Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/British National Party election results (2nd nomination)

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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. PeterSymonds (talk) 12:19, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

British National Party election results[edit]

Discussion to run until at least 8 February 2009 (UTC)

AfDs for this article:
British National Party election results (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

We do not have articles on election results for other parties in UK politics, major or minor. Sure, they can be sourced (all results are published) but articles like this serve no purpose other than to inflate the importance of a marginal party; a similar article on the Green Party would be unmanagaeably big and the Greens stand about the same chance of being the next Government as a snowball does in hell. Much better to cover the elections themselves, and the parties separately, rather thangive undue weight to the minor successes of this reviled bunch of extremists. The article was deleted recently and promptly recreated, but this is not a G4. It is, however, one of the things Wikipedia is not: a distillation form primary sources with no independent evidence of the significance of BNP election results as opposed to those of any other party. Guy (Help!) 22:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep This article was recreated following a review of the original deletion, as shown by the rubric at the top of the talk page. Similar non-arguments were used when the article was previously deleted in what amounted to a non-debate. Note that, contrary to what the nominator says, the article was not "promptly recreated", unless 5 months is prompt! It would help to study carefully the comments in the review: they supported the recreation of this article, with the proviso that proper sources be cited (done). I must conclude that this is a vexatious and malicious nomination. Emeraude (talk) 22:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Calling them "non-arguments" and invoking the previous deletion is worth precisely nothing as a contribution to this debate. The rationale is different, your assumption of bad faith is the only constant. Guy (Help!) 22:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the circumsatnces, I think I am justified in suspecting bad faith and still hoping I'm wrong. And surely everything said in the deletion review was a "non-argument" for you, seeing as you have jumped to overturn a debate in 24 hours. Now that is prompt! Emeraude (talk) 22:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm prepared to accept good faith, the problem here is that when a nominator describes the subject of the article that's he's proposing to be deleted as a "reviled bunch of extremists" then it's hardly conducive to a dispassionate debate. It smacks of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and that will raise questions. Valenciano (talk) 23:25, 3 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - As a bunch of statistics on its own it means little. wikipedia is not a repository of information. As PhilKnight says, British National Party#Electoral performance covers the topic. If such statistics can be linked to on an off-site page from British National Party#Electoral Performance then I suggest that is the way to go. There is no point wikipedia exactly duplicating content that is freely available elsewhere online. If the statistics are not freely available elsewhere on the internet, then they should perhaps be merged into the original article, if such detail is relevant to an understanding of the BNP as a political entity.
If other such stats don't exist on their own pages for other parties, then this implies there is something special about these numbers. Which violates neutrality. I don't want to be neutral either, but the fact is there is no reason that they should exist in their own right without elucidation. That elucidation is to be found at British National Party#Electoral Performance, so it is where they belong if anywhere. Either they are relevant to the Electoral Performance section, or they should be deleted as WP:NOCATALOG. Ddawkins73 (talk) 00:15, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply. The stats don't necessarily belong at British National Party#Electoral Performance (see WP:SPLIT); but if you do feel they belong there, that's an argument for merger rather than for deletion.
    Your point that a separate page for these states "violates neutrality" might be an important one if it were not for all the evidence that the BNP is a subject of particular interest (see my links above and British National Party#Electoral_performance). I say "might be", because this seems to me to be a very dubious application of the principle of neutrality: if taken literally, it would mean that we should not have a list of MPs of one party unless e also have list of MPs in another party ... and similarly for football teams, car models, or anything else which could be represented in a table of data. That approach would be a recipe for wholesale deletion: for example, we have much more detailed coverage of Iriszh politicians than of Mongolians. Your argument suggests that we should delete all the Irish political articles until we have similar coverage of Mongolia and every other country. That's covered in WP:OTHERSTUFF. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Re all the analogies and neutrality, can we apply one overriding "super-WP": common sense?
Why should it be taken literally and spread to cover false anologies? The highly-politicized context is what's relevant. The relevant point is "why have separate statistics for BNP election results?" not "Why aren't all lists representative of all groups?"
My argument doesn't suggest anything of the kind re Irish and Mongolian politicians. Better analogies would be having, in the 1980s, a list of "Irish Nationalist political figures who have spent time in UK Police custody", but not having lists of other political figures who had spent time in police custody. Or having now a list of the teaching qualifications of Discovery Institute members but not having the same for members of other organizations who publicly debate regarding educational issues. Such lists might well be relevant (note I haven't advocated in bold Keep, Delete or anything yet), but if orphaned from the articles that give them context there is certainly a danger that they violate neutrality, wouldn't you agree?
If the stats are genuinely relevant to the BNP article, then merge. Or if that level of detail is not necessary, then delete, if the statistics are freely available off-site (and link to them) - purely on the grounds of WP:NOTCATALOG and "wikipedia is not a repository of information". Why duplicate statistics?
Either they are "just stats" and they are irrelevant, or they are meaningful stats and careful thought should be given as to whether they should exist as a wikipedia page in their own right. I think neutrality is very relevant. Ddawkins73 (talk) 01:28, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OKay, let's try commonsense! The problem is that we disagree on what commonsense means here.
Your anaology with arrested nationalists is a bad one, because such a set of lists would be very different in scale (there weren't many of Conservative MPs arrested). I see no problem in having such a list of arrested nationalists, and no resaon to exclude it because others were not arrested. As to the Discovery Institute, I know nothing of it, but such a list would be appropraite (even without other similar lists) if there was evidence that the DI members qualifications were a significant topic of study (as BNP results are).
You are simply wrong to say that "wikipedia is not a repository of information"; the relevant policy says that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". That word "indiscriminate" is crucial: are you really trying to argue that this ist is indiscriminate?
So far as I am concerned, this article is at this stage a work in progress. There are things I would like to see added to it (sortable tables, some explanation of how heavily scrutinised BNP elections results are), but we don't delete articles just because they are incomplete: we judge them by whether they have the potential to become anything useful. This article is already useful, by compiling in one place data from a long historical period with links to the relevant articles -- for example it enabled me to quickly find an article on the highest-polling BNP candidate in the 1992 general election.
There's a very good reason for not mergeing it to the BNP article: this much detail would overwhelm it. That's a common situation, which is why we have WP:SPLIT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:06, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
All analogies are bad :) but at least we moved away from the first one to a less bad one (As an aside, my first case - certainly would have been significant, trust me).
I think the sticking point is whether these stats are knowledge or information. I'm sure we can agree there is no need to represent mere information in an encyclopedia. Broadly speaking, encyclopedias contain knowledge. Information can be found anywhere, and there is no need to replicate it. Knowledge, in an encyclopedia, is the bringing together of information under a topic. That is, it presents information as associated with other information and weaves it together. Stats don't have a topic, any more than the contents of this page do. They are what they are. They are information.
It is in the sense described above that "wikipedia is not a repository of information". It is also what is meant by "indiscriminate collection". Information collected but not contextualized. Here I think is a major source of misunderstanding: it is not whether information is indiscriminate. It is whether the collection of it is indiscriminate.
The phrase is not "a collection of indiscriminate information". It is "an indiscriminate collection of information."
Reproducing as a separate page information that exists elsewhere is 'indiscriminate collecting' of information.
An editor or author of a page is showing critical discrimination (which is a good thing) by the choice not to include what is unnecessary.
So, are the stats freely available elsewhere online? (I'll check after posting this). Are they vital to the (actual) topic (which is, I would think, Electoral Performance of the BNP)?
Ddawkins73 (talk) 03:34, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I see no grounds for deletion. Neither the absence of a similar article on other parties nor a comparison between the chances of electoral success with the survival chances of frozen snow in a place in the afterlife is sufficient. The page is organised and sourced. A merge to the main page would overbalance it. Sure I find the policies of the BNP distasteful but we have much on Wikipedia that I find distasteful and, luckily, that is also not grounds for deletion! There are plenty of highly reliable sources that discuss the implications of electoral success by the BNP. My preferred way forward would be to add textual context rather than deletion. TerriersFan (talk) 03:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)TerriersFan (talk) 03:07, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keepabstain - Crucially, I cannot find the collated election results anywhere online (except in another encyclopedia). I think they are definitely relevant to the topic Electoral Performance, WP:Split is a valid reason to detach them from the BNP Page, the link from Electoral Performance and the top link to "main article" constitute context (so mitigating neutrality concerns), they are essentially an intrinsic part of "Electoral Performance" detached because of WP:SPLIT.

Edit: I don't know. I'm ambivalent. They do have some significance, points still hold, but there are a lot of stats in those stats. Then again, they only have to be updated every 4 years and it's not paper. Then again, hrafn's point over significance of K Hill 1983. It is a bit much. Maybe edit into a summary table as suggested. Ddawkins73 (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]


@Brown-haired girl: (I'm glad we discussed it - cleared it all up in my mind :) )

Ddawkins73 (talk) 04:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete per WP:NOTDIR. Exhaustive lists like this are well beyond our scope. Individual successes, such as Richard Barnbrook's in 2005, can be mentioned in the respective articles. - Biruitorul Talk 08:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comments 1 The page was created to give background context to the main article section on Electoral Performance. 2 It would not fit into the BNP article without making it far too large (and there is an argument for reducing the size of the BNP article anyway). 3 The information/stats are not available elsewhere outside Wikipedia in a single source (which explains the large number of sources quoted). 4 The Electoral Performance section is going to change whenever there is an election if editors are on the ball. This data provides useful information for editors to hang their contributions on. 5 As stated by others, the page is a clear split from the main article and itself refers to the main article for alll the right reasons. 6 There are countless lists already in WIkipedia and most of them are available elsewhere (see for example List of minor planets: 199001–200000, one of I believe some 8,000 such pages all replicating what is online in a single source. That's not an argument for deletion; it's a demonstartion that "exhaustive lists" are most definitely within our scope. '7 And bear in mind that Wikipedia is not paper! Emeraude (talk) 11:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: WP:NOTDIR WP:NOT#STATS, wikipedia is not a depository for such primary-source data. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Agree with Hrafn - to give an example, Wikipedia has information about the climate in London, but doesn't (and shouldn't) have tables of figures for the amount of rainfall each day since records began. In the same way, there should be summary data about the BNP's electoral performance, but this sort of detailed information isn't required. PhilKnight (talk) 17:26, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment and comment and comment In your opinion, but which of the 6 points in WP:NOTDIR does this violate? In the deletion review, PhilKnight commented: "Allow recreation provided every entry is properly sourced. Unsourced content should be removed, and if the entire article is unsourced it should be deleted." That was done!! Emeraude (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Your above comment is somewhat weird, however the answer to your question is number 6. PhilKnight (talk) 17:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • "4. Statistics. Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader." Would appear to be spot-on. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Reply. a) This isn't a complete list: it covers only parliamentary elections, not local council elections. b) This isn't a "long and sprawling lists of statistics", it's a well-organised and annotated list election results. c) You are quite right that the article would benefit from explanatory text, but if that is needed it's a matter for expansion rather than for deletion, and may not be needed since ths data is pslit out per WP:SPLIT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:50, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per arguments outlined above. I have to say, from a purely selfish standpoint, I utilised this article as a reference when writing up my PhD thesis a number of times and was gutted when it disappeared. I agree, however, that it could use some explanatory text along with the results and I will be happy to dd some if the artice survives this process. Keresaspa (talk) 20:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • You used Wikipedia as a reference for a PhD paper? Yikes. Madman (talk) 21:57, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The nomination seems to be based on WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST, and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If the articles on other political parties are organised in a different way so that there isn't a particular article on their election results it doesn't mean that this one should be deleted. If you are coming from the standpoint of not wanting to give undue weight to a minority opinion, then I would have thought that this article very clearly demonstrates that the far right has very little support in the UK - far less than in most other European countries. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete in its current form. Whilst the topic of BNP electoral performance is certainly encyclopedic this article doesn't attempt to analyse or discuss it. Instead it presents a huge mass of electoral data. WP:NOT#STATS says that "articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader", and this article is nothing but statistics. If explanatory text were added the article might be worth keeping, but this material is already present in British National Party. Hut 8.5 21:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - the absence of explanatory text is not a valid ground for deletion. We expand articles that have deficient content not delete them which is the way the encyclopaedia develops. TerriersFan (talk) 22:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rebuttal: the title of the article ("results") clearly indicates it is intended to be on the "huge mass of electoral data" and that "sufficient explanatory text" is not intended. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 02:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Counter-rebuttal - no problem; then move the page to a better title and add some explanatory text. Deleting useful, informative content on a fine interpretation of policy is not, in my view, a constructive way forward. TerriersFan (talk) 02:22, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The idea that a title which includes the word "results" cannot include "sufficient explanatory text" is bizarre. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, it is these defences of the article that are "bizarre". "Results" = raw data. That an article with a different title, and with different contents, might not be in violation of WP:NOT#STATS is irrelevant. If you want to address an article with a different title and different contents, then please find a different AfD (any other AfD will give you this). This article, by both title and contents, is clearly intended to be just raw data, and is thus a clear violation of WP:NOT#STATS. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:09, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You choose, for whatever reason, to read the word "results" as narrowly as possible, to preclude any discussion or explanation of those results. As other editors have repeatedly pointed out in this discussion, the article can be expanded to include just that sort of analysis, and I have pointed above to some of the many sources which could be used. Your bizarre reasoning appears to be that because you read a word in a particularly narrow way to mean only a list, you can therefore divine the intentions of any other editor who might seek the expand the article. Please may I borrow your crystal ball? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. I choose, for the reason that it is accepted usage of the language, to distinguish between numeric "results" and more descriptive "performance" -- e.g 'the results in the soccer game was a 2-1 victory to team A' versus 'team A's performance in the first half was good, but they rested on the laurels in the second half, allowing team B to score a late goal'. (i) The title of the article indicates that it is intended to be in violation of WP:NOT#STATS (ii) its current contents are in violation of WP:NOT#STATS (iii) no attempt has been made to attempt to alter it to be anything other than a violation of WP:NOT#STATS (iv) the amount of data is excessive (see my question on K Hill below) to be anything other than a violation of WP:NOT#STATS. WP:DUCK applies. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hrafn, that's pure pedantry. There is absolutely no reason why an article on "results" cannot include an analysis of those results, but if the term upsets you so much you can always propose a renaming of the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:20, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "No reason" why it can't -- but no reason to believe it is intended to, no reason to believe that such an article wouldn't be better titled 'BNP electoral performance, no reason to believe that such an article wouldn't be better written from scratch, no reason to believe that such an article would use even a small proportion of this raw data -- i.e. no reason to believe that anything you've been asserting has any validity to it. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 07:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hrafn, there's a very good reason: WP:AGF, which says "avoid accusing others of harmful motives without particularly strong evidence", which you have just acknowledged you don't have. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a red herring. WP:AGF does not mean assuming that, all evidence to the contrary, an article is assumed to be a good basis for an encyclopaedic article. If it did, AfDs would be redundent. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 14:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "All evidence to the contrary" is not what you said above when you wrote "No reason why it can't" ... and "all evidence to the contrary" ignores all the points made by several editors in this debate as to how the article can be expanded. You are not just assuming bad faith wrt to those participating in this AFD; you are also making a generalised forward-looking bad faith assumption that no editor will come forward to expand the article. The evidence required for that assumption to have any validity is to give the article time to be expanded, and if after a few months there is no sign of expansion then your argument might have some merit ... but using your crystal ball to make negative assumptions before an article has been tagged for expansion is the sort of bad faith that would lead to the deletion of every stub. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:10, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The idea that a title which includes the word 'results' cannot include 'sufficient explanatory text' is bizarre" -- (i) we have an article entitled "British National Party election results" (ii) its introductory, and sole prose-text, sentence is "The British National Party's election results in UK parliamentary, Scottish parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections are shown below." (iii) Thereafter is (what WP:NOT#STATS refers to as) "long and sprawling lists of statistics". It is therefore reasonable to identify "results" with "long and sprawling lists of statistics" and to conclude that this was the meaning that the article's creators intended, and to delete this article as nothing more than a violation of WP:NOT#STATS. If some new article, on a related topic, comes into existence that is not simply a "long and sprawling lists of statistics", then that is not a problem. But its potential existence is no reason to keep this article that has zero encyclopaedic content. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we wanted to make this article encyclopedic we would have to essentially rewrite it from scratch. Hence there is no point keeping this version. Hut 8.5 07:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, but that's nonsense. An article which discussed in detail the BNP's electoral performance should include the data. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is your claim that is "nonsense". No reasonable discussion of 'BNP's electoral performance' (which I would note is broader than the topic of this article) would require electorate-by-electorate data, let alone the names of all their candidates. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you want to write such an article, one which omits the data, then why not go ahead and do so? This article is developing as one which does include the data, and I don't understand why you are so keen to find a reason to prevent it from being used as a basis for expansion. There are thousands of such articles on wikipedia with tables of sporting results and I see no move to purge them. Do you think that all those sporting articles (such as Sailing at the 1968 Summer Olympics) should be deleted because they consist mostly of data? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
  • Obviously in order to win a medal at the olympics, sailors compete in a series of races. If the articles included the results from each race would be overkill. Producing a summary table OTOH is entirely reasonable. PhilKnight (talk) 16:07, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • So tell me BrownHairedGirl, what use would your article make of the fact that in the 1983 general election, K Hill, the BNP candidate for 'Glasgow, Shettleston' gained 103 votes (0.3%). Now explain what your article would make of each and every one of hundreds more such details. What "sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader" would you provide so that this is not simply "long and sprawling lists of statistics"? I await your answer with bated breath. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hrafn, that's a silly question. An article on any subject is highly unlikely to make use of every point of data in a table, but for each election an article on this subject would discuss such points as the BNP's choice of which constituencies to contest, whether there is any regional or other trend in performance, and note any prominent campaigns. Providing the full data table alongside the analysis provides extra detail to the reader which may point to other areas for examination. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No BrownHairedGirl, it is your defence that is "silly". Any original discussion on the basis of this data would be WP:SYNTH. Any secondary-source discussion, would not rely on data presented verbatim in this article, but would rely (most probably either by summary or citation) on data in the original sources. K Hill, and their vast army of fellow candidates are completely unnecessary here. Their presence is in direct violation of both WP:NOT#STATS and of WP:PSTS: "Primary sources ... may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care", and the article is clearly nothing more than a vehicle for such abuse. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 03:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Straw man, and I am disappointed in the gross bad faith which you display here, alleging that the articles is "nothing more than a vehicle for such abuse". I was not suggesting "original discussion", but analysis based on the numerous secondary sources available, some of which I linked to above. In that case, the tables are not "completely unnecessary"; on the contrary they illustrate whatever issues arise in the analysis. Selectively quoting WP:PSTS is mischievous, because at no point have I or anyone else suggested using the primary data as the basis for analysis, and WP:PSTS supports this use of primary sources. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No straw man -- I explicitly discussed secondary-sourced commentary as an option. That option would not require minutiae on K Hill and their hundreds of compatriots to "illustrate" them (an 'illustration' that would lose the reader in a 'can't see the wood for the trees' of irrelevant detail). This article is nothing but primary information, carelessly regurgitated at great length, so that policy is completely apt. Your arguments appear to be disconnected from the current article, from any article that could be created from it other than by a rewrite from scratch, and from policy. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 07:49, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you regard tables of vote shares as "irrelevant detail" in an article about a political party's electoral results (or electoral performance), then nothing is going to persuade you that any article on this subject can ever be appropriate. I really don't know what you are trying to achieve here, but since you contradict yourself from one comment to the next, there's little point in discussing this with you. I prefer the straightforwardness of the nominator, who at least made his prejudices clear at the outset rather than trying endlessly convoluted ways of justifying deletion. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:29, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as overkill. Dahn (talk) 06:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • One person's overkill is another's comprehensiveness! Emeraude (talk) 12:35, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Delete. Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information. This is just a bunch of statistics. Madman (talk) 19:32, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply: Please read Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information. It says "articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader"; that means that this article should be expanded rather than deleted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I disagree with your analysis. This article is solely a collection of stats and so should NOT be in Wikipedia. If someone wanted to write an article about the BNP and then include some stats, I would support that, but your proposal is backwards. There is a outlook amongst some editors that "If only this article had X then it would be appropriate for Wikipedia. So, let's delete the darn thing until we get the article with X. Madman (talk) 21:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • If you want to delete articles because they are incomplete and don't start in the way you like, you can similarly delete half of the articles in wikipedia. What's wrong with improving and expanding an article? It's worked for plenty of others. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • "Incomplete"? There is no encyclopaedic content whatsoever. There has likewise been no attempt whatsoever to add any "explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader" (that might provide encyclopaedic content), let alone to add explanatory text that would be "sufficient" to justify the shear level of detail of statistics. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 04:18, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The topic is clearly notable. The article itself should be expanded to include the necessary explanatory text (and the statistics listed should probaly be pruned). But the fact that the article in its current form needs a lot of work is not a valid reason for deletion. Rlendog (talk) 01:20, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If it's a WP:Split, then perhaps Electoral Performance could be merged with it? If the two belong together, it makes sense. The split article being Electoral Performance, incorporating the statistics. It's a suggestion for discussion, not an advocacy.Ddawkins73 (talk) 06:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment One factor which some contributors to this debate appear to be unaware of, and which I should have mentioned before, is that many wikipedia articles on parliamentary constituencies (known in other countries as "electoral districts" or other similar terms) include the full electoral results for each election held in that constituency. Some constituencies do not have this data, but those articles which lack it often have a stub section marked for inclusion of the results at a latter date, and in many cases the data is comprehensive, stretching back decades or even centuries, and sophisticated templates have been developed to assist in the elegant presentation of this material. Here are some examples from around the world, including some examples where the results have been split out it into separate articles:
United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
United States
Ireland
New Zealand

Note too that very detailed election results are often included in articles on the electoral process: see for example United States Senate election in Oregon, 2008 and United States Senate election in New York, 2006.

So there appears to be a long-established consensus that the figures which comprise election results do have value in wikipedia articles on politics and the electoral process. This accords with the practice both in scholarly works and in newspapers, where this data is routinely published in full. I have on my bookshelf about half-a-dozen books which consist solely of election results from the UK and Ireland, and many others in which tables of such data are laid out in detail for the reader.

There is a few simple reasons for this widespread use and publication of the raw data. Firstly, raw election results are hard data: unlike statistics (which may be compiled in any different ways on many different bases), the number of votes received by a candidate is a single figure which (except in disputed elections) is accepted by all as a measure of electoral performance. Secondly, this data is the fundamental information on elections: after all the campaigning and recounts, what matters in the end is a very short list of figures for each constituency or electoral district.

Those in this debate who describe this data as "trivia" appear to be both unaware of the significance of election results and of the many ways in which they are analysed by psephologists, professional or otherwise. I presume that the advocates of deletion do not want to remove all the huge mass of election results on wikipedia, which would seriously undermine the usefulness of the relevant articles ... and if so the only issue in dispute here is whether similar use may be made of the data wrt one political party.

In have provided above a lengthy set of references to the extent to which the BNP's electoral record is the subject both of scholarly examination and of journalistic coverage. I have yet to see any persuasive reason why Wikipedia's coverage of the BNP's electoral history should not include the data tables which would be included in any scholarly work on the subject: the arguments against appear to be the misplaced charge of "trivia", or a peculiarly strict interpretation of WP:NOT#STATS which ignores the widespread use of electoral results tables both in scholarly works and in journalism. I find it hard to exclude the possibility that other advocates of deletion are motivated by the the nominator's view of the BNP as "reviled bunch of extremists". I dislike them too, but dislike of a subject is not supposed to be a barrier to its coverage on wikipedia. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:07, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I find it hard to exclude the possibility that one line of your argument should be excluded.Ddawkins73 (talk) 14:59, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I would strongly recommend that editors take a look at BrownHairedGirl's examples above, and ask themselves if these articles are in compliance with WP:V, WP:NOR (and particularly WP:PSTS) and WP:NOT, and if they serve as a good example for what political articles should look like. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 02:32, 8 February 2009 (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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