Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Western Australian general election campaign, 2005


 * 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. Cbrown1023 talk 18:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Western Australian general election campaign, 2005

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This article was created on 22 February 2007 and in its initial form was not suitable for Wikipedia. Large sections of it were removed and it has sat there ever since. At the talk page for Western Australian general election, 2005 a discussion about the content of this and some other matters resulted in no consensus. The article is clearly not going to be developed as, for various reasons, no reliable source can be agreed upon for current Western Australian political matters. DanielT5 03:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep The idea that "no reliable source can be agreed upon for current Western Australian political matters" is based on a conspiracy theory about The West Australian being owned by Brian Burke. A dearth of DanielT5-approved sources is not a valid reason to delete this article. The New South Wales general election campaign, 2007 article turned out quite well - so the premise (if not all of the content) is certainly sound. I suggest that concerned users post specific problems on the currently-blank discussion page. Joestella 04:27, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The above comment is by the creator of the article, who is in a minority on the talk pages. Interested parties can read the sources themselves - which is new (last week), and I also cited on the talk page at the time  several pages which clearly demonstrate the West Australian is not a WP:RS on *current* political issues, it is like using the Liberal party website and is itself a political player. The discussion page is blank because the discussion has taken place on the original talk page as nobody but the above user accepts this page as legitimate. The NSW qcampaign article which is cited as precedent here was in fact created by User:Joestella only several days earlier and itself didn't have consensus - political articles have suffered from a lack of contributions and this user's ignoring of consensus, edit-warring on election articles and forcing of Liberal Party of Australia POV has already driven away at least one good faith user and made others back away from contributing to the encyclopaedia. DanielT5 04:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Strong Merge (formerly Delete) While avoiding the issue of WP:RS as this is a content issue, the article was possibly created to make a WP:POINT and violates consensus - the only people who have commented at Talk:Western Australian general election, 2005 other than Joestella have opposed this article's existence, and discussion at the relevant WikiProject has also drawn near-unanimous opposition Furthermore, the original article is barely beyond stub status so it is hardly time to start splitting them. (JRG below makes some excellent points.) Orderinchaos 05:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge. There is obviously some useful material for the article on the election. There are obvious issues between the creator and the nominator and AfD is not the place to sort it out. There are obvious reliable sources for the article such as the West Austalian, The Australian and the ABC so the nominators comments about lack of reliable sources are rather mystifying. Frankly, the West Australian's status as a reliable source on West Australian politics than Redrag.org. If the claim about no reliable sources were true, there would be no sources for the other article. Capitalistroadster 01:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletions.   -- Capitalistroadster 01:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Merge to election article - this should not be deleted whatsoever; the election campaign is as important as the results. Despite what is claimed on the talk page, the election article without the campaign material is not extensive and needs a lot of work; the merger of the two articles would be a good way to expand the article. It doesn't need two articles. JRG 03:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. The article is heavily one sided and would not be suitable without a significant re-write. This is not withstanding that it's essentially a duplicate of an existing article already adequately covering the subject, and is at best one-sided and pushes only a specific viewpoint. thewinchester 16:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep, as an election and the campaign are distinct events, as well as a hearty non-binding directive to DanielT5 and Joestella to grow up. Lankiveil 00:10, 9 April 2007 (UTC).
 *  Keep Merge (see below). The standard practice for Australian election articles has been to have a seperate page for the election campaign. I feel that if there is a merge, then when the main election article length is increased then we will have to demerge again. With resepct to POV, I believe it is better to fix the problem rather than delete the article. Recurring dreams 00:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem for me here is that it is not a "standard practice". Certainly, it is widespread, thanks to a non-consensual change which was pushed onto a range of articles in around mid-February 2007 by one user, which has been opposed by almost anyone else who's had a say in the matter. I don't think this is the way we should be forming standards - certainly willing to discuss what works, and I am personally of the view that different elections require different procedures to avoid an overly lengthy article in some, and an overly stubby one in others. Orderinchaos 03:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I was not aware how the practice of having separate articles for campaigns and elections came about. In that case, particularly considering neither articles in this case are overly long, I will change my recommendation to merge.Recurring dreams 07:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep if vic and nsw can have campaign articles, so can wa and sa imho. orderinchaos is wrong if he/she thinks that these articles are not standard. order in chaos voted TO KEEP Articles for deletion/2006 Victorian election campaign - so much for not standard practice ChampagneComedy 20:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Note this contribution history of this user when closing this debate DanielT5 06:38, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Read my reply to Recurring dreams - what you have highlighted is entirely consistent with my stated position. My vote in that instance had less to do with standards development and more to do with not wanting to demean the hard work of others who had contributed to that particular article. I note, however, that my original concerns about that article's content still stand despite two months having now elapsed. The two AfDs under consideration here are completely different - one was created as a clear NPOV violation, while the other was a raw duplicate and probable GFDL violation. Common sense trumps need for absolute standard in this area IMO - where required, do it, where not required, don't do it. Orderinchaos 20:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The idea that the WA campaign article is "a clear NPOV violation" just doesn't play – and would anyway be solved through the use of NPOV tags, editing and talk page discussion, not deletion. This AfD debate seems to be more about three WA users – thewinchester, Orderinchaos and DanielT5 – demanding local control of WA-related articles. That's not how Wikipedia works. Joestella 06:13, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I raised the POV issue on 8 March under the topic "POV issues" on the article talk page. Your tone in reply was confrontational and dismissive, and you refused to continue the discussion once reasonable sources were presented on 10 March to justify the stance you were ridiculing. This is not conducive to obtaining a meaningful consensus. Secondly, if you got me, Orderinchaos and Thewinchester in a room discussing politics, you're talking about three mutual political opponents, not a cabal. However I respect them as good faith contributors to Wikipedia and we would work to improve these and other WA political articles on that basis with anyone who wishes to work alongside us, regardless of their state of origin. DanielT5 06:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Jos - Can I ask how you came to the very interesting idea that the supposed cabal of OIC, Dt5, and myself are demanding local control of articles? I suspect you are pushing this baseless viewpoint because of the continued disagreement with your position on these matters. If anything, I see the work of these users as well as all others acting independently as a solid and reasonable attempt to achieve and build clear consensus on the issues at hand. Any assertion to the contrary is both baseless and borders on personal attack. As for NPOV tags, they don't solve anything. They are a simple attempt not to modify the core issues that caused them to be there in the first place. It's also not helped by the fact that you've been attempting to attract users with a specific bias to your viewpoint to this AfD debate in order to support your obviously contentious viewpoint. I came across this AfD as part of my usual project checking, and not because one of the many friends and contacts who may or may not share similar views or ideas brought it to my attention. Now seriously, can we please can the crap and come to a plausible and reasonable consensus on this AfD as quite frankly it's gone on far far too long and should have been an easy fix.. -- Thewinchester (talk) 07:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Both articles have changed significantly since the deletion proposal was first aired. Joestella 05:19, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * While I still think the two pages should be one, and believe a merged article will deliver the most solid presentation of the election, I'm no longer opposed to the *content* in the articles following the changes made yesterday and today - the issues are starting to get a reasonably fair and balanced coverage and when I have time in a few weeks, I can hit the Battye (our state ref library) and source some of them. As I said on the main talk page, I'm somewhat relieved that we can actually look to develop this now rather than watch a continuing and pointless revert war between one inferior version and one slightly less inferior version. Orderinchaos 06:57, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The election article is still pretty bad - the best outcome is still a merge, which will combine one average and one slightly-better-than-average article into something that can be significantly improved. JRG 03:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually agree. The article was created by someone well removed from the circumstances who did not contact anyone in WA for help on it, despite two very active project talk pages and about 5-10 people at that time being available. Given the limited media available online about an election held two years ago, and the fact most media is offline and in our state library here in Perth, this was going to result in a flawed article no matter what. By the time we did discover it two weeks later, all of us were too busy with other projects and offline stuff to do anything useful with it. There had actually been some discussion of creating the article in June, that gives you some idea. I think the best thing about such an outcome would be to draw a line under the warring over this article which has taken place until 2 days ago, so we can come back at another time and fix up this article to a point where we're reasonably happy with it (I have no real plans to get it past B-grade, to be honest). Orderinchaos 04:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually agree. The article was created by someone well removed from the circumstances who did not contact anyone in WA for help on it, despite two very active project talk pages and about 5-10 people at that time being available. Given the limited media available online about an election held two years ago, and the fact most media is offline and in our state library here in Perth, this was going to result in a flawed article no matter what. By the time we did discover it two weeks later, all of us were too busy with other projects and offline stuff to do anything useful with it. There had actually been some discussion of creating the article in June, that gives you some idea. I think the best thing about such an outcome would be to draw a line under the warring over this article which has taken place until 2 days ago, so we can come back at another time and fix up this article to a point where we're reasonably happy with it (I have no real plans to get it past B-grade, to be honest). Orderinchaos 04:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge (as original nominator) based on changes to the article on 10 April by ChampagneComedy, the two are now halves of a whole and I am happy to accept the retention of the new content accordingly. DanielT5 01:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * strong comment :P the nominator no longer supports deletion. orderinchaos's main problem is that user:joestella and i are sydneysiders and so "someone well removed from the circumstances who did not contact anyone in WA" - WP:OWN if ever i saw it. i think the deletion should be rejected and a merge discussion set up instead. ChampagneComedy 06:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that *I* changed my vote to merge 4 days ago. I disagree with the notion of this page existing, but the content in it is now significantly improved from the 2 POV versions battling for attention previously (which I largely credit to yourself), and merits being used in the original article. The deletion debate was opened up, the primary issue with the *content* was addressed (which as I noted in my reasons for deletion near the very beginning, should not have been part of the AfD discussion anyway) but the issue with the *existence* of the page still remains: "Furthermore, the original article is barely beyond stub status so it is hardly time to start splitting them." Furthermore, there is no need for an additional bureaucratic procedure to determine what is by now a fairly clear consensus, and the outcome is a win-win for all as your hard work is acknowledged, recognised and incorporated, while the article can be appropriately expanded when sources and other materials become available. Orderinchaos 07:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete these articles are inherently built on commentary, and I don't consider that encyclopædic. Any coverage that is necessary is perfectly containable within a section of the general election article.--cj | talk 09:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete and merge with the main article, as with the South Australian version the writing is good but there is no need for a separate article on the campaign alone. Euryalus 09:59, 15 April 2007 (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.