Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Santorum controversy

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. No real consensus to merge, but that's not a concern of afd anyway. If someone wants to merge, no one stops it (at least based on this afd). - Bobet 23:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Santorum controversy

The article makes sweeping POV statements that tend to condemn what Santorum said. The controversy is not any more noteworthy than incidents by, among others, Howard Dean, George Allen, and Joseph Biden, who each have their controversies described in the text of their biographies. A nearly identical summary exists in Santorum's biography, which should be sufficient to discuss the controversy. On account of it being a redunant entry, a biased article, and lacking meaningful support (for instance, the "defense of remarks" section is largely ad hoc), coupled with the fact that it's not any more noteworthy than similarly-situated controversies, it should be deleted. The incident will still remain in the official Rick Santorum page. Zz414 13:08, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Per nom, gratuitous and redundant with coverage in Rick Santorum#Remarks about homosexuality. Pan Dan 16:57, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I don't see the POV here, the article covers both sides. Perfectly valid content branch, the entry at Rick Santorum can be pruned, the article is already 53kb long. I'd like to see some more sources though. ~ trialsanderrors 18:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge back to Santorum's page. This is an obvious POV fork.--Cúchullain ^t/c 19:51, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge into Rick Santorum. Taking a minor controversy and creating an article out of it is blowing the issue out of proportion. If this issue becomes another Watergate, then I'll reconsider. --physicq210 22:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per trialsanderrors. This is an article surrounding statements made to the AP, and political fallout and public reaction. But it does need to be renamed specifically to what the controversy is. Maybe "Santorum controversy on homosexuality" or something like it. It needs to be expanded and wikified. It is a CONTENT FORK NOT A POV FORK. The main article touches on the subject, this article goes into detail. Arbusto 00:49, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge back to the Santorum page or outright delete it since it is already contained on the Santorum page.Bagginator 06:16, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge back to Santorum page. Will inevitably be used for POV pushing purposes as a seperate article.--Jersey Devil 07:34, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge No more notable than Lott's career-jeopardizing praise of Strom Thurmond a few years back...shouldn't get more than a mention in his bio. —ExplorerCDT 22:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep the info would be too unwieldly to put into the main Rick Santorum article plus there are several facets of the controversy that are intrinsic to the controversy but not neccessary to the article about the Senator. For instance, the coining of Santorum (sexual slang) was directly related to the controversy and not really the Senator himself. Reference to that in Senator's main article is inappropriate but it fits perfectly in context of the controversy. Agne 00:16, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I don't think the popularity of the "santorum" slang term bestows notability upon the controversy that spawned it. I also don't buy that this is a mere content fork. It isn't even the only controversy the dude's been involved in! I won't assume whoever split this off from the main article had political motivations, especially because this may have been a bigger news item three years ago, but having a separate article now gives undue weight to the events comparatively.--Cúchullain ^t/c 02:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the brunt of contention is the notability of what happened. It was distinctly notability with a firestorm of attention. Looking at the discussion above, the vast majority deems the content worthy of inclusion but in what format? As its own article or merged with the main Senator's page.Agne 02:16, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

"It was distinctly notability with a firestorm of attention." But any more so than incidents of Biden, Dean, or Allen? I mean, even Dean Scream redirects to Howard Dean's main page, and that certainly had far broader political and cultural implications than this incident. I just think it's as notable as any other political controversy, but doesn't warrant its own page. It's on Santorum's page under "controversy," and that's enough.

Clearly it was notable; but how notable? I don't think it's enough to warrant its own separate article, especially at this point.--Cúchullain ^t/c 02:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per my man Arbusto. There is a strong possibility that this ordeal will be the longest lasting memory of the good senator (by both the anti-Gay right that lionized him as a hero for his stance and the left who villianized). Seriously, when you think of Santorum what comes to mind first? Any legislation he proposed or his "man on dog" comment? That is lasting notability that has a better chance of surviving the 100 year test then anything else the man has done. 205.157.110.11 09:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep for reasons already above. VJ Emsi 20:55, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - I agree that it would be too unweildly to merge, and if merged, it's likely to become another firestorm of casual neocon POV editwars. With the article seperated, both "factions" can be pleased, and, more importantly than partisan politics, more information can be made available to the researcher. The arguments to delete or merge all seem to fall under the "well, here's an example, and here's an example, and if this example, and this example, then therefore" fallacy, which I believe contradicts official Wikipedia policy. --70.108.116.231 13:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I really fail to understand how this event is any more significant than incidents of Biden, Dean, or Allen? Even Dean Scream redirects to Howard Dean's main page. If you can convince me that this controversy is more significant than the Dean Scream, you've convinced me to keep the article. The fact that even the plethora of incidents related to the Dean Scream make it under Dean's main article, however, suggests that it won't be too unwieldy.

To counter this question (this is likely not the Way of Wiki, but humor me): How is this any less important than the Nobel Prize controversies, the Londonderry / Derry naming controversy, Controversy_over_Cantor's_theory, or anything else in the Controversy page? I have not yet read the Dean article - this I will freely admit - however, off the cuff, I could say that a senator's ten second outburst on television is slightly different than a senator being completely biased against homosexuals. It's a deeper issue, for starters - while there's plenty of sociopolitical commentary that could be had on whether or not Dean's Scream "should" have been more tolerated or less reported than it was, it's not fitting for a Wiki article. This, on the other hand, is more than "Santorum stated in a conversation that he is against homosexual acts, though not homosexuals, and doesn't feel the right of privacy applies to them" - or rather, it should be more than that, as anything less would be merely inflammatory. Even that inflammatory, provacative, unsourced / unqualified statement takes more words to summarize than Dean's ten seconds of fame in 2003.

Also, being that this is a relatively current event, sheer information abundance (not to be confused with information overload) may contribute to the size factor in comparison to Joe Biden - slap a ^{[citation needed]} tag or two on an article from an event in 1988, and you can hear the sound of Wikipedians one by one resigning themselves to a shorter article, rather than spending a day in a library with suitable historic archives.

Allow me to also make it clear that I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican, nor even a practicing homosexual (though, like many others, I have been called "gay" on the internet). I'm just a random surfer who has come to this page via the aforementioned Controversy page. --70.108.116.231 15:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I only use the "Dean Scream" as a point of comparsion. Yes, it was 10 seconds, but it's considered the singular issue that resulted in Dean's loss by many, and it was widely mimicked and imitated in television and Internet culture. I'm not saying that Santorum's position on this issue isn't significant. But Marilyn Musgrave is also opposed to homosexual conduct, as are many other conservative members of Congress. His remarks on homosexuality are no more significant than, say an article identifying a "Barney Frank controversy" simply because he's a homosexual and in the significant minority of Congress. It seems entirely POV fork to insist that a candidate significantly opposed to homosexual acts is a "deeper issue," but other issues, like incidents of racial slurs (Allen), plagiarism (Biden), or religiously-bigoted comments (Dean) are not "deeper issues."

As for Cantor's theory, genuine scientific debate over a scientific matter is entirely different than a "controversial" political position. While there's debate in science about whether a theory or hypothesis is sound or not, in politics we accept that different politicians have different positions. There's controversy, sure, but we shouldn't designate controversial homosexual opinions more weighty than others. This article can easily be condensed with a few footnotes to relevant articles and merged with the main article.

• Keep per trialsanderrors and Arbusto, the article needs a trimming and there's no POV issue. --WikiSlasher 13:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
• Reply to above commenters who don't see a POV issue. Conceding for the sake of argument that the content of this article is perfectly NPOV, the article itself is still a POV fork of Rick Santorum. Pan Dan 15:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.