Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dylan Perceval-Maxwell


 * 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 2020 Green Party of Canada leadership election. NPOL sets a standard that can seem a bit higher than GNG but that reflects the fact that campaigns are often the subject rather than the individual. Over the years, the community has supported the case that multiple unsuccessful candidates either have to win something or we cover them in the campaigns. Once all these arguments were aired and the article.relisted there was no disagreement with this argument. Spartaz Humbug! 21:41, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Dylan Perceval-Maxwell

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WP:BLP, referenced entirely to primary sources with no evidence of reliable source coverage shown at all, of a person notable only as an unsuccessful candidate for political office. As always, this is not grounds for a Wikipedia article in and of itself -- but this article demonstrates neither that he had any preexisting notability for other reasons independently of the candidacies, nor a credible reason why his candidacies could be considered more significant than other people's candidacies. And while there is a "this article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in French" tag at the top, the French article is just a very short stub with nothing to actually translate that isn't already here and citing no sources at all, which means it's deletion bait over there as well. Bearcat (talk) 05:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 05:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 05:25, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep - achieves bare notability between some recent coverage of a controversial policy he proposed to combat racism, and significant WP:ABOUTSELF info that can be used to build the article into something more than just the campaign. I think a very narrow GNG pass is in effect here. NPOL is for politicians who fail to meet GNG, not some super extra special guideline that also has to be met. Even if that weren't the case, I don't care, because in that case it's clearly a rule detrimental to building the encyclopedia and should be ignored. People expect Wikipedia to contain information about political candidates. Wikipedia seeks to be the biggest repository of free information in the world, and people have come to rely on it; it's often hard to find info about candidates, and most people would reasonably expect candidates for office to have articles. He's also run for god knows how many elections, making him a perennial candidate which can in itself create notability in certain cases. This is also a pointy nomination (see here, CTRL+F "WP:WAX") and should be speedy closed for that reason alone. &minus;&minus;&minus; Cactus Jack 🌵 05:34, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * NPOL is not "for politicians who fail to meet GNG". We don't always do a very good job of actually finding and using all the sources necessary to write a substantive article that looks like the person passes GNG, but that's not the same thing as the person actually failing GNG — NPOL-passing politicians always pass GNG, and we just aren't always on the ball about doing the work to make their articles good. That's a "lazy Wikipedians" problem, not a "the people don't pass GNG in the first place" problem.
 * And a brief blip of coverage in the context of announcing a policy proposal during a leadership race just makes hima a WP:BLP1E, not a person who has attained permanent notability yet. We are WP:NOTNEWS: we consider the enduring notability of potential article topics, not just their temporary newsiness: our job here is to look past the daily news and sort out what information is still going to matter in 2030, not just to indiscriminately keep an article about everybody whose name happens to have shown up in the daily news cycle one day.
 * And also, WP:WAX is not WP:POINT. There's nothing disruptive about responding to a WAX-based argument by listing the named WAX article for a deletion discussion — WAX literally says that that's one of the standard responses that people should expect to a WAX-based argument. Bearcat (talk) 06:22, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete Fails WP:GNG worse than most, as the only potentially qualifying coverage is the fact there was a documentary film made about one of his campaigns - the review of the film in the article focuses solely on the filmmaker, and not on Perceval-Maxwell. The rest of the article is his CV, a couple Facebook posts, routine election results, a National Post article about a Green Party debate, and a press release which doesn't even mention him. The French language article has zero references at all and is unhelpful. On top of WP:PROMO concerns related to the fact he's a current candidate, which was the reason why this article was created, this is a clear delete. I also want to address a point made above - there is no way at all this is a pointy nomination, as Bearcat generally does an excellent job at bringing articles that need AfD review to our attention and has for a long time. That accusation must be retracted. SportingFlyer  T · C  06:30, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I will not retract it, because it is correct. In fact I will double down. Bearcat's crusade against politician articles is one of the worst things I've seen at AfD. He gleefully misuses policy, lawyers it to mean the opposite of what it plainly says, and bludgeons the process with his walls of text of randomly italicized words and meaningless blather. Wikipedia would be far better off if he were topic banned from AfD, or even desysopped or sitebanned entirely. I'm done here. I'm not going to waste my time on a failed encyclopedia run by deletionist zealots like him. &minus;&minus;&minus; Cactus Jack 🌵 06:44, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep and Topic Ban User:Bearcat from AFD nominations - It's a very pointy nomination, as it's clearly vengeance for another editor pointing out the nominator's lack of competence in the Annamie Paul AFD, and a quick WP:BEFORE shows lots of other articles relating to this environmentalist's similar activities, such as his hemp business, and his famous car that ran on discarded deep-fryer oil from fast-food restaurants (even I remember that one - and a good "Do you know" candidate). I've added several more references to the article, some routine, but some meet GNG, such as the 2005 Montreal Gazette article, the 2009 car articles, the 2008 piece on his hemp business (did User:SportingFlyer see these?) The nominator really should withdraw this nomination. This nomination meets the speedy keep criteria 2 (created for disruption). Though it's also clear that the mandatory BEFORE checks were not done. Nfitz (talk) 06:57, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Once again, responding to a WP:WAX argument by listing the WAX article for discussion is neither disruptive nor pointy — listing the WAX article for deletion is exactly the standard and expected response to a WAX argument.
 * I also do not have any "lack of competence". If you would like to propose that we change the established consensus around non-notability of political candidates, that's one thing — but I am not incorrect about and do not misrepresent what the existing consensus is, and the sheer number of deletion discussions where I've voted to keep because I was able to salvage an article with better referencing than had been provided is also plain proof that I know what I'm doing when it comes to WP:BEFORE. Salvaging inadequately referenced articles is literally 75 per cent of the work I do on here at all, in fact — and kindly read WP:ATTP, which specifically states that "As well, be very careful about flinging around accusations of a nominator's or commenter's perceived failure to follow WP:BEFORE. Not everybody has access to the same research tools, so the fact that you were able to access a database that provided more coverage than somebody else found in other databases is not, in and of itself, proof that the other editor was negligent in their duties. If you can salvage the article, then just salvage it and don't attack other editors for not finding what you found." Bearcat (talk) 07:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I completely disagree with everything you have said here. WAX hardly applies when it's overwhelming clear that the original nomination is heading towards a keep - and to suggest otherwise raised WP:CIR questions. If WP:BLP1E applied you might have a point ... but in both cases you've raised, the coverages goes back decades. And when it's shown to you that that is the case, instead of doing the honourable thing, and withdrawing the nomination, you dig deeper with spurious and irrelevant arguments, trying to twist WP:SNG and ignore the clear guidance in WP:N that A topic is not required to meet both the general notability guideline and a subject-specific notability guideline to qualify for a standalone article. I can understand you making mistakes, and misinterpreting things ... lord knows it's not all clear ... but to let your ego take over, and create disruptive nominations, and waste everyone's time is disgraceful, and I believe you should be topic banned from further AFD creation until you have time to reflect on this. Nfitz (talk) 07:20, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not withdrawing anything so long as you're speaking to me in that unacceptable tone — and it wouldn't matter whether I withdraw it or not anyway, because if you've salvaged the article enough for people's satisfaction, then they'll vote accordingly and it will be kept regardless of whether I withdraw it or not. This is, after all, exactly how AFD works: if articles get salvaged and improved enough to turn the tide on an AFD discussion, then that's a win for everybody, not a "competition" that I've "lost". If you start speaking to me civilly, then maybe I'll consider your position — but I have no obligation to obey the commands of anybody who's talking to me in this kind of blatantly uncivil and inappropriate manner. And allow me to point out as well that I have never, not once, attacked you in any of this. Bearcat (talk) 08:05, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm talking perfectly civilly - though if you think that your decisions should be based on how people speak to you, rather than the facts, then that raises even more quesions. There's no doubt that this was a pointy nomination - likely in retaliation for the same user doing a pointy AFD at Articles for deletion/9th Jutra Awards. The hypocrisy of complaining about that and then doing the same thing stuns me. Also ... who said that you attacked me - I didn't think you had? And what has rescuing the article got to do with it ... we don't decide to delete based on the quality of the article - AFD guidelines clearly say that one should improve the article if one can, rather than deleting. It is your failure to WP:BEFORE that is the prime issue here ... and then you seem to think that the rest of the discussion be some kind of transactional exchange - rather than failing to do the right thing, and withdrawing clearly faulty nominations. Stop wasting our time. Nfitz (talk) 08:19, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, you may think you're talking civilly, but the comment I was responding to was very angry and attacking and uncivil. And this article was created by a user named Fulserish, not by Cactus Jack, so I don't know why you think nominating this for discussion was retaliation against anything Cactus Jack did. I'm also going to remind you, once again, of what WP:ATTP says about accusing people of failing to do BEFORE: "Be very careful about flinging around accusations of a nominator's or commenter's perceived failure to follow WP:BEFORE. Not everybody has access to the same research tools, so the fact that you were able to access a database that provided more coverage than somebody else found in other databases is not, in and of itself, proof that the other editor was negligent in their duties. If you can salvage the article, then just salvage it and don't attack other editors for not finding what you found." And finally, again, it doesn't matter whether I withdraw a nomination or not — if people are convinced that you've salvaged the article enough, then it will be kept regardless of anything I do or don't say, and if people aren't convinced that you've salvaged the article enough, then any withdrawal I make would almost certainly be followed by somebody else immediately initiating a renomination anyway. So not immediately complying with an order from you is not evidence that I'm "failing to do the right thing", or that I'm being "transactional" — it's evidence that I'm trying to respond calmly to a personal attack I didn't deserve. Bearcat (talk) 08:42, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My apologies ... I thought it was Cacti Jack who had mentioned this article ... re-reading the discussion it was User:TimeEngineer ... however within minutes of their mentioning this article, you not only nominated this article for deletion, but (to me at least) seemed to gloat about it. It's hard to believe that in the intervening 16 minutes after their post, you had time to not only see their post, but to read it, do the AFD nomination for this article, and do a proper BEFORE. Which the amount of GNG material relating to him, that's not related to his candidacy, would have found. Nfitz (talk) 08:56, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. Nfitz (talk) 07:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I looked at the article as it stood at 06:30 and you updated it with a single new article afterwards, which isn't really significant coverage in my book as it was a late 2000s blog post. I do not think the mention that his car runs on cooking oil is enough to make him notable or is considered a separate "event" considering a quick search shows his notability stems mostly from a single documentary with one review or the fact he's standing to be the leader of the party, which is a candidacy. The claim for WP:GNG is exceptionally weak even for candidates, who we expect to receive WP:GNG and that's why we've carved out the exception. You also need to consider your response. A topic ban for Bearcat would be absolutely ridiculous. This was a very legitimate nomination. SportingFlyer  T · C  08:12, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Fair enough - I'm not sure when you looked at it. There's three articles referencing the car ... and I certainly remember seeing reports about it, there was significant media coverage of him and the car at the time. There's significant coverage about his Hemp business. And there's significant national coverage about his candidacy for leadership a major federal party ... it's not like he's running for Senator in Red Neck, East Dakota, and just retired as a schoolteacher with no profile. My gosh ... if we applied this depth of GNG to sportsplayers, they'd be about five per league. Nfitz (talk) 08:27, 1 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Per above comments, he passes GNG, and as he received coverage prior to his campaign he does not fall to any possible WP:BLP1E problems, though I am not convinced there would be one anyway. Devonian Wombat (talk) 10:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * If you strip away anything that's not campaign related, he was the subject of a non-notable documentary, was interviewed, and was mentioned in a couple blog posts. WP:GNG is not met. SportingFlyer  T · C  01:29, 2 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Meets GNG with sources, some of which are in French. His candidacies are essentially beside the point, there's enough here for an article. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs )~ 01:28, 2 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. His political activity, while a noble endeavor, does not meet the guidelines for notability Politician. The fact that there are newspaper articles that cover his candidacy is irrelevant to the criteria that running for elected office in of itself is not notable. While there is a documentary, the subject of that is the campaign which would warrant either special detail in the article about that election OR the documentary itself. The articles covering his activism do not have him as the subject. Rather he is simply "one of the proponents," of biodiesel. He might meet some notability as an inventor if he actually invented the original systems, but I could not find anything to that effect.--Mpen320 (talk) 02:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Someone should mark the French article for deletion too if this article is going to be marked. Just thought I should point that out, since there's no point in only removing it on one wiki and leaving it on another. Fulserish (talk) 3:30, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a completely separate project, with separate inclusion standards. SportingFlyer  T · C  04:32, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Hopefully, relisting this discussion will allow time for additional analysis and comments about the article itself, without further ad hominem attacks against either the nominator or the participants.
 * Delete per WP:BLP1E and redirect to 2020 Green Party of Canada leadership election - the only thing he has ever done that meets any of our inclusion criteria (and that just barely, media have hardly covered it) was to be expelled from the Green Party leadership contest over racist remarks, and it's inappropriate to center a BLP around such an incident (it's already described in as much detail as is necessary at the election page). The rest of this is the biography of a perennial candidate who hasn't ever really even come close to winning an election, and a generic "businessman" wiki-resume otherwise. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:05, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, –Darkwind (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per Ivanvector. This is clear BLP1E territory, the sourcing leaves the article way short of WP:BASIC and fails NPOL by a couple of yards too. ——  Serial # 17:47, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete or Merge to 2020 Green Party of Canada leadership election. Multiple failed candidacies for office, including a failed bid for leadership do not meet WP:NPOL. Additionally, as mentioned, his comments in the debate are WP:BLP1E and probably won't meet the ten year test. See Articles for deletion/David Bertschi, Articles for deletion/George Takach, and Articles for deletion/Martin Singh. Bkissin (talk) 20:00, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hang on User:Bkissin, given that much of the significant in-depth coverage is from the decade before last - how can you say they won't past the ten-year test? And why does NPOL matter when they pass GNG? Nfitz (talk) 08:15, 19 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete I don't see the point of redirect in this instance. The subject is the very definition of a mediocre politician, and why foist him on the Green Party.  scope_creep Talk  22:56, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect to 2020 Green Party of Canada leadership election as ATD.Djflem (talk) 06:40, 18 July 2020 (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.