Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diane Benson

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 delete. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 13:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Diane Benson

Delete; Yet another political hopeful that satisfies neither WP:BIO nor WP:C&E. Note that despite Deidre's claims, this article does not satisfy WP:BIO as a playwright, actor, or poet, because there is no indication of notability in those fields, either. Vectro 17:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: Any evidence she has a snowball's chance in hell of winning (say, some recent polls)? Or is this one of those cases where she'll be lucky to crack 35%? --Aaron 19:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
• keep 66.229.188.247 20:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment This isn't a vote but a discussion, simply saying keep won't be useful unless you can give a reason why the person in question should be kept. To get an idea what matters, you may want to take a look at WP:BIO and WP:C&E. JoshuaZ 20:26, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete No assertion of notability. Resolute 04:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment After rewrite, I am not convinced either way, thus cannot currently maintain a delete vote. Resolute 16:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. The more AfD nominations I see because of WP:C&E, the most I realize that it's a really bad idea and needs serious rethinking. And as much as I hate the idea of deleting a major party candidate for the US House, I'm having a really hard time finding reliable sources to add to the article. Yes, she's published several books, but it's difficult to find reliable sources about her being an author/poet. So, as much as it pains me, I'm leaning towards "delete." But I'll keep looking. - Lex 05:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
• Don’t forget that neither WP:C&E nor WP:BIO are actual policies that must be followed, more guidelines that indicate the best way to proceed. In this case, I urge people to follow me in voting to keep, because I would argue that any professionally produced playwright of Tlingit ancestry, writing about Tlingit themes, is notable. Benson has definitely accrued some serious coverage, including through the American Indian Quarterly (you can search this via Project MUSE, JSTOR and Chadwick Literature Online (LION): look for volume 27:1). Don’t forget in searching for her on Google to include the middle initial "e". A good bibliography can be found on her bio created when she was an invited guest to the ninth "Returning the Gift" conference – see [1]. While the WP:BIO and WP:C&E guidelines are very useful when it comes to US or UK mainstream politicians who should always garner major press headlines, they can be less useful for marginalised peoples or smaller nations, and should be treated with care. Vizjim 13:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
• keep: I'd like to point out that this article is still a stub; research is ongoing. As Vizjim points out, there are quite a few references to her out there. Deirdre 15:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Let's forget about WP:C&E here; I asked two days ago if she has any chance of winning, and have received no response, so I can only presume she's not a viable candidate and her district is safe Republican. Given that the article, in its current state, is pure political advertising (and, interestingly, never existed before September anyway) that means she fails WP:BIO, so bye bye. If someone wishes to do a full rewrite of the article that describes her as a Tlingit playwright, actor and poet, and only mentions her candidacy in passing, I'll be happy to reconsider my vote, but I must admit that as of yet I haven't seen any evidence of her notability there either. We need some verification that she's somehow a notable playwright, actor and/or poet. Her ancestry does not grant her inherent notability --Aaron 16:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
  • comment -- like Aaron, I'd be happy to keep this page if we can say something interesting about her literary and theatric works. Vectro 01:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
  • comment--I created this article in the first place, and not just because she is a political candidate. She is pretty well known in the state of Alaska. It was not intended as political advertising; that content was what I knew about right away and could slap up on a wikipage. Again, I'd appreciate some time to work on this. I really am grateful to Vizjim for the extensive work done on this article; it fills it out much more nicely. My understanding of Wikipedia's basic purpose is to create a freely accessible online encyclopedia of human knowledge. It's not like we have a shortage of space in the virtual world, and she certainly seems worthy of inclusion to me. With regard to her political viability, an (admittedly unscientific) poll conducted at the Tanana Valley Fair by the local League of Women Voters put Young vs. Benson at 53 to 47 percent out of a sample of 249 voters. (This is, of course, being touted by Daily Kos.) Deirdre
• Comment. I've done as much of the requested rewrite as I can manage. Agree that the political stuff was overplayed in the original article. There is more that could be done, but it will need an expert contributor with access to more journals etc. Vizjim 10:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I should point out that the page still fails WP:BIO. The only citations we have are as follows:
    • [2], an article not about Benson.
    • [3] only mentions Benson in passing, in that she is performing her own play with no other actors, as part of a listing of a large number of other events.
    • [4], an article about benson that is not from a WP:RS
    • [5] is itself certainly a reliable source, but the topic of the article is the Tlingit people, not Benson.
    • [6], a very short (but probably reliable) biography of Benson, with no other sources.
    • [7], a non-public copy of a poem by Benson.
    • [8] notes a performance (again by Benson alone) of the same play aforementioned, plus some minor biographical details. The topic of the source is not benson (despite our article's claim to the contrary), but rather Elizabeth Peratrovich, who seems on the whole much more notable than Benson.
    • [9], the IMDB page, which has no material except a mention of two film credits, one as the last credit of an unrated film, the other in the end credits of a rated independent film.
    • and of course, the official election page.
  • I'm still willing to countenance the idea that Diane Benson may be notable, but nobody has yet to establish it -- the best we've got is a bunch of things out on the periphery. It may be that she's actually notable, but it may be that she's good at getting her name out there and not much else. Given the straws that are being grasped in the article so far, I'm inclined to think that this source-gathering is motivated by her politics rather than by her art, so until we can say something interesting about that, delete. Vectro 15:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
    • If you check my contributions you'll see that I have a long-established interest in literature by Native Americans, and almost zero interest in American party politics (I'm a Brit living in Cyprus). The motivation behind my research comes from knowing how much more difficult it is for Native writers and performers to get coverage, hence the paucity of information on them: I don't like to see potential sources of information deleted. I'd remind you again that BIO is not a policy and that there are many borderline cases tht are kept as WP:PAPER. Vizjim 18:21, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete not-notable until she wins. --Tbeatty 07:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep at least that's what I think. I don't really get it. She's a major party candidate for Congress, and she has quite a few published works. These both seem like reasons folks might want to know more about her, without a lot of campaign spin interfering either way. I can understand that you don't want this place to be promotional, but she's running for Congress and I can't imagine that Wikipedia is part of her campaign strategy or anything like that; she's already well known. Seems to me like even in the future schoolkids might be curious about who ran in the past and lost. Sounds like you have pretty strict rules about who is important enough for people to care about, though. Anyway, that's my two cents. I just registered today, so you might not care what I have to say. Garrote 07:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete A poll published on October 20 indicates Benson is behind by more than 15 points. Don Young, the incumbent, is going to win. KrakatoaKatie 12:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

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.