Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leila Abukar

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. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 00:40, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Leila Abukar[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

A WP:ONEEVENT case; an unsuccessful candidate for state political office, with all of the coverage centred on that fact (with the possible exception of this one, which alone does not, I feel, put the candidate outside the ONEEVENT situation). The Centenary Medal, while a worthy honour, is does not confer inherent notability per WP:ANYBIO. Frickeg (talk) 23:08, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Frickeg (talk) 23:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Abukar was already a prominent figure prior to running for office. In 2001, she was awarded a Centenary Medal by the Australian government for her work. The Centenary Medal is one of three specifically Australian commemorative awards. That makes it a well-known and significant award or honor per WP:ANYBIO. It was originally presented to individuals who made a contribution to Australian society or government. It is now only open to centenarians, so it is by definition limited [1] [2]. Commemorative medals on Wikipedia are usually not considered to warrant a category unless they are awarded for merit, such as the Centenary Medal [3]. If elected to office, Abukar will also become the first Muslim in Queensland's Parliament [4]. Middayexpress (talk) 00:21, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- OK, first of all, the election was on Saturday, and Abukar lost (as she was always going to). If she had won, sure, she'd be good. Secondly, the Centenary Medal does not qualify under WP:ANYBIO. There are over 15,000 recipients (almost all of whom were awarded in a single year, 2001), and explicitly include things like "community volunteers" and "local government". Given that we have solid past consensus that the OAM (21,000 recipients since 1975) and even the AM (less than 10,000 recipients since 1975) do not qualify under ANYBIO, I cannot see how the Centenary Medal (which clocks in at number 60 out ot 69 on the order of precedence, well below AM at 15 and OAM at 27) can possibly be included. Frickeg (talk) 00:49, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Note also the discussion currently running (coincidentally) which clarifies the Order of Australia stuff. Frickeg (talk) 00:52, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The Centenary Medal is not something that would make for notability on Wikipedia, and the vast, vast amount of its recipients would never pass WP:GNG. Take that away, and she's just an unsuccessful election candidate, whose articles are routinely deleted all the time. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:35, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Merge. As I see it, nobody is complaining about the article content, simply the notability of having the article as a whole. I think it's a waste of people's effort in creating the article in the first place if we just delete it. Given the reason for questioning notability is the "one event" principle, why don't we do as sugggested and move the contents of this article into the relevant event, say, Electoral results for the district of Yeerongpilly in the section for the yet-to-be-created section on the 2015 election and make LA a redirect to that section? This seems a good place to preserve content about failed candidates who don't warrant their own article. For each election, here's some info about the candidates followed by the results. That way, the article can easily be recreated as an article if subsequent events warrant it (the failed candidate may stand for election and win on another occasion), and does not waste the contribution of those who contributed to it in the first place (given we have a global editor decline, I am not in favour of deleting content that appears to be accurate and well-sourced as I think it is seen as a kick in the guts by those who contributed and reduces motivation to contribute again). These comments are intended to apply to any failed election candidate, not just LA who is the subject of this particular AfD. Kerry (talk) 01:32, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I am not a fan of this approach: I think this would be a huge case of undue weight in any of the electorate articles. I wouldn't mind a vastly summarised version of it going into Electoral results for the district of Yeerongpilly and the not-yet-created Results of the Queensland state election, 2015: we discussed a while back adding some text content to these pages by having a paragraph or so about each individual race for more in-depth coverage, and I thought that worked well the couple of times someone bothered to do it. But this is a fairly long article, and if it doesn't stand on its own, there isn't really anywhere appropriate to put it. I'd be borderline about keeping the article if all the references weren't solely in the context of her election candidacy, but as it is I don't think there's a place for it on Wikipedia. Maybe we need an Australian equivalent of Ballotpedia. The Drover's Wife (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't think it's undue weight to put it into Electoral results for the district of Yeerongpilly. You can't have an elections without candidates! And the present format of just tables of numbers is very dry and Wikipedia is not a stats book WP:NOTSTATSBOOK. Real people stand for election, I think having something about the candidates and/or issues is what makes it an article. Not being in Yeerongpilly, I never encountered LA in her campaign but I find her story (now that I have read her article thanks to this AfD) to be a fascinating one. Isn't it part of telling the story of this country and particularly of the electorate of Yeerongpilly that a third of them would happily have had her as their representative in state parliament despite being a woman, a Somali, an Islamic, and a refugee (all of which are "minorities" in the Queensland Parliament)? To the extent we have people willing to contribute (which is the limiting factor in practice), I think we should be trying to tell the "story" of elections as a story of candidates and local issues as well as the numeric results. Kerry (talk) 23:12, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - As I said, I am quite okay with having a hugely-summarised version of this in those articles, as part of a discussion of the other candidates and the local issues, and with appropriate weight given to the others as much as to Abukar. She may be interesting personally (and as said if the independent coverage were stronger or there at all I'd gladly support keeping an article), but I really can't see a place for something like the article as it stands. The problem is this - while real people stand for election - in an electorate that's been around for fourteen years, there are a lot of real people who stood for election, and an article this long would turn those pages into a list of biographies on questionably-notable people instead of an article about the results. Take the 2012 race, which features Libby Connors, a Greens candidate who is probably more notable than Abukar but probably not enough to get her own article: should we make a race where the LNP fluked taking a seat off the ALP about the life of a mildly interesting Greens candidate? Abukar is no more significant this time around. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 00:38, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per WP:BASIC. Multiple, independent reliable sources have covered her not only with respect to her candidacy but also with regard to her earlier work "on the Council for Multicultural Australia, and the Refugee Resettlement Advisory Council, as well as being a respected campaigner against female genital mutilation" as in this Brisbane Times article from which that quotation is drawn. 24.151.10.165 (talk) 20:24, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per statements made by Middayexpress and the IP above. AcidSnow (talk) 04:05, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - It is ironic that Abukar's notability is questioned, while apparently not that of her far less notable political opponent Mark Bailey. Yes, Bailey won the Yeerongpilly seat and that in itself is notable; but his notability apparently doesn't go much beyond this election, unlike Abukar. Besides her community and governmental work and various awards, Abukar was also a prominent campaigner for women's reproductive health. Middayexpress (talk) 17:00, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Even her articles readership is far greater than his. It's almost a 3:1 ratio. AcidSnow (talk)

What nonsense. Bailey passes WP:POLITICIAN, so his notability is not in question. As for readership, his article was created months later than hers, and she is up for deletion which easily explains the discrepancy. Once again we have the claim that she won "awards", but I've only seen evidence of one. Is there any evidence at all that she is a "prominent" campaigner for women's health? Because I sure haven't seen it. Frickeg (talk) 19:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bailey is indeed notable since he won the seat. Despite this, it is rather telling that his readership was roughly a third that of Abukar's on the very eve of the election. Even prior to the electoral race, Abukar was the more prominent figure, having been a member of various national Councils as well as a respected campaigner against female circumcision (noted in the relevant link-thru), and received a Centenary Medal from the Australian government for all her work. That Abukar won other awards is also established [5]. Middayexpress (talk) 20:24, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that article says "several awards", but frankly I wouldn't be taking them into consideration until we know exactly what they are. If the Centenary Medal is the most significant, chances are they're pretty minor. Meanwhile, if she was a notable campaigner against circumcision (or for or against anything else), then there would be coverage of her before she became the candidate for Yeerongpilly, which there just isn't. (Meanwhile, the Bailey comparison is still pointless. His article didn't exist on the eve of the election, because he wasn't notable then.) Frickeg (talk) 22:36, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Update: actually, looking into it, Bailey is a former Brisbane City Councillor, which means not only was he probably notable pre-election (Brisbane CC is Australia's largest council, and its single-member wards cover areas similar to state electorates), he was and is far more notable than Abukar. So this argument is doubly pointless. Frickeg (talk) 22:43, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And today's update: he's now the Minister for Roads and Energy. It's a silly comparative argument anyway. Frickeg (talk) 11:01, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Bailey comparison is certainly relevant since he ran against Abukar and his stub indeed existed before the election, as timestamps show [6] (btw, the comparison tool above compares the readership of existing pages). That said, the Crescent link does not assert that the Centenary Medal is the most significant award that Abukar has won; it just indicates that she has won several awards, among which was the Centenary Medal. On the other hand, despite allegedly being far more notable, Bailey appears to have won none. It's likewise fairly certain that Abukar was a respected campaigner against female circumcision since the other link explicitly indicates as much. She was already a prominent figure prior to the election; that's why she won those awards in the first place [7]. Moreover, while Bailey apparently sat on the municipal-level Brisbane City Council, Abukar sat on the Council for Multicultural Australia [8], among other national and statewide councils. Just so it's clear, I agree that Bailey is notable since he did, after all, win the election. It's the notion that he is more notable than Abukar that is not tenable. Middayexpress (talk) 18:07, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

He is a cabinet minister. He is unquestionably more notable than Abukar at this point. But the comparison is still pointless; we are not talking about Bailey, we are talking about Abukar. (By the way, I created the stub and I know - it was created the day after the election (1 Feb 2015), as the timestamps clearly show.) Here's the issue: "multiple" awards are being used as an argument for keeping, but not a single source that I've seen says what any of them apart from the CM are. They could be awarded by her high school for all we know. And if Abukar was a "respected campaigner against circumcision prior to the election", then show me coverage prior to the election. Otherwise we are accepting an awful lot from the LNP's candidate profile, which of course talks up her achievements as it does all its other candidates (I'm not saying she's not a worthy person, but "prominent" and "respected" are subjective terms.) Lastly the AMC is an advisory body, and its members are not necessarily notable (indeed, many are not); I've already explained why Brisbane City Council is more than the usual municipal-level council. Frickeg (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On the pageview tool - I think it shows views of pages that don't exist? As in, someone ending up at the empty "Mark Bailey (politician)" page before it was created. Either way, per WP:POPULARPAGE, the argument is not a good one; and either way, since Bailey's views yesterday following his ministerial appointment were almost twice that of what Abukar has ever seen in a single day, it won't be long before he outstrips her completely. Frickeg (talk) 20:12, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 14:28, 18 February 2015 (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.