced the same conclusion, included: a) the canvassing by the article's creator of 9 individual editors ([17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]), who were selected on the basis of having edited an article which took a similar perspective; b) the fact that two of the !votes to keep ([26], [27]) were explicitly based on a reference to a book labelled as The Political Development of the British Isles, but whose full title reveals that it is about medieval political history: The Political Development of the British Isles, 1100-1400.
  There is a further issue, which was addressed in the post-closure discussion on the closer's talk page, which I think is important in approaching complex political topics. The closer suggests that one way to narrow the scope to something more usable would be to write just such an article on "post-nationalist archipalegic studies". This suggestion of an article on a particular strand of scholarship seems to me to be something we should have much more of; more historiography rather than just history, and more about political science rather than just politics. The creator of the article under review here clearly has at least some in-depth knowledge of the postnationalist approach to studies of this region, and may be well-placed to develop an article about that strand of intellectual development. The error, in this case, was in framing the substantive topic so tightly in a postnationalist lens, rather than in seeking an approach which would accommodate the many different perspectives ... and the closer is right to suggest that an article on the intellectual framework itself could be a great addition to Wikipedia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry I just can't let these blatant untruths go uncontested.

a) Claim 1:"huge overlap with topics which fell more naturally under Ireland–United Kingdom relations" This is a specious claim, never sufficiently established by anyone. The claim that Anglo-Irish bilateral relations naturally includes Ireland-Isle of Man relations has not been established by any document or any written source. If they have proof, perhaps they should have provided it during the AfD. From what I've seen, there is no evidence that he government of Ireland considers its relationship to the Isle of Man to be just a subset of their broader relationship with the UK (see [28], or search the Irish Dail debates, and you'll see numerous mentions of Isle of Man, almost never in the context of UK). If this was really the case, how could Ireland and the Isle of Man work together, on issues opposing the British government (see Sellafield controversy)? You'll notice that the lead of Ireland–United Kingdom relations, for 7 years, has stated that it is about the relations between the two states. Only as of late May 2012 do the Ireland-crown dependencies relations suddenly become part of the Ireland-UK relationship. The *only* reason this claim came about is that those opposed to keeping this article *had* to take this position; Isle of Man *had* to become part of UK politics; otherwise, their claim of fork didn't hold up.

You may also be interested to note that in a different discussion, about a category, BHG made the *opposite* claim: "The so-called "British Isles" is a hotly-contested label for a geographical concept whose politics has little commonality. The politics of the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands has little or no relation to the politics of Ireland, so the attempt to group them together seems even less coherent than a Category:Politics of Benelux; and while the politics of the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands is strongly influenced by their relationship with the UK, the converse is not true -- UK politics pays scant attention to those outlying islands." So when we're talking about a category, the politics of the British Isles has "little commonality" (thats how you get a category delete). But when it comes to an article, all of a sudden *all* of the politics in the British Isles can be summed up by British-Irish relations, and now the Isle of Man is an integral part of Irish-British relations! It's amazing how BHG can change her argument, like a chameleon, just in order to win. I already pointed out in the AfD her hypocritical attack on me for having pre-empted consensus by creating a sub-category in a different debate, followed by her encouragement of RA as he diligently copied all of the content from Politics in the British Isles to Anglo-Irish relations, pre-empting consensus by performing a merge before a merge was decided.

Again, none of these claims are sourced; only inferred based on specious arguments about who is really sovereign, which is not the only thing that counts in politics - otherwise, we couldn't have Ireland-Scotland relations, b/c Scotland isn't sovereign - but they do exist, and are important. [29]

b) Claim 2:the lack of evidence of scholarship which explores contemporary politics from a British Isles perspective. This is utter nonsense. There is a book, from 2011, called "Politics of the British Isles". There is a research center, Atlantic archipelagos research project using this approach. Famed scholar Richard Kearney has written a book about the idea of a post-nationalist archipelago, and book has been written about *his ideas*; there is a non-fiction journal devoted to an archipelagic approach: [30]; I could go on...

c) The accusations of canvassing are bogus. The editors were selected based on having edited History of the British Isles recently (which is an obviously related article), notifying them did not violate any wikipedia rules, so BHG is casting aspersion; I did not look at their edit history, and none of them voted in any case. On the other hand, Snappy, the nominator, listed the article on the politics and Ireland lists, but neglected to place it on a UK or other country list, so if you want to talk about canvassing, aim your sights at Snappy - he only told *one* side of the British Isles about this debate - is that allowed? [31]; [32] --KarlB (talk) 17:34, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Karl, do calm down, assume good faith, and stop giving the appearance of being a purveyor of WP:THETRUTH. Please remember that DRV is not a re-run of AFD, and that an accusation that another editor is posting "blatant untruths" is a pretty extreme charge which does not assist collaborative discussion.

a) My position in the CFD and the AFD is consistent, and these discussions would have been easier if you had AGFed and attempted to understand why. As I noted at CfD, these entities have no common polity; that's why the Category:Politics of the British Isles should be deleted. In this case, we had an article whose content consisted overwhelmingly of material on the intergovernmental relations between two sovereign states plus the dependencies of one of them (or to be precise, the dependencies of the Crown of one of them, where the Crown gives responsibility for external relations to the UK govt; so for the purpose of international relations, we effectively have the UK plus its dependencies). So, relations between these entities are a matter of international relations between two sovereign states (plus the dependencies of one), which on Wikipedia are routinely covered in articles entitled Foo-Bar relations.
You, however, appear to approach this solely from a postnationalist perspective, and prefer to regard all of these international relations as issues within a common polity.

b) It is clear by now that you are quite a fan of the academic who you eulogise as "famed scholar Richard Kearney". You may wish to expand Wikipedia's coverage of his scholarly work, but the way to do that is to expand the article on him, or (as already suggested) write an article on the development of that particular approach. The "idea of a post-nationalist archipelago", which you mention above, is a political POV, and like any other political POV it is one which should of course be documented on Wikipedia. However, it is regrettable that rather than documenting the debates around that scholarship, you continue to push Kearney's postnationalist agenda as the framework in which to structure Wikipedia's coverage of these issues. I prefer to follow the WP:NPOV solution of continuing with the structures used for other articles on international relations, and regret that you choose instead to push one POV. Your single-minded pursuit of postnationalism is why several editors at AFD and CFD have described your contributions as tendentious.

c) As to your WP:CANVASSing, notifying 9 editors of one article is at the very least excessive cross-posting. If it was appropriate to notify editors of a particular article about the AFD (and Wikipedia:Canvassing#Appropriate_notification does not mention that approach), then you should have i) left a single message on the article's talkpage, rather than spamming 9 user talk pages, and ii) explicitly notified the AFD discussion. Snappy used WP:DELSORT in the usual way, and quite correctly ensured transparency by explicitly notifying the AFD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:47, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The examples cited here don't say what you say they do. "Towards a Postnationalist Archipelago" isn't a book, it's a 12 page essay. [33] doesn't have anything to do with politics at all. [34] doesn't seem to have much to do with politics either - it's run by an English department and they seem more interested in national identity. The subtitle of the book "The Politics of the British Isles" is "A Comparative Introduction": while I haven't read it, the subtitle indicates they are using comparative politics to study the political systems of Britain and Ireland in isolation, or to study politics more generally, rather than studying a single entity called Politics of the British Isles. Hut 8.5 20:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Arg. Postnationalist Ireland is the book, and there's another book, and oodles of journal articles; Kearney has written tons! The Exeter research center is looking at "an interdisciplinary view on how Britain’s post-devolution state inflects the formation of post-split Welsh, Scottish and English identities in the context of Ireland’s own experience of partition and self-rule; Consider the significance of this island grouping to the understanding of a Europe that exists in a range of configurations; from large scale political union, to provinces, dependencies, and micro-nationalist regions (such as Cornwall), each with their contribution and presence; Reconsider relations across our island grouping in light of issues regarding the management and use of the environment." Can you not see that that politics is one of the objects of their study? You realize when they say "relations across our island grouping", that politics is one expression of those relations? And yes, the book is taking a comparative look, which is further evidence for the notability of this article - someone thought is was worth it to write a whole book about comparative politics, using the geographic lens of the British Isles.

Finally to BHG's point, I am not pushing a postnationalist view (which is anyway different than an archipelagic view), stop making accusations that have no basis in fact; my only point in bringing Kearney to the debate, and the others, is to show that serious scholars are looking at the archipelago AS A WHOLE - not just in terms of its constituent parts. So while an article on bilateral relations between Ireland-UK is perfectly reasonable, the article I was proposing was totally different in scope and scale, and clearly notable given the references already provided.--KarlB (talk) 20:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Karl, I hope that what you intended to say was that some serious scholars are looking at the issues in an archipelagic sense, and some take a postnationalist view. Similarly original schools of thought exist wrt all sorts of aspects in politics and international relations, but since Wikipedia has a core policy of neutrality, we do not structure Wikipedia's coverage of topics according to the lens of one particular POV. For example, we have a (regrettably short) article on rogue states, which discusses this highly significant approach to contemporary international relations, but we we do not use this framework to structure Wikipedia's coverage of the states so labelled, or of their relations with others. Similarly, we do not use the concept of "imperialism" to structure Wikipedia's coverage of international relations, despite the wealth of scholarship which adopts that framework. The reason is simply that neither of these highly notable approaches is NPOV.

By pushing the postnationalist and archipelagic approaches as the way of structuring Wikipedia's coverage of these topics, you are promoting a postnationalist and archiupelagic perspective just as effectively as articles on the Politics of the rogue states or the Politics of the imperialist states would promote those particular viewpoints.

The "article you were proposing" went beyond a proposal; it existed, and was actually written mostly by you. You failed to persuade a consensus of other editors that it had a scope beyond international relations. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

BHG, you still don't realize that saying that politics in the British Isles is equivalent to anglo-Irish politics is itself a massive POV, and you've yet to show any sources which state anything of the sort; I do look forward to you finding such sources. The idea that only sovereign nations matter, and that is how all coverage of politics should be arranged on wikipedia, is 1) not true (i.e. there are many politics articles on wikipedia that are *not* about sovereign states) and 2) it also represents a particular POV, specifically that of the realist school. Now, I will admit, realism is popular, and it is also populist (in that most people who haven't studied international relations may take "realism" to be the 'natural' state of things), but it is just one way of looking at international relations, and certainly would not be considered NPOV by any standard - its very much a POV. The article in question was *not* attempting to take a postnationalist view; it was intended to be a comparative geographic survey, the same way one might do for politics in the caribbean or politics in south asia or politics in indochina or politics in latin america or Scandinavian politics. Any of these would make a worthy encyclopedia article, and I guarantee you if I wrote one I wouldn't have screeds of text from various editors deriding the work and calling it POV or OR or SYN or FORK or whatever; you and I both know the thing that pissed you and others off was simply the words "British Isles". For some reason, you and RA seem to believe that just because there are two sovereign states, then by definition politics is subsumed by just those two sovereign states. Your statement above that wikipedia doesn't structure IR articles according to a particular POV is nonsense; we do, it's called realism, and it's only one way of looking at the world. I don't have a problem with it, and let the bilateral articles stand, but Ireland-Scotland-Isle of Man vs. UK government is *not* a bilateral discussion. I suppose you might say "oh, the Ireland-UK article *always* had a broader, multilateral, all-islands scope, we just never wrote it down." Yeah, right.

Bottom line is, historians are looking at archipelagic perspectives; critical literature and cultural studies are looking at the archipelagic perspective, political scientists are looking at the archipelagic perspective; but stick the word "British Isles" in the title and whatever it is, it will be shot on sight; instead of having a productive discussion about what an article (or category, or whatever) could be, you have to deal with wikilawyering, dirty tricks, pre-emptive merges, false accusations... no wonder editors are leaving in droves...--KarlB (talk) 22:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Karl, either you are making a straw man or you have not been reading what I wrote. I have not been "saying that politics in the British Isles is equivalent to anglo-Irish politics", because I do not believe that and see no evidence for that; I would object strongly to any such assertion. Nor is it true to say that the thing that pissed you and others off was simply the words "British Isles"; my substantive objections have been set out at length, and I won't repeat them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

BHG quotes

1. 28 May: "Same topic, different perspective = POV fork"
2. 29 May: "So please just drop the drama, and use this AFD to discuss whether or not the topic "Politics in the British Isles" duplicates the topic "Ireland-United Kingdom relations". What issues can be covered under one title but not under the other?"
3. 31 May: "I have not been "saying that politics in the British Isles is equivalent to anglo-Irish politics", because I do not believe that and see no evidence for that; I would object strongly to any such assertion."

I leave it for you to judge whether she is saying the same thing.--KarlB (talk) 19:46, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

• Overturn on the basis that there was no consensus. This was a classic supervote, expressing their own view of the matter. I'm not going to reargue the fundamental issues here in full; that's for afd2. But I think Karl's argument just above about sources a very good one, and is a sufficient reason to keep the article. DGG ( talk ) 18:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse per Uzma Gamal. Snappy (talk) 19:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
• Endorse while Moreschi's closing statement could have been better worded to make it clear the closer was relying on strength of arguments rather than personal opinion I think the reasoning is basically sound. While the debate had been closed early it had already degenerated into an unreadable mess and continued discussion would not have helped. I'm not seeing a convincing rebuttal to the arguments that (a) the nature of the sources is such that any article with this title would substantially constitute synthesis, and (b) that the content is substantatively duplicative of other articles. Hut 8.5 19:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

long discussion with Hut 8.5 and Karl

Thanks. I hope you don't mind explaining your comment further. 1) By synthesis, what do you mean? There is a difference between WP:SUMMARYSTYLE and WP:SYNTHESIS; which one are you talking about? 2) By 'substantively duplicative', I assume you are talking about Anglo-Irish relations? So is it your position that politics and relationships between Ireland and the Crown dependencies (which are not part of the UK), or multilateral relations between Ireland/Isle of Man/Scotland or Ireland/Wales/Channel Islands, or pan-Island political movements, or discussions about cultural linkages - all of *that* should be in the article about Anglo-Irish bilateral relations, even though in 7 years of history of that article, it had never been there before? Even though in all discussions about the British-Irish council, it is called a multilateral body? I just don't see anyone providing any sources anywhere that state that "Anglo-Irish relations == All politics in the British Isles", everyone just accepts it on faith. Good thing too, since no such sources exist; serious political scientists would never say such a thing. This is an invented re-scoping of the Anglo-Irish article in a blatant attempt to quash this new article.--KarlB (talk) 20:00, 31 May 2012 (UTC) Whether synthesised material is presented in summary style or not has nothing to do with its status as synthesis. I could create an article called Politics of Sino-Nigeria by summarising material in articles about China and Nigeria, but it wouldn't change the fact that I just made the topic up. Much of the article at the time of deletion was spent summarising the methods of government used in the various parts of the British Isles, this is better covered elsewhere (British Isles#Government, say). There was also some discussion of projects and relations involving the United Kingdom, Crown dependencies and the Republic of Ireland, which yes belongs at Ireland–United Kingdom relations. I'm aware that Crown dependencies are not part of the UK, but since their external relations are handled by the UK discussion of them should be in articles about UK international relations. A common theme with this article is an attempt to shoehorn various things into some topic called Politics of the British Isles, even when very few of the sources treat them that way and it's debatable whether the topic of "Politics of the British Isles" exists in its own right at all. There was a section summarising devolution in the British Isles, even when the sources are only talking about some bit of the British Isles. That's synthesis. There were sections on immigration and citizenship which suffered from the same problem. In your comment above you claim that "cultural linkages" have some place in this article, despite the fact that culture is not politics. The article also had material about studies of British history from an "archipelago perspective" and things about national identity, which again don't belong here. About the only thing that probably does belong is the discussion of Richard Kearney's work, but that can't possibly make up an article by itself and he doesn't necessarily represent all or even many of the available sources. Nobody is trying to claim that "All British politics = Anglo-Irish relations", only that much of the content you tried to shove in here is better covered there. Hut 8.5 20:57, 31 May 2012 (UTC) Yeah, I love your China-Nigeria example. Why don't you replace it with, say China, Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - would it be ok if I wrote an article about the relations between those countries? The reason British Isles is notable is because of their shared history, culture, and until rather recently, shared monarch and government. If you don't see the difference between China/Nigeria and the british Isles, I don't know what else to say to you. As for sections on immigration which only talked about one bit, give me a frickin' break! the article was only 3 days old, those were all areas that could easily have been expanded. And please stop with this culture is not politics - take a browse through any of the X-Y relations articles, you will often find a culture section - including your Anglo-Irish relations - in fact it's thanks to me that the culture section even exists in that article! Finally you point at British Isles#Government; so it seems you accept the article British Isles, and you accept that that article can have a section on government, but you don't accept that a more profound article can be written, expanding on that section? This is no more shoe-horning than any of the thousands of other summary-style articles we have, all over this wiki.--KarlB (talk) 22:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC) I didn't say that the relationship between the UK and Ireland is the same as the relationship between China and Nigeria, I made that comparison to illustrate a point about synthesis which you have now misrepresented. We can't have an article on "Politics of the British Isles" unless we have plenty of sources which talk about politics of the British Isles as a topic, and even then we would need to be careful that we don't end up promoting one person or one faction's view, as BrownHairedGirl said above. Regarding the culture section you're comparing this article to an international relations article, even though it is not an international relations article. A better comparison would be to something like Politics of the United Kingdom, which oddly enough doesn't mention British culture at all. My point about the immigration section wasn't that it was too short, but that it was synthesis and that it didn't belong there. There's a huge difference between the government section I referred to - most of which is actually about British-Irish relations - and having an article on this contrived topic. Hut 8.5 23:15, 31 May 2012 (UTC) Please read wp:syn. It doesn't say what you think it does. SYN is not combining material from different sources. SYN is drawing a new conclusion that none of the sources individually stated - which was *not* done. So it is a false charge, and no-one has been able to demonstrate any wP:synthesis here. Do you really think Politics of Europe was lifted out of some single source, or that every source in their spoke about their topic as Politics of Europe. NO. Then you say This isn't an international relations article? Let me quote you the first line: "Politics in the British Isles describes the multilateral and bilateral relationships and the political, economic and cultural interchanges between the countries in the British Isles." Does that *not* sound like international relations to you? And while I appreciate that you find it contrived, I've already provided several sources; just do a google search for "Politics of the British Isles" and "Politics in the British Isles" and "Politics Atlantic archipelago" "Politics in the British-Irish Isles" etc etc - there are many names for this topic, but there is also plenty of ink. For example, another recent, ENTIRE book: "The Atlantic Archipelago A Political History of the British Isles: Tompson, Richard S." - this book goes up through the late 20th century! Remember, history is just what already happened, so if historians are using "British Isles" as a topic, and political scientists are writing entire books on the political history of the British Isles, do you think that all of a sudden, in 2012, it all just falls apart and can now be reduced to Anglo-Irish relations? Ask yourself if you can seriously believe and defend that, and more importantly, can you find ANY sources which would defend that POV (e.g. that politics in the British isles can now be fully captured by politics between Ireland and UK) - because THAT was the strongest argument at AFD. Also, please recall, this was not a rename discussion, and I proposed in several moments a rename or even a rescoping of this article. This is a delete discussion. I do agree that if we add up all of the ink that has been spilled in the past 20 years about international relations in the archipelago, maybe 90% of it would be about Anglo-Irish relations. That's fine! What this article was trying to capture was the other 10%. What about multilateralism? What about political cooperation beyond sovereign bilateral relations? What about cross-cultural/cross-island collaboration that does not form part of the Dublin/London nexus? What about when Ireland cooperates with Scotland on matters that Westminster disagrees with? What about the crown dependencies working together to frame a joint approach to UK politics and to the politics of the EU? What about political movements (like separatism) that cross borders? There is a *ton* of scope possible in this article as a broad geographic survey that goes beyond the simplistic frame of "all international relations are between sovereign nations". We have Politics of Europe, why can't we have this article? If you're afraid of NPOV, please read the article again, and tell me exactly, which POV is it promoting? Also re: your point on the crown dependencies, please read this and then reflect: Foreign_relations_of_Jersey#International_relations. There is a difference between de jure and de facto, and the crown dependencies are acting more and more like sovereign nations; separate and different membership in international organizations, separate negotiation of certain types of agreements, and working together (for example Sellafield controversy or transport of nuclear material) with other nations *against* the wishes of their protector the UK - so grouping them under Ireland-UK relations is an insult to them and to studies of international relations in general.--KarlB (talk) 19:36, 1 June 2012 (UTC) I think your main problem is that you haven't decided what this article was about. Since there was no clear scope various topics including history and culture were forced in without reference to sources, and this is where the synthesis comes in. Though the article was titled "Politics of the British Isles", your comments here suggest its scope and purpose did not bear much relation to other "Politics of X" articles and that it would be better off being titled something like "Relations between constituent parts of the British Isles". We could rename it to that title, and some of the content would be more appropriate there, but a rename would just formalise the fact that most of the content is duplicative of Ireland-United Kingdom relations (since all parts of the British Isles are either part of the UK, part of Ireland or have their external relations handled by the UK). Again you've misrepresented several things I've said (I did not say that avoiding synthesis requires all the content to be taken from one source, or that everything within the scope of "Politics of the British Isles" can be reduced to formal UK-Ireland relations), and you seem to have problems writing clearly and concisely. Hut 8.5 21:49, 1 June 2012 (UTC) I was quite clear on what the article was to be about; multilateral and bilateral relations of the countries in the British isles; with a focus on things other than Anglo-irish relations (since an article already exists for that). Again, look at Politics of Europe, and tell me why this article was so much worse than that one. Also please recall, it had existed for 3 DAYS before it was prematurely put on ice ([35] - this is the Ireland-United Kingdom relations article, 2 years after its creation. You will note that it has zero references. None. Zilch. Nada.) Adding in brief coverage of history, culture and immigration and so on was all to be in the service of framing the complex set of relationships that exist between all these countries - for example, the fact that an intergovernmental body was set up British-Irish council - did they set up such a body for China-Nigeria? In any case, if you agree that there are any "politics in the british isles" that do not belong in or are not part of bilateral Anglo-Irish relations, then shouldn't this article exist? I didn't mean to misrepresent what you said, but you were very clear that for example the relationship between Ireland->Isle of Man belonged in Anglo-Irish relations, but I've seen zero sources to justify that, except a weak argument around sovereignty which doesn't hold up to scrutiny (e.g. there is no evidence that the Irish government treats Isle of Man as a sub-part of its dealings with the UK; they have separate relations (see Ireland-Isle of Man relations). Finally as to scope, I suggest you take a look at Anglo-Irish relations, which has recently been expanded massively in scope, in part due to all of the content from the politics in the British isles which was copy/pasted over during the discussion; it has been expanded further since, but if you think immigration, culture, common travel area, sports, citizenship, etc is not germane to politics in the british isles, then do you also think it's not germane to ireland-UK relations? If not, why not? In other words, why is all of that stuff ok/no problem/looks great for a bilateral relations article, but it's a bunch of POV/SYN/OR when it's in a multilateral article with a the words "british isles" (which is a widely accepted geographic term with clear scope)? In any case, are you saying you would be ok with recreation, given a different name, and a discussion on scope? I've always been up to discuss naming: "politics" "relations between" "international relations" - these are all just shades... do you really think that if people talk about South asian politics or Middle eastern politics or central asian politics that people are going to be confused as to what that means? --KarlB (talk) 02:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

• Notification. WikiProject International relations has been notified of this discussion by Karl.brown (talk · contribs)
  It is unfortunate that rather than using the standard neutrally-worded templates, the notification includes Karl's mistaken view of the nature of the discussion; this discussion is about whether an XfD was correctly closed, rather than Karl's assertion that it is about his framing of the substantive topic. Whatever the wording, transparency should have been maintained by informing this discussion of the notification. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:20, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be canvassing on the part of KarlB. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be a false accusation on the part of IRWolfie. The notification was neutral; both nominators used the same reasoning; intersection of geography and politics, and whether in this case it was notable, so it was a neutral summary of the nominations. BHG is right I should have notified here, sorry about that, but RA also notified several projects and didn't notify, and I don't see a chiding from BHG for that.--KarlB (talk) 22:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse – I have waded through the morass of the afd and cannot discern a coherent counter to the charges of synthesis and duplication. (KarlB needs to master the art of précis.) Oculi (talk) 20:24, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Endorse while Moreschi's closing statement is a bit shaky worded and not clear enough in showing that the closer was relying on strength of arguments rather than personal opinion, I think the reasoning is basically sound. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• Comment There is a opinion expressed in some of the comments above that strikes me as blatantly opposed to NPOV policy: that there are topics that can not be written about neutrally, and therefore any article on the topic should be prevented by deletion. his is a policy which will reduce the encyclopedia to a very bland and relatively useless enterprise, for much of what people want to know in the world is about the factual background to things that are controversial. There's a somewhat less start version also expressed, that this particular article was so tainted that it must be deleted. I think this is true only of libel and copyvio. Anything can be edited. Seeing a poor article in the history of what has become a good article is the proof of NPOV--the demonstration of what is, and what is, not the proper presentation of information. People will learn from what has ben replaced, if they analyze it. DGG ( talk ) 17:26, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

• Hear, hear! Silverseren^C 19:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)