Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benjamin Kallos


 * 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   no consensus. Black Kite (talk) 17:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Benjamin Kallos

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Yet another article about an as yet unelected candidate in the New York City Council elections, 2013. As per WP:POLITICIAN candidates are not notable just for being candidates, but this article is promotional in nature and does not make a particularly substantive claim that he passes WP:GNG for anything else. In fact, while this article was created over a year ago, it was already positioning his campaign for a city council seat as his primary claim of notability, right from the very first day it was created, even though at the time he was still only a declared candidate for the primaries. As always, he'll be entitled to a Wikipedia article if he wins his seat, but is not entitled to use Wikipedia as a campaign tool in the meantime. Delete, without prejudice against recreation in November if he wins. Bearcat (talk) 03:59, 24 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Speedy redirect to New York City Council elections, 2013 per the precedent set by Articles for deletion/Cathy Guerriero. The associated issues have been hashed out and discussed in detail. Unless they are otherwise notable for something other than their council run, candidates should be redirected to the article for the election for which they are a candidate. In this case, New York City Council elections, 2013. Stalwart 111  04:12, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment. Help me here -- my understanding is that if an article meets GNG (not yet sure whether this does, as I would have to take a deeper look at the refs that exist and could be added), that's it.  It meets our requirements.  It matters not a jot whether the person would otherwise meet a subsidiary, alternative notability criterion. Are you asserting that if this person meets GNG, they still should not have an article? --Epeefleche (talk) 02:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The policy combination being invoked here is WP:POLITICIAN and WP:BLP1E - he's received some coverage in reliable sources but really only with regard to his election campaign for which, having not been elected, he isn't yet notable. The general consensus has been that candidates not notable for anything but their candidature should redirect to the article for the election in which they are running until such time as they either pass POLITICIAN (by being elected) or are no longer subject to BLP1E (by being notable for a 2nd something). In this case, I don't think he would otherwise be notable for his web development work so his candidature remains his 1E. Thoughts? Stalwart 111  03:28, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Some thoughts: 1) wp:politician is of no moment, and need not even be looked at, if this meets wp:GNG. There is no merit to the argument that the article should be deleted if it does not meet wp:politician, if it otherwise meets our GNG criteria.  2) Do you think it meets GNG?  At first blush, to me it appears to.  3) Precedent has severely limited value at AfD, though it can be looked at.  See wp:otherstuffexists.  4) And even the discussion in the AfD pointed to was all over the place.  5) As a common sense matter, there is much in this article that is RS-supported and of interest to people looking him up, which would be lost to our readers by a bare deletion or a bare redirect.  I see little benefit in that.  6) As to the application of BLP1E (is an entire election campaign, for example, what is meant by an "event"? And what of all the coverage of events outside of his campaign, taking place as part of his background prior to the campaign and covered by RSs? And what of all the coverage of discrete individual events within his campaign, which though they fall under the heading "campaign", are individual events? ... and if so, doesn't it fall into the exception if there is more than brief, temporary coverage), there is little consensus on this, as best I can see, as reflected in the discussions here and the related failed effort to garner consensus.--Epeefleche (talk) 16:50, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not really a matter of "precedent" (bad choice of words on my part) so much as WP:COMMONOUTCOMES and fairly long-standing WP:CONSENSUS. There are many, many examples of single election campaigns (fought by otherwise non-notable individuals) being considered "one event" for the purposes of WP:BLP1E. Such a view might have failed to gain consensus on that talk page but it would seem to have general consensus in practice at AFD. Different location, same priciple as an example beyond the NYC elections. Stalwart 111  23:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)


 * For the record, Wikipedia_talk:Candidates_and_elections isn't a great place to look for evidence that there's a lack of consensus around political candidates; all of the discussion on that page is dated 2006, and you'll find that Wikipedia consensus on pretty much anything is very different in 2013 than it was seven years ago. There are a lot of different venues where consensus can be and is established, and a lot of lessons that have been learned over the years about why our processes and policies and practices have had to be revised and tightened up — so you'll find that consensus evolves over time, and there isn't just one place you can look to find a complete record of every discussion that's ever taken place on a matter. You have to look at policies and precedents, at past AFDs on similar topics, at various WikiProject talk pages and in all kinds of other places — so the fact that one specific talk page that hasn't been edited in about seven years didn't fully establish a consensus against unelected candidates doesn't mean that a consensus against unelected candidates hasn't been properly reached in other venues.
 * And strictly speaking, WP:EVENT does not place a time limit on the duration of an event — an election campaign is considered to be a single event, not a series of discrete individual events that would make a candidate notable for multiple events rather than just one. The fact that it's an event that unfolds over several weeks or months rather than happening entirely in one single day does not render WP:EVENT inapplicable. (It's not a perfect parallel, obviously, but competing in a reality show does provide a useful example of the distinction: is a person who competes on Season 3 of America's Best New Whatever notable for one event, Season 3 as a whole, or does the fact that the season unfolds as a series of distinct episodes over 13 weeks mean that they're notable for 13 separate events instead? The answer is the former; the whole season is one event, and a person doesn't become notable for it unless they either win it or can successfully establish additional notability before or after that event itself.) That said, I still don't particularly like applying the BLP1E test to political candidates, but for a different reason: all an unelected candidate has to do to escape BPL1E is to run for office a second time.
 * It's also important to understand that local media have a public service obligation to cover local politics — which means that every candidate in every election will get some form of press coverage, and thus if the ability to demonstrate that the candidate has garnered media coverage were all it took then Wikipedia would have to keep an article about every single person who ever ran for office at all whether they were successful or not. I've often had to explain in AFDs that there is a difference between being able to demonstrate a person's notability via sourcing and being able to demonstrate their existence via sourcing, and that Wikipedia is not interested in the latter. We can source the existence of every person who ever ran in an election (or even in a primary race). We can source the existence of every person who ever wrote a book. We can source the existence of every single DJ on every radio station. We can source the existence of almost every single person who ever opened a restaurant. We can probably source the existence of almost every person who ever organized a bake sale for their church. And on and so forth — but that doesn't mean that they're all notable enough to be covered in an encyclopedia with an international audience and a "potentially forever" timeline.
 * So, in fact, virtually all of our notability guidelines for people apply additional criteria to help us further distinguish notable from non-notable people in the same field — and the base criterion in most cases for politicians is that they have either (a) actually held office, or (b) gotten enough coverage for other activities that they can get past another notability guideline (e.g. the ones for writers, businesspeople, sportspeople, etc.) A person whose candidacy somehow breaks out to become national or international news may potentially become more notable than the average candidate, but most unelected candidates for most offices are notable (and sourceable) exclusively in local media, and thus don't cross the bar.
 * In this case, what we have is an article that's sourced almost entirely to coverage of his campaign for a city council seat; even his prior legal and web development work is not sourced to coverage that clearly demonstrates his notability for any of it. Sometimes it gets mentioned in passing within the context of the campaign coverage, sometimes it's sourced directly to a primary source such as the website of an organization he was involved with, and sometimes it's sourced to news briefs which aren't long or detailed enough to get past WP:GNG's substantial coverage test, and in one case it's even sourced to a link that completely fails to even mention his name at all — but none of it is sourced to coverage which demonstrates that any of it would actually get him into an encyclopedia if he weren't also a city council candidate. So no, what we have here is not an article about a person who was already notable enough for an article and then also threw his hat into the ring for a political office — we have a campaign brochure for a person whose candidacy itself is the notability claim, and a rule which says that simply being a candidate is not enough of a notability claim for a person to keep a Wikipedia article. Bearcat (talk) 17:43, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Euryalus (talk) 15:15, 5 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. Overwhelmingly meets GNG.  Which is all he has to meet (wp:politician, like all other subsidiary alternative notability requirements, is wholly irrelevant is the subject otherwise meets GNG).  And the GNG coverage, while it started when he was 15 years of age, began to heat up five years ago.  And it covers all manner of "events" that preceded the 2013 primary, so BLP1E does not apply -- both because this is not one event, and because coverage extends over a number of years. Plus, as a matter of common sense -- there's no logic to deleting an article with three dozen refs worth of info, and related text, covering a series of positions and accomplishment over the years -- and those dozens of refs are not even close to being exhaustive.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:08, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment a redirect to New York City Council elections, 2013 should be the appropriate outcome (at this time). The statement by Bearcat does a good job explaining why redirects are appropriate for unelected candidates. Just being in the news or on the ballot does not equate to meeting WP:GNG's substantial coverage test. If this page came up for RfD when it was originally created, the sole question was (and should still be), is the subject notable before the run for office, and I doubt there would be little controversy with a redirect to the general election page (despite the many interesting RS things the subject has done over the course of their career), and elections are presumed to be WP:BLP1E (even across multiple years). Many of the older (pre-election) reliable sources are not about the subject or his career. However, since winning the primary election of the Democratic Party in 2013, a redirect seems to be a temporary (less than a month) solution. Councilmembers for most major cities are presumed to meet WP:GNG (see WP:Politician) and winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to winning the general election. Enos733 (talk) 05:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * If a person meets GNG, it does not matter whether they meet wp:politician. He meets GNG. Coverage of him is clearly substantial.  This is most assuredly not the case of someone "just being on the ballot".


 * And "just being in the news" is what GNG is all about. All the refs are about him, to the extent they are used as refs.  Refs do not have to include sources primarily about the person (though that is nice), if there is sufficient coverage.  And he even has refs solely about him.  Detailing his career.  That's why the article is nearly completely about his career prior to the recent race.  And by no stretch of the imagination are those RS-sourced refs a part of BLP1E, however broad one's interpretation.


 * And BLP1E states: "Just being... an unelected candidate for political office ... such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". Such is the case here.  As reflected by the three dozen refs in the article, and those that you can find by google.  And the coverage that BLP1E says we should look to is not (though you suggest otherwise) limited to coverage before the election.  We don't punish a person who otherwise meets GNG by deleting articles, just because they are running for office.--Epeefleche (talk) 14:38, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Among the membership of the New York City Council, 90% are Democrats and every seat in Manhattan is held by a Democrat. The hurdle for Kallos was the September primary, and having won that he should win by the 2-1 margins that have been characteristic of council races in this part of New York City. Regardless of the election result, there are more than enough reliable and verifiable sources that are about Kallos to satisfy any objective Wikipedia notability standard, with substantial coverage in independent sources that is indisputably about him. Alansohn (talk) 15:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Redirect for now, no prejudice against recreation after election, per established practice for unelected candidates who aren't named Donald Trump. From the lead: "On September 10, 2013, he defeated Micah Kellner in the New York City Council election primaries. He will be the Democratic candidate for the 5th New York City Council District, representing Manhattan's Upper East Side, in the 2013 general election.[3][4][5][6][7][8]" Quoting myself: Timbo's Rule 14. "Whenever you see multiple stacked footnotes in a lead to document a subject phrase as encyclopedic, it probably isn't. (March 2012)" Carrite (talk) 05:09, 12 October 2013 (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.