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 keep. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:48, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Counterattack (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This is unverified and is probably original research. Because of the large number of one- or two-edit contributors, I have not notified any individual contributors of this AfD. It has been around since 2004. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 08:58, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Dictdef. TallNapoleon (talk) 09:38, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and improve, valid encyclopedic topic even though the information there is suboptimal. Stifle (talk) 11:51, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Apparently neither TallNapoleon nor Roger Davies have actually looked for sources themselves, as they are supposed to before nominating an article for deletion on grounds of unverifiability. It took me a mere 2 minutes to find a discussion of counterattacks, in both warfare and sport, in Schneier and a further 2 to find a discussion of counterattacks in warfare in Johns. I didn't bother including the further sources that discussed specific examples of counterattacking, such as ISBN 0044450532 which discusses the failure of Italian military leaders to employ effective counterattacks until the the last few months of World War One. But there were several of those, too. There seems to be plenty of source material upon which to base an article, and what we have already is clearly a stub with scope for expansion. I encourage the aforementioned editors to look for sources yourselves before nominating an article without sources for deletion, as Wikipedia:Deletion policy, the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion, and User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage all say to do. Keep. Uncle G (talk) 12:06, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep The idea of a counterattack is one of the most basic in military tactics, and (aside from the ones added by Uncle G since this was nominated) you can surely find tons and tons of sources discussing it. There aren't many things of any sort in military affairs that are better known than this. Nyttend (talk) 12:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep There is little doubt that this article can be improved content wise, but the concept of Counterattack is so basic and widespread that it transcends a mere dictionary term. A simple Goggle search will find countless uses of the term in the context outlined in this article. For example: [1], [2].--Mike Cline (talk) 14:06, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Thousands of reliable sources with substantial coverage of this important aspect of werfare are easily found. It is a highly encyclopedic topic and Wikipedia should have an article about it. If an article needs improvement, then edit it. What is the big idea of the sudden attempt to demilitarize Wikipedia by deleting so many articles related to important military topics? It seems disruptive and "pointy." Edison (talk) 16:15, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Although this is potentially a huge subject, structurally this article is nothing more an unverified dictionary definition. I cannot find a source that supports it as it is. I can find many much simpler definitions and I can find plenty of material alluding to specific counter attacks, which might make a good List of military counterattacks but I cannot find the two together. Incidentally, from the examples (from computing, using counterattack figuratively) given above, it is far from clear what direction this should go in. Perhaps the route is turn this article into a disambiguation page, with separate (new) articles on Counterattack (military) and Counterattack (computing). If this finds support, I'll write them. --ROGER DAVIES ^talk 17:37, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep—Basically a no-brainer. The counterattack is a well known and widely used combat tactic.—RJH (talk) 18:28, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep along with the similar articles. There should be a few tens of thousands of print references from the Romans on down. The scope and title--whether to refer to purely the military use, or the more general uses-- can be discussed on the talk page. DGG (talk) 23:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep If the nom sees the article as having potential, which it clearly does, I don't know why the hell it's at AFD, as all administrators obviously know that AFD isn't cleanup. SashaNein (talk) 19:34, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as per most everyone. Valid topic; sources exist. Edward321 (talk) 23:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I absolutely agree that the concept is notable. However, my fear is that any article that was sufficiently general would be a dictdef, and any that wasn't would be too focused on particular things. That said this should probably be closed perWP:SNOW. TallNapoleon (talk) 00:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - this is exactly the kind of article which would be voted in for WP:COTW back when it was active—it's highly notable but is currently a stub. Someone should expand and source the article, not delete it. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - aproximately 2 million stubs on the english wiki are unverified stubs, so why do we have to delete such military tactics articles? --Eurocopter (talk) 13:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and expand. It's a shame such an important topic is but a pitfull stub... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:34, 12 October 2008 (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.