Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of American politicians convicted of crimes


 * 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. / ƒETCH COMMS  /  02:24, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

List of American politicians convicted of crimes

 * – ( View AfD View log ) •

This article is huge and continues to grow. The article is so huge that going through it is a time sink. The current article does have a number of sourced entries, but I've also found a lot of unsourced ones. Article as it stands would be a nightmare to clean up and/or bring into compliance with BLP. Would be better as a category. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 19:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * keep Perfectly good article about a subject of interest to many people. If it were a category, then it would be attacked it as lacking a place to to put explanatory comments that an article can, and this article does, contain.  Most of the entries are sourced either directly or though their linked WP articles--the comments above are misleading.  'Too long' is not a reason to destroy WP content; at most, it is a reason to split up the article.   The time it takes for an editor to work on an article is also not a reason for deletion of anything.  By the way, BLP only applies to living people, not dead ones and, in any case, criminal conviction is truth to be reported in WP, not hidden or deleted.  Hmains (talk) 19:58, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Plus another WP:DOGBITESMAN kind of subject. Politicans commit crimes, whoda thunk? - The Bushranger Return fire Flank speed 20:30, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete... I don't know where to start... coat rack? Criteria narrow enough on the criminal side to convieniently exclude George Bush, but somehow broad enough on the political side that the list bizarrely includes clear non-politicians such as Frank Sturgis, Albert Hakim, Fawn Hall, etc etc. Hairhorn (talk) 21:20, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:39, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Be accurate.  You have discovered NO unreferenced entries here.  This is a short, to the point article which is important to studies of corruption.  This important article is neither “huge” nor a “nightmare” and is similar to other lists in Wikipedia. Richrakh (talk) 17:14, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Please stop top posting, follow the regular order. And your comments are all wrong.- Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:25, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My opinions are as valid as yours...and better researched. Richrakh (talk) 19:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Bullshit. The article contains MANY unreferenced entries. Your statements to the contrary as well as your repeated attempts to make this personal are pure nonsense. Saying I've found no unreferenced entries is a baldfaced lie. You're just hoping nobody else will take the time to actually look as I have. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:56, 30 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Speedily KeepOf all three of these articles this is the most concise and unambigous. Why on earth would you want to remove it?  Leeroy10 (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2010 (UTC)  Struck out vote by obvious sockpuppet
 * Strong keep - This is kind of a cheap tack, guys. just ebcause the articles go after peopl you like doesnt make it a BLP violation. besides, some of these people are dead which obviates a BLP violation unelss you are suggesting that Frank Boykin, Ted Kennedy, AND Fred Richmond are ALL still alive despite being born in 1885 for the former!! BLP does not apply in this case for obvious reasons lol. Besides, the WP:RS are clearly numerous and extensive, including the New York Times and Los Angeles Post. i cant believe that all of you think that these sites, which are PEFECTLY good sources on other articles, somehow fail the WP:RS and WP:V tests here, and if youre suggesting that WP:N is an issue -- well, since when is Ted Kennedy not a notable person, despite being DEAD? User:Smith Jones 15:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep It might be a good idea, if length is a problem, to split by time period or branch of government. But such a list is unquestionably useful. Ray  Talk 02:40, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Useful does not trump BLP. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * BLP problems with a good encyclopedic list are solved by editing, not deletion. Ray  Talk 23:57, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you want to trudge through this, finding the ones that aren't sourced and then determining whether each one is still living? Because if you're volunteering, please feel free to get to work as it just may save this article from deletion. These unreferenced BLP violations have existed now for some time and will continue to exist until all the people here demanding to "keep" it get busy fixing it or it is deleted and improved off-site to the point that it can exist on Wikipedia without violating a core policy. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, my personal willingness to wade through tons of BLP-violating crap is not a deletion criterion. If it were, we could rapidly delete Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and Foreign policy of the United States in short order. Established custom is that if a topic is encyclopedic and worth covering, we will cover it - and for each topic there are editors willing to go through it all. Ray  Talk 15:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete Makes claims of political connections for nonpolitical crimes, is a nebulous concept as it includes some state officials, excludes others, and includes people who were employed by officials who were not actually "politicians." Better served by a category than this melange.  If the nebulous requirement for listing here is correct, it could end up being several megs long. Collect (talk) 14:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep  This is the classic example where there are no BLP problems. It is an accepted principle of BLP that crimes are admissible content when the people are public figures and the crimes are relevant to their notability. For people whose notability is positions of public trust, such as politicians, convictions for crimes are always relevant content--and even accusations can be. I am not sure i would emphasise them by making of list of politicians accused... but in the case of convictions, any conviction is very highly relevant to notability, would usually warrant a full section of an article, not just a mention, and is absolutely correct for a list.  Anyone who thinks this is a bLP problem should propose a different standard of BLP than the one we are using. This is one area where we should have stable policy, for inclusion as well as exclusion.    DGG ( talk ) 17:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep concur with DGG. That a politician is convicted of a crime is always significant in relation to their public life (although, disclaimer; only those crimes committed whilst in office, or in relation to their office). BLP policy for this issue is designed to ensure we are sensitive to the issues of using pejorative terms in relation to living persons - it does not mean we do not aply such terms. --Errant[tmorton166] $(chat!)$ 17:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So it is not a violation of BLP to say "so and so was accused/convicted of a crime" and to not provide a reference for it? That's news to me. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 18:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If it is referenced in the article this is accepted as fine. Otherwise, no, remove it. These should be fairly trivial to check, though. And deletion is a poor mans solution to that problem. --Errant[tmorton166] $(chat!)$ 18:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be interesting to see some examples of unsourced inclusions. I've scanned through the list and can't really find any.--Errant[tmorton166] $(chat!)$ 18:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure. There are 13 in this section alone . Some of those people may be dead, so not BLP violations, however the entry for Don Blandford is uncited and the article does not cite this accusation of committing a crime either. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 19:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, WP:V is a policy so it should be fine for you to just remove them. Alzarian16 (talk) 19:31, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've removed a large number of them from at least one of these three articles. The problem is, the article is massive and expecting someone to dig through it for unsourced entries is unrealistic, especially when they're still being added from time to time. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 19:35, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * whjat you deem as "unrealistic" is a cornerstone of WIkipedias WP:BOLD and WP:SOFIXIT policies and cultural touchstoneds. Your decision that this is somehow too "hard" to expect anything to do is an editude unbecoming of an editor and I perosnally feel that if you think its that much work to just muddle through somehow because we are all in this togehter and this is a group project. simply destroying someone leses work because you personally feel that its not worth working on seems contrary to the initial intent of WP:AFD. User:Smith Jones 19:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:BOLD (and SOFIXIT which redirects to BOLD) are editing guidelines. BLP is a core policy. Do you want to wade through this mess piecemeal and find all the entries that are unsourced, then check each one to determine whether that person is alive or not? Because I sure don't. If they're not removed they'll remain as BLP violations, which is unacceptable. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, that's exactly what I've been doing! If it's too much for you, it's not for me.  I've been wading through this mess and fixing things one by one. Richrakh (talk) 18:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * precisionly!!! - just because you dont to spend your vlualbe time editing this article doesnt mean that NO ONE ELSE should be alloewd to edit it, Burpie. Thats completly unreasonable, deleting an article just because you personally dont want to work to on it. there are hundreds of millions of editors on wikipedia, and you are the only one who doesnt want to work on tihs article. let me and Richrakh and the other editors who work on this article to continue our god faith efforts and you can do whatever it is that you would prefer to do here, and together we can make this an excellent encyclopedia! What do you say? just cancel the AFD and everytthing will be good, okay? User:Smith Jones 17:07, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Please review civility. Richrakh (talk) 20:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. For the inverse of my reasoning at Articles for deletion/Political scandals of the United States. This list is discriminate and well-defined with clear-cut inclusion criteria. Any BLP issues should be sorted by editing rather than deletion. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:11, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG and Alzarian16. This is a perfectly good list, the sort of thing that WP does best.  It can be sourced and fixed with a bit of work. Afd is not for cleanup. Bearian (talk) 20:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
 * comment now with 247 citations, regardless of the nominator's false statements. Hmains (talk) 04:46, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete, if the recentism and the improper organization continue. The article gives the impression that no state politicians ever committed a crime before 1990 – hah!  And it gives the impression that federal officials are much more corrupt now than in past decades and centuries.  I don't buy that either.  If you're going to make a list like this, do the research to get the list right.  (Yes, I know this can be an effort.  I kept United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in a sandbox for a month while I got as complete a list as I could find for the whole time period – while there may be a name or two still missing, the gaps aren't skewed by time period.)  And the organization is by presidential administration is a terrible idea, because the legislative and judicial member crimes generally have absolutely nothing to do with who was president.  Even some of the executive branch crimes have little to do with who was president.  Just organize by spans of years (decades, scores, whatever).  Wasted Time R (talk) 01:37, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Potential for POV problems, and I have concerns about the choice of criteria used for list members, but that should be fixed through normal editing. bobrayner (talk) 03:45, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * On the subject of unreferenced entries, I just found one, so I added a ref. If anybody finds an entry which can't be referenced, go ahead and delete that entry :-) bobrayner (talk) 03:52, 3 December 2010 (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.