Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ross Dowson


 * 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. Tone 17:28, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Ross Dowson

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Inadequately sourced article about a person notable primarily as a non-winning candidate for political office. This is not a claim that passes WP:NPOL -- a person has to win election and thereby hold a notable office to get an article because politics per se -- but there's no strong or well-sourced claim of preexisting notability present here otherwise. The only sources are his own deadlinked website and the website of another directly affiliated organization (both primary sources that would be acceptable for verification of facts but not as support for a notability claim), and a namecheck of his existence in a book that isn't about him and is being cited only to support the fact that he was a closeted gay man. This was created in 2005, a time when our standards for notability and sourceability were much looser than they are now -- but under 2018 standards, he doesn't have a valid notability claim under any SNG, or solid enough sourcing to pass WP:GNG in lieu. Bearcat (talk) 17:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:43, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:43, 20 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Dowson is not only an unsuccessful candidate, but a trounced one. When someone gets less than 300 votes to the winners 10,000+ votes, they are not even remotely close to being notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - Dowson's significance is not in being a political candidate but in being the leader of the Canadian Trotskyist movement from the 1940s to 1970s and also due to the Dowson v RCMP court case. Nixon Now (talk) 19:58, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The leader of the entire Trotskyist movement? Not what the article says; it just ascribes him the leadership of one relatively minor Trotskyist group that's notable only as one of several forerunners of the merged League for Socialist Action, and wouldn't even independently pass WP:ORG in its own right for a separate article as a group. So no, we would need a lot more sourcing than this before we could deem him notable for that. And Dowson v RCMP might qualify for an article about the case, in the vein of Egan v Canada or Delgamuukw v British Columbia, but it's also not enough to earn him a standalone biography separate from that in the absence of much better sourcing than this. Bearcat (talk) 21:45, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Not the entire Trotskyist movement, the entire Canadian Trotskyist movement. I've added sources, in any case, and will continue to do so. It would be helpful if you did so as well. Dowson's name comes up a lot in Google Books. Nixon Now (talk) 22:22, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Two groups merged in 1960, the Socialist Education League and the Socialist Information Centre. If you read the Tate book (which does much more than a "name check" of Dowson), it's clear Dowson was considered the national leader even before the formal merger. In any case, Dowson was leader of the LSA from 1960 until 1974 so even if you want to quibble about the 1950s it is clear he was leader of the Canadian Trotskyist movement in the 1960s. Nixon Now (talk) 22:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep as the article has been improved with references added, and because the subject was the leader of the Canadian Trotskyist movement, which seems to me to be a reasonable claim to significance. In short, the article meets the policy requirements for inclusion Ilyina Olya Yakovna (talk) 23:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - Excellent WP:HEY work by Nixon Now adding non-primary sources like The Globe and Mail. Persons don't have to win elections to pass our notability guidelines. --Oakshade (talk) 03:01, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep per GNG.--IndyNotes (talk) 18:42, 22 January 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.