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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. The contentious material has been removed, and the two people calling for deletion have withdrawn their delete views on condition the article is blanked. Wikipedia:Speedy keep now applies. SilkTork *YES! 19:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Corruption in Ghana

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Corruption in Ghana (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Article has multiple issues, and has been tagged as Original Research since 2007. While there is room for an article on corruption in Ghana, this is not it, and the nature of the article is such that it makes addressing the issues difficult. The first edit makes it clear that this is a student's dissertation cut and pasted onto Wikipedia. All that other editors have done since then is to format the contents, and to tag it with their concerns. Sometimes the best thing to do is to delete the junk and start over. I am not motivated to research and write an article on Corruption in Ghana, but if somebody else is, they might prefer a clean page. SilkTork *YES! 20:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • The article is quite large and contains numerous sources so your assertion that nothing is salvageable seems absurd. For example, to pick a detail at random, the article provides details of the Citizens Vetting Committee which was established to investigate officials who seemed to be living beyond their means. The essential accuracy of this information may be confirmed by reference to an independent source such as Administrative ethics and development administration. Your sweeping dismissal of so much sourced information requires a more detailed rationale please. Colonel Warden (talk) 02:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I respectfully disagree. In my view, the article is totally unencyclopaedic and deletion should be an option in these cases. I can't identify a single paragraph in the nominated version that isn't unencyclopaedic (ie sourced, neutral, not written like an essay). But if the article can be improved (more like rewritten) I'd be happy to change my !vote. --Mkativerata (talk) 03:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You are welcome to your opinion but it seems worthwhile to probe this further as I still find it incomprehensible. It may be helpful to compare our topic with the featured article which you wrote — Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Baxter Healthcare. I have no great objection to the latter but notice that it relies heavily for sourcing upon the court report and judgement, which seems to me to be too much of a primary source for our best work. And it is literally a case-study, and so is arguably too particular for our purpose, which is to present knowledge in summary form, with a historical perspective. Our topic here today seems to provide a better framework in this respect, being a historical review of a more general topic. Apart from cosmetic formatting, the main stylistic difference is the use of inline citations and wikilinks. These assist us in verification but are not especially encyclopedic as many encyclopedia do without them. As we have many sources provided in the article, it seems a straightforward matter to tie them to the relevant sections and generally wikify the content so that it more closely resembles your work in style. The work involved will be onerous, as there is much ground to cover, but I still fail to see the fundamental difficulty which makes this impossible and so necessitates deletion. What is it that stops us working this up into another FA too? Please explain your thinking. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:07, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. -- Mkativerata (talk) 22:50, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The nomination is false in several respects. I have today started editing the article and have rewritten the lede, working from a substantial source which testifies to the topic's notability, being a book about the topic which has been cited by numerous other sources which also cover the topic. The claims of OR are not supported by any specific examples and the provision of numerous good sources in the article refutes this hand-waving assertion. The nominator states clearly his personal unwillingness to work upon the topic and has declined the opportunity to discuss it in detail at the article's talk page. As he does not wish to work upon the topic, it seems disruptive to obstruct editors who do so wish to improve the article in accordance with our policy. The cited justifications of Wikipedia:Delete the junk and Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over are neither policies nor guidelines and are directly refuted by our actual editing policy which is to preserve such material for further work. There is thus not the slightest reason to delete. Colonel Warden (talk) 01:32, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep "I am not motivated to research and write an article on Corruption in Ghana, but if somebody else is, they might prefer a clean page." "some one else should write a better article, because I am unwilling to do it" here and elsewhere,[1] is always a dubious argument. Well referenced article with major WP:POTENTIAL Okip 02:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I may have worded myself badly. When I come upon an article that has serious issues which need attention, my first approach is to address those issues. If the circumstances (time, skill set, motivation, size of task, etc) do not lend themselves to me helping out, then there are two options - leave the mess as it is, or draw attention to it. I have opted to draw attention to the mess. The tags have alerted people there are issues, but in the three years since the first tag was placed nobody has felt motivated enough to actually do something, and nobody has been able to make a dent in the essay as the size and structure is unhelpful. It is a self-contained essay. An option I considered was simply to remove the essay, but that would have left a blank page. I am not saying that the topic itself is inappropriate, simply that the content is against two of our core founding principles and two of our main policies: Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. The opening statement of the essay prepares us for the fact that this is going to be an argument designed to lead the reader to a conclusion: "The historical perspective of this work is to conclude whether or not the occurrence of past corruption issues have affected seriously the government’s role in levels of corruption around the country." A solution to all this would be for someone to write a few lines on "corruption in Ghana", and to remove the student's essay. SilkTork *YES! 08:08, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I struck my comments, thank you for your well thought out justification. How about I stubbify the article, moving the content to a collapsed talk page section? I have done this before, and it works very well. You could then reverse your deletion nomination on the condition that you will renominate if unreferenced material is presented again. Okip 19:16, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Deleting a page for original research is a proper reason. The topic is not the problem, it is the content that needs removing. Removing the content does not prevent a new article being created. My rationale is that this content has been in place since 2007 and has actually prevented an appropriate article within Wikipedia's guidelines and policies from being created. SilkTork *YES! 08:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Blank content except for citations. Ordinarily I would say Delete because of unredeemable WP:OR but for those who want to keep the article, some positive solution that doesn't hurt Wikipedia is needed. --Bejnar (talk) 15:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and improve per normal means of editing, even if it means removing all uncited claims and drastically revising as the subject of "corruption in Ghana" strikes me as encyclopedically valid as it is a subject that is the subject of multiple articles: [2], [3], etc. and hundred page studies a la this or this book, i.e. we have multiple sources, including published sources with "Corruption in Ghana" in their titles. My concern thus is even if the current state of an article is not sound, an AfD closing as delete, could make difficult efforts to start over with a new article. And clearly this subject is both notable and verifiable per the aforementioned sources. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 19:30, 7 March 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.
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