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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 no consensus. "Global gun cultures" is not infeasible as a notable topic. What is needed is greater proof that this is considered a legitimate topic of research, one which the Keep voters argue may become apparent with further time put into the article. The accusation of a POV fork does not make sense to me, unless if the United States is the whole world. Shii (tock) 16:42, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Global gun cultures

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Global gun cultures (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

As seen HERE. This article was hastily created to take control of content that will be merged into the Gun politics in the United States from the Gun cultures in the USA article. Virtually all of the remaining content was cut and pasted from other areas of Wikipedia. The article is also edited exclusively by it's creator. This is basically a form of WP:PUSH behavior that not only creates MULTIPLE REDUNDANT CONTENT FORKS, but an article that fails notability requirements as well, since the content is already going to be merged into a larger article, and if not merged, remain where it is. (No new article is needed) Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:54, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements to the article is almost exclusively WP:OR, very badly cited or not cited at all. The main articles of each nation do not generally even mention any "gun culture", as an example. I am beginning to understand why some are calling it a POV fork now. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:22, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that little "Find sources" tool above is great. I wonder of anyone in the WP firearms editor community has a copy of this? Open Fire. Understanding Global Gun Cultures Lightbreather (talk) 01:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This editor follows me around and shouts "SPA" about me at everyone. Here is the latest discussion about this. Lightbreather (talk) 03:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lightbreather, please sign your posts. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 01:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Quit it, Sue, I will block you if you continue.--v/r - TP 03:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
User is nom - appears to have voted twice. Hipocrite (talk) 03:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Firearms-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 04:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 04:34, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 04:34, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Overview of gun laws by nation is about LAWS. Except for a section called "Arguments" that presents POLITICAL arguments (and mostly Western/U.S. arguments) there are only three - under Pakistan, Serbia, and the U.S. - short sentences containing the word "culture." The Pakistan and Serbia sections have see-also links to Gun politics in... articles - and the U.S. section has lists "main" articles Gun laws in the United States and Gun laws in the United States by state. Drmies and others have said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: culture, law, and politics are not interchangeable terms. Wikipedia can and should be able to present gun culture and gun law data without an emphasis on politics. Those articles - culture and law articles - should have references to politics, along with see-also links.
BTW: The Arguments section of the Overview of gun laws by nation includes duplicated material that should be of more concern to WP editors than Global gun cultures. Those political arguments should be merged or summarized or whatever is most appropriate into the appropriate article or articles. Lightbreather (talk) 22:37, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, based on the further discussion below, the article Culture of the United States has a section on gun culture. That section can be expanded, and when it gets big enough then a new article on US gun culture can be started. Same for other countries. That's how WP:Summary style is supposed to work. Based on the dearth of such gun culture info in Wikipedia articles about countries other than the US, the present overview article is premature and unnecessary. Moreover, it is poorly named, given that there is not really any global gun culture (i.e. a gun culture that spans the globe), but a better article title would not save this thing from being premature.Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:21, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Meh. Keep, for now. Not a great article, but I don't see how this is a POV fork--it's hardly not-neutral beyond salvation. As an overview article, it could be very useful. As for the proposed redirect, there is a great difference between gun culture and gun laws/legislation (I mean, duh). That the article is supposedly badly sourced right now is not a valid reason for deletion. Gaijin42, I don't know what overview article you mean--can you enlighten us? Drmies (talk) 23:24, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Drmies While you are correct that culture is different than laws, with the minimal amount of content here,even if it is slightly off-topic, I see no reason why that could not be included on the article about laws (since the two are often tightly interrelated) Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation. (With obviously Gun Politics in XXXX having the info for each individual country as well. Gaijin42 (talk) 23:39, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree, Gaijin--I think there's plenty of content here, and different enough from content about laws. We're having enough trouble already keeping politics and attitudes out of the more legal and historical articles, so let's not throw this into the mix. Sure, the two are related, but so are popes and saints. Or popes and Renaults. If SCOTUS saw the light and reinterpreted the 2nd amendment tomorrow (to read it the way the Founding Fathers intended! haha) we'd still have a gun culture(s) in the US, probably even more of one. Drmies (talk) 00:18, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Drmies How are popes related to French cars? (Or is there some obscure Catholic term Renault that we don't have mentioned? (Is the popemobile a Renault or something?) I see the relationship as a feedback loop. The dominant culture controls the growth, constraint, or reduction of gun laws/habits. That in turn affects the next generation of culture. With of course the standard pendulum swing common to many cultural cycles. Occasionally there are major disruptive forces in the cycle that can change things drastically in a short time (wars, mass shootings, terrorism, revolutions) but the two are very closely linked. Certainly in the case of the US I think it would be futile to talk about the politics without the culture, and visa versa, and in other countries where the law has brought ownership down to negligible levels there is not much culture to talk about. (Although your comment on the other split/merge discussion I thought was insightful, if there was enough sourced content to give detail to each sub-culture, I could see that breakout being valuable, but right now the "US gun culture" is pretty much just talking about the NRA etc. Gaijin42 (talk) 01:04, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As you have seen I don't yet believe in the viability of the US gun culture article and have argued for it to be merged. That's not so for this article, which is viable and full of content. As for the pope, certainly you read this. Drmies (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's already an article Overview of gun laws by nation and another article Number of guns per capita by country, and this one would basically be a further article about gun cultures by country. Perhaps that's too many articles. Moreover, the title of this one is confusing. There isn't any global gun culture (given that they vary by country), much less a plural number of global gun cultures. So I'd just delete this thing, and maybe move content to the other two articles, or perhaps to the respective articles about culture in each country. For the U.S., there's already a section started at Culture_of_the_United_States#Gun_culture. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, no--this article isn't about laws or numbers; it's about "attitudes, feelings, values, and behavior of a society" related to guns, as I indicated in the section on the Philippines I just added (in that case, increased violence among almost all levels of society). (And it's not all "culture" like Calamity Jane...) If you want to tweak the title, go ahead--on the talk page, but of course you can't discuss after you delete it. :) Drmies (talk) 05:26, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
But, Drmies, wouldn't all this stuff fit nicely in the respective articles about culture in each country? I know that I added that thought late, but better late than early, I say. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:29, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Even if so, isn't that an argument for merging the individual articles? It doesn't remove the validity of a general article... What I foresee is a couple of individual articles, not one for every country: for a lot of countries there's simply not a lot of exciting stuff. The Netherlands has gun legislation, but hardly any gun politics and no gun culture to speak of. Drmies (talk) 02:26, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure which articles you're referring to when you say "merging the individual articles". Surely the article Culture of the United States should not be merged with any other article. What I'm saying is that that article (Culture of the United States) has a section on gun culture, so why not simply expand that section? If the section gets big enough, then a separate article can be started. Same for all the other countries. It seems waaaay premature for an overview article, which seems to be what you have in mind for "Global gun cultures".Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:34, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note - If all of the duplicate material were removed, there would be no article to speak of. Whatever remained would rightfully be merged into the main articles anyway. The entire article is just a series of content forks. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 19:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
From the way you worded that, basically all the material in the article is duplicated elsewhere. Where exactly? Please provide links. Lightbreather (talk) 22:43, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Not a notable topic. One book uses the term its title, but that's basically a wp:primary source use. Another uses it a section heading (as singular). Can't find much else besided the Reuters blog cited as first source here [1]. Given the beeelion of books about guns and their control/culture in general, this is clearly a WP:FRINGE topic framing which doesn't needs its own WP:CFORK article because a couple of authors used/coined a new term. (None of these sources even bothers to explain exactly how they think we have [multiple] global gun cultures.) Someone not using his real name (talk) 00:02, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Fringe" is a totally inappropriate word to use here, even if a topic could be described as fringey. Drmies (talk) 01:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • And I think you misunderstand the meaning of the title. There need be no "Global gun cultures" concept in order to have an article that lists and discuss gun cultures around the globe (and functions as a guidepost to other articles). BTW, there is at least one global gun culture, and that's the proliferation of small arms; this was made pretty clear in the half a dozen books I just looked at to write a sentence or to for Global_gun_cultures#Philippines--if only to indicate that improving and expanding this article is easy. Drmies (talk) 02:22, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ok, you seem to concede that the title (which is a non-notable/fringe framing, like I said) has nothing to do with the article's content. Please explain then how is this page suppose to be different from Overview of gun laws by nation, which seems to have the same content (summaries of other articles). It seems to me we have a bit too many "guideposts" (as you call them), whose only purpose appears to be to fork stuff for rather dubious purposes. Someone not using his real name (talk) 17:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't concede that at all. And the page is supposed to be different since its focus is, or should be, on culture in the broader sense, not about laws--but that's not the first time this is said in this AfD. Note this edit. I still don't know what a "fringe framing" is supposed to be: it's hardly fringey to state that different cultures/countries have different gun cultures, unless you want to say that there is no such thing as a "gun culture", which strikes me as silly. And that "gun culture" as a concept is notable is borne out easily by high-quality references currently in the article. Scholars have written about many gun cultures--did you know apparently Kumasi has one? This for those with access to JSTOR: "This article is about guns and the culture of guns in Kumasi today. Much of value has now been written about armed African youth, but little of this is concerned with guns themselves, and more specifically with their history, meaning, manufacture and use." Drmies (talk) 20:15, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • Really? So which are the global gun cultures? I can think of only one and some academics seem to agree with me [2]. There are no wiki articles about the gun cultures of the other countries. They are all called Gun politics in XXX e.g. Gun politics in Switzerland. Where does the "gun politics" redirect? Oh, wait, ... I told you that already. Once we have several long articles like the global gun culture of Switzerland (like never), I can see why an overview wiki page might be needed. But not before. Someone not using his real name (talk) 20:43, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • Even leaving the "global" title silliness aside, you cannot really treat gun culture and gun polics as separate issues for most countries (gun culture of Switzerland goes where?), regardless how some academic might title his paper about the Kumasi. It makes no sense to wp:cfork country-level articles between the politics and the culture aspect. And if that doesn't make sense, how does a fork at higher level make sense? In the Kumasi case it may be the case that the state has very little influence (as law enforcement etc.) and perhaps it's not at all a political issue there as result of that, but such states/regions are far and few in between on the globe today. Gun culture and gun politics are intertwined in all modern/functioning states. The only exception I can think of is Hollywood gun culture which has global penetration but is not affected by politics in other countries, except maybe via censorship. (Concrete example of the latter [3].)Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:12, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • If you want an RS example look at "A+very+British+gun+culture", which starts by discussing the British [shot]gun culture, then gets into gun violence, and finally the resulting gun control laws. All in the space of five pages in the same section titled "A very British gun culture". Would it make any sense to chop that into two or three wiki articles all of which would have a significant part of the picture missing? Someone not using his real name (talk) 21:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • So you're arguing that culture and politics are basically the same thing; others here are arguing that culture and law are the same thing. I find that very strange: do we need to pull out a dictionary? Yemen has a qat culture but no qat politics. Canada and the US have very similar gun laws, but very different gun cultures, as far as I know. Same with Germany and the Netherlands. I'm getting the feeling that (besides this quibbling over the title--you're just gonna have to get over the fact that for some people "global gun cultures" means "gun cultures as found in different parts of the world"--or "gun cultures globally". English can do that) you're really just saying that you don't like articles on the culture of something, or that you simply don't understand what "culture" means.

                The destabilizing effect of guns in the Philippines, for instance, is not political, and there appears to be very little that politicians are doing about it--except arming their own bodyguards. It's not simply a legal issue, since there are laws, but a third of the weapons in the country are illegal--that is, of course it's an issue that the law could address, but we're writing legal articles on laws that exist, not on laws that could exist to solve some particular cultural problem. Again, I just don't see why anyone would deny the validity of this content, or why they would think that the real-life issue of journalists having to hire armed bodyguards could somehow be made part of the politics or the legislation of gun issues in a given country. But this is getting repetitive, and tedious. Drmies (talk) 02:02, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Is the TERM "Global gun cultures" even notable? I cannot find any citations for it. There's a book with the term as part of the title, but this article isn't about the book. I can't see where anyone has ever used the term, so unless someone was inquiring about the book, why would anyone even look it up? --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
that particular problem is surmountable. it could be moved to Overview of gun cultures by country or something similar to what we did with the politics article. One would have to show there are enough countries that have WP:RSWP:V content though, otherwise its just going to be a dupe of the US (and handful of others that are sourceable) Gaijin42 (talk) 21:10, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks Gaijin: that's pretty much how I feel. (The Australia and Asia sections have plenty such content, I believe.) Sue_Rangell, this is a rather short-sighted objection, especially since the matter is already discussed above. I'm disappointed you'd bring this up so late in the game. You might want to read Wikipedia:Article titles, third sentence: "The title may simply be the name (or a name) of the subject of the article, or it may be a description of the topic". Drmies (talk) 17:56, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Failed how? I count only four votes to keep (One of them being a "keep or merge") vs. 10 or so votes to delete or merge. I have yet to see a keep vote that cites an applicable Wikipedia policy with any strength (Just my opinion, mind you). I would wager that even if I were to withdraw the nomination, someone would come up right behind me and nominate it again. So no. The nomination stands, at this point I am just waiting for the discussion to close. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:29, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Consensus is not a vote. It is the quality of reasoning, not number of people holding a position, that matters. There have been 5 editors that have given reasons to keep, and 1 redirect (plain). On the delete side, there were 2 "delete or merge", 1 redirect or delete, and the remainder delete. (Three editors made non-discussion or technical edits.) We can't count delete non-votes giving POV fork as a reason, since we agree it is not a POV fork. The subject is certainly notable, so those giving notability as a reason don't count. We can't count "hastily created" or "written like a soup sandwich" as reasons, and it is not a "fork of Gun control", and it is not WP:FRINGE. Most of the delete reasoning was based on an earlier version of the article. Since the AfD tag was placed on the article, the size has increased from 7,754 bytes (26 January 2014) to 19,997 bytes after User:Yobot removed the stub tags (6 February) from this developing article. None of the delete reasons are valid now, IMO. ...172.162.77.52 (talk) 03:17, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If the reasons given in the deletion nomination are later addressed by editing, the nomination should be withdrawn by the nominator, and the deletion discussion will be closed by an admin. If the nominator fails to do it when you think it should have been done (people can be busy, so WP:AGF on this point), leave a note on the nominator's talk page to draw their attention.

— WP:DISCUSSAFD
Heavens to Betsy! This doesn't seem like a reason to delete an article that in a matter of a week Drmies and I were able to flesh out easily. I imagine people searching might type in "gun culture" or "gun cultures." The first one already redirects to "Global gun cultures," and I'm going to create the latter as a re-direct, too. I mean, we have an article in Wikipedia titled "Federal Assault Weapons Ban," and I bet most people searching for that simply type in "assault weapons ban." Lightbreather (talk) 22:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sue has made this edit - removing a link to Global gun cultures from Gun politics in the U.S. - with the edit summary: "No point in linking to an article that is about to be deleted or moved." Does she know something we here don't know? Has a decision been made about keeping or deleting this article? I see five votes to keep, seven (including Sue as the nom) to delete, and two to redirect to Overview of gun laws by nation (which is about LAWS not culture). Is there a cut-off date? And is the final decision based on counting votes? Lightbreather (talk) 21:46, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The cutoff date is typically 7 days unless the closing admin extends it. It is not a majority vote, but the vote count is certainly taken into account. The 2 redirect votes would likely be counted as delete !votes as the end result is the same (this article would not exist). That puts it 9-5. A no consensus result is possible from that, but much would depend on how the closing admin interprets the strength of the arguments used in the !votes. Gaijin42 (talk) 21:50, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good example of what I've observed over and over again as a Wikipedia editor: someone who claims there's consensus based on votes - often as small as a 2-to-1 vote. Lightbreather (talk) 22:04, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
2 to 1 would generally be closed in favor of the "2" (based on my memory of past discussions) unless the !votes were flawed and discounted, but that is something that will depend greatly on the closer of the discusion. Wikipedia:What_is_consensus?#Not_unanimity
Having never gone through this process before, this action seems to fall foul of 1. Proposed deletion and 2. Deletion discussion. Lightbreather (talk) 22:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It is presuming the result of this discussion, but is not really a violation of the deletion process imo. Its just a bold edit that can be reverted. It doesn't affect the outcome of this discussion either way in any case. (If someone blanked THIS article, that would likely be a violation though. Gaijin42 (talk) 22:08, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lightbreather, it was a statement of my opinion, and this discussion should be made on the page in question, not here. If your opinion differs from mine, discuss it there. That's where I made the edit, and that's where other editors will expect to see a discussion like this. Bringing it up here only muddies the issue. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 04:26, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for now per Drmies original post. Look, I can see why this came across like a POV fork, but in reality it looks like it may be more of an attempt to cover a sub coulture that may not be relevant everywhere in the world...but that doesn't mean there isn't a "global" culture. This is a difficult subject for editors to cover in a truly neutral manner and it could be said that this is using an over arching source that might be seen as opinion, but in some form almost all sources have some amount of opinion...that's why we need them or we could just sources from nothing but primary documents. I don't know what the article looked like when this nomination was made but it does seem to have more than a few reliable sources.--Mark Miller (talk) 11:18, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename this isn't a vote, obviously. If the article stays, it needs to be renamed. The title blows, to put it succinctly. 'global gun cultures' can be read to suggest that there are gun cultures that are global in nature - a gun culture that spans Peru and The Aleutian Islands and Luxembourg etc.. At minimum, simply observe the lack of articles entitled Global car culture, Global music culture, Global drug culture, Global bacteria culture (kidding), Global knife culture, Global sex culture, ad nauseum. Each of these indeed are represented by cultures found around the world, but there are no articles by such names because it's just reads poorly. Gun cultures around the world might fly, but really it should just be either a category, or List of gun cultures. Ultimately, it's just a list. The article does not describe "Global gun culture". Anastrophe (talk) 22:05, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - WP:OR fest. Completely skewed to the USA side of things, and when some of the other sections include gems like "A gun culture in the Western sense never developed in Japan.", you know the article is a WP:POINTy piece of junk. I can see a fair few sources that are unreliable blogs, are primary sources, or just seem plain irrelevant. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:51, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Request for admin to close

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Discussion has ground to a halt. I count only four votes to keep (One of them being a "keep or merge") vs. 10 or so votes to delete or merge. I have yet to see a keep vote that cites an applicable Wikipedia policy with any strength (Just my opinion, mind you). The article has been improved a bit, but it is still just a mass of content forking (among other problems) If an admin could close this early as a delete or as a move, that would be great, but I am not opposed to keeping it open for the full 2 weeks if it is felt that more people may contribute ivotes. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 20:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The proper place to request this is WP:ANRFC but doing so in a way that is intended to influence the outcome is highly frowned upon. this would not be early. AFDs are usually only for 7 days. Gaijin42 (talk) 20:28, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, I thought it was two weeks. Be well. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 21:08, 7 February 2014 (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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