Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George W. Bush insider trading allegations


 * 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 Professional life of George W. Bush. Other possible merge targets have been menioned but I do not see any reason to endorse or enforce any of them here; the page history remains available for that purpose. Shereth 14:48, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

George W. Bush insider trading allegations

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This article is a violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:NOTNEWS. It is a recounting of a years-old news story dressed up as an encyclopedia article.

I voted the straight Democratic ticket in 2004, 2006, and 2008, and I regularly read a variety of liberal weblogs. I'm familiar with most criticisms that have been leveled at George W. Bush, but I've never even heard of this alleged incident. It appears to have been a brief blip on the radar which then faded away with no further ado &mdash; precisely the kind of thing that we have routinely deleted in the past. *** Crotalus *** 14:23, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Professional life of George W. Bush per WP:POVFORK. — Rankiri (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, I disagree that the story itself is not notable. From [Google News]:
 * http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=oeoPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pI0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4008,7204089&dq=bush+harken+insider+trading+sec
 * http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/07/12/harken/index.html?x
 * http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/09/business/corporate-conduct-president-bush-defends-sale-stock-vows-enhance-sec.html?pagewanted=all
 * http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200209/kelly — Rankiri (talk) 15:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article is not "WP:UNDUE".  To the contrary, the precise purpose of this article is to preserve properly sourced and encyclopedic information but not to give it too much weight in the main Bush bio.  It's an application of WP:SS. JamesMLane t c 15:31, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You can't just keep it. POV or not, the article is almost a carbon copy of Professional life of George W. Bush. Please recall WP:CFORK. — Rankiri (talk) 15:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * More precisely, the section of the "Professional life" article is textually similar to this article, not vice versa. The "Professional life" article was created later.  Perhaps when that one was created, it should have included only a brief summary of the insider trading issue, with a wikilink to this article.  Certainly this article wasn't created as a content fork or POV fork of the then-nonexistent "Professional life" article.  Of course, that leaves open the question of how best to present the material. JamesMLane t c 16:10, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, whatever the case, one of the articles should almost certainly be redirected to the other one. As for the WP:UNDUE aspect, as a nonpartisan individual with no prior knowledge of the incident, I feel that the article conveys the distinct impression that "he did it but got away with it" and should probably be rewritten from a more neutral perspective. — Rankiri (talk) 16:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look at the passage it's mostly just facts, so I'm hoping if you think the passage is stacked against Bush that you have some additional facts to add that would help clarify the matter rather than paring down the information presented. --kizzle (talk) 18:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete as an unnecessary article. We do not need an article for every detail of a President's life, this is not a newspaper to document everything to the minutiae level. There is sufficient content included in (the newer) Professional life of George W. Bush and any other sourced content can be added in there. This shouldn't serve as a redirect either. -SpacemanSpiff (talk) 16:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Why not redirect? I think it would be useful. -- Explodicle (T/C) 17:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict) Having a redirect for individual activities within a professional career is pointless, but I could live with a redirect if forced to. -SpacemanSpiff (talk) 18:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect per Rankiri. -- Explodicle (T/C) 17:26, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep/Redirect... as my nemesis JamesMLane states, the two sections are textually similar. Putting on my Republican hat for a second, I don't think there should be an article about W's professional life where 70% of the text is covering an allegation of insider trading.  I think the article should be kept and linked with an ultra-brief wiki-link from the professional life and main Bush article. Also, no offense to the person proposing the deletion, but simply because they've never heard of something is not grounds for deletion. --kizzle (talk) 18:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, people might want to take a look at Harken Energy Scandal at the same time for possible merge opinions. --kizzle (talk) 19:11, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Needs some balancing and it was/is notable and covered; agree with Kizzle on how to do it.Fuzbaby (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. George W. Bush already has a summary section that briefly mentions the issue and links to Professional life of George W. Bush for more information about George Bush's early career. The problem with kizzle's approach is that one will have to go from George W. Bush to Professional life of George W. Bush to George W. Bush insider trading allegations in order to get more information about the topic. Not only would that be needlessly cumbersome, it would hinder the consensus building process and serve as a direct invitation to WP:CFORK. Another point is that Professional life of George W. Bush is only 8kb long. It makes more sense to trim the fat out of the bloated section or to use the template on the undersized parts instead of splitting the already short article in two pieces. — Rankiri (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Rankiri, the main Bush article already links to the insider trading page so one would not have to go from George W. Bush to Professional life of George W. Bush to George W. Bush insider trading allegations as you say. As for the makeup of the Professional article, I just think ideally it should have more details about his other careers but I'm not one to go in and start paring down info... that extra stuff can be put in by someone with time :) --kizzle (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, again, the main issue seems to be WP:CFORK. If the consensus is to turn Professional life of George W. Bush into some sort of a summary section, I won't object. — Rankiri (talk) 19:21, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete/Redirect This probably doesn't warrant coverage at all, let alone its own article. Non-Dairy Creamer (talk) 20:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 11:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 11:58, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep In the Madoff Era, people are seriously considering suppressing information about corporate criminals who got away with murder. This is unbelievable. Corporate crimes such as this have brought the global economy to its knees and need more attention, not less. Madoff's case was dropped by the very same enforcement agency, the SEC, in the very same year 1992, under the first President Bush. Serious food for thought there, in the country with the biggest absolute and percentage prison population in the world, overwhelmingly consisting of poor people jailed for minor drug-related offenses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gensmahaut (talk • contribs) 10:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Deciding what to do with this article for political reasons would conflict with Wikipedia's neutrality policy. -- Explodicle (T/C) 14:41, 13 July 2009 (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.