Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Veracity of statements by Scott Morrison

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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. Numerically, we're at about 15 delete to 10 keep, which is a majority but not clear consensus for deletion.

In terms of arguments, the "keep" argument is that the topic is notable because reliable sources have covered it, while the "delete" argument is that the article is an attack page created for partisan reasons, and that an article is unwarranted because all politicians lie anyway.

In my view, the "keep" arguments are stronger: WP:GNG is a widely accepted inclusion guideline and that the topic has received substantial coverage apart from Scott Morrison's other political activities has not been contested. The arguments why the page is an "attack page" are unsubstantiated: per WP:NPOV, we write what reliable sources write, and if they say that a politician lies a lot then that's what we write as well. The "attack" argument would therefore make sense only (and would warrant speedy deletion) if the contents of the article were not neutrally worded or poorly sourced, but that argument is not (substantively) being made here. Moreover, accusing other editors of partisanship and creating attack pages without good evidence violates WP:NPA and WP:AGF.

To sum up, the headcount is slightly for deletion while the arguments for keeping are quite a bit stronger than those for deletion. That being the case, there is no consensus to delete the article, and it is accordingly kept by default. Sandstein 07:47, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Veracity of statements by Scott Morrison[edit]

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Veracity of statements by Scott Morrison (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Attack page. Any useful material should be included at ScoMo's BLP Pete (talk) 23:10, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article is on a notable topic - Morrison's veracity has been documented and reported on by numerous reliable sources. The page's purpose is to cover what reliable sources say about Morrison's veracity, whether they be positive or negative. While much of the coverage happens to be negative, it is neither unsourced nor poorly sourced. Hypothetically, if reliable sources published positive coverage on the subject, they would be covered here. Attack pages must be both negative in tone and unsourced. The content in this article is verifiable and reliable sources are referenced.
Precedent exists for comparable pages. See Veracity of statements by Donald Trump. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 00:19, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
All politicians tell untruths. It goes with the territory. ScoMo is hardly in the same league as Donald Trump. --Pete (talk) 00:27, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that there is a larger volume written about Donald Trump's veracity does not mean that Morrison's veracity is not a notable subject in its own right. Under the General Notability Guidelines, it is enough for the subject to have significant coverage in reliable sources without needing independent research. While telling untruths may be common among politicians, compared to other Australian politicians, Morrison's veracity has been covered in more detail and subject to greater debate, such that it can be regarded as a notable subject. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 02:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You say that with zero authority. Do you have a RS making this claim? We have better well-referenced examples of notable mendacity in the category of recent PMs, but do we have a Veracity of statements by Juliar Gillard article? We do not. --Pete (talk) 02:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whether another article exists or not is irrelevant to this discussion. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 09:31, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A simple Google search reveals an entire archive from the country's main public broadcaster on the veracity of statements made by the Australian Prime Minister,[1] and specific articles dealing with the propensity to mislead.[2][3][4][5][6] Nor is this an issue exclusively related to claims from political opponents, there are claims as well from fellow tories.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ "Scott Morrison - Fact Check". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
  2. ^ "A Dossier of Lies and Falsehoods Archives". Crikey.
  3. ^ "Morrison's top 10 bare-faced lies". Independent Australia. 25 November 2021.
  4. ^ "The lie of the land: Morrison's corrosive behaviour threatens trust rebuilt during pandemic | Katharine Murphy". the Guardian. 22 November 2021.
  5. ^ Denniss, Richard (19 March 2022). "Morrison's economic lies". The Saturday Paper.
  6. ^ Mulgan, Richard (6 December 2021). "Morrison's lies mark a new low in our political discourse. Do voters care?". The Canberra Times.
  7. ^ "Scott Morrison Called 'Hypocrite and Liar' in Leaked Texts By Political Allies". thediplomat.com. 8 February 2022.
  8. ^ "Barnaby Joyce not the first to call Scott Morrison a liar". The New Daily. 6 February 2022.
There's clearly enough for the topic to be notable in and of itself. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 09:31, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - This is clearly an attack piece based on opinion pieces and synthetic arguments. Every politician tells untruths and ScoMo doesn't seem to be any better or worse than the average run of recent PMs, all of whom receive multiple hits in Google searaches for lying. Julia Gillard was notable for her big lie on a carbon tax, so much so that the nickname "Juliar" gained considerable traction. Amongst her political opponents. We could, I guess, compile similar articles of similar length for recent PMs, based on the less-than-objective opinions of political opponents, inside and outside their parties. The Rudd-Gillard dynamic was particularly toxic. But we don't. ScoMo isn't in the same league as Donald Trump mentioned above, where the challenge is not to find an untruth amongst the regular statements, it is to find something that is actually true. Sure, we have a Veracity of statements by Donald Trump article, and a similarly-named redirect to a section in BoJo's BLP article but I'm not seeing ScoMo as up there with those guys, especially Trump. Otherwise we'd have one for every prominent politician with enemies. Vladimir Putin doesn't have such an article and he's been dropping some cracking whoppers. This is a pointy article by a SPE and very hard to AGF. --Pete (talk) 09:46, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    None of that statement addresses the reliable sources which discuss the topic at hand. An attack page would be titled the Lies of Scott Morrison. The title itself is NPOV and a perfectly reasonable summary of the sourcing. One can certainly debate whether or not there is UNDUE weight around lies, misstatements, half-truths and truth, but that's a content dispute and irrelevant to AfD. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 10:05, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • You've missed the point. We currently have two articles in all of Wikipedia on "Veracity of Statements by …". One of them is Donald Trump. Are you seriously suggesting that we open up a category of similar articles for all politicians??? --Pete (talk) 02:23, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The topic has received coverage from many reliable sources. Publications including Guardian, ABC News, 9news, the Diplomat, the Conversation, and Crikey have specifically addressed the veracity of statements made by Morrison as a topic in its own right. Articles from these sources have been cited in the page as references. This topic has also been the subject of public debate by high-profile public figures from different sides of the political spectrum, as well as in the international community. This should indicate that it is of sufficient interest to the public to be regarded as noteworthy. The fact that what various sources have to say about the topic happens to be negative does not automatically make the article an attack page. The page exists to summarise discourse from reliable sources on the veracity of Morrison's statements regardless of whether they are positive or negative. If reliable sources published positive coverage on Morrison's veracity, that would be included in the article too. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 12:19, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Accusing your political opponents of lying is the oldest manoeuvre in democratic politics, and the fact that such accusations receive routine coverage does not justify the existence of a whole article on it. Agree with Pete that this is obviously a political attack page which has no place on Wikipedia. Atchom (talk) 12:45, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The issue has been commented on by individuals from across the political spectrum. Discourse on the subject is not limited to statements made by Morrison's political opponents, it includes comments by fellow conservatives from the same party, individuals outside the political sphere, and foreign leaders. Calling the page an attack page does not make it one - an attack page must exist for the purpose of disparaging the subject and be poorly sourced. The page is titled Veracity of statements by Scott Morrison, leaving scope to include both positive and negative coverage of the subject matter. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 14:31, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - An impressively detailed and referenced article (kudos to @Combustible Vulpex:!). This has been a particularly notable topic in Australian politics in recent months and years. Precedent in the Trump article is strong; editors outside of Australia would do well to keep WP:GLOBAL in mind. The article is particularly notable to a global audience given the involvement of former leaders and Macron/AUKUS etc. Of course WP:NPOV is important; I suspect that as the federal election campaign continues, the topic will attract more attention from unbiased and respected sources, which may help. If the consensus is to delete, however, I would recommend adding sections in the articles on Scott Morrison, 2022 Australian federal election#Background, and/or Post-truth politics#International examples. Neegzistuoja (talk) 23:37, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Nom's claim this is an attack page is clearly untrue. The page is well-sourced and covers a notable topic. While politicians are frequently accused of having an uneasy relationship with the truth it is uncommon for a leader to be accused of having a record of deception by leaders of major allies (the French President) and senior members of his own party (Gladys Berejiklian, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells). The article is not purely a list of lies but actually a broader analysis of Morrison's falsehoods and deception and the coverage from reliable sources of that and impact on Australian politics and foreign relations. AusLondonder (talk) 00:36, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep, but God this article was badly written. I have cleaned up a lot of it, and more needs to be done. There does seem to be substantial media interest in Scott Morrison repeating falsehoods, but the question of whether the material here should be merged into the article on Scott Morrison is just a question of the length of the text of this article. If it ends up being trimmed down to the point that it fits in Scott Morrison, it should just be merged there: whether a standalone article for this would or wouldn't make sense is mostly a question of whether all the relevant things there are to say about the topic are too much to fit in the main article on Morrison. Endwise (talk) 06:47, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Plenty of coverage of whether his statements are true or not. Doctorhawkes (talk) 08:45, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The topic has received Plenty coverage from many reliable sources. Alex-h (talk) 10:44, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep well referenced article backed by significant coverage. There is too much to merge into main ScoMo article. LibStar (talk) 02:44, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Sufficient coverage from reliable sources is available. Spkabil (talk) 03:54, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep – Article appears neutral and based on his own statements, with a good amount of references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hey man im josh (talk • contribs) 2022-04-07T16:39:12 (UTC)
  • Delete Morrison's false statements have been reported on before, but general coverage regarding the veracity of his statements does not appear to warrant this article. Most politicians lie, and it's normal for their lies to be documented in RS, but having an article like this requires something more special. It would require thorough analysis of his lies as a whole and substantial commentary about his pattern of lying, and that does not appear to be the case. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 17:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question What is this article a WP:SPINOFF from? Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The material here would have put in a section in the article Scott Morrison, but it is too long in comparison to the length of the article. If that was done it would have been spun out into its own article.
    Agree with Endwise's comments above that whether this should be a separate article from Scott Morrison is a question of the length of the article. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 00:51, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The main issue I have with this article is that it's just a list of WP:RECENT news stories about lies Morrison has told, rather than being a well sourced commentary on the veracity of his statements. I contend that the actual coverage about the veracity of his statements is not worthy of its own article. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 02:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Cheers for clarifying that, I think that's a legitimate argument to be made even if I don't necessarily share the same view. I admit the issue with 'recentism' is tricky because he's only been in office for a few years, and will probably require some judgement calls to be made, which people will have different views on. I (and some others) consider the coverage to be enough, but ultimately, this debate will probably come down to whether people think there is enough coverage of the statements be notable. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 03:08, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Oh my God, this definitely needs deleting as a perfect example of what Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, meaning we define things. We don't have op/ed pieces or exposés, which is exactly what this reads like. We're not here to right great wrongs or get to some ultimate truth. There is no thing here to be defined. This is a truth hunt, and you could change the prepositional phrase "veracity of" to "truth of" in the title without altering the meaning one bit. That's not what we're here for. Imagine if we had an article (and use the term article loosely) like this on every politician. And why stop there? We could have such articles on the veracity of celebrities, science, or even religion? By golly, then we'd be just like the rest of the internet. An encyclopedia article should begin "Subject is...", and if you can't, then that's a good indication it doesn't belong. (And I'd say the same for the Trump exposé or any other like it.) Zaereth (talk) 18:17, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether or articles on the veracity of other subjects should exist is a different issue, and not the one being discussed here. See WP:OTHERSTUFF. The question of whether this article should exist should be determined by reference to the GNG.
    The article would be a ‘truth hunt’ if it consisted of original research. This is not the case. Even though the article discusses the ‘truth’ of statements made by the subject, commentary on the veracity of Morrison’s statements comes from reliable sources cited in the article, NOT original research.
    While most articles start with defining their subject, this is not necessarily the case; many articles do not. You may argue that there is no 'thing' to be defined, but this does not preclude the subject matter from being the topic of an article. See these examples:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_relating_to_social_networking_services
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_psychiatry
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk Combustible Vulpex (talk) 02:52, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is not an encyclopedia article. It's an exposé. These are two completely different styles of writing, and you can't simply call it encyclopedic and expect people to be fooled any more than you can cook an egg and call it fried chicken. The definition of exposé is: "report that reveals the shocking truth about something". That's what Chris Hanson from Dateline does. Encyclopedias just don't do that without being laughable. As in all exposés, despite the misleading name, the subject of this article is lying. That's a verb, not a noun, and information on lies he may have told belong in his article. Like Frickeg says below, it's an NPOV nightmare. Let me ask you, have you included any truths he may have told? Zaereth (talk) 03:39, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As has already been stated elsewhere, should there be positive coverage of Morrison's veracity by relevant news sources or publications, that is within the scope of the article. Have you done a simple search for any notable commentary of truths he has told? I don't see many notable sources praising how honest he is, but you or any other editor is welcome to add such commentary should you find it.
Whether or not any relevant truths have been included here can be a matter for discussion, but not here. That is an issue for the article's Talk page, not AfD. Anyways, I'll indulge you on your last point briefly for the sake of the discussion. Also, see this section which includes statements by Barnaby Joyce which actually praise his veracity, as well as this section, which includes positive commentary by Josh Frydenberg. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 04:41, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The existence of the article creates the NPOV problem, not the content. A similar article could be written and adequately sourced for the vast majority of politicians (I imagine there would be sufficient sourcing for most Australian PMs and all US presidents at a minimum). But the existence of the article is in and of itself a statement, and thus it is inherently against WP:NPOV. Frickeg (talk) 07:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The very concept of this article is an unavoidable violation of WP:NPOV, as for it to exist at all it requires a judgement that Morrison's truthfulness or otherwise is out of the ordinary - a value judgement in itself. This kind of article is an extremely dangerous path to go down. Zaereth's points above are highly relevant. Frickeg (talk) 20:32, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not trying to change your vote, but if contributors thought the article was one-sided, why wouldn't they add evidence of where his contested statements are true? Doctorhawkes (talk) 07:52, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Responding here to both this comment and your comment above. The article itself does not pass a value judgement about Morrison's truthfulness - it merely reports on a value judgement that has been made by a consensus of other reliable sources. It would be a breach of NPOV for the article to consist of original research that made this judgement on its own. On the other hand, if a majority of reliable sources all appear to make the same value judgement (which lets say is the judgement that Morrison's truthfulness is out of the ordinary) then to have an article documenting and analysing that phenomenon should not be considered a breach of NPOV. NPOV does not prevent articles from being written about topics where majorities have passed a value judgement. To interpret NPOV in such a way is too simplistic and would prevent articles from being written about many noteworthy topics. For instance, the article titled Propaganda in China can exist without breaching NPOV even though messaging being considered propaganda implies a value judgement has been made about it. The same could be said about the article Enron Scandal, for something to be a scandal implies that it is wrong and outrageous. The existence of these pages and others like them imply that some value judgement is involved but they can still be written in a way that is compliant with NPOV. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 13:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: Add anything relevant to the appropriate pages in the series. Gusfriend (talk) 08:34, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: per arguments of Zaereth and Frickeg with a side order of WP:NOTNEWS. Anything genuinely significant can be merged to the main article, but most of this is just trivia. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 10:48, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Partisan attack page created on the eve of an election. Personal essay built on discreet events joined together in an original synthesis. Wikipedia is not a venue for political campaigning and dirty tactics. 12:41, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duffbeerforme (talk • contribs)
    woops, one two many ~. Yep, that was my !vote. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:06, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. If any subject matter covered in this article is properly-sourced and of demonstrable significance, discussion of it belongs in the Scott Morrison biography. I can see no evidence from the talk page for that article that a proposal to fork this putative subtopic off was made, and without such prior discussion, creation of such a fork is premature, to say the least. Any article of this form is liable to be inherently of questionable neutrality, and it would take a very strong consensus to justify it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: I agree that this was set up as an attack page from the get-go. Just examine the language; the first sentence of the lead is "Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made numerous false and misleading statements over the course of his political career." The final sentence of the lead is "Public perception of Morrison's tendency to deliver false statements has been seen as problematic for his political party, the Liberal National Coalition." The first sentence of the main body of text is "Scott Morrison's history of making false statements has received significant media attention, which has led to issues for Morrison with public trust and repeated criticism from the Australian Labor Party." And so on and so forth; the article presumes that Morrison is a habitual liar, rather than set forth the sources in a NPOV fashion and invite the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Honestly, this skirts G10, well-presented or no. Ravenswing 15:56, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you or other editors dispute the neutrality of the article, then you should go and find reliable sources with other POVs and include them in the article. As has been mentioned before, the title leaves scope for inclusion of POVs that provide both positive and negative coverage. It happens that are very few reliable sources providing positive coverage of the subject, and this should not preclude an article from being written about the topic. I see what you are saying about the language, and the first sentence has now been changed to read more neutrally and better reflect the sources. But in any case, that is an issue with the content of the article, which is separate to the question being considered at an AfD. G10 exists to cover articles where there is no sourcing, this is not the case here so G10 is not relevant. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    "Gosh, I changed a single sentence, so that means I didn't write an attack page after all!" No, sorry, I'm not swallowing that. Nor am I swallowing that there are "very few reliable sources" providing positive coverage of the Prime Minister of Australia, for pity's sake: the man was elected to Parliament fifteen years ago, and you're alleging that just about no one in the press has written anything positive? No, I'm not swallowing that either. Ravenswing 11:39, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: This is a horrible hit piece, appearing politically motivated. I'd even say it warrants G10 speedy deletion (though I see that has already been tried). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Andy and Ravenswing. Borderline G10. Concur with Boing! that this appears as a politically-motivated hit piece, intended to disparage a politician during an election campaign. Jip Orlando (talk) 17:21, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This is a hit piece written for partisan reasons connected with an election next month. This should be discussed more briefly and in a less tendentious way at Scott Morrison. Cullen328 (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether or not there is an election ongoing is completely irrelevant to an AfD. The article should be debated on its merits or lack thereof, rather than aspersions cast about other editors. The same goes for comments by Zebedee and Jip above. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 08:15, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Combustible Vulpex: Attacking every comment and badgering everyone you disagree with really won't get you anywhere, you know. It just makes you look more like a single-purpose battleground proponent. Oh, and desribing it as a horrible hit piece *is* describing it on its merits - and the possible motivations of an editor who creates an attack article are indeed a valid part of a deletion discussion. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:15, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment On looking at the the contributions of User:Combustible Vulpex I find that their first contribution to Wikipedia was less than three weeks ago, they made a few trivial edits in unrelated areas and then dropped this article in one edit, all 58K worth, in one go. Perhaps this editor is no stranger to Wikipedia and has some previous history here? That is most unuaual behaviour for someone with a welcome message still on their talk page. --Pete (talk)
What you're suggesting is untrue, this is the only account I own or have owned. I am a Newcomer and have learned to use the interface through those past edits and reading various guides. This should be apparent from the formatting mistakes I made while putting up the article. If you think I am a banned user or using an alt-account then there are other channels to raise that and you should take that discussion there rather than cast aspersions here. You should be focusing on the content itself, not the editor.Combustible Vulpex (talk) 00:55, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I too, am curious about that. But an SPI, would be required. GoodDay (talk) 14:29, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete per Zaereth, Ravenswing, Andy and Frickeg. Strong violation of WP:NPOV and probably WP:NOR. The article is effectively one user's political attack "essay": the first sentence of the article shows exactly why it should be deleted - it puts forward an allegation that Morrison is a liar and then uses sources partisanly (if that's a word) throughout each subheading to back up that thesis. To the extent there are any valid NPOV sources about criticisms, it hasn't been demonstrated that the existing Scott Morrison page (or subpages about the Governments he has led) are not adequate places to put that content. The article is not redeemable and must be deleted. Deus et lex (talk) 23:44, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The opening sentence has now been changed following criticism to read more neutrally. If you think the article is "not redeemable" by virtue of the topic, then I disagree with you. Veracity of statements by Donald Trump is evidence that an article can be written on the veracity of a political figure's statements and still be NPOV. If you think the content of the article isn't NPOV, then that's a content dispute rather than something that should go in AfD. As has been stated before, the question of whether the content should be moved to the Scott Morrison page is an issue of length. Combustible Vulpex (talk) 06:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    A couple of points in reply: (1) The opening sentence still is based on an allegation that Morrison is a liar and then uses particular incidents to back that thesis up. When it uses statements like "credibility" and that sort of thing then it veers away from NPOV into attack page territory. The page is defamatory, and if Morrison wasn't a public figure used to receiving criticism it would have been deleted some time ago. (2) In terms of your arguments about content, there comes a point at which an article is so badly written in violation of Wikipedia policies that the better option is to get rid of it. This is clearly one of them. Other users have indicated that the page borders on G10 speedy deletion, which suggests it does fall into that sort of category. Deus et lex (talk) 22:57, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    To go further, some of these "examples" aren't backed up by secondary sources describing the criticism (e.g. the whole Novak Djokovic section doesn't include any sources describing any criticism of Morrison at all - it's hard to know what the "veracity" that has been challenged in fact is), are statements not attributed to Morrison at all but to others (e.g. the 2019 bushfires example which refers to a statement by his office, not by him), or are statements where there's an easily available explanation so are hardly a criticism of the veracity of the statement (e.g. the Hillsong one where statement that he "hasn't been at Hillsong for 15 years" could just be a statement that he hasn't attended it as his local church for that time, rather than not at all). The article heavily relies on opinion pieces to explain the alleged criticisms too (often as the only secondary source). It is a complete mess, and there is no other explanation than it is an attack page that violates Wikipedia policy. Deus et lex (talk) 23:17, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I've deleted a fair few of the examples where there was no merit to the criticism (as described above). Further to that, a significant number of the alleged "criticisms" in the article are just refutations of the primary claim by ABC Fact Check - that really isn't a justifiable criticism that has been reported on by independent sources. Some of the others are just petty. Every example I look at in here has problems. Deus et lex (talk) 23:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete An attack page; clearly serving as a list of bad things Morrison did. Perhaps an article called Scott Morrison controversies could be created, but the concept of ScoMo's evaluation as a reliable source seems rather unnotable, so this is not the article. Dunutubble (talk) (Contributions) 02:15, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No offense intended, but in my opinion even a controversy section becomes an NPOV problem for the same reason. Not only do people incorrectly use the word "controversy" ("a widespread public debate", not simply anything negative about a subject) merely walling it off in its own section or article creates an intrinsic unbalance. I like the analogy of a UPS plane. Before they load cargo on a plane, they first load it into sections called "igloos" (due to their shape). They carefully weigh each igloo, to make sure they are all balanced, regardless if one has a million packages or just one. If they load all the heavy stuff into just one igloo, the whole plane will be off balance and go down in flames. This isn't much different from WP:BALANCE and WP:WEIGHT, and other aspects of NPOV and NOR, including synth. Instead of walling it off in its own section, information should like this should be distributed throughout the subject's article in its proper place in the timeline of events. Same info, but now the article is balanced. Zaereth (talk) 03:29, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree the Trump "article" should be deleted as well, but I'm not going to nominate it. If someone else wants to, I'll put in my two cents. With Trump, he's a bit of a special case, in that I don't think anyone could ever accuse him of lying. I don't think he could pull off a lie with a script, cue cards, and props. The man simply has no filter; whatever goes through his mind comes out his mouth. As much as I've never liked him, even before politics, I do believe that is the one thing that made him so attractive to so many people who are on neither side. Everything he says may be completely wrong, but at least you know it's what he truly believes, and to those people this exposé will only serve to reinforce their support of him; opposite to its intended purpose. Without careful thought, sometimes these things just backfire in the face of their creators. Zaereth (talk) 20:34, 10 April 2022 (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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