Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 British Library cyberattack

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. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2023 British Library cyberattack

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This two-paragraph news article seems like a slam-dunk (i.e. SPEEDY) Merge&Redirect per WP:NOTNEWS; does not seem to meet WP:EVENT. I'm not sure why the two paragraphs were not simply added to British Library, with its own Level 4 header if necessary, under British Library#Electronic collections. Softlavender (talk) 10:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Softlavender (talk) 10:51, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Crime, Events, and Russia. Deltaspace⁴² (talk • contribs) 11:48, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A redirect makes sense, yes; the two paragraphs can easily be merged. Drmies (talk) 14:49, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment after being unable to use the BL catalog I googled and found the NYer article and "How to Lose a Library" which both gave the distict impression that this was a signal event in the history of what used to be called the Information Age. The attack seemed independently notable distinct from the institution at large (like Notre-Dame de Paris & Notre-Dame fire) but maybe I overestimated the significance of databases being offline. jengod (talk) 17:10, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
~~Merge into BL then ~~delete~~ redirect~~ while the information herein is noteworthy, its independence from the British Library is unclear, and the info could just go into a sub-section. Chumpih ^t 00:11, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why delete the history here? This is a reasonable redirect. Elli (talk | contribs) 02:50, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point. Redirect is good. Altered previous !vote. Chumpih ^t 04:18, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep having been swayed by Jfire's arguments below. Chumpih ^t 01:04, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to British Library -- Separately, it does not pass WP:NEVENT for lack of WP:SECONDARY sources. I also cannot see this subject passing WP:LASTING, WP:PERSISTENCE or WP:GEOSCOPE as it didn't seem to make a ripple in international news. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 21:56, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to British Library. The article is short and would fit well under a subheading PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - the subject is notable and could be expanded. Otherwise, merging the information into BL would not be a bad idea as it means the information can be kept and the article can be remade again in the future.DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 12:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Nothing much to merge — the incident is already referred to in the British Library article see British Library#Online, electronic and digital resources under the Elecronic collections subheading, so all that's needed is a targeted redirect. Another redirect/merge worth considering is to Rhysida (hacker group). Rupples (talk) 23:29, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - this is certainly a notable issue and it will only get more important (to BL users and the rest of the world) as we learn more about what happened and how they responded. Having this as a separate article means there is a special place for information on this significant event to be collected as news reports, magazine articles, and - eventually - the Library's own incident post mortem report - become available. Why is this article important? Because all similar institutions around the world need to learn lessons from it. ZoneAlarm5 (talk) 15:47, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:29, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are a lot of articles about this—not just one-off articles that appeared when it happened, but later-in-time articles that talk about its impact and implications. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. It's also not necessarily an isolated event; the Toronto Public Library suffered a similar attack not long before (see here). Whatever the state of the article now, it could easily be built out into a healthy standalone article. --Usernameunique (talk) 18:38, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Meets WP:NEVENT, which says that events are very likely to be notable if they have widespread (national or international) impact and were very widely covered in diverse sources, especially if also re-analyzed afterwards. All three of these prongs are met: this event had widespread national impact in the U.K., with the national library being taken offline for several months; it was widely covered in mainstream international news outlets such as the The New Yorker and New York Times, IT and cybersecurity-focused media such as The Register and Infosecurity Magazine, and museum and library journals such as Museums Journal and The Art Newspaper; and many of these articles contain detailed analysis or commentary about the wider impact of the event, e.g. Museums, galleries and archives have been urged to tighten their cyber security following the massive ransomware attack on the British Library and what can arts bodies do to combat ransomware threats?. Jfire (talk) 19:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well argued. I've changed my stance above. Chumpih ^t 01:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Jfire and Usernameunique. It is essentially a stub right now but it turns out this isn't "just" your every day cyber attack – the implications for other libraries, museums, and arts organizations worldwide is significant, and the fact that the British Library still isn't back online, months later, tells you it's BAD. That said, some of the coverage is still so recent that it's understandable why it was kind of hard to see what it all looked like in aggregate. All our energy now should be directed toward expanding the article and incorporating the many sources that have been identified in this discussion, also to provide readers with vital information they are looking for. Cielquiparle (talk) 06:06, 1 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per sources substantial reliable sources found that demonstrate the lasting impact of this event. This is much more than a simple outage and newer sources show that. As an aside, I only found this AfD because my research for another article was disrupted by the attack. Schminnte^{[talk to me]} 15:34, 3 January 2024 (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.