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 keep, but under the condition that it is substantially rewritten to conform to WP:MOS within a reasonable span of time. Sandstein (talk) 12:19, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Arms Control, WMD, and Proliferation

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What on earth is this? Certainly, its prose is coherent and many of its assertions have references, but it appears not to be an especially encyclopedic topic, at least in current form. It sounds a lot more like a policy analysis than an encyclopedia article. Thus, per WP:NOT and perhaps WP:COATRACK, it should be deleted, and we should also investigate the other 9 articles linked at the top. Exhaustively chronicling every move the CIA makes seems outside our scope. Biruitorul (talk) 20:21, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is a work in progress to document what actual activities have taken place, in support of policies that have been ordered by Congress and the White House, as opposed to the model of an organization dedicated to nothing but regime change. You mention that the prose is coherent and there is sourcing, and indeed there may be superfluous detail. Finding that excessive detail would seem the purpose of consensus-based editing.

There is certainly a balance of detail to be struck, but these articles are a starting point to finding NPOV over what had been, in the single extremely long article, to have large numbers of unsourced allegations about covert action. This is not an attempt to cover everything the Agency has done, but, in part, these are descriptions of Congressional requirements for production of documents.

Why not consider discussing the subject, by assuming good faith, rather than immediately calling for deletion? I am certainly open to constructive criticism, but the previous single article had distinct difficulties I was attempting to balance. In addition, an Intelligence task force has been established within the Military History project, and these things certainly are intended to get input.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All well and good, and I agree that not all the information here is throwaway material. However, articles must adhere to WP:SYN and WP:NOR, and this appears to cross those lines. Before having a Wikipedia article on a subject, we must also document its third-party existence as a discrete subject of investigation rather than as something an editor (you, in this case) cobbled together from disparate sources to create a new entity. No evidence has been adduced demonstrating that to be the case. Biruitorul (talk) 23:10, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's it in a nutshell, for me. No discrete subject. There's a lot of no-doubt useful stuff here, which may need to be merged into various articles. But as the CIA needs to be active and watchful on just about everything, that doesn't mean we should be carving the world into orange-slice-like survey articles commenting on a vast range of topics because they are ""CIA Activities" -- does it? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What an odd article. Far as I can figure out -- this is a personal essay by the author about various WMD and weapons systems, all grouped together into one grab-bag of an article, because, he feels, they are within the purview of the CIA? And he has created other essay-articles grouping other topics according to the same rationale? As this one goes, so must all of Mr. Berkowitz's essays go, but I'm not ready to vote, at least not yet. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:44, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as somebody's personal essay and per WP:LIST, WP:SOAP, and WP:SYNTH. Bearian'sBooties (talk) 22:55, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep What do you want to do, merge it into CIA, which would then have to be split again? This is notable (very), and if we had similar information on what the KGB/FSB had been up to, we'd be adding it. This is not a grab-bag of info, this is what the CIA can be proven to having been doing about said subject. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- That's not quite the case, is it? This tells us the CIA's forecasts on the Indian nuclear programme; this talks about Iran and bio/chem weapons, and so on. Why, taken together, should such disparate bits of information be of encyclopedic value? By all means, go to the apposite articles and write, "CIA analyses predict that...", but a list of CIA forecasts (essentially what this is) is not especially fitting as an article subject. Biruitorul (talk) 23:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And BTW, if these articles do get retained, "CIA Forecasts on..." would be a much more comprehensible title. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This article is confusing because of the bad organization and difficult writing. I was originally going to say "delete" but as I look into it (a) the topics of WMD, proliferation and arms control all do seem to cohere pretty well, and CIA activities in regard to each would seem to cohere a bit more; if they don't cohere, the solution is to break the article up, not delete; (b) the topic is a worthy one for Wikipedia -- obviously; (c) the article is poorly put together in terms of organization and Wikipedia style, but those are fixable and not reasons to delete; either the originator of the article or someone else can fix it. Noroton (talk) 01:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all of these POV forks (CIA Activities by ...). Wikipedia is not a directory of the CIA, nor of criticism of the CIA. Documenting a particular agency at this level really is something that should be done at Wikia. --Dhartung | Talk 02:55, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As far as I can tell, this is a somewhat new editor who was doing the hard task of splitting the massive CIA article. I'm gonna take a swing through and try shine up the presentation and some of the sourcing issues, maybe even a rename of some articles, but I'd say the topic of the CIA being involved in arms control activities (think Soviet war in afghanistan for a top-of-the-head idea) are notable enough. Mbisanz (talk) 03:06, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Let me just clarify I think Mr Berkowitz is acting in more than good faith by creating this series of articles, which he split off the main CIA article that was getting truly out of hand until he stepped in. However, the exhaustive level of detail, the lack of focus, the tone and the lack of third-party notability as stand-alone subjects is what concerns me and led me to call for deletion. Biruitorul (talk) 03:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - This AfD just made me bump this issue up on my todo list, no biggie. I've started working with Mr. Berkowitz to tailor his contributions to people who might not know as much as he does about the field. I've finished the first two big sections of this article, and will begin making my way through the other 9 over the following weeks. Expect an FYI sometime around Spring to check on my work. Mbisanz (talk) 10:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This is a hard one. On one hand, this is a very worthwhile topic for an article and it cites what look like reliable sources. On the other hand the article as it currently stands is a mess and needs a very substancial re-write - at present it lacks context and the structure is confusing. As this is a new article on a worthwhile topic I think that it should be given the benefit of the doubt but be tagged as needing a re-write and be refered to the relevant wikiprojects. If it's still a mess in a month or so then deletion and starting from scratch might be the best option. --Nick Dowling (talk) 05:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I agree with many of the foregoing statements on both sides -- the article is well-referenced and contains much useful information that should be available on Wikipedia even though it would be too much detail for the main CIA article; but the article is disjointed and needs reorganization and considerable rewriting. The balance of these pros and cons comes out to "keep" and let it be improved. Contrary to Biruitorul's argument, I don't consider "exhaustive level of detail" to be a reason to delete an article -- quite the opposite. One suggestion that comes to my mind is to create articles on some of the particular governmental offices mentioned, such as the Office of Counterproliferation Initiatives in the State Department and the National Counterproliferation Center in the CIA itself. Such articles could describe the history, structure, and function of the named entity. As one urgent rewriting task, the section on "Clandestine production" is taken verbatim from the cited source. Better cited than uncited, of course, but that doesn't excuse the copyvio, nor the use of "last week" and "this page" from a 1997 Wall Street Journal article, nor the POV of "as with all its arms control agreements, Moscow has been banking on the technicality and the camouflage." JamesMLane t c 08:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It is an acceptable article. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 10:31, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Needs work, but the topic is notable and it was split off of the main CIA article. Keep, tag, and clean up. -FrankTobia (talk) 20:44, 3 January 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.