Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dan Seals (Congressional Candidate)


 * 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  Keep. Even taking into account the SPA's there is still a clear consensus to keep, as opposed to deleting or merging.(non-admin close) RMHED (talk) 18:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Dan Seals (Congressional Candidate)

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Speedy delete under both CSD-A7 and CSD-G11. He was a presidential intern - that is the most notable thing in the article and that is insufficient for inclusion as a standalone article. Let this person pay for airtime on television in order to educate the public about his campaign position rather than use Wikipedia as a soapbox. Keeleysam (talk) 19:12, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want to speedy delete this article, just put the correct speedy tag on the page. There is no need to bring it to AfD.   Esradekan Gibb    "Talk" 01:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Not a speedy clearly asserts importance--that it quite probably isnt enough for a Wikipedia article is a matter to be discussed here. See WP:CSD. DGG (talk) 02:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * He is the elected democratic nominee in a major Congressional race. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles.  It's not like he is just some nut running for Congress, he won a contested primary.  Meditotal  —Preceding comment was added at 03:52, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I know afd isn't cleanup, but this article needs to be stubbed, big time. Much of it is small controversy stuff and the rest seems tacked on.  Also, some of the sourcing is improper.  It is a weak keep for now (as candidates aren't notable automatically but he has had some news coverage). Protonk (talk) 07:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep The article needs work, but the subject is indeed a Congressional candidate. As this is a BLP, deletion is a last resort.Kuzmatt9 (talk) 22:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * — Kuzmatt9 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.


 * Neutral. However, please WP:AGF.  69.140.152.55 (talk) 06:20, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  21:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  21:20, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete and redirect to United States House of Representatives elections in Illinois, 2008. WP:BIO makes it clear that mere candidacy does not equal encyclopedic notability. Yes, there is news coverage such as the Chicago Tribune articles referenced, but as WP:BIO states, "When a person is associated with only one event, such as for a particular relatively unimportant crime or for standing for governmental election, consideration needs to be given to the need to create a standalone article on the person. If reliable sources only cover the person in the context of a particular event, then a separate biography may be unwarranted." (emphasis mine). --Stormie (talk) 12:45, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  jonny - m  t  03:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep The precedent is wrong if it is to delete major party congressional candidates in the year of their campaigns.--CastAStone//₵₳$↑₳₴₮ʘ№€ 04:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. He hasn't won an election yet and being an intern isn't particularly notable. No redirect, since the current title is pretty bad (and would have to be changed if he is elected). Clarityfiend (talk) 07:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Redirect to race (and possibly delete first) per Stormie and WP:BIO1E. Notability is established when the candidate is elected. Insufficient evidence of WP:RS coverage besides running for office. • Gene93k (talk) 07:30, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Notability lies in his having won a primary election to become a major party nominee for U.S. Representative. Mark Kirk, the Republican nominee, is beyond the notabiilty debate because he's the incumbent.  Between now and November, at least, Seals is notable.  Mandsford (talk) 12:34, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Illinois' 10th congressional district, without deleting first, as another excellent example of what I have called the Kratovil standard (compare talk; I have other examples). Also link from United States House of Representatives elections in Illinois, 2008. The issue positions are way overweighted, the bio pretty much also. This is not an unbalanced campaign site, but I say you can say anything you want as long as you add equal space in IL-10 article for Mark Kirk. It's a new twist to see accusations of COI on both sides, but the standard I've proposed should still serve as a very happy medium. JJB 17:12, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Very happy for some, I guess. Certainly, the Mark Kirk article, which has a very noticeable section about "political actions and positions" can't be deleted, even if someone wanted to do so.  I note that the nominator lives in the Chicago area, although I don't know if he's one of Congressman Kirk's constituents.  Still, the rationale for deletion ("Let this person pay for airtime on television in order to educate the public about his campaign position rather than use Wikipedia as a soapbox") doesn't go very far if it can't be applied to Mr. Kirk as well.  And as a practical matter, it can't.  I don't see that any nominee should be muzzled between now and election time.  Mandsford (talk) 18:04, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete it could have been a worthy article, but as it is written now it reads more like a resume or a political ad, and Wikipedia is not the place for that. Therefore, Wikipedia would be better off without the article.  If the serious POV issues were addressed I would reconsider.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, rather than use AfD to get rid of poorly written articles, there is the cleanup template options which should be used. Or NPOV.  Those should be attempted before a delete.Shsilver (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

"Clarification. From WP:BIO: Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although 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." imo this means that if Joe Blow 'declares' himself an indidependent candidate for some office, whether President or dogcatcher, we don't have to allow an article for him. It's certainly not meant to apply to someone who's won the primary of a major party for a major office, as those have had significiant coverage in reliable sources such as Project Vote Smart, Follow the Money, Open Secrets, as well as the media. Let's keep in mind what the guideline was intended to allow and disallow, and not twist its meaning into only allowing incumbents to have articles. That makes no sense at all. As for KeeleySam's political affiliations, he claims to live in the Chicago area and he worked on the 'Stevenson High School (Lincolnshire, Illinois)‎' article, which is in Kirk's district. Draw your own conclusions. I'm now returning to my work on every single U.S. Senator and Rep, and every single state Governor, Senator and Rep - and (assuming I'm not continually ambushed with these sorts of 'discussions') all the candidates (sometimes called 'challengers') running against them. I actually believe elections matter, and politics isn't some game (ooh! ooh! I got the other side's candidate deleted! Two points!), or an excuse to take cheap shots at the candidates running in elections. I further suggest that 'KeeleySam' read the article about Lee Atwater - he might learn something about why his game-playing is a really lousy idea. Flatterworld (talk) 18:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Changed to Keep Okay, improve it!--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The man ran for the United States Congress in 2006, lost a close race, and is running again. Otherstuffexists IS a good argument here, because there are 100% identical cases and we have had articles for years with no problems. Do we delete Mary Jo Kilroy, Jack Davis, Eric Massa, Diane Benson, John Thrasher, Charlie Brown, Jill Martinez, Christine Jennings, Larry Grant, Maj. Tammy Duckworth, John Laesch, etc, etc, etc? Cus if we do, nom them all.--CastAStone//₵₳$↑₳₴₮ʘ№€ 04:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep I think consensus has changed, as well it should. Major party candidates who have actually been officially nominated for national office are notable. We accept the notability for members of state assemblies and the like-- those offices are less notable politically than the nomination of one of the major parties (at least in the US political system with only 2 major parties) for congress; they serve as preliminaries to a congressional run. This will only amount to 500 people every 2 years or so--fewer, given that many people run more than once, as is the case here--and is not opening the gates very wide.  Even if we dont accept it in general, someone who has already run and gotten a significant amount of the vote is  only slightly less notable than the ones who get elected. Second place in a major contest of national importance is notable. DGG (talk) 12:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Strongly Keep. As the nominee of a major political party for a national position (U.S. Rep) in 2008, it obviously meets the notability requirement (which, btw, includes both national and one level down, which would be state legislatures). (also btw - this is one of several articles about Democratic nominees I've seen in the 'delete immediately if not sooner!' list - which makes it difficult to assume 'good faith' is in operation here). Summary: Unless you truly believe the U.S. is some third-rate country which has no impact on anyone or anything important, and therefore the people running it are totally irrelevant and of no interest to anyone at all, this article should be kept. (Although I would rename it 'Dan Seals (Illinois politician)' to be consistent with the rest, and add one or more of the 'rewrite needed' tags.) Flatterworld (talk) 18:16, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge/Redirect per above. Allowing for the inclusion of all major-party congressional candidates sets a dangerous precedent. No less then half of the candidates will lose, and a vast majority of the "losers" will not achieve the significant-coverage-in-reliable-sources-outside-of-one-event notability standard. -- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 22:54, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment You can always renominate the article later. I don't think that there's any precedent being set here regardless of the outcome of the debate.  Mandsford (talk) 15:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So we're gonna have two articles on two candidates and then delete the one that loses. Besides for the ridiculousness of that way of operating, that's not the way this encyclopedia is supposes to work. Wikipedia is not a newspaper, only articles that have long-term notability are included. If someone has potential for notability we wait for the person to become notable and then we make an article. We don't make articles and then delete them if this person was on the losing side of the 1 out of 2 chance of losing an election. -- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 15:47, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Notability is not temporary. If the subject is notable now, it is notable 100 years from now--or after the election!--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:17, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Ha ha. Trust me, except for "inherently notable", "notability" lasts only until the next AfD, and then it turns upon the opinions of a handful of us nobodies.  See ya on November 5.  Mandsford (talk) 01:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, but revise After quick lookup, it seems that original nominator for AfD ([KeeleySam]) is indeed an intern, if not a staffer, on Mark Kirk's campaign.  I won't tell you how I found out in the interest of respect for privacy, but if admins want to know, please don't hesitate to contact me.  Therefore, I don't believe that this article was nominated "in good faith", and it should be kept.  Yes, the article should be revised to maintain NPOV standards, but since Dan Seals candidacy is gaining a lot of notice nationally (Red to Blue, DCCC support, political blogs, large newspapers), I don't believe the article should be deleted, but it certainly needs reworking to conform to Wikipedia's standards. DoubleD17 (talk) 20:09, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment for those who haven't yet noticed An Admin just deleted the Congressional Candidate template for the Officeholder Infobox after NO discussion with anyone actually using it. Among other things, it contained an 'opponent' entry, which was useful as certain Wikipedians kept deleting opponents' names from various incumbents' main articles. Well, can't let any challengers be known about, can we? Welcome to Dirty Tricks, Inc., I guess. So I guess the idea is that even if articles such as 'Dan Seals' exists, they'll make sure they'll be effectively buried. (And yes, I do find it a sleazy, disgusting and an insulting way to celebrate the Fourth of July - especially with family in Iraq fighting for something called 'democracy'.) Flatterworld (talk) 21:05, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The template was redirected to Infobox Officeholder like most politician infoboxes. Where is the dirty trick in treating the politicians equally? Unless the merge broke functionality in the old box, it appears to be an improvement. Please remember that there are good faith editors out here who don't see things quite your way. • Gene93k (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * WRONG ANSWER If it were simply 'redirected' to Officeholder (which, btw, it always was), the fields would still work. They don't. Every single field was deleted. Every single article using that Infobox now shows nothing but the 'personal' information. NOTHING about the office, election date, runningmate, opponent, incumbent, etc. If that's your idea of 'working' or 'good faith' or 'equal treatment', try again. There are plenty of us working in 'good faith', and we don't appreciate people like you suddenly deciding to delete (in effect) all our hard work because you not only don't see things our way, you can't even be bothered to discuss it with us. Acting like that is insulting to the concept of Wikipedia, let alone 'good faith'. All you had to do was look at the translocation list to realize you were having a major impact - but you didn't care, did you? Flatterworld (talk) 00:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Read the 'consensus discussion' yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Infobox_Officeholder Flatterworld (talk) 00:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep I don't even like the guy, but meets minimal notability standards. — BQZip01 —  talk 21:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * INFO. I don't know why this request is still open, but in the meantime I've renamed the article itself to Dan Seals (Illinois politician) to be consistent with similar articles. Flatterworld (talk) 14:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep and rewrite - significant coverage in reliable sources. PhilKnight (talk) 16:21, 8 July 2008 (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.