Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates

message: * 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)
thread_title:  Arguments in favor of the proposal 

message: 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.  — Haeleth Talk 20:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arguments against the proposal 

message: 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.  — Haeleth Talk 20:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Arguments for the status quo

message: 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)
replies: text: 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★talk 10:28, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Counter-proposal 1 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Arguments against Counter-proposal 1 

message: * 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)
replies: text: *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 {yakłblah} 17:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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 m: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)
thread_title:  U.S.-specific counter-proposal 

message: 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:
# Is enough verifiable, objective information about the person available to write more than a stub?
# 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 Wikipedia:Importance and related pages but no consensus, I think.)
Mwalcoff 01:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Uncle G. —James S. 11:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Better off with no policy?

message: *For the proposal. Against Counter-proposal 1. -- Mwalcoff 00:08, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  
Votes
 

message: 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)
thread_title: Why try to decide who is credible?

message: 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_>|< 23:56, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  A mergist's solution 

message: 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: Wikipedia: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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Another counter-proposal 

message: 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)
thread_title: Lower Level Candidates?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: ''Very'' Minor Candidates

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Some Thoughts

message: 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)
thread_title: Is an obituary an acceptable source?

message: 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)
thread_title: Is this inconsistent with "In The News"?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Should this "12 month limit" be discussed somewhere else?

message: 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)
thread_title:  My rather simplistic solution 

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