Talk:Redditch Borough Council elections

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Are there any encyclopedic merits in creating a new article for every year of local election results? --Kudpung (talk) 11:06, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see any reason why we cannot - WP:NOT#PAPER - where articles meet our content policies and guidelines there is no reason why we should not cover them. I would like to know what policy Redditch Council election, 2008 failes for instance. I have written articles on council elections such as Hartlepool Council election, 2000, Hartlepool Council election, 2002 and Gateshead Council election, 2003 which have appeared on the front page and there have been quite a few AFDs where these have been supported. For the latest 2009 council elections all but two of the council elections have already had pages created by editors (not me).

Wikipedia:Five pillars defines wikipedia as "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia incorporating elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers". Elections results are something that almanacs do cover and wikipedia can and does do so as well. Davewild (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dave, I am not referring to the quality of the content. However, WP:NOT#PAPER is a guideline only and another guideline states somewhere that common sense is the best policy. WP has become a maze of bureaucracy with almost as many rules and guidelines as articles. I personally guard against taking the WP:NOT#PAPER and other guidelines too literally and/or exploiting them to the full. The results of AfD 'keep' debates are always decided by a very small consensus of very small groups of people who often have a vested interested in the article under discussion. It is therefore quite easy to get a consensus that might represent an aberration - including on the guidelines themselves.
You have nevertheless cited some valid precedents; I have therefore flagged the individual year results for merging, but as I do not intend to get involved in an edit war, I will not of course take any 'bold' action. That said, ALL the Redditch articles are in need of some serious attention. There is no harm in being enthusiastic, but it leaves a lot of work for other editors to come and clean up.--Kudpung (talk) 02:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Well I completely disagree - one major point is that WP:NOT#PAPER is policy not a guideline. To all practical purposes you are talking about deletion of these articles as there is far too much content for them to be merged into one single article without losing a lot of the content. Also I have yet to see any policy or guideline reason for why these pages should be merged? I cannot see how they meet any of the four rationales given at Wikipedia:Merging for considering a merge. Davewild (talk) 07:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

To demonstrate the potential of these articles I have done a major expansion of Redditch Council election, 2002. I would hope that this shows that a merge is just not practical, that these can and are perfectly fine articles and a merge would in effect just be deletion. I would also ask that the merge tag would be removed from this article then I can nominate it for Did You Know (an article cannot go on Did You Know if there are any tags on the page and it needs to be nominated within 5 days of an expansion). Davewild (talk) 09:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

As there has been no opposition or comment since my expansion I have removed the merge tag from the 2002 election article and nominated it for DYK. Davewild (talk) 18:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)