Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hungarian Spectrum

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. Sandstein 08:59, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Hungarian Spectrum

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Hungarian Spectrum (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Per request at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Deletion_request:_Hungarian_Spectrum, alleging WP:SOAPBOX.

Copy of AN discussion

This article: Hungarian Spectrum must be deleted: self promotion, soap boxing, political activism. The creator of the page Stevan Harnad used and uses repeatedly the WP to spread his political views - just take a look at his editing history: He edits his own wp article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stevan_Harnad&action=history He spreads political opinions as facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard/Archive_68#Constitution_of_Hungary etc. It is just another attempt. Hungarian Spectrum is a closed facebook-group, the main contributor has ZERO scientific output. Speedy deletion tag already placed, but I guess that Harnad will remove it soon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.224.163.158 (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2020 (UTC) Hi. I have removed the speedy deletion tag. Your reason, "self promotion and soapboxing", is in line with WP:G11, but I really don't see the content of the article as "exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten". I have no comment on the notability of the subject (which is not a valid speedy deletion reason anyway), or on your apparent claim of conflict of interest. If you think the article should be deleted, please use WP:AFD. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:34, 1 April 2020 (UTC) More than the half of the whole article consists of a quote from George Soros about his vilification in Hungary, and his appraisal (philantropist etc. - he has his own wp article, no need to repeat it here!), and his views on Viktor Orbán. It is clearly soapboxing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.224.163.158 (talk) 06:21, 2 April 2020 (UTC) Then nominate it for deletion at WP:AFD. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:59, 2 April 2020 (UTC) I don't know if there is some confusion here, but AFAICT, the article is about this blog https://hungarianspectrum.org/ . It seems to just be a blog hosted as a normal website. It's not a closed Facebook group. Maybe there is a closed Facebook associated with the blog but if there is, that's not what the article is mostly about. In fact the article never seems to have mentioned the closed Facebook group AFAICT. The blog seems to mostly about politics and stuff, so I'm not entirely sure why anyone would expect people associated with it to have scientific output anyway. Nil Einne (talk) 14:08, 2 April 2020 (UTC) This discussion should be closed as being in the wrong venue. The place to discuss article deletion is WP:AFD, as Boing! said Zebedee said. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:06, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Hungary-related deletion discussions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 17:33, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Summary up to this point:
  1. Speedy Deletion of Hungarian Spectrum (created in April 2019) was requested by User 84.224.163.158 on April 1 2020.
  2. Editor Boing! said Zebedee removed the Speedy Deletion tag and wrote: "I have removed the speedy deletion tag. Your reason, "self promotion and soapboxing", is in line with WP:G11, but I really don't see the content of the article as "exclusively promotional and would need to be fundamentally rewritten". I have no comment on the notability of the subject (which is not a valid speedy deletion reason anyway), or on your apparent claim of conflict of interest. If you think the article should be deleted, please use WP:AFD."
  3. User Nil Einne added: "I don't know if there is some confusion here, but AFAICT, the article is about this blog https://hungarianspectrum.org/ . It seems to just be a blog hosted as a normal website. It's not a closed Facebook group. Maybe there is a closed Facebook associated with the blog but if there is, that's not what the article is mostly about. In fact the article never seems to have mentioned the closed Facebook group AFAICT. The blog seems to mostly about politics and stuff, so I'm not entirely sure why anyone would expect people associated with it to have scientific output anyway."
  4. User 84.224.163.158 then placed a tag calling for citation evidence of Notability. I then provided the evidence and removed the tag.
  5. There was further discussion of a quotation that Editor User:MarkH21 found too long. After some exchanges User:MarkH21 trimmed the quote and this is now resolved.
  6. Editor User:DGG has also helpfully modified the heading of a section in which User 84.224.163.158 had posted some information critical of the creator of the blog, Professor Eva Balogh, for being left-liberal and critical of the Orban government in Hungary. This criticism is fine, indeed welcome! It is true and valid: All the authors in Hungarian Spectrum are critical of the Orban government in Hungary. And it is for WP users to judge whether that undeniable fact is a valid reason for deleting the entry for Hungarian Spectrum.
  7. A Deletion tag was applied today (April 5), linking to the prior exchanges among Users 84.224.163.158, Boing! said Zebedee, User:MarkH21 and myself during these 3 days.
  8. I would like to ask those who take part in this Deletion Discussion to please first read those prior exchanges, as well as their continuation from when the Discussion was transferred to the Talk section of Hungarian Spectrum so that the same points need not be repeated here (except if Users find some of them unresolved).
  9. In summary, the article on Hungarian Spectrum is a short, factual and objective description of a daily blog of 13 years standing that features critical analyses of current developments in Hungary, most by Professor Balogh, a historian specializing in Hungary from 1900 to the present -- a blog whose visibility, timeliness and influence has been growing with the current developments in Hungary.
  10. One particular very current development may or may not be relevant to this Deletion Discussion. I leave it to fellow WP Users to judge: The initiative by User 84.224.163.158 to delete the WP entry for Hungarian Spectrum began on April 1st -- two days after the Orban government "voted in favor of passing legislation that would create a state of emergency without a time limit, grant Prime Minster Viktor Orbán the ability to rule by decree, the suspension of parliament with no elections, and prison sentences for spreading fake news...". Journalists within Hungary are understandably fearful... All the articles in Hungarian Spectrum since March 30 have been devoted to this topic, and the reaction of the Hungarian democratic opposition, the EU, and the rest of the world to it . Hungarian Spectrum (the blog) is chronically targeted by anonymous Orbanian trolls. Is 84.224.163.158 the vanguard of a similar initiative in WP? --User:Harnad (talk) 20:08, 5 April 2020 (UTC)--User:Harnad (talk) 22:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)--User:Harnad (talk) 23:31, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

References

• Keep. Obviously a notable topic. Any objections to the content of the article should be discussed on its talk page. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Delete - obviously soap boxing and POV pushing and lack of notability. Even the creator of the page admits that he thinks anyone not agreeing with his version of the text is involved in Hungarian internal politics and/or Orbán-troll. See the opening remarks of this page: "The initiative by User 84.224.163.158 to delete the WP entry for Hungarian Spectrum began on April 1st -- two days after the Orban government "voted in favor of passing legislation that would create a state of emergency without a time limit, grant Prime Minster Viktor Orbán the ability to rule by decree, the suspension of parliament with no elections, and prison sentences for spreading fake news...". Journalists within Hungary are understandably fearful..." etc. etc.

Total paranoia. Harnad is doing a crusade, he often uses even the talk pages to spread his views, just like now: you can read about the oppressed Hungarians - soon the article itself will be expanded by him with long citations, as he is trying to do so now. And the references he mentions are circular references: friends refer to each other. Just like in the case of the Canadian-Hungarian Democratic Charter. It was founded by the author of this blog, and the article about it was created by Harnad. Here is the discussion, and so on. Repeated violations of the WP:neutrality policy and also a breach of WP's conflict of interest policy.

And Stevan, please don't create more articles about yourself, just like you created the Stevan Harnad article in the French WP. We have been through this many times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.204.13.123 (talk) 13:44, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

References

++ "We"? I have no idea who you are. And this discussion is about the contents of Wikipedia entry Hungarian Spectrum and the blog it describes, not me. --User:Harnad (talk) 15:53, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

• Keep abundant coverage in RS. Unfortunately for IP, WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid deletion rationale. buidhe 14:58, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
• Keep What is this? It's clearly notable, the sources presented suffice, let alone that found with a not-even-WP:BEFORE search. ——SN54129 22:16, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
• Comment The IP's reasoning is way off, but I'm otherwise slightly confused... I found a ton of articles that quote the Hungarian Spectrum, but I don't see any that give significant coverage on the blog itself. Which articles have sigcov? — MarkH₂₁^talk 01:07, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

++User:MarkH21, I'm not sure I understand your question. Hungarian Spectrum is the WP entry for a blog. The nearest point of comparison would be a WP entry for a (notable) Journal: Behavioral and Brain Sciences has an impact factor of 17.194; that is not based on sources discussing Behavioral and Brain Sciences itself but on sources discussing the content of the articles that are the content of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Am I misunderstanding something about sigcov (for [Journal] entries in WP)? --User:Harnad (talk) 13:55, 7 April 2020 (UTC) --User:Harnad (talk) 14:00, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I am referring to WP:SIGCOV, which requires that the blog has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. It is the basic notability guideline used unless one of the specific notability guidelines apply. In this case, WP:WEBCRIT may apply, which requires that the blog has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself. So far, I don't see published works where in the Hungarian Spectrum is the subject; I only see articles where it is quoted or very briefly mentioned. — MarkH₂₁^talk 14:01, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

++User:MarkH21 I still don't understand. Hungarian Spectrum is a blog publishing one article per day since 2007. Most of the articles are authored by Eva Balogh, who is the creator and editor of the blog. It is her articles and their contents that are discussed when they are cited, not the blog itself. (There do exist some discussions directly of the blog itself: should I cite those too? But I would think that, as with any notable journal, it is discussions of the contents of its articles that make the journal notable, not discussions of the journal per se.) All the citations I referenced in response to IP's call for notability (journal articles, books, newspaper articles) were independent, of course, not self-citations or citations by colleagues or associates of Professor Balogh. --User:Harnad (talk) 14:23, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

The criteria that I linked in my last comment are about coverage of the blog itself. Whether there is significant coverage in reliable independent sources is the principal metric used for notability on WP. — MarkH₂₁^talk 14:34, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

• Keep This AfD has been open by a WP:SPA IP who tries clearly to delete this article for pure political reasons. The content of the article satisfies all Wikipedia policies, including WP:NPOV. The only thing that deserves a discussion here is whether the blog satisfies the notability guidelines, and specially whether it has an international coverage. The fact that the blog is archived by Library of Congress (reference 4) is a first positive indication. A Google search on "Hungarian spectum" provides almost 600 hits, and the entries of the first page of results include medias of France (La Croix), Belgium (RTBF), Italy, Brazil (Zero Hora) and Romania. So, it is clear that this Hungarian blog has a significant international coverage. D.Lazard (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

I refuse the charge. As I've already proven, there is a clear tendency in the creator's activity towards soapboxing. In fact, if You check the edit history, you can see that I tried to upgrade the article: the authors speciality etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hungarian_Spectrum&action=history . It has nothing to do with political affiliation.I typed "Hungarian spectrum" as well - I got results only from the blog itself.And if you take a closer look at the talk page of the article, you can see that it is actually the author, Stevan Harnad who tries to politicize things, accusing the opponents of being paid trolls etc.--84.224.163.158 (talk) 18:10, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

By the way, you can even have your Twitter archived...just fill in the form http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/websites.html:How about asking any editor guys working on articles dealing with Hungary? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.224.163.158 (talk) 19:02, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

++Did I say "paid"? --User:Harnad (talk) 19:52, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

++And your (WP:SPA IP) beef sounds like it's not with Hungarian Spectrum but with me (WP:NPA). I suggest you take it to my talk page --User:Harnad (talk) 20:26, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

@D.Lazard: From the Google hits, I haven’t found any examples of those articles being sigcov as opposed to just quotes or brief mentions of the blog. — MarkH₂₁^talk 03:59, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

​ Specifically:

• The La Croix article only mentions the blog once: [...] estime Kim Lane Scheppele, professeur de droit à l’université de Princeton et spécialiste de la Hongrie, dans une analyse publiée sur le site Hungarian Spectrum.
• The RTBF article mentions the blog once: Le site politique Hungarian Spectrum, très critique à l’égard de la politique de Viktor Orban, parle de chèque en blanc pour le Premier ministre...
• The Zero Hora article mentions the blog once: [...] segundo o Hungarian Spectrum, site independente fundado pela professora de história da Europa Oriental de Yale Eva Balogh.

They're only passing mentions. — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:17, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

• Delete - I'm slightly left of centre by British standards which means I'm way left by Hungarian standards. However, I'm not seeing any significant coverage independent of the source. What I'm looking for are BBC (or other media) articles saying "Hungarian Spectrum say this" and I'm not finding it. Seems decidedly niche. BTW. I've subscribed. Nigej (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

++Nigej,Would you settle for The Economist or The New York Times (Braham obituary)? That's just off the top of my head. I can search for more, but of course it will never be able to compete with notability in sport ;>) Everything scholarly is niche relative to that! --User:Harnad (talk) 23:45, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Those are more examples of articles that quote or briefly mention the blog, which is different from providing significant coverage about the blog. — MarkH₂₁^talk 03:59, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

I think the difference is that I can find a golf tournament in 1940 which was reported in hundreds of different newspapers from one side of America to the other. No one's heard of it now but it was notable at the time. Not scholarly I agree but Wikipedia is not scholarly, it's populist. Nigej (talk) 08:44, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Nigej, you can find hundreds of sources like that simply by clicking on the word "news" in the searches at the top of this discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 06:41, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

@Phil Bridger: I genuinely don't see any sources that say more than half a sentence about the blog. Could you link some? — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:18, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

I said that there are hundreds of sources there of the type that Nigej described, not of the type that you described. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:41, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I misunderstood what Nigej was looking for. — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:56, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

• Comment. There is a clear consensus that this blog is mentioned by many notable medias all around the world, but there is no (not yet?) consensus whether this is a significant coverage, or, in other words, whether these mentions are trivial mentions. In fact, WP:SIGCOV says "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". The open question is thus "what is a trivial mention?". Clearly a sentence such as "there is a blog called Hungarian Spectrum" is a trivial mention. But the mentions of the blog in medias are not of this type, they of the type "our source for some aspect of the political situation in Hungaria is Hungarian spectrum". This is far to be trivial, as this implies that the blog is an influential media. I agree that this implication is somehow WP:OR, but every reader may understand that by himself, and may therefore want to know more about the blog. This makes a WP article very useful. Therefore, if the blog does not satisfy formally the notability guidelines, this means that WP:IAR applies here (If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.). D.Lazard (talk) 11:00, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

  I've never interpreted Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention to mean that any non-trivial mention is significant coverage though. — MarkH₂₁^talk 11:08, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

++Here are some more citations and mentions (some may also be in the reflist I earlier added to the article itself in response to WP:SPA IP's Notability tag): --User:Harnad (talk) 16:32, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

@Harnad: We already know that there are hundreds of articles that briefly mention / quote the blog. Could you find any (and please nothing from Blogspot, Twitter, opinion articles, etc.) that actually talk about the blog in detail? I.e. one that has more than a sentence written about Hungarian Spectrum. — MarkH₂₁^talk 16:39, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

To editor Harnad: This discussion is about Hungarian Spectrum, not about Hungary. It appears that some of the references that you have added do not contain the word "spectrum". Please, remove them. Otherwise, as we have plenty of mentions of this blog in notable media, the discussion focuses on whether these sources suffice for establishing notability. It would help to reach a consensus, if you can find a source that gives more details on Hungarian spectrum, and is independent from it. D.Lazard (talk) 17:07, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

The ref 5 below (in www.libertatea.ro) in a Romanian medium is an example of the requested sources. A source in English would be better. D.Lazard (talk) 17:32, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

++As suggested by D.Lazard I've left only the more extensive citations, but if the decision about deletion is based on how many articles discuss the blog itself, rather than the content of its articles I can't help. When (as they say) the history is written, I think Professor Balogh's exposés of the goings-on in Hungary during these crucial years will be recognized as not only having documented the critical developments for the non-Hungarian-speaking world well in advance of the major international news media, alerting and leading them to it (as the citations show), but also as often having anticipated developments well in advance of when they went on to happen. It may even turn out that the remarkable remote web with which she has already been monitoring and reporting on Hungary daily for over 4700 consecutive days will have played not just a chronicler's role but a causal one in how it all turns out. But to see that, you have to read what others have picked up from what she has said in her blog -- not what they've said about her blog. --User:Harnad (talk) 01:21, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, WP cannot predict the future nor directly assess a website's importance (we have to rely on secondary sources' assessments). Also, aren't the WaPo and NYT articles also only half-sentence mentions? — MarkH₂₁^talk 01:47, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

• Keep. It is clearly a propagandistic blog financed to regularly describe Orbán as a fascist, authoritarian dictator, but it is regularly mentioned in mainstream media. Borsoka (talk) 00:15, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
• Comment — I agree with the concerns above about whether there is actually any significant coverage of the blog, though I'm not confident one way or another. I looked through most of the long list of references given to justify notability and they seem to be only footnote citations or off-hand mentions. Perhaps a better option would be to have an article on Balogh herself, who does seem to be safely notable, and integrate Hungarian Spectrum as a section? —Nizolan ^{(talk · c.)} 12:27, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

++User:Nizolan, I'll be happy to try to do a bio entry for Éva Bologh either way -- separate or merged -- but I don't know enough about the biographic details and reliable sources. I invite those who know more to send me the data, either on my Talk page or by email (easily found at UQAM or Southampton, but I don't check my McGill email regularly). --User:Harnad (talk) 21:43, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

• Move to Éva Balogh, otherwise delete. Given that none of the coverage (except perhaps the Libertatea interview article) offer significant coverage of the blog itself, this article should be deleted. However, there is an argument for the notability of the author of the blog herself via WP:JOURNALIST#1 as she is cited in dozens of news articles in dozens of languages through the blog. This article can easily be converted into one on its author, with much of the content shifted to a section for the blog itself. — MarkH₂₁^talk 05:03, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Discussion of sources to show notability is ongoing. Relisting for a firmer consensus to emerge.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:56, 14 April 2020 (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.