User:Geo Swan/opinions/Applying POLITICIAN to individuals who don't meet the criteria of GNG

I drafted this on a talk page of an article that had been prodded. I've copied this here, because that article may be deleted, and other articles may be prodded for similar reasons, needing the same defence. Geo Swan (talk) 17:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC) =Should this article be subject to a prod?=

I can't dispute this article on Afghan politician "lacks significant coverage". Ali Mohammad doesn't measure up to the criteria of WP:GNG -- the general notability guidelines we expect most articles to measure up to.

However, we do have special notability guidelines. Those special notability guidelines offer more relaxed inclusion guidelines for certain selected articles. In particular WP:POLITICIAN offers more relaxed inclusion guidelines for individuals who have held office at the national or provincial level.

Why? Why did wikipedians first put exceptions of this kind in place? I always thought that we relaxed the inclusion guidelines for politicians, for winners of their nation's highest medals, for sports figures, in order to offer comprehensive coverage. Ordinary encyclopedias offer articles on individuals who may not have accomplished much -- other than reach a national office -- in order to be comprehensive. I thought that we wanted to be at least as comprehensive as ordinary encyclopedias.

If the wikipedia were to cover some politicians, and not others, some readers might wonder whether they had detected a lapse from WP:Wikipedia is not censored. Way back in 2005, when I was inexperienced, when the wikipedia was newer, and had looser standards, and, when the first articles I wrote were nominated for deletion, I looked at articles on members of the US Congress. In 2005 I didn't have to look very far before I found one for an individual that said practically nothing about him.

I can't remember whether I cited his article as an example anywhere. The guideline WP:OTHERSTUFF had been written then, and someone could have cited it to me.

The interesting thing is that, a few years later, I went back to that Congressman's article, to see whether I should consider pointing to it in another AFD discussion. I found that the US guy's article had been fleshed out. He turned out to be a formerly closeted gay man. That may explain why, in 2005, his article was shorter than other members of Congress. I suspect he or his staff may have cut his article back to nothing in an attempt to keep him in the closet.

With regard to Ali Mohammad, and most members of Afghanistan's national and provincial legislatures, together with his opposite numbers in the national and provincial legislatures in less prominent countries around the world -- since whatever press coverage of them would mainly never get translated into English, they are unlikely to ever measure up to the GNG. But, in the interests of remaining comprehensive, and continuing to represent our project as a world project, rather than an ethnocentric project only focussed on the Anglosphere, I think we should continue to interpret POLITICIAN broadly, to protect articles on national politicians from smaller countries and non-English speaking countries.

A new American President makes 3,000 Presidential appointments, cabinet secretaries, heads of Federal agencies, ambassadors, and so on. If their office is a national office, I think they should all be considered protected by POLITICIAN.

I've written about some smaller countries, where a person can reach national office with just a few hundred votes. I think POLITICIAN applies to them too. Geo Swan (talk) 17:21, 1 March 2016 (UTC)