Wikipedia talk:Notability (politicians)

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Not exactly, but it does seem unlikely to ever reach a consensus in its present form; plus the discussions over WP:ATT and other reconfiguration of policies means that this issue ought to be discussed elsewhere. Αργυριου (talk) 22:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] Comments

The first two comments here were copied by User:Argyriou from comments made at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Notability (politicians)

Thanks for the obvious time and effort you have put into this proposal, however I feel that this proposal is too prescriptive. My belief is that if a politician or elected official can meet other notability guidleines then they should be included. My preference would be remove entirely Political figures holding or who have held international, national or statewide/provincewide office, and members and former members of a national, state or provincial legislature.
IMHO the requirements for notability of political figures is covered both in the central criteria and the very first guideline on public interest -ie. the person made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field
Due to this I would like to see the guideline on politicians entirely removed. - Parasite 22:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Far too prescriptive. For a start, it would mean most British MPs are not inherently notable (since their constituencies are generally too small) and no members of the House of Lords (who do not represent contituencies) are inherently notable unless they are Secretaries of State or Law Lords. -- Necrothesp 23:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Parasite - the sentence as it currently exists is overbroad, but a) right now that page is protected, and b) since it's a core policy, changes will be controversial. I seriously doubt that a consensus to just remove that sentence is possible. Having a proposal to replace what's there now will make the change much less so. Sometimes it's hard to see what "enduring change" a politician has made, unless one digs into the specifics of how certain legislation affected society, or a specific field of endeavor, and then looks into how that legislation got made.

Necrothesp - by defining "inherently notable", I am not intending to exclude any particular person who would be considered notable for other reasons; so that an MP who has made a particular name for himself in the press or historical record would not be denied notability just because his constituency wasn't large enough. I mostly pulled the numbers out of my ass, and am willing to be flexible about them; I chose 100,000 thinking that the average British MP represented slightly more than that. I now find that I am wrong, and that the true number is closer to 90,000. But ask yourself this: is a random junior member of the opposition inherenly notable just because he's in parliament? Will anyone care about him 10 years after he's left, if he never becomes a minister? Perhaps we should lower the number to 75,000. Perhaps we should raise it to 750,000, to exclude most U.S. Congressmen.

Argyriou (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, I think any member of a major national legislature like the UK Parliament is inherently notable and should have an article. People are interested in them. -- Necrothesp 00:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
A major category missed in the proposal are the leaders of (at least major) political parties; the criteria might be whether the party has successfully fielded a candidate for the legislature. I would also recommend including heads of governments in exile as notable. Askari Mark (Talk) 02:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
6. National legislative leaders: People who are a current or former leader of the government/majority party or coalition in a national legislature, or the leader of significant opposition parties/coalitions. Is that what you want? I admit I wrote the proposal rather densely, and it may be easy to overlook individual bits of it. Argyriou (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do we need a seperate guideline on this

I do not believe that politicians should have notability guidlines seperate to those already at Notability (people). This Notability (politicians) should not be adopted. Parasite 01:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't really see the point of being too prescriptive over this. For instance the provision of 100,000 for heads of state would on my count eliminate a grand total of 14 bios, and many of them would gain bios on other grounds anyway. Yet you have just told the citizens of those 14 countries their country isnt worth a couple of kb of space on Wikipedia's disc? All national policial figures are notable, if people are interested in writing a bio. The problem is keeping them NPOV. It is pretty hard to tell the future. What obtaining political office does tell us is that the person is active in public life. And if the Prime Minister of Tuvalu or the Mayor of Springfield, Idaho does spring onto the international stage, I would like to think I could turn to Wikipedia for some background. --Michael Johnson 02:22, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
You've misread a little. I've said that the head of state and the head of government (where they're different) of any independent country is worth mentioning. The limit was intended for colonies, though I'm also perfectly willing to allow the head of government of all colonies considered separate dependent nations. As I commented above, I've pulled the numbers out of my ass, and am willing to adjust them.
But I do think that for subnational entities, we need some sort of limit on what makes someone inherently notable. There are over 3000 counties in the US, most of which have boards of 5 or more members. Do all 15,000-20,000 county commissioners deserve an article? Do all 15,000 different people who held those posts 20 years ago deserve articles? Certainly some do, but those can establish their notability in the usual way. On the other hand, the President of Tannu Tuva in 1940 probably is notable, even if nobody can find good references to him because Pravda and Izvestiya aren't on Lexis-Nexis. Argyriou (talk) 02:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Playing devil's advocate here, but we don't need a prescriptive guideline to tell us who is notable. To rephrase your statement:
Do all 15,000 different people who held those posts 20 years ago deserve articles? Certainly some wont, but we can establish their lack of notability in the usual way. Parasite 05:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree that it's probably better to add a paragraph to WP:BIO than to create a separate partially-overlapping guideline for politicians or indeed just about any other profession. >Radiant< 10:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the only possible reason why a separate guideline might be required is that I don't think the "press coverage" of normal WP:N is adequate in the case of politicians, because you expect all politicians to receive a substantial amount of press coverage. I'd expand the requirement to require the coverage to be in a source whose target area is substantially larger than the area a politician represents, e.g. for a British MP, a local newspaper wouldn't be sufficient, you'd have to look at a national or at least regional paper for information concerning notability. JulesH 11:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree that WP:BIO should be tweaked rather than setting up a sub-criteria, unless there is demonstrated sustained failure using WP:BIO. However, I disagree with the phrasing "source whose target area is substantially larger ...". The Boston Globe publishes for all of northern New England (and probably southern New England as well, but I've never checked the newstands in Rhode Island or Connecticut. That is a larger coverage than any particular Massachusetts politician's representation area, and we wouldn't want to cover all Massachusetts politicians just because the Globe has such a large target area. Instead, how about "source whose target area is outside the area a politician represents or is campaigning for". The the Globe would cut it for anybody outside New England, but you would need a different source for anyone inside New England. We should also make sure that national candidates receiving significant press in country meet the standard even if no international press exist. GRBerry 13:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Why wouldn't we want to cover all massachusetts politicians, if sufficient sources exist? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 14:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I said "we wouldn't want to cover all Massachusetts politicians just because the Globe has such a large target area." I was trying to change the trim that JulesH proposed on what coverage we consider adequate. Routine reporting on the candidates for election X by media covering the electoral district is no more an indication of notability for a politician than routine reporting of the scores of local high school sports competitions is for the school. Yet, as JulesH had worded it, if some of that media had a substantially larger publication area, they would be deemed notable solely for such coverage. The notable politicians will get coverage from media not overlapping their electoral district, like the Worcester or Springfield paper covering Barney Frank or Thomas Menino, which I'm sure have happened even though I don't even know the names of those papers to look for citations. GRBerry 15:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Mere statistical information, like scores and election results, is trivial coverage on its own. It's the non-trivial coverage, not necessarily the area it occurs over, that makes it notable. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 18:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Most local papers will run articles on their local elected politicians fairly often. Barbara Lee gets lots of coverage in the Oakland Tribune, but much less in the Orange County Register. Which is more useful in establishing notability? Argyriou (talk) 19:20, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
If we've got frequent articles about the person, why not use that as sources and have an article? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:23, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe Barbara Lee wasn't the best example. Besides all else, she's done one thing which should keep her notable for the next 50 years - voting against going to war in Afghanistan. But instead of going from 600 to 15 articles when you look at coverage away from the constituency, a less-visible politician might go from 40 to zero.
On the other hand, while my suggestion that notability for politicians should be established by media mention from outside their jurisdiction, really, I'm trying to do two things: establish notability for important people who don't get reported much in the english-language press (who is the provincial governor of Karnataka? Of Caldas?) even though they might be as important in their own sphere as english-speaking politicians are in theirs; and prevent enthusiasts from putting up an article about every single minor politician in the English-speaking world (there are probably 15,000 to 20,000 county commissioners in the U.S., and god knows how many city councilmen). By saying "If your job meets these criteria, you're notable, whether or not the English-language press covers you", we don't go around deleting important people just because they're not Americans or English. By saying "If your job doesn't meet these criteria, you're not special", we save Wikipedia from tens of thousands of unreferenced bio-stubs. My proposal would not prevent articles on people who can be shown to be notable in the ordinary way; it just tells us where the argument "Of course the X of Y is notable, don't be silly" is valid or not. Argyriou (talk) 21:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
But being an unreferenced bio stub is already a criteria for deletion. Trouble with trying to set these criteria for inclusion is that we shouldn't have unreferenced article anyway. There's no requirement that the source even be in english. If people in India want to cite their hometown newspaper, they can do it just as much as people in kansas or new york city. I wouldn't mind having articles on every single smalltown mayor, referenced to the local papers. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 23:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this proposal found no consensus and has been rejected. --Kevin Murray 00:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clarifications

I've made some edits to clarify this proposed guideline. The most important is

“ Political figures who have received press coverage by news media from outside the area the person represents or governs or other independent coverage sufficient to meet WP:N on their own are not the subject of this guideline. ”

If you think that something like this would be useful, but don't like some specific number, or some specific exclusion or inclusion I've made, I'm very willing to change these numbers to accomodate your points.

If you think that this guideline is not necessary, I'd be interested to know why. Argyriou (talk) 22:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting the current "Politician" clause on Wikipedia:Notability (people)

Political figures holding or who have held international, national or statewide/provincewide office, and members and former members of a national, state or provincial legislature.

IMHO the requirements for notability of political figures are covered both in the central criteria and the very first guideline on public interest -ie. the person made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field. Why do we need any special clauses for Politicians. Notability does not rely on occupation, why do we want any special treatment of politicians?

Parasite 02:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Deleting that sentence without replacing it with something will be really controversial, and may never achieve consensus. And even if you did manage to get consensus for that, it will cause ill effects, by making the border less clear, and by replacing the statement with whatever precedents people can dig up, including the original statement, leading to more articles about not-really-notable people instead of more articles about notable people.
Notability gets interpreted in wildly different ways in different subjects in Wikipedia. Each and every of the 493 Pokemon characters is considered notable enough for its own article, and every numbered highway in the United States is considered notable, yet there are large towns in India and China without their own articles, or have rather pathetic stubs. It's possible to argue forever, in AfD after AfD about how much media mention constitutes "notability". Does the article of the week on a state representative which the local paper runs qualify as "multiple independent non-trivial coverage"? Read literally, it does. Discussion on notability has come up with the concept of "impact" - how much does this person, place, or thing affect others? My proposal is trying to measure impact a little more directly; partly because within the group "political figures", one can compare, and partly to help redress Wikipedia's systemic bias towards the internet-saturated countries. I don't know that my proposal will be adopted, but notability is a mess right now, and I'm trying to help clean up one corner of it, because cleaning up more would require a Jimbeaux ex machina. Argyriou (talk) 01:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
The large towns in India or China could (and should) be written about as they are already considered notable. What you are fighting against should not be a perceived lack of guidelines, but the lack of depth in our coverage of encyclopaedic topics. We can have guidelines that relax the requirements of Notability but this does not encourage contributors to write about obscure politicians. Unfortunately, there is an inherent bias for people to write about what they are interested in, have a special knowledge about, or what is popular. The problem as I see it is that if we relax the notability guidelines, the articles that are would be permitted under the proposed Notability (politicians) guidelines are still likely to be un-referenced and will fail verifibility, especially since we do not allow original research. I do not believe that we need this new guideline and can rely on the guidelines already in place. We already have a guideline at Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Special cases that says a person is notable if they make a widely recognised contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field (i.e. politics). Also, I am particularly concerned with the arbitrary figures used to assess notability in the proposed guideline. Why is a national legislator suddenly notable when s/he represents 200,000 people and not 190,000? The use of numbers to gauge notability is far too prescriptive. While I appreciate your efforts in improving our guidelines, I don't agree with the need for this proposal. -Parasite 23:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good idea

I like the idea of better guidelines on which politicians are and aren't notable. It might also be useful to have a "yes/no" list in some cases. For example, while checking disambiguation pages, I routinely run across redlinked names of various politicians. Normally I delete redlinks, but when it's a politician, I'm unclear on whether this is a major figure who just doesn't have a page yet (and should therefore stay on the disambig page), or whether it's a minor figure who will probably never have an article (and which link I should therefore delete). For example:

Any thoughts? Should these kind of names stay on disambig pages, or not? Elonka 16:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rejection - no consensus

Consensus to reject evaluated and supported --Kevin Murray 04:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of historical proposal

Why do you keep removing the text of this proposal? Your claim (This is appropriate because the text was included as a merger to BIO. Other actions should be discussed at the talk page) is false - the text was not merged into WP:BIO. Because your claim is untrue, I'm reverting. Please provide a valid reason to remove the text of a historical proposal, when every other one is kept unless MfD'd. Αργυριου (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The pertinent issues are handled at BIO. --Kevin Murray 01:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Please don't insult my intelligence. Αργυριου (talk) 03:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's not get carried away here in talking about intelligence. This looks like it was a one-man show trying to over regulate a non-issue, which is handled just fine by BIO. On Radiant's suggestion by tagging for merger with BIO, and seeing no substantial support for your work, I merged rather than rejected. This page demonstrates a lack of understanding of how WP works and how notability is handled generally. But rejected is just fine too, if you want to leave a monument to folly. --Kevin Murray 17:06, 27 April 2007 (UTC)