Talk:2008 United States vice presidential debate/Archive 1

Purpose?
Do we really need a separate article for the VP debate? This can be merged into the main debate article. If for some reason this split is deemed necessary, then the information about the VP debate in the main article needs to be cut way down, to a very short summary. —KCinDC (talk) 04:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it belongs in the main debate article too. Wasted Time R (talk) 05:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If you think it's not notable enough to exist as a standalone article you need to file an Afd, backchannel abusive tactics that try to circumvent established processes and want to get rid of the article any way possible, and outside Afd won't work here. Follow policy, follow procedure. Hobartimus (talk)
 * An article topic is either notable or not-notable. We exactly have the Afd process for deciding questions like this in a community process where they are listed and available for comment. It is setup so other members of the community can comment, during the 5 days of an Afd and community consensus can develop. It is highly inappropriate to attempt to circumvent this established process by talkpage suggestions of deletion. Hobartimus (talk) 05:45, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Merging is a perfectly normal part of Wikipedia. This has nothing to do with AfD, nor with removing any material. —KCinDC (talk) 05:48, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You used wording "Purpose?" "Do we really need", that are clearly indicative of challenging the notability of the article, and indicative of deletion intention which can only be done at Afd. From the phrases you used it seems likely that you see it yourself that the article due to breadth of topic, established early status and many sources, easy expandability make an Afd deletion unlikely and want to use a merge to achieve declaring the article "non-notable". I see that you never listed this at Proposed mergers where merger proposals are listed which is another reason why suggestion looked not a genuine merge proposal but a deletion intention outside of Afd. Hobartimus (talk) 06:02, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * As it says on that page, "This page is an incomplete list of proposed mergers. Anyone may list any article merger proposal here. This is optional, and it does not replace any of the other steps in the merger process." And there's no need for an AfD to perform a merge. If the article expands so that it isn't redundant with the main debate article, then it will no longer seem mergeable, but in that case the section in the main article needs to be cut down. Just try being less hostile and explain what the point of this seemingly redundant article is, as you see it — perhaps I'll agree. —KCinDC (talk) 06:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Simple, I feel the topic is, important, "notable" as we call it, enough to warrant a standalone article. This is the fundamental reason for any article's existence. Now there is a process that is used to determine consensus regarding notability of topics and I feel the article would pass that test of notability with flying colors. I think if you do some research into sources covering this topic that you will see that there are more than enough to write a full, detailed article even possibly FA quality some day as the topic is well defined and sources are plentiful. Hobartimus (talk) 06:19, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Hobartimus, you're way off base here regarding process. No one is questioning whether the veep debate is notable or not, just whether it should be represented by a standalone article or should be included with the rest of the 2008 presidential debates.  This is an editorial decision that reasonable people can differ on, and AfD is not the best forum for discussing the decision.  Editors use the "mergeto/mergefrom" tags to make proposals like this all the time, I've seen dozens of cases.  This is not an example of "backchannel abusive tactics" as you claim.  Wasted Time R (talk) 11:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That's silly. Either a topic is notable enough to exist as a standalone article or it's not notable enough to exist as a standalone article. The fundamental basis of all articles existence is that they cover a standalone notable topic. Do you agree that it's a topic notable enough to have it's own article or not? Do you agree that it's notable enough to have it's own article? You have to answer this question first, before we can move forward. Hobartimus (talk) 12:03, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The United States presidential election debates, 2004 article fit all three presidential debates and the veep debate in one article. I think the same should be done for United States presidential election debates, 2008.  I didn't see anything spectacularly complicated coming out of last night's debate to warrant the length that a separate article would give.  Both candidates did what they set out to do, and the Ifill issue turned out to be much ado over nothing.  Wasted Time R (talk) 12:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Please answer the question, do you think it's notable enough for it's own article or do you believe it is not notable enough. Notable enough, not notable enough, which is it? I'm struggling to decipher the answer here because earlier you said that "No one is questioning whether the veep debate is notable or not" and yet the main question is exactly notability here. Notable enough, or not notable enough to have it's own article?Hobartimus (talk) 12:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The article has only just started to be written. It still talks about the debate in the future tense. Why would you merge it? —Pengo 13:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The vice presidential debate easily satisfies the formal notability criteria, and if people are willing to devote the work to it we could easily have a good article on the subject. However, the debate itself was a bit of an anticlimax and in the long run, for purposes of creating a good encyclopedia, we should probably keep it in the main debate article.  Most likely, within a few weeks nobody will be much interested in this and the article will suffer neglect.  So I suggest keeping it as a section in the main article.  If I'm wrong we can always spin it back out.  No harm either way.  If we keep an independent article and it grows shaggy we can always merge it back a few months from now.  AfD is not necessary for these kinds of organization questions. Wikidemon (talk) 18:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * To address Hobartimus' question indirectly, there are probably 100 million notable subjects in the world but only 3 million articles at present and several tens of thousands of active editors to write them, so we have to pick and choose. Notability is a filter but people still have to decide what's worth writing about.  Personally, I think that hinges on two things - first, how can we best present the material in the context of the family of articles on the overall subject, and second, are there enough people willing to make the effort to write a decent article.  Wikidemon (talk) 18:39, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I find your concerns valid and if it will become a neglected article it should be merged. We can easily determine that by looking at the number of edits, sources and text expansion when some time passed. However there is no possible way to know if that will ultimately happen or not. Hobartimus (talk) 19:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the way such spinoffs are usually handled is to wait until the section becomes big enough to warrant its own article. I don't understand why it was necessary to depart from that procedure in this case. I would favor merging the small amount of new text in this article into the main article and waiting to see if the section grows larger. If the spinoff is to be kept, though, those maintaining it should trim the text in the main debate article down to a basic summary and change the title of this article to something that matches the title style used for other debate articles. —KCinDC (talk) 19:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes except it was not a spinoff, this article had much more content than the section in the other article at the time it was created, however people started to stuff that with content and for some odd reason the old one is still better linked and more popular or whatever so it gets expanded. Once editors get confident that this article remains and their work will not be lost I'm sure this article will develop in a great way. Hobartimus (talk) 19:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Title
How about moving to "United States vice presidential debate, 2008" (with a similar move for the 1984 article)? That would make the title more consistent with the main debate articles. —KCinDC (talk) 05:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * As I said earlier, I'm okay with it. Hobartimus (talk) 05:35, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Whatever it's moved to, proper capitalization should be used. It's Vice Presidential. And "United States Vice Presidential" would probably be better. Little Red Riding Hood  talk  05:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Why would "vice presidential" be capitalized? It's not a proper name. Check your style guides. —KCinDC (talk) 05:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm unaware of any style guides (Chicago Manual, Associated Press, etc.) that would capitalize "vice-presidential" in this context, except perhaps the U.S. Government Printing Office style manual, which also does things like capitalizing "Federal" and "Nation" when referring to the United States, which would be inappropriate for Wikipedia, which isn't a U.S. government publication. Dictionaries differ about whether to use a hyphen in "vice-presidential", but I'm leaning toward using it (as the American Heritage Dictionary does), since Vice President of the United States uses it. —KCinDC (talk) 14:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow. I've never seen cases where Vice Presidential wasn't capitalized, but when I went to look at news sources, they didn't do it.  I'm surprised.  Never mind, then.   Little Red Riding Hood  talk  00:27, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Polls and Surveys
Since no one else did, I added some media feedback on the debate including polls and surveys. I gave it its own Reception section and tried to avoid including comments/information from blatant Republicans and Democrats that could be potentially biased. Hopefully it will suffice. Cale (talk) 07:27, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Picture?
That Jpg is flat out horrible. We need a better one.Saberwolf116 (talk) 02:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that image (along with its distortion!) is only temporary. The image's distortion is due to a replacement image I've already uploaded but that hasn't "taken" yet. That is, the replacement image's sizing is now in effect, but not the replacement image itself, which results in the old image being distorted like it is now. This has always fixed itself eventually in this situation in the past -- I assume as soon as the system rewrites the new image and deletes the old one; but let's wait and see what happens .   $\sim$ Justmeherenow     03:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I've changed the image's name and reuploaded it. Thanks. $\sim$ Justmeherenow     03:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality
While looking at the article, the section about the content of the debate seems to be heavily skewed toward stating what Gov. Palin said, leaving very little information regarding what Sen. Biden said. Hopefully this can be resolved and the commentary eliminated. Casey (talk) 04:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)