Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of dictatorships

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.

List of dictatorships

List of dictatorships (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Violates

Notice: the corresponding articles on Chinese Wikipedia created by the same user are either deleted or nominated for afd. The user is currently blocked on Chinese Wikipedia.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 14:09, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - It's a pretty map, but GIGO. First off, the word "dictatorship" is tendentious and undefinable. Are we talking about a unitary leader? A clique or junta? A single-party state? A bourgeois state with a rigged political system offering a choice between a
  WP:NOR. Carrite (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete, basically per Carrite. Parsecboy (talk) 19:43, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, While I am sympathetic to Carrite's personal political views (as I am myself left-libertarian who criticizes the pitfalls of states), this deletion discussion should not be about exchanging persoal political views among editors.
  • I agree that definition of dictatorship and its selection is understandably challenging for academic researchers, and a job that should never be done among Wikipedians per
    WP:NOR
    .
  • However, I will remind @
    WP:NPOV
    , this alone should not suffice for an Afd.
  • democracy index, Polity data series, etc.--_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 03:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• Special note to other editors: See
  Dictatorships, as Jsjsjs1111 implied in this Afd. You are warmly reminded that Jsjsjs1111 was previously checked (and confirmed) by CheckUser to have registered an account with the same derogatory name that was used to attack me personally (one other Chinese Wikipedian was blocked and another was warned). Normally this deletion discussion should not discuss this. However, I am afraid that the way Jsjsjs1111 proposed this Afd has misrepresented some important facts, and thus the clarificatoins made here. --_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 03:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • You are blocked on Chinese Wikipedia because of edit warring on multiple articles, including those about
    WP:3RR and "long time edit warring", the latter which covers dictatorships-related articles. So please don't lie. And as for so-called "personal attacks" on you, it's unrelated to this afd.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 07:45, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • Correction of Jsjsjs1111's above false statement. The fact is what I am currently blocked by zh:User:乌拉跨氪 (the same administrator who blocked me on Human Rights and Weiquan templates) in Chinese Wikipedia is specifically on 3RR：联合国地理方案. I beg the others either to contiunue the discussion without considering Jsjsjs1111 false statement or read m:User:Hanteng/personal_attacks_by_some_Chinese_Wikipedians to see how a Chinese news organization Southern Weekly's investigative report provides important contexts for Jsjsjs1111 and other Chinese Wikipedians' actions here and in Chinese Wikipedia. See also my Wikimania 2014 submission here: Paid contributions in the Chinese context of monitoring and guiding online public opinion--_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 14:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • You can ask the admininstrator 乌拉跨氪 if you don't agree with me. In fact you are blocked for two reasons: one is "long-time edit warring" (长期编辑战), the other is 3RR on
        WP:ANI--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 15:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
        ]
• Notice to administrators:
  canvassing on multiple user talk pages of those people who said "keep" on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_dictators asking them to vote "keep" here: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 16:05, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]

I didn't notify some of the discussants because they are either indefinitely blocked [8][9] or inactive[10][11] when I first quickly sent out the messages. I guess good will from Jsjsjs1111 is lacking towards me. I also sent a couple of the same messages to those that I have missed . --_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 09:09, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• DD index may be garbage in User:Carrite 's eyes, but not only it is published [12] in a peer-review journal and cited more than 500 times since its publication in 2010 [13]. (More see User_talk:Hanteng#GIGO.2C_exactly and User_talk:Carrite#but GIGO)--_{(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng)} 09:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete -- I was lobbied to participate as a result of participating in a previous AFD. The problem is of how one defines what is a dictatorship. Another problem is that some of the countries concerned maintain a facade of democracy, so that there is a grey area, where it is a POV issue whether it is a dictatorship or not. The present article is a list of counties quoting an index that is not expalined in that article, from one (probably academic) source, and for 2008, not 2014. If kept it should be List of 2008 dictatorships. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:27, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep What is a dictatorship? Is it a grey area? Is it tendentious and undefinable? Awesome questions to chat about at the pub, but not here as editors. Here we should just stick to what reliable sources state about the issue. Now, since it seems that there are indeed reliable peer-reviewed sources in the political science area that do such a classification, we can and ought report that. --cyclopia^speak! 12:08, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- I agree with Js. Apollo Augustus Koo (talk) 13:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete:
  WP:POV. Wikipedia should not be used to give highlight to the results of one or several scholars, especially when it comes to political problems that involve actual ideological controversies. There is no clear and universal criterion of dictatorship. Thus Wikipedia should not accept one as orthodox and make a list from it. --Snorri (talk) 15:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep. No policy-based reason for deletion.
  WP:EDIT does not allow labeling certain topics as "too difficult to write, intrisically POV, cannot be ever made neutral etc." How can we have a list of titles used by dictators, if we cannot know who is a dictator and who is not? Note that list of dictators was finally deleted after a really under-participated AfD and before that because a certain leftwing troll admin (now banned) had a crusade to whitewash WP with his POV. jni ^(delete)_{...just not interested} 20:14, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete. (content deleted) so I strongly support him. Wikipedia should not be used to give highlight to the results of one or several scholars, no matter how many times the source has been cited or how popular it is. Wikipedia also should not be used to give a list in grey area, although I can't see anyone mentioned any citation that mostly contradicts to those listed in the article. And if there is, this article still should be deleted rather than list various opinions. I consider an article's neutrality according to handsome Wikipedia editors like (content deleted) rather than reliable sources, so it's a very tendentious article. --The Master (talk) 12:52, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • sarcasm won't help achieve consensus. --Snorri (talk) 15:07, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I consider this as WP:STALK.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 20:12, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm very sorry if it created irritation, annoyance or distress to you, so I removed the content about you. I was just intend to express my real feeling.--The Master (talk) 01:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Could use some cleaning up, and when that happens, it could be a very useful article. Adamh4 (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, the point is that the question of "what is a dictatorship" is an inherently subjective one. And, if we look at the contents of the article, we see that even in cases where we restrict ourselves to published sources, there can be disagreement (see, for example, the entry for Botswana). A more accurate title for the article as it currently says might be "List of dictatorships according to a couple of think tanks", because there are no agreed criteria for what is and is not a dictatorship. As such, I think the current article under its current title is misleading and should go. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 23:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC).[reply]
• Delete largely per Carrite and Lankiveil. The cited groups are not fringe groups, but their opinions do not necessarily reflect the broad scholarly consensus either. Some of the entries may be controversial (e.g. labelling Russia as a "dictatorship" which has elections and opposition represented in the Duma, even though there are severe limitations in the freedom of media and speech as well as an awfully powerful president). It is far from clear that all countries can be classified as either being a "democracy" or a "dictatorship", and by presenting the issue as if it were like that, we are giving implicit endorsement of that view, in violation of
  WP:NPOV. List of freedom indices broadly overlaps this subject and is a better way of doing this. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:36, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep. Given the title, I expected to find original research, but the list is sourced to two apparently reliable political science databases and is transparent about its inclusion criteria. Evidently, what constitutes a dictatorship is a controversial issue, but that alone is not a reason not to have a list or an article about it - it's why we rely on reliable sources rather than our own opinions. As such, I see no policy-based reason to delete the list.  Sandstein  07:21, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or merge to
  WP:UNDUE, especially when taken in concert with List of freedom indices. --slakr^\ talk / 04:16, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply
  ]