Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Protests of 2019

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

The result was no consensus. Opinions seem to be pretty much split 50:50 between keeping and deleting. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:22, 28 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Protests of 2019

Protests of 2019 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Contentless duplicate of previously deleted page (see Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/2019_Year_of_Protests) Kingsif (talk) 00:00, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as this is a page that leaves links for other protest lists and I think that it doesn't need deletion. Just consider renaming it as List of Protests in 2019 by Country and put all countries' names in it.WikiAviator (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as a regular article, not a list article. This is not a duplicate, since this version is mostly written by me (89% of text right now), though I started off with the five references of the article when I found it, and I have no access to the deleted article for comparison to test the moot point of whether the present version is a duplicate of the deleted article. Boud (talk) 02:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Not a moot point when being a dupe is grounds for speedy delete, though. If you bother to read the previous deletion discussion, there was clear consensus against even the topic of such an article. Kingsif (talk) 03:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as zero evidence in RS of protests on large scale being related - listing all together is WP:OR. Since this article has been recreated (it counts as a duplicate if it is using the same sources to convey the same information, no matter who wrote it), I would also suggest create-locking it at both titles and anything similar. List of protests in the 21st century exists, we don't even need a plainlist for this one specific year. Kingsif (talk) 03:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging contributors to the last AfD: @DGG, Reywas92, Vorbee, and Trillfendi: for input. Kingsif (talk) 03:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete/merge per Kingsif and previous AFD. List of protests in the 21st century is more than welcome to include a lead with analysis and further details about the protests beyond the wikilinks, but there's no need to have a separate article for this year in particular with little evidence these are interconnected. The Causes section reads like a horoscope: "economic inequality, corruption, the desire for political freedom from governmental political repression" have been the causes of virtually every significant protest in history (yes climate is relatively new but doesn't require this article to state). The effects are also specific to protests without anything unifying or distinguishing in 2019. Reywas92^Talk 05:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Refs.2, 3, & 4 (BBC, The Independent, The Guardian) all talk specifically about he connections between the protests. That's enough evidence for a genuine topic--3 of the most reliable int'l news sources. DGG ( talk ) 06:03, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I read these sources and they are telling me that they aren't connected to each other, unless your definition of "connected" is "Is protesting the same broad topics people have always protested". While Arab Spring protests are said to have inspired each other, the same is not true here, each with completely independent nucleation points. Saying the "themes that connect them" are "Inequality...Income inequality...Corruption...Political freedom...Climate change" (BBC) just shows how vapid this supposed connection is since these are the themes that have inspired every nearly protest on the main list (That line is preceded by "All are different - with distinct causes, methods and goals"). The other two also look very broadly at the protests and describe them separately without any relationship between them drawn. If anything, it's just Protests in 2019 not Protests of 2019; this is coincidence of timing in the news, not a specific phenomenon. Reywas92^Talk 08:21, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • A newspaper article is, by definition, normally about a single overall subject - a phenomenon, even if the phenomenon is itself a cluster of things. Whether or not the protests are causally connected to each other, the author(s) of any of these overview sources (e.g. BBC) saw enough commonality among the protests to group them together in an article. And then proceeded to discussing both commonalities and differences. Making sure that the article is NPOV by listing differences would of course be useful (I haven't added these, because I don't WP:OWN the article and I've already spent a long time editing it; a table to contrast the sourced causes, both common and different, would be a useful addition, for example.) Boud (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - None of the references discussed above is actually treating the various protests during 2019 as a single phenomenon or might have a contested existence. The BBC article is titled "Do today's global protests have anything in common?", the Guardian article discusses the differences and similarities between them, The Independent article discusses solely the HK protests. Nothing indicates that these are being treated by reliable sources as a single phenomenon with notability independent of the individual protests. Notability is not WP:INHERITED. FOARP (talk) 13:59, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - I don't like these, because we need to add Second Cold War in the 2010s as usual! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.68.139.138 (talk) 23:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete – Fake news!--Jack Upland (talk) 01:37, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge/redirect to List of protests in the 21st century. The protests are more likely to be coincidences rather than a series of connected events. The only "connections" I see is the Hong Kong protests/Catalan protests, and to an extent, the Chilean protest, but I don't think the weak connections between the three are enough to justify a full article. OceanHok (talk) 04:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:34, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:34, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I think renaming this to be List of protests of 2019 it'd be better off. Links to all the articles about protests this year and provides useful information about it. And if reliable sources talk about them together in a single article, mentioning similarities and differences, as others have said in this AFD, then that aids to the notability of them being listed together here. Dream Focus 16:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is a WP:FORK of several articles coalesced into one mass. Secondly, the treatment of these distinct protests as a single entity has no basis in RS (which at most provide a comparative analysis of distinct subjects) and is therefore WP:OR. The article, thirdly, contains WP:SYNTHESIS. It starts, for example, already at the very first sentence through linking a cited characteristic of the HK protests to a uncited claim about other protests. --Cold Season (talk) 22:05, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • So the judgment of a senior Washington Post editor, other authors of articles in major newspapers and numerous academics at well-recognised universities all count as the opinions of Wikipedians? It might happen that all of them are Wikipedians, but they have published their opinions regarding the existence of a major global wave of protests in 2019 under their non-Wikipedian roles. Regarding your specific claim, the lack of 100% completeness in inline referencing is not an argument for deleting a new article. Boud (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • The view of the protests under a single phenomenon does not fall in their judgement. Feel free to "complete" the references, but it would not change the fact that it is a synthesis to reach the uncited conclusion that they are under a single phenomenon. --Cold Season (talk) 22:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • So let's look at wikt:phenomenon:

      5. A fact or event considered very unusual, curious, or astonishing by those who witness it. Jackson Diehl and the other authors of the syntheses-by-notable-non-Wikipedians consider this event as unusual, curious or astonishing enough to write a whole article about it;

      7. An experienced object whose constitution reflects the order and conceptual structure imposed upon it by the human mind (especially by the powers of perception and understanding) This meaning gets closer to what we're worried about in WP:SYNTHESIS - is it Wikipedian human minds that impose the order and conceptual structure or is it notable external human minds? Here we have sources to external human minds, including academics at universities who study sociopolitical phenomena, who impose order and conceptual structure (which includes both common and differing characteristics of the subelements of the event).

      Even the Wall Street Journal in a subscription-only article gives the title "Global Wave of Protests Rattles Governments", about what it sees as the phenomenon of a 2019 global wave of protests. Are the governments rattled by a list, a synthesis, or a phenomenon? Boud (talk) 23:29, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

      • I get the impression that the problem is not the lack of sources saying that the 2019 protest wave is a phenomenon worth publishing an article about, but rather that the sources have not agreed with each other on a common name, such as 2019 world on fire (Global Insider) vs the 2019 global protests (BBC) vs the 2019 world rage of protests (Guardian) vs the 2019 protests that rocked countries around the world (Wash Post) vs 2019 global wave of protests (WSJ). I agree that under WP:TITLE, any of these names would be premature. But that's only a question of retaining a descriptive title for the moment, and leaving a common name to evolve from future usage. It's not a question of whether the sources agree that this is an important WP:NOTABLE topic/phenomenon. Boud (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per User:Cold Season. Having such an article may tend to suggest a geopolitical reason (such as the US or Russia destabilisation) when there is no proven link between any of the protests to each other nor to the existence of any prevailing foreign influence, when in fact they all seem to be the result of local factors. There is no need even for a list of protests as readers looking for an article on such and such protest would go to the relevant category. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:44, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • First argument: The title of the article and its existence say nothing about a single dominating geopolitical factor (US "color revolutions", Russia destabilising "the West", PRC seeking dominance). If there is one, then that will have to be decided by external sources. Jackson Diehl and Julie Norman state their assessments of the dominating factors - their reasons cited in the lead are not e.g. US/Russia/PRC geopolitical factors. So no, the article does not suggest anything that's not written in it. Please look at what the sources say and are cited for, instead of factors that the sources might say, but didn't, and aren't cited for.
  • Second argument: it would be better if readers wondering whether or not there is a global wave of protests this year and what the analyses are by reliable sources can come to this article and see the arguments by Jackson Diehl and Julie Norman and others, WP-notable people or academics at WP-notable universities, who claim that this phenomenon exists, and then decide for themselves based on the Wikipedia entry and the sources. Boud (talk) 20:25, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just a quick re. the second (and a bit the first) argument: readers could instead use the sources to decide if it exists. We don't create WP articles to collate sources on different topics in order for people to judge whether the topic of the article itself actually exists based on reading arguments laid out from all the sources and SYNTHesizing the info. Kingsif (talk) 21:19, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Synthesis by the readers in this case is not needed: the multiple notable sources make the claim of existence. Boud (talk) 01:37, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Should have been deleted under WP:G4. - STSC (talk) 20:30, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Many of the arguments above are out of date with respect to the sources in the present version of the article. Please see this version as of around 21:54, 27 November 2019 (UTC). I think that that WP:OR/WP:SYNTH argument should be reworded as: How many journalists and university academics need to assert the nature of the 2019 wave of protests as a significant wave of protests with common causes in order to override the WP:OR of Wikipedians claiming that the protests are happening together just by coincidence? Historian Larrère specifically argues that focussing on the varying nature of the triggers is misleading, and claims that these protests are not just happening at the same time by coincidence. Doesn't she have a better claim to this than we do? Boud (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • A historian's opinion that the protests don't need to be connected as justification for no RS connecting them is still not viable with Wikipedia policy when you're writing an article connecting them. That's the problem. Kingsif (talk) 22:00, 27 November 2019 (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.