Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liberal Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election


 * 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 (non-admin close) RMHED (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Liberal Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election

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

This is one of many dumping grounds for biographies of non-notable unelected politicians. It is a compromise approach, between those wanting deletion of non-notable bios and those who want to keep them. They're kept, fully intact, but grouped up in a here. There's only a small number of bios now, but this will grow when the election is called. Prior to nominating, I considered simply fixing it, by removing all the WP:BLP information that's not properly cited. But, the problem is, that it's *all* unsourced. Every word. What's happening is political party operatives write promotional pieces for candidates, usually copy/pastes from their web site. These promo articles are spotted by an established Wikipedian, who sees they're not notable, and then merges it into an article like this. Now, if somebody wishes to go to the effort of making an article that's an actual list of all Liberal candidates, than that might be good, but I suggest it's probably easier to create a true list from scratch, since you don't want to have a section for each item in a list. This has one-section per riding, because it's designed to have full bios for each riding's candidate. Every reason we have for deleting non-notable biographies should apply to deleting a holding tank for non-notable biographies. Rob (talk) 03:20, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep lets not be hasty here... this is a topic clearly within wp:not even if all sub-particles contained within are not Testmasterflex (talk) 03:48, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * So, how would you address the problems unsourced claims about living persons, non-notability, partisan promotion, and likely copyright violations? As said, if I removed all those problems, there'd be almost nothing left. --Rob (talk) 06:35, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.   —• Gene93k (talk) 08:59, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.   —• Gene93k (talk) 08:59, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Should those of us who are card-carrying members of a different Canadian political party get involved? (We might want to delete the entire Liberal Party and not just its candidates! ;) ) Ron B. Thomson (talk) 21:33, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep and clean-up. What's wrong with removing all unsourced content? An article listing the candidates and sourced info seems reasonable to me and if there is sufficient sourced content for any particular entry, then it can be a break-out article of its own. The organisation of the article seems fine to me but if there's a better way, then I'd encourage re-organising it. Double Blue  (Talk) 23:59, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prediction: Nobody will clean this up properly.  Rather, several more copyright violations, unsourced bios of living people, and promotional pieces will be added to this article, especially during the election campaign.  Once the election is over, all editing of the page will stop, and this page will look just like most similar cases .    --Rob (talk) 01:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Have you lost your belief in the collaboration model of encyclopedia building? It certainly can be taxed at times but I believe it will ultimately work out. Double Blue  (Talk) 02:46, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I do believe in collaboration, strongly. I think almost nothing is too small in quantity (as opposed to quality) to have value for others to be able to build on.  Just one reliabley sourced sentence is often a good start of something great.  But, a lot of completely unsourced promotional material is actually worse than nothing.  It makes it appear that Wikipedia endorses certain political candidates.  None of the content here has value.  If I were to make a good list of liberal candidates for the next election, I wouldn't use any existing content, and would start fresh from external sources.  --Rob (talk) 03:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I say keep and clean up as well as source all unsourced content. Rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater let the unsourced content be deleted and/or sourced. Furthermore; *Green Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election, *New Democratic Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election, *Bloc Québécois candidates, 40th Canadian federal election, *Christian Heritage Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election, *Independent candidates, 40th Canadian federal election, *Conservative Party candidates, 40th Canadian federal election.All of these pages exist and none of them are being discussed for deletion. If nothing else, for fairness sake dictates that this page should absolutely not be deleted.Mr. No Funny Nickname (talk) 17:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prediction #2: Without this, we'll end up with a pile of separate individual articles about each individual Liberal Party candidate. None of them will get properly cleaned up either. A few will get deleted and recreated again; many more will just sit there as permanent clutter. I'm certainly a big fan of the goal that every article on Wikipedia should be of maximum quality, but if there must be imperfect works in progress we're infinitely better off with one article that needs more cleanup work than it's getting instead of 308 articles that need more cleanup work than they're getting. And make no mistake: even with policies in place that explicitly inveigh against unsourced articles about unelected politicians, there are hundreds of them and not nearly enough attention being paid to cleaning up or deleting them. As much as you may want it to be, the actual choice at hand isn't between this and properly sourced cleanliness — it's between this and dividing this into 308 pieces that will get even less cleanup attention than this currently is. Bearcat (talk) 01:05, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - if it's not fair. First: This whole idea appears to lost it's way from the early beginning. The list of ridings was a good start but the notion seems to have lost it's way in the transition to it's current form. Why not have a single list of ridings and show all nominees, for all parties, for each riding? And, why make it just for the 40th Federal Election? Why not make it flexible enough that it can be used for the next election as well? Perhaps a chronology of nominated candidates would be a better solution - winners and losers. Do we really want to go through this again and again? Another point is that this information is already available in Wikipedia and just needs to be brought together. Secondly: I object strongly to the notion that unelected nominees are somehow non-notable. The fact that they won their nomination IS notable - at least to the people of Canada. These people have a history and usually have some standing in their communities and rightly deserve to have their own page. Often they have made an impact in the world for reasons far greater then merely being nominated (I could list hordes of people listed as notable because they played some minor role on a hockey team). As I understand it, Wikipedia is supposed to be a source of information, There are over 110,000 people in my riding and they deserve to have something more than cursory comments about the people they are looking up. The current conception does not allow the user to access that information for unelected nominees. Why, for example, am I allowed to click on Walt Lastewka's name and get re-directed to his page? Yet, Heather Carter who is notable for more than her candidacy, on the other hand, gets no such courtesy. Are they not both running in the same election? Is the information on Heather Carter somehow less valuable than the information on Walt Lastewka? If the courtesy is not extended fairly and equitably then I say we should delete and then fire the Deletionists. Better yet: fix it up so that it becomes a handy source of information and allow links to candidate pages - that's fair AND informative. (talk) johncaron.ca 19:35, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Walt Lastewka has already been elected to the House of Commons, which means that he falls within the class of politicians who are inherently notable because they've actually held a seat in a federal or provincial legislature. If you think Heather Carter is notable enough for an article, then you're certainly free to write up an article that actually contains real, verifiable, neutral sources — if she's received media coverage for her work, then actually citing it is usually sufficient — and comes from sources independent of the subject, rather than reading like you typed it straight off her campaign brochure the way the previous version did. But WP:POLITICIAN is quite clear that candidacy for political office is not a sufficient claim of notability on its own. If she's notable for more than just being a candidate, then the onus is on you to show it. Bearcat (talk) 00:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If somebody is not notable enough for a stand-alone biography, why is that you think it's ok to copy/paste the exact same bio text into a section of a page like this? Does unsourced material, badly sourced material, blatant promotionalism, non-notability, and, copyright violations become acceptable because it has more company on the same page?  How does the merge/redirect process fix these problems ?  It's the approach of merging/redirecting into this article, that's at the root of this AFD. --Rob (talk) 01:15, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * AFD consensus came up with the merged biopage solution in the first place, so I'll thank you to stop approaching this as if it were about me. Simply deleting articles on non-notable candidates doesn't work, because then they just get recreated again without any actual improvements — but leaving them as standalone articles fails numerous Wikipedia policies and leaves us with up to 308 articles that need far more improvement than they ever going to get, instead of just one article that needs improvement. What alternative solution would you honestly propose? Bearcat (talk) 01:35, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Back when you started this blanket-blind-merge compromise approach, Wikipedia wasn't yet taking BLP issues as seriously as it does now. WP:BLP now makes clear that BLP violations can and should be removed from *all* locations in Wikipedia immediately.  They shouldn't be simply relocated.  For instance, it used to be ok to push violations to the talk page, for discussion and improvement.  But now BLP violations must be removed immediately, anywhere.  If you choose to do a merge/redirect it's your obligation to remove all unsourced (potentially) contentious material immediately.  If that means removing all the text, then so-be-it.  You keep on talking about violations of policy in stand-alone biographies, but don't explain why those same violations in merged articles is somehow less bad.  It discredits Wikipedia when we publish campaign brochures, with light editing, *regardless* of whether we publish one promo-per-page or multiple-promos-per-page.  Junk is junk.  Merged junk is still junk.   What solutions do I propose:  Follow WP:BLP and others policies consistantly.  If something meets the criteria, keep it, else delete.  Merge/redirects is for *legitimate* material which needs to be relocated, for reasons such as providing proper context.  --Rob (talk) 01:58, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What part of "I did not start this approach; AFD consensus started this approach" are you having trouble grasping? And no, it is not my special obligation to remove all unsourced material immediately upon doing a merge/redirect — every Wikipedian has that right at any time, and I have just as much right as any other Wikipedian to state that the outer limit of my interest in the subject is the act of ensuring that the content is in its correct place, so that the people who do want to review it for sources and WP:BLP conformity can do so. Beyond that, I have no more obligation in the matter than you do — my interest in unelected political candidates begins and ends at keeping the categories clean. If you choose to take on the equally important task of ensuring that the articles are properly sourced and/or have unsourced content deleted, then good on you, because it's sorely needed — but neither you nor I have any responsibility to take on any task we don't choose to take on. That's part of being a Wikipedian: I get to decide which tasks I'll take on and which I won't, and you get to make that same decision for yourself. If I choose to look after the relocation part of our policy for unelected candidates, but leave the reviewing for sources part to other people who care more about that aspect of this particular topic, it's my place to decide whether that's okay or not, not yours. Bearcat (talk) 02:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You are not responsible for all merge/redirects. You are responsible for all of *your* merge/redirects.  By attaching your name to your edits, you make it less likely for others to check the work, since they think an established user already checked it.  Surely, you expect other users to [{WP:AGF]] and assume you wouldn't add copyright violations and promotion to an article.  I am not asking you take on any task you don't want.  I am just asking you to stop doing a task that's harmful.  --Rob (talk) 02:55, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The identity of the Wikipedia editor who added the content only comes into play if (a) you're on Recent Changes patrol in the first 15-30 seconds after the edit is made, or (b) mine happens to be the top edit on people's watchlists, which is only true until the next edit comes along or the page scrolls off the bottom of the list. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, who's looking at the article later, and noticing that there are sourcing problems, reviews the entire edit history to see who added what. Bearcat (talk) 03:06, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll agree that it is a mistake to simply cut and paste a poor unsourced bio into a candidates article. It can be seen, however, as the first step in a merge process. Double Blue  (Talk) 01:40, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We don't decide who's notable, if there are adequate reliable sources for a fair and balanced article, then by definition the subject is notable. Double Blue  (Talk) 01:43, 23 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep and cleanup, as others have said. This is a good topic, and I refuse to believe there aren't RS that cover this information.  The one I looked at had 6 immediately obvious hits in RS, and If there are adequate reliable sources for articles (as there seem to be here, briefly looking at the subjects), then it makes sense to organize them in this way, so I don't see anything unresolvable here that can't be solved by the normal editing process.  Celarnor Talk to me  03:46, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong keep, per several precedents. CJCurrie (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Definite keep we have this kind of list over the past few federal general elections. The article needs a clean-up although it is in part dependable on the speed the Liberals are nominating their candidates (I'm surprised that there are several blanked ridings). For the candidates that do have articles (so provincial politicians, councillors and mayors of major cities of over 100 000 are notable for their own article) add some brief intro info in their section. -- JForget 00:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment: It's fairly obvious the result of this is going to be Keep and (somebody else will) fix it.  So, I'll accept that, and to be consistent, I undid the redirect for Liberal Party candidates, 2008 Alberta provincial election which was based on an AFD that had the opposite outcome.   --Rob (talk) 01:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I never saw that AfD but I wonder what the chances are that that basically sub-stub will ever be expanded to something useful now that the election is long over. Double Blue  (Talk) 03:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say there's a fairly good chance of it. I'm more interested in these pages as historical documentation than as "current events", and I've expanded a number of archival ones.  CJCurrie (talk) 22:09, 27 August 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.