Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/H.R. 301 (113th Congress)

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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 no consensus. There seems to be some degree of consensus that this article should not exist. The keep arguments tend to be based less in policies and guidelines than a general sense of what our coverage should be. There is some agreement that perhaps this should be reworked with a new name and different name. Ultimately a lack of participation, despite the very thoughtful participation of editors who did participate, prevent any sort of consensus from being found. No prejudice to a quicker than normal renomination. Barkeep49 (talk) 01:35, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

H.R. 301 (113th Congress)[edit]

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H.R. 301 (113th Congress) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Non-notable legislation that passed the U.S. House but not the Senate. Fails WP:NOTNEWS and WP:EVENT because most news coverage was routine. I did find some articles covering this bill: [1][2][3][4], but none of those sources demonstrate enduring significance or depth of coverage. Edge3 (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Edge3 (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Edge3 (talk) 01:37, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:NOTNEWS. This bill (which would have established a special envoy to monitor religious freedom in the Middle East) was never enacted into law. Substantially the entire article was written when the bill was pending in Congress in 2013, and there have been minimal edits to the article after that. This article is basically an artifact of recentism that seems to have flown beneath the radar to remain undeleted for seven years. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 08:36, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Metropolitan90:There's a lot more of these at Category:Proposed legislation of the 113th United States Congress, if you'd like to consider nominating some for deletion as well. At some point, there might need to be a sweep through the entirety of Category:United States proposed federal legislation just to ensure they're meeting notability standards. Edge3 (talk) 15:00, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I may do so when I get a chance. I agree that some of that proposed legislation doesn't appear to be notable. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to Near East and South Central Asia Religious Freedom Act of 2014. The bill was indeed passed into [Public Law 113-161]. ref. It became law on 08/08/2014 when Obama signed it. This article written in 2015 after the bill became law is titled "Obama urged to name envoy for religious minorities" [by Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore]. --David Tornheim (talk) 09:19, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm. Thanks for the input. H.R. 301 doesn't seem to be the underlying bill for Public Law 113-161. Rather, it appears that the Public Law was introduced as S. 653. In any case, even though a law was eventually enacted, it still fails WP:NEVENT because the news coverage is not sufficient to demonstrate enduring significance. Edge3 (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Edge3 Can you take a look at some of the other Public Laws listed List_of_acts_of_the_113th_United_States_Congress#Public_laws here--a random sample of three would probably suffice--and tell me if the references appear to justify WP:GNG for the other statutes? I've looked at a number of federal statutes and they almost all have the same format and many lack much outside WP:RS. I have a feeling someone at the GPO is putting them up. I think most of them are not that different than this one, and I wanted to see if you agree. I think we should treat them all with about the same standard.
Right now, I lean toward keep as federal statutes are of such significance, as once they become law, they may be law for many years to come, that it seems that they are likely notable even if finding WP:RS is not easy.
The disadvantage of some of these more minor statutes is that it increases our burden of maintaining the articles.
My feeling is that we should look at the bigger picture of all of these rather than just this one. Possibly that conversation has already taken place elsewhere. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:13, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi David Tornheim, thanks for your input. I haven't had a chance to look at the Public Laws you've linked to, but I have already been looking at some similar articles. As I mentioned to Metropolitan90 above, I found a lot of potential candidates for deletion (or maybe merger) in Category:Proposed legislation of the 113th United States Congress. In fact, I'd say that the entirety of Category:United States proposed federal legislation would need to be discussed, but the 113th Congress seems to be the largest subcategory.
Based on some feedback I received from BD2412 during a de-PROD, I've withdrawn all my pending PRODs in this topic and will list them here, just to see if we can have a broader discussion on what to do for this topic. If it's not appropriate to discuss it on this page, I can open separate AfD discussions for the other articles.
As you can see, I initially felt that I could handle each of these articles by deciding to nominate for PROD, AFD, or propose merger on a case-by-case basis. However, this is quickly becoming unwieldy, as potentially hundreds of articles would be affected by the consensus we form.
I think that generally, it will be difficult to set standards for reviewing the notability of US Congressional bills, especially the ones that did not pass. However, we can potentially look to WP:GNG and WP:EVENT for guidance. WP:EVENTCRITERIA list several aspects that we could consider, including "lasting effects", "depth of coverage", "duration of coverage", and "diversity of sources". Because most bills appear to be getting only routine news coverage in sources such as The Hill or official Congressional sources, our ability to write thorough articles on each bill is limited. The administrative and maintenance burden on Wikipedia would be massive if we kept all of them as-is.
While I recognize the nationwide scope of these bills (satisfying WP:GEOSCOPE), I would argue that not every piece of Congressional legislation is notable. Notability is not inherited from Congress. We can also look at WP:OUTCOMES, which has previously addressed a related question regarding cases decided by the US Supreme Court. See WP:OUTCOMES#Legal cases and court decisions, stating "Decisions by [a supreme court] are not considered notable for this reason alone, because even high courts make many routine or unexceptional decisions." Similar logic can be applied to Congress. Edge3 (talk) 17:08, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As a general principal, I think the fact that Congress tried to legislate on a topic will often be significant to that topic. We can always merge individually non-notable efforts into a list of such efforts for a year, or merge them into the topic the bill was trying to address. BD2412 T 18:23, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Per what I write below. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Edge3: Thanks for looking into those. I agree that this is definitely not the place to discuss ALL of them, and that nothing determined here should apply to all of them. But I do think that the context is important.
I agree with BD2412.
Decisions by [a supreme court] are not considered notable for this reason alone. This is not an appropriate comparison. Unlike the handful of approved bills like this one, courts receive countless cases that get turned down in a trivial manner with probably no mention in any WP:RS. See [5]. Each of the ~300 in the table List_of_acts_of_the_113th_United_States_Congress#Public_laws appear more significant to me, and a number of them do not have articles.
Compare these bills with the fact that anyone who participated in the Olympics is entitled to an article per WP:NOLYMPICS and that person does not require any coverage. I think a bill that passed in either house or senate is way more significant than some teen who got into the Olympic one time and never did anything else notable in their life and received no coverage. According to Olympic_Games#21st-century_Games, there were >11,200 participants in 2016. I have tried to delete these articles, and get nowhere. So does each participant worth more than 37 times as much as a bill that was passed in the 113th Congress? I think not. --David Tornheim (talk) 12:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename and expand per David Tornheim. Even if these are two separate bills, the first represents an effort to achieve what was accomplished in the second, and is therefore relevant to the history of the second. I would consider this a reasonable general practice for specific outcomes sought through multiple efforts in Congress. BD2412 T 15:56, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 09:40, 24 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 21:34, 31 December 2020 (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.
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