Talk:2010 Edmonton municipal election

Page protected because of edit warring over deletion of candidate information
After adding a variety of material such as:
 * - fact David Dorward is an accountant and is, by his own account (cited to the Edmonton Journal), "pro-airport"
 * - fact Hana Razga is a former federal NDP candidate
 * - fact Chinwe Okelu has been a competitive candidate in several previous races for councilor
 * - fact many candidates have run for council before with mixed results

User 117Avenue deleted this material and more and further changed the formatting in order to, by his own account, make it as difficult as possible for future editors to add back candidate information. According to 117Avenue, "[t]here is no way of describing a candidate without making him sound better than others." He nonetheless appears to make a general exception for incumbents, as he has no apparent problem with inviting readers to click through their wikilinked names in this article to other articles that go on at length about the politician and his or her accomplishments. My advice to other editors here is to not be afraid to challenge 117Avenue's ongoing deletionism. If the material is verifiable, presented consistent with a neutral point of view, reliably sourced, and consistent with the policy of not giving undue weight, the material may stand, notwithstanding this reverting editor's barnstars, reviewer rights, contribution count, aspirations to adminship and what have you (studies have shown that novice editors get reverted many times more often than experienced editors). Just because a candidate in this election is not notable by Wikipedia standards prior to this election, or does not maintain a Twitter account or webpage, that does not mean that he or she should necessarily remain in obscurity. From Wikipedia's main page: Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.Bdell555 (talk) 05:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's come to my attention that my comment above is not universally recognized as appropriate for an article Talk page. Any editor may delete my comment above (and this whole section if not responded to) if the content dispute at issue here has been settled such that information about candidates in this election may be included in the article on a case by case (as opposed to blanket deletion) basis.Bdell555 (talk) 07:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I might add that I do not currently see a WP:consensus in favour of not adding candidate information, since I note that besides 117Avenue deleting candidate information on this article added by editors other than myself, he has deleted a great deal of information from the Calgary and Lethbridge election pages added by others (see here and here). If this information should not be included why is such a varied group of editors adding it and, as far as I can tell, only one editor removing it?Bdell555 (talk) 21:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Every time you make a comment, I get more confused with what you are trying to say. What does "Any editor may delete my comment above" and "I don't object to deleting my Talk comment" mean? I thought it meant I could delete your comment. I am sorry for any personal attacks I may have made at you. I was performing a planned reorganization, which just so happened to be after your edits. The summary "rewrite to prevent advertising" was not directed at you, it was simply an explanation of the rewrite. My following edits were not intended as reverts, but though research, and an edit conflict. After considering your comments, I think a short summary of each candidate can be added below the tables, like the previous election. These summaries should be kept short, and should explain where they come from. I think detailing their platform will cause future promotion violations, and a bias article. My initial hesitation for including such a section, was a concern for the lesser known candidates, if someone doesn't have a sentence on them, it will seem like an unbalanced article. I think that your opinion of me promoting the incumbents doesn't seem logical, as I was giving them no favour, other than linking to the appropriate article, which is Wikipedia practice. I do not like the statement of promotion to challenge me, as I see this as a personal attack. After considering your comments, I have kept the candidate summaries on the Calgary and Lethbridge articles, what do you think of the layout, could it work for this one? I used the layout of Edmonton municipal election, 2007. I am not sure if you are completely informed on my edits to the Calgary and Lethbridge election articles, I didn't remove any of the information, I just moved it, am I mistaken? 117Avenue (talk) 03:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * There was an "if" after ""Any editor may delete my comment", and even if there wasn't, you didn't advance this argument claiming permission either of the two times you deleted my comment, you instead cited, in the latest case, WP:CFRD #2, which wouldn't have applied even if my comment did constitute "incivility, personal attacks or conduct accusations" since those things are explicitly excluded. As for personal attacks, as you acknowledged elsewhere, you were describing your edits as if "Bdell555 had not been there" such that I dare say I've been ignored too much for there to be much opportunity for personal attacks for me to take exception to! Thus I do appreciate your current comments here which acknowledge the reality of dispute.  If advising editors to challenge those who do not appear to agree that Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" constitutes a personal attack, then, yes, I am guilty, just as I would admit to being guilty of characterizing that principle of openness as a cornerstone of the Wikimedia project.  With respect to other municipal election articles, you applied the same formatting to them that you applied here, advising me elsewhere that unless this formatting was applied, there would be "a section allowing for candidates to describe themselves..."  That's a deletionist policy in my view and I don't think it reflects the consensus view.  I suggest applying your preferred policy against "detailing [a candidate's] platform" somewhere on Wikipedia that has a lot of editor attention and seeing if other editors agree with your deletion.  If, for example, you were to nominate Political positions of Sarah Palin for deletion, and the editor consensus was to agree with your recommendation to delete, then I would agree that your position is in accordance with the general consensus on Wikipedia.  Finally, I cannot agree that you "used the layout of Edmonton municipal election, 2007," if you had, you would have been satisfied with just ADDING your results tables, creating a new section for them above the existing candidate summaries without deleting the candidate descriptions (I might also note that the 2007 article included information about most of the candidates' platforms/priorities).  Notwithstanding all of the above, I do stand corrected with respect to my charge that you "deleted a great deal of information from the Calgary and Lethbridge election pages."  I had too quickly assumed that because your formatting changes were accompanied with extensive deletion here that they were accompanied with similar deletion there.Bdell555 (talk) 05:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Moving forward.... Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, the layout of Edmonton 2007 I applied to Calgary and Lethbridge, and was proposing it be used here after the protection droped, not that I had already applied it to Edmonton 2010. However, I do object to the edit you just made to Edmonton 2007, it is precisely the unbalanced article I described in my last comment. I would like to keep the summaries down to one sentence, like Calgary and Lethbridge. In your edit there are entire paragraphs describing Dowling and Whatcott, but nothing for Kheireddine; there are entire paragraphs describing McKenna and Thiele, and nothing on Vasquez; ward 4 doesn't have any descriptions, except for one. Not to mention the information is three years old, the campaign sites are useless, and we don't even know if half of it is still true. In my opinion the section should have been deleted a month after the election, the "conversation" you joined ended two days after the election. 117Avenue (talk) 03:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The situation has indeed moved forward, although I think concerns about my specific edits to, say, the Edmonton 2007 article (as opposed to my editing philosophy/policies which is a germane topic anywhere) can be taken up on the Talk page for the 2007 article. I'll just note the one thing most relevant here (aside from the incongruence between your view that an election article should change substantially after election day and your view that formatting for elections results needs to be added and maintained well before results are available, as if the article cannot be changed after people have voted), which is that I never contributed a word to the 2007 article, I just undid your extensive deletion, such that if that article is "unbalanced" as you say, it is because it was consensus of the editors who developed that page to have it read as it now does. With respect to this article, it is my understanding that when there is a lack of Wikipedia coverage with respect to a subject - in this case a candidate for office - the recommended solution is to add that coverage, not delete Wikipedia coverage of another candidate, especially when the deletion is being applied to a more notable candidate. If there were an "entire paragraph" for Kheireddine and not a word for Dowling last time around, I would have acknowledged an argument for slimming some of the Kheireddine material, particularly if the availability of sourced information about both was limited and especially limited for Kheireddine. But that's primarily because Dowling finished THIRD and Kheireddine dead last in NINTH. In this same vein it would not be POV to say Vasquez was an "also ran", even before the election results; it would rather be POV to suggest that he was NOT an "also ran" by implying that his notability during the campaign period was comparable to McKenna's and Thiele's.  I believe you are substituting a principle of equality in Wikipedia's coverage for the true principle of neutrality (aside, again, from your odd exception of the wiki-linked candidates who already have articles... WP:POVFORK holds that editors cannot evade issues about a subject's coverage in an article by having it off-article but tied back in with a wiki-link). A neutral POV would follow the lead of the independent (ie non-campaign-affiliated) external sources in terms of how coverage is weighted. A key difference here is between your activist approach about how to cover the election and a passive approach that is more reserved about any one editor's idea about how it should be done. The most pressing need right now, however, is for recognition of the reality that Wikipedia is developed incrementally. It simply isn't reasonable to demand that no information be added for a candidate unless information is simultaneously added for all candidates. Editors who feel as you do that there is a lack of balance would be better informing the public by taking it upon themselves to ADD information where they believe it to be lacking than to delete well-sourced, neutrally presented material elsewhere in the article. That said, I'll grant that you've moved on this issue enough that it is approaching a WP:UNDUE weight issue on which reasonable people can disagree, and I've added a strikethrough to what I said at the start of this section that you considered especially unfair.Bdell555 (talk) 20:43, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ken Atkinson
117Avenue has wikilinked Ward 4 candidate Ken Atkinson to a former federal MP from Ontario. I see no evidence from here or elsewhere that this is the same Ken Atkinson. I accordingly think the wikilink should be removed absent a source cited here that this Ward 4 candidate is, indeed, a former Ontario MP.Bdell555 (talk) 05:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay you got me, I made a mistake, I am human, use editrequest. 117Avenue (talk) 05:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

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