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 delete. MBisanz ^talk 03:15, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surveillance and Incarceration in the U.S., Russia, and China[edit]

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Surveillance and Incarceration in the U.S., Russia, and China (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

The article seems to be non-encyclopedic and arbitrary collection of information on incarceration in 3 separate countries. The only rationale for putting these three together is one external article that reported that Privacy International listed these as the "top 3" countries in terms of incarceration; the rest of the article is simply references to data that says the same thing, or criticism of Laogai (already available in that article). The decision to discuss these three countries together and not any other is too arbitrary to be encyclopaedic —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 08:41, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: Incarceration Rate, Military Spending, and Surveillance among the World Superpowers has recently been created, a nearly exact copy of this article. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 15:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete The article basically seems to be a summary of the findings of one watchdog group. The judicial, police, and prison systems of these countries already have their own articles, making this article redundant. The idea that this one organization focused on these three countries is not a sound basis for an encyclopedic article. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete after ensuring any relevant facts from the article have been moved to appropriate new homes (e.g. surveillance, incarceration). JulesH (talk) 08:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree; if the user wants to move this stuff into his userspace then we can move the country specific bits to articles like Incarceration in the United States and the corresponding articles for Russia and China (with a sentence like "Privacy International identified the United States as one of the '3 worst incarceration societies'" or whatever), and the broader statements can be mentioned at surveillance and incarceration as you suggested. The information about Laogai doesn't need to be moved anywhere, it's already in the Laogai and Re-education through labor articles. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 08:55, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - little more than subjective highlighting of certain statistics, that of themselves aren't notable. Use of the term "surveillance" in title seems inappropriate. Agree that perhaps individual articles like "Incarceration in the United States" might be of value, but would have to be expanded greatly on what is provided here. I see that Incarceration in the United States exists, so, anything new here should just be moved there, adn similarly for articles abotu Russia or China. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 14:22, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep This article explains that the big 3 incarceration societies (US, Russia, and China), which collectively jail about half of the world's prisoners, are also the societies that give their citizens the least privacy and have the most prevalent surveillance. The decision to discuss these 3 in particular is not arbitrary because they are the only superpowers/potential superpowers in the world to be considered "endemic surveillance societies" by privacy international. I agree that the article can be expanded or marked for a proposed merger with another article pending discussion. But, this information is too valuable and relevant to be deleted and must be kept in context if it were moved. The article is not a summary of the finding of one watchdog group because no organization ranks both surveillance and incarceration. (Disclosure, I wrote the article but am in no way related to any party mentioned or referenced in the article. I am a Law School Student that just finished a paper on the subject and decided to create a wikipedia article because no one in my class knew anything about the lack of privacy or incarceration statistics in these three countries.) Unsigned comment by Kikbguy (talk) (contribs) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • • • • Disclosure: Kikbguy is the creator and main contributor to this article. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:48, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the combination of surveillance and incarceration is what's supposed to make this article special, then it's missing a lot, because the article in its current state doesn't integrate the two at all. Sentence 1 says the three are "endemic surveillance societies," and sentence two immediately switches to saying the countries have lots of people incarcerated, without ever addressing the relationship between the two. The rest of the article talks exclusively about incarceration, completely ignoring surveillance; the only mention of surveillance anywhere in the article is the quoting of Privacy International. Finally, the statement that "The United States, Russia, and China have more total prisoners then any other countries in the world" is almost meaningless: these countries also have some of the worlds' highest populations in general, so it's not surprising that they have a high raw number of people incarcerated; talking about it per capita would be more useful, although still not enough to save this article. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I did mention that the US and Russia were the highest per capita incarcerators and referenced that fact as my third reference in my originally submitted article. I agree that the article is just the begining of an article and does not explain the correlation bewteen the two because I'm not yet sure if there is a causal relationship to explain the correlation. But the correlation is important and needs to be further studied by someone who can determine whether or not a causal relationship exists which would explain the correlation. Unsigned comment by Kikbguy (talk) (contribs) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • There's no point having an article in the mainspace if the article's whole raison d'etre is a causal relationship that might not even exist. If you want to investigate it further, the best thing to do is to move the article into your own userspace (by using the move tab at the top of the article, and moving it to User:Kikbguy/Surveillance and incarceration in the United States, Russia, and China, and then allowing an admin to delete the redirect); it shouldn't be a mainspace article if you can't establish the significance of this otherwise arbitrary relationship. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 19:25, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Something that "needs further study" before the article makes sense isn't ready for an article at all. There is a serious potential for drawing your own conclusions in a situation like this, and that is to be avoided in encyclopedia articles. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:30, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • The whole reason for the article is a correlation which does exist and few know about, not a causal relationship that may exist. I wrote the article to disseminate important information that does exist and can be verified through references including but not limited to the ones that I cited. I thought that was the goal of wikipedia.Kikbguy (talk) 19:35, 6 December 2008 (UTC) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • First of all, as far as I can tell, the correlation was not pointed out in any of the sources you gave; the Privacy International source points out the three countries' problems with surveillance, some other sources mention the three countries' problems with incarceration, and you put the two together. This is a kind of original research or novel synthesis, not something that's independently significant and covered by other sources. In other words, as far as I can tell, the topic of "surveillance and incarceration in the United States, Russia, and China" is something that you just made up.
          • And more seriously...now that I've looked more closely, I don't think you're even interpreting the data correctly. Look at the original data table [347=x-347-559597 here] (from the source you gave in reference #1, this article). The U.S., Russia, and China are not listed as the three worst surveillance societies. The three worst, in this data, are Malaysia, China, and Russia; also in the top 7 are Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore. The U.S. is 7th. Only one time does the article even mention the U.S. and Russia in the same breath, and at the end of the posting the writer even directly separates them: "In any case for all your whining, the UK scored a 1.4, China, Russia, & Malaysia scored 1.3. The U.S. is still doing a bit better at 1.5."
          • So, long story short, not only is this article an an arbitrary cross-categorization and a pairing of two factors that are not connected in any other literature, it is factually inaccurate and a source of misinformation. If the U.S. isn't listed in the top 3 endemic surveillance societies in the one and only source that you've used to rank them, then the whole exercise of comparing these societies in terms of surveillance and incarceration is futile. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
            • • addendum: I have changed the article so that it no longer implies that the US, Russia, and China are the top 3 surveillance societies. That was just to clean up misinformation; I still believe this article is OR/synthesis and based on arbitrary cross-categorization (the creator's rationale for creating it, stating above, is essentially that these nations are "the only superpowers/potential superpowers in the world to be considered "endemic surveillance societies" by privacy international" and that all three happen to be in the top 3 for incarceration and the top 7 for surveillance...that's a lot of qualifiers) and should be deleted. So far, the only person against deletion has been the article creator. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:18, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Good points all. What about the British obsession with security cameras? What about India's possible emergence as a "superpower"? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:30, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • Well obviously Politizer doesn't want my article up. At least there is a good discussion on this article and I know that at least 5 wikipedia editors have read it. Even if you kill my article please don't let the information die. There are too many people in prison because they are threats to the ruling party or status quo. All three countries have a history of using surveillance technology against political dissidents or groups that threaten the status quo with similiar "keep the people safe" rationales, such as Cointelpro by the FBI in the U.S., Goulag prisoners in Russia, and Laogai prisoners in China.Kikbguy (talk) 20:32, 6 December 2008 (UTC) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • But identifying these three countries as the only countries to talk about, while many other countries use surveillance technology for the same thing, is arbitrary and uninformative. If you want to write this article, then do your research so that you can talk about all countries that do this, rather than giving undue weight to these three.
    • You seem to think I have a personal quibble against your article. This isn't personal; it's just a problematic article, for the reasons I have pointed out. I don't have anything against you and I have already offered you the option of moving the article to your userspace where you can continue to work on it and then move it back to mainspace if it ever gets good enough to be included. No one here is trying to stifle your information; we're trying improve the quality of the encyclopaedia by removing articles that don't belong. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:36, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Wow, this article must not be deleted. There is currently little information available on surveillance and incarceration relationships among the world's top three superpowers. I would like to learn more about the possible reasons that would explain the statistical relationship. Unsigned comment by 38.105.86.203 (talk)

• Keep and expand: Per Wikipedia WP:BIAS policy, "Despite the many contributions of Wikipedians writing in English as a non-native language, the English Wikipedia is dominated by native English-speaking editors from Anglophone countries. These Anglophone countries tend to be industrialized, thereby accentuating the encyclopedia's bias to contributions from First World countries."--Jmundo (talk) 23:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Delete: The appropriate article should be List of countries by incarceration rate.--Jmundo (talk) 00:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • What? This AfD has nothing to do with the language or style in which the article is written. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 23:48, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WP:Bias policy is about the world wide perspective that Wikipedia should have. Many wikipedia articles are written from the bias of the industrialized countries, see WP:Bias.--Jmundo (talk) 01:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I know what it says at WP:BIAS. But this article has nothing to do with those issues. Including this article on WP wouldn't add anything to worldwide perspective; the article is an arbitrary cross-categorization founded on original research. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:16, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and expand I completely agree, this article is relevant and it should be expanded. I can't beleive it's even been posed up for deletion in the first place. I'm looking in to the concept myself and see a relationship between welfare, incarceration, and surveillance that can be well referenced if one just spends a little time looking. But this information would be better disseminated if it remains on wikipedia. Unsigned comment by User:86.59.32.35 (talk) (86.59.32.35)— 86.59.32.35 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Wikipedia is not a place for disseminating new information that you are "looking into." It's for disseminating well-established information that is documented in third-party sources...not just some abstract "relationship" that you think you see. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:57, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The International Centre for Prison Studies from King's College in London is a "well established" source.The article should be expanded using more references not delected because the subject is not in the U.S media.--Jmundo (talk) 01:12, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's a well-established source but it's not saying what this article is trying to claim. The page linked is just a list of incarceration rates; it doesn't do a thing to back up the claims of this article. Try actually looking at the article and sources before you leave irrelevant comments. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:21, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - folks, the fact that these three countries might have poor incarceration and/or surveillance records might be true, and there are likely sources to support such a claim. but this article purports to make some kind of connection/correlation between the three, which is not supported by any sources provided. No problem having an article for each case, and probably ok to expand more appropriate articles like List of countries by incarceration rate, but this article is an arbitrary highlighting of three countries, with nothing binding them together other than the author's own analysis/opinion. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 01:17, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note to closing admin. The two IPs in this debate so far, 86.59.32.35 and 38.105.86.203, have been identified and blocked as open proxies. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 01:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• comment from Kikbguy removed

• I strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia's policies regarding verifiability and original research before making these kinds of accusations against other editors. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 02:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • Well, Politizer certainly didn't familiarize himself with the facts of my article when he claimed my article "only referenced one wired article and criticized Laogai". I never criticized logai, I just used the Logai Research Foundation as a reference for the 6.8 million people it believes were in Laogai camps and every sentence of my 4 sentence article is referenced to an entirely different source. And you may have the power to delete the article with some bogus rationale, but you will be doing the world a disservice, instead you should mark it as a stub until it is complete, like Politizer should have done in the first place.Kikbguy (talk) 02:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I didn't claim that you only referenced one article, I claimed that only one article supported your statements (the other articles, as I have explained already, are irrelevant). Since then I have looked closer and found that actually none of the articles support your claims, and I have described that above. If the article is incomplete (as you have admitted), the proper action is not to mark it as a stub and leave it for people to see and be misinformed by, but to move it to your userspace where you may work on it at your leisure—as I have already suggested multiple times. Also, please note that insulting other editors and calling the AfD process "bogus" is not a good way to get your article rescued. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh look, it's lord of wikipedia with his arbitrary deletion powers based on false claims. I never insulted other editors, I only insulted you. You told me on my homepage that I shouldn't accuse you of killing information when in fact that is exactly what you do when you propose to delete my article based on false pretenses. Deleting my article will not make the fact that you are abusing your power as a wikipedia moderator any less valid. Kikbguy (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC) Banned as a sockpuppet and has attempted evasion of that block on several occasions.--VS ^talk 20:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note to closing admin The original creator of this article, Kikbguy, has begun editing from a sock IP address (diff), 74.79.166.241; this casts doubt on some of the other IPs who have commented on this discussion (and are already blocked). —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 04:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't see any potential for expansion, too narrow topic for an encyclopedia. Delete (or userfy at best). - Mike Rosoft (talk) 10:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • • NOTE I gave this user the option of userfying early on and he has instead resorted to personal attacks and socking, as well as recreating the article under other names in mainspace, showing a deliberate unwillingness to userfy. So I don't see much value anymore in userfying the article to him, although if someone else wants to take this under their wing I won't stop them. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 17:23, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete arbitrary collection of information, redundant to articles on the individual countries. No justification for comparing them all in this way. Hut 8.5 17:10, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. No evidence has been presented that the relationship between surveillance and incarceration has been the subject of any significant study. If there are such studies then there is the potential for an article on surveillance and incarceration, but there would be no justification for limiting it to three countries. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Indiscriminate as there's no particular reason for lumping these countries together, uses Wikipedias a soapbox. Ray (talk) 18:59, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete (full disclosure- I was alerted to this discussion by Politizer). This article does contain information that should be saved but there are already existing articles for Incarceration and Surveillance and I see no reason why the page should focus only on these three countries. Superpowers is also pretty vague term. Does that include India? The EU? The relation between incarceration and surveillance is an interesting issue that deserves mention, with a cited source making that relation explicit. But do I think that one factoid about these three particular countries deserves its own article, no.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 04:35, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this drivel. Obviously. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 08:08, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as WP:SOAP. Arbitrary set of countries. Even the title given to the first citation is misleading "Privacy International Ranks U.S., Russia, and China as Worst Surveillance Countries" - that web page correctly says that the US, UK, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia are assigned in the Privacy International list to the worst category. The Privacy International document [1] actually ranks Russia, China and Malaysia as worst (with 1.3 points each). UK and Singapore get 1.4 points. The US comes equal sixth worst with Thailand and Taiwan (and 1.5 points). Jll (talk) 22:26, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• WP:SNOW Beeblebrox (talk) 05:30, 9 December 2008 (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.