Talk:Harriett Baldwin

Request for comment

Happy for this to be removed if she does not win the seat, but people rightly will be interested in non partisan information about her, especially if they live in West Worcestershire. Removing the information in line with a 'small' policy is OCD and defacto vandalism. Leonig Mig (talk) 07:16, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

This has been reverted again by a freindly editor without any discussion. Request discussion or RFC - Jimbo Wales has said the "internet will act as a catalyst in the promotion of democracy" so why should enforcement of WP:NOTABLE trump this. If the human effort has been made to create referenced non-partisan documentation of use to electors- why allow over zealous rules manics decimate it simply to satisfy their own sense of order. Applying rules has some moral value but the political imperative of democracy overcomes such "small" consideration - in this case. Although after the election failed candidate page should be removed per WP:NOTABLE. Leonig Mig (talk) 11:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Note there is some discussion on another page - [1] I've subsequently discovered, but I don't think repeating "I have to enforce the rules" is valid. WP is voluntary! You don't have to do anything! Leonig Mig (talk) 11:17, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The guidelines and policies do help the wiki world go around. I had this discussion earlier this year about a labour candidate. I wanted exactly your position. After the discussion I had changed my position to the consensus one which is that we do not create articles about people that may become notable if they win the election on the assumption that if they don't win we could delete it later, that would create a bigger mess than usual. Imagine if your position was applied to all the election in all the countries in the world. The simple situation is that if they are not notable they don't get an article. This is much more important in regards to living people than cartoon characters and suchlike, a not notable person who has a page created by us may not be very happy about it, whereas if he is notable and fits all our guidelines then more or less he can't object to his article (we do consider requests from living people to delete). Here is the article I wanted to keep saved in my user space in case more detail is reported that may make him notable or to replace in the article space if he should win the election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Off2riorob/Graham_Jones_%28politician%29 and the AFD discussion is here.Political candidature does not assert automatic notability on wikipedia.Off2riorob (talk) 11:36, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Copying my own contributions from discussion at Talk:Richard Burt (politician) as the discussion has moved here:

• The established policy is that candidates as such are not notable. See an example at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/James_Monaghan_(British_politician): general election candidate, euro candidate, current Leeds City Councillor, but agreed at AfD to be non-notable. This isn't OCD, it's abiding by a policy. If you disagree with the policy, argue elsewhere to get it changed. PamD (talk) 09:11, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

and

• This near to the General Election is not the time to change a long-established policy under which articles on many candidates have been deleted (eg Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/James_Monaghan_(British_politician)) or not created in the first place. To allow some candidates to have articles now, just because someone who disagrees with the existing policy wants to write them, would be unfair. PamD (talk) 14:41, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

PamD (talk) 06:51, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

• Rewording a little from my note from WP:AN, WP is a new kind of encyclopedia, without precedent, and successful and useful beyond any prediction. To some extent we have achieved that because we match people's expectations based on the old forms, but to some extent also because we meet their openness to new ones. We need to have some substantial level of significance in our contents, but we also can be-- and are-- more inclusive than any previous encyclopedia in both scope & currency"

as applied to this issue, it's time to change the rule. The rule I propose is to include major party candidates for national legislatures and other nation-wide offices, and for the highest level statewide (or province-wide) offices-- in the US, Governors. . In the US, there are only 2 major parties. In the UK, perhaps 3? I am not proposing to include candidates for State legislatures in the US--they can often be essentially political unknowns. (Whether to consider the Scottish, Welsh & NI Parliaments as national or provincial in this context is something the UK people here would need to discuss) . Nor would I include candidates merely running for a primary election, or contending to represent a party in a constituency. For minor party candidates, it would depend I suppose on their strength in a particular consistency & other individual considerations.

I recognize this is a change in a general guideline and cannot be decided here. But there are two ways to change policy--by changing the guideline, and by gradually changing what we do in individual cases. The need for a substantial consensus to change important guidelines has not prevented many guidelines from effectively changing based on decisions at AfD, which just requires a rough consensus in each case. DGG ( talk ) 16:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC).

It would be wrong politically to only allow this in the two or three major parties. Hundreds of BLP articles about not notable people, the vast majority of which would need deleting later. Do you think they would need deleting if they did not win? I think from what I have seen that community consensus is against this. Off2riorob (talk) 16:25, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry I came to this discussion a bit late. There were similar discussions in the US before the 2008 election. This issues was resolved by including the candidate information in an article about that specific election, then moving it to its own article if that candidate won. Worked a treat. Flatterworld (talk) 14:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)