Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2012 (2nd nomination)


 * 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. There may be a valid argument to be made that Wikipedia should have such an article, but consensus seems to favor the notion that this is not that article. It may be appropriate to revisits this after the election when it is more of a moot subject and emotions have slacked off a bit. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:09, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2012
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )



As per WP:IINFO. Serves as nothing more than a voter's guide. Far too large an article, and only favours the two main political candidates, as well has having vast amounts of detail missing (the missing Romney sections seem to point to a pro-Obama bias). This vast collection of indiscriminate information should either be deleted or merged with United States presidential election, 2012 –  Richard  BB  18:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. This article is awful from every perspective. Its purpose is to serve as a voter guide, which is not what WP is here for.  Its scope is limited to the two major party candidates, when some others such as Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson are on the ballot in almost every state.  Much of the content is a blatant copyvio of both content and formatting from OnTheIssues.org (for example, compare what's in the "Energy" section with the Obama and Romney sections at http://www.ontheissues.org/Energy_+_Oil.htm#Headlines).  The "Biographical data" section shows a weird slant in favor of Obama, playing up his minor achievements while completely ignoring Romney's time as CEO of the Winter Olympics, time as a church leader, etc.  Wasted Time R (talk) 19:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep it. This article is brand new and nobody has put significant effort into it yet. What is wrong with comparing the positions of political candidates? I think this would be a great detail article beneath the main election article, which has very little info on the candidates positions on the issues. Wikipedia did this before with the 2008 election.Farcaster (talk) 19:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I'd say that just because other stuff exists that doesn't mean this should exist. – Richard  BB  20:20, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I would ask you to please look at the citations that were used. Thanks. Mugginsx (talk) 21:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Which others have said are not reliable. Besides, that doesn't change the fact that you said that there is another article of this kind, which means that this one should stay. That's not how it works. –  Richard  BB  06:45, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete itI vote for deletion of this article. violates WP:Reliable Sources and is totally bias. The entire Abortion section is quoted to an online political website and does not meet RS Guidelines This same citation is used over and over again as the only citation in many sections, Abortion Section, Free Trade Section and Energy Section, and the material it is citing should be deleted on that basis alone. http://ontheissues.org/Abortion.htm#Mitt_Romney - This is not considered a reliable source on Wikipedia. The entire article is in the style of a ""Voting Guide Mailer" and in no way is it encyclopedic.  This article is one of the most bias I have ever seen. Put this article out of its misery. Mugginsx (talk) 19:35, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - One can easily make a comparison by looking at the articles about Obama and Romney.  Dough 48  72  19:56, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - I don't believe I have seen an article of this nature before. This topic does not deserve a page of its own. Wikipedia does not do political comparisons. In addition, this article is Pro-Obama; here is a section of the article: Non-partisan analyses of Romney’s tax plan have estimated that it could add more than $3 trillion to the federal debt over a decade,[14] and would favor the highest-earning Americans,[15] possibly raising annual taxes on middle-class earners by as much as $2,000... I mean common people, it does not get more biased than that! - Harpsichord246 (talk) 20:38, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: Actually, that isn't biased at all. Romney is proposing extending the Bush tax cuts, which means that would add $3.2 trillion to the debt over a decade per CBO (cited in article in tax section). He has yet to specify which deductions or exemptions he will remove, so his plan as stated on his website (which differs significantly from his debate positions) has a further $5T in tax cuts. All the more reason for our fact-based encyclopedia.Farcaster (talk) 22:00, 21 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - Same reasons as Harpsichord246 gave. Lukeno94 (talk) 20:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - A train-wreck. Not fixable 16 days before the election. Newross (talk) 20:52, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not a voter guide. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Automatic  Strikeout  20:55, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Agreed - this is an encyclopedia, not an editorial. Please leave arbitrary t-charts of the issues to bored high school students everywhere. --66.90.145.103 (talk) 22:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: Here is the article from 2008: Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008
 * Delete A little better than the first version which barely contained anything, but in this form it reads like a mudslinging forum in the form of a Wikipedia article with gridding (he said-he said), and third parties don't exist here either, which is at least part of the related 2008 article. Major help needed before a weak keep can even be contemplated.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 22:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete: I am not aware of any formal policy that prevents Wikipedia from presenting direct comparisons of candidate positions in an article devoted to that purpose. An article for the 2012 election developed in the format of the Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008 article would seem to be very useful both for readers currently following developments in the election that is underway and for future readers who may want to look back to the campaign and find in one place highlights of the positions the candidates had taken on major issues. However, in its present version, this 2012 article falls far short of the standards we should expect for Wikipedia insofar as large sections of the article remain that have been drawn directly from another copyrighted source and the article addresses only the positions of the two major-party presidential candidates, despite there being several other candidates in the race. Were this Article for Deletion discussion taking place two or three months back, I would have leaned toward giving the article more time to develop. It seems exceedingly unlikely, however, that the necessary work required to correct this article's deficiencies can be completed in the time remaining before the election, which is the period during which it would be likely to receive the greatest amount of attention from Wikipedia users, since the election is a mere two weeks away (and since many voters are already casting votes now under early voting and absentee voting rules). (Note that I began these remarks as only a "comment" but have shifted to calling for a "delete" after considering the points I was making as a comment.)  Dezastru (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Massive problems aside from the many general reasons against such a page on WP.  Has no historical significance.  Arzel (talk) 22:56, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:30, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:30, 22 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete For same reason given by AutomaticStrikeout. Mpgviolist (talk) 01:34, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - Great summary and the side by side comparison is encyclopedic. See also Comparison_of_United_States_presidential_candidates,_2008 Cwobeel (talk) 03:33, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete It's a train wreck and a voter guide, not an entry for an encyclopedia. To be honest, I don't think I'd have voted Keep for the 2008 version if I had been involved given that it also seems like it was mainly copied and pasted from ontheissues.org CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 04:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC) — CoffeeCrumbs (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete per nom. Wikipedia is not a newspaper, not a voter's guide, etc.  Also, this covers only two of the candidates. Qworty (talk) 05:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete as failing the very first requirement for Wikipedia - being an encyclopedia article of any long-term value. It is also subject to being gamed (see the part on energy policy stressing that Romney was seeking money from the oil industry for his campaign), for WEIGHT issues (long lists of puff comments from candidates), etc.  As for other articles (2008) - "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS" is specifically not considered as a strong reason to keep. Collect (talk) 07:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and Revise - Here is the one from 2008, Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008, which is better because it doesn't contain loads of bullet points like this article. So, REMOVE THE BULLET POINTS to begin with. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 08:06, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. By including only two of the candidates, the article is simply political propaganda. This article has the potential to severely damage the reputation of Wikipedia.  Whoever created it should make a public apology. X5dna (talk) 09:55, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is WP:NOT a voter's guide (though I hope we don't have to add that example!) and the "subject" of the article is one that would be near-impossible to cover while respecting WP:NPOV. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 10:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable and encyclopedic. There's a difference between a how-to-style voter's guide, and a factual list of the main positions held by the different candidates. There are many sources for the differences between candidates, making this a notable topic.  The 2008 version of this survived AfD (Articles for deletion/Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008) and the same arguments apply. Many of the arguments for deletion don't match any kind of Wikipedia policy reasons for deletion: complaints about lack of 3rd-party candidates, criticism of article quality, difficulty of maintaining NPOV, etc - all these are surmountable issues. Some people argue for deletion because there is no long-term value, others argue it's a permissible topic for 1912 but too soon for 2012: clearly not everybody arguing for deletion is correct.  It should of course be updated post-election as historians debate the main issues at stake, but there are enough reliable sources to start now.  --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:18, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, and probably should be blanked right now for copyright violations. What an eyesore. I hope we still realize that we're an encyclopedia, not the ultimate source of all potentially useful information. Rank-one map (talk) 11:52, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, Wikipedia is an encyclpaedia, this "article" has no value and is just a partisan voters' guide. Amazing that Google saw fit to highlight it. A true encyclopaedic article would have a summarised comparison table of all the presidential candidates who are standing in the 50 states and so would include the Libertarian, Green, Constitution and Justice party candidates as well. As it is, it is simply awful.--Tovojolo (talk) 15:02, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is not an article, it's a laundry list of campaign talking points. Wholely unencyclopedic petri dish for the culture of more rabid wiki-partisanship. Is Wikipedia's reputation not sullied enough? – JBarta (talk) 15:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete -- Any encyclopaedic information in this article should be worked into the individual pages on Romney and Obama. 129.63.129.196 (talk) 15:22, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. Article of campaign talking points; a non-salvageable train wreck replete with bias and POV problems. —Lowellian (reply) 15:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and cleanup. I'm unpersuaded that this is "voter guide material" or "indiscriminate information." The topic itself is clearly a suitable topic for an article of lasting interest - the analogous article Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008 is well-formatted and reasonably well-balanced between all major candidates and remains useful 4 years later. The positions of presidential candidates is of lasting historical significance, since it affects not only who is ultimately elected but has an influence on all concurrent races, and also often forces the winning candidate to make some concessions to attract voters who find the position of the opposition appealing. The fact that we lack similar articles for every past election is due only to lack of interest/systemic bias. We have a number of B-class comparison articles, such as: Comparison of the health care systems in Canada and the United States, Comparison of cricket and baseball, Comparison of Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish, Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions, Comparison of Spanish and Portuguese, and so on, which look reasonably high-quality to me upon inspection, establishing clearly that this format is not out of scope. The fact that this article focuses only on the two major candidates reflects to me that it's incomplete, and needs to be expanded; and copyright violations should obviously be excised, but the article is not 100% copyvio. Note that I don't expect this cleanup work to happen before the election. Dcoetzee 18:18, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your six examples of WP:OTHERCRAP, which is never a legitimate argument for inclusion. Qworty (talk) 19:08, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep the Article and Clean-It-Up. The page being considered for deletion,Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2012, is very much like it's already accepted predecessor Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008 and, like it's sister page, is an excellent chronicler of the historical backgrounds of candidates and events and positions held prior to and throughout the campaign cycle for 2012. It is a one-stop-shop depository and comprehensive wealth of comparative biographical information and associated links to pages on each of the two major candidates. As long as it does remain in place, it can be cleaned up to, like it's sister 2008 page, include information about the additional candidates who ran for this high office. Especially, and additionally, this page is encyclopedic on the issues of each candidates positions and the histories of those positions. This information may seem, and at times throughout the campaign is used for individual purposes of becoming more knowledgeable about the candidates, understandably, as many other pages are as well. However, as we move passed the election and into the next presidential term, this article will become more and most valuable as the collection of information and related links that it is, even while it exists during the actual election. To delete it now, I feel, or before the remaining 13 days would be premature and a great and monumental loss of organization, work and talent proffered by the contributors, editors and administrators and would result in a total loss of those efforts. Please consider the elapse of time and the short window that remains which may give any real credence to the argument of deleting it on the grounds of voter guide material. This issue will in very short order become completely moot. What we will then be left with, given additional clean up, is an excellent encyclopedic reference for years to come. WroteOddly (talk) 00:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The 2012 article and the 2008 article cannot be compared. The 2008 article included all of the major candidates.  The 2012 article is an advertisement for two of the candidates at the expense of the other candidates.  In effect, the 2012 article is a political advertisement advocating a two-party duopoly. Whether the United States should be ruled by a two-party duopoly is a significant issue in the United States, and this article takes a strong position on this important issue by ignoring other views. X5dna (talk) 01:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. 1. This Article propagates the biased view that only the two major party candidates are worth comparing. 2. As a corollary to point 1: issues that are important to the country, the economy, or the world, and discussed by minority candidates, might be ignored by both major candidates if they both happen agree about such an issue, and thus such issues will not appear in the Article. This is a type of information bias that does not belong in Wikipedia. 3. Once we get past the initial biographical data, which can indeed be factual, we get into the realm of political and tax analysis. These latter topics are hard, almost impossible, to discuss and present briefly in a reliable, factual, or encyclopedic manner. No matter how many sources are cited, the final Article will strongly reflect the biases of the people who most recently edit it. 4. The timing is all wrong. It takes time for a good long authoritative article to be created on Wikipedia where strong opinions are involved. There is not enough time for this Article to be edited into a useful form, even if it could be done eventually, before the elections. Better delete it now than provide biased and vague information to readers. 5. I see no problem with one or more bloggers taking all this information, biases notwithstanding, and publishing it on their respective blogs. Rahul (talk) 02:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Google News is listing this article in its news cluster for all articles relating to the race: mennonot (talk)
 * Move to Comparison of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, 2012, or Keep and include all the third party candidates than can be reliably sourced. Either way, make sure the amount of detail in each category is equal for each candidate.  Mr G (talk)
 * Keep and clean up. Present quality is a poor criterion for deletion, as quality may always be improved. The article should be expanded to include other candidates and otherwise cleaned up, but not deleted. &mdash;Bill Price (nyb) 05:55, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment following up on User:Mennonot's comment, the article has attracted 20K views in a day since it got featured in Google News. --DarTar (talk) 06:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. Is this significant? I don't think this has a bearing on the quality of the article. The US election is always going to generate a lot of traffic to every article related to the election. –  Richard  BB  10:40, 23 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep, but completely rewrite. My take (i havent read any comments, only the nominator rationale, so this may have been said already) is that this article should be limited to reports on reliable sources who THEMSELVES have compared the two candidates. this article as it stands is original research. each comparison, no matter how apparently logical, which is made here is OR if not explicitly reported by, say, a NYT reporter who writes "romney on foo: nothing. obama on foo:4 reports he is against it, with reservations".Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:40, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment. Not enough time to rewrite. In the mean time, in its current form, it provides a very large number of readers with opinionated information. Rahul (talk) 11:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Practically speaking, i have to agree, thus it should be blanked back to nearly nothing, and built slowly back, with NO consideration for its use in the election.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:56, 27 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete: nearly impossible to keep an article like this bias-free and neutral when this is a still evolving subject. Aurorion (talk) 09:21, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep and clean up. Improve the quality and expand to include other candidates, but do not delete. Like others, I am annoyed that the public has not been kept informed about other candidates, and wish computers had wider screens... RS need not mention the comparisons themselves. This is a topic of great interest in the US. Smm201`0 (talk) 09:44, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete per nomination. Wikipedia isn't set up to develop articles like this given that they require synthesizing multiple sources, and this duplicates topics which would be better covered elsewhere. Nick-D (talk) 10:33, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete way too subjective ... Needs to be removed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.26.25.26 (talk • contribs)
 * Delete The sources are not making these comparisons, therefore this is OR and SYNTH.  little green rosetta $central scrutinizer (talk)$ 11:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment as OP Most of the keep votes seem to request a rewrite or revision. With the election so soon, I very much doubt there is time for a rewrite in any meaningful way. The delete vote above mine, by Little Green Rosetta, says that many of the sources do not actually make these comparisons, meaning that this is OR and SYNTH. As such, with no time for the complete and total overhaul that this article would require to make it acceptable, we are left with a very (pro-Obama) biased article laden with original research. –  Richard  BB  11:23, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * '''Comment with clear consensus for DELETE was is the article still up? 108.172.114.141 (talk) 12:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep . I wish these existed for all elections. This is of good historical value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.136.184.30 (talk) 13:06, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete I agree it's too subjective. Remove it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.214.33.57 (talk) 13:36, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep, but needs major work.   I agree that the article presents issues, but the analogous article for 2008 is a useful resource, in time this article will improve.  We're a wiki-- we label problematic articles with the optimism they will improve with time. --HectorMoffet (talk) 13:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete OMG, for crying out loud! Delete!  There's no way on earth and article with this topic can be NPOV.  No.  Way.  A comparison of candidates is by definition subjective.  This topic itself is inherently non-NPOV and non-encyclopedic.  You're fooling yourself if you think this topic can be addressed without being an editorial.  The topic has a place, but that place is not on Wikipedia! Fish Man (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Neutrality issues can be edited, sources performing comparisons can be found, third parties can be added in the style of the 2008 article. The amount of detail is encyclopedic, and Wikipedia is perceived by many to be an encyclopedia. I'm not a Wikipedian, so I don't know your policy on this, but it's very nice to have this sort of comparison as I research the people on my ballot. 164.107.101.18 (talk) 14:33, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. This article violates several aspects of WP:NOT. It is also NPOV in that it lists only some and not all of the candidates. The writing style leans heavily toward favoring one of the candidates. And following the 2012 election the article will have little or no value. Wikipedia is not a guide, it is not a newspaper. And not meaning to get into the "other stuff exists" argument, but unless similar articles retroactively list the platforms for the candidates in all previous elections back to George Washington, this article has no place on Wikipedia.  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 14:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. How the hell did this abomination even survive a speedy deletion? Good god wikipedia has become such a jokeWhatzinaname (talk) 14:42, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - I think both sides have good arguments. While it runs the risk of being tilted in POV, I think it could be fixed; it follows a similar format to the 2008 article.  On the other hand, there is so little time, there is so much to fix, and I'm going into midterms.  I know, I sound like an uncommitted voter from Lucas, Ohio. :-) Bearian (talk) 15:17, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I concur with the assessment that the neutrality of this article is impossible and the format is unrealistic. We must act now, as this article is prominently visible in Google News. theMONO 15:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - and blank or hide from public view for now pending the outcome of the discussion (something that may require a faster administrative process). The subject is utterly unencyclopedic and cannot reasonably be made so.  However much anyone tries, Wikipedia just isn't a voter guide.  The article will be obsolete anyway after the election, and completely unimportant after a few years, so letting it stand for half the time between now and the election means we do half the damage.  I haven't checked it for accuracy, neutrality, or completeness, but even if it were all of these things, it does a disservice to voters and to the encyclopedia for WP to try to offer this service.  - Wikidemon (talk) 15:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Please see the Deletion/Recreation strategy discussed on the article talk page. It may be a way to salvage the article (if it is salavagable at all).--NextUSprez (talk) 16:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep, major rework per HectorMoffett. Comparison of United States presidential candidates, 2008 is an example of a good article still quite useful 4 years later - that's what this one should aspire to.  It should include all candidates on the ballot, with very short position summaries.  It's tempting to delete this one and start from scratch, but the 200+ cites so far are a useful starting point.  – SJ +  16:12, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree with you in principle, it would need to be majorly reworked if it were kept. The 2008 version is a good comparison to use. However, that one was much better in several distinct and important ways (eg, encompassing all candidates who mathematically could win). With 2 weeks to go before the election, I just don't see how there would be time to bring this article up to standard. Gabefarkas (talk) 18:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The work done to date should be preserved somehow - even if the article is renamed in the short term so that it doesn't attract high-profile traffic. I suggest moving it and its talkpage [back] to the userspace of one of the active authors, with suggestions for cleanup based on this discussion.  – SJ +  05:23, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not a voters guide. Article is synthy WP:SYNTH, although I do not see it outright violating that rule, it's awfully close.  POV issues, I'm not sure how you can keep a NPOV with what is essentially soundbites.... when you go beyond the soundbites, it gets synthy.  I don't think the article should exist at all in this format, and should only be considered to be written after-the-election. Roodog2k (talk) 16:21, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete As per WP:INFO, WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTDIR and WP:UNDUE. This is a compendium of electoral facts which would fit within a newspaper special edition, not an encyclopedia.  This is not useful for voters (as it is a magnet for vandals) and is not useful for the parties (as it can be skewed by malicious edits). doktorb wordsdeeds 17:12, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete It is not a necessary article.  One can make sufficient comparisons from the 2012 Presidential debate article and from the articles of Obama and Romney.Coviepresb1647 (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Why is this still going on? This AfD needs to be closed (and I shall stress here this is my opinion only) the wretched article needs to be deleted. The reason why there needs to be a quick decision is that Google is doing enormous damage to Wikipedia. It's directly linking to the article and what do people see when they come? The great big banner at the top saying that the article, which Google has linked to, is being considered for deletion! It just makes Wikipedia look incredibly stupid. --Tovojolo (talk) 18:49, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Our BRD process is unable to keep up with this complex and ultra-fast moving collection of controversies NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I think that this will have a place on wikipedia when it is written in retrospect. For example, the 2008 version was largely written in retrospect and the information is a lot better and more neutral. If we delete this page now, it can be rewritten following the election so that it is more neutral (neutrality is going to be just about impossible with only two weeks before the election) and more complete. Anyone interested in learning about the individual candidates can visit their respective pages for the time being.Spirit of Eagle (talk) 23:56, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - The Wikipedia is not a directory of statistical comparisons, nor is it a voter's guide to American elections. This article is an example of the weakness of crowd-surfing an encyclopedia.  We have no mechanism other than pitched battles at AfD to prevent partisans from using this project as a political ticker/blog, because all they do is parrot "but its reliably sourced!" and hope it carries the day.  What's really sad is that right at this second, this article is linked directly from Google News' section about the political campaigns.  So alongside legitimate news articles written by professional journalists is a link to a Wikipedia article where most of the first pageview is taken up by a big box describing why the article sucks.  Tarc (talk) 02:36, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Rename and improve. I think there's a diamond in the rough here, or at least a cubic zirconia. The issue is the name and the early state the article is in at the moment. I think this article represent a start at would should be called Issues during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, considering Casualties of the Iraq War as the precedent and the model for such an article.  There's nothing in Category:United States presidential election, 2012  that covers issues arising during the campaign as a whole. The biographical data would be mostly gone, except for the little bit needed as an intro and coverage of items related to a candidate's biography that became issues during the campaign.  Organizing it this way means we are limited to just the two major party candidates.  No doubt the editing will be painful for all involved, but it would be a legitimate topic to cover. Dynamic IP 72.244.200.243 (talk) 04:45, 24 October 2012 (UTC) — 72.244.200.243 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete' I don't like it! Regards, Sun Creator(talk) 06:23, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Unencyclopedic Shii (tock) 08:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * If you two want your votes to actually count, they need a bit more meat on the bone. Tarc (talk) 13:02, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Clear delete The bits of referenced material are synthesized and mixed with a whackload of WP:OR making this entire attempt to be partisan and inappropriate. Even the formatting - why is "Obama" in the right and "Romney" on the left - after all, O comes before R alphabetically.  Such random choices makes this WP:BIASed overall.  Delete and burn with fire (✉→BWilkins←✎) 10:27, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - full of original research and synthesis; omits most of the candidates; violative (IMHO) of WP:NOT, as being a voter's guide (and a malformed one at that). -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  13:18, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep, major rework per HectorMoffet and SJ. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 03:19, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete and add this to WP:NOT -- No  unique  names  07:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. I don't know how this article can be written without original research, especially at this stage in the game. If anything, any "comparison" doesn't serve an encyclopedic purpose. Reporting views and allowing people to think for themselves - ok. But it's not appropriate for us to be arbitrarily deciding this for others. Lord Roem (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment 'Reporting views' can be considered against the spirit of WP:NOTNEWS, especially when these 'views' are from primary sources. Strengthens your Delete.Roodog2k (talk) 16:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe "reporting" was the wrong word choice. But yeah, I agree. Lord Roem (talk) 17:02, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Split either into per subject articles or per candidate articles. There is simply too much information to cover all six (or more) candidates positions in depth in one article.  Also rename to something better regardless. It is not a comparison except in the most trivial of senses (and the belief that it is seems to be creating issues). Rich Farmbrough, 18:07, 25 October 2012 (UTC).


 * Keep it. Meets every requirement of notability. I would like to see this for all presidential elections. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 20:26, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment No one said it wasn't notable. It is notable.  Although everything in Wikipedia must be notable, not everything notable must be in Wikipedia.  This fails WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, potentially fails WP:OR. Passes notability, though. Roodog2k (talk) 13:29, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It isn't WP:OR, almost every sentence has a reference. It isn't WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, it isn't a diary or a Who's who or a first-hand news report. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment I like the side by side statements of their stands on issues. It lets the readers make the comparisons. It would be preferable to include all nominees. I'd like to see a table of candidates and issues with links to related content on all candidates' pages. If we made the structure of the individual candidates consistent, it would give readers easier access to candidates' stands on the issues.


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