Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 United States presidential election controversies and attacks


 * 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.

I have discounted the following opinions in closing this discussion:
 * keep: Biophys ("criticism is good" is not an inclusion criterium), JeremyMcCracken and Everyking (WP:USEFUL).
 * delete: Jtrainor (unclear how this is a WP:POVFORK as it addresses all candidates, also such articles usually need editing and not deletion), Southern Texas (NPOV concerns can be addressed by editing), Biruitorul (WP:NOT and see Jtrainor), Steve Dufour (no policy-based argument), Fallenfromthesky (WP:PERNOM).

This leaves us with 12 "delete" opinions, most of which note that this article needlessly duplicates material covered in the articles about the individual candidates or campaigns. The 7 remaining "keep" opinions, on the other hand, argue that the subject is notable in and of itself, and that a dedicated article can cover it more neutrally and in a form that is more useful to the reader.

On the basis of applicable policy and precedent, I find the "delete" opinion to be more persuasive. The principal problem with this page is that it does not rely on a reliable, common standard of "controversy" or "attack", which makes WP:SYNTH and WP:WEIGHT problems almost unavoidable. Also, the scope and importance of the 2008 US election is a major challenge for our limited resources of volunteer editors. I agree with some of the people commenting here that consideration should be given to this: the smaller the number of individual articles we use to cover the election, the less time we spend on maintenance, discussion and general drama; and the more eyes we have on the articles that matter. Under these circumstances, election-related content should not be forked unless e.g. size considerations render it absolutely necessary.

On both a numerical basis and on the basis of the strength of argument, therefore, consensus is to delete this article. Sandstein (talk) 08:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

2008 United States presidential election controversies and attacks

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This article is completely unnecessary and inappropriate. Separate "controversies" and "criticisms" and "attacks" articles are violations of WP:NPOV, WP:Content forking, and WP:Criticism. If these controversies and attacks have played a notable role in the campaign, they should be included in the campaign articles for those candidates. (And some of these entries are decades old and have had no role or impact on the current campaign.) All such separate "controversies" articles and sections were previously eliminated for all the 2008 presidential candidates — see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States presidential elections for that effort. This doesn't belong either. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete as per nom. Articles such as this are simply laundry lists of grievances against the candidates, stripping them of context and presenting an undue weight concern. All of the issues addressed in this article are already extensively linked at the candidates' biography articles and (where they are currently relevant) their campaign articles. We don't need another fork that serves only to foment MOAR DRAMAH.  Horologium  (talk) 13:58, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as a fork redundant to 2008 United States presidential election. It seems hard to swallow that controversies and attacks would not be covered in an article about a political campaign. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Can be discussed in the various detailed articles already dealing with the election. Cirt (talk) 18:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is useful as a 'List' article. Various controversy articles already exist, and not all can be satisfactorily included in a campaign article. For example, the article about Insight and Fox News spreading the Muslim smear about Obama was bounced around from one article to another (including its own) and then quietly deleted. That left no audit trail, so the information couldn't even be merged into any existing article. We DON'T need to repeat that debacle. The current Obama/Ayers 'connection' is another example. It's not really relevant to either person (as it doesn't actually exist), but the story ITSELF has become the story. It shouldn't be addressed at length in any of the Obama articles, or in the Ayers article, so it needs another place. People look to Wikipedia for information, and we need to figure out how and where to supply it. Simply deleting the information (claiming it was 'merged') isn't working. Flatterworld (talk) 18:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The Ayers-Obama thing should be included in Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008. It would get placed into the chronology according to when it happened during the campaign, and the description of it would be in the proper context, e.g. it could discuss whether publicity and attacks about the connection had an impact on the Pennsylvania primary results. Wasted Time R (talk) 19:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The campaign article can discuss the impact of this (and other controversies) on the PA primary, and reference the section in this article. Flatterworld (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * This is not a POV/NPOV issue imo. The people behind these controversies may have a strong POV, but we are providing a NPOV article. (See Wikidemo's comment below.) Flatterworld (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. The subject of the article (controversies and attacks that occur in the course of a Presidential election) is highly notable. There are books and articles about this subject all the time.  An industry has grown around it, and it is a big part of what makes a political campaign, and what makes the press run as well.  Given that we have a notable subject that we've agreed to cover, it's best base the answer on results, not sentiment.  When we put the full context of a controversy about a candidate into the candidate's article it often becomes a POV issue because the subject does not often fit.  The people stirring up these controversies do so in order to score points against the candidates, and they win those points when they succeed in elevating impertinences about a candidate to the level of public awareness that they get into an article describing the candidate.  We become the tool of attack politics.  The candidate's own (alleged, often unproven) faults are typically a highly partisan issue, a matter of analysis and judgment, and quite often disputed.  To cover the other side, and shine the light on the people doing the attacking, and then the defending, becomes even more argumentative and diverges further from relevance to the article in main.  In this article, however, we cover neutrally that the controversy has taken place, how, and among whom.  One can cover the genesis of a controversy in an NPOV way, whatever candidate one supports, because the article is about the controversy, not the candidate.  As a result this article is orderly, with very little edit warring or dispute that marks most other current politics articles here.  The article is not simply a fork from these articles, it is a child article of the main 2008 article (one of several, perhaps dozens), each on a different subject.  Accordingly, in some cases it merely points a link to the existing material; in others it covers a different aspect or in more depth, or an issue that does not properly belong in the other articles.  Wikidemo (talk) 19:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not a child article of United States presidential election, 2008 since there's no link from there to here. The article also doesn't cover any of the candidates who ran in 2008 but are no longer in the race — you think Romney, Giuliani, Edwards and the others didn't suffer from controversies and attacks?  Yet paradoxically, for McCain and Clinton it does include past biographical controversies that have had no role at all in the current campaign — Keating Five, cattle futures, Whitewater, Rose Law Firm, Travelgate ... none of these have been a factor.  So the article has no coherence at all; it's just a random dumping ground.  Wasted Time R (talk) 19:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I've addressed all three issues.  I've linked the article from the main Presidential campaign - it's obviously related.  It's no surprise that the active candidates are getting addressed first but for goodness sakes, the article is only nine days old!  How many articles reach GA status immediately?  We expand incomplete articles rather than delete them.  But for good measure I've added a section on Rudy Giuliani and see no reason why all major candidates cannot be included.  Time will tell but Whitewater has come up as an issue for Clinton in this campaign (see the Rezko section under Obama), and I think Keating Five has come up for McCain already.  In the end, issues that are not raised as new controversies in this election cycle don't belong here.  There has to be some sourced context as to why it is relevant to the story of how controversy and attack politics play out in this campaign. Wikidemo (talk) 00:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep This article should be kept.  It should also avoid personal attacks been focus on controversies directly tied to the 2008 presidential elections versus on the POV inserts regards not presidential controversies surrounding the candidates.  This article is a great way to cover notable material without have the material take over the candidates biographies and presidential campaign articles.  In favor of keeping.  It is me i think (talk) 19:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Hard to see how this is any more appropriate than a controversy page for a specific candidate.  Grsz  talk  19:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - for all the reasons the nominator enumerates. This is not how we do things here. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  19:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - The campaign articles are very long. It's useful to have an article that summarizes the controversies in one place.  MikeWren (talk) 20:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename (remove word "attacks"). . Criticism is healthy and good. The more criticism I read about the USA, the better I feel about living in this country. "Controversy" articles are consistent with WP policies. There are no reasons to delete this particular article.Biophys (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The word "attacks" is probably the one honest aspect of the title. Changing the title won't fix an irreparably flawed article.--Loonymonkey (talk) 21:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this is balanced. It slanders all candidates equally.Biophys (talk) 22:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If it "slanders" any candidates, equally or not, it is a speedy-delete candidate. BLP violations are not acceptable.  Horologium  (talk) 17:07, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not the article that "slanders" candidates. There is a political process in the United States by which derogatory claims made about politicians are an important and distinct part of the mechanics of elections.  Balance, in this case, is a matter of giving reasonable weight to the more notable of the controversies, and is something that may emerge as the article matures.  Wikidemo (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. This is a political process. Do not blame the messenger.Biophys (talk) 18:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Speedy Delete POV fork. Jtrainor (talk) 20:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete, clear violation of NPOV, very biased and exclusive, there were far more than 3 candidates with controversies in this election.--Southern Texas (talk) 20:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete As predicted, (and as always happens with articles of this nature) it has simply become a coatrack for critics of the three current candidates and a POV fork for them to add opinions that they might have been prevented from adding to the candidate articles.  The fact that there is POV against all three candidates is not "balance" it is simply an example of an article with excessive POV.  Consider this, if the article were only about one candidate, not all three, would it be acceptable?  Would we allow an article that was simply a list of attacks against a living person?  Unlikely.  So why would it be acceptable to combine three such articles into one?  Further, it is apparent that most of this article has nothing to do with the election.  A number of the "criticisms and attacks" such as the Keating Five scandal, Whitewater, Cattle Futures, etc. have not even been mentioned in this campaign and the cites are from a decade ago or earlier. And why is there no mention of any of the other candidates who are no longer in the race?  It's because nobody is gunning for those candidates anymore, further evidence that this is simply an attack forum for political opponents rather than an encyclopedic article on the 2008 election (are we going to drop Clinton or Obama from this article when one of them emerges as the primary victor?) This article cannot be salvaged since the very idea of it is flawed.  It should be deleted immediately.  --Loonymonkey (talk) 21:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * All those issues HAVE been brought up in this election cycle. Flatterworld (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If so, then their importance to the campaign must be cited somewhere. I don't see any such cites in this article or in the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, 2008 article.  I do not believe any of these old issues have had any kind of importance in this campaign.  I believe they are just being dragged in here to make the Hillary list look roughly equivalent in number to the Obama list, which is silly.  Wasted Time R (talk) 22:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * STRONG KEEP This election is already historical, based on the candidates (First legitimate female candidate, a candidate who would be the oldest ever elected, and the first strong African-American candidate).  The controversies around the campaigns are noteworthy in themselves.  WP:CRYSTAL aside, in regard to the future interest in this election, this article is worth keeping.  --InDeBiz1 (talk) 23:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Sourced, and linked in many cases to separate articles on the more notable issues. The words "and attacks" must be removed from the title, as that's a POV statement. Controversies is not a POV statement. 23skidoo (talk) 23:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. As the article creator I might have chosen the word "attack" unwisely but I assure you the purpose is not POV. We could just chop off the words "and attacks" but I think that's an incomplete picture.   There's no doubt that partisan attacks (e.g. Attack ads) exist and are occurring in this election.  I meant to keep the article general so it could cover partisan attempts to discredit the candidates that are not genuine controversies.  A good example is the section I just added on Obama's middle name.  The thing happened and it's notable in my opinion.  But it's not really a controversy.  Nobody says he shouldn't have that name and nobody in their right mind thinks there's anythign wrong with it.  Yet there has been an effort to discredit him by drawing mental connections to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, based on his name.  Wikidemo (talk) 00:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete as per nom. A laundry list of controversies does not seem encyclopedic. If a topic is relevant then it should be worked into another article that meet the test of notability.--InaMaka (talk) 01:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have noticed that Wikidemo has commented that the "Delete" votes are from folks that have not read the article. I have no idea how Wikidemo has made this judgment.  I don't see how he KNOWS that the Delete votes have not read the article.  But at any rate, in the McCain section there was a section about a woman lobbyist that McCain knows.  This was a "controversy" for 25 seconds.  Also, the way that the section was written was clearly POV.  It stated that "rumors" are going around that McCain and the woman were in some kind of "improper relationship."  It does not go into any more detail, etc.  It was just plain old POV attack that violates BLP.  The article needs to be deleted.  I suspect that much of the information throughout the article violates BLP concerning all three candidates and this article is just a backdoor attempt to get negative BLP material into Wikipedia that needs to be highly vetted by the editors of each of the candidates' articles.  And vetting should happen at the talk page of each of the candidate's articles.  This article is not seen by enough editors to provide balance to each of these delicate topics.  Each candidate's talk page will have folks from both for and against each of candidates reviewing additions and deletions--providing balance.  I change my voted to: Strong Delete--InaMaka (talk) 01:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete per all of the reasons illustrated by WTR. Essentially a content/POV fork. I urge the closing admin not to give in to recentism and "I like it" rationales for keeping such an article.--Jersey Devil (talk) 03:41, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * By the same token much if not most of the "delete" sentiment is "idontlikeit" directed at the fact that people in the world at large take potshots at politicians, and conflating the existence of this unfortunate phenomenon with our encyclopedic coverage of it. There is also a bit of a walled garden from a small group that has tried to establish a standard across several articles for how to cover the 2008 election.  An article that concentrates on all the bad things politicians do would be unhelpful.  An article that describes the controversies that arise in an election is highly relevant.  I get the sense that most people commenting here have not actually read the article, and are objecting to what they imagine it to be.Wikidemo (talk) 18:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking from the walled garden, it wasn't a small group of editors! We got buy-in from everyone working on the 2008 candidates' articles, that's sixteen articles' worth of editors. Wasn't easy, and so you can probably understand why a gardenite such as myself does not want to go backwards.  As for "an article that describes the controversies that arise in an election is highly relevant," I agree completely; it's called a campaign article, and we have a bunch of them.  Wasted Time R (talk) 19:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * (ec)Actually, reading the comments leads me to believe that most of the delete votes are people who have read the article, and recognize that this particular intersection of characteristics does not merit an article of its own; a selective listing of perceived controversies and attacks (which are subjective) strips them of context and presents undue weight concerns.  Horologium  (talk) 19:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In any case, the closing admin has discretion to weigh comments differently. Wasted Time R (talk) 19:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete, unnecessary content fork redundant to United States presidential election, 2008. KleenupKrew (talk) 10:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep I can see the use of this list from the standpoint of analyzing the culture of elections. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 20:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.   -- Fabrictramp (talk) 23:16, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete this polemical coatrack. Our coverage of this inane election already dwarfs that given to truly historic ones like 1860, 1932 and 1980; there's no need to keep yet another fork on the latest hot air to come out of this circus. Biruitorul (talk) 00:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Not really an encyclopedia topic, better to post it elsewhere on the Internet. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Per Nom Fallenfromthesky (talk) 00:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep This is a useful resource to check the facts on the many political attacks in this campaign. Wikipedia can provide a more complete account than "urban legends" sites and make sure it's POV neutral.GreekParadise (talk) 19:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fact-checking is clearly not the purpose of this article and, in fact, many of the attacks listed are factually inaccurate. They are included because they are "attacks" not because they are true. --Loonymonkey (talk) 20:29, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. Not encyclopedic, lacks a well-defined subject and, by distinguishing between matters as "controversies" and "attacks," has unavoidable NPOV problems. Minos P. Dautrieve (talk) 03:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and various stated above, this has a ton of POV problems and gives undue weight to any critical remark made by any media outlet. I don't see a mirror page giving all the positive comments during the campaign (Nice things said about the Presidential Candidates in the 2008 Election, anyone?). Darrenhusted (talk) 08:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, useful as a list compiling the various controversies surrounding the election. Everyking (talk) 19:01, 30 April 2008 (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.