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 and rewrite. - Mailer Diablo 01:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Irish neutrality during World War II (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Article was described as "[remaining] massively subjective and non-encyclopaedic" by a user identified as the sock-puppet of an editor permanently banned for POV attacks on Irish editors. Without any further discussion on the talk page, the user posted to WP:AN/I that the article was "massively POV, written in the first person and an advocacy piece originally created by a student from his/her own thesis. I fixed as much as I could but it remains subject to revert warring." No edit warring has ever taken place on the article.

A discussion ensued as to whether or not the complaining user was the sock puppet. User:Dynaflow remarked that his/her edits were none the less valid, pointing specifically to an edit in the lede. User:Crotalus_horridus stated, "I've had that article bookmarked for a while and have considered nominating it for deletion. The primary article author says on the talk page that it originated as a college essay, and it doesn't even come close to meeting the requirements of WP:NPOV." User:Kurykh said, "It either needs stubbing down or outright deletion and starting from scratch." User:The way, the truth, and the light then removed the article content and redirect the page to Irish neutrality.

At this point I noticed the discussion on AN/I. (No warning of this discussion was placed on the article itself.) I questioned the wisdom of the decision and pointed to Contributing to Wikipedia which explicitly allows for undergraduate college essays so long as they are marked as requiring a clean-up in tone. User:The way, the truth, and the light suggested to merge the article into Irish neutrality. I replied that the relevant section in that article already contains the same information but in a more summarative manner. User:The way, the truth, and the light then suggested that the only alternative was to put it for AfD. sony-youth^pléigh 21:58, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep That the article started life as a college essay is irrelevant, this is actually encouraged by WP. No question about the NPOV of content has ever been raised. Where questions of NPOV have been raised it has only been in regard to tone, not fact. This is easily fixed and in fact was happening through the natural WP editing process. Merging with Irish Neutrality would be difficult and unbeneficial. Likewise, merging with History of the Republic of Ireland or The Emergency. The subject is note-worthy enough to merit treatment as an article in its own right. --sony-youth^pléigh 22:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep. I didn't know that college essays were fair game, actually, and for that reason alone I'm not going with delete. The article definitely has some POV issues which could be cleaned up, but I'll leave that to the experts. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(((Broken clamshells • Otter chirps)))} 22:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, serious POV issues but thats a case to fix it rather than delete it!--Vintagekits 22:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - it's an orgy of POV. If it stays I'll have to gut it. The Emergency is surely the same article under a different name?(Sarah777 22:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

• Delete or redirect - this could almost be called a POV fork of Irish neutrality. This is admittedly not written as an encyclopedia article and there's little good information in it not at Irish neutrality#World War II. In response to the previous poster, The Emergency is actually biased the other way if anything, and is a further reason this article is unnecessary. The way, the truth, and the light 22:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete and rewrite I know it may be an unorthodox option, but if we just simply rewrite this, the current format will essentially be preserved and avenues of further POV-pushing are still left wide open. Best to just restart from scratch to create an unbiased, policy-compliant article. —Kurykh 22:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where is the POV pushing? Until this AfD, the article went through 20 edits by 11 editors, none of which had been reverted. That the tone is not NPOV, I accept - the lede especially, as noted on the talk page, needs serious re-doing - but how is POV being pushed, if nobody is reverting anybody else's edits? --sony-youth^pléigh 23:06, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Struck that out. Thanks for correcting me. —Kurykh 23:12, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Article is horribly POV and inaccurate in many of its assertions, but these have never been reasons to delete and shouldn't be here. Irregardless of how it came to be made or ended up looking like this, Irish neutrality in World War II is unquestionably an encyclopaedic topic (and is different in many respects to the concept of "Irish neutrality", some of which should be merged here). Article should certainly be extensively rewritten though.--Jackyd101 22:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep -- a valid encyclopedic entry. Needs work, some good reference material. Djegan 22:57, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Delete or rewrite (or change to a redirect to Irish neutrality, which is a comprehensive and NPOV article that covers the WWII period in detail. This article is a fork and a very POV one at that. --Red King 23:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • On reading further, I realise that the strong POV comes from the sources (which are all British). It is essential that they be balanced: if that is not possible then it has to be deleted. --Red King 10:52, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge with The Emergency. --Red King 10:52, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - well referenced article on an encyclopedic topic. Does need work, though. Bastun^{BaStun not BaTsun} 23:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Sony-youth. It needs work, as others have said above, but its problems do not justify deletion. ---Cathal 23:30, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and Redirect to Irish neutrality - The article in its current form is an abject POV disaster, and the topic is covered in depth at Irish neutrality. --(Ptah, the El Daoud 23:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]
• Delete or merge into Irish neutrality --Barryob Vigeur de dessus 00:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I do not think the POV issues are unfixable, whatever its origin this is not a school essay at the present time, but about half-way to a good WP article. I wish some of the college essays transferred into WP were half as good, or had anywhere near the amount of work added to this one. DGG 00:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC),[reply]
• Delete redundant with the WWII section of Irish neutrality]. Some info can be moved to the new entry. AlphaEta 02:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and move extra content from Irish neutrality here. The biggest war of the century (if not all history to that point), I'd say any country as close as Ireland was to it, should have some coverage. Given the length of the content at Irish neutrality, I suggest trimming it down and giving it extensive coverage on its own page. If this page isn't up to snuff it can be improved. As a subject though, I have no objection to it. FrozenPurpleCube 04:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Very notable and encyclopedic topic deserving article. If it needs cleanup and checking for POV that is not justification for deletion. Davewild 07:30, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep An area of history which is currently receiving increased attention; see, eg.: [1] and [2]. Ideally the article could also include references to the issues of Irish servicemen serving in the allied forces and Remembrance Day parades in Dublin.--Major Bonkers (talk) 07:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It needs a re-write but it needs to be here. Scolaire 10:38, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, albeit guarding against overlap with The Emergency. McPhail 13:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, as per Vintagekits. (I actually enjoyed writing that phrase for the first time and enjoyed even more the lyrical language of the essay.) Since the main editor of the article is a fine and competent editor and seems to be well aware of any deficiencies, perhaps unusually he could be given a period of 7 days grace to improve the article in the ways suggested by deletionists if the consensus is for deletion? W. Frank ✉ 15:02, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep — The topic is notable and the neutrality of this article appears achievable. — RJH (talk) 18:51, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

*Comment: OK - I've withdrawn my delete and improved the article. It wasn't as bad as I feared when one removes the presumption that there was something to apologise for or question the "rightness" of Irish neutrality. Actually it was a good read. (Sarah777 20:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

• Keep regardless of history of article it passes notability threshold, SqueakBox 20:08, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep obviously what countries in and near the war zone during WW2 is notable. Carlossuarez46 23:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Pretty notable topic, why purge!! Gold♣heart 23:11, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Important topic in its own right. Merging with Irish neutrality or The Emergency, while keeping enough detail, would overwhelm those two articles. It needs work (and I'm surprised David Gray doesn't get a mention), but nothing that can't be addressed by editing what's there. FlowerpotmaN (t · c) 02:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. In order to become an acceptable article, the essay deserves editorial attention in proportion to its subject's monumental importance to post-independence Irish history, but why shoo that attention away with a deletion? Efforts should be made, though, to harmonize the article with the one on The Emergency, up to preparations for a merge at some point in the future. --Dynaflow babble 08:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Not sure whether there are similar articles for other countries, but it seems like a notable topic. It's an important part of the history of the ROI, and it seems to have good sources for an NPOV rewrite. Nyttend 13:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep While this may need some work, Ireland's neutrality was the cornerstone of foreign policy during 1939-1945 when it was necessary to maintain a neutral stance so that none of the belligerents might any justification to invade the country or be annoyed about anything that Ireland did during this time. A must have article in its own right and far too long to be included in the general article The Emergency ww2censor 21:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This article is too long to merge into any other article. Reduce the WWII section in Irish neutrality to a summary and put a Template:Main article link from that article to this one. --Richard 08:04, 30 May 2007 (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.