Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tim Canova (2nd nomination)


 * 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. There is consensus he is notable, at minimum, for his work in academia. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:15, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Tim Canova
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Fails WP:NPOL, no notability except in connection with multiple failed political campaigns HouseOfChange (talk) 13:06, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. HouseOfChange (talk) 13:06, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:19, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:19, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete we have decided that major party candidates for US house are not default notable. This applies doubly to people who failed to even win a primary election.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Snow keep has non-routine coverage that meets GNG. This feels less like a credible deletion, and more like a WP:IDONTLIKEIT nomination. Quidster4040 (talk) 15:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * (footnote that is the creator of the article.) Please cite 2 or 3 examples of coverage unrelated to his failed campaigns. Is there anything post-2016 aside from embarrassing Seth Rich speculation? HouseOfChange (talk) 14:49, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep there are multiple, independent, non-trivial sources that covering this person in detail. Whether he won office or not is irrelevant. Many people are notable without winning office. The sources, not their actions, dictate notability.--User:Namiba 16:22, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Canova's campaigns for Congress have received substantial national media attention, particularly his first campaign, when he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and ran against the DNC chair. Canova also probably meets Notability (academics): "has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research." Canova was the Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law at the Chapman University School of Law. The school is rated 111th best law school out of 198 law schools. TFD (talk) 16:24, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * NPROF specifies a "major" institution, i.e. implies rank well above the 50% percentile. Although Chapman did better than his current employer, which apparently lies somewhere between #148 and #194. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:01, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * To me, a "major" institution, in the US context, is an R1 or R2 university, which includes Chapman.--User:Namiba 17:34, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:NPROF specifies: "Major institutions, for these purposes, are those that have a reputation for excellence or selectivity." If our benchmark for excellence is as low as Chapman's research ranking of R2 or the 111/198 ranking of its law school, then our benchmark for excellence is very low. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:42, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete Unsuccessful political candidate fails WP:NPOL. The article is mostly supported by trivial mentions, local/regional reporting, and election-related coverage. KidAd   talk  20:53, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems to meet one of the criteria: "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." TFD (talk) 17:22, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Likely mets PROF, but definitely meets GNG. Plenty of non-trivial coverage. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs )~ 16:36, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, –&#8239;Joe (talk) 07:50, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 07:51, 4 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Per User:Editorofthewiki. Meets WP:PROF as he held a named chair appointment at a major institution. Paisarepa (talk) 17:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak keep under WP:NPROF rather than WP:NPOL. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:05, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * and Both Chapman (scoring 48/100) and its law school (ranked # 111th of 198 law schools) rank BELOW the median level of quality. NPROF specifies a "major" institution. Would any RS call Chapman a "major" institution? HouseOfChange (talk) 02:08, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I would say that every ABA-accredited law school is a major institution. "Major" and "better than average" are in no way equivalent concepts. Would you argue that the Gorilla Monsoon Professor of Folding-Chair Throwing at Vince and Linda's Wrestling College is "major" because it's better than its one competitor? That Dartmouth isn't a major institution because it's below average quality in the Ivy League? The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.  Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 02:22, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * So many straw men, jammed in so closely together! Did anyone claim that "'Major and 'better than average' are equivalent"? No. Did anyone raise the topic of what it would mean to be above or below the "average" of a tiny unrepresentative group? No. Also, and importantly, "median" doesn't mean the same thing as "average." Chapman is below the median for all law schools rated by US News -- not because someone took an average of law school "quality" and Chapman had less -- but because when ranking all law schools from the best down to the worst, more than half of all law schools are better than Chapman. (And fewer than half of all law schools are worse than Chapman.) Being below the median of a large representative group of one's peers is not exactly a position of honor. This does not imply that a law school at or barely above the median would be "major" in the sense of having "a reputation for excellence or selectivity." HouseOfChange (talk) 16:08, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Changed to weak keep as less confident about it now, but still a keep. -Kj cheetham (talk) 09:00, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep as meeting NPROF as holder of a named chair. Keep as meeting the GNG due to extensive national coverage in 2016. Tring (very credibly) to knock the chair of the DNC out of Congress was a major front in the battle between the Clinton and Sanders forces and was covered as a major news story. There is no excuse for the out of hand dismissal as just another unsuccessful candidate; that's just IDONTLIKEIT denial of the real world. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.  Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 02:15, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Quoting NPROF: "Major institutions, for these purposes, are those that have a reputation for excellence or selectivity." That is a higher bar than accreditation. The "extensive national coverage in 2016" was for Sanders v Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not for Tim Canova. Redirecting his name to the 2016 Senate election (and adding more specific info if needed to DWS's article) loses nothing of value to our readers. (Do we have an article that covers Sanders v Clinton proxies in local races? That could be interesting and useful, I think.) Responding to IDONTLIKEIT, this nomination is not about Tim Canova's politics but about his notability. I argued to keep Marquita Bradshaw and Saikat Chakrabarti in Wikipedia, because MB is notable and SC is notable. HouseOfChange (talk) 12:15, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You're just talking nonsense. There's no disputing that the subject received enough coverage to satisfy the GNG. It's IDONTLIKEIT to nevertheless deny notability without a principled, generally applied reason -- which is conspicuously absent here. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.  Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 18:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You say there's "no disputing" TC passed GNG. I am not the only person here disputing that he passes GNG. The principled, generally applied reason I gave when I nominated this article for AfD: "Fails WP:NPOL, no notability except in connection with multiple failed political campaigns." If you disagree, give URLs of 3 independent in-depth RS that are not "in connection with multiple failed political campaigns." (And The Intercept is not an independent RS when promoting a Sanders-backed candidate.) HouseOfChange (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have a much better idea. You,, should stop talking until you understand the GNG and stop arguing that a failed proposal to modify notability guidelines should inexplicably be enforced. The GNG has exactly nothing excluding coverage related to "failed political campaigns". Not one fracking word. Exactly the same is true of NPOL. Not only that, the attempt to add that standard to NPOL in a recent RFC has gone down in flames, meeting overwhelming opposition while receiving minimal support. And it's fracking uncivil of you to issue demands that other editors comply with your policy delusions. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.  Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 23:24, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Multiple editors in many AfDs have said that routine coverage of a failed political campaign is not equivalent to the kind of press interest that rises to GNG. For example :"the fact that some routine local campaign coverage happens to exist is not a WP:GNG-based exemption from having to pass NPOL: every candidate in every election everywhere can always show some evidence of local campaign coverage, so if that were how it worked then every candidate would always get the exemption and nobody would ever actually have to pass NPOL at all anymore." Can you link to an RfC where that sensible idea was rejected? I still have not seen "multiple independent" in-depth interest in Time Canova, even within the 2016 campaign coverage. And I take it you have given up your claim that Chapman Law School is a "major institution" as described by our policy. I am glad to hear you dislike behavior that is "fracking uncivil" and hope you will apply that standard to your own contributions. HouseOfChange (talk) 11:29, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Who the hell cares? Editors present lots of lousy, non-policy/guideline-based arguments in AFDs all the time, just like you do here. And why you need assistance in finding the relevant RFC, when it's in plain view on the NPOL talk page, I have no alternative but to ascribe to the arrogance of indolence. You also never responded to my substantive argument about what constitutes a major institution, preferring to repeat your original position, unsupported by policy language. Arguing that a school with a Nobel laureate on its faculty must be minor strikes me as insensible. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006.  Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong! (talk) 21:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * If you missed my earlier policy citation, NPROF defines what it means by a "major" institution: "Major institutions, for these purposes, are those that have a reputation for excellence or selectivity." Considering what a high bar NPROF sets with the other 8 possible criteria e.g. "a highly prestigious academic award at a national or international level," it is unlikely they intended to drop the bar so low as Chapman Law School when specifying a chair at a "major institution." Having antique Nobel laureates on the faculty is associated with a wealthy institution, not necessarily one that has a reputation for excellence or selectivity. HouseOfChange (talk) 23:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You created an article in 2018 about Gina Ortiz Jones, who had won the Democratic nomination for Congress and subsequently lost. She is trying again this year. While her campaign received local coverage, it was not covered in national media. Even though she got further along in the process than Canova, just being nominated does not guarantee notability per WP:POL. Why do you think she is notable, while someone who received far more media attention is not? The main difference I see is that Canova took on the party establishment while they supported Jones. But that's why he received more coverage in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 04:39, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for another example, of which you can see more in Articles_for_deletion/Gina_Ortiz_Jones. Jones herself, not the race she had run in, met the criterion of 'A politician who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists' described in Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#cite_note-note6-8. Unlike Canova, where "running against DWS" got significant coverage, in the case of Jones it was SHE, the candidate, who got significant coverage for being an unusual candidate of particular interest, in (among others, and talking only about sources I found in 2018) Harvard Political Review, Huffpo, Ozy (magazine), ABS-CBN, news stories that include long quotes from the subject and in-depth material about her life, with shorter articles in Teen Vogue, and Time Magazine. If there were similar number and focus of stories in-depth about Tim Canova, I would not have nominated this article for AfD. IMO, the GNG exception to NPOL is when a CANDIDATE is notable separately from his/her campaign, not when one got multiply mentioned in the context of a notable contest. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:05, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see any real difference. Take your reference to "U.S. Rep. Will Hurd gets first major Democratic challenger for 2018" in the Texas Tribune. It's a brief article in a local paper saying that Jones is challenging Hurd. There are numerous articles about Canova challenging DWS. Your article from ABS-CBN is an opinion piece, which cannot be used to establish notability. Meanwhile, Canova has received in depth coverage for example in the Miami New Times ("Inside Tim Canova's Bernie-Fueled Bid to Upset U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz".) Also, the focus of the coverage on articles about Jones is her sexuality, with little or no coverage of her political views, which is an important element in biographies of politicians. And it goes over the jobs she has held without saying what she accomplished in them. Accomplishments are also a major part of any biography. You could say that Jones is notable because she is a lesbian challenging a conservative Republican in Texas, while Canova is notable because he was a progressive challenging an establishment Democrat in Florida. TFD (talk) 16:24, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The difference is not in routine local coverage, which both got. The difference is national interest in GOJ's unusual characteristics. She did not get national coverage as "a lesbian." HuffPo and TeenVogue were inspired by her hardscrabble background ("A first-generation American, Ortiz Jones and her sister, who is currently serving in the navy, were raised by a single mother who worked multiple jobs after emigrating from the Philippines.", "Trump’s plans to gut education and housing aid hit too close to home for Jones, as someone who relied on reduced-cost school lunches and subsidized housing when she was a kid being raised by a single mom in San Antonio.") HarvardPolitics and emphasized the role of her military career as "a path to the American Dream."("For Gina Ortiz Jones, the military was more than just a career...Ortiz Jones won an ROTC scholarship to study at Boston University; after graduation, she served a total of more than 15 years in the U.S. Air Force and the national security sector." ) Despite much more coverage than TC ever got, GOJ's first AfD closed as No Consensus and the second closed as "Redirect." (although  restored the article in June 2018.) Clearly GOJ got more coverage and more widespread GNG-caliber coverage than TC, and yet GOJ was not a slam-dunk "Keep." Neither is TC a slam-dunk GNG Keep, and I would like to see examples of in-depth coverage of TC rather than examples of routine local coverage of GOJ. That one local article cited by TFD is one in-depth example, although very closely tied to the a single campaign. For GNG, TC would need two more. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:49, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's almost a requirement for U.S. politicians to have hard-scrabble backgrounds or service in the armed forces. Bill Clinton, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden, Harris - all claim hard-scrabble backgrounds. TFD (talk) 20:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the sophisticated political insight. My point was multiple RS covered GOJ for multiple reasons; this was in response to your suggestion that being "a lesbian" was her only notable feature. But let's get back to the topic of whether or not Tim Canova passes GNG, where are some in-depth sources supporting GNG? HouseOfChange (talk) 20:30, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You said that HuffPost and TeenVogue were inspired by her hardscrabble background, not her sexuality . But the HuffPost article says in the title, "Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones would be the first lesbian, Iraq War vet and Filipina-American to fill a U.S. House seat in Texas." Similarly, TeenVogue says in the title, "If elected, Ortiz Jones would be the first openly gay Congresswoman of color from Texas." TFD (talk) 18:36, 10 September 2020 (UTC) (Striking the part of your comment where you attribute to me a claim I did not make. To say that they were inspired by X is not equivalent to saying they failed to mention Y.) HouseOfChange (talk) 20:26, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Let's set aside GOJ, saying merely that national-level coverage of GOJ was much more than the national-level coverage of TC. (The national-level coverage of DWS in 2016 was probably more than the national-level coverage of GOJ.) But the topic here is the claim that TC meets GNG, for which we need two more independent sources that are in-depth about TC. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:26, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Here are two: and, plus a recent mention establishing some enduring notability:  Js2112 (talk) 02:38, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your courteous addition of information. (Although the Bernie-boosting, Hillary-hating New Republic is hardly an "independent" source per GNG.) So, if profiles by partisan boosters plus campaign coverage suffice to make failed candidates "notable," as others have claimed, then you have established that Canova does reach to that bar. In my opinion, the 2016 campaign created very temporary interest in Canova--and aside from that BLP1E he remains not notable. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:07, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Canova received far more national coverage. More importantly, they were not just Human interest stories like the TeenVogue article about Jones, but discussed his political views, which is important in articles about politicians. TFD (talk) 15:18, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Still no links to in-depth coverage of Tim Canova? HouseOfChange (talk) 15:39, 11 September 2020 (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.