Wikinews:Deletion requests
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Deletion
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 Content requests |
This page is where Wikinewsies discuss whether a page or file should be deleted or undeleted through consensus. See the Deletion Log or the Deletion Archives to see which pages have been deleted or kept.
| DELETION | |
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| I | Read and be familiar with the Deletion Criteria before listing a page here, or debating on a page here.
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| II | Add {{Deletion request}} or {{dr}} to the image, category or article page. |
| III | List the link below using the following template:
== Date of request == === [[:Page title]] === State reason for deletion request and sign with ~~~~. ==== Comments ==== ==== Votes ==== |
| IV | The listing will remain open for at least seven days while the community discusses the page(s). The period of time starts at the submission of the deletion request on this page. |
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| UNDELETION | |
| Note | If you object to speedy deletion of a page, or wish to overturn a closer deletion request, please list it here. An admin may undelete the page(s) at their discretion for the duration of the vote, so that users may view the page they are voting on. |
| I | List the link below using the following template:
== Date of request == === [[:Page title]] === State reason for undeletion request and sign with ~~~~. ==== Comments ==== ==== Votes ==== |
| II | The listing will remain open for at least seven days while the community discusses the page(s). The period of time starts at the submission of the deletion request on this page. |
| Admins | To close an Undeletion Request
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Deletion requests
[edit]February 1, 2026
[edit]@New mayo, Metropolitan90, Wikiwide, Gryllida: notifying article contributors for awareness only.
I propose this article be retracted due to multiple failures to comply with WN:Plagiarism (proposed guideline), WN:CS (policy), WN:NPOV (policy), and WN:MOS (guideline). Taken together, these issues are sufficiently extensive that post-publication correction is not practical.
These problems were identified during the archival process. In light of the reviewer’s previously stated position regarding the scope of their reviews, this case raises concerns about whether the review performed met the expectations outlined in policy.
The following statement is was plagiarism. It is not detected by Earwig, which I believe will not scan Reuters due to their Robots.txt directive. The text can be found by a manual search. It could be fixed even post-archive if it was the only issue. This statement was removed and a note placed on the article.[1]
- "57 years old and had entered the Turkish Air Force in 2010."
The following statements are unsupported by the listed sources, but verifiable elsewhere:
- tail number 68-1609 verifiable
- departed at 14:19 verifiable
The following statements are unsupported by the listed sources:
- "that has been compared by Reuters" Reuters didn't compare the two, only mentioned it as background.
- "seen with a smoking engine descending in a flat spin" Reuters reports eyewitness accounts of fire, not smoke
- "vanished from radars 27 minutes later" Author's analysis maybe?
- "27 minutes after takeoff" Author's analysis maybe?
- "According to Georgian authorities and Turkish officials"
- "by November 13"
- "By November 14, Turkish and Georgian officials continued joint inquiries."
- "and support" NATO Secretary General expressed his condolences. No source supports the statement that NATO offered support or expressed condolences.
The following are style guide issues:
- "The cause of the crash remains under investigation" (present tense)
- "but investigations are ongoing..." (present tense)
- "Georgian authorities confirmed the wreckage was found near the border region." exact same sentence in lede, not an SG issue per-se, but should have been caught
Attribution: There are too many phrases to include here. Below are a few examples:
- "killing all 20 military personnel on board"
- "vanished from radars 27 minutes later"
- "the wreckage was found near the border region"
- "all soldiers were killed"
- "communication was lost"
- "the remains of the military personnel ... were recovered by November 13"
- "the flight recorder (black box) was recovered"
- "the cause of the crash remains under investigation"
- "the cause of the crash remains undetermined"
Please vote using 
Keep, 
Remove, 
Neutral, or 
Comment followed by signature. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 19:10, 1 February 2026 (UTC)
Comments and Votes
[edit]
Keep My note is that the proposed level of scrutiny is too high. Articles written at the site are going to inevitably have issues and not be perfect if someone puts a few hours to check each letter. I do not see any of the above issues sufficiently major to require a retraction. If there is something that actually misinforms the reader about what happened, then it may be included in a correction. Gryllida 22:07, 1 February 2026 (UTC)
- Wikinews archival policy limits post-publication changes to narrowly scoped factual corrections with documentation. The issues raised in this proposal extend beyond isolated factual errors and include attribution, sourcing, and structural compliance problems, which are not ordinarily addressed through post-archival edits. This is why retraction is being proposed rather than incremental correction.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:05, 2 February 2026 (UTC)
- Keep
Neutral
Comment While on the first glance I couldn't find "smok" in the text of the sources, I haven't re-read them yet. Both Al-Jazeera and Independent clearly show, in video and photograph, that the falling airplane emitted plenty of smoke even before crashing into the ground; whether it was smoking engine, smoking wing, or smoking door, I cannot say right now, I am not an airplane expert, but it was not a cigarette. I don't like the idea of removing a piece of text just because it is plagiarism; re-phrasing would be preferable, so that information would not be lost. If Reuters has such a hostile robots.txt, then some tool, Earwig or whatever else, should alert the contributors against usage of such sources - forcing humans to do Earwig job manually is not sustainable. As it is, I cannot be certain that your points about lack of attribution are valid - information had to have come from somewhere, it just needs to be found where it came from. Will re-read later. Wikiwide (talk) 23:25, 1 February 2026 (UTC)
- To clarify; the video and photographs showing smoke are of the Turkish C-130 crash itself. However, the “smoking engine descending in a flat spin” description originates from Reuters’ background reference to a separate, 2017 US Marine Corps KC-130 accident, not from reporting on this incident.
- Even if the smoking engine statement was about the Turkish crash, for which there is video, Wikinews policy does not permit editors to analyze or speculate. As stated in the neutrality policy, contributors must avoid analysis and speculative interpretation unless explicitly attributed to qualified sources. In this case, we have reporting that sufficiently describes the scene without our interpretation or analysis. The change was not necessary.
- Lastly, while the 'smoke' wording would be a minor issue in isolation, it reflects a broader pattern in this article involving unsupported claims, attribution gaps, and style guide issues that should have been fixed during pre-publication review. The retraction proposal is based on the cumulative impact of these issues rather than any single descriptive detail.
- The plagiarism has already been removed as a priority along with placing a reader-facing note for transparency.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:27, 2 February 2026 (UTC)
Remove (retract with statement and blanking article) There is precedent for retracting articles with fewer issues and also specifically for inadequate reviews. For example:
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- New cave opens to the public in Indiana Retracted for being published while stale
- North Korea launches "early-stage" hypersonic missile Retracted because reviewer added a source
- Wikinews interviews Chiaki Hayashi, Asian Projects Coordinator at Creative Commons Retracted due to poor interview process and for "inadequate and incompetent review of the article".
- I propose the following retraction statement:
Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 15:09, 4 February 2026 (UTC)This article has been retracted because a post-publication review identified multiple policy and guideline failures, including plagiarism, unsupported and misattributed statements, sourcing gaps, attribution problems, and style compliance issues. The cumulative scope of these problems made reliable post-publication correction impractical.
The last version of the article text can be found here.
January 22, 2026
[edit]State reason for deletion request and sign with BigKrow (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2026 (UTC).
Nomination again. BigKrow (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
Comments
[edit]nominating again with my evidence.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by BigKrow (talk • contribs)
- Please add the specific evidence supporting this deletion request.
- Per deletion guidelines and Wikinews:Criteria_for_deletion#Cases_where_deletion_may_be_required, deletion requests must clearly state the applicable criterion and the supporting rationale.
- If no evidence or criterion is provided, the request cannot be evaluated and may be removed as procedurally invalid.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 14:20, 23 January 2026 (UTC)
- This request does not cite any applicable deletion criteria or provide a supporting rationale, so it cannot be evaluated. It has now remained open beyond the recommended, seven-day period.
For reference, a consolidated list of related discussions is available on the article talk page.
As the reviewer of the article, I am noting my involvement for transparency.Absent any objections, I intend to close this request on procedural grounds with no action taken.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 16:23, 7 February 2026 (UTC)- This user is promoting story on other sources as well. @Michael.C.Wright BigKrow (talk) 23:40, 7 February 2026 (UTC)
Votes
[edit] Remove —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BigKrow (talk • contribs) [2]
Abstain As the reviewer of the article, I am abstaining from voting.
On further consideration regarding my previous note re:closing on procedural grounds, I will not close this request myself. An uninvolved administrator is invited to review and take any action necessary.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:23, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
September 11, 2025
[edit]
This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.
This is a proposed retraction of a published article.
As stated on the article talk page: the article contains no attribution, meaning every statement is presented in Wikivoice, asserted by Wikinews.
Additionally, several key statements are unsupported by the sources provided (emphasis added):
- "Survivors described the floods as sudden and catastrophic..."
- "The scale of destruction was unprecedented..."
- "...with dozens of villages damaged or flattened..."
- "The recent flash floods in Pakistan amid heavy monsoon rains have caused one of the deadliest natural disasters in the region..."
- "...amid worsening weather conditions..."
The review summary noted that the last paragraph was “probably AI generated and needs some revision to reduce bias and make it more factual,” meaning the bias was recognized at the time of publication. A 12-hour window was provided for revisions, but the issues were not addressed. Since the article still contains unsupported statements and lacks attribution, and more than 24 hours have passed, the problems cannot be corrected without a substantial rewrite, which WN:ARCHIVE prohibits. Therefore, a correction statement is insufficient; the article should be fully retracted, with its content blanked and replaced by a retraction notice.
As stated by the original author, the article was mostly written by AI. According to WN:AI (a proposed guideline), "Wikinews articles must always reflect human-reviewed accuracy, neutrality, and verification of sources."
Given the issues with WN:NPOV, WN:Source, and WN:AI, I propose this article be retracted.
Comments
[edit]- Comment If consensus is to remove the article, I propose the addition of the following retraction statement and a blanking of the article:
This article has been retracted because it failed to comply with our sourcing policy, neutrality policy and recommended guidance for AI/LLM use.
The last version of the article text can be found here.
Votes
[edit]Please vote using Keep, Remove, Neutral, or Comment followed by signature
Neutral, BigKrow (talk) 18:59, 11 September 2025 (UTC)
- Could you share a bit more about your perspective? For example, do you see a preferred course of action besides retraction, or do you view the article differently than my assessment, or do you think a specific policy or guideline needs to be changed? Your thoughts could help shape consensus before the discussion closes.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 13:09, 12 September 2025 (UTC)
- I will vote per nom. Thanks @Michael.C.Wright BigKrow (talk) 14:59, 12 September 2025 (UTC)
- I didnt get it. Why not do "correction" by removing biased words? Gryllida 20:44, 13 September 2025 (UTC)
- I will vote per nom. Thanks @Michael.C.Wright BigKrow (talk) 14:59, 12 September 2025 (UTC)
- Remove Since this was "mostly" AI generated and includes several unsupported statements, I think we should retract the article. We need to ensure we are not allowing "AI Slop"[3] to creep into Wikinews.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:57, 24 September 2025 (UTC)
- Remove, we should not keep AI-generated articles. Ternera (talk) 21:32, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- Why though? @Ternera BigKrow (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- It is prone to including errors and honestly, it's a more lazy way of writing that does not take much effort. We should focus on keeping quality articles only in my opinion. Ternera (talk) 21:52, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- I love AI though maybe that makes me "lazy too". BigKrow (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- I think we can differentiate between AI-assisted and AI-generated. AI-assisted is permitted, even encouraged for some uses, as briefly discussed in Help:AI.
- AI-generated is frowned upon, discouraged, and in our proposed WN:AI, forbidden.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- I love AI though maybe that makes me "lazy too". BigKrow (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- It is prone to including errors and honestly, it's a more lazy way of writing that does not take much effort. We should focus on keeping quality articles only in my opinion. Ternera (talk) 21:52, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- I have stricken the vote from the above temp. account. It was only active for seven days in December, 2025 and was likely a vandal, though never blocked. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 00:12, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Why though? @Ternera BigKrow (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- This request has been open for several months and participation has been limited.
If anyone has additional views on the appropriate resolution—whether correction
or retraction—please add them. - Otherwise, the discussion may be ready for closure.Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 00:18, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- 1. I am
Weak oppose to deletion, because event was occurred and there is a proposal to salvage article as shown below. - 2. Suggest reword 2nd and 3rd para as one para as follows:
- "Dozens of villages were damaged or flattened. Emergency response efforts were in progress. Happening amid heavy monsoon rains, there were hundreds dead. Emergency authorities and communities faced challenges with rescue and recovery. The rain was ongoing at the time of the report as the government was continuing rescue operations."
- This goes to 102, barely above the word limit for an article. I tried to make it as neutral and unambiguous as possible.
- and add correction notice
- "In this article several statements about the extent and impact of the torrential rains were over exaggerated, and opinion was presented as fact, going against neutrality requirement. This has been corrected by removing opinionated pieces and shortening the text."
- Regaɾds, -- Gryllida (talk) 00:31, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- > Dozens of villages were damaged or flattened.
- Which source supports that and how?
- > Emergency authorities and communities faced challenges with rescue and recovery.
- Who actually said this? It should be attributed.
- > The rain was ongoing at the time of the report
- Which source supports that and how?Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Reviewer) 01:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- ok, cbs news wrote:
- One resident told AFP that the flash floods felt like "the end of the world" as the ground shook with the force of the water
- article text can be:
- One of the survivors described the floods as catastrophic
- cbd news wrote:
- "Mohammad Khan, 53, said the floods "came so fast that many could not leave their homes.""
- article text can be
- one of the survivors described the floods as sudden
- bbc source text was:
- In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble on Friday after a flood crashed through a Himalayan village, killing at least 60 people and washing away dozens more.
- ai hallucinated as:
- Dozens of villages were damaged or flattened.
- should be
- Pir Baba and Malik Pura villages were most hit by the heavy rains, with most fatalities reported in these areas.
- re "Emergency authorities and communities faced challenges with rescue and recovery." could remove that part.
- leaving with this thing to put for 2nd and 3rd para:
- CBS News reported some survivors describing floods as sudden or catastrophic. Emergency response efforts were in progress. Happening amid heavy monsoon rains, there were hundreds dead. CBS News also reported excessive rains being increasingly common in the India's Himalayan regions and Pakistan's northern areas, attributing them to climate change.
- Correction text:
- In this article several statements about the extent and impact of the torrential rains were over exaggerated, and opinion was presented as fact, going against neutrality requirement. This has been corrected by removing opinionated pieces and shortening the text. A passage was added to clarify the location and cause as required by 5W.
- This is kind of stretched out, because not supposed to expand article after it was published. I tried to do minimal additions to just barely meet the 100 words requirement. If this is an sisue, then, I think can ignore that rule and go with
- CBS News reported some survivors describing floods as sudden or catastrophic. Emergency response efforts were in progress. Happening amid heavy monsoon rains, there were hundreds dead.
- Correction text:
- In this article several statements about the extent and impact of the torrential rains were over exaggerated, and opinion was presented as fact, going against neutrality requirement. This has been corrected by removing opinionated pieces and shortening the text. The article became shorter than the required length, and was preserved for archival purposes.
- Gryllida (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- ok, cbs news wrote:
- 1. I am
Undeletion requests
[edit]Proposed deletions
[edit]For reference, it is currently March 12, 2026.