Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Archie Parnell

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 in one form or another. I see no policy-based arguments for deletion without at least redirection to the election's page. There is no clear consensus whether to keep as a separate article or to redirect/merge but that can be discussed at the talk page. So Why 08:43, 15 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Archie Parnell[edit]

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

Contested PROD. Non-notable political candidate. All coverage is in the context of the campaign that he just lost. Fails WP:GNG and WP:POLITICIAN. The "de-PRODder" tried to make a comparison of Parnell to Jon Ossoff, but the difference in coverage between the two of them is staggering. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:24, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of South Carolina-related deletion discussions. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:24, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: At the very least this AFD is premature. There is likely to be more analyses of this election and the concurrent vote in Georgia 6th in the coming weeks. Even as it currently stands the article cites a large number of reliable secondary sources, indicating significant media coverage. His campaign advertising style certainly seems have drawn significant coverage, and since Demon Sheep is an article, it seems that particularly covered works of political advertising are notable. From Wikipedia:POLITICIAN:

"Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article"." which Parnell does. --HighFlyingFish (talk) 03:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

- I didn't say other losing candidates aren't notable. I said Parnell isn't. The focus of electoral analysis will focus more on Georgia's 6th, where most of the lead up coverage was focused. The sources in this article do not establish notability per GNG. Re: "Demon Sheep", that's WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. We're debating Parnell, not one of the many other articles that could or should be nominated for deletion. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:44, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Parnell was covered by reliable, recognized secondary sources. The articles has several appropriate footnotes from distinct sources. He was a major party candidate in a congressional election which was frequently mentioned in the U.S. national press. He got more than 40,000 votes in a special election, meaning the people who showed up to vote weren't just filling out the down-ballot; this was the best-known, most important race on the ballot they were filling out. The article's existence serves a couple of identifiable research purposes in the upcoming weeks and months: (1) It's still news, and people may look up Parnell to understand what just happened, that is, who just lost that race. Indeed the article has 800 hits today. (2) There have been four special congressional elections in the Trump era, and it is natural that people interested in upcoming congressional races would review the other recent races and candidates and their successes; indeed Parnell came unusually close, in such a Republican-leaning district. I do not understand the argument for deletion or the goals that would be served by deletion. Parnell is in the news now. His name will be on the front pages of major newspapers, tomorrow. -- econterms (talk) 04:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Stuff like "He got more than 40,000 votes in a special election" has no bearing here. He lost, so does not pass WP:POLITICIAN. As for "It's still news", Wikipedia is not a news site. The argument for deletion is that while there are some sources, they're nothing more than WP:ROUTINE coverage of a candidate for a federal office that do not go far enough in establishing WP:GNG. Now that he's lost, the coverage won't continue. He's in the news now, but he won't be next week, or even before the week is out. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:12, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - Looks to me like the secondary news coverage is such that this article does clear the WP:POLITICIAN and WP:GNG hurdles. It helps to understand User:Muboshgu's argument for deletion: WP:ROUTINE. I don't think this case or coverage was routine, however. I have also argued that inclusion of this article makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia; it helps someone research and understand this nontrivial election, which has a substantial article of its own. -- econterms (talk) 04:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - The number of sources here is completely in line with the number of sources that every single candidate in any election could always show — so yes, it falls under ROUTINE (and WP:BLP1E, for that matter.) To escape routine, campaign-specific coverage has to go well beyond what every candidate always gets — such as Christine O'Donnell, whose article cites 160 distinct sources rather than just nine, because the coverage of her campaign went global. Bearcat (talk) 15:25, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to South Carolina's 5th congressional district special election, 2017. As I wrote for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tanner Ainge, the community consensus has been that being a candidate for the national legislature is not a claim to meet WP:Politician or WP:GNG. The current consensus is that electoral campaigns are events and the electoral contest is notable, while the individual participants are not (unless they meet WP:Politician or WP:GNG independent of the campaign or subject to coverage that is "far" out of proportion to what is expected). For subjects running for the U.S. Congress, a redirect is appropriate to the page about the specific race in question. In this case, while a special election, is special, I do not see coverage that is out of the ordinary for this subject. --Enos733 (talk) 05:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This special election received far more attention than do most Congressional elections. Detailed information about one of the major candidates helps inform the reader about that election. I reject "redirect" because it would mean either losing a lot of the information about one candidate or cluttering the article about the election with it. The best way to serve the reader is to keep the election article, with basic information about the candidates, and have daughter articles giving more detail about each candidate. JamesMLane t c 10:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Comments like these show the need to better understand the difference in coverage of an election vs. coverage of a candidate. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I don't see any compelling reason to delete this article. This was a candidate in one of two compelling and newsworthy special-election races seen as a referendum on Pres. Trump. Why would we delete the article? Moncrief (talk) 16:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Compelling reasons to delete: GNG, NOTNEWS, COATRACK re: Trump. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and/or redirect. Special elections always get media coverage, and are always seen to some extent as an informal referendum on the president and/or analyzed as possible portents of what might happen in the next regular congressional election — so those claims do not, in and of themselves, make a non-winning candidate in the special election more notable than the non-winning candidate in the same district in 2016 was. And as for the national visibility of the SC5 race, it was very much in the back seat of that car compared to GA6 — I'm Canadian and GA6 was getting coverage here, while even as a regular reader of American political media such as Politico and Daily Kos and The New York Times, I remained completely unaware that SC5 was happening at all until watching the live coverage last night. So there's a case to be made that GA6 was significantly more visible than special elections usually are, but it does not follow that SC5 was too.
Accordingly, we have to judge this according to our normal standards for political candidates, by which candidacy is not notable in and of itself and rather he has to have already cleared a notability standard for some other reason before being a candidate — and that requirement just isn't being demonstrated here at all. There's certainly a legitimate case to be made now that the coverage of Jon Ossoff has nationalized to the degree needed to get him the highly rarefied "notable as candidate because the coverage exploded so far beyond normal that GNG has been surpassed" treatment — although I still maintain that the article was premature at the time it was first created — but the degree of coverage needed to get Archie Parnell over that same bar is not in evidence. As noted above, what we're looking for here is not coverage about the race qua race, but coverage about him qua him, and the sourcing here is showing "about the election, with namechecks of Parnell because he's a candidate in it", not "about Parnell as a person". Bearcat (talk) 18:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect The high level of coverage had to do with the nature of the election, not with any thing notable about Parnell. There is no justified reason to have a stand alone article on him, and doing so is an extreme case of presentism.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:56, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Winged Blades^Godric 14:02, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reflecting on the various arguments for deletion. The conversation is interesting. (1) COATRACK is an important point in principle, but not relevant to this case. The sentences in the article and its past versions are about Parnell, not some other person or idea or ideology. (2) The Tanner Ainge case's arguments are relevant but the conversion of that article into a redirect is not itself a strong precedent; Ainge had not even been in a primary election, whereas Parnell was in one and won it. (3) These elections are what that bring coverage to Parnell, right. His coverage is associated with a congressional election, events before, during and analysis after. He's not notable for other things. But he is interviewed and quoted in several articles, and there is discussion of his unusual ads, and there is news coverage afterward of why he did well in the election. People in sports, science, etc, are also notable for the things they do. He's done notable things. (4) Parnell got 42K votes; the article has had 10K visits ; and there are plenty of distinct footnotes on him in the article. These numbers illustrate that this person and his campaign are of some interest, and each day we keep the article we are doing a service as a reference work to readers. -- econterms (talk) 09:26, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Winning a primary election to become a general election candidate is not an WP:NPOL pass in and of itself — our notability criteria for politicians are based on the holding of political office, so a person has to win the general election and not just a primary. So no, Tanner Ainge is not irrelevant here — and neither is he even the precedent setter per se, he's simply one recent example of standard practice that's pertained for years.

And the number of votes a candidate got in the process of not winning the election is not a notability claim either — for the purposes of accruing notability as a politician, the determining factor is the mere fact of whether they won or lost the general election, not how many votes they did or didn't get. There are some legislative seats where the total number of eligible voters in the entire district is smaller than the number of votes that a minor candidate can get in a more heavily-populated electorate — so our notability criteria are based strictly on the objective fact of whether they won or lost, and not on how many votes they did or didn't get in the process of winning or losing. And the number of people who viewed an article isn't a relevant factor in determining notability either — it's impossible for us to determine how many people read an article because they were actively looking for one, compared to how many people clicked on it just because it happened to exist as a bluelink in the election article, so we can't base notability on readership stats.

And finally, the number of sources present in the article is not showing him to be more notable than every other non-winning candidate in every other election — every candidate could always show this number of sources, so election coverage falls under WP:ROUTINE unless it attains a volume far out of scope to what could be simply expected to exist. Bearcat (talk) 15:23, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: We include candidates who lose, but receive significant media coverage from reliable sources all the time. From people like Goodspaceguy to Jon Ossoff. These candidates both have never held political office, but have received significant media coverage throughout their political careers. The same is true of Parnell, whose advertising and ~~surprise victory~~ (surprisingly close result. Thanks to @Muboshgu for catching the mistype) has garnered him significant post-election coverage, as can be seen from recent additions to the article. --HighFlyingFish (talk) 18:25, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Goodspaceguy and Jon Ossoff are the exceptions to the community consensus regarding unelected candidates. The community has recognized that perennial candidates, like Goodspaceguy, can be notable, with a recognition that those candidates may "use their candidacy for satire, to advance non-mainstream political platforms, or to take advantage of benefits afforded political candidates" (or parties). Other candidates are kept, like John Ossoff or Christine O'Donnell, because of the unusually high level of international and national coverage accorded to the subject (and we must compare special elections to special elections and regular elections to regular elections). WP:POLOUTCOMES says this - "Candidates who ran but never were elected for a national legislature or other national office are not viewed as having inherent notability and are often deleted or merged into lists of campaign hopefuls, such as Ontario New Democratic Party candidates, 1995 Ontario provincial election, or into articles detailing the specific race in question, such as United States Senate election in Nevada, 2010." All of the relevant information about a losing candidate can be placed into an article dealing with the specific race in question. --Enos733 (talk) 20:02, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Surprise victory"? Parnell lost. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:25, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bah, my typo, sorry.--HighFlyingFish (talk) 20:29, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As correctly noted by Enos, Ossoff and O'Donnell both qualified for the "special case" exemption, where there was simply so honking much coverage about them that they passed GNG on the grounds that their candidacies were quite plainly significantly more notable than the norm — Ossoff's article cites 56 sources, and O'Donnell's cites 160, and both of them even got covered in international media that normally devote zero attention to US election races anywhere below the presidential level. That is, they didn't automatically get articles because candidate per se — they got articles because their candidacies passed the high bar needed to qualify as special cases. An article which cites just nine sources is not clearing that same bar — every candidate in every election could always show that many sources, so that doesn't represent enough coverage to make him a special case over and above most other non-winning candidates the way Ossoff and O'Donnell are.

No candidate in any election ever fails to be the subject of some reliable source coverage — so it's not enough to just say that coverage of his campaign existed, because coverage of all candidates in all election campaigns always exists. To deem a candidate notable for being a candidate per se, what we require is that the candidate got significantly more coverage than what all candidates routinely get. Ossoff and O'Donnell got a lot more than usual; Parnell did not. Bearcat (talk) 14:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: To attract more uninvolved users
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Winged Blades^Godric 06:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:NPOL. Parnell certainly does not meet GNG. While special election candidates tend to have media coverage, it is WP:MILL in nature. Power~enwiki (talk) 01:22, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NPOL; unelected candidate, press coverage largely related to their fact of being a candidate and not sufficient to demonstrate their notability independent of their standing as a candidate. Mélencron (talk) 00:03, 11 July 2017 (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.