Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Helene Davies

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete. Redwolf24 01:21, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Helene Davies
Only claim to fame is as one of thousands of candidates in the last UK general election. Wikipedia is not a directory of PPCs. Timrollpickering 20:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Even individual MPs do little on their own; people who pull 1.5% of the vote in an effort to reach that position hardly approach the bar of notability. We really need guidelines for politicans like we have for music and fiction. Who's up for getting the ball rolling here? -R. fiend 21:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * We already have guidelines. They are the criteria for inclusion of biographies.  They've existed since 2003 and have been listed alongside the other notability guidelines in the Guide to Votes for deletion for over half a year.  The criteria are clear on the subject of living politicians, who are in fact the very first group of people addressed by the criteria. Uncle G 15:53:25, 2005-08-17 (UTC)
 * It appears they are not specific enough, as there is considerable disagreement over what constitutes a "Major local political figure", as well as "significant press coverage". We have articles on people who got less than 1% of the vote in an Ohio primary for Congress. Some people seem to think the very act of being a politician is notable in itself. "Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events", can be used to justify anyone involved in an election, certainly a newspwrthy event. More than these brief sentences are needed, I fear. -R. fiend 16:03, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Here's one way of looking at it: Coverage in newspapers is primary source material, as long as it isn't simple repetition of material provided by the subject itself (i.e. clandestine autobiography) and as long as the newspaper is a reliable source.  From primary and secondary source material, a tertiary source encyclopaedia article can be written, if there is enough useful primary source material.  The question thus reduces to "How useful is the source material, and how much source material is enough?".  The answer to that varies from case to case, according to what is actually written in the sources, and according to what the sources themselves are.  Press coverage saying "He ate a whole bowl of nuts at the Republican national convention." is less useful source material than press coverage saying "He gave the opening address at the Republican national convention."  Similarly, press coverage in the The Independent of East Hampton doesn't augment human knowledge as much as press coverage in The Independent does.  For the politicians that do get into the newspapers (unlike the subject at hand here) this is where the discussion lies. Addressing your example about "anyone involved in an election" with this as a basis, it can be seen that though the newspapers may write about the election, if they don't write about the specific candidate then there's no source material for a biography.  Mere involvement in something that newspapers cover is not enough.  People generally don't get encyclopaedia biography articles for passing out leaflets, because newspapers generally don't cover the individual people that pass out the leaflets, and there are thus no sources to be cited. Taking another example: Ross Perot didn't win the election to national office, but there was extensive news coverage of him and thus extensive source material for an encyclopaedia biography article. "renown or notoriety" equates to lots of humans knowing stuff about him, those humans in fact having obtained that knowledge from the very news media sources as are cited by the encyclopaedia biography article. In essence, our criteria for the inclusion of biographies try to approximate and to codify the notion that human knowledge about politicians is augmented through news media (the only source for unelected politicians) and through (for politicians that hold office) public records of their activities (such as voting records, official journals of legislatures, and the like).  It is knowledge that we are here to collect and to summarize.  Addressing the issue by asserting that "all candidates are notable" is to be building a directory of people (indeed a directory of people's autobiographies), not an encyclopaedia of knowledge. Does that help? If not, start with Wikipedia talk:Criteria for inclusion of biographies/Archive 0 and work forwards.  &#9786; Uncle G 18:29:24, 2005-08-17 (UTC)
 * Comment while individual losing candidates may not pass the test, consideration could be given to creating omnibus articles for defeated candidates. This approach has been adopted for Canadian losing candidates. In this case, one might create an article called "UKIP candidates in the UK general election, 2005" that would gather together the stories of various unsuccessful candidates. See, for example, Freedom Party candidates, 2003 Ontario provincial election. (What's a PPC?) Ground Zero 21:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * A prospective parliamentary candidate. Most are referred to as PPCs outside of election time. Timrollpickering 21:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Candidates can (and are) mentioned on the various constituency articles (see Newbury for example). It's a delete from me by the way. -- Joolz 13:22, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete minor losing candidates --TimPope 21:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete losing doesn't make you notable. -Splash 22:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep - perhaps merging into a 'minor candidates in' page. Trollderella 01:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Losing minor party candidate with no other indication of notability. Capitalistroadster 01:45, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Dottore So 02:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete all PPCs who have done nothing else of note. Secretlondon 04:49, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete failed candidates unless something else makes them notable. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 14:20, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete nn politicians.  Grue  19:47, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Losing Parliamentary candidates are not normally notable. David | Talk 13:27, 21 August 2005 (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.