Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chele Farley


 * 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 redirect to United States Senate election in New York, 2018. Numerically, 8:4:2 for redirect / keep / delete. Discussion centers on whether the campaign coverage provides notability or whether this is a BLP1E case. This is a matter of editorial judgment and not something I can decide by fiat. So there is consensus not to have a separate article at this time, but no consensus to delete, which makes redirect the only possible outcome.  Sandstein  10:40, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Chele Farley

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This is in effect a test case for the interaction of WP:NPOL and WP:GNG This person does not pass NPOL, being a candidate who has never held elective office, but is the formally nominated candidate of a major party (and two minor parties as well) for the US Senate from a major state. If any candidate were to be notable purely for being a candidate, Farley would seem to qualify.

There is significant coverage from a variety of major reliable sources, but almost all of it is directly in connection with the campaign. That being a much watched and well funded state-wide campaign for a national legislature in a polarized year from a large state, there is a good deal of it. Again, if this sort of coverage can be held to satisfy the WP:GNG (and the essentially similar WP:BASIC) this would seem to be an example that would. If all this coverage is considered routine under the circumstances, the remaining coverage (see the Town and Country article about Farley's wedding, and the Resident Magazine article about her appointment as NYC Finance chair for the Republican party, both cited in the article currently) does not seem to me to establish separate notability.

There has been considerable discussion of theses issues and the sources on Talk:Chele Farley, in the sections "Notability tag" and "Added additional sourcing". I urge that the comments there be considered as if they were part of this AfD discussion.

I also call attention to Articles for deletion/Patrick Little (engineer), where another candidate for the Senate was found not notable under WP:NPOL despite an appeal to the GNG. (Note that I argued to keep that article. I am now bowing to consensus.)

I recommend redirection to United States Senate election in New York, 2018. But if the consensus here is to keep, I would not be unhappy. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC) DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Pinging all those editors who commented on the article talk page. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)


 * comment Depending on how this goes, I wonder if there should be an RfC to consider a modification to WP:NPOL. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 22:54, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to United States Senate election in New York, 2018, which should be standard practice in such cases. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  22:58, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * comment I will post a more detailed defense of the article tomorrow as soon as I have time, but I would like to note that there are significant differences between Farley and Articles for deletion/Patrick Little (engineer) as cited by DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs in that Little was a fringe and radical candidate without the support of a national party and only a single endorsement (That of David Duke's) to his name, whereas Farley has secured the nomination of the GOP as well as the Conservative Party and the Reform Parties of New York (both regular players in NY state politics), as well as both sitting and former elected officials, including governors, senators, and congresspeople. YankeesFan85 (talk) 00:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes those are significant differences, but I would argue that they made Little the more notable of the pair. That a fringe candidate was apparently doing well in polls, that a candidate was opposed by the formal machinery of the party in whose name he was supposedly running, and that a candidate could support such extreme positions and still apparently poll well made him a quite unusual, and therefore notable, case in my view. Whatever may be said, his coverage was not routine. Do not make the all too common mistake of equating "notable" with "worthy" or even with "important", . To be notable is to have been taken note of by society at large, to make a significant and lasting mark on some field or area of human activity, for good or for ill. There are no absolute and clear-cut ruelks for what will constitute notability, there are merely rules of thumb, which may be modified over time or in particular cases. They are all judgement calls, on one level or another. At least that is how i see it. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 00:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 06:40, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 06:40, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 06:41, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 06:41, 20 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Redirect until at least the election is over. In the unlikely event Farley wins, the text can be restored. 331dot (talk) 10:24, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect or Delete The coverage that the candidate has is not independent of their candidacy, which could be an argument for WP:BIO1E. The larger argument here is that candidates don't inherently pass WP:NPOL without other notability. Being an investment banker and Republican fundraiser is not notable enough to pass the muster. See Draft:Zak Ringelstein, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine. If people want to be informed about their candidates, local media sources provide plenty of detailed information, as does Ballotpedia. Every election, (especially in the Canadian election articles I've worked on) there are always operatives with a clear WP:CoI who want to promote their candidate. I'm not suggesting that the editor in question has a conflict of interest here, but when John Doe Green Party wants to make an article for his local candidate who they feel has a clear shot of winning, it makes me suspicious of any entry with dubious notability. Bkissin (talk) 13:26, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to United States Senate election in New York, 2018. This is, and should be the standard practice for candidates for national legislature, who are not notable prior to the campaign. The reasoning is two-fold. First, the election is a(n extended) case of WP:BLP1E as all the coverage about a subject is within the context of the election itself. The second reason is that losing candidates are likely to remain a low-profile individuals after the campaign is over. All of the pertinent information about the subject can be placed in the campaign page (including basic biographical information, polling, and other details about the campaign). If we regularly keep (losing) candidates, there is an increased risk of Wikipedia becoming a repository for campaign material and increases the risks of vandalism (as supporters and opponents of the campaign seek to edit the page to be favorable to their position). --Enos733 (talk) 15:19, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to the suggested article per the comments above. SportingFlyer  talk  15:21, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Farley is running for the United States Senate. She also is running in the third largest state in the country, which has the #1 media market in the country, and her opponent (Kirsten Gillibrand) is considered by many to be a top tier contender for the 2020 election for President in the Democratic Party. Furthermore, as noted by DES, this year is shaping up to be quite contentious, and interest in this race will be high at not only the state and national levels, but also the international level. It is currently only June but I think it’s safe to say that there will be a lot more coverage of Farley as election day approaches. Some of you are citing WP:BLP1E, though I don’t think it’s fair to characterize a long process that has many individual events over the course of a year as “simply one event”. There will be many more incidents and stories that will occur over the next 5 months which will be covered by national press, as this will be a race that affects not only the 20 million residents of NY state, but the country of 300 million as a whole. Furthermore, Farley’s coverage extends beyond just local publications in New York. Her actions have received coverage from multiple international news sites, including the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva, two major reliable publications in Israel. How many non-incumbent candidates for US elected office receive international coverage? Unlike Ringelstein who some have compared Farley to, a candidate who struggles to get coverage in local Maine publications, Farley has been covered in major national publications like The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Hill, and Breitbart, among others. Additionally, she has been covered by many of the significant local papers throughout the state, including those both in the City as well as Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Long Island, Rochester, and others. I believe this is overwhelming evidence that there is significant interest in Farley from the international, national, and local press. Also, this coverage is not solely limited to biographical information. Many of these publications are interested in her beyond simply the fact that she is running: they’re interested in who she is and what she stands for, and therefore an article covering all of this verifiable information is appropriate. Again, Farley blows the requirements of WP:GNG out of the water - you do not get covered by international news publications for being "non-notable". YankeesFan85 (talk) 16:14, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment To be fair, the Israeli publications aren't actually about her, but rather about her policy on an issue important to that country, and would have been written about any nominee. SportingFlyer  talk  16:50, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment It's extremely rare for non-incumbent nominees to get written about in a foreign press, this is in no way "routine coverage". I would also disagree with your characterization that the articles are not "about her". I'm not sure what else they could have said to be more "about her" as is relevant to the Israeli public as they are. YankeesFan85 (talk) 16:57, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The Republican nominee running against Gillibrand would say that regardless of who it is. The coverage is not about her per se, but what she said. 331dot (talk) 17:13, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment This argument seems to be both circular and essentially semantics re: the distinction of whether the article is about "her" or "her views". You might presume what a theoretical nominee may or may not say, but I haven't seen examples of the Israeli press covering any other non-incumbent nominees. YankeesFan85 (talk) 17:33, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect. At the Senate level, it is certainly possible for an unelected candidate to clear GNG on the basis of receiving substantially more and wider and deeper coverage than most other unelected candidates — it's certainly at least somewhat more likely to happen for a Senate candidate than it is for a House candidate or a state legislature candidate, but it's still by no means whatsoever guaranteed to happen for every Senate candidate. (And further, Senate candidates are also significantly more likely, though still by no means guaranteed, to already have enough preexisting notability for other reasons to have qualified for an article on those grounds anyway, such as having already served in another NPOL-passing political role prior to running for the Senate — so pointing out other examples of Senate candidates who got articles despite losing isn't determinative.) So being a Senate candidate is not an automatic inclusion freebie in and of itself, and it certainly hasn't been demonstrated here that she's already earned special case status. Even if we take YankeesFan's Israeli news stories as getting her out of the starting blocks toward being more notable than the norm, as it stands they're just WP:BLP1E for a single campaign comment, so they don't get her to the finish line all by themselves. Over the course of the election campaign, at least half to two-thirds of all candidates nationwide will be able to show something "out of the ordinary", such as getting namechecked in a "ten races to watch" listicle on CNN or Politico or making a five-minute appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 — so it still takes more than just one "out of the ordinary" thing to make a candidate more notable than the norm. There has to be a substantial body of "out of the ordinary" coverage, not just one or two hits, to make a candidate a special case. If a candidate didn't already have preexisting notability for other reasons besides being a candidate, then she does not instantly clear the bar just because she made one comment that got her a blip of BLP1E coverage in Israel — her international coverage would have to explode to Christine O'Donnell proportions before it clinched permanent ten-year test-passing notability in and of itself. Bearcat (talk) 17:28, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Passes GNG with multiple RS, including the international press. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs ) ~ 21:02, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete there is not enough to show notability. Those who say she passes GNG are ignoring that GNG is just not enough for media saturated cases where the coverage tends to be very shallow, which is what we see with political races.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:17, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect I don't see any coverage un-related to the election. There's significantly less coverage than for Mark Harris (North Carolina politician), Kara Eastman, or other candidates who have been kept recently.  While she's the presumptive GOP nominee, no sources give her a credible chance at winning the election. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 05:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep: subject has received significant coverage. Also, Requirement #3 states "If the event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented." The NY 2018 Senate race is significant. Farley's role in the contest is substantial and documented. Thus BLP1E does not apply in this case. – Lionel(talk) 11:16, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Conservatism-related deletion discussions. – Lionel(talk) 11:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
 * There is also a talk thread about it at the WikiProject Conservatism talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Redirect to United_States_Senate_election_in_New_York,_2018; not independently notable. As an unelected candidate, does not meet WP:NPOL. Coverage is routine for this phase of the campaign, and there's nothing better. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - clearly meets GNG and WP:BASIC bio guidelines. Other guidelines like NPOL and BLP1E are just additional inclusion guidelines to "catch" those that don't meet broader guidelines - voters above seem to be treating them as the only ones. Clicking the News search links above demonstrates significant coverage already and will only surely grow. --Netoholic @ 16:03, 24 June 2018 (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.