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. overall consensus is for deletion, with valid arguments being made citing NOT, indiscriminate info, WP:NOR, etc. -- Cirt (talk) 19:34, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Visa requirements for Palestinian citizens[edit]

Visa requirements for Palestinian citizens (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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Unreferenced, looks a lot like a hoax. I can't find any sources for this information at all and it seems quite factually implausible.

An ANI/I thread discusses this article. Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 12:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as I'm going to fix this article now. --Saki ^talk 12:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've checked 4 or 5, all of them are wrong so far (some are denied, some require a full visa etc.) --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 12:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and semiprotect if by the time the discussion is closed every country has been referenced, delete otherwise. The article suffers chronically from Koov (talk · contribs)'s sockpuppets (PakRom64, Rohil1x, PBS RENTALS and many others to come), semiprotection is absolutely necessary anyway, and the article would benefit from being watchlisted by more people. Colchicum (talk) 13:01, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Palestine-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Wikipedia is not a repository of random information. This topic is not encyclopedic in the least. Basket of Puppies 20:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete This is just trivia. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Peacock (talk) 21:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete This is a banner example of what WP is NOT: not trivia, not random information, and not a guide. MSJapan (talk) 22:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Almanacky list of dubious reliability. Carrite (talk) 01:51, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Needs sourcing and reliability is awful - but plausibly keepable - it's not random information, and Wikipedia does include features of specialist encyclopedias, almanacs or gazetteers. Travel and immigration requirements between countries are actually a perfectly worthwhile topic - and also help explain things like illegal immigration patterns or international marriages. The number of countries in the world is sufficiently low that a set of articles on their mutual travel and immigration restrictions is maintainable. But since this article is so full of unverified and apparently false claims, I wouldn't object strongly to its deletion, so long as it was without prejudice to recreation. It'd be possible to do a far better job than this! TheGrappler (talk) 03:22, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Wikipedia is not the U.S. State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs. Kindzmarauli (talk) 06:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep because we can fix this article as we do have article on visa requirements by almost every nationality but if you are talking about deleting every article listed in the Category of Visa requirements by nationality than I will go with consensus.--Saki ^talk 07:02, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please don't vote twice. Can you change the vote to comment? Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I struck your second keep vote, but the argument of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't usually accepted as one for saving an article. It means that the other articles may have never been checked for AfDed themselves and would likely end up also being deleted. Basket of Puppies 14:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Delete I'm sitting here with August's copy of IATA's Travel Information Manual (TIM) that lists the published visa regulations of pretty much every country in the world. Firstly, the current list is completely incomprehensible. What does listing a country mean? Does the holder need a visa? Also I checked around 30 of the visa on arrival claims. Only two were correct and that was probably fluke as the countries concerned (Uganda & Georgia) issue visas on arrival to everyone. Otherwise, its not correct and nonsense. The problem with this article and articles like this are numerous. Firstly, TIM is reprinted every month because visa regulations frequently change and a static list quickly becomes unreliable. Therefore the content of the article is always going to be too complicated to keep accurate. Secondly, its breeches WP:NOT as an indiscriminate list. Thirdly, there is no central reference that details visa regulations for palestinians, rather the industry standard is to maintain lists by country entering so the list is effectively original research and even if there were sources it would be a WP:SYNTH violation as the data would have to be taken out of context. Fourthly, there is no sources for this and none have been provided so it fails N. Finally, there is an additional issue concerning the validity of palestinian authority documents as the authority is not a country so these documents are non-national travel documents issued by an authority that is not recognised as a country by everyone. Even before you can look at visa requires there needs to be an understanding of whether the country accepts the document as valid for travel. The UK does but Schengen countries issue visas to holders of Palestine Authority travel documents on separate papers as they do not accept the document as a valid travel document. This example shows that before you can parse a visa requirement you need to be able to understand if the country concerned will even accept the holder of one of these documents in the first place. In short, this is a worthless page and should be purged and salted. Spartaz ^Humbug! 09:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there some way to propose deletion of all the articles in under one AFD? (based on the above rationale) --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 09:44, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other what? you are welcome to lift stuff off for a prod nomination or you can look at a mass afd. depends on the content you are looking at. Spartaz ^Humbug! 12:38, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bah, sorry, I meant to link to Category:Visa_requirements_by_nationality, I may try a mass AFD..depends how this closes --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 14:37, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This will most likely end up as a delete. From there we can do a mass AfD, but I would try a mass prod first, or maybe even a mass speedy. Basket of Puppies 14:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is an exceptionally poor article for its type and the incorrect information, lack of sourcing and the issue with non-recognition of the document make this a poor precedent for other articles. Some of the other articles in the category are well referenced to web-timatic which contains the same information as TIM and as clear and well organised. If you are looking for a precedent it would be better to look at one of those first. Personally, I don't think the subject is suitable for wikipedia and there are the issues listed in my vote to support that but not everyone would agree. Further discission to establish a clearer overall consensus would be better. Maybe an RFC at a village pump would be a better way then just adding all of this to a deletion catagory?? Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this article is absolutely full of factual errors, and nobody's got the time to sort it out for now, then sure, delete it. But it shouldn't be salted, it seems to me that there is a valid article in here. Immigration and travel requirements are certainly "notable" in the sense that plenty of coverage is available, including in specialist publications. And personally I think the original research/synthesis argument is overblown; it's not an attempt at an original synthesis to push an argument or position, and it's no more original research than making sortable tables is. (Sortable tables feature in many of our articles and allow readers to rearrange the data in the table in a trivial but well-defined way that may not have been present in the original source listing. Theoretically we could produce a table in which Column 1 is the country visited, Column 2 is the nationality of the visitor, and other columns contain various details on travel restrictions. From the source texts, this table would appear grouped by Column 1 as original data will be by country visited. But there's no reason not to put a "sort" button on Column 2, whereupon it would be grouped by the nationality of the visitor. Of course, such a table would be unfeasibly large (of the order of magnitude of 40,000 entries if the whole world was included) but that would simply require it to be broken down, and all the information in the sortable table could be conveyed by using around 200 articles listing by country visited, and around 200 articles by nationality to show exactly the same research but resorted. I think this would be perfectly reasonable set of articles. It is information that wouldn't belong in WikiSource or WikiBooks and deserves a Wikimedia home somewhere; since Wikipedia does contain information normally present in almanacs and gazetteers, this seems the best place. TheGrappler (talk) 17:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, Grappler, just curious- what kind of valid article is there? This sort of article, even if absolutely correct and well sourced, seems to me to be a random collection of information and non-encyclopedic. Basket of Puppies 17:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, a comprehensive list of visa requirements for citizens of a given nation is by definition not a random collection of information. Second, for just about everyone other than the stereotypical American (for whom "traveling abroad" means going to Mexico or Canada), visa regulations matter a great deal. Visa-free travel is the difference between simply buying a plane ticket, and having to assemble all sorts of forms, paying a hefty fee (relative to your income), traveling half the way across your native country for an in-person interview at your destination country's consular office, waiting in line for half a day, and finding out a month later that no, you won't be getting your visa after all, because after the most recent diplomatic spat between the two countries, the consulate has decided to limit the number of visas it issues (something that all relevant officials naturally neglect to tell you about in advance)… I can tell you that in Russia, changes to visa requirements (and even diplomatic negotiations about potential future changes to visa requirements) frequently make the national news. For citizens of a place like Palestine, whose freedom to travel internationally is quite limited, an article about visa requirements would be even more important. Therefore, if the information is sourced and accurate, the article (as well as all other articles in the category) should be kept. — Tetromino (talk) 02:42, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a directory, not a catalog and not a guide, which is exactly what this article is. Basket of Puppies 03:18, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Have you actually read the guideline that you are linking to? "Not a directory" means "contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses are not encyclopedic". The article is clearly not a list of contact information. "Not a catalog" means that "product prices should not be quoted in an article unless they can be sourced and there is a justified reason for their mention." Do you see products and their prices mentioned anywhere in the article? "Not a guide" means that an article should not read like a how-to manual and should not read like a travel guide that mentions "the telephone number or street address of your favorite hotel". Clearly, neither of those apply in this case. If the information were properly sourced and accurate, the article would be no less encyclopedic than any other geographic list-type article such as List of countries by GDP (PPP) or Use of capital punishment by nation. — Tetromino (talk) 03:54, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This information is certainly not "random", as Tetromino explains: it's clearly organized information (wrong, probably, but sourceable and repairable). Perhaps your objection is that the topic is "random" in the sense of it being odd or unusual or niche? There is lots of stuff of niche interest on Wikipedia, and always argument about which of those niche topics are valid. Different people have widely divergent opinions about what counts as "valid"; I'm not entirely certainly than "encyclopedic" is a useful term of debate, since Wikipedia is the first and largest encyclopedia in its class. I think the best definition of "encyclopedic" might be "this is the kind of entry that one might reasonably expect to find in a general purpose encyclopedia, specialist encyclopedia or reference handbook with topical entries, almanac or gazetteer". Alternative homes for material vary by type: pedagogical/instructional writing (e.g. from a textbook or manual, which more properly belongs at Wikiversity or Wikibooks), original source material (→ Wikisource), a media item devoid of critical commentary (e.g. a page from a catalogue of plates for an artist or gallery, → Commons), a dictionary definition or thesaurus entry for a word or phrase (→ Wiktionary), an assembly of quotations (→ Wikiquote), coverage of a current event (possibly with context, background and analysis of future implications, but not more than what a newspaper or news magazine will include, → Wikinews), directory-style information about a species (little more than genealogy and current status, → Wikispecies) and so on. Rough guide is: if it written as original material (not just original text/media like at Wikisource/Commons), containing more than a dictionary definition (else Wiktionary it) or newspaper-style coverage of a current event (else WikiNews), and is written (or rewritable!) in such a way that seems more fitting for a reference handbook than a textbook or manual (Wikiversity/Wikibooks), then it seems that the material is of a "valid type" i.e. it's not in the wrong place. Once it's established that the type of material is valid, the question is how that material should be integrated into Wikipedia (e.g. does it deserve its own article, does it belong as a subsection of a larger article?) and whether that material can be written in a way that complies with content guidelines (Sufficient quality references available? Is it "due weight" to incorporate that material in an existing article, or notable if it is placed in its own article?). Information about visa requirements is the kind of thing found in specialist handbooks and indeed some gazetteers, so this is the right place for it. Quality sources are available so I think that notability and verifiability concerns are adequately addressed (the current contents of this article are wrong, but it could be salvaged). My personal opinions on "validity" are somewhat off-topic, but since you were curious, I've left a message over on your talk page. TheGrappler (talk) 16:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• "Palestinian citizen" is a meaningless term. Regardless of whether "Palestinian citizen" should be meaningful, the current legal situation is that it is not meaningful. Wikipedia is descriptivist, not prescriptivist. DS (talk) 18:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Palestinian Authority passport, which contains some actual cited information. This page could be an article in the future if someone starts from scratch with verifable data. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 22:49, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep if the information is sourced and accurate. See my reply to Basket of Puppies above for argumentation. — Tetromino (talk) 02:42, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, but move to Visa requirements for holders of a Palestinian Authority passport – the resulting redirect can remain. Just as for all the other Visa requirements for ... pages, notability is not an issue. Of course the information should be sourced and ought to be correct, but deletion is not the way to handle such repairable issues.  --Lambiam 09:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, but references are urgently needed, as well as an evaluation of the political reasons for this list! I would also endorse the move suggestion of Lambian... L.tak (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrue my support... I agree with the merit of this type of articles in principle. However, this wiki is so incorrect (see some of my attempts to provide refs at Talk:Visa requirements for Palestinian citizens) that only removing everything, and recreating afterwards (if someone wants to) will help . The present version is probably not worth saving. L.tak (talk) 20:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse move - yes, a move is necessary to deal with the title issues. A bad title in its own right isn't a reason to delete (it's what the "move" button is for, after all) but I do appreciate the concerns of the editor who spotted the flaw and they should be dealt with. TheGrappler (talk) 16:47, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge This list would be nothing more than a reverse collection of everything that would be included in other countries "Visa policies of Country x". send the relevant info to those articles. There is no need to have basically 2 series of articles containing the same info.--Crossmr (talk) 08:16, 30 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per Sparatz. Karanacs (talk) 20:02, 31 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep strangely enough I think this is a keep. I think the main reason people vote to delete this is because those voters come from countries (i.e. USA, UK, Australia, Canada, etc) which do not need their citizens to travel anywhere on the globe (except for Cuba). So they do not appreciate this type of information. Yet having a list like this is more useful to many people than say having an article on some semi-obscure TV show in the US. Lots of people would use these lists on wikipedia if they were well referenced, while very few people would care about the seasons of those obscure shows. Nergaal (talk) 05:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Visa requirements pages, a short history[edit]

Allow me to give a short history of this type of pages. They used to be part of the corresponding passport pages (e.g. the Mexican passport would have a section on visa requirements for Mexicans. A general discussion was held at Talk:passport (Talk:Passport/Archive_2 and Talk:Passport/Archive_3) and whether there was a valid reason to have this info on the corresponding passport page. 1st concensus: no, they should go

This resulted in a fierce revert war an several passport pages and people very much dedicated to well-sourced info were attracted to the discussion on passport

2nd consensus: no, they should not be at the corresponding passport page, but they merit their own article. That why they were all created (beginning 2010). This consensus was quite sensitive and I suppose that most who discussed still have passport on their watchlist.

• I am not giving my opinion on this wiki, but should you wish to discuss the general topic of this type of pages, I suggest having this discussion on Talk:passport or having a link there. L.tak (talk) 19:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The correct venue for discussion for deletion is this very deletion discussion. Basket of Puppies 21:05, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • For this wiki (Visa requirements for Palestinian citizens), I agree completely. For a proposal relating to all articles related to this subject, I think a wider forum is needed. As this discussion is closely linked to the discussions on Talk:passport to which I was not involved, I think the main actors there should be notified via a message on Talk:passport, or have the integral discussion there; or make a specific massAfD discussion (with notification to Talk:passport. Choice is up to those involved in this discussion which feel it should be placed in a wider context... Rgds! L.tak (talk) 21:13, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • What is being discussed is a page, more specifically an article. The wiki is the entire thing, for which deletion discussions don't occur on the wiki itself but on Meta. Uncle G (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • You are more than free to drop a note on a talk page informing editors of a deletion discussion, but make sure not to WP:CANVASS. Deletion discussions occur on deletion pages, such as this one. Basket of Puppies 21:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • I was just reading WP:CANVASS ;-) to find out when you posted this... I will carefully place the note... L.tak (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, original research. Stifle (talk) 08:18, 1 September 2010 (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.