Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philadelphia mayoral election, 2007

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 Keep. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-02-13 08:27Z

Philadelphia mayoral election, 2007

Tagged for speedy but fits no criterion. Wikinews is over there --->, I don't think we need an article on the mayoral race of an individual town. Guy (Help!) 11:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Cleanup. Some NPOV problems as the article stands now. As for notability, many municipal articles in Category:2006 elections and subcats; so it seems to be an accepted niche for articles. Neier 11:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS to me :-) Wikinews is surely the place to cover elections, especially minor ones. Guy (Help!) 12:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just as WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is not a valid argument to keep an article, WP:IDONTLIKEIT doesn't work to get rid of one either. All but the smallest elections will trivially meet WP:N with multiple coverage in independent sources. For a city of several million, the mayoral race will not be ignored by mainstream press. Neier 13:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will agree with you, Neier, that this election probably will (future tense) receive notable published coverage from independent sources. However, this article fails to provide any of those sources, and in fact looks to be mainly speculation as to the possible future results of the race. My suggestion is delete unless seriously cleaned up, and then if and when better information is actually available consider recreating it down the line with proper sourcing. Dugwiki 00:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And, that's where we disagree. A bad article should not be deleted. A bad article should be improved, per WP:DEL. It seems to me lately, that AFD is being misused for many articles of this type. We aren't here to find articles in need of cleanup; but, to find articles which don't meet the WP:N requirements of Wikipedia. Even if the article is reduced to "The city of Philadelphia will hold mayoral elections on 2007-11-06." with a reference link to the Philadelphia Daily News page, it would pass WP:N. Neier 02:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(And, a second link, for "multiple" references: http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/23/cq_2168.html ) Neier 02:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if the article was reduced to "The city of Philadelphia will hold mayoral elections on 2007-11-06", that would not meet WP:N, because the information being relayed through the article is quite trivial in nature. To count as a source for WP:N, it must be a non-trivial treatment of the subject. So just listing the date of the election would not count.

As far as AFD only being allowed to delete articles that aren't "notable", that is likewise incorrect. Articles that fail to meet policies such as verifiability and original research can certainly be deleted as well. As a courtesy, we normally give articles with insufficient references a chance to improve before deleting them. But articles with no references at all and which aren't likely to receive proper referencing can definitely be deleted. Dugwiki 16:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Cleanup per Neier; Philadelphia is a sufficiently important city that its mayoral race is notable. However, the current article is fairly poor. Walton monarchist89 13:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep - keep the basics in the article, feel free to move the rest of the nitty gritty details to Campaigns Wikia — MrDolomite | Talk 15:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Philly is the 5th largest city by pop in US, and 2nd on East coast. Definitely meets notability and verifiability requirements. Joshdboz 16:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I beg to differ on meeting verifiability requirements as there is virtually no verification provided in the article. In fact, the article attempts to analyze an election that won't occur for a number of months using information of questionable value and sourcing. "Definitely" doesn't meet WP:V criteria as currently written. Dugwiki 00:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. If this was "Tomah Mayoral Election, 2007" I'd agree with the nom, but as the US's 5th largest city Philadelphia's race is notable enough. Could use some cleanup, though. BryanG^(talk) 17:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, needs sources, but notable topic. --Dhartung | Talk 22:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete unless references provided for verification and to remove bias/OR~~ This article has a couple of serious problems. First, it has almost no references within the article aside from "www.thenextmayor.com". The article must provide independent, reliable published sources. Secondly, the article appears to be partly Original Research and possibly slightly biased. For example, the very first sentence says that "the real race (and the next mayor of Philly) will be with the Democratic Party primary which will be held on 2007-05-15," which sounds very suspiciously like a biased political analysis of an election that is still many months away. Finally, it talks about "polls" of questionable value that attempt to predict the result of a future event with no attempt at verification, which breaks WP:NOT#CRYSTALBALL. So while I agree in principle that in general articles about mayoral elections might be ok if properly done, this article isn't even close to being properly done and should be deleted unless these issues are addressed. Dugwiki 23:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I want to make clear one detail most of the keep comments seem to be overlooking. Even if you assume the election will probably eventually be notable and receive good independent news coverage, those facts must be demonstrated within the article. It is ultimately up to the authors of the article to provide verification of information, demonstrate lack of bias and verification of notability. The article as currently written fails quite badly on all three items, and should therefore be deleted unless seriously improved. Then, if a better article can be written in a couple of months around primary time, when newspapers are dealing with it on a more detailed basis, recreate the article using correcting referencing, etc. Dugwiki 00:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I agree that this belongs on Wikinews. We should wait to write articles about elections until after the election is over. Just as we transwiki dicdefs, we should transwiki stories about elections that have yet to happen. Also, these stories are about the ongoing campaigns, not the elections. JChap2007 00:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- "We should wait to write articles about elections until after the election is over." So do you think we should delete United States presidential election, 2008 and French presidential election, 2007 despite their having already attracted massive media coverage and obvious political importance? Andrew Levine 20:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep To the people that say delete, I tihnk if they have a problem with the article, they are free to make changes in order to make it better and besdies, hundreds of other ongoing and recent elections have their own pages on Wikipedia —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.125.60.133 (talk) 00:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Except that it isn't the responsibility of the critics to correct the mistake. It's the responsibilty of the author of the information to ensure the article meets with policies and guidelines. And if the article's problems are serious enough in nature, it can lead to the article's deletion if not corrected. Lack of correction of an article is solely the fault of the author, not the messenger of bad news. Dugwiki 16:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

delete Every city in the US has mayoral elections every four years or so. To include them all on wikipedia strikes me as extraordinarily silly unless the race has some sort of unique feature or reason for having great encyclopedic merit. Yes Philidelphia is a big city, but there are also lots of big cities in the US, and to include minor political races (face it mayors are the LOWEST elected executive position in the US) If we include this, we also set the precident for including every single congress race (state and federal), county executive, and state offical in the US, a few thousand articles a year for articles of limited merit about which reletively little beyond the obvious can be said without resorting to OR. 129.89.68.218 01:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, which part of WP:N has not been met by this article? Neier 02:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The part that requires that the article itself must assert notability by providing non-trivial references for the subject. Note that the article also has problems beyond simple notability, including bias and unverifiable predicition of future events. Dugwiki 16:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Links have been provided to show that the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer both are providing extensive campaign coverage, as in dozens of articles each about the race. The unverifiable predictions are now gone. Andrew Levine 20:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Andrew, that's definitely a step in the right direction. Based on the cleanup and the fact that the article is starting to include some good references about the upcoming election, I struck out my previous recommendation and am willing to change it to Keep but requires more clean up. Specific things that ought to be cleaned up are linking actual remaining facts in the article to specific references using ref tags (ie footnotes) and the article could probably stand to incorporate some of the published analysis of what are expected to be key political factors in the election. However, those are stylistic concerns, not afd ones, so that sort of thing would be better handled in the article itself and its talk page, not this afd thread. Dugwiki 22:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I posted some suggestions for further article cleanup on its talk page.

minor political races? It is mistaken to equate the mayor of a metropolis with the mayor of a village. Big city mayors have long been recognized as prominent powerful political players. Is the current front-runner for the Republican nomination for President a Senator or Governor? Nope, it's former New York mayor Giulini.Aardhart 21:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dugwiki 22:38, 9 February 2007 (UTC) Keep. And this seems like a bad-faith nomination to me. This obviously isn't a town! It's one of the largest cities in the U.S. Considering that the Philadelphia metropolitan area is larger than Ireland I'm having trouble understanding how anyone could sincerely nominate its mayoral election for deletion. Maybe I don't get wikipedia, but why would this not be tagged for clean-up or NPOV first?--JayHenry 22:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This is a very interesting race. Philadelphia has a larger population than several states. I see no problem with pages for mayor races of the 25 largest US cities. Aardhart 05:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep --evrik ^(talk) 17:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Comedy240 18:41, 11 February 2007 (UTC
Keep and clean-up: precedent of notability has been established for very large cities. See New York City mayoral election, 2005, for example. Lincolnite 21:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Clean-up Complete - I cleaned up the article, you are welcome. - Comedy240 23:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Comedy. I have to say, this article has changed a great deal since the original afd nomination. I think it's looking much better. :) Dugwiki 16:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.