Brion wrote: Because it's not very informative, changes with little notice (therefore will likely not be maintained well), and would probably be better served by linking to the embassies' home pages which will have more information?
Dan wrote in reply I still think it's bad to delete npov content, even if it's incomplete.
The problem, Dan, is that for any article to focus on a country's relationship with only one country is not NPOV. If an article on say, Canada, Australia or New Zealand only listed the diplomatic relationship between that country and the UK, it would implicitly be suggesting a special relationship between the country and the UK over other states, or that Wikipedia believed there was a special relationship that required special mention. That by definition is POV, not NPOV.
The problem isn't that it is the US, it is that only one country is mentioned in these articles. Whether it was the US, UK, Ireland, China or Outer Mongolia is irrelevant; focusing simply on one country and listing its diplomatic relationship exclusively gives that relationship an implicit extra weight. We should not do that. The only way to introduce a balance would be to add in other countries, but that is a POV minefield; use too many European states and it would look eurocentric. Too many western countries and it would look as though it was giving the west additional weight. Too many African states and it would look like it was giving Africa special weight. So either to achieve absolute balance you mention ALL diplomatic relationships, or none. All diplomatic relationships would be a nightmare to construct, would date quickly and would dominate most articles on countries because maybe 10% of the article space would be taken up with that country's information, and 90% with a list of their diplomatic relationships with 150 countries or more, possibly 300 if one takes each country's representative in the country whose page it is on, and that country's own embassies and ambassadors to each country with whom it has diplomatic relations.
I understand totally how this problem arose and don't doubt for one moment the genuine reasons behind it. But as it stands it send out the message that the most important diplomatic relationship countries have is with the US. That is highly POV. A far better solution would be to pull all that info out of separate articles and pull it together in an article on [[US Ambassadors and diplomats]], which in time could be augmented by pages on anything from Congolese Ambassadors and diplomats to Irish, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, Argentinian, etc etc etc. That could be linked to pages on what is a [[head of state]], on what is a [[Letter of Credence]], on what legally diplomacy and diplomatic immunity means, on the differing types of diplomatic relationships (head of state to head of state with ambassadors, government to government through Charges d'Affaires) But in its present form it is unworkable and POV.
JT
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