Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eric Duncan (Canadian politician)


 * 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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:46, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Eric Duncan (Canadian politician)

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WP:BLP of a person notable only as a smalltown mayor and as yet unelected candidate in a future election. As always, neither of these are article-clinching notability claims per WP:NPOL: a person has to win the election, not just run in it, to pass NPOL #1 for federal politics, and a person has to have a lot more than just a couple of hits of local media coverage to pass NPOL #2 as mayor of a small town. As always, GNG is not just "anybody who can be shown to have gotten their name into any media outlet twice" -- it also tests for the depth of how substantively any source is or isn't about him, the geographic range of how widely his coverage is originating from, and the context of what he's getting coverage for. Additionally, it warrants mention that the article was created by a virtual WP:SPA who seems to exist solely to start premature articles about nominated Conservative Party of Canada candidates in the forthcoming election. Obviously, no prejudice against recreation on or after October 20 if he wins the seat and becomes an MP, but neither the sourcing nor the substance here are enough to make a smalltown mayor or an as yet unelected candidate special enough to already have an article today. Bearcat (talk) 18:34, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 18:34, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 18:34, 11 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Weak oppose The coming election is close. Should this content be merged in a candidates listing page instead? Alaney2k (talk) 12:45, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Actually, do we still make those types of pages? Alaney2k (talk) 12:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There hasn't been a formal consensus to officially deprecate them, but the will to create or maintain such pages at all has certainly waned in the past few years. Federally, lists do exist for 2015; provincially, Ontario was the only province that ever consistently did them, and even then 2011 is the last time they were done consistently across the board — the PCs have one for 2014, but no other party does. In other provinces, lists either never existed at all, or exist only as isolated one-shots for purely random and inconsistent combinations of party and election year. As well, even the lists we have are incredibly poor — many still follow the old style, where the lists were allowed to contain basically all of the biographical content that would have been in a standalone BLP if the person qualified for one, and have never been properly cleaned up to comply with the tightening of rules that disallowed that. Conversely, the newer ones are complying with the current "no extended biographical sketches" rules, but there's little to no editorial will to actually getting them completed: see, frex, Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario candidates in the 2011 Ontario provincial election, in which the residence, votes, % and rank columns have not been filled in for even one person in the list, and the occupation column has been filled in only for three. And since the election articles contain complete vote results tables anyway, the lists aren't actually offering any unique information we aren't already covering in other places. So for all of those reasons, I believe that the lists should be deleted and not carried forward as a thing we do anymore, but there hasn't been a formal consensus for that yet. And at any rate, we have a longstanding consensus that we do not keep articles about unelected candidates just because the election is "close". If the election were literally less than seven days away, such that an AFD discussion might have to be prematurely closed if they turn out to win, then we have some leeway to potentially consider just holding off for a few days — but candidates get no special dispensation to keep articles months in advance of election day just because there's a chance that they might win. Either he already holds an NPOL-passing office today, or he has to wait until he does before an article gets to be started at all. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 12 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete Doesn't currently pass WP:NPOL . Best, GPL93 (talk) 13:12, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't be draftifying premature articles about candidates pending the election results, because that just turns draftspace into exactly the repository of campaign brochures for unelected candidates that NPOL is designed to prevent mainspace from becoming: if we draftspace this, then we automatically have to let every other candidate across Canada keep a draftspace page pending the election results too. We also have the ability to restore deleted articles if circumstances change, so draftspacing isn't necessary. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Bearcat you're right, completely forgot about that option. Straight up delete. GPL93 (talk) 16:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Not notable enough to be kept at this time. Article can be recreated if he wins the fall federal election. Kevinhanit (talk) 00:23, 13 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete If the candidate wins election in 2019, then the article can be recreated. --Enos733 (talk) 17:14, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete until he wins the election he is not notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:33, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Non-notable mayor and future federal candidate do not meet WP:NPOL. Use of Wikipedia as free election advertising would violate WP:PROMO. If/when he wins we can re-create. Bkissin (talk) 20:38, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Per the nom. Fails WP:NPOL, but can be recreated if he wins the election. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:54, 18 June 2019 (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.