Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Lindsey local elections

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 There were plenty of good arguments on both sides, but prior AfDs on similar articles push the balance towards keep.. Fabrictramp (talk) 23:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] West Lindsey local elections

West Lindsey local elections (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable British local council election list. A national election would satisfy notability criteria, or one local election with a lot of controversy perhaps, but this is a (well organised) list of very plain, NN constituency election results. I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reason:

West Lindsey Council election, 1998 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

West Lindsey Council election, 1999 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

West Lindsey Council election, 2000 (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

—Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 10:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep Part of a series on local elections in the United Kingdom. I have added a couple of several references to the pages including one from the BBC. There are multiple reliable sources on these elections meeting the notability guidelines. This is the basis of an article with some examples of ones that have been expanded into good articles being Slough local elections, Croydon local elections and Lewisham local elections. These clearly show the potential of this topic. Davewild (talk)
• Comment Can I ask the nominator which "notability criteria" they are applying which these articles fail, other than a subjective opinion? The articles are well-sourced, so they appear to meet the primary notability criterion. --Canley (talk) 11:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I agree the articles are brilliantly sourced, well laid out and nicely written. But the subject of the articles (a local council election where nothing particularly special happened - no big controversy, international event, terrorist attack, health scare or public outcry for instance) is just not important enough to have a series of articles devoted to it. At most a small table in West Lindsey is justified. —Vanderdecken∴ ∫ξφ 14:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Merge all to West Lindsey. "Well-sourced" has nothing to do with whether something is "notable". There is nothing that says that Wikipedia has to accept articles about local elections, let alone an entire series or "project" about city, county or district elections in any particular part of the globe. West Lindsey is a district that has 86,500 residents, somewhat comparable to Geauga County, Ohio. However, I would say the same for city council elections in Birmingham as well, whether in West Midlands or in Alabama. In fact, the minutiae of the number of votes tallied in a particular election in New York City or London or Tokyo are, in my opinion, not worthy of an article. Mandsford (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete & Merge per above comment. Non-notable on its own. Renee (talk) 14:02, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Merge per Mandsford or delete - Wikipedia is not news. These local elections have been reported in the news and thus are verifiable, but they didn't have any lasting impact and have not gathered any later coverage. Huon (talk) 14:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment A few points:

• There is ample precedent for these sorts of election articles - which have never been deleted at AFD before (except for WP:CRYSTAL violations) - a few examples Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Windsor municipal election, 1991, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Norfolk County municipal election, 2006, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kettering Council election, 2007 and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philadelphia mayoral election, 2007.
• There are 888 articles in the subcategories of Category:Council elections in the United Kingdom created by multiple people over more than two and a half years (I created quite a lot but you will find plenty of others have created and expanded them), if we are considering getting rid of the above articles then we are in effect setting all these articles up for deletion and getting rid of those peoples efforts. Are we just going to change our existing practice of accepting these articles which meet all our content policies and have always been accepted as being notable before? (I even received a barnstar for the articles I created on these elections)
• This is not just a United Kingdom thing, a quick glance at the Canada election categories showed lots of municipal election articles - again I could not find a single AFD deleting any of them. I am sure it is the same for the US if you check.
• Read WP:NOT#NEWS and I think you are stretching it well beyond its wording to apply it to West Lindsey local elections. These articles meet our core content policies WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:RS and have significant coverage in reliable sources thus they meet our main notability guideline. Every single one of the individual elections has a BBC page on it. Opinions that these articles are 'not notable' are not backed up by our policies.
• People are creating articles for the upcoming United Kingdom local elections, 2008. This Category shows the articles (each one created by a different user), all believing that these articles are acceptable for wikipedia. If these articles we are discussing are to be merged or deleted then we should be telling them not to waste their time as there is no difference between those articles and the ones being discussed here (except the ones being discussed here probably have more sources already in the articles!).
• Even the essay Wikipedia:Other stuff exists accepts that "the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes", as I have shown above consistency and precedent requires we keep these articles or change our practice and start deleting hundreds (perhaps thousands if you take in other countries) of articles.
• I apologise if I sound uptight here and for the length of my comments but having the possiblity that all the articles I and many others have worked on for the past two and a half years deleted or merged out of existence when it has always been believed they were fine... (well you can guess the rest). Davewild (talk) 17:27, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep If we have multiple independent reliable sources concentrating on these elections, how can they not be notable? NotNews might have applied to these articles if they had been created 10, 9, or 8 years ago, but the articles aren't news now. As noted above, there's longstanding precedent for having properly-sourced election articles; I don't see how this is any different from any others. Nyttend (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - The election is covered by reliable, independent sources ("multiple" is dubious). This is just routine news coverage, which is exlicitly mentioned in WP:NOT#NEWS: Just as every game of soccer in the national leagues is reported in the news, so is every election. That doesn't make a local election inherently more notable than a single game of soccer. WP:BIO names as notable: "Politicians who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office". Local politicians are not considered inherently notable. So I'd like to ask those in favour of keeping the article three questions:
  1. Why is an election more notable than the elected?
  2. Why is a game of soccer less worthy of an article than a local election, given that I can probably write a more detailed, well-sourced article about the soccer game?
  3. If a local election in the UK, the US or Canada is judged notable, where do we draw the line? Are local elections in India notable? How about local elections in Djibouti? Huon (talk) 19:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Firstly I completely disagree that the sources in these articles is just routine news coverage. Secondly an election is more notable because it covers the whole council while each individual councillor only serves their particular ward and generally do not get anywhere near the coverage in reliable sources as an election. For those that do we have the clause in WP:BIO saying "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage".

For your second point I would draw your attention to the essay Wikipedia:Other stuff exists which points to the fallacy of making comparisons between unrelated topics. But to answer the point anyway, an individual soccer game would be exactly what I would describe as routine news coverage - i.e. they are covered briefly, routinely and then generally are forgotten pretty quickly (a month would be very generous) and have little effect wider. In the exceptional cases we do create articles on the matches e.g. 2005 UEFA Champions League Final. An election decides the people who run, in this case, the council for the next 4 years. As Sarcasticidealist commented in this request for comment Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Edmonton Election Pages they do get coverage by local historians and political scientists. In the UK the national party leaders launch their campaigns for local elections and the campaigns, as well as the results, get coverage in the press. I quickly found an article on this years campaign in West Lindsey even though there are still several weeks of the campaign still to run 1.

Finally if there is the coverage in reliable sources in order to meet the relevant policies and notability guideline for us to write such articles in India, etc, then there is no reason such articles should not exist - WP:NOT#PAPER covers this well. Davewild (talk) 21:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Precisely, and I question why it is necessary to "draw the line" at all, as if keeping these articles will result in Wikipedia tripling in size as every editor toils to create the required coverage of every local election in the world. If reliable, accessible sources exist for local elections in India, Djibouti or wherever, then we should have articles on them. If local elections are not notable, then we should have a community-sanctioned guideline stating such, not drawing dubious comparisons to soccer matches or making subjective judgements that if it has "local" in the title, it can't be notable, and WP:NOT#NEWS is not exactly explicit in this regard. --Canley (talk) 07:09, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 23:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 23:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Merge to West Lindsey and the relevant UK local election articles. Whilst I'm a big fan of articles on elections, I don't believe individual district or county council elections are notable enough for stand-alone articles. The topic should be covered by a combination of United Kingdom local elections, XXXX and a Politics and government section of the articles on the councils themselves. пﮟოьεԻ 57 20:29, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment As this is WP:NOTAVOTE I would note that most of those who have argued for merging or deletion have used arguments that are not backed up by policy or guideline and their arguments about notability go completely against the general notability guideline which says that a topic is presumed to be notable if there is significant coverage in reliable sources. Those who have argued for keeping (myself, Nyttend and Canley) have argued based on policy. The Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators make it clear that "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted." I fail to see how most if not all of the merge/delete opinions do not fall under this. Davewild (talk) 07:55, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - I don't think any of the nominated articles but West Lindsey local elections show "significant coverage": The yearly election articles have a Times article which, judging from the title, covers all simultaneous elections at once, and the BBC archive of all british elections (except the 1998 election, which has even less). As I said above, that's not significant coverage by sources independent of each other, but routine news coverage, explicitly mentioned in WP:NOT#NEWS. The elected councils don't have articles of their own; the elected councillors are not notable. Davewild claimed above that local elections do get coverage by local historians and political scientists. If such coverage exists, add it to the article and I'll gladly change my opinion. Huon (talk) 08:25, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I have struck out 'if not all' and added 'most' into my comment above, yours is the only such opinion which does base their argument on a policy or guideline, so I apologise for characterising your opinion that way, (which I still disagree with as I and others have argued above) but on the other arguments expressed here. Davewild (talk) 08:48, 19 April 2008 (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.