Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Iceland–Mexico relations

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 to delete. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Iceland–Mexico relations

Iceland–Mexico relations (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

state visit doesn't make an article. non resident embassies. no real third party coverage either [1] LibStar (talk) 04:32, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Keep. Relations between these two states are as worthy of an article as between any two states. I have no connection to Iceland or Mexico. Robert Brockway (talk) 04:26, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment several of these X-Y country relations have been deleted in last few weeks. LibStar (talk) 04:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Please try to say why you think they're significant - have you found sources covering this relationship? - Biruitorul ^Talk 05:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Delete - no third-party sources treating this relationship are forthcoming. - Biruitorul ^Talk 05:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete enough with the X - Y relations cruft. JBsupreme (talk) 06:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete Fails notability and not a directory or random collection of information. Better to have 200 sections or articles on "Foreign relations of ..." for each sovereign nation than about 20,000 random pairings which merely regurgitate information from the websites of the foreign ministries, and which will quickly become stale and outdated.Edison (talk) 15:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Keep in this case. A quick search in Spanish turned up:
  • Iceland-Mexico income tax treaty (2008) - [2] [3]
  • Mexico has an embassy in Denmark and a consulate in Iceland - [4]
  • Agreement on Agriculture between the governments of Mexico and Iceland (2001) - [5]
  • Speech by the President of Iceland in Mexico City (he talks about a lot of collaboration between the countries) - [6] (Spanish) (translation: [7])
  • Agreement between Mexico and Iceland for the promotion and mutual protection of investments (2005) - [8]
  • Geothermal energy agreement between Mexico and Iceland - [9]
  • Both countries are directly affected by the Gulf Stream which has a direct effect on the climate in Iceland - [10] (same link as the 4th item)

— LinguistAtLarge • Talk  23:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• • The Gulf Stream is not an action of the Mexican government, while numerous precedents have found the mere existence of an embassy (which is not even the case here - the embassy is in Denmark) not to constitute inherent notability. For the rest, I strongly suggest you familiarise yourself with WP:GNG, particularly the clause requiring sources "independent of the subject". These sources are not independent, they are primary, and thus you have failed to demonstrate notability. - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Comment how does having an embassy in a different country prove notable relations? If anything it proves non-notability. Most of these agreements are relatively minor and do not prove notable and significant diplomatic relations. Gulf stream argument is really scraping the barrel and can be covered in the Gulf Stream article. LibStar (talk) 23:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
• Keep per sources found by LinguistAtLarge, my own usual standards. This can be rescued. Bearian (talk) 00:45, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
• Keep - The List of sovereign states shows there are 203, therefore (203*202)/2 (=20503) potential articles with the title "X-Y relations", counting "Y-X relations" with it. It looks like some users are going around, like Johnny Appleseed creating as many as possible, as stubs, in the hope others will add onto them. I support this activity, as those subjects are unlikely to be examined, in detail, in most articles on individual countries. The first two of the basic tenets (verifiability, notability, and reliable sources) are guaranteed by the subject, leaving only the last to be checked for any details added. -MBHiii (talk) 23:25, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Please see WP:NOHARM for why that's an invalid argument. - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
• Keep per secondary coverage found by User:LinguistAtLarge. Relationship meets WP:N if people are writing about it. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 13:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC).
• Strong Keep per sources found by User:LinguistAtLarge. Some have now been added to the article, the others are on the talk page awaiting review by a spanish speaker. Had these sources been availabe earlier the weather round here would be positively icelandic! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
• Comment - all sources found so far are either not independent of the subject, or are primary sources, or do not provide significant coverage of the subject. Seriously: does WP:GNG just get thrown out the window for this string of nonsense articles? - Biruitorul ^Talk 19:39, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

No, WP:GNG deserves our respect. I note it says Significant coverage is more than trivial but may be less than exclusive - which seems to imply the source doesnt have to be exclusively about the subject. I suggest the sources are supplying non trivial coverage of important aspects of the relationship ( I might have said that more confidently if my spannish was better.) I guess its partly a judgement call on what one considers trivial. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:37, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

One of the sources is a speech - a primary source that can't be used to demonstrate anything. One mentions Iceland only in passing, and one tells us they signed an "income tax treaty", which, no matter how you spin it, is of no relevance. - Biruitorul ^Talk 18:44, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. This article has only been suffering because thus far it has been drawing on available English articles, and as others pointed out, those are lacking in quality. I did not know of the search done by LinguistAtLarge and thus did my own search in English to form my own opinions. I found a wealth of material available on this, but was unable to translate it. Most of the problems raised above would be solved if we could just find some Spanish-fluent editors to translate the real meat of the material. While I am aware that searches do not prove notability, this to me suggests that with time and willing Spanish-fluent editors, the article will improve. -moritheil^Talk 01:15, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Could we perhaps see at least a few links to that "wealth of material"? - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:19, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
    • Well, first off, most of us (myself included) don't understand the actual agreement in its original language. Editors are still arguing above as to what it's about, yourself included. You claim that it's only about tax rates, but this has not been definitively substantiated; it's only true that the mention of it in a speech was summarized thus. As to the notability of the topic, This article discusses the importance of Iceland's foreign trade to the country, and you will note that Iceland has very few agreements with other countries listed in the WP article about the Economy_of_Iceland. Thus, the trade agreement with Mexico is important to Iceland. On the other side of things, this states that Mexico's foreign trade with Iceland is important to it. If it's important to Mexico, and important to Iceland, then it shouldn't be folded into either country's economy article and ought to have its own article. I'd love to send you links to Spanish-language things but A) you can do your own search; even a simple search on google yields 7 million results and B) I'd hate to pass myself off as some judge of what's worthy, as I can't read Spanish. It's enough for me to point out there is a vast amount of material on the topic, a fact which was corroborated by LinguistAtLarge above. Of course, if you can read Spanish, and wish to assert that nothing of quality on the topic exists in Spanish, feel free to tell us. Otherwise the argument for deletion is effectively saying that you cannot trust that it will get better, and that doesn't warrant deletion, as WP:Deadline. -moritheil^Talk 01:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Your first link only mentions Mexico once, and it is a thoroughly trivial mention at that. The second link is dead. I did some searches in Spanish: nothing independent; one source from the Mexican Embassy in Denmark which, revealingly, tells us that bilateral trade is under $5 million a year, which, to a Mexican economy of $1.5 trillion and even an Icelandic one of $12 billion, is peanuts. Still waiting on that "wealth of material". And again, all of LinguistAtLarge's sources are government documents or from government sites, thus failing WP:GNG's requirement of independent sources, and likely breaching WP:NOR if used without corroboration by secondary sources. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
    • I don't want to repeat myself, but I think you've failed to understand something. My first link is not primarily about Mexico; it is about Iceland, and yet it is an important piece of the puzzle. It establishes the importance of Iceland's trade with other countries. There are, as I pointed out, very few other countries that Iceland trades with, as listed in the WP article about the Economy_of_Iceland. The article establishes that its trade with these countries is important. I have never claimed that the article was primarily about Mexico; go back and read my argument if you like. As for the second link not working, I don't know what to say; I just searched again and downloaded that file successfully. Try again? Even if it doesn't work, try this, which talks about Iceland's investment in and trade with Mexico. These are all English documents, as I've said, and there are ~7 million more of them.

It is clear that you may have stricter standards than other editors as to what constitutes a relevant article, but even if you continue to find fault with one or another for various reasons, I find it statistically unlikely that they are all trivial or of no importance. There will only be more documents in Spanish, which is where I said the wealth of material was. However, since I don't claim to know it and you do, I will not attempt to overturn your arguments based on the Spanish-language searches you claim you did. I explicitly noted above that I would defer to expertise in Spanish, and I will. If you and the other Spanish speakers have examined the Spanish documents and agree that this international treaty is somehow insignificant or not noteworthy, I will agree that it should be moved rather than kept - though where to move it will then become a serious issue, as it will have to be mirrored in articles about Iceland and Mexico (as we have seen, it is economically significant in each place even if the treaty itself does not pass a literature test for being noteworthy). Editors will then have to go back and forth each time improvements are made to one version of the section, copying the edits to the other version.

Finally, I must raise an entirely different issue: you seem to be singlehandedly pushing for deletion and repeating the same arguments at different people with different reasons for voting to keep. Perhaps there is nothing automatically wrong with one person arguing passionately against the consensus of five others who vote to keep, but you are using a lot of references to WP principles, so is it fair of me to raise the issue of WP:CON? The two other votes for Delete are JBsupreme, whose rationale amounts to labeling it cruft and therefore automatically disliked without addressing the issues (see WP:CRUFTCRUFT), and Edison, who focuses on quality ("will become stale and outdated"), when WP:Deadline. -moritheil^Talk 11:16, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• • But you see, one mention of Mexico in a list of 50 countries does not constitute the "significant" coverage we require. I can now see the second link (as well as the third) and, yes, Iceland has an agricultural agreement with Mexico. And...? What precisely does that mean? Is it something we'd ever think of mentioning outside this series of nonsense articles? Is it something whose importance is validated in the context of a broader discussion of "Iceland-Mexico relations", or just something we should decide constitutes an important part of that, without secondary sources telling us? See also here - Mexico ranks 19th of Iceland's trade partners (1.7%) - perhaps not irrelevant, but (I would argue) something that, if indeed notable, could be mentioned at Economy of Iceland, especially as the relationship seems to have a mostly economic dimension.
  • I certainly consider some bilateral relations articles to be notable (Iceland-Denmark, Mexico-US, Russia-China, France-Spain, etc), but for me at least, notability is conferred by significant coverage of the relationship itself (which is, after all, what the title says the article is about), not of bits of information regarding any two countries in common. Something like this (not necessarily a book; journal or even newspaper articles can also provide significant coverage).
  • While there are some common threads in my arguments, I don't actually say the same thing over and over; I do consider each pair separately, as well as the sources presented. On rare occasions, I've even voted to keep some of these - I have a viewpoint, but I'm not dogmatic about it. And let's not forget, many of these do get deleted. So while we may continue to disagree here, I hope we do so respectful of each others' viewpoints, and not in acrimony. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:44, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

• Keep Reading the article, I see many things that make this relationship notable enough to be mentioned in its own article. Please read through the article, before just deciding you don't like articles of this type, and trying to delete it. The content makes it notable, not the opinions of others. And unless you have done a proper search in the language of these two nations, for things mentioned in the newspapers of the countries involved, you aren't going to be finding a lot of third party media coverage. But surely such events would in fact be mentioned there. Does anyone doubt this? Is there any reasonable doubt at all that meetings and treaties between two nations, would be covered in major newspapers of those countries, thus satisfying the current notability guidelines? ♫♫♫♫♫ Dream Focus 01:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • The sources are either not independent or trivial, and the burden of proof lies on those defending the article to submit evidence it's worth keeping. Calling on me to search in Spanish and Icelandic (!) isn't going to bolster the article's cause, and neither are fallacious questions about what might have appeared in the Mexican or Icelandic press at some time about some treaty. Unless those sources can actually be shown to exist, as opposed to saying they "must" exist, they're the sound of a tree falling in the forest. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Keep based on non-trivial (not a "passing mention") sources supplied by LinguistAtLarge indicating easily passing WP:GNG.--Oakshade (talk) 03:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • No, GNG requires sources "independent of the subject", which speeches by Mexican officials are obviously not (in addition to being primary sources). Let's not pretend they are, or that they validate anything whatsoever. - Biruitorul ^Talk 03:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Keep - sufficient reliable sources to establish a significant relationship. Smile a While (talk) 16:15, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Keep--esp. the tax information, uncovered by Linguist and added by Fred, convince me that this relationship is notable. In these kinds of cases, this kind of primary evidence should be sufficient--one cannot really expect these kinds of treaties being discussed independently, but that, in my opinion, does not take away from their notability and should satisfy GNG. Drmies (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
  • It's easy to see the way this is going, but let me just quote WP:PSTS: "any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation". Any relevance to those treaties should be validated by secondary sources, and if it can't be, it shouldn't be in the article. Once that gets stripped away, we see how bare it really looks. - Biruitorul ^Talk 20:59, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Keep-- The information provided proves notability of this subject.--[|!*//MarshalN20\\*!|] (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included on the  and Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations/Bilateral relations task force/Deletion page(s), which are related to this deletion discussion. User:Ikip
• Delete Iceland's embassy for mexico is in... the United States. Mexico's embassy for Iceland is in... Denmark. No reliable sources indepdent of the subject discuss this relationship in any non-trivial depth. While the fact that weather in both countries is effected by the Gulf Stream is true, that says nothing about bilateral relations.Bali ultimate (talk) 15:55, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
• Delete Negligible sources about individual events or treaties, not the topic as a whole. Poorly sourced at best as it stands. --BlueSquadronRaven 17:26, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
• Strong keep per LinguistAtLarge's research. Ikip (talk) 23:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Which turned up what, exactly? Speeches and documents? Not usable, per WP:PSTS. - Biruitorul ^Talk 00:11, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Keep per state visit. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 05:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
• Delete, you must be joking. Stifle (talk) 13:36, 5 May 2009 (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.