Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bilateral relations of Ireland
Sorry, but that short commendably short comment needs a long reply, because it seems to me to be little more than a sophisticated way of saying . (I doubt that was DGG's intention, but I think that's the effect).The claim that "Important topics are notable" is ''not'' what  says:Notability is distinct from "fame", "importance", or "popularity", although these may positively correlate with it."Importance" is a subjective concept which amounts to OR|original research, whereas we have some reasonably objective tests of notability ... and the importance of that objectivity is stressed in #Notability_requires_objective_evidence. In this discussion I have repeatedly asked for evidence of notability for these topics, but there has been absolutely none: nothing at all to satisfy any of the principles or tests set out in ."Important topics are notable" is also a rather tautological argument, like saying that "expensive things cost a lot of money".  On what basis does anyone claim that Irish-Montenegrin relations are important, or that there is anything significant to say on the subject that could not be easily accommodated in a brief list entry?However, the notion that really surprises me is the claim that "we cover all nations equally": that's completely untrue and I'm really astonished than an experienced editor could claim that. What we actually do is rather different: we try to cover things in relation to their significance to each country. We have an article on Pacific Islander American because it's a significant topic, and likewise Irish American, but nothing on Pacific Islander Irish, because the number of Pacific Islanders in Ireland is negligible. Although we have a lots of detailed articles on American and Soviet space technology, there's next to nothing on Ireland, because Ireland's involvement in such things has only been through the European Space Agency. That's not inequality, its just reality.Wikipedia doesn't have articles just to even out the numbers between countries, we have articles to cover the things that matter in those countries. A big nation such as the United States or China inevitably has a major diplomatic, commercial and military involvement with many many countries ... but  Ireland, with a small fraction of the resources, has to prioritise its diplomatic relations, which is why bilateral relations with Montenegro get only a http://foreignaffairs.gov.ie/home/index.aspx?id=25076 one-line mention in the Dept of Foreign affairs website. That's no slur on either country, just a reflection of the reality that two nations don't interact much, because small countries can't do everything.The notion that all bilateral relationships are notable works fine where a superpower is involved, but it's not the case with small nations. :Category:Foreign relations of the United States contains hundreds of articles that simply couldn't be replicated for Ireland, such as the articles on military alliances. If we were to create articles to fulfil the aim of treating all countries equally, we'd have lots of articles saying that Ireland has no military alliances in Asia, none in Africa, etc ... which would be daft, because Ireland has no military alliances at all, just as it has no glaciers or grisly bears. On bilateral relations, Guinea-Bissau-United States relations is a useful start-class article with real content and apparent scope for expansion, but Ireland's relations with Guinea-Bisseau amount to assigning it as http://foreignaffairs.gov.ie/home/index.aspx?id=5574 one of the jobs of Ireland's ambassador to the UN; there is no reason to assume that that there is much if anything more to say on the subject, but according to this cover-all-nations-equally we'd have to have an article saying that each of these two countries has a file in the others office at the UN.Finally, I want to make a broader point about , which too many editors miss: it's: it's not some arbitrary construct to conserve diskspace on the servers, it's also an important consequence of  and OR. Put simply, the selection of topics other than by the tests set out in  amounts to original research, and if there isn't substantial coverage of a topic, any non-trivial article is likely to consist either of original research or of |synthesis. Restricting notability to topics that reliable sources find notable enough to cover substantially is one of our bulwarks against original research, and I'm very disappointed to see to see an AFD discussion in which some experienced editors seem to me to be ready to cast those principles aside. Yes, there are some |systemic bias consequences of  and the associated policies of ,  etc because they favour those with the printing presses (or their modern equivalents such as web servers and TV newsrooms, or in older times those who could afford to employ scribes to write up the annals) ... but if there's a better way of doing things, it isn't yet anywhere near wikipedia's fundamental policies
— User:BrownHairedGirl, 05:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Stance: comment
Cited policy: WP:ILIKEIT||WP:N||WP:NOR||WP:N||WP:N||WP:N||WP:V||WP:NOR||WP:N||WP:SYN||WP:CSB||WP:N||WP:V||WP:RS (Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions)