Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marxist-Leninist Party candidates, 2006 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   no consensus. After relisting there are still valid viewpoints on both sides of the aisle. At this point in time, this is a no-consensus. -- Cirt (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Marxist-Leninist Party candidates, 2006 Canadian federal election

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

This is basically a page of biographies of non-notable individuals, who ran in a local election several years ago, and who received very few votes. This article seems to be a cover for providing bio pages for these candidates. Neither the political candidacy nor the individuals themselves seem to rise to the level of WP:NOTABILITY or WP:BIO. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 22:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reason:


 * (Note: second nomination)
 * (Note: second nomination)

As I have noted, the 2000 election page was nominated for deletion with the result of keep several years ago. The prior AfD can be found here: Articles for deletion/Marxist-Leninist Party candidates, 2000 Canadian federal election.

The prior AfD kept the article feeling the proposed deletion was hasty and the article could be expanded. This and the related articles have long been in a stable form and are probably as expanded as they are going to get. A fresh assessment of the notability of this subject is called for. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 22:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Note also: if the vote is for delete of all of these articles, Category:Marxist-Leninist Party candidates for the Canadian House of Commons and its subcategory pages should also be deleted. It appears their are some individual biographies that are part of this category as well. In any event, it seems to me like this category needs consolidation. Breaking it down year by year for just a couple of articles is not justified. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 23:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:16, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Federal elections are notable, and so are the candidates, at least in a bloc. Doc Quintana (talk) 23:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * From the same rational, hundreds, or perhaps thousands of articles can be created which à priori are unenclyclopedic. What about creating articles about list of those who worked on Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista and then 7? Don't you see what I am getting at? -RobertMel (talk) 00:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I don't see what you get at. Canadian federal elections require a certain threshold to overcome to get on the ballot which indicates significance. Doc Quintana (talk) 02:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Petitioning for 50 names hardly indicate significance. The number of votes most of those candidates got hardly significantly exceeded the number of names they've got to register as a candidate. Mind that not only they are not ministers, not only they are not deputies... but they've also all got under 1% of the votes. -RobertMel (talk) 02:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's actually 100 eligible voters that must sign, this means they must be Canadian citizens over 18 years of age who live in and are eligible to vote in that riding, you also must deposit $1,000.00. To become an official part you must run a minimum of candidates in the election, MLPC is recognized by Elections Canada, if it was not the candidates would have to run as independents--Mista-X (talk) 04:02, 9 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Also, you should have an official agent and auditor, it is not really that simple to run or else everyone would do it. Which is sort of the point MLPC has put forward. --Mista-X (talk) 04:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The fact that they were on the ballot at the federal level itself denotes significance in some form, that in itself is enough. Changing opinion to Strong Keep. Doc Quintana (talk) 16:10, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * A federal election is notable, but all participants at all levels? For example, if somebody is running in one very small district representing a Toronto neighborhood, and even on that scale gets 0.2% of the vote and runs 6th or 7th place, that doesn't indicate notability. Yet, because of these articles, a number of people who have only this marginal of a claim of notability have Wikipedia biographies. I think the compromise where these articles are simply reduced to candidate lists and vote tallies is called for. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 20:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Very strong absolute delete - Those sort of articles create precendents. It's unacceptable to create several articles for each elections of some small party which has non notable candidates. Any relevant info should be on the parties mainspace. -RobertMel (talk) 00:13, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Lists are useful, particularly when there is no corresponding category. Most losing candidates, even from a party that wins a majority of the seats, are considered individually non-notable, but there is still a role for listings by party. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 02:56, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Eastmain is correct that lists of this type are useful. But RobertMel is incorrect that this article is setting a new precedent — the precedent permitting this type of thing was, in fact, already set years ago, and by AFD, to boot. That said: these articles have tended to turn into something they were never meant to become, which is a giant pile of unsourced BLPs smooshed together. The original idea was that these would be just reference lists, not long aggregations of unencyclopedic campaign brochure biographies; Liberal Party candidates, 2008 Canadian federal election is a much better example of what these lists were supposed to be. Keep, but strip the unsourced biobumf and reformat to be consistent with Liberal Party candidates, 2008 Canadian federal election. It should also be noted that the CPC/ML ran 71 candidates in the 2006 election, 84 in 2000, 65 in 1997 and 51 in 1993 — but as currently constituted, each of these articles only lists a fraction of the complete slate. It's not a topic that's too small to be useful — they're just incomplete articles. Bearcat (talk) 07:30, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The thing is, that nothing prevent anyone to do the similar for this party for exemple, anyone wanting to creat his own notability and be in Wikipedia will only have to find 50 signatures. Minor parties with candidates who gets few dozens of votes can do well having few relevant statistics in the article on the party itself. But here, not only we have lists, but for each elections. -RobertMel (talk) 17:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, that party does already have candidate lists on here. Bearcat (talk) 00:01, 27 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete This is a bunch of low quality BLPs, about largely non-notable persons. It's a great place to throw possibly contentious poorly sourced material, where nobody will ever notice.  While a properly sourced/formatted list article may be appropriate, *none* of the content in this article would be of any benefit.  If somebody wishes to make such a list article, please go straight to Elections Canada and get your data there, and use nothing from this.  These wretched lists tend to be made in a piecemeal manner, by merge/redirects from BLPs that should have been deleted, but are instead copied, without *any* editorial review, to garbage dumps like this.  Again, deleting this, does nothing whatsoever to discourage a good list. --Rob (talk) 05:16, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * My primary concern is that some people don't review the situation very carefully, and just speedy the new version as a G4. The appropriate solution is usually to keep and reformat the list and then delete contentious or badly sourced information from the visible edit history, rather than deleting the whole thing and then recreating it from scratch. Bearcat (talk) 05:47, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * G4 is a fair concern, but that's to be solved by admin education (and there's always an undelete option). The merge/redirect approach is only good if bad content is useful in making good content.  It isn't here.  It's easier to make good new lists based on Elections Canada Data.  Also, future good new bios are best made by sourcing content from external reliable sources, instead of trying re-use existing content from the person's "nn days", which were probably written by the candidate them-self, their friend, or worse, their enemy.  I can see a situation where somebody who wins their first election has somebody spin off a separate article from a list like this, and simple keeps the text largely as is, without properly reviewing it, and providing sources.  In the rare case where somebody writes a "almost but not quite good enough" bio for a candidate, who's content is worth preserving in history, but doesn't warrant an article quite yet, that article could be re-directed to a party article, if a list article doesn't exist.  --Rob (talk) 06:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Bearcat (talk) 23:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, JForget  00:54, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Delete per Rob above. Not worth saving. Policing bad articles is time consuming, and ultimately should be solved by deletion. --Bejnar (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep on the same basis as other parties, as just a list, without the bios.    DGG ( talk ) 19:53, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep. Keep (and possible merge) these as a list, but absolutely get rid of the bios, per Bearcat. Iamcuriousblue (talk) 01:52, 9 March 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.