Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-03-27/Deletion report

The news, the memes, the group DMs, and the edit wars have been subsumed by a singular topic in the last month. Most of us know what it is; indeed, some of us are living through it. It follows, then, that article deletion discussions would take a similar tack. Indeed, the largest and most-active discussions of this month have been overwhelmingly focused on events, people, and topics related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with few exceptions. Usually, the deletion report explores a variety of different discussions, but this month they're quite similar, so I will try a different format. This is a fairly short deletion report, owing to time constraints; if you want more detailed information (including a breakdown of !voting patterns, close trends and overall activity) feel free to check out the March index of the Oracle for Deletion, which I wrote a few months ago and use to gather statistics for these reports.

Of the ten longest AfDs (by character count), six were related to the conflict in Ukraine. Of the ten most active (by !vote count), seven were Ukraine-related; four articles appeared in both lists. By characters:

• Marina Ovsyannikova, a Russian journalist arrested in March after publicly voicing her opposition to the war on a live news broadcast (54 !votes, 69,497 bytes, closed "keep").
• Russian fascism (ideology), an alleged POVFORK concerning a school of far-right Russian nationalist ideology (22 !votes, 49,940 bytes, closed "no consensus").
• List of Russian generals killed during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a list of... well, you get the idea (73 !votes, 48,329 bytes, closed "keep").
• Vitaly Gerasimov, a Russian Ground Forces major general and possible member of the above-mentioned list (36 !votes, 41,284 bytes, closed "keep").
• Historical background of the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, an overview article nominated for deletion by one of its editors after a dispute regarding inclusion of content in the article (10 !votes, 31,358 bytes, closed "keep").
• Azov Special Purpose Regiment, another alleged WP:POVFORK, this time about a rename of the right-wing Azov Battalion after its incorporation into the Ukrainian National Guard. (18 !votes, 31,207 bytes, currently ongoing).

By !votes:

• Mark Bernstein (Wikimedian), an edge case bringing up WP:OUTING concerns (29 !votes, 29,293 bytes, procedurally closed after WP:BLP1E concerns were addressed by a retitling of the article).
• Battle of Techno House 2022, a meme video of a Russian soldier shooting a door for no apparent reason (26 !votes, 25,020 bytes, closed "delete").
• Russian Kyiv Convoy, a procession of Russian military vehicles sent off towards the capital city of Ukraine (20 !votes, 20,996 bytes, closed "no consensus").

There were, however, some discussions representing other topics. These represented a minority of both lists: between them, only 7 concerned subjects unrelated to the war in Ukraine. By characters:

• Jessica Foschi, a former competition swimmer who was disqualified from the 1995 national championships due to apparent steroid use (16 !votes, 75,443 bytes, currently ongoing).
• Werewolves in popular culture — Awoo!^[1] (18 !votes, 34,194 bytes, closed "merge").
• Checkley Sin, a Hong Kong record producer and political candidate (6 !votes, 33,660 bytes, currently ongoing).
• STANLIB, a South African asset management company currently on its second AfD nomination (3 !votes, 32,509 bytes, currently ongoing).

By !votes:

• Archishman Sarker, a scholar in the humanities suspected by many participants of writing a Wikipedia autobiography (23 !votes, 16,008 bytes, closed "delete").
• Vaush, a left-wing YouTube pundit at his second AfD nomination, dedicated to proving that new media acolytes can be just as good as traditional TV talking heads at starting drama on Twitter. (20 !votes, 26,500 bytes, still ongoing).
• Randolph Lablache, a football player whose deletion discussion invoked long-running WP:NSPORTS concerns (19 !votes, 26,183 bytes, closed "delete").