Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates

Please add your votes under the Votes section.

The proposal
From Mwalcoff:

In the article Criteria for inclusion of biographies, after the first bullet, insert the following:


 * Credible candidates for one of the offices above.

Arguments in favor of the proposal

 * Information on candidates for legislative offices will be of great interest to our readers.
 * Lawmakers are very important, and, therefore, people who might become lawmakers are important as well.
 * Information on candidates will be readily available through campaign websites, newspaper articles, League of Women Voters pamphlets, etc.
 * There is plenty to write about all candidates: their background, their policy positions, their campaigns, etc. (This may be more likely in the U.S., where campaigns are generally candidate-centered. In countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, individual candidates are less important than their party.)
 * Although not everyone is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, it is worth remembering that Wikipedia is not made out of paper. There is plenty of space for these articles. Even if every major-party candidate for Congress, state legislatures and the Canadian parliament in 2006 gets an article, those articles will still make up a very small portion of Wikipedia.
 * We have many articles on people and things of far less importance than legislative candidates, such as fictional politicians, musicians of regional note and American football punters.
 * Articles on losing candidates are low-maintenance. They can sit there until the person runs for something else or dies.
 * Any politician running for a major office is likely to have some notable experience. If the person has no such experience, that's notable itself.
 * The first sentence is redundant: Those running for a major office are likely to have some noticable experience and are also likely to have an article in Wikipedia already. And the second sentence is contradictory. SYSS Mouse 18:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I see your point with the first sentence. But what I meant with the second is that it's quite rare in the U.S. for someone with no previous experience to be considered a credible candidate for Congress. When this has happened, as with Paul Hackett, it's considered noteworthy. -- Mwalcoff 22:46, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * We allow the most marginal writers to be included for appearing in notable publications. Candidates should get the same courtesy.  How perverse is it to allow an entry to be included for writing an article, but not to allow the actual subject into Wikipedia?  We could limit the field a bit to candidates from parties who receive x% of the vote in a nation/state/province-wide election.  Primary candidates could be limited to those who receive y%, perhaps?  But candidates for a major office are pretty much defacto notable. - Jaysus Chris 20:21, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Arguments against the proposal
These arguments are from Just zis Guy, you know?


 * In the UK, there are over 600 parliamentary consituencies
 * Each constituency is contested, on average, every three years or so
 * Each consistency has, at each election, between two and five "credible" candidates (i.e. candidates from credible parties, who, in the interestss of balance, must be covered, even though a given party may stand little chance in a given constituency)
 * A high proportion of defeated candidates do not stand again (even more true in US elections), whereas a high proportion of successful candidates will stay in office for several terms
 * Overall it is not unreasonable to estimate that the proposed criterion would yield around ten to twenty times the number of candidate articles, a substantial number of which will (a) not be maintained past the election or (b) finish with "x is now selling insurance in Slough" (to paraphrase an AfD coment).
 * Many of these articles will be substantially unverifiable, especially after the election date
 * Many of them (as at present) will largely be vanity or at least distinctly subjective and out of proportion to the person's real importance (e.g. Paul Hackett). Again, much of the detail will be substantially unverifiable and, in encyclopaedic terms, trivial.
 * I recall at least a couple of these end up as what look suspiciously like partisan slugging matches (looking for links now)
 * The issue of what to do with failed candidates post-election is not addressed: do we delete them and have them re-inserted next time they stand? Look at Paul Babbitt as an example.

Arguments for the status quo
It is hard to see how running for election, in and of itself, makes someone suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Candidates for any election who attract significant media attention, or who are inherently notable for other reasons (e.g. candidates from disadvantaged groups), obviously deserve inclusion regardless of what election they're standing for; equally, candidates who do not even attract much attention from their local media probably do not deserve inclusion. Note that this is exactly what our existing guidelines suggest.

It seems to me that the guidelines are not obviously broken. We might, perhaps, remove "Major local" from "Major local political figures..." in the present WP:BIO, to clarify that any political figures, including legislative candidates, can qualify for inclusion if they receive significant press coverage. &mdash; Haeleth Talk 20:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with the above. To me it's not really relevant how large of a district the candidate is running for, or whether it's major a party candidate or a minor party one or an independent.  The important thing is whether or not the candidate is noteworty, and that will be detirmined by the ammount of media attention that he/she has recieved, be reflected in the number of relevant Google hits, etc.  Of course candidates from major parties and those running for seats in large districts will tend to become more notable, but that process should be allowed to run its course, not be detirmined by Wikipedia.  And of course there will also be non-major party candidates who run in small districts and don't get elected, but for one reason or another are able to create a whole lot of hooplah and therefore become notable.  Blackcats 08:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Counter-proposal 1
From Just zis Guy, you know?:

I propose that coverage is on the basis of an article per electoral competition (e.g. "Berdmondsey South, 1997 General Election" or "California district X, 2005" (excuse ignorance of US terminology). This allows a potted bio of each candidate, plus coverage of the issues in a neutral way.


 * I agree with this proposal; if a candidate is noteworthy enough to warrant their own article (something other than just having collected enough signatures to get their name on the ballot) then that page can obviously link to that article. Peyna 17:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * This seems like a good system, and would help in finding information for outsiders as well. It might help create a resource for election information. - cohesion &#9733; talk 10:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I have come to accept the merit of JZGYW's counter-proposal. See my comments at "Reviving the discussion" below. -- Mwalcoff 03:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Arguments against Counter-proposal 1
From Mwalcoff:


 * Articles with titles like "U.S. House of Representatives election, California district 24" are unwieldy.
 * A single article might not be long enough to include pertinent information on each candidate.
 * What would we do about candidates that run more than once, such as Paul Hackett?
 * Some people become notable for running multiple times, for example Bill Boaks and Screaming Lord Sutch, noted below. - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 12:21, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

 * If, as Mwalcoff asserts in the Arguments in favor section above, "Any politician running for a major office is likely to have some notable experience" then the candidate is already includable based on that other experience or performance. However, I disagree with the second part of his/her assertion that "If the person has no such experience, that's notable itself."  In many races where the incumbent is virtually assured a win, the opposing party will put a non-entity on the ballot just so the incumbent is not running unopposed.  This challenger is a sure loser barring some miracle during the election.  The challenger is a generally a good person but no more notable than any other professional.  This type of candidate does not deserve an article.  The article will become stale and functionally unverifiable within a very short time after the election.  We are writing an encyclopedia for the long-term.  We are not WikiNews.  To challenge another point in the discussion above, articles which are unmaintained do damage the Wikipedia.  An article which is not being maintained is still discovered by readers (remember that readers outnumber editors).  An obviously unmaintained article damages the credibility of all our articles.  It undermines the trust that we are trying to earn from our readers.  Unless there is a critical mass of knowledgable reader/editors who will continually watch the article and keep it current, safe from vandalism and verifiable, Wikipedia is better off without the article.  Now, you could argue that a "sure loser" is not a "credible candidate".  I do not believe it will be used that way.  From past experience, I believe that partisans will misuse the proposed clause to attempt to drive publicity and controversy to their cause without regard for our goal (and the self-imposed limitations) of creating an encyclopedia.  There are plenty of other clauses that could get a candidate included.  Merely being a candidate is, in my opinion, not sufficient all by itself to establish that the subject is encyclopedic.  Rossami (talk) 04:58, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I recommend that a candidate being placed on the ballot for one of the above offices be considered prima facie support of notability. 24.54.208.177 14:48, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Personally, I don't think simply running establishes notability. I mean, there are often cases where a lot of people get involved in one race. Just look at the California recall. And who's to determine a 'credible' candidate? I mean, it would seem like anyone officially in the running, no matter where in the polls, could argue they're 'credible'. --InShaneee 04:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The proposed addendum is for credible candidates. Simply obtaining the nomination of a major party to run under its banner for a given constituency is not a trivial achievement; primary elections must be won, or the candidate must be selected by a committee or caucus.  We are not talking about minor party or independent candidates, whose worthiness will continue to have to be decided on a case by case basis.  Smerdis of Tlön 20:02, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Is something similar to Green Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal election covered in one of those proposals. Whether you consider them notable or not, you must assume, to be proactive, all candidates will get articles. Since anyone can create an article for free Wikipedia can become a great place to advertise (where is the down side to creating an article on my candidate?). Even if the article only lasts 5 days (duration of AfD) it is still getting a name and information out there (and afd links increase the page hits). I do not think it is appropriate for one candidate (the incumbent) to get an article where he is described as a real person and the other candidates are simply names on a list. The candidate list is much more easily maintained than hundreds of individual articles which must be watched during election time for POV and vandalism (or if banned, potential creation). Each candidate should have a redirect to the main list so that if they do try to create articles on themselves it can be easily reverted (merge if appropriate) to the redirect. --maclean25 07:10, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should also suggest that all challengers be elected to post for at least one term, to remove the "incumbent advantage" whish has been an issue sincve forever? No, I stand by my original comment: information on candidates is substantially unverifiable before and election (the major source being the candidate's own PR) and even more so after the election.  Candidates who run multiple times may achieve notability as a result (as Bill Boakes, the most consistently unsuccessful parliamentary candidate in Britsh political history, or Screaming Lord Sutch).  Most articles on candidates appear to be put up either by their own people or by their opponents.  In either case by the time the article has been around long enough for NPOV to be established by consensus the election will likely be over and it'll be time to AfD the article as non-notable (the person no longer being a candidate).

As I pointed out in the AfD discussions for David Ashe and Paul Hackett, and similarly to what JZG points out above, there are 435 congressional districts within the United States. These seats come up for re-election every two years. Having a seperate article for every candidate who runs in each of these 435 districts every two years will provide us with a raft of articles of people who are notable solely for their failure to win a Congressional election.

And that's just on the national level. The proposal also makes being a candidate for a state-level office in the U.S. also inherently notable. There are 50 states in the United States. Every state but Nebraska has a bicameral state legislature. Texas has 150 seats within its state House of Representatives, and 31 seats within its state Senate. So there's 481 elections every 6 years, with at least two candidates per election. And that's just for one state out of 50. So again, we're looking at a barrage of article stubs about people who will be notable simply and exclusively because they failed to win an election for state office.

Expanding the terms of WP:BIO to include failed election candidates would unnecessarily expand the scope of Wikipedia in an unproductive way, and would not improve the overall quality of this project. → Ξxtreme Unction {yak ł blah } 17:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

U.S.-specific counter-proposal
If there are 600 members of the House of Commons, I think it is clear that we are dealing with different matters of constituency size from one country to the next. (To give a non-U.S. Wikipedians a sense of scale as to constituencies here, there are two bodies of the U.S. federal legislature, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Today most of the Representatives represent a consituency of 500,000 to 700,000 people, and there are 2 Senators for each of the 50 states). Thus I think it would be best to offer a counter-proposal specific to the United States, and I would like to suggest that Just Zis Guy or someone else offer one for the U.K. (and also someone for Canada, and Australia, etc.):


 * All candidates for federal legislative office (i.e. the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives) who received at least 40% of the vote (the exact percent can be negotiated in the following days) in any election to such a post are notable, retroactive to 1789. (Granting thousands of long-dead candidates notability is not really as big a deal as it sounds; in practice most pre-20th century vote tallies for the House are not verifiable because they were often not kept, and there was no popular vote for Senate before the 20th century. I highly doubt we'd see a spate of failed candidates from the 1854 mid-term House elections added to Wikipedia if this policy were adopted.)
 * All current candidates for federal legislative office (i.e. the election has not yet been held) from the Democratic or the Republican party are notable if they have secured their party's nomination. Additionally, all candidates to such office (including Independents and candidates from other parties) are notable if 30% or more (for House) or 20% or more (for Senate) of the respondents to at least one verifiable (i.e. public) independent (i.e. non-internal) opinion poll say that they would most want to vote for that candidate in the election. Again, the exact percentages are fully negotiable for the moment. "Opt-in" polls like mail polls and internet polls are excluded. Once the election has been held, any candidates who did not achieved at least 40% of the vote (see point #1) can be considered to have their notability for being a candidate revoked (they might still be notable for other reasons). The poll in question must be held within 1 year of the election.
 * The same rules that apply to Senate candidates would also apply to State Governors. Not really a legislative position, but it should be spelled out in the policy.
 * The same rules that apply to Senate candidates would also apply to candidates for mayor in the 20 largest cities in the U.S. by population (at the time of the election). Again not strictly "legislative" but still important to have. Being a failed candidates for mayor in a smaller city would not be sufficient to establish notability. Making it "Top 20" cities is also arbitrary and the ensuing discussion may change the exact figure.
 * Failing to win a seat to a state's own legislature, or to a city's legislature, does not establish notability.
 * Failing to have secured a party's nomination (e.g. being a Republican candidate for Senate who loses in the primaries) to any office, once the nomination has been decided, does not establish notability, except if the person qualified under the opinion poll provision above at some point during the 1-year pre-election period.

Any thoughts?
 * I think it's a good idea to let each country devise its own standards. We Canadians have been working away quietly for some time with our own standards. We made articles on many of the candidates in the last election, and I anticipate we will have articles on almost all of them by the time next year's election is concluded. List of candidates in the 39th Canadian federal election already shows several hundred blue links. - SimonP 03:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * You could just use U.S. Census figures for population in determining the top 20 cities. Those figures are pretty accurate for the most part (except in cases where whole towns go against filling out the census form, but that's beside the point), and they only change every ten years.  However, I think that on the whole your proposal is rather long; I'm concerned about instruction creep because other points in WP:BIO are very concise.  That, and trying to manage all of the other countries' elections also would just make it that much longer. --Idont Havaname 06:58, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Letting each country devise its standards could create a precedent for encoding systemic bias into policies. Wikipedia is not organised along national boundaries; I strongly believe we should avoid any situation where a Wikipedia policy could state that of two otherwise-equivalent articles, one should be kept and the other deleted on no grounds other than the subjects' nationalities.  It may be possible to devise country-specific policies that accurately take into account differences in countries' legislative structures in such a way that it is ensured that the cutoff level is effectively equal throughout the world.  But that would be incredibly difficult, and the risks could be considerable. Far better, I think, to stick to the present situation, where there is one simple set of criteria that applies to every possible candidate, without any dependence on any details of the election for which s/he is standing. &mdash; Haeleth Talk 20:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * From what I've seen of Canadian candidates, it appears to me that there might be a clear distinction between American legislative candidates and Commonwealth parlimentary candidates. American candidates run semi-independently of their party and have their own policy positions that might be different from others in the same party. Westminster-system candidates run as members of a party team and have few policy positions of their own. As a result, Canadian candidate pages tend to be of the "She has owned a small business and is involved in the Pickering PTA" variety. Therefore, I can imagine fewer legitimate articles for candidates outside of the U.S. But I still wouldn't want to establish a criteria in which Commonwealth candidates would be excluded from having their own article unless they were already some big official. -- Mwalcoff 03:13, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I just see these pages having to be constantly policied and checked to make sure they are NPOV and not advertisements from the candidate (or a 3rd party trying to make it look like grass roots). This is a very slippery slope. --Pboyd04 16:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Better off with no policy?
I was thinking about something along the same lines as what a user suggested above in an unsigned comment. One issue I do have with the suggestion is that state legisatures can be really important. California state Senate districts are bigger than congressional districts. So I don't agree with ruling out state-level candidates. Similarly, I don't believe primary candidates should necessarily be considered not notable. In some areas, the primary is more important than the general election. Thirdly, polling data won't be available in a lot of races.

Now it's true that the user did not say that people who don't meet the qualifications should always be excluded. But the problem is that some people will think that if the person does not meet a qualification for automatic inclusion on WP:BIO or a similar page, he or she should be excluded, despite the fact that WP:BIO says it is not all-inclusive.

To me, it's become apparent that trying to find a one-size-fits-all policy to determine which candidates should get an article and which shouldn't won't work. All that's important is:


 * 1) Is enough verifiable, objective information about the person available to write more than a stub?
 * 2) Are a lot of people interested in reading about the person?

Now perhaps we need something like WP:BIO to help answer the second question. But in the case of candidates, there might be no way to answer it using cut-and-dried criteria. A candidate in a city-council primary might be of interest to more people than an incumbent national legislator somewhere else.

I think the best thing we can do regarding this issue would be to put a note in bold on WP:BIO that says: "The fact that an article fails to meet any of the following criteria does not necessarily mean it should be deleted. Any article that meets (the two numbered criteria above) may be included."

(There's been a lot of debate on this on Importance and related pages but no consensus, I think.)

Mwalcoff 01:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, WP:BIO addresses the first question, as long as one takes the view that all of our various notability criteria have one primary criterion in common, namely that a subject (be it a person, a company, a product, a web site, or a band) is notable if other people independent of that subject have considered it notable enough to have gone to the effort of creating and publishing non-trivial works of their own about it. The WP:CORP criteria say this explicitly.  For the WP:MUSIC criteria this is a simple generalization of the "music magazine coverage" criterion to all forms of published works.  For the WP:WEB criteria this is a simple generalization of the "media attention" criterion to all forms of published works.  For WP:BIO this is a simple generalization of the "subject of a biography" and "significant press coverage" criteria to all forms of published works. Thus a candidate in a city-council primary is notable if xe has been the subject of in-depth coverage by a newspaper during xyr campaign.  Conversely, if the only things published about a candidate for the U.S. Senate except are sourced from the candidate xyrself, and no-one else independent of xem has published anything except for mere recitals of the list of candidates (i.e. directory entries), then xe does not satisfy the primary notability criterion.  In other words: Candidates are notable if other people independent of them have published more than just raw political candidate directory entries about them. Coversely, the second question doesn't help us to decide anything.  What humans want to know is not the same as what humans know.  People want to know lots of things that Wikipedia cannot, by its nature as a tertiary source tell them.  Wikipedia is about what people do know, not what people want to know. Uncle G 00:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Uncle G. &mdash;James S. 11:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Votes

 * For the proposal. Against Counter-proposal 1. -- Mwalcoff 00:08, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Voting is premature. We need to much more thoroughly discuss the issue and its implications before we open the floor for any kind of voting.  Wikipedia is not a democracy.  We solve things through discussion and consensus-seeking.  Thanks.  Rossami (talk) 04:37, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I see all sorts of problems here. How do you define "credible candidate"? Some major party candidates are not credible candidates, in that they stand no chance of being elected. How do you define "significant press coverage". Some credible candidates might not receive much coverage before they are elected, but some local papers might give significant coverage to all candidates. We had a discussion on whether a failed UK Green Party candidate should be deleted, I said they should be but the consensus was against. After this I did something possibly a bit naughty and created an article to make a point Anthea Irwin (the only time I have ever done this) and waited to see if somebody called for it to be deleted, nobody has. PatGallacher 17:14, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Why try to decide who is credible?
What's wrong with covering all actual candidates? Credible ones will have more verifiable info than non-credible ones, and it removes our need to editorialise. Trollderella 22:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Because it's vandal-bait/POV-bait/spam-bait and there just aren't enough seasoned editors to go around. We have an obligation to make sure that all these trivial articles start and stay verifiable and NPOV. I've spent the past four hours cleaning up the vandalism from just two anon IPs.  These trivia articles add nothing to the reader's experience but vandals and partisans still find them and add all sorts of garbage.  These articles can be enormously time-consuming for a responsible editor trying to prove to him/herself that a particular edit about this non-notable topic was vandalism.  The cost/benefit just isn't worth it.  If we don't have enough people to watch these articles (and history shows that we don't), we are better off without them.  Rossami (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Exactly the point I was going to make. If the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy has taught us nothing else, it should at least establish the thousands of articles on very minor figures that aren't well monitored and verified have the potential to do much more harm than good. If John Seigenthaler Sr. went untouched for more than 4 months, how long will libelous vandalism and Chip Smiggle, who's running for Illinois 13th district in the state Senate on the Right to Life ticket, remain? I've also seen articles for some of these candiaites that were taken straight from their press kits, which is anything but NPOV. These articles add nothing. About all they ever say is the guy's name, what he's running for (which can be covered in an article on the election itself), and then where he went to college, what law firm he worked for, his wife's name and and how many kids he has. Garbage that doesn't belonng in an encyclopedia. -R. fiend 17:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Because Wikipedia is not a directory of political candidates. It is an encyclopaedia.  Articles such as Witney (UK Parliament constituency) record all candidates, and for many candidates a one-line mention in a table is as much coverage as they warrant in an encyclopaedia.  If I were to stand for elected office in my country, and all that I did was pay the fee and fill in the forms to have my name added to the ballot, I wouldn't warrant an encyclopaedia article, and all that I would warrant would be that one-line mention. If, on the other hand, a national newspaper such as The Age, The Hindu, or The Washington Post independently wrote and published a multiple page spread on my life, my politics, and whether I would be able to continue to make edits to Wikipedia after I became Governor, then I would warrant an encyclopaedia article.  My being a candidate for elected office would not have altered my notability at all, and simply isn't a viable notability criterion.  What would have altered my notability is other people, the journalists and editorial staff at the newspaper, considering me notable enough that they created and published a non-trivial work of their own, namely the multiple page spread in their newspaper, about me. If you wish to eliminate the need to editorialize, do it properly, and let the world at large decide notability.  Simply measure how notable the world at large has already gauged a subject to be, by seeing whether multiple sources independent of the subject have considered it notable enough to have created and published non-trivial works of their own about it. "All X are notable" criteria produce directories (be they of "all political candidates", "all companies", "all people", "all web sites", or even "all roads"), and are not appropriate for a tertiary source.  They are appropriate for primary sources performing original research, but a tertiary source's primary criterion should be "whatever the secondary sources have considered to be notable enough to warrant non-trivial, other than simple directory entry, coverage, is notable". Uncle G 01:31, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with what you have to say, for the most part. The problem is that there seem to be a lot of WP:AFD users who think WP:BIO should give them a definitive answer. If they don't see a type of person — say, a legislative candidate — on BIO, they write, "Delete. Doesn't meet WP:BIO." They do this even if there is a wealth of verifiable information available on the person. -- Mwalcoff 02:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * That's often followed by someone saying something like "Yes, xe does! Xe's published seventeen best-selling books and meets the 'published author' criterion.", though.  Uncle G 04:49, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * And I see a lot of AfD users confusing verifiability with notability. Verifiability does not establish notability. Notability must be verifiable, but the converse, verifiability must mean notability, is not true. WP:BIO is a guideline, not a policy, but that does mean we should use it as a guide. If WP:BIO is modified as the result of a consensus arising for change, I will still use it as guide and cite it in my reasons in an AfD discussion. --  Dalbury ( Talk )  09:01, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

A mergist's solution
I think the easiest thing to do here is go by the amount of useful information available on people. And since this is policiticians we're talking about, I mean their political views, agendas and voting habits, not their birthplace and name of their pet dog. There is quite some information on (most) elected people. There is often little information on the candidates, with some big exceptions (e.g. first black/woman/gay runner, specific controversial view, etc, as opposed to joe average who is put on the elections list as a filler). I suspect this corresponds with what some people would call "credible" candidates.

So here's the thing. Keep articles on all politicians with lots of useful information (and if there's an article on them anyway, might as well include birthplace and pet dogs while we're at it). Merge those with little information into lists, containing name and party affiliation (and possibly one or two other informative facts). Ta dah! We have information and it's accessible.

Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 23:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Radiant. I think what we could do is redirect all candidates for which there is little verifiable information to articles like Ohio 1st District congressional election, 2006. One issue that I see: What do we do with people who run more than once? -- Mwalcoff 13:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with this proposal. It appears people are taking a long term view of this problem (ie. they do not want "non-notable" losing candidates to have an article forever. However, I see it more as a short term problem. I believe it is important to have an article during the election (they are all very prominent and "notable" then) but after the election they should be deleted. The mergist solution works both ways. The loser doesn't get an article (but gets mentioned in one), it avoids endless (contradicting) afds, and they are easy to monitor for vandalism/peacockism (opposed to thousands of individual articles). --maclean25 00:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I also agree with this proposal and it should be policy, not just a guideline. But I wonder how easy it will be to enforce. Note that I was a losing candidate here, and I have 906 Google hits, but that doesn't make me notable enough for an article. Luigizanasi 16:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with this, a "run through" of minor candidates would be a suitable soultion. "The following candidates are failed candidates for the X Party" - is that the sort of thing you mean? doktorb 16:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Another counter-proposal
The last thing we need is another schools war. How about if we nominate a period after the election - 3 months, say - after which time if no attempt is made to establight he independent notability of the candidate, and if they are no longer receiving any measurable news coverage, we merge to a historical record of that election? I know this runs counter to normal practice, but there are lots of people who generate a fair bit of discussion during the elction, all of which is of pretty much zero relevance afterwards. Of course, since WP is not a crystal ball or a newspaper, we might just as easily say that information has no place in WP anyway, and nothign should be entered on an election until some time after it closes, at which point historical perspective will allow a more balanced view of the issues and personalities.

Example here: Articles for deletion/Melissa Brown. A toss-up whether she remains in or not, but it's clear to me that the political-focussed team that created this article is separate from the constituency which is interested in the subject as a person, since the suggested bases for continued inclusion are not mentioned in the original article - in fact it's not even certain at this point that the Google results are the same person, although it's quite likely. - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 10:39, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I would prefer your second proposal - "that information has no place in WP anyway and nothing should be entered on an election until some time after it closes, at which point historical perspective will allow a more balanced view..." It sounds more radical but I think it is best for Wikipedia in the long run.  Wikipedia is not on a deadline and has no need to scoop anyone.  News items belong in WikiNews.  We can write a truly great article only after the election.  Rossami (talk) 16:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Lower Level Candidates?
What about in regards to legislative candidates of major parties at lower levels? (States, Provinces, Cities, etc.) The same things in favor above for national level candidates are the same at lower levels, albeit on a smaller scale. If a Congressional or Parliamentary candidate of a major party in any country is up for deletion, let me know and i'll come and vote Keep. karmafist 14:54, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * These are of course even less functionally verifiable than national candidates. Wait till after the election, why don't we? - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 16:45, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Because it's during the election campaign that people will be most interested in the candidate. There's usually enough available from neutral sources on state-legislative candidates. -- Mwalcoff 23:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a hosting service for candidate election statements. It is an encyclopaedia. Uncle G 00:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I just want to add a few points regarding "low level" elections in the UK. Obviously Wiki already has a reasonable delete process for non-notable people and that seems to work, on the whole, fairly well. Candidates seem to automatically have a "saving grace" in that they stand for election, but this could be misused. I have stood for election two times, both for a seat on Preston city council. I don't pretend to be notable or worthy of an article on Wikipedia; I don't think the candidates I stood against have much need to be here either, bar Ron(ald) Atkins who used to be the MP for Preston South who has an obvious notable factor in that he was a member of the Westminster parliament for many years.

Given that the UK parliamentary system allows just about anyone the chance to stand, even if they are trouble makers, publicity seekers and/or non-notable 'paper candidates', it would be a terrific waste of time and resources to bring together enough details on each and every candidate just to allow Wiki to claim (or certain editors to claim) that the resource to find such information is available. There are other such resources on-line. I note that the 2005 general election in the UK had over 3,000 candidates - could Wiki cope with such an increase from one country alone?

I suggest one idea - and this is just for open discussion - of articles for each electoral year along the lines of "Minor Party Candidates in UK General Election 2005", with either summary information or, if absolutely necessary, longer profiles. A table to list independents and randoms could be a tidy-up device.

doktorb 13:01, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The 2005 United Kingdom General Election stuck to the rule that candidates that weren't already notable for other reasons didn't get articles. All of the people who won in their constituencies got articles, of course.  People who win major elected office become a matter of public record (their speeches in legislatures, their signing of documents, and so forth being independently recorded) thenceforth.  Those who lost have articles either because they had won elected office some other time, or are notable for other reasons. The 2005 British Columbia General Election stuck to that rule, too. Uncle G 00:27, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Very Minor Candidates
I think policy should at least reflect guys like this, who got a total of 24 votes in a primary election for a seat in the US House of Representatives. Why does he have an article? -R. fiend 17:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)


 * No idea. It was up on WP:AFD and got six votes for delete, two for keep, one for merge and one for "keep or merge." That's 70% in favor of eliminating the article, so I have no idea why User:Eugene van der Pijll determined that the result of the vote was "keep." -- Mwalcoff 23:37, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Reviving the discussion
Things seem to have trailed off here even as AFD votes on legislative candidates continue to be contentious.

Let me suggest a compromise that I hope can gain consensus approval.

The idea is that when someone wants to create an article on a candidate, he or she first creates an article on the race or party. For elections in which the type of race in which candidates run generally as individuals, such as American elections and nonpartisan elections in Commonwealth countries, the article would be about the race. The format could be "(Year) (type) election, (constituency)." For example: "2002 U.S. House election, Ohio 12th district." The article would give brief bios of the candidates, explain the issues and discuss important campaign events.

For Westminster-system elections, the article would be on the all of that party's candidates running in the election, either nationally or in a given province or region. For example, we might have an article on "Green Party candidates, 39th Canadian federal election, Ontario." The article would include brief bios of the candidates and talk about the platform, campaign events, etc.

At first, searches on the candidates can be redirected to the articles described above. However, if, and only if, enough verifiable information develops on the candidate that the bio gets too big for the article, the candidate can receive a full article on himself or herself. Now we run into the thorny issue of whether that can mean any candidate or just some candidates. If we accept that some candidates, such as Paul Hackett, are notable because of their candidacy, what do we do when people say the Libertarian Party candidate in the same district should have an article? If we allow state Senate candidates in California (who represent more people than members of the U.S. House) can we exclude Wyoming Senate candidates?

In my opinion, the only fair way to decide is to judge based on the amount of independent, verifiable information available on the candidate. I would suppose that the quantity of independent information available on Hackett would not be available for, say, a Libertarian candidate for a state House seat in Rhode Island.

Some people have also raised the concern of what happens to articles on candidates after the election. I think this proposed solution would deal with the problem by directing most candidate articles to pages that won't become outdated after the election. Candidates notable enough to get their own article, such as Hackett, are likely to stay in the news.

Mwalcoff 04:12, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Your proposal is perhaps marginally better than the status quo but I still question it. Your proposed compromise starts with the assumption that the election itself is encyclopedic.  I'm not convinced of that yet.  Many races are newsworthy at the time but not at all significant to history.  What, for example, does anyone remember about the races for the governorship of Delaware in the 1930s?  We are writing an encyclopedia, not a newspaper.  We have an obligation to exert some editorial judgment.  Newsworthy is not the same thing as encyclopedic.  With very rare exceptions, candidates do not belong in Wikipedia for the mere fact of their candidacy.  Rossami (talk) 07:51, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your input, but I do disagree with you on what types of events should be included. Strict application of the 100-year test would strip a good portion of articles from Wikipedia. It's doubtful history will care about that plane that ran off the runway in Toronto (Air France Flight 358) or the recent three-day transit strike in New York. I think one of the strengths of Wikipedia is its ability to provide background information in encyclopedia style about current events. And you never know: The 1858 elections for the Illinois legislature (in which a slate supporting Stephen Douglas beat a slate supporting Abraham Lincoln) are still famous today. -- Mwalcoff 23:30, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe history will be right to forget the transit strike. And the air crash?  Could go either way.  If something is notable after the event, it will be included.  But the majority of unsuccessful politcal candidates are fundamentally unverifiable once the media spotlight has moved on - I have no fundamental problem with them being in until the election if the people covering the election (which should in any case be on Wikinews but I digress) can be relied on to AfD the unsuccessful ones afterwards. But create-and-delete sucks more than slightly, and WP does not cover current events, so in the end aren't they on the wrong Wikiproject? - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 23:56, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I have recent experience with this topic and process, as I created an article about myself as a political candidate oblivious of the WP:BIO, WP:Notability and Vanity page guildelines. There seems to be consensus that all political candidates are non-notable unless they:
 * get over 20% of the primary vote
 * are notable for reasons other than their candidacy (e.g. Andrew Wilkie)
 * win.


 * The article was duly moved to my user space at the end of its AfD consideration. However, I did create a listing of all Greens candidates for the last Australian federal election and added some additional information about results.  So the status quo seems to revolve around the above criteria, which I think are reasonable.  However, these criteria needs to be more prominent as new users don't see them when they get the "create a new article" prompt - which means a lot of pages are created that may not have been if people were better informed. Peter C Talk! 05:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Some Thoughts
Thanks to Mwalcoff for re-starting this discussion. After reading the discussion, let me share some thoughts. (Disclaimer: I am a US resident, and most familiar with US politics, so my views are mostly applicable to US candidates). First, I'm not sure I like the idea of creating an article for each election, though - that will tend to get unwieldy, and I doubt people will come to Wikipedia looking for articles by those titles. Articles about the candidates are more likely to be found by interested readers and editors.

Our policy currently states that members of both national AND state legislatures are considered notable, as are local political figures who receive significant press coverage. Taking that as a baseline, I believe every major party nominee for NATIONAL legislature (i.e Congress) should be considered notable. Congressmen represent districts of +/- 650,000. Even the least succesful Democratic or Republican nominees for those seats typically get 75,000 votes or more in their unsuccessful bids. As a result, these unsuccesful Congressional candidates are often more widely known than a typical state legislator. For example in my home state of Missouri, a successful state legislative candidate rarely gets more than 10,000 votes. I realize that this invites a large number of articles on unsuccessful congressional candidates. However, most of these candidates would already be considered notable because they previously served in state or local office.

What about candidates for their party's nomination for Congress? Again, these individuals may already be notable for serving in a state legislature or holding local political office. Those that do not meet that threshold would have to be decided on a case by case basis. After the election is over, it should be relatively easy to determine who the "noteable" candidates were. For example, I would propose that any candidate who won more votes in a primary election than another candidate who was a member of a state legislature sould be considered noteable. Another standard could be "did this person receive more votes than a typical state legislator?" It is a bit trickier while the campaign is ongoing. But I would suggest that press reports of fundraising success or major endorsements could help establish the notability of a candidate.

What about minor party (Green, Libertarian, etc.) candidates for Congress? In general, these candidates receive very few votes, and should not be considered notable. Again, a useful test is "Did this person receive as many votes as a typical state legislator?" Generally, the answer will be no. If a particular minor party candidate is doing exceptionally well in a particular campaign, there will probably be significant local press coverage to help document the phenomenon and establish notability. It seems to me that articles about minor party candidates (including aricles created or edited by the candidates themselves) are the single biggest problem leading to this discussion.

Finally, I would suggest that unsuccessful candidates for state legislature, regardless of whether they won their party's nomination are generally not notable. There may be exceptions, such as the California Senate example noted above, but unsuccessful candidates in such large districts may already be notable as local electeds or members of the state house. TMS63112 21:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem with this is, as previously discussed, a large proportion of nominees who fail are not reselected and their future life is not covered in the trusted secondary sources which constitute verifiability. So we will potentially end up with  thousands of articles for people whose notability timeline starts with standing for an election and ends with losing it.  I strongly believe that these people belong on Wikinews or maybe on Wikipolitics (if it exists).  Politicians are completley convinced that nothing in the world matters more than politics, and in all of politics their election is the single most pressing issue.  Otherwise they would not be there.  Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, and encyclopaedias are backward-looking. I'd be perfectly happy to exclude by policy any event less than 12 months ago.  And I mean that.  - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 00:03, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
 * In terms of verifiability, we have the same problem with most members of State Legislatures. Once they leave office (unless they move up to a higher office) it may be difficult to verify the future details of their lives.  But they already qualify for inclusion under our established criteria.  My point is that most unsuccessful major party Congressional candidates are already more prominent than state Legislators, and most of them will at least get an obituary in the local newspaper that can verify details from after their political days.  As for your 12 month standard, it seems to ignore one of the strengths of Wikipedia: it is not a paper encyclopedia, and therefore better able to cover recent and rapidly developing events.  TMS63112 20:32, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
 * You raise an interesting point about the relative verifiability of a failed Congressional candidate vs. a successful state Legislator. I would argue that an obituary is not the right source for an encyclopedia article and that instead of dumbing down the standards for failed candidates we should be considering raising the bar for state-level legislators.  The 12 month standard does not ignore the fact that Wikipedia is not paper.  Instead, it openly admits that wikis have inherent problems with verifiability.  We rely on social controls such as the presumption that good editors outnumber bad ones and that we always have enough informed editors to watch the article and keep it balanced.  Articles on current events, especially highly partisan events such as elections, severely test those assumptions.  It is not at all clear that we are "better" able to cover recent or rapidly developing events.  I would argue instead that current events articles have in fact strained our resources past the breaking point - that we have suffered low quality, unverifiable and biased articles because we don't have the resources to keep them cleaned up.  I have believed for some time that we would be better off without these articles until after the election.  The partisans will (mostly) have moved on and we will have a bit of the perspective of history to inform the editing.  We are writing an encyclopedia, not a newspaper.  We have no need to scoop anyone.  We've toyed with the idea of imposing a delay before.  I hadn't thought about a specific time-limit but Just zis Guy's suggestion of 12 months feels about right to me.  Rossami (talk) 03:40, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Well. . .lots to deal with there. I'm not sure how this 12 month standard would work, exactly, and it seems to me that it would require much broader discussion than what we're seeing here.  I thought the idea behind the "in the news" section, for example, is that while WP is not a newspaper, people are often inspired to create and edit articles based on current events.  I thought we wanted to encourage that.  Also, I'm also not sure why an obit would be an unacceptable source for information. TMS63112 04:38, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
 * There are two things going on here. First is the coverage of current affairs, which undoubtedly belongs on Wikinews (the huge Canadian election project, while admirable and impressively well organised, should in my view never have been started in the 'pedia).  The other is coverage of current developments in already notable subjects even if they are redlinked prior to those events.  An example might be Concorde and the Paris crash; a breaking story which is highly relevant to something which is already encyclopaedic.  Most encyclopaedias do not cover elections.  They describe the electoral process, they list the office holders over time, they recount the milestone events in electoral history, but they do not as a rule document each and every election.  Thats partly because they can't, and partly because elections, while they are of pressing importance as they happen, become largely irrlevant once they have passed (while the composition of the elected body might have an impact, the process byu which they go there does not).  There are few elections which are genuinely encyclopaedic.  The Khaki Election has encyclopaedic merit, and is regarded as a major event in British political history, but routine elections simply aren't important.  Never mind whether they'll be remembered in a hundred years, most of them are forgotten within one. - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 15:09, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

(outdenting and parsing the discussion some - hope this helps)

Is an obituary an acceptable source?
My apologies. I was unclear above. In my opinion, an obituary may be an acceptable secondary source for some information but an obituary is never sufficient by itself to verify the contents of a good encyclopedia article. First, only a small percentage of obituaries are actually written and fact-checked by the news staff. Most obituaries are written by family members or others with a less-than-objective viewpoint. Any information beyond the most basic of facts (such as date of death) must still be confirmed from another source. Second, most obituaries are very short synopses and tend to focus on family details. Wikipedia is not a mere memorial. We must have much more content than typically shows up in an obituary in order to support a proper encyclopedia article. All that other content must still be verified. I wasn't trying to say that an obituary is inherently untrustworthy (though we should always retain some skepticism) but that an obituary alone is insufficient to support an encyclopedia article. Rossami (talk) 15:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Is this inconsistent with "In The News"?
I'll challenge your statement that the In The News section is supposed to inspire people to create new articles based on current events. I believe that it is supposed to attract and educate readers - that it's a way of showing off how complete our encyclopedia already was. The idea was, in my opinion, that we were so good that for any given current event, we already have articles which are relevent to understanding the background and context of the current event. It did devolve into "let's create new articles". That was not a particularly good idea and eventually led to the creation of WikiNews. We're still struggling to understand the proper distinction between an encyclopedia article and a news article. I think that In The News serves a purpose but it's not to drive the creation of new articles. Rossami (talk) 15:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Should this "12 month limit" be discussed somewhere else?
Almost certainly, yes. It's been proposed before and in several different places. The most recent and most rich discussion was at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not during the discussion about "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball" (now in the archives). The conversation moved on without a real decision but more and more people are starting to worry about the inherent verifiability of current events. Elections are simply a recent and relatively concrete example of the problem. (At the risk of dragging us into another tangent, the 2004 Ohio election "scandals" were a perfect example. After the election, the papers were boiling over with accusations and counter-accusations of election "irregularities". That conflict spilled over into Wikipedia. After all, we were merely citing "reliable" news sources, too often ignoring the disclaimers made right in the news articles. Months later, after the experts finally had a chance to evaluate the data and to reach some meaningful conclusions, the allegations were dismissed as either not supported by the facts or as the statistically normal failures of any such large-scale exercise. We are still struggling to clean up the various Wikipedia articles from the partisan attacks and false statements made during and shortly after the campaign.) Unfortunately, I think we're still at the point of asking more people to think about the problem of verifiability for current events. In my opinion, more people are becoming aware of the problem but there might not yet be the critical mass of people who recognize the problem in order to challenge some of our long-held traditions and practices. Only when we have reached some level of consensus on the problem can we begin to seriously discuss potential solutions. The 12 month limit is attractive to me but there might be other equally effective solutions somewhere. Rossami (talk) 15:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It will not be a surprise to hear that I agree :-) We already have wikinews, the 'pedia should not be a place for current affairs. Yes, this debate is just another side-effect of a wider problem. - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 11:42, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

My rather simplistic solution
I do not think candidacy in any office is, in itself, notable. If the candidate wins, he becomes notable. Someone may say, "Yeah, but what about someone running for president of the US?" or any other such major position. My answer is the person is probably notable even without running for office and can be included for those reasons. One wouldn't list people who try out for a major sporting team, for example. They become notable once they make it. Ifnord 22:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Two words: Paul Hackett. A completely ordinary person until nominated by his party for Congress, he now has 304,000 Google hits. He is one of the biggest political news stories in the U.S. in 2005. But according to your qualifications, his article should be deleted. Think about it another way. We have an article on Cindy Sheehan. She is not an elected official. She is famous for being in the media a lot due to her criticism of George Bush. Paul Hackett is also famous for being in the media a lot criticizing George Bush. The two gained their fame through different paths — Sheehan by camping out in Texas, Hackett by running for office. But they're now doing the same kind of thing. If we follow your guidelines, and those of the other people who oppose the proposed policy, we would delete the Hackett article. Do you also favor deleting the Sheehan article? Or should we favor Sheehan because she is not running for office? To turn your sports analogy on its head: We have an article on Samuel Peter, a top heavyweight boxing contender. Should we delete his article until he wins the heavyweight title? Of course not. If we get rid of articles on people like Hackett, I also want to get rid of articles on episodes of television programs, Major League Soccer players, Canadian indy synth-pop bands and the other 99 percent of Wikipedia content that is less important than information on candidates for public office. For heaven's sake, we have a featured article on Spoo, which is described as "a valuable and highly desired food product from the fictional Babylon 5 universe." If you want Wikipedia to be more like a traditional encyclopedia, with thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of articles, fine. But don't start your cutting here; start with something that's not important -- Mwalcoff 23:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Excellent examples. Start off with Paul Hackett. If he came up on AfD as non-notable while a candidate for congress I would have voted to keep as he had already been elected to a city council. Ergo, met criteria for notability. Similarly Cindy Sheehan is notable for her achievements outside of any attempts to get elected. My point is that if the only claim to fame is as a candidate for public office then I believe them unremarkable unless they win. These debates often get turned into, "Well, what about article x? If we allow that then we should allow this." I believe that's besides the point. There will always be a sillier article which has somehow reached a lack of consensus to delete (Spoo being a good example). Ifnord 00:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You mean to tell me that you think Hackett is more notable as a member of a city council of a little town — elected with 388 votes — than as an unsuccessful candidate in a congressional election, in which he received 55,886 votes? Or as a Senate candidate likely to gain several hundred thousand votes even if he loses? -- Mwalcoff 01:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Actually, Paul Hackett is a perfect example of why we don't need mere candidacy as a specific inclusion criterion. Paul Hackett is includable under the current criteria at WP:BIO because he has lots of independent coverage in the press. That press coverage qualifies him for an article, not the fact that he is a candidate.  If he had such press coverage for some other reason than being a candidate (as Cindy Sheehan has), we would still include the article. If he were a candidate without such press coverage, we would have nothing useful or verifiable to write about him.  The key is wide independent coverage. Without enough coverage, we won't have the necessary critical mass of informed editors to make sure that the article is factual, verifiable and written from a neutral point of view.  Rossami (talk) 00:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, actually. The question is whether there is 1) an interest in the article and 2) enough independent, verifiable information available. Personally, I think that any congressional candidate nominated by a major party will meet those qualifications, but I don't think that we need to spell out ahead of time that such candidates should automatically merit inclusion, as I had proposed. The problem, as I stated before, is that a lot of AFD voters seem to think that if a type of person isn't specifically listed for inclusion on WP:BIO, then the person's article should be deleted. Perhaps what we really need to do is to clarify the point of WP:BIO, which is not to automatically exclude classes of people. -- Mwalcoff 01:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We also need to clarify that the point of WP:BIO is not to automatically include classes of people. "All X are notable" is simply a formula that doesn't work, whatever the "X", be it "real places", "businesses", "web sites", "candidates for office", or one of the many others.  It results in the creation of a directory of "X", not an encyclopaedia.  Uncle G 02:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You beat me to it (edit conflict). And said it better than I was going to. --  Dalbury ( Talk )  02:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Bear in mind that whatever rule we come up with will be subject to WP:IAR in any case. There will always, in my view, be corner cases to which this doesn't apply. I strongly agree with JzG's opinion that most election coverage belongs on WikiNews, to where we cannot transwiki. I would think that one should be a credible candidate for a national or major state legislature to deserve one's own article. If one then fails miserably to make the grade, we have WP:AFD. Stifle 08:58, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That last bit bothers me. How can someone be notable while running for election, but become non-notable when and if he or she loses the election? It can't be because the candidate may hold a particular office in the future (WP is not a crystal ball). I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the mere act of running for an office makes someone notable. If they are notable while running for office, they should still be notable even if they lose. --  Dalbury ( Talk )  13:02, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Is there a definition of "notable?" To me, anyone whom a lot of people would be interested in would be notable, even if he or she hasn't done anything particluarly noteworthy before. -- Mwalcoff 22:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Individual examples
There is now an individual example taking place of a discussion on this issue at Articles for deletion/Anthea Irwin. (See a previous exampe at Articles for deletion/Jacob Sanders. PatGallacher 12:12, 5 February 2006 (UTC)