Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Heritage Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal 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 of the debate was keep. Mailer Diablo 07:22, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Christian Heritage Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal election and Christian Heritage Party candidates, 2006 Canadian federal election
Not encyclopedic. Pages for failed candidates of very minor party. brenneman {L}  04:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep for both. There are numerous pages like this on Wikipedia, and the article format is the result of a compromise that followed extensive discussions.  CJCurrie 04:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * If you provided some links to these discussions that would help. As it is, these pages appear to be platforms for non-notable people to squeeze into wikipedia, expanding the coverage of fairly non-notable groups.  There's nothing encyclopedic here that couldn't go into the parent article. -  brenneman  {L}  04:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The original discussion can be found here. Subsequent practice has confirmed the acceptability of list pages -- I'll see if I can find sufficient evidence.  CJCurrie 04:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Here is the first practical example of a list page being utilized as a compromise. CJCurrie 05:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And here is a more recent example. Note that most contributors now believe the list page approach is acceptable, even if the specific bio page is not worth keeping (which it wasn't).  CJCurrie 05:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And here is a prior example of a list page being nominated for deletion, and surviving by a wide margin. CJCurrie 05:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep for both. The CHP is just as notable as Marijuana Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal election. :: Colin Keigher 04:57, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep While I strongly feel that individual minor party candidates don't deserve their own articles, it is a good idea for an encyclopedic type production such as Wiki to keep a list of former candidates. Good reference material, without wasting space on non-noteable nobodies. pm_shef 05:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. --Ardenn 05:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep both. Gives us a place to store information on candidates for a party without clogging the place with non-notable biographies often cribbed if not copied from the Party website. Capitalistroadster 05:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - At least some of this material belongs. If it doesn't warrant a separate article, then it may be merged to Christian Heritage Party of Canada, after discussion on the relevant talk page (not an AFD issue).  Christian Heritage Party of Canada has nothing on individual candidates, and I think at least some, like those who's vote counts exceed the winner/runner-up spread, are worthy of inclusion in one or the other article.  -Rob 05:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep both per CJCurrie and pm_shef. —GrantNeufeld 05:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Looks interesting, and much better than having articles on each of the candidates. Fagstein 06:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Which sentence of it do you find interesting, choosing from those following the table of contents? The plain old results tables are, I expect, already summarised more sensibly elsewhere. -Splash talk 19:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete An article on the Party is a different matter, but failed candidates are not notable. --kingboyk 06:34, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This whole idea was first proposed by AFD as a solution to a very real and otherwise unresolvable debate. It's not an ideal solution, I grant, but it's the only way anybody's found to date to balance a very real and legitimate difference of opinion on the notability of electoral candidates. So, considering that this approach was AFD's idea to begin with, keep'. Bearcat 06:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep as status quo compromise. This 'List of...' article is a proactive alternative to individual candidate pages that spring up every election. Theoretically (in my mergist fantasy), all candidates get a redirect page to this kind of list page (or, more practically, as it is practised, all candidates get merged/redirected to such a page once someone creates an article on them). This page solves some rather annoying things, like endless afds on electoral candidates who just want the free ad space and get it for at least the 5 days the afd takes (hint: don't take it to afd, just merge/redirect it to the list pages) and a one-stop shop to monitor for abusive or peacock descriptions of the candidate (opposed to monitoring hundreds of pages during that grace period candidates are normally given during an election). This topic had a centralized discussion here: Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates; and this proposal came up here: Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates. --maclean 25 07:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It is not a solution since we just keep the (non-)information somewhere else! What does it matter which title you put it under? If we get a bunch of politico-vanity-adverts every election, then that's fine. Delete them every election. I do not see, like Hiding below, that that discussion has any particular 'consensus' so strong as to overrule ordinary notability standards and to justify a dismissal of this entire AfD on the basis of it, as some seem to be suggesting. -194.247.247.60 19:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * It is not a "solution" to the problem you are posing, but it is a solution to the problem posed at the centralized discussion. This is an unofficial compromise, not a 'concensus' that emerged from centralized discussion (it never went to a straw poll). The reason the title matters is because it is much easier to deal with one article than a dozen. These are just little bios that illustrate what kind of people are running for these parties. They are not full-blown biographies that require hours of research. One of the reasons the centralized discussion occured was because the afd process was not working, some were kept, some deleted (some repeatedly) but most ended with 'no concensus'. --maclean 25 01:29, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced, reading Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates, that this compromise has any more consensus than any other. I'm also not sure we need seperate lists for each party, when they are of these lengths.  I think I'd be inclined to keep merging these lists to a point where they aren't unwieldy and aren't potential forks and aren't granting undue balance.  On the last point, do the major parties also have lists of their failed candidates?  If not, we are creating articles on an undue balance basis. At the moment, delete. I could see a value in Candidates in the 2004 Canadian federal election, but we're not debating that here. Hiding  talk 07:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, yes, the major parties do also have list articles for their unelected candidates. Bearcat 07:59, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you give me a few links. I can't see any links on Canadian federal election, 2004.  Is there any reason these can't all be merged into one list? Hiding The wikipedian meme 08:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * (i) Liberal Party candidates, 2006 Canadian federal election (I actually think Wes Penner might merit his own bio page, but I'll save that for another day), (ii) a "merged list" would be too long. CJCurrie 19:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Is there any reason that all these lists can't be folded into Candidates in the 2004 Canadian federal election, which seems to be a natural sub-article of 2004 Canadian federal election. Hiding The wikipedian meme 18:40, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Because there's 1,683 candidates and that would be a ginormous list? Fagstein 19:28, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. This seems totally appropriate to me.  While having a separate page for each of these candidates would be overkill, a list with some basic information certainly seems worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia of unlimited size such as Wikipedia. NoIdeaNick 09:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep per NoIdeaNick and others. Wikipedia is not paper. CJCurrie and others have gathered a lot of verifiable informaiton about these people into a small numbers of well-organized articles. It would be a shame to lose these. Ground Zero | t 11:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep --Ter e nce Ong 12:35, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep We need to get rid of the individual nn candidate entries, and need a place to put them. One article per party per election for losing candidates seems reasonable. Fan1967 14:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * How does keeping them get rid of them? Why do we need a place for below-average losers? One article per party that is actually relevant to the world outside their pub crew, I can understand. But an article just for signing a form once? That's a bit much. -Splash talk 19:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm at a loss why a party that got way way less than 1% overall (yes, individual ridings varied but they competed in what, 15 ridings tops???) needs an article about a particular election outcome. I think merging this stuff with the main party article is the way to go. To those that cite other party articles, as examples that it should be done this way, I suggest perhaps that other minor party articles need the same merging/purging treatment too. Nothing much more could ever be said here, could it? As much as it pains me to do so, given my extreme detestation for Mr. Brenneman and his deletionist ways (KIDDING!) I must suggest that the right thing to do here is Merge with redirect... + +Lar: t/c 15:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong keep - This is the sort of information that politics researchers find useful; one of the things that constantly hampers my discipline is not having information on the minor parties in countries outside the United States. Even if the article was not useful now, I can state without any reservation at all that, based on the research being done today, it will be useful a few years down the line.Captainktainer 16:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep both as CJCurrie pointed out, it is a reasonable compromise. Useful information for future research on Canadian elections. Note that Wikipedia is not paper. Luigizanasi 05:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep per CJCurrie et al. BoojiBoy 18:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete nn  Funky Monkey    (talk)   19:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as irrelevant to the local community, the national community, the world community, the election, the other candidates in the election and as a grouping together of a whole bunch of utterly non-notable bios, each of which would be a near-speedy candidate if it weren't masquerading as an election result. There is little to no information in these articles that is informative of politics and there is no reason to spend time writing about a collection of literal losers. Losing by a stonkingly huge amount is something that Joe Anybody can do without even leaving their bedroom: literally. Add a passing mention to a main article or two, or a table of percentages somewhere. No need for a full-blown merge and redirect. -Splash talk 19:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Above user has no prior contributions. CJCurrie 19:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have about 25,000. -Splash talk 19:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * My apologies, but you signed anonymously the first time. CJCurrie 19:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did. And I imagine my comment sounds quite harsh to the author of the article. But really, did they have any impact on any of the things I mentioned in my first sentence? Are they likely ever too? Did they even get any significant media coverage, apart from some presumable stuff about being a fringe party (or whatever the terminology appropriately is)? Is the detailed info on the candidates actually of connection to anything other than this article? If you cut that out, at least we'd get a more focussed article. -Splash talk 19:32, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't create the 2006 article -- someone else did. As has already been noted, the list system is a compromise: the candidates don't need to be individually important to qualify.  To the party's importance, it might be noteworthy the Stephen Harper, Canada's current PM, once wrote about adding the CHP's support base to a broad "right-wing coalition" (not that I'm suggesting that the page should be kept for this reason alone).  CJCurrie 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. A minor party, but at least a notable one. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) Seen this already? 19:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Notable for what? Your comment implies that some minor parties might be non-notable. What distinguishes this one? -Splash talk 19:32, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, nn. RexNL 19:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Where has everyone got the idea that Wikipedia should onlyu include things that are important or "notable" (which is as vague and useless a term as one could imagine)? The main advantage that Wikipedia has over paper encyclopedias is that is can cover the nooks and crannies of the sum of knowledge in this world. There is no consensus that "notability" should be a criterion for inclusion. See the grounds for deletion at Deletion policy, and, for interest, Jimbo Wales' view on notability, as expressed in the poll where notability failed to become an accepted reason for deletion. Ground Zero | t 20:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This is an endlessly rehearsed argument. It fails on several key counts: Jimbo's ordinary opinions, whilst of great interest, do not form policy or guideline absent some authority being granted to them, or him speaking ex cathedra. Also, "non-notable" is such an accepted deletion criterion that non-notable bios, bands etc, can be deleted on sight per CSD A7. "Non-notable" is a frequently successful argument for deletion because it is simply a collecting-together of many different things: WP:NOT a collection of indiscriminate information, of unencyclopedic information, etc etc. It is not as simple "i don't think he's interesting". It is clearly enough not a "useless" term, it is actually a usefully adaptive term that is just oft-debated as people differ on individual items. The nooks and crannies of the sum of knowledge indeed; it is questionable whether the school-days employment of a random loser qualifies as knowledge. -Splash talk 20:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And the counter-argument is that there are hundreds of articles on minor characters in Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Buffy, Pokemon, video game and lots of other fictional universes. There are articles on weaponry, spacecraft, battles, religions, languages and institutions of these universes that do not exist. These articles exist because people are interested enough to write about them, and because Wikipedia is willing to be the host for information about them. Here we are talking about real world candidates of real world political parties for real world political offices in a county that is, for the most part, a real place. There are people who are interested in writing about and reading about these people. How is Wikipedia diminished by allowing the stories of these real people sit alongside all of the articles about the stories of minor fictitional characters? Ground Zero | t 21:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Extremely Strong Keep per Ground Zero's excellent argument. If we can have articles on every single damn pokemon that (N)ever existed, this should be a no brainer. Jcuk 21:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep as the party is notable and the information here could be useful to researchers. Wstaffor 23:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep I think that records on small party candidates are important for historical reasons. Also, CHP canidates tend to run multiple times and in multiple ridings. This info will almost certainly be useful for future elections. Just nbecause you didn't get a lot of votes doesn't mean that a candidate didn't make an impact. NDP Johnny 23:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep as per pm_shef. — [[Image:Flag_of_Ottawa%2C_Ontario.svg|20px]] [[Image:Flag of Ontario.svg|20px]] [[Image:Flag of Canada.svg|20px]]  nath a  nrdotcom  ( T •  C  • W) 04:18, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong keep, as above. Samaritan 07:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete both. While an article about the party is perfectly acceptable, these "list of failed candidates" pages are not appropriate to the encyclopedia.  This is just a thinly veiled attempt to include content which would be unacceptable (per WP:BIO) if listed separately.  If this trend is allowed to continue, Wikipedia will be flooded with these unmaintainable pages.  Rossami (talk) 12:58, 22 April 2006 (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.