Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2003 Oakville municipal election


 * 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 delete‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. The views presented to 'delete' were probably marginally more grounded in policy than those opposite, and were definitely better-supported. On that basis I find that a consensus exists to delete these articles. Daniel (talk) 11:51, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

2003 Oakville municipal election

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)
 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)
 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Two minimally-sourced articles about municipal council elections in a suburban town. Wikipedia long ago deprecated the idea that we need a standalone article about every town or city council election on earth -- what we need to see, to render a town or city council election notable enough for a Wikipedia article, is a significant volume and depth of reliable source coverage about the election to pass our notability criteria for events by establishing some context (specific issues that were debated, specific campaign proposals, etc.) for what would make the event significant to a wider audience than just Oakville alone. But these are both just results tables with boilerplate process introductions, featuring absolutely no content about any specific issues that may have been involved in the campaign -- and one is referenced solely to the muncipal government's own primary source election results on its own self-published website, while the other adds just one piece of "incumbent mayor announces that she won't run again" in the town's own community hyperlocal, which isn't enough coverage to pass NEVENT all by itself. In addition, it warrants note that the established consensus of WP:CANADA for Ontario municipal elections has long been to have one omnibus article per county, region or district, rather than separate articles for each individual town or city in a county, region or district -- so Halton Region articles might be fine, if somebody can actually be bothered to write substantive articles with proper context and sourcing to establish their significance, but Oakville doesn't need its own standalone articles separately from Halton, and there isn't nearly enough context or sourcing here to make "move these to Halton Region and walk away" a viable alternative. Bearcat (talk) 17:21, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politics and Canada. Bearcat (talk) 17:21, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. I believe Oakville is large enough that it can warrant having articles on its own municipal elections. I mean, it does have more people than most of Ontario's counties and districts, which we've agreed get to have their own articles. Yes, ideally this would be merged with a greater article for Halton Region, but we don't have articles on Halton's other municipal elections in 2003, so I think it's fine to have a standalone article until that time comes. -- Earl Andrew - talk 18:29, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Not without reliably sourcing its significance, it isn't. There's no such thing as "place large enough that its municipal elections are exempted from having to have any sourcing to establish their significance" — even Toronto and Montreal don't have municipal election articles because they're large, they have municipal election articles because GNG-worthy reliable sources establish their municipal elections as significant and enable us to write articles with substantive information beyond just a bunch of raw vote totals. Bearcat (talk) 21:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article needs more sources, but if they were added would you withdraw this AfD? I know reliable sources exist on this topic (and a quick search at newspapers.com confirms this).-- Earl Andrew - talk 20:53, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would be happy to over-time amalgamate these into a larger article encompassing Halton Region Millsy0303 (talk) 20:01, 12 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep: sure, it's a "suburban town", but Oakville is also the 25th largest municipality in Canada, and the 11th largest in Ontario by population size. That, by itself, does not establish notability for this particular election, but it suggests reliable non-primary resources should be available, including coverage in national news outlets. Owen&times; &#9742;  20:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We don't keep articles on the basis of guesses about what reliable non-primary resources "should" be available — we keep or delete articles on the basis of hard evidence about what reliable non-primary resources have or haven't been demonstrated to exist. That is, we don't speculate that national news coverage might exist — if you can't show concrete evidence that national news coverage does exist, i.e. by showing actual proof that real pieces of national coverage really exist, then merely speculating that it could exist carries no weight. Bearcat (talk) 21:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep -- This article is sourced exactly as well as most municipal elections, with local election-result outlets. Policy and precedence are in conflict here, and I would side with precedence. On virtually any other topic, I'd do the reverse, but elections have always been an odd duck in the encyclopaedia. I do not think that deletion of this particular article improves the encyclopaedia (WP:DDH). Cheers, Last1in (talk) 23:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * What precedent exempts election articles from having to have proper sourcing? Any plausible precedent for that was kiboshed at least a decade ago, and local election articles are now routinely deleted if they don't have adequate sourcing. We rely on media coverage, not just the town or city council's own self-published results on its own self-published website, to establish the notability of municipal elections, and these aren't citing media coverage — so they aren't "sourced exactly as well as most municipal elections" in any sense, because municipal elections get sourced to media coverage if they intend to get kept. Bearcat (talk) 00:41, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree with you on the policy side. As I said, I have always !voted on strict policy guidelines in anything other than local elections. However, a quick survey of a few dozen articles about municipal elections shows that most of them seems to have exactly the same sources and, presumably, precisely the same lack of wider (non-local) media coverage. I still don't think that deleting this (or the dozens of other, similar articles) improves the encyclopaedia, and I feel that this is an example of an encyclopaedic article with valid, useful information. I believe that's why AfDs are consensus-based discussions, to notice and act on cases where a strict application of policy hurts the encyclopaedia. I feel that this is such a case, and you don't. That's a reasonable part of discussion. If consensus agrees with your position, I will happily accept that. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 17:01, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Delete There are several reasons for deletion, primarily WP:NOTDATABASE. While we generally should be fine with sourcing from a government website (in this case results of an election), the problem is that these pages are just that - simple reassertion of the data. There is no sourced content that indicates the significance of the election (either for the municipality or any of the candidates). Size of municipality does not mean (much) anymore and has no basis in policy, as Bearcat mentions. Also some of the information is contanined in 2003 Ontario municipal elections, whcih could be expanded so the information is not lost. --Enos733 (talk) 14:28, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: Couldn't find any indepedent coverage about these elections. Delete both for a lack of independent souces, as this is a failture of WP:NOTDATABASE. Let&#39;srun (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Did you try newspapers.com? There was plenty of coverage in the Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator, especially considering how close the race was. Even the Globe and Mail (not in newspapers.com, but source added) weighed in when recount was conducted.-- Earl Andrew - talk 21:25, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Wordsmith Talk to me 23:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 22:27, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep: As @Earl Andrew said, seeing as there are no articles about the Halton Region municipal elections in both 2006 and 2003, until the time comes that those exist it would be best to keep these to be transferred over. I would be happy to take that project on. Millsy0303 (talk) 20:07, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Delete Oakville isn't the type of city where the local elections have more than local importance, and there's no clear lasting coverage of the event. Just because a race is a close one doesn't mean an election necessarily qualifies for its own article. Furthermore, a clear ATD exists where this could me merged into the Halton region, but it should not be its own stand-alone page. SportingFlyer  T · C  02:11, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: article is only of local interest. Therefore the topic fails WP:NOT (which needs to apply alongside WP:GNG to keep any article). More specifically WP:NOTDIRECTORY. बिनोद थारू (talk) 04:53, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. The sources provide no convincing evidence of overall notability. Doczilla  Ohhhhhh, no! 08:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. The coverage that I'm seeing here is extremely local in nature, and is routine coverage to boot. I don't see how a population of 200,000 is large enough to make the election so significant that we can ignore the lack of coverage. I'll also note that we don't have articles on many elections outside the global north in which the electorates were orders of magnitude larger. To be clear, I'm not saying that that is a reason to delete this; rather, that that lack shows there isn't a well-established or consistent precedent for local elections of a certain size, and that the lack of SIGCOV becomes harder to overcome as a consequence. Vanamonde93 (talk) 10:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)


 * 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.