Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sara Innamorato

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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. Before renominating, consider merging to Pennsylvania House of Representatives election, 2018 SoWhy 15:36, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sara Innamorato

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Sara Innamorato (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Candidate for state legislative seat with no claim to notability before this campaign. Campaign coverage is mostly local, with some national mentions as one of a group of Democratic Socialists of America candidates running this year Democratic Socialists of America candidates, 2018 election is a potential target for a REDIRECT.

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 13:06, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 13:06, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 13:07, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Her primary win was major news in Pennsylvania and was also covered nationally by the New Yorker, Washington Post, and NPR, among others. The article does not make this clear, but she is unopposed in the general election and therefore the presumptive representative-elect for her district; statewide office holders are presumed notable per WP:POLITICIAN, including those who have not yet assumed office. The article could definitely use some work but she easily passes WP:GNG and is a clear keep for me. Camerafiend (talk) 14:44, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
However, the election isn't until November. That brief, minor flurry of post-election is WP:BLP1E. I can see an excellent argument for moving this to somebody's user space. But I am wary of setting a precedent for keeping candidate articles based on an argument that boils down to : it's OK to start/keep an article about a candidate as long as you are sure that they will win....E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:14, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's true that something unexpected might happen and she could end up not being elected (which might in itself be notable depending on the circumstances). If she quietly drops out of the race and we never hear from her again, then yes, this can and should be deleted as BLP1E. But barring an unforeseen event, she will formally win office in two months and I don't really see the harm in letting the article exist in the meantime. (That said, it looks like others are leaning toward draftifying and that seems like an acceptable compromise to me.) Camerafiend (talk) 20:03, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify the coverage is not so detailed that I want to ignore the standard practice for state legislature candidates. There's also no reason to delete this. Moving to draft until November seems the best option, though a keep (partially invoking IAR) would also be reasonable. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:59, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete unelected candidates are not notable. Wikipedia is not news, so we do not have the fleeting news reasons to cover such people that the NYT and other newspapers have.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:30, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify. As near as I can tell, Pennsylvania does not simply acclaim uncontested candidates to office the moment the primaries are over — the state follows a process whereby she still has to actually get actual votes from actual voters on general election day before she's actually declared as the rep-elect. As much of a meaningless formality as this may seem, it's not — with two months still to go before election day and another month after that before the newly elected legislators actually have their status bumped up from rep-elect to incumbent officeholder, it remains entirely possible in the meantime that an "uncontested" candidate could withdraw their candidacy for personal or professional or scandal reasons, or die in a car accident, and thus not actually become the actual rep. (And for that matter, while I don't know if Pennsylvania is one of them or not, there are some jurisdictions where even an unopposed candidate still has to beat an explicit "none of the above" option on election day to actually win the election.) So her running unopposed is not, in and of itself, a reason to waive WP:NPOL — even if the election itself looks like a formality, there still do remain ways in which she could fail to actually become the incumbent representative. She still has to go into general election day as a person who actually gets voted for by the voters of her district, and power-enwiki is correct that the coverage shown so far is not so compelling as to exempt her from being treated the same way as everybody else who has to get voted for by the voters of their districts first — and furthermore, there appear to be at least six other districts across the state where a non-incumbent Democratic or Republican candidate is also running unopposed, without any of those other candidates besides Lee and Innamorato having been deemed automatically article-worthy by any Wikipedia editor yet. So it's "inevitable" enough that we should permit this to be held in draftspace, while making sure to clarify that draftspacing it is not otherwise setting a precedent to allow routine draftification of just any article about just any candidate — but it's not "inevitable" enough to grant her a mainspace exemption from NPOL yet, because as of today there are still ways in which she could not actually become a state legislator in December. Bearcat (talk) 17:24, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect without prejudice of recreation once November rolls around - we cannot presume she will win, even if she is running unopposed. I would consider this to be a similar case to a young footballer who hasn't yet appeared for the first team, but is likely to shortly - it's simply just WP:TOOSOON. I'd vote to draftify, but I think a redirection to whatever state legislative election page we can find is a better option, since there's not much to the article - the link to her campaign website violates WP:PROMO. SportingFlyer talk 02:03, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There's no need to WP:IAR, because there is no policy or guideline against keeping articles on unelected candidates. WP:NPOL explicitly says that Just being [...] 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". It's uncontested that she passes GNG, and her high probability of assuming office is a further reason to keep the article. FourViolas (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly there is more than significant coverage in reliable (local and regional) news sources independent of the candidate (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh City Paper); that's all that is necessary to pass GNG. Beyond this, shorter discussions in nationwide sources (NYT, Economist, New Yorker demonstrate broad interest, and per WP:BASIC they could be combined to establish notability even if no regional sources were considered. There is coverage of Innamorato throughout her campaign, not just of the event of winning the primary; see the first article I just linked. FourViolas (talk) 18:38, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think she passes WP:GNG either. Almost all political candidates will receive coverage of their political campaigns. There's nothing in my search showing this campaign will be particularly notable if she were to lose the upcoming election - it all seems promotional or routine. SportingFlyer talk 18:51, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
GNG says nothing about whether an article subject is a "particularly notable" example of the category it belongs to—this is a perpetual misperception of people unfamiliar with WP:N and misled by the ordinary usage of "notability". The fact that politicians whose campaigns are of interest to the public regularly receive coverage is hardly a reason to ignore the coverage when it exists; see WP:NOTROUTINE#Politics. WP:ROUTINE is supposed to apply to things like wedding announcements and crime logs; it would apply if the only coverage to be found merely stated that she declared her candidacy and received x% of the vote, which is clearly not the case here. FourViolas (talk) 20:37, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but just because someone is in the news for a short period of time doesn't automatically qualify them for an article. Consensus shows unelected candidates are frequently redirected/draftifyed in order to avoid several "what Wikipedia is not" concerns. I don't see why this candidate would be any different. (She's likely to win and I'm arguing for consistency's sake.) SportingFlyer talk 21:24, 4 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If there's a local consensus to this effect, we need to have a centralized RfC about it, because it directly contradicts the text of both WP:BASIC and WP:NPOL, and we work by the PAG: see WP:CONLIMITED. Personally, I think it's very valuable to give voters a convenient summary of what secondary sources have to say about the people asking for their vote, and accordingly I think articles on candidates should be kept whenever there is enough coverage in independent reliable secondary sources (addressing WP:NOTPROMO) to say more than a sentence or two about them. FourViolas (talk) 14:21, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think that an RfC on recognizing the notability of major party candidates for the U.S. Senate, for Governor in, say, the 10 largest states by pop., and possibly the U.S. Congress might be worth doing (after Election Day.) But keeping candidates for a seat in a state legislature goes too far. I did look at press coverage before nomination, but this is not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez level coverage, not even close.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:26, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with you - the NPOL note distinctly says, "A politician who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists." If those sources exist, they are not on her article at the moment. If you look at the Politicians articles for deletion page, we frequently delete failed candidates. Once you're notable on Wikipedia, you're always notable, and simply running for office does not automatically make you notable - it makes you a part of the news cycle for a bit, unless you receive continuing significant coverage. SportingFlyer talk 19:20, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of the first two sources I linked, do you dispute that they are news feature articles, that they are written by journalists, or that they contain in-depth coverage of Innamorato?
And regardless, the point I'm making is that pending a RfC on the working consensus you claim, there's no policy or guideline justifying the routine deletion of failed candidates because they are only notable as failed candidates; WP:NTEMP cuts the opposite way, saying that once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage. FourViolas (talk) 21:19, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
FourViolas, have you taken a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Candidates?E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As I repeatedly wrote, there is no policy or guideline allowing editors to ignore BASIC, GNG, and NPOL in the case of unelected candidates. If this really is a consensus among people who watchlist politician AfDs, all the more reason to bring it to the broader community to be ratified. FourViolas (talk) 22:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And as noted, there are a number of "what Wikipedia is not" which typically apply. WP:RECENT/WP:NOTNEWS, WP:10Y, WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCRYSTAL and WP:PROMO all apply to unelected candidates - and NPOL specifically says unelected candidates are not presumptively notable. SportingFlyer talk 23:07, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Not presumptively notable" is different from "presumptively not notable", and (as I wrote in my !vote) the guideline explicitly states that meeting GNG is a way for such candidates to be notable anyway.
  • NOTNEWS says that breaking news should not [...] treated differently from other information; a half-dozen in-depth articles in reliable sources about a candidate who ran for office in 1918 would certainly be enough to establish notability, so why not 2018?
  • NPOV requires fairly representing all reliably published views, and says nothing about notability (that only comes up in WP:FRINGE, which certainly doesn't apply presumptively to all unelected candidates!)
  • I don't know why you think NOTCRYSTAL is relevant, unless you're begging the question by assuming that actually holding office is the only way for a politician to become notable. NPOL is clear that the latter is not the case.
  • PROMO is certainly something to watch out for on the article for any active politician, incumbent or not. But unless the only available sources for a politician are partisan outlets of questionable independence, this is not a deletion rationale.
And once again, this is not the place for this discussion. Under the current notability guidelines, Innamorato is a clear keep. You're offering general reasons in favor of changing those policies in the case of unelected candidates; if you think these arguments will win over the community (despite the kinds of objections I just gave), we should start a RfC. Until then, the guidelines that currently exist take precedence. FourViolas (talk) 23:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I believe there's a consensus among currently active watchers of politicians-related AfDs; I think that was already clear. But per OSE and CONLIMITED, that consensus does not overrule the notability guidelines (which do not require non-local sources for politicians, just reliable independent in-depth ones like this). FourViolas (talk) 00:38, 6 September 2018 (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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