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. A good case was made that the lab meets WP:GNG, and that merging to University of Toronto would not be a better outcome. Concerns about promotional editing definitely should be addressed, but deletion is not required to achieve that. RL0919 (talk) 17:20, 4 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Citizen Lab (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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This is a laboratory, within a school/department, within a university. With this article we are going down a granularity router that is, at best, unusual. There needs to be a very good WP:GNG reason for even a school/department to exist as a separate article from the university.

The Munk School of Global Affairs is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Munk School of Global Affairs with a potential outcome of merge to University of Toronto and I propose that this article be treated in the same manner. It is far to late to add it to that deletion discussion, and, because of that discussion, AfD but suggesting a merge as the outcome is appropriate, though perhaps a little WP:IAR.

Note that the article subject of this discussion suffers from one major example of WP:CITEKILL, and that its research being featured on the front page (etc) or media does not mean that there is necessarily independent coverage about it Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 07:45, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - First instinct was to vote merge, but then I looked at the article. It's very well sourced. It's also quite extensive. We don't remove well sourced information from wikipedia, and we shouldn't merge such a huge amount of information into another article, as that would create WP:UNDUE weight. A separate article for the amount of reliably sourced information we seem to have is fine. Wikipedia is WP:NOTPAPER after all. Fieari (talk) 07:52, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. There are numerous articles that can be found that discuss Citizen Lab as the principal subject. For example:
  • How The Citizen Lab polices the world's digital spies at Christian Science Monitor
  • How these Toronto sleuths are exposing the world’s digital spies while risking their own lives at Toronto Star
  • ‘X-ray on the abuse of power’: Citizen Lab’s founder on fighting for human rights at TVOntario
  • APNewsBreak: Undercover agents target cybersecurity watchdog at Associated Press
  • Internet watchdog Citizen Lab targeted in comically inept undercover sting at Ars Technica (related to the AP story)
• There are many more. Mindmatrix 13:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. As Mindmatrix says, there are many, many more. Not to mention that University of Toronto is already over 150kb, so it would be sensible to break Citizen Lab right back out of it as soon as it was merged in. -- asilvering (talk) 13:47, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Either delete or rewrite. They probably are notable, but this article is a PR piece indistinguishable from what they would write t themselves It's also essentially advocacy for the causes the lab supports, something they could send to people when they are trying to raise money. This seems not to have been noticed because probably every person active at Wikipedia does support their purposes; I had never heard of them, but now thatI have, I certainly think they are doing an excellent job. The promotionalism is shown by the usual techniques: focusing on their successes, highlighting the difficulties they face (to hte point of putting one threat they received in a boxed quote), using adjectives and phrases of praise, repeating at every opportunity their lofty goals, emphasizing the names of the important organizations they work with, repeating their full name at least once in almost every paragraph, using current jargon and the conventional bureaucratic triplets the Citizen Lab contributes to field building by supporting networks of researchers, advocates, and practitioners around the world, particularly from the Global South, citing dozens of their own publications, and repeating a great deal of the content in an article on the director, Ronald Deibert. About 75% of it has been written by a succession of single-purpose editors and ips. Anything that reads like a promotional web page is not an encyclopedia article. I think it needs almost total rewriting. DGG ( talk ) 20:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep ample coverage per many of the others. Their coverage of NSO Group alone has been amply documented. If there are content issues in the article, beyond notability like promo language, that should be addressed with article tags and or edits. WP:AfD is not cleanup and this is far from a WP:TNT situation. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:59, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for the reasons given by other editors above. It's obviously a notable subject and it would be awkward (and counterproductive) to merge it. It can always be edited or cleaned up if need be. BuySomeApples (talk) 02:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Coverage, especially of its history with uncovering the NSO group easily meets WP:GNG. Definitely some tone issues, but nothing that can't be fixed by regular editing and would require deletion. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 13:29, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I nowadays never say "rewrite" in an afd unless I am prepared to do it. Otherwise, it's putting the burden on other people. DGG ( talk ) 07:13, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or rewrite same arguments as DGG Yleventa2 (talk) 16:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or rewrite In agreement with DGG and Yleventa2.-Hatchens (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep In agreement with Mindmatrix. I'd like to point out that the MIT Media Lab is similarly a laboratory, within a school/department, within a university. I think the Citizen Lab qualifies for a standalone article under WP:GNG for the same reason as the Media Lab does - it has many, many articles about it independent of the University of Toronto. I also agree with Patar knight that some editing could be done to remove PR-heavy parts, but it doesn't constitute a full rewrite (most of the article has a good tone and is well-sourced). 204.239.251.6 (talk) 23:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Widespread sustained international coverage: Ooni (Zambia) EFF 2015 EFF 2014 NYT 2013 NYT 2019 Al Jazeera BBC Jakarta Post CBC Brown University Seattle Times Toronto Star. The current state of the article does tend to mostly source to Citizen Lab's own reports, and there is quite a bit of advocacy (including the jargon quoted by DGG), but the sources are clearly available for doing a rewrite that would establish a reasonable secondary-to-primary source ratio and remove the advocacy. Notability of individual sections and reports could be sorted out either directly with edits/edit summaries or on the talk page when/if it's unclear or controversial. Boud (talk) 00:01, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Hacksaw. I'm going to !vote this because I don't want to see everything deleted and there's too much good stuff for stubbifying. Nor do I want to put the burden of rewriting on anyone. But I would like to see an editor (such as myself) go at this article with a proverbial hacksaw and just delete entire sections that are badly sourced. No rewriting or trying to find sources (although of someone wants to do that they can). Just a massive section blanking of all the crap sourced only to Citizen Lab. I'll also note I was the original nom of the Munk School for deletion. WP:INHERITORG is somewhat clear. Parent organizations don't inherit notability from child organizations and vice versa. Just because Citizen Lab is notable doesn't mean the Munk School is. Chess (talk) (please use ((reply to|Chess)) on reply) 09:34, 26 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 00:37, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and Rewrite Because of the sources presented by MindMatrix, this is obviously notable enough per WP:GNG... but it needs a lot of editing. Not stubifying it, just a rewrite. Lectrician2 (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I started cleaning up this article, which I wish more people voting to delete or rewrite did, as it doesn't relate to the core question of notable or not. Happy editing and improving! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:14, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The comparison with MIT is inaccurate. The MIT lab is universally acknowledged as the leading laboratory in its field in the world, and qualifies as famous,; this lab is important, but not remotely to the same extent. DGG ( talk ) 01:02, 30 December 2021 (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.