Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Impact of the Arab Spring

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

The result was keep. Deletion is not an option here, issues can be solved with editorial work. Default keep then. Tone 17:10, 17 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Impact of the Arab Spring

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There is the Arab Spring, and then there are other protests happening in different parts of the world in the same year, but for entirely different reasons. Protests against austerity measures in Europe are not seriously described as a resulting effect of the Arab spring. The "occupy" movement is not considered a "subsidiary" of the Arab spring. Protests that happened before the Arab spring are not inspired by the Arab spring. You get the idea. Making a connection across so many countries does not appear to have foundation in good RS, and as such is OR, or at best in places based on occasional very weak journalistic asides. What material here that should go into Arab spring should go there. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:14, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support as nominator. The talkpage, by the way, is full of comments by editors who do not understand the connection between the Arab Spring and all these other protests.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - While I agree there are a number of protests referenced in the article that have no verifiable connection to the Arab Spring, there are also protests that are undeniably related and have been described as such by many reliable sources (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Djibouti, and the Kurdish protests in Turkey and Iraq come to mind). The protests that have not been substantially linked to the Arab Spring should be weeded out and removed, while protests like the aforementioned and any others citing a substantial connection to the Arab Spring (not just a few protesters carrying signs comparing Scott Walker to Hosni Mubarak or trying to recast Barcelona as a Spanish Benghazi, but a substantial connection) should be kept in. Deleting this article altogether would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater. -Kudzu1 (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cutting out the non-related stuff effectively eviscerates the article, removing the need for a fork. The protests you mention should go into the Arab Spring article (actually, they're already mentioned there). "Impact of the Arab Spring" is something we're not going to really have decent sources for, for a couple of years at best. It's a history question, not one for journalists looking for a hook for a story to answer.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:34, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you think it should be merged, why are we here? Withdraw the nomination.Malick78 (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support as VsevolodKrolikov said there is too much confusion over the influence of the arab spring, it may have had a influence on the occupy movement but honestly it doesn't link to a majority of the protests shown, like 2011 England riots or the russian protest. This list is too loosely defined. Jonjonjohny (talk) 17:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:46, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:46, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, this debate could be closed as speedy keep under WP:SK ground 1: nobody, not even the nominator, feels that this material should be deleted. The "support" votes are clearly in favour of the smerge that the nominator recommends. AfD is not normally the place to discuss a smerge, but okay, why not run with it for the moment?
A smerge is not usually a delete outcome. Compliance with our content licences, the CC-BY-SA and the GFDL, means that we have to preserve attribution, which is normally done by preserving the contribution history under a redirect to the target article. There are other ways to do so but they're more cumbersome (e.g. a history merge). Because the merge and redirect is something any editor can do on the basis of a talk page consensus, it's not necessary to invoke the AfD process to achieve it. AfD is normally for when it's appropriate to delete an article outright, i.e. make it into a redlink and hide the history from non-administrators.
I concur that the subject article is an original synthesis and thus a violation of core policy, so I'll go with smerge per nominator.—S Marshall T/C 20:21, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep - the subject is notable and will be of major scholarly interest in years to come. Of course the Arab Spring is having and will have an impact! To deny this is absurd. Basically, the topic can be interpreted in two ways: either other protests are caused by the Arab Spring, or other governments' (e.g. in Russia) harsh crackdowns on protests are influenced by fears caused by what they've seen in the Arab Spring. In Russia, for instance, the latter seems highly likely. Either way, for example, here it says regarding John McCain: "Within this context, we find that the work of McCain’s IRI recently manifested itself when it was caught meddling in Russia’s elections. [...] The purpose of this was of course to cast doubts on the validity of the elections and justify street mobs brought out by the Russian opposition groups the IRI had been cultivating in an attempt to trigger an “Arab Spring” in Russia." To pretend there's been no impact from the Arab Spring is absurd, surely. That said, the article needs better references. But the article's concept is sound.Malick78 (talk) 21:14, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Malik's comment neatly demonstrates the problem: single comments here or there among myriad commentaries do not mean analysts seriously make a connection. "Anti-government protest" was not invented this year. We do not invent our own ideas here and then scrabble for sourcing to justify them. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 21:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I focused merely on Russia since I know more about it than other countries. Other sections of the article seem equally and perhaps even more justified. Some should be cut though, I agree. I.e., it needs improving, not deleting.Malick78 (talk) 23:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep - I believe, as others have said, that in years to come this article may be of more importance that what some here currently think. By all means, remove links to articles that are obviously not an impact of the Arab Spring. The Occupy movement would have undoubtedly happened anyway, as would Greece and Italy anti austerity protests. Keep the article, just clean it up a little.(talk)Kspence92-

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. I don't doubt in a few years there will RS assessing the impact of the Arab spring. That will be a different topic to the one here, which appears to be "How protests in North Africa inspired a hitherto enslaved worldwide generation to rise up against the machine", which is more or less the thesis being put forward here.

Firstly, VsevolodKrolikov, please sign your edits so others can address you. Secondly, please don't misapply policy. WP:CRYSTAL refers strictly to "anticipated events". What you're complaining about is not "anticipated events", but a perceived lack of existing scholarly analysis of past or developing events. If you refer to the right WP policies this discussion may be more productive.Malick78 (talk) 10:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The editor stated a belief that in the future this topic would be notable. That's breaking WP:CRYSTAL. Despite your apparent expertise in Russian politics, you haven't actually been able to provide a decent source to show that the current protests are considered by informed opinion to be a result of the Arab Spring. You even cited one source that not only did not describe any kind of causality, it even rejected a comparison between the two. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reread WP:CRYSTAL, please, please, please. It's about "anticipated events". That's a direct quote. The events in this article "have happened". Past tense. And if anyone thinks the Arab Spring has not inspired/caused/had an impact elsewhere... then, I'm afraid they have no understanding of the world around us. It's just a question of culling the crap, and providing refs for the rest. (As for the article I cited on another page (not here), my vain hopes of you understanding the subtlety of the fact that the author mentions other people who see a link has long died.) Malick78 (talk) 11:29, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You'd be correct if we understood "impact" as "happened at the same time as only somewhere else". That is not actually how impact is understood in English. You'd need proper sources (which you don't appear to have - not even in your specialist area of Russia) to make the causal connection. The impact of the Arab spring will be felt in the future. The event itself hasn't finished, and the "impact" will be probably be in those places where it happened.

Support (smerge) per Original Synthesis and unsourced (and unlikely) connections in most sections. Within some years there will likely be enough reliable material published to write a properly sourced article with this name again. For now the few sourced sentences on the impact seems to be able to dwell well in the Arab spring article. Chiton magnificus (talk) 17:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Weird - this is like a reverse-WP:SNOW. --Legis (talk - contribs) 05:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep This article is chuck full of WP:OR, the only way I can see it being salvaged as if the WP:OR is removed and just the countries that have multiple references that imply the connectuion to the arab spring are left in. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:35, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise known as a "Weak Keep" following a clean-up?Malick78 (talk) 18:04, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sure I will go with that, there is alot of coverage out there for the countries impacted by the Arab Spring but this article needs cleanup work done bad. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 22:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I quite agree. I deleted some rubbish about Germany and the UK yesterday. Don't have the time (and knowledge) to check the rest - not with what's happening in Russia at the moment that I have to add to other articles :( Malick78 (talk) 23:25, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep. The Arab Spring article is too long to keep all of the related protests in it. Some of the protests in this article have no RS linking them to the Arab Spring. They can be "citation needed"-tagged and if no citations turn up within a reasonable delay, removed from this article. But other ones - such as the US Winconsin and Occupy protests and PRChina protests have plenty of RS (e.g. chairman of the United States House Committee on the Budget, a very famous linguist, a wikipedia-notable journalist) giving POVs that the protests are inspired by the Arab Spring. Because of demographic bias among en.wikipedia editors (not our fault!), it is difficult for many editors to see Arab/non-Arab world sociology as a spectrum rather than a binary black/white structure. Our demographic bias as editors should not lead us to ignore the RS's. Boud (talk) 00:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. This isn't "Impact of the arab spring" at all, it's "List a bunch of protests around the world and imply that they're all triggered by the arab spring". Even ones which had their origins well before the arab spring or where there's an obvious alternative cause. We already have articles on practically all of these protests, and indeed we have some existing lists of protests which are framed more neutrally, so en.wikipedia would be much better off without this duplication and synthesis. bobrayner (talk) 19:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Sociological events like these always have multiple causes. "Impact" does not claim that the events would not have occurred without the Arab Spring. It documents, based on RS, events in which the Arab Spring is claimed by RS to have had an impact - i.e. have been one factor involved in triggering the event. The countries/events that do not have RS claims of impact can be safely removed. Others are solidly sourced to the Arab Spring having an impact. The existence of multiple editors of the article is not a valid reason for deleting it. Boud (talk) 19:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - As Bould says, "impact" doesn't imply cause, and besides, protests can have multiple causes. The fact is that the Arab Spring has not gone unnoticed by other regions/nations around the world where there is discontent, and documenting it's impact is a valid pursuit.Malick78 (talk) 20:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Multiple causes" does not mean "We can hang every recent protest around the world on this arab spring coatrack". That fallacy is just as serious as the post hoc ergo propter hoc which is the backbone of this article. bobrayner (talk) 20:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - If there's a RS that says there's a link, it deserves mention. Anything without proper references should go. No one is suggesting we should hang everything on the Arab Spring - delete what shouldn't be there and it'll be fine.Malick78 (talk) 20:29, 16 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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