Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Local politicians

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[edit] Conclusions

  • This policy consensus article has ran for over a month and has not received much attention in the last couple of weeks. I feel justified in closing it for now.
  • The only conclusion that can be significantly drawn from the discussion, is that there is no consensus on the matter. If/when it becomes relevant again in the future, it should be re-opened.

[edit] Attempted consensus

Sometimes, a group of similar or related articles is nominated for deletion over a short period of time. In cases like this, it seems prudent to have one centralized discussion about the entire group, rather than repeating arguments over each member thereof. This is an attempt to forum consensus on one such groups of articles.

Note that individual members from the group may still be considered notable on other grounds. This discussion is purely to determine whether membership of this group, solely on its own, is merit enough for inclusion in Wikipedia.

[edit] Description

From the category Bio-stubs, a number of articles on local politicians were nominated for deletion - in particular, a number of Chicago Aldermen. While it seems clear that some, but not all politicians are notable enough for inclusion, the question arises where the bar of notability lies.

[edit] Arguments for deletion

  • While I dislike the principle of forbidding whole categories of people from having articles, the vast majority of these don't need articles. Of course, we must consider subjects based on their own merits. For example, few would argue that New York mayors don't deserve articles, whilst similarly few would argue that small-town comptrollers, magistrates, councilmen, and school-board members do. The question is: where should the line be drawn? A good guideline can be formed thusly: A subject should have an article if it is reasonably evident that a non-stub article about the subject could be created without resorting to filler, trivia, or unverifiable information. Let's look at a real world example, our Chicago aldermen. Dorothy Tillman is a Chicago alderman, and also an outspoken proponent of slavery reparations. There is a good amount of verifiable information about her and her activities, enough to be a nice article. Vi Daley, on the other hand, is also a Chicago Alderman. There is very little verifiable information about her. Even her official bio on her district website http://www.chicago43rd.org/bio.html is a mere 295 words, much of which (names of her daughters, her wedding anniversary) would be considered trivial in an encyclopedic context. In my opinion, no real Wikipedia article could be written about her, at least not yet. However, there is the possibility that such issues might be resolved with central articles, such as a "List of Chicago Aldermen" or similar. It's all about the amount of verifiable information that's out there. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:37, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
  • Concur with Andrew, individual local politicians might be notbale under special circumstances, but by and large, local politicians are not notable enough to deserve articles. There's also a problem of systemic bias/US-centrism: there have been a number of cases where articles on local politicians from India (and probably other countries, but I distinctly remember some Indians) were placed on Vfd and there was unanimous consensus to delete. I'd suspect the same would happen if I was to create articles about city council members from German cities (Munich, where I live, has half a dozen mayors and several dozen council members, and I do not think there are more than one or two about whom an article could be written). Obviously, the same rules should apply to US politicians -- Ferkelparade π 10:27, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Concur with all the above. Local politicians may become notable through their activities, but just being elected for a public office seems below the bar to me. Mayors of large cities are not granted an entry simply because the were elected: its the amount of public attention they attract that justifies an article. There is an everlasting debate in VfD about similar issues (e.g., high schools, malls) and the bottomline argument for inclusion seems to be that Wikipedia is not paper, i.e., that there is no size limit here. But Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base either: it is not a collection of verifiable things, but a collection of notable verifiable things. And local politicians are not, IMHO, inherently notable. Maybe the reasoning suggested by Ferkelparade is also a good general guideline in these matters: "Would I vote keep if the article was about an equivalent class of this thing/person/etc. in another country?" In this particular case, would it be reasonable to write an article about everyone holding an office which is the equivalent of an alderman in a large city from another country? I would say no to this, and that means I'll have to say no for the Chicago Aldermen as well. vlad_mv 14:57, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • We definitely have a problem when it comes to biographical articles and applying reasonable notability tests. For example, when they come up on VfD, people generally vote to keep articles about Playboy Playmates. We will keep most actors once they have more than a credit or two, or musicians if they have released a CD. We will keep people who have won a couple of prizes in demoscene competitions. But we will delete any professor who does not clear the "average professor test", which turns out in practice to mean most of them. And local politicians have a difficult time. One way I think about this is to imagine what the English Wikipedia's target is for the number of biographical articles and to relate that to notability. (Note that there is no consensus about this; so this is just my way of proceeding.) For example, one could say that the aim of the Wikipedia is to have 100,000 biographical articles. This is many more than we currently have. That works out to an average of one article per 70,000 people, or so, considering the number of people who are alive in the world or who have lived. By that measure, there should be about 15 biographical articles for a city of one million people. Before you get to the aldermen, you need to account for the famous scientists, sports stars, writers, musicians, entertainers, historical figures, CEO's of major corporations, state, regional, and national figures, and, yes any porn actresses, Playboy Playmates, talk-radio hosts, professors, etc that you want to cover. For most cities, an alderman isn't going to make the cut, unless he has done something pretty important. This approach assumes no bias in favor of American/Canadian/Australian/British cities at all, and that may not be reasonable. Boston only has a couple of million people, for example: so by the above standard it should get get 30-50 biographies, which wouldn't even cover all the important professors at Harvard. For an English-language encyclopedia, one might argue that Boston's "quota" needs to be higher than a comparably sized city in Brazil or Thailand, both because Boston has produced more "important" people than other places, and, anyway, even if it hasn't, the readers of the English Wikipedia are apt to be more interested in people from Boston than from Belo Horizonte. But even if you give Boston a much higher "quota" -- say an order of magnitude more -- you still have a lot of people ahead of the local politicians. --BM 16:05, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There has to be a bar somewhere, and presumably we do not want an article for everyone who has ever held the post of dogcatcher in Isleton, California, presuming that said position exists and is elected (though as Bay Area Californians may remember, the fire department there established at least some temporary notoriety last year). Statewide (or similar geopolitical extent) office seems to be the bar set by Wikipedian consensus to date, unless the individual has distinguished her or himself in some other way, and I think that is a good place to set it. I almost also included an argument for keeping, as Wikipedia is not paper, but in consideration, I think that Android79 has suggested a good compromise position. HyperZonktalk 17:54, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreeing with the above, I think the basic point is that people aren't notable just for being politicians or elected officials. Including otherwise non-notable people in lists, though, seems sensible. — Asbestos | Talk 19:24, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreeing with the above, I think the basic point is that people aren't notable just for being politicians or elected officials. Including otherwise non-notable people in lists, though, seems sensible. — Asbestos | Talk 19:24, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I think local politicans for sizeable cities sould have articles if they do something noteworthy. Obviously if we have articles that just say "Herman Flugg is a city councillor for Omaha, MB", we can have an article listing the councillors for Omaha, which will carry exactly the same information, in a more concise space. I do not think we should do that for every settlement in the country or world, partially because they will be very unlikely to be updated, and would soon prove to be very inaccurate. And I think no article is better than an inaccurate one. If a councillor for a sizeable city does something clearly above and beyond just taking their seat and casting a some votes for or against something, they may warrant an article. Some articles like this exceed the substub classification because they have been filled with filler. Merely expanding the above sampled substub to give where the guy went to college, as well as mention of his lovely wife Bess and their children Arnold and Louise, who are attending NYU and Bryn Mawr, etc, does not usefully expand the article, and basically makes it akin to vanity. Likewise information that can be said about most politicans wouldn't be sufficient either. Saying "this Democrat was accused of being a tax-and-spend liberal with ties to labor groups, as well as being soft on crime", is not differentiating him from just about any other Democrat, who all get that stuff thrown at them. They must do something that sets them apart in a meaningful and substantial way. Just arguing that this person's name is somewhat known to many residents of Omaha is insufficient. Everyone in Allston, MA is familiar with Ellis the Rim Man, but that doesn't get him an encyclopedia article. A related topic that needs to be addressed is articles on people who ran for some office, but did not win. Just on the Congresional level in the US there must have been 30,000 such people in history. I don't think just running makes them encyclopedic either. -R. fiend 19:19, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments for keeping

  • Notability should not have to be an international test. If someone is notable at a local level, why is that not sufficient? We're not running out of room here, and being an elected official should be reason enough to be a local notable. Kevintoronto 15:29, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd like to clarify that my comments refer to local politicans in general, and not to the articles listed below, none of which is substantial enough to warrant a separate article. If the articles were expanded to include what their accomplishments have been as alderthingies, and/or their accomplishments outside of the heady world of municipal politics, then they woud be worth keeping. Kevintoronto 17:05, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There is no logical reason or physical need to arbitrarily establish a notability bar that excludes people, facilities or events that have "mere" local significance from being included in Wikipedia. Doing so merely apes historical encyclopedias that imposed such bars out of necessity. We should not forget that encyclopedias were first conceived as universal repositories of knowledge, and it was only ever the limitations of the storage media that necessitated the introduction of such concepts as "notability". No such limitations apply to Wikipedia. --Centauri 10:57, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • In reaction to the two above, the point is that we should lay a bar somewhere... the president of my fraternity is an elected official as well, and notable on a local level, albeit on a smaller scale of 'local'. The reason for excluding articles below the bar, wherever we lay it, is that below a certain level, there really isn't anything interesting to say about those people, and their articles are doomed to be stubs. Most of these Alderman articles already consist of a mere sentence. Radiant! 09:35, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
      • Yes, and we mustn't forget that every high school (and grade school) in the world has numerous clubs and groups with elected officials as well (presidents, treasurers, secretaries), not to mention the tens of thousands of local, national and international trade groups, unions, political groups, charities, school boards, PTAs, hobbyist clubs, fan clubs, etc, all of which have their share of elected officials. The total number of elected officials at every level in the world must number many, many millions, if not a billion or more. Clearly, being involved in an election at any level is not enough. If it were, a good 25% or so of the civilized world would have articles just for that reason. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:39, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
        • Has anyone defended including high school club officials, or any of the other list that you've suggested? No, they haven't. Let's talk about the issue at hand, which is people elected to public office at the local level. That would mean people on municipal and regional councils, and would not include PTAs, etc. I think that we have to establish a line based on the quality of the article, rather than excluding articles on the basis of the position the person holds. I agree with Meelar, below, that we should merge the single line articles ("Mr. X is a town councillor in West Podunk, Arkansas" into list-type articles. But if someone has taken the time to write a decent article about Mr. X's contributions to West Podunk, or about controversies arising from his tenure as town councillor (did he advocate levelling the town and moving it three kilometres west? was he caught with his hand in the till?), then let the article stand. Kevintoronto 16:03, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
          • Actually, there have been occasions of articles on high school clubs, or people involved therein. They're usually discounted as vanity. Anyway, I believe the important distinction is this: I claim that local politicians are not inherently notable. That means that a local politician can still be notable for another reason, such as moving the town three miles west. This is not to be confused with being inherently not notable, which would imply that being a local politician would permanently invalidate your chances for an article. Can we agree that the former has merit, and that the latter is wrong? This seems akin to the professor test. If a politician has made significant contribution to his domain (which most local politicians probably haven't) then he would merit an article. Radiant! 21:53, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
          • As Radiant mentioned, we do indeed see those subjects up for VfD on a fairly regular basis, and they are usually deleted. But more to the point, we regularly see statements like "all elected officials are notable" even when I'm not entirely sure they realise just how broad those claims are. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:18, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • I think what we're trying to decide is whether an alderman is an appropriate topic for an article. If there's not enough material to have a decent article, I agree--go right ahead and put them on a list. But if someone goes to the trouble of writing an article with a good amount of detail (that is, much better than "XY is a Chicago Alderman"), it should be kept. I don't think those on the deletion side of the argument would disagree with this; I believe they have a point about Vi Daley. If someone went out and studied Vi Daley's career and wrote an interesting article, though, I would vote keep. Meelar (talk) 17:48, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
    • Yes, exactly. If it is decided that Aldermen aren't notable, then a person who is an Alderman can still be notable for other reasons (e.g. winning a Pulitzer). The purpose is not to remove all Aldermen from Wikipedia, merely those of whom nothing else can be said that is interesting. And they can, of course, still be merged into a list. This should reduce the amount of eternal stubs in Wikipedia. Radiant! 19:30, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
      • Actually, that's not what I was saying. I feel that an article saying "XY is an alderman from Chicago", and only that, should be deleted. On the other hand, we should keep "XY (born April 1, 3003) is an alderman from Chicago's nth ward, which contains the largely lower class neighborhood of foo, as well as the more middle-class bar. Prior to entering politics, he worked as an attorney, and ran for garbage collector in 2002; after several years as garbage collector ,he took a pay cut to join the city council. He has introduced several bills ,most dealing with keeping residents of Foo away from Bar." Meelar (talk) 04:50, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
        • About the only really useful information in that sample article is the ward he represents, which could be included as part of the alderman list (along with party, and maybe another statistic or two). Everything else is basically filler. Are insignificant factoids about his history any more encyclopedic than giving similar facts about a clerk at the DMV? People are notable for their accomplishments, and members of local councils generally have few. Change comes slowly and most changes are minor. Maybe someone votes to raise the local sales tax by 1/4%. Good for them, but is that the sort of thing that is covered in an encyclopedia? They sit on a council, vote on a few things, and few people, even their constituents, take notice of most of it. Maybe he introduces a bill here and there; it may pass and it may not. Is the bill notable? Does it have an article? If not then why is the introduction of such a bill encyclopedic? Throwing around a bunch of arbitrary facts doesn't make an encyclopedia. -R. fiend 15:55, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • You make some very good points. I wonder how many Chicagoans can name their own district's current alderman... my guess is less than half. And only a tiny fraction of a percentage could name all of them. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:55, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Are these articles part of the "sum of all human knowledge"? Yes, if they have verifiable information. Verifiability being the key here. I may not go out of my way to create them, but there's no reason to delete the verifiable. It's not like we're going to run out of paper - David Gerard 14:03, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • The idea of having a notability requirement has been rejected on multiple occasions by the community.[1], [2], [3], [4]. What we have long had is a verifiability requirement. Any elected official that has received enough coverage in a reliable source, such as a major newspaper, for a decent biography should be in Wikipedia. Verifiability is enough to keep out my cat and your frat leader without the need for inherently arbitrary and POV notability requirements. - SimonP 15:50, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but that is not quite correct. All the pages you linked to mention notability as a requirement one way or the other ("What Wikipedia wants" lists "notable foo" for pretty much every item under "What is encyclopedic?" and explicitly excludes "nonfamous people", "Importance" talks about things being "insufficiently important, famous or relevant", and the poll you linked to had a majority of 53 to 33 votes in favor of notability as an inclusion criterion - so saying that the requirement for notability has been rejected by the community is a tad bit misleading. There does not seem to be broad community consensus against notability - granted, there's no general consensus for notability either, but hey, we can agree to disagree :P The question that remains is where we set the bar for notable people to be included, not whether to set a bar at all -- Ferkelparade π 16:19, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I known they all mention notability, that is the point. They were all proposals that would have introduced some sort of notability requirement for Wikipedia articles but that were rejected by the community. All but one of them died on the vine and the one that did go to a poll failed to achieve consensus and was strongly opposed by Jimbo himself. - SimonP 18:57, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • However, the Wikipedia:Verifiability page links to two other criteria, being Neutral and Informative, and the latter is part of policy and mentions notability. Also, on the VfD page, the first criterium for deletion is Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and that does list notability under biographies. Radiant! 11:17, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
Merely being verifiable isn't necessarily encyclopedic. "Jimmy Grigglegot was a contestant on 'Press Your Luck' on March 13, 1982. He answered 5 questions correctly, and won $500, after hitting 3 whammys..." can be verified. He is not encyclopedic because he is not notable. No one cares, and we're not going to have an article on every person who has in any way appeared on TV. Or are people propsing that we should? When it comes right down to it notability is why some people are in an encyclopedia and others aren't. Anthony Eden has done notable things; he is a notable person. I am not. I could write an article about myself and supply verification for everything stated, but it would be deleted, and not just because it's vanity. I am not ashamed to say I am not worth an encyclopedia article. Neither is some guy who was elected to the town board for some town with a population of 900. -R. fiend 17:58, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
A huge amount of everything that goes on in the world is verifiable in some way or another. If I withdraw $20 from my bank account, and write an article about it, it would be 100% verfiable (because of the recipt). It wouldn't, of course, be notable. Every birth, death, arrest, marriage, court case, credit card transaction, weather pattern, package shipment, sports stat, website hit, and telephone connection in the civilized world is kept in some verifiable form, somewhere. They can't all have articles. WP may never agree on exactly where the line is, but hopefully it can be agreed at least that there is a line, somewhere. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:43, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Verifiability. One of the important rules is that the information must come from secondary sources. Records of the type you are describing are unquestionably primary sources and an articles based on them should be deleted as original research. - SimonP 15:01, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)
Come on, are you implying that if a cash withdrawal was for some reason cited by a secondary source it would be worthy of an encyclopedia article just because it is verifiable? Sorry, but there are facts in this world, from primary, secondary, or tertiary sources, that are not worthy of being in an encyclopedia. I think at some point people have to stop pussyfooting around and at least acknowledge that. Whether you call it "notability", "importance", "significance", or whatever, there is something beyond verifiability that separates people who are included in an encyclopedia and those who are not. Take my made up Press Your Luck contestant above. The facts about him are verifiable (or would be if he were real; certainly thousands of equivalent examples exist), but not notable. You could try to argue that such information is from a primary source (a TV show) but if that's the case then so is 95% of the Ken Jennings article, as well as a thousand other articles on TV shows and popular entertainment. Notability in some form is clearly important. It's what separates good biographical articles from the high school vanity we see so much of. -R. fiend 06:22, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • SimonP, In the vote that you mentioned where Jimbo voted "No" to Importance/Fame being a criterion for inclusion in the Wikipedia, where he argued that "Verifiability" was the criterion that should be adopted, you might note that he eventually voted on the "Yes" side also as a concession that there were valid arguments on that side also. So, he voted "Yes" and "No" in the same vote. Not one of the more shining examples of rigor and coherency from our God-King, I am afraid. --BM 19:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
So he voted for that bill before voting against it, is that right? ;) -R. fiend 02:37, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
My interpretation of Jimbo's dual vote is that he agreed that it is obvious that non-notable information should be excluded, but that the "real solution" for doing so relies on "verifiability and NPOV" requirements. - SimonP 15:01, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I think it is OK to have articles about candidates for high office, if they had a significant influence on the vote result or were otherwise notable. See Gary Reams. Rad Racer 15:48, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree with Meelar. It's nice to have these smaller scale articles about less-famous people, and their connections to their twon. Well, it's more interesting, more human, than articles about inanimate objects, abstract concepts etc. I'd much rather read about the local councillors, even if they haven't done anything spectacular. And normally, I'd prefer to keep short articles merged as a list, I don't think that's practical here. When councillors aren't re-elected, we won't be able to keep them on a List of councillors in XYZ district, and the List of all people who used to be councillors in XYZ district will be too big to manage easily. Small, separate articles are the best way. Miss Pippa 22:43, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I have no objection to the "List" article, although the format of each such article should address the outdatedness problem identified by Miss Pippa. (One possibility is seen in the list of council members in Las Vegas, Nevada#Law and government, where the ending dates of the current incumbents' terms are shown. A reader who comes to such a list that hasn't been updated will at least be warned.) Along with such a master list, though, if someone creates an article about a public official in a policymaking position, and the article has more information than is in the list, I see no reason to delete it. JamesMLane 07:53, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments for merging

I agree with deletion of the one-liner type local politician articles, but I can see where a list of Aldermen would be useful, to Chicagoans, at least. Perhaps a compromise: a List of Chicago Aldermen page. Those Aldermen deemed noteworthy enough for their own articles get them. Those that aren't get redirected to List of Chicago Aldermen. If some local politician does something noteworthy (scandal, controversial legislation, etc.) then they can get their own article. Android79 14:39, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

  • This may be slightly more complicated than I first thought. Of the Chicago aldermen linked, there is one, John Pope, who shares his name with others who have Wikipedia articles of their own. (There are three John Popes; this link goes to a disambig.) So, here's what I propose:
    • Chicago aldermen remains pretty much as-is.
    • Each (apparently) notable alderman (e.g. Dorothy Tillman, or all those with articles that aren't mere stubs) get their own articles.
    • Each non-notable alderman with the need for a disambig (e.g. John Pope) gets linked from the disambig page to Chicago aldermen like this: Al D. Erman
    • The rest of the aldermen are linked as redirects back to Chicago aldermen.
    • This way, individual alderman can be put up for VfD (err, VfRedirect, really) without undermining the utility of the list of aldermen. Any objections? Android79 17:00, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreed. And it seems the list already exists, too: Chicago aldermen Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 21:53, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Also agreed. The creation of "list pages" strikes me as a reasonable compromise, satisfying the concerns of both sides. (I would also recommend that individual candidate pages be kept as redirects to these "list pages", as opposed to simply deleting them.)

For a practical example of this approach, please see the discussion on Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/David_Chernushenko. CJCurrie 22:05, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • I think Android's idea has great merit. Concur. Radiant! 21:47, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
    • Unfortunately, someone has gone and VfD'd the remaining stubs. I've decided to be bold and do as much as I can, but I won't touch the VfD notices for now. Android79 23:09, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

On a recent VfD, I noted my own personal criteria for making a judgement call on the notability of an unelected political candidate:

(a) they attracted significant national or international media coverage or controversy,
(b) they're already encyclopedia-worthy for other reasons and their political campaign is just an extra fact for the article,
(c) they're the leader of a political party at the state/province/national level, even if it's a small one,
(d) they're notable specifically as a perennial candidate.

I think there are some municipal politicians whose notability is absolutely beyond question, usually under more or less the same criteria. I'll use Toronto City Council as an example:

(a) Tom Jakobek was embroiled in the Toronto Computer Leasing Inquiry scandal,
(b) Giorgio Mammoliti is a former MPP; Tooker Gomberg was a nationally-known environmental activist; Olivia Chow is a nationally-famous figure in progressive/lefty politics; Kyle Rae was one of the first openly gay municipal politicians in Canada.
(c) Paula Fletcher is a former provincial party leader in Manitoba; Adam Giambrone is the president of the New Democratic Party of Canada,
(d) Ben Kerr, Enza Anderson.

Meanwhile, there are other members of Toronto city council for whom I wouldn't support articles (not even my own councillor, for that matter, and she's the current chair of a major civic board that was intensely controversial last year...but she wasn't chair at the time, and she wasn't the focus of the controversy.)

That said, I do support the idea of a simple list of councillors, and I'm entirely in favour of a straight list of any political party's successful and unsuccessful candidates for state/provincial/national legislatures. People who do rise above the bar of notability would be wikied; those who don't wouldn't be. For me, it strikes the best balance between the fact that a lot of such people just aren't notable enough for an encyclopedia and the fact that there is some research value in the information. (I do want to know what kind of people ran for the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, for example.) Bearcat 20:30, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

    • These are good reasons; the only one I don't quite agree with is (c). I'm not entirely sure how it works in Chicago, but where I live it's very very easy to start a new political party. It is not uncommon for a local election to have three new parties appear out of the blue, sometimes even without a discernible party program, then get near-zero votes, and disappear into obscurity. What I'm getting at is that being the leader of a really small party is not inherently notable, and should (imho) instead direct to the page (if any) of that party. Radiant! 21:47, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)
      • I think there can be a judgement call involved here, as well; I meant more long-standing, well-established minor parties. Bearcat 00:12, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
        • re: Bearcat's list, I specify that the article need meet only one of the criteria, and would add:
(e) The article is well-written and documents that person's contribution to the community.
In this case, there is an article that is worth reading and worth keeping, but this would exclude articles that simply state the fact that the person is an office-holder. It would also exclude an article that adds only that he/she/it is married and has two kids and one-and-a-half dogs. The detail added to the article would have to be relevant to his or her position, e.g. what causes he/she championed, etc.
As far as (c) goes, I came to Wikipedia looking for information on the fringe parties that get little or not coverage in the media, and have edded a large number of articles on thse parties in Canada. Wikipedia is the only place for this sort of information. If Wikipedia focuses only on major parties, then what advantage does it have over other sources of information? Kevintoronto 19:10, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Using a list reduces but does not eliminate the fundamental problem of such articles about little-known people. In my view, the strongest argument for deletion has always been our inability as a community to protect the article from subtle vandalism. If the politician (or anyone else) is not widely enough known, reader/editors will not realistically be able to verify the information in the article. A vandal could add, delete or modify the content of the article (whether stand-alone or in a list) and there won't be enough knowledgable reader/editors to catch it. I could not, for example, help protect the Chicago aldermen article from any but the most obvious vandalism. I don't know who they are and couldn't learn fast enough.

So how many articles can you keep on your watchlist and can you research to make sure that the information is verified? For the sake of argument, let me run a few numbers. (These are based on the best data I can find tonight. If anyone has better data, please update this analysis.)

Based on this week's report, there are 44,712 registered users in the "en" space. Some proportion of those are sockpuppets, vandals and trolls. 10,233 have only a single edit to their name. 29,418 have 10 or less edits. 40,360 have 100 or fewer edits. I think it is reasonable to assume that only our more experienced Wikipedians will participate in the vandal-watch. Now, if we draw the line at 100 edits, we still have to bump up that number for the experienced users who have chosen not to create an account. We know there are many more anonymous users but most of them do not perform heavy maintenance functions like vandal-patrolling. For one thing, they don't get a watchlist. But the good anonymous users will offset the numbers lost to vandal accounts. To be conservative, let's increase it by a factor of 2. Let's further assume that 75% of the "en" editors are US-based or -knowledgable. (I believe that number to be high but don't know of a definitive source.) I'll round up and call it 7,500 users who might have enough knowledge to keep track of a US politician. Not all of those will be interested in monitoring pages on politics but it's a conservative estimate.
At any one time, there are 1 president, 1 VP, 100 senators, 435 representatives, 9 supreme court justices and an unknown number of national-level appointees, party leaders and judges. There are 50 governors, 50 assistant governors and on-average hundreds of state-level politicians for each state. There are 3,086 counties, most with some level of county government. There are about 30,000 incorporated cities in the US, each with a mayor (or equivalent), city council and other administrative functionaries. I'm getting a rough total of about 200,000 elected officials. (I believe that estimate only captures the "significant" officials, not the dogcatchers.) That's over 25 people to track for each of us on politics alone. Most of those were in competitive elections. Some hold office for multiple years but others serve for very short terms. So at a rough guess, we could be talking about 200,000 articles every 4 years.
We have to make the same arguments and choices about athletes, movie stars (regular or porn), talk-show hosts, professors, business people, inventors, etc. not to mention all the other topics and passions that we each have. (Gotta keep those Pokemon articles factual as well...)

It is not realistic to say that "Wikipedia is not paper" or that the problem will sort itself out over time. We have a responsibility to make sure that the information in Wikipedia remains verifiable. We need to make some choices about cut-offs. My personal opinion is that we should draw the line at state-level (Governor or equivalent) unless the person has done something significant beyond merely running for election. Rossami (talk) 11:50, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • A response ...

Rossami's arguments are well-considered, and present a serious case against an unduly liberal approach to inclusion. In spite of which, I don't believe that the solution he proposes (ie. choosing a high cut-off point, and rejecting even "list" articles) necessarily follows from his arguments.

My reasons:

(i) The number of elected officials in the United States is extremely high, and the number worldwide is extremely higher than that. Creating articles for all such figures, under Wikipedia's current system, would be both difficult and time-consuming as regards maintenance. It is also highly unlikely to occur in the first place.

There isn't a sufficient interest level to create pages for all such figures within Wikipedia's current membership. If our membership totals improve to the point where it *is* likely, then it's equally likely that we'll have enough people to watch over such pages on a regular basis.

(ii) The politicians suggested for list articles may not be "well-known" figures, but they are public figures. Information on such individuals may be confirmed through available sources, if necessary. (Albeit that these sources will not also be available on-line -- but then Wikipedia isn't supposed to be limited to information that anyone with Google access can double-check).

Wikipedia's purpose is not simply to compile knowledge that can be referenced or verified by members of the general public, but to do the same for members of *interested* publics as well. Not everyone will be able to oversee a page on Chicago aldermen so as to prevent vandalism from occurring -- but if a public will exists to create a page of this sort, a public will must surely exist to oversee it.

In any event, uncertain or suspicious edits can always be reverted immediately in the absence of proof.

Beyond which, I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of arguing that certain pieces of public information have no place, whatsoever, on Wikipedia. We've already clarified that not every public figure deserves a bio page, and I'm willing to live with that assessment -- but entirely forbidding certain bits of information from inclusion strikes me as unduly harsh, and an over-reaction.

We should obviously be vigilant as regards "list pages", but I don't think we should shut our doors to such relevant information as is made available. CJCurrie 00:42, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Since the discussion has lasted long enough and I feel consensus was established, I have marked the discussion as closed and added a 'conclusions' section. I've left messages on the personal pages of the major contributors asking them to double-check the conclusions made and verify they are valid. Radiant! 10:.14, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

How is there consensus in favour of merging? It seems no more popular than the other optiopns and in no way matches the results of individual VfD discussion. - SimonP 14:34, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Because it's not a strict vote between keep/merge/delete, but a discussion. Moste people in the 'delete' section agree that simply listing the people in question is appropriate (e.g. "Tthere is the possibility that such issues might be resolved with central articles, such as a "List of Chicago Aldermen"" - Starblind, and "Including otherwise non-notable people in lists, though, seems sensible" - Asbestos). And the people in the 'keep' section agree that politicians of whom nothing of interest can be said other than that they won an election, should be kept but not in a separate article (e.g. "I feel that an article saying "XY is an alderman from Chicago", and only that, should be deleted." - Meelar, and "I think it is OK to have articles about candidates for high office, if they had a significant influence on the vote result or were otherwise notable." - Rad Racer).
  • Remember that this is not about deletion, it's about merging. It is agreed that local politicians deserve a mention (on account of verifiability, among others). But given that for the majority of them, an article about them could never be more than a stub, they should be put in lists with appropriate redirects. Radiant! 16:00, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
But this consensus does not seem to materialize when an actual article is listed on VfD. Peter Milczyn and Frank Di Giorgio have done absolutely nothing noteworthy other than get elected but, so far, the clear consensus seems to be that they should be kept as separate articles. To me the consensus seems to be that only the poorest sub-stubs on local politicians should be merged and any article with two or three sentences of content is kept. - SimonP 16:17, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Actually, this is one of those topics where VfD consensus depends heavily on whoever happens to be voting that day. There are similar articles that were voted to delete. Radiant! 09:14, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

If one is looking at the page as "has there been an overwhelming preponderance of votes for x positon," one would have to say that there is not a consensus. On the other hand, developing a consensus does not mean "there are nearly equal votes on both sides, so the consensus is to follow the advice of one side — specifically, the side that wishes to preserve the status quo." Rather, when attempting to form a consensus in a case where two sides are closely divided, usually one attempts to develop a compromise position that is acceptable to both sides. Isn't the merge idea an attempt at compromise? I support this compromise position fully, and believe that it is an excellent position to present to everyone interested in the question as a new position to develop consensus around. HyperZonktalk 17:10, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Other

I think it is going to vary from city to city. In Seattle, with a 9-member city council, and all seats elected citywide, city council membership is quite significant. Nearly every council member is a significant public figure. In Chicago, with 50 aldermen, elected by district (and a strong Democratic Party machine, to boot), many are just party hacks. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:49, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

  • This seems consistent with the opinion expressed above, that city council members are not notable in and of themselves. In a smaller city, it seems likely that a larger amount of council members has done other things that are noteworthy (such as getting a large media presence for standing for controversial issues, or whatever) and thus deserve an article for that reason. Radiant! 19:56, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I mostly agree with the conclusions that have been drawn here so far. However, I have some problem with the following:

  • Councilmen in a smaller city could be considered more worthy because there are fewer of them. However, in practice, councilmen in a smaller city are more likely to attract media attention.

I would think that councilmen in a larger city are more likely to attract media attention. I'd also note that the most likely to get media attention are those in a reasonably large city with a reasonably small city council. Thus, it's pretty easy to be a rather anonymous Chicago alderman (there are 50, and Chicago has a strong-mayor system), but Seattle, though a far smaller city, has a city council of nine, and their powers are strong enough that they have been described at times as "nine mini-mayors" or "nine mayors in waiting". Also, because Seattle's council are all elected at large rather than by districts, council members are all known city-wide.

So I'd be inclined to replace the above bullet point by these three:

  • Councilmen in a city with a smaller council are liable to be more notable.
  • Councilmen in a city where councilmen are elected at large are liable to be more notable.
  • Councilmen in a larger city are liable to be more notable.

-- Jmabel | Talk 17:11, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree with Jmabel with regards to the last point. As for the other three, they seem like a good compromise, assuming that point 3 is followed closely. A question, though. I assume that councillors who don't get their own articles will be merged to a list of city councillors. Will we maintain separate lists for current and past councillors? How will this be set up? Aside from that minor point, and Jmabel's worthy contention on point 4, this seems like a good idea. Meelar (talk) 18:26, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Concur with Jmabel.

---

Ummm.... what's a large city? What's a small council? Does this mean we have to work out a population per councillor formula and try to apply it before deiding whether to add to a councillor to list or create a separate article? What if a city has multi-councillor wards? Is that counted as "at large" or not?

It seems to me that we should be focussing more on the quality of the article than on trying to set arbitrary and impossible-to-enforce thresholds. I agree that stub articles that say nothing more than "Bob Terwilliger is a member of Springfield City Council elected in 1998" should be merged into a list. But if the article detailed his electoral history, his role on council, his previous professions, and is appropriately linked to relevant articles, I would argue for keeping it.

As an aside, use "fewer" if you can count the subject (e.g., councillors, Wikipedians, articles), and "less" if you can't (e.g., water, air, bickering). I've edited the above to reflect this. Kevintoronto 18:40, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the matter will vary from city to city, and area to area. I don't think we need a bright line rule for who is and isn't notable, because it is all subjective. I think if the entry for the elected official would not be considered a vanity page if it were a self post, it should be left up. I don't see any problem with having a list for officials in an area, with cross references to ones that are more notable. I don't see any rush to eliminate entries that are borderline notable. Srcastic 00:55, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

  • Please note my wording above: "...liable to be more notable". This does not require drawing black and white line on "larger", "small", etc. These are factors. They will combine different ways. I will say that as a longtime Seattle resident, I cannot imagine a city councilperson here who would not, in principle, merit an article if someone felt like writing it. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:56, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

I know someone who is semi-notable about five different ways. One of them was being a councillor for four years, in an interesting way. But each on their own would not pass the notability test. My feeling is that being a councillor adds to notability but does not make it, and you have to judge the case as a whole. A stub which just says they are or were a member of a council need not be kept in the hope something more interesting will come along, but having as part of a longer article helps justify keeping the longer article. --Henrygb 11:53, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Should criteria be based on potential value to a researcher/reader?

I notice above, that a lot of people are writing about how to decide if someone deserves an article, as if we are judging someone's merits. That is the wrong question. We should ask: would this article be of any use to someone doing research on something. For example, if you were reseraching question of slavery reparations, would you expect to see Dorothy Tillman's name? If so, then there should be an article about her. I have created a fair number of articles about government officials. See Robert M. Morgenthau for example. I try to put information that might be useful to someone researching the history of New York, or Wall Street corruption, or whatever. Where and when the person was born and educated may have some relevence. Beyond that, I don't include kids or hobbies, etc. unless they have some relevence (or for someone very prominent, like the president of the United States). Morris 16:06, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Test cases

In the last month we have had a wide array of test cases brought before VfD, enough to give a good idea of what consensus is:

Longer articles seem to always be kept and it thus seems certain that any city councillor with more than a substub is worthy of inclusion. The consensus on short articles on local politicians is more vague, and they have sometimes been kept, sometimes merged, and sometimes deleted. Consensus clearly does not exist to delete them all. Moreover general Wikipedia policy has always been not to delete stubs. The conclusion thus seems to be that substubs on local politicians should either be merged or kept. (added by User:SimonP)

  • I disagree. The articles that are being kept are those that have established some other notability beyond being a councilman. It logically follows that people who have done more, can have a longer non-trivial article written about them. Also, Wikipedia has no specific policy concerning stubs, and they can be kept, merged or deleted for a variety of reasons. Radiant_* 11:11, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm afraid I have to agree with [[User:Radiant!|]]. The community has not yet reached concensus. Unfortunately, I don't think this discussion is adding much right now. I move to table the discussion for a few months. Rossami (talk) 16:54, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Articles categorized

Chicago aldermen:

Other:

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