Talk:Cathy Rojas

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Theleekycauldron (talk) 18:21, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that Cathy Rojas, a socialist, received nearly 2.5% of votes in the 2021 New York City mayoral election? Source: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/election-results
  • ALT1: ... that Cathy Rojas, a socialist, received over 27,000 votes in the 2021 New York City mayoral election? Source: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/election-results

Created by Hcoder3104 (talk). Self-nominated at 14:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC).

• Good work on creating this article. However, DYK is a bit stricter than raw notability standards, and I'm afraid it's not particularly close to meeting them. The article would require near-total rewriting to be eligible (although happy to help work on improving it). Some of the issues:
  • The biggest is the sourcing. The raw election results are fine, and there's one passing sentence fragment on the endorsements so I guess that's okay, but a huge amount is sourced to Liberation News, and "Indypendent" is used as well. But Liberation News is the house rag of the PSL. It's a primary source that really shouldn't be used at all if possible, but only for the most boring claims if used at all. (Imagine citing an article on a Republican to the RNC's house newspaper.) The Nation is the closest to a usable source, if still one that is favored for the socialists. I would suggest starting with using The Nation more heavily, and seeing if there's any coverage outside of raw left-wing sources, and restricting anything sourced to Liberation News as much as possible.
  • There should not be a copy-paste of her ideology as 14 points. Candidate ideology is relevant, but it should be sourced to neutral news sources who can suss out what's actually relevant and what's just chatter - all candidates make various crazy claims that are meaningless or just not going to happen.
  • The phrasing is not neutral. Rojas was not "barred" from the debates (i.e. she should have been there, but guards blocked her at the door), she didn't meet the criteria and was not invited. The "most votes for a left-wing candidate" is uncited but more importantly using socialist lingo to claim that only socialists are "true" left-wingers, which is not the standard meaning casual readers will assume of the term "left-wing" (i.e. including the Democrats).
  • Finally, if the above issues are fixed, the proposed hooks aren't "interesting". If anything, they're reverse-interesting: casual readers will wonder why such an insignificant candidate is being featured at all who didn't even come close to winning. Something new and unique/surprising, while being cited to a good source, would be required. SnowFire (talk) 23:10, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@User:SnowFire

1. It was difficult to find sources outside of Liberation, as, due to media bias, she was not covered that much. However I will work on that, but I might not be able to find many sources.
2. Ok I can change that.
3. I can change the wording, the latter is from Liberation, so I can remove that. Also, sidenote, the democrats are not a left-wing party, although they may be framed that way in the United States, they are comparable to many centre-right parties in Europe and Latin America.
4. I can't think of anything better, it's pretty suprising on its own that a socialist won so many votes. Wording can be changed to "Communist", a stronger word that can catch readers attention.

If you would like to help out making these changes, please do so! Hcoder3104☭ (💬) 13:10, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

• • I'm happy to edit the article, but you might not like it - I would radically cut the article down, enough that it wouldn't qualify for DYK on length requirements. (In other words, I still don't think this is going to qualify for DYK.)
  • I don't want to get into a whole philosophy of language debate, but "left" and "right" are inherently specific to a time and place. Even to the extent that the Democrats may not be left-wing by some worldwide scales, that's moot, because this is an article on US politics, and you can find many US political sources that call the Democrats "left wing" in an American context.
  • I disagree that this was a milestone for socialists - there have been socialists in the US who have won their elections, or at least come passably close. For one in the same cycle, see 2021 Buffalo mayoral election, where the socialist got 40% of the vote. Results less than 5% are generally considered minor candidates - doing that poorly isn't considered a mark of notability. SnowFire (talk) 02:52, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
    • I haven't checked the article yet but I was just wondering: was her performance the best performance of a socialist candidate in New York ever? If it was and such a fact could be cited, then maybe that could work as a hook (albeit it may be misleading since getting 27,000 votes in an election for a city of over 8 million is to me unimpressive). Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 11:26, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
      • Not even close. 1929 New York City mayoral election for one example of a better performance by a socialist. Rojas had an "opening" too in that a centrist Democrat won the primary in 2021, so a serious socialist candidate could theoretically have gotten more votes, but as The Nation article indicated, Rojas was a badly funded afterthought. I don't say this to rag on her but she truly was a footnote in the election whose campaign attracted no attention whatsoever. SnowFire (talk) 03:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
        • Considering that Bernie Sanders and AOC, both socialists, received way more votes in their respective campaigns, I'd agree that 27,000 votes is indeed rather unimpressive (especially when, as noted above, a socialist got over 170,000 votes way back in 1929, when New York City's population was much less than it is today). I have no comment on the article quality or notability at this time, but it really puts that 2.5% in perspective (i.e. it's not impressive, media bias or no media bias). Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 18:57, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
• Another issue with the hooks is that, according to Ballotpedia, she may have actually received less than 10,000 votes in the election. While I'm not sure if Ballotpedia is reliable in this case (indeed, WP:RSP lists it as a yellow source), it does suggest that the 27,000 votes number may not be accurate. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 09:03, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm pretty sure that source was probably taken mid count when Adams was announced as the winner, as the official tally has her at 27k votes, that's probably why Ballotpedia is a yellow link. Though yeah, I have to agree, Rojas is probably falling short of notability on my end. Ornithoptera (talk) 07:21, 23 April 2022 (UTC)