Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abbie Hodgson


 * 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. Does not satisfy WP:NPOL as a not-yet-elected candidate, and not enough other significant coverage for WP:GNG. RL0919 (talk) 01:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Abbie Hodgson

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Notability concerns for this candidate for US Congress. The article is often promotional as well. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 17:01, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 17:01, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Kansas-related deletion discussions. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 17:01, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete Until and unless she becomes the nominee, and even then there are some NPOV issues. Squeeps10  Talk to meMy edits 18:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep : I'm the author of the article. I wrote an article about the incumbent Steve Watkins more than a year ago when he was running for the seat for which Hodgson has filed. He had padded his resume extensively, but I thought he deserved an article. He was spending six-figures, family money, at that point and had very narrowly won a heavily contested primary against better known, though far less well-funded opponents. An AfD was started and some deletionist editor from England who showed zero understanding of U.S. politics and had contributed little of any import to the encyclopedia erased it. A new article, not of my creation, was back on not long afterward. After that, he narrowly won the general election for the seat. Based on that experience, I protested the inclusion of an article about Daniel Cameron who is running for Attorney General in Kentucky. It was argued he should be included because he had been on the University of Louisville football team (probably briefly a benchwarmer, as I can't find any info on him thre), had worked for a couple of private law firms whose websites provide most of the material in the article, and he was African-American. Then, President Trump mentioned him in a joined pair of tweets, but probably hadn't the faintest notion of who he is. The tweets went viral and half a dozen or so citations referenced the pair of tweets, though they presented no other content and least some were from an AP story though with different URLs, that were otherwise identical. So I presumed the WP rules had changed, somehow, since my original Watkins article was deleted. Since Watkins is running for reelection and has been heavily covered in recent news, and his only opponent has a rather extensive resume, I expect the article about her would be supported. She provoked a firestorm of controversy and incurred substantial employer wrath when she initiated an investigation of bipartisan inappropriate behavior involving exploitation of student legislative interns, though she was not one of those so treated. She has considerable political experience in Kansas, including being the chief of staff for the House Minority Leader, was the spokesperson for two successive governors, and had lost a previous closely contested legislative primary to the eventual incumbent. (The sort of credentials that got Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway articles) Had she been elected the mayor of a town of 25 people, I expect there would be less resistance to inclusion. Hodgson has considerable private and non-profit sector experience. I'm hoping we can achieve some consistency with this AfD. Meanwhile, the Watkins article has been regularly scrubbed, admittedly, by the article's subject and by his campaign manager and chief of staff (someone tagged it), and twice this week by an IP editor posting from England. Activist (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep I think the POV issues can be cleaned up with editing, Being a "staffer" doesn't clear the notability bar, so I go back to WP:GNG and the subject seems to pass there.  If the POV issues are not cleaned up, then deletion is the course.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:32, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Candidates for US Congress do not pass WP:NPOL. The sources provide about the subject's career do not pass WP:GNG]. Sources 1, 3, and 6 are local coverage (or project vote smart) of her political campaigns. Source 2 is an interview with her employer. Sources 4 and 5 do not mention the subject. Sources 6 and 7, which cover the sexual harassment complaints help with notability, but in the Hill article, the subject is mentioned in only one or two paragraphs. No prejudice against renomination is the subject wins the seat in the 2020 election. (note - also at this point we do not even know if the subject will be the Democratic party nominee) --Enos733 (talk) 16:06, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Source 2 is not "an interview with her employer." It is a recent report from the University of Kansas from which she graduated and where she worked many years ago. It is a feature about alumni who are noteworthy. She worked in Washington D.C., over 1,000 miles away at the time the story was written. Source 1 is not "local coverage." It is in the Ottawa Herald, a Harris chain newspaper published 25 miles south of Lawrence, where the candidate lives. Ottawa is a town in the KS Congressional District 2 which stretches from Nebraska to Missouri to Oklahoma and to within 30 miles or so of Arkansas. CD-2 borders on KS Congressional Districts 1, 3 and 4. Sources 3 and 4 are from the Kansas City Star, a major metropolitan, recent Pultizer and Scripps-Howard award-winning newspaper based in Missouri, 41 ENE of Lawrence. Source #5 is published by GrayDC, a local TV news service in Washington, D.C., 1,000 miles east of Lawrence. KCUR is the "flagship NPR station" located at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Missouri. Source #7 is Politico, published in Arlington County, Virginia, almost 1,000 miles east of Lawrence. I had intended to come to the article to add a story from the Capitol Journal, the newspaper of record in the State Capital of Topeka, 27 miles west of Lawrence but I just whizzed away a couple of hours that I didn't have, wrestling with an Internet connection that is spotty and which keeps going down, to answer baseless contentions. Claims made here at AfD should be subject to the same criteria that apply to edits made in the article, made from RSS, and factual in nature. I only cited Project Vote Smart because I was looking for information about her 2014 primary campaign. In fact, when I checked Dennis Highberger, her opponent's Wikipedia article, I found it was a pathetic stub which has remained unimproved for years. I made a mental note to make it better after improving it slightly, but I've been here pointing out the obvious instead. Activist (talk) 01:13, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep . The local coverage shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. That seems to me to be a cosmopolitan failure to recognize the value, and often the quality, of local press, though small papers are fighting the same decline as the largest outlets. When the Malheur Wildlife Occupation situation evolved I noticed one very small rural paper was doing at least as good a job, despite limited staff and resources, as the major regional press and broadcast media. Months later, I saw that it was on the shortlist of five finalists, along with two small Appalachian and Midwestern non-profits outlets that I read often, for a major national press foundation award. I called the editor to communicate my congratulations. It turned out the editor had retired after a long and noteworthy career with one of those major state outlets and bought the very old rural paper. I mentioned that an even smaller paper (staff of three) had won a Pulitizer in 1979. I was surprised to find the editor was aware of that success. I thought the Ottawa Herald did an excellent job with their story about Hodgson. I looked at the WP list of KS papers and discovered that two excellent community papers were listed as defunct and I was disappointed. Then I discovered that they had combined into a single publication so was relieved. I cited the Ottawa Herald article six times here in the WP article. I knew that Highberger, her opponent in 2014, was still a state legislator, now in his third term. Hodgson was running against a very experienced candidate in that primary, and I was unaware of his history. She had run a respectable campaign against him - he was a multi-term City Councilman and ex-mayor from her city, Lawrence, Kansas, one of the three large cities in district which is also her home town, so voters would have been far more familiar with him than her. I thought Wikipedia readers should not be deprived of that pertinent information. I've got to get on with some other rather urgent business, but I'll come back to this; I thought the issues should be addressed. Activist (talk) 00:35, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Ambox warning pn.svg — Duplicate vote: Activist (talk • contribs) has already cast a vote above. FoxyGrampa75 (talk) 06:28, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Just for future reference, while you're correct that people aren't allowed to vote more than once in an AFD discussion, they are allowed to comment more than once. So if and when you run across similar situations in the future, please just strike the word "keep/delete" itself, not all of the supporting text. Bearcat (talk) 15:42, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Enos733 (talk) 16:08, 29 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete As mentioned above, two sources do not mention the article subject, one is an interview on her employer's blog, and three sources only mention her in relation to her campaign. The remaining two sources do not seem adequate to establish the significant coverage in independent sources as required for general notability. The article should be recreated if she eventually wins the congressional seat. – Wallyfromdilbert (talk) 16:23, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete we have politician notability guidelines because just name dropping coverage of any politician anywhere could in theory pass GNG. Unless Hodgson is elected to congress or another public office she will not be notable. As it stands this is largely a coat rack to engage in cleaar NPOV violating attacks on Gov. Brownback's policies.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:41, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 05:18, 30 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. People do not get Wikipedia articles just for being candidates in elections they have not yet won; the notability test for politicians, per WP:NPOL, is holding a notable office, not merely running for one. And that holds even if the campaign has received local press coverage within the district where the person is running, because every candidate in every district in every election can always show some evidence of local press coverage within their own district. Our job is to have articles about people who pass the ten-year test for enduring nationalized or internationalized significance, not to indiscriminately maintain an article about every single person who's ever gotten their name into any newspaper for any reason whatsoever. And no, it's not a dismissal of local press either — a person who was running as a candidate in New York City, and was thus getting their routine local campaign coverage in The New York Times instead of a small regional pennysaver, still wouldn't get a Wikipedia article just because the citation tags had the words "New York Times" in them, because the context of what the NYT was covering them for still wouldn't clear our notability standards. Obviously no prejudice against recreation in November 2020 if she wins the seat, but nothing here adds up to a reason why she would already be eligible to keep a Wikipedia article today. Bearcat (talk) 15:41, 30 August 2019 (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.