Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Weber


 * 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 no consensus. North America1000 23:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Linda Weber

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Fails WP:POLITICIAN as a candidate for elective office who has not yet won elective office. All of the coverage about her is due to her campaign, and she therefore doesn't meet WP:GNG. Marquardtika (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep The WP:POLITICIAN guideline says Just being ... an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". And there's plenty of coverage: in-depth coverage here, a third of this magazine article, primary focus here,in-depth here, in-depth here, and in-depth here. She's won major party endorsements which are also confirmed here. Further, she's notable as a business executive also confirmed here. In sum, easily meets the general notability guideline.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:00, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. North America1000 20:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep Appears to be a person with significant in-depth coverage.   Lonehexagon (talk) 23:10, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep as indicated above and in the article, there are plenty of reliable and verifiable sources with in-depth coverage about her to meet the general notability criteria. Alansohn (talk) 06:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Weber fails WP:NPOL. The coverage of her run for congress is all local sources. The ABC News story only mentions her. It is the congressional race, not the candidate that the media is covering. So, she still might be notable for her business career but the only coverage of her business career that anyone has produced is one sentence about her in a short Reuters article. So also fails WP:GNG--Rusf10 (talk) 01:09, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep per Tomwsulcer and others. Djflem (talk) 10:56, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. A non-winning candidate for office who fails WP:NPOL does not get an automatic free pass over WP:GNG in lieu just because some coverage of her campaign for office exists — every candidate for office always gets some coverage of their campaign, so every candidate would always clear GNG if that were enough in and of itself. Rather, a candidate gets an article in one of three ways: (a) she wins the election and thereby becomes a holder of a notable political office, (b) she already had a credible and properly sourced notability claim independently of her candidacy, such as already having held another notable office or passing our notability standards for her primary career apart from politics, or (c) she received so much coverage for her campaign, expanding significantly out of scope to what every other candidate also got, that her candidacy itself can be credibly claimed as significantly more notable than everybody else's candidacy (the Christine O'Donnell test.) But A isn't true, and this article as written is demonstrating neither B nor C. Tomwsulcer isn't a user whose assessment of sources I put much stock in, considering that he once tried to argue that a television reporter had cleared our notability standards for journalists because her existence could be referenced to a letter she had written to her local newspaper's food columnist asking for a kale recipe. Bearcat (talk) 18:27, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Really? You mean you have a rule; we (the community) have rules clearly specified by WP:POLITICIAN and WP:GNG -- please read them.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:50, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I do not have my own special personal rule for determining the notability of politicians outside of existing Wikipedia practice — every word in my comment was and is correctly reflective of Wikipedia's established consensus about how a non-winning candidate for office becomes notable enough to have a Wikipedia article just for being a candidate. It is not sufficient to point to how an article technically meets the letter of a Wikipedia inclusion test — rather, you need to be familiar with the corpus of how AFD has actually responded in similar situations: campaign-related coverage always exists for all candidates, but we do not automatically accept all candidates as notable for that per se, so the coverage does have to expand significantly beyond what every other candidate could also show before it makes mere candidacy an includable notability claim in and of itself. NPOL is significantly outdated, in fact, and requires a significant rewrite that just hasn't been undertaken yet, so the fact that it doesn't already explicitly say that doesn't mean it's not true. Bearcat (talk) 19:05, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * So you, Bearcat, know the correction interpretation of WP:NPOL, but the guideline as written, is wrong. Seriously?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:08, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Not at all what I said. For one thing, not one syllable in NPOL suggests that anything I said is even slightly wrong in the first place. And for two, I'm not expressing a personal opinion that differs so much as one iota from established consensus about unelected candidates. The simple fact is that Wikipedia does not automatically accept an unelected candidate for political office as notable just because some campaign-related coverage exists, precisely because every candidate for any office could always show some campaign-related coverage. The key to making a candidate notable enough for an article because candidate per se is to show that she's significantly more notable than the norm by virtue of having generated outsized coverage that goes significantly above and beyond what every other candidate could also show — not because I said so, but because AFD consensus established that years ago. Bearcat (talk) 22:43, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's the NPOL wording: Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". I don't see anything about outsized coverage needed. The wording is clear.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:20, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, and since every candidate for any office always gets some coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the article, if that were all it took we would always have to keep an article about every candidate for anything. But we don't, because campaign-related coverage falls under WP:ROUTINE and WP:MILL. So the key to demonstrating that one particular candidate would qualify to have a Wikipedia article, when most candidates don't, most certainly is to show that that the volume or depth or breadth of coverage involved is significantly out of the ordinary. Because again, if all we had to do to make an article about an unelected candidate keepable was to show that the normal and expected volume and depth of campaign coverage existed, but that volume and depth of campaign coverage never, ever, ever fails to exist for any candidate in any election, then we would have to always keep an article about every candidate — which, again, our rule is very explicit that we don't. Accordingly, yes, to make a candidate notable enough for an encyclopedia article just for the fact of being a candidate per se, it does take more than what every other candidate in every election could also show. Bearcat (talk) 01:38, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Bearcat is correct. The coverage is of the campaign, not the candidate. The campaign may be notable, but not the candidate. For the candidate to be notable, there must be in-depth coverage of her outside of the campaign. See WP:BIO1E and WP:BLP1E, Linda Weber is notable for one event only and therefore does not get an article.--Rusf10 (talk) 02:31, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Weber is notable as a (1) business executive and (2) cancer fund-raiser in addition to her (3) running for Congress.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:22, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You're not showing the sources needed to make points 1 or 2 notability claims — they're not sourced to coverage about her business career as such, but to coverage about the campaign which merely mentions her business career by way of background. Bearcat (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete the coverage is routine for a political candidate, not enough to show notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:54, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Since when is coverage of a woman business executive, credited for developing online banking platforms, who raised millions for cancer research, who decides to run for Congress, routine? Don't you mean you just don't like it?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:22, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Since those claims aren't being sourced to coverage about her doing those things, but to "background info on the candidate" in coverage about the campaign. That's not how you make a business executive notable for her business career — a business executive becomes notable by showing media coverage specifically in the context of her business work, not by showing that her routine campaign coverage mentioned her background the same way it would mention any other candidate's background. To make those valid notability claims, you would need to show sources which covered her because business itself, ideally not even mentioning the candidacy at all — sources which covered her because election campaign, while adding an "oh by the way business" blurb in the middle but not being about her business career per se, don't cut it for making her business career a notability claim. Election coverage always mentions the prior career backgrounds of the candidates, that's just the nature of the beast — but that coverage does not, in and of itself, mean that they get to claim notability for their prior careers just because the election coverage mentioned their prior careers, if they weren't already garnering a GNG-satisfying volume of coverage in those prior careers before becoming a political candidate. The way to demonstrate that a political candidate was already notable enough for an article under some other notability criterion for her prior work is not to depend on the campaign coverage as the sources for that prior work — her notability as a businessperson cannot depend on the campaign coverage, it has to depend on coverage that she was already getting as a businessperson before she was a candidate for anything. The way to make a candidate notable enough under some other inclusion criterion for her pre-political work is to take the candidacy, and all candidacy-related coverage, completely out of the equation, and write and properly source a fully keepable article without depending on the campaign coverage. Then, once that's done, the campaign itself can be added back in as a minor extra detail — but the campaign-specific coverage cannot be the crux of the sourcing: if you expect her business career to count as preexisting notability that got her over our notability standards for businesspeople, then you need to show sources which covered her specifically in that context, not just sources which mention it as background while covering her in the context of the political candidacy. Bearcat (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep, there is substantial coverage as found by Tomwsulcer and Lonehexagon. Davey2116 (talk) 05:36, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Every candidate in any election could always show campaign-related coverage, but Wikipedia has an established consensus that candidates are not notable enough for Wikipedia articles just for the fact of being candidates per se. The coverage shown here is not marking Weber out as a special case who's more notable than most other candidates for any reason. Bearcat (talk) 19:32, 15 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete I agree with above comments that a few routine news stories in local press are not enough for the "significant coverage" required by WP:NPOL Seraphim System  ( talk ) 12:41, 15 February 2018 (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.