Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abdul Rahman Orfalli

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 no consensus. The deletes say this is WP:ONEEVENT, the keeps say he is sufficiently important to that event that he meets the ONEEVENT criteria for an individual's standalone article. However, no clear consensus was reached, so I am closing as No consensus, without prejudice against a re-nomination. I would suggest that if this is renominated, interested WikiProjects be notified, and relevant DelSort categories be added to the new AfD, to enable a fuller discussion to be possible. PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 23:08, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Abdul Rahman Orfalli

Abdul Rahman Orfalli (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)

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per WP:ONEEVENT. Subject hasn't actually done anything notable (the article itself makes a barely-credible claim of importance as "one of the first organisers", and so I don't think a speedy is appropriate). Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 12:26, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Keep. His death was widely reported, and thus he would seem notable. I do wish we could find some information about apart from the fact that he was one of the first organizers and that he was killed though. --Kristjan Wager (talk) 12:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment: Yes, it is just one event we know of, but if he, as reported, was one of the first organizers, then it's more. I think we need to see if we can get more information about him before deciding to delete the article. --Kristjan Wager (talk) 12:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I do think that argument is entirely invalid. "He hasn't done anything notable that we know of but he may have done tons of stuff that was never recorded" could be said of any subject nominated at AfD. Until sources turn up to justify any speculation over what he may have done, we should stick to the facts, which are that he was a man notable only for being killed in a protest. Thus, per ONEEVENT, we should redirect to Syrian uprising (2011–present). Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 12:57, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Keep He was one of the primary organizers of the Syrian Uprising, and is noted for this.--Goltak (talk) 16:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Syria-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Speedy Keep -- This nomination claims this individual is only known for "one event" -- which is transparently untrue. I'd like us to know more about this individual -- but we do know:

1. He was one of the original organizers of the original "Arab Spring" protests in 2011-03;
2. The ancient regime captured him and tortured him for five months;
3. He was killed in shelling in 2012-03

That is THREE events. Nominations for deletion that claim one event should only be placed on individuals who were truly only known for one event. Geo Swan (talk) 08:38, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

No, it's one event. He organised it, and was captured and killed during it, but it was all part of the same event. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 10:08, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• There was a wise guy who claimed, tongue-in-cheek, that we should merge the article on Tony Blair into the article on George W. Bush, on "one event" grounds -- as "no one would have ever heard of him if he hadn't supported Bush's Iraq invasion." There were headlines that backed up this interpretation of Blair's role -- some critics called him "George Bush's lapdog".

  Let's be frank here -- your presumably genuinely held position and the tongue-in-cheek mocking argument of that wise guy are not that dissimilar. No offense, but it seems to me your conflation of these three events into one event reflects a POV judgment on your part that the efforts of those working for political reform in Arab countries lack importance.

  You haven't explained WHY' you do not recognize five months of torture as a separate event from his death in the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians. One interpretation of your position is that you think the Syrian government is entitled to employ torture and the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians -- civilians who were not entitled to seek political change in the first place -- so everything that happened to them was their fault. Is this why you characterize his torture and his death through the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians as the same event as his leadership role in the original demonstrations? Geo Swan (talk) 14:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah you're right, I obviously just think the Syrian government is entitled to torture its civilians; that's clearly my rationale for nominating an article for deletion on wikipedia. That's definitely not an absurd assessment of my motives. Hell, the only thing I can't understand is why the Syrian government isn't torturing everyone else in the middle east; I mean it's clearly their prerogative. In fact, my name is Bashar al-Assad. _{Note: in case you can't tell, the preceding comment was not intended to be taken seriously} Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 17:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

• Keep - per Goltak. WP:1E envisages "On the other hand, if an event is of sufficient importance, even relatively minor participants may require their own articles, for example Howard Brennan, a witness to the JFK assassination." A similar example in this context would be Mohamed Bouazizi whose self-immolation was a single event that nevertheless precipitated the Arab Spring. Nomination strikes me as vexatious judging on the nominator's contribution history and contributions here. Charles04 (talk) 16:00, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Back so soon? Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 16:54, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

• Delete - Disingenuous use of sources. No independent verification, and therefore does not meet GNG. The article author, by the way, has also lifted word-for-word what the sources cited say about the topic, but has ignored the majority of the content of said articles. However, when there is only one source (the opposition group themselves), that is not independent (the reporter having simply repeated what was said by the group with no followup), which supports his leadership role and makes the statement of torture (none of which was at all the focus of the article in question), there is simply nothing to support inclusion. I also object strongly to the language above insinuating that either WP or its authors are (or should be) making moral judgments in any direction to determine article inclusion. MSJapan (talk) 16:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• Delete or Redirect - It's hard to disagree with Basalisk or MSJapan here. Charles 04 right I think to point out what he does, but Orfalli really isn't as notable as Mohamed Bouazizi. One solution would be to comment out his article and redirect, so that at a later date the article can be restored if he attains a greater degree of posthumous fame. Best would be to redirect to the March 2011 timeline (when Orfalli was killed), but I see in fact he's actually not mentioned there (edit needed?) I do rather strongly endorse MSJapan's final remark by the way. I'm thinking, for example, of the Iranian Revolution, which received a very largely sympathetic reception in the Western media at the time and one can imagine the same kind of detailed timelines and so on we see now in Syria if there had been a Wikipedia at the time. That is not at all to say a sober and NPOV account of the uprising is out of place (how useful that would have been today for historians of the Iranian revolution) but we do need to be careful about partisanship. David Osborne 2 (talk) 20:13, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

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.