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 merge to List of massacres in Iraq. MBisanz ^talk 03:17, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

List of massacres of the Iraq War[edit]

List of massacres of the Iraq War (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This was previously prodded because there were no criteria in place on the list to assess "massacre" as an objective term. I'm not sure it's possible to do so, but the victim totals range from 5 to 800, and the classification of the items that have articles are varied: some massacres, some bombings, some a combination, and some are unclear as to where they belong. The list also claims to cover the entire Iraq War (2003-11), but really only focuses on 2005-2007, and one entry in 2010. Therefore, the mixture of information seems too WP:INDISCRIMINATE to be encyclopedic, because I wouldn't classify a bombing or the death of five people as a massacre. My definition would be "mass killings of unarmed civilians by military forces", but if the level of subjectivity is not a problem, it could probably be merged to List of massacres in Iraq, because the delineation is somewhat arbitrary, and there's some duplication, but I don't see it as a slam-dunk for a merge. I'd note that Talk:List_of_massacres_in_Iraq seems to specifically exclude military-on-military activities. MSJapan (talk) 05:49, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Iraq-related deletion discussions.  ^B E _C K ^Y _S A ^{Y L} E _S  09:12, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as the "List of massacres of Iraq" would suffice, there's nothing else to suggest this can become substantially better. SwisterTwister talk 21:01, 1 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Uanfala (talk) 19:56, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Uanfala (talk) 19:56, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge It would be conceptually important to not inadvertently convey any tendency to suppress or to dismiss this general theme of intellectual inquiry. Nonetheless, this effort within itself is not coming close to being helpful, and the nominator and one commentator so far do indeed appear to have explained why. By the time you read the following preamble within the article you know you are in for a "true but" listing that is obviously an arbitrarily selective and uninformative subset of the topic: "This list currently covers only notable events or events in which civilians or prisoners were killed in mass; far more numerous massacres perpetrated by insurgents have occurred. It is not necessarily exhaustive, and sources frequently disagree on the number of deaths." Because this particular title / fuzzy bordered concept is quite obviously only going to confuse a difficult situation (what is "the war" exactly and what is not? what apportions a "recent" event to this list versus the more generic list?), merging the content to List of massacres in Iraq is appropriate. For example, Nisour Square massacre and Haditha massacre are on both lists. There is a rash of similarly themed articles that might be best brought together, or at least cross-referenced within a main article: e.g. Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2014, Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2012, List of terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2007, List of bombings during the Iraq War, Terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2010. I suggest Merge this article, and perhaps these others too, to the most generically titled, list by chronology, and hope that the one list will then see improvement over time. FeatherPluma (talk) 01:39, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge: I think a merge to "List of massacres in Iraq" would make the most sense in the circumstances. As noted above the concept of the "Iraq War" is ill defined, which makes this list ill-defined. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 09:10, 11 July 2016 (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.