Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Weber (2nd nomination)

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 Delete. Michig (talk) 07:19, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Linda Weber

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Weber was borderline notability before, with her coverage being mostly about her candidacy; now that she's announced that she's suspending her campaign for the NJ-7th House seat, she's unlikely to be notable in the future. Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:33, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 06:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 06:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Being a candidate wasn't enough for notability in and of itself the first time, and the debate closed no consensus rather than a clear keep — and there weren't, and still aren't, enough sources here that predate the routine campaign coverage to deem her as having had preexisting notability for her prior work. But if her candidacy's now been withdrawn, and even the person who was most vocal in the first debate that candidacy should be enough is himself the nominator this time around, then that effectively erases every single vote that kept it from being a delete consensus the first time. Bearcat (talk) 16:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: this article failed WP:NPOL when it was created, and it fails it now. I find it...odd...that the article's creator is the one nominating it for deletion now, as he vehemently opposed its deletion when I nominated it for deletion a month ago, arguing not only that it met WP:NPOL but that Weber was "notable as a business executive" and "easily meets the general notability guideline." But now that she's no longer a candidate in a race, she's not notable after all? This is the exact reason for WP:NPOL; we need to be building a timeless encyclopedia, not serving as a temporary host for campaign literature. Marquardtika (talk) 03:12, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:33, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete- I'm not going to attack the nominator, but I just like to point out this is why she wasn't notable the first time. Someone's level of notability doesn't decrease over time. If we're going to create an article on a person, it should be someone who is going to have lasting notability, not just someone who shows up in the current news cycle.--Rusf10 (talk) 03:36, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. As the person who created the article, who then argued 'keep' during the previous AfD discussion, I'd say that at those times, yes, she was notable -- in the NJ-7th, an important hotly-contested congressional district attracting national coverage -- and she had enough coverage to put her into the 'keep' zone although I'd agree it was somewhat of a borderline case before. She met the GNG but didn't meet NPOL. So in March 2018, she drops out of the race -- who can predict that -- stuff happens -- and her act of dropping out, in a real sense, invalidates the previous references and her notability. It is like she lopped off her future potential? Like, if she had stayed the fight, and lost, she would have been still notable in my view. Regardless, I'd like to add that my experience here at Wikipedia has taught me to cultivate detachment, and not get one's eyeballs glued to a particular landscape; fixedness can cripple our minds -- fluidity is good since we live in a world which changes, and we do the best that we can. She was notable, now she's not, stuff happens.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 09:21, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

She never met GNG. You just have a flawed understanding of GNG.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:48, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Candidacy-related coverage does not help a person meet GNG while they're still a candidate, because if it did then every candidate in any election would always pass GNG and thus be exempted from having to pass NPOL. There are exceedingly rare exceptions for candidates on the order of Christine O'Donnell, who got so much nationalized and internationalized coverage that her article is longer than, and cites three times as many distinct sources as, the article about the actual senator that she lost to — but every candidate does not get an automatic GNG pass just because some media coverage exists in the campaign context itself, because some media coverage always exists for all candidates in that context. And there's also no such thing as temporary notability on here, either: either a person stays notable forever, or they were never really notable enough in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 17:09, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Also, WP:NOTTEMPORARY. There's no Wikipedia policy that supports political candidates being notable qua candidates, and then no longer being notable once they are no longer candidates. In fact, our notability guidelines are designed precisely to avoid this. Someone is either notable or they are not, it doesn't depend on whether they are active candidates in a political campaign. Marquardtika (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:23, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you people feel so strongly that you're right, then consider rewriting the rules. Rewrite it so that NPOL takes precedence over the GNG.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GNG is not, and never has been, as simple as "media coverage exists so we have to keep". Lots of people get some media coverage in contexts that don't count as notability claims — as I've pointed out before, if all we had to do to get an article kept was show that two pieces of media coverage exist, and the context of why it existed didn't have to clear a notability standard because its existence was enough in and of itself, then we would have to keep an article about my mother's neighbour who got into a couple of newspapers for finding a pig in her front yard. And by the same token, an otherwise non-notable person doesn't suddenly clear GNG just because her taste in interior design got her a "look at this person's lovely furniture" spread in the Homes section of the local newspaper (a thing which has also been attempted on Wikipedia more than a few times), or because she once wrote a letter to the newspaper's food section asking for a kale recipe (which has also been tried on Wikipedia...by you, in fact.) And again, no candidate in any election would ever fail GNG if candidacy-related coverage were enough — which would mean that NPOL's provision for the non-notability of candidates would be inherently eviscerated, because every single candidate in any election could always claim that the candidacy-related coverage met GNG and thus exempted them from having to pass NPOL. So no, "media coverage exists" is not, in and of itself, an exemption from having to pass an SNG: the context in which that media coverage exists is relevant to whether the person actually passes GNG or not. Bearcat (talk) 16:32, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete the previous keep votes were built around flawed crystal ball arguments to keep the article. The coverage before was allroutine about the candidacy, and not as Tomwsulcer claimed showing that her previous actions rose to the level of notability. He continues to show that he does not in fact understand notability, since it is not temporary.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:44, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just saying, I could use the whole "crystal ball" arguments against your "crystal ball" arguments -- that is, supposing Weber stuck in the race, and either won the primary, congressional seat, or even lost one or both -- then she would still be notable, and she would have passed the GNG (not NPOL), and Wikipedia would have voted to keep her in (imo) if another AfD happened in the future. Like it or not, all of us make guesses all the time about whether a subject is likely to be notable in the future. And Weber's decision to quit the race (as opposed to sticking it out and losing, or sticking it out and winning) invalidated her previously notable references. She "de-notable-ized" herself by dropping out.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We don't keep or delete articles based on what might become true in the future; we keep or delete articles based on what's already true today, and then permit recreation in the future if and when things have changed. A candidate is not notable during the campaign just because campaign coverage exists — once the election is over she becomes notable if she won it, but the fact that she might win an election that's still in the future does not count as a notability claim in and of itself. We're WP:NOTNEWS, so happening to be present in the current news cycle is not in and of itself grounds for inclusion — a person gets a Wikipedia article only if and when they have a credible claim to have passed the ten year test: which means holders of notable political offices, not candidates for them. Bearcat (talk) 16:32, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're saying WP:NPOL trumps WP:GNG. It's established that the GNG takes precedence (even NPOL says so). But if you want to change this, argue that on the NPOL/GNG talk pages.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:32, 21 March 2018 (UTC) Also, the WP:10YT is an essay not official policy.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:35, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, that's not what I'm saying at all. GNG is not automatically passed the moment a couple of media sources happen to exist in a purely local context, but is rather a complex balancing act between the number of sources, their depth, their geographic range and whether any of them actually verify anything that would even count as a notability claim in the first place — so it is not necessary to deprecate GNG, or pit it in a contest against a subject-specific notability standard, to deem some topics as not passing GNG just because "some media coverage exists". There's no candidate in any election who ever fails to have some media coverage. So to actually make a candidate notable enough for a Wikipedia article on "fails NPOL but still passes GNG on the strength of her media coverage", it does take substantial evidence that her candidacy is exponentially more notable than most other people's candidacies. By your standards, my mother's neighbour would pass GNG for the pig incident, because media coverage of it exists — but she doesn't, because her sourceability doesn't actually have the volume, the geographic range or the encyclopedic relevance needed to warrant one. Bearcat (talk) 20:53, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm, who's your mother's neighbour -- I'm looking for new article topics. :) Also, as per WP:MOS, in your posting, you're exceeding your limit of italicized words (11). My concern is that your interpretation of the rules lends itself to us overstepping our authority -- the idea should be that the sources determine who is and isn't notable, newspaper editors, journalists, etc, not us, and when we start picking and choosing which sources we like and which we don't, we end up inserting our POV into the encyclopedia. Like, us, trying to gauge which coverage is routine (sheesh -- you've got me doing it) and which isn't, well that's us making editorial decisions, and I don't think the encyclopedia improves that way. I recommend that you consider challenging the rules on NPOL and GNG if you continue to feel as you do; or at least push the rules-writer types to clarify what's what.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:05, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I sometimes think of notability like a vector, an arrow: it's not just the present, but the present mixed with a bit of the future, as if the term being is linked with the idea of becoming. If we take a snapshot of a person, it's a still photo, but it's linked with the idea that they're alive, smiling, and will keep living in the future, and this forms part of our basis of photographing them in the present; it's the same with BLP Wikipedia articles. To use other words, what a person might do, or might become, informs our idea of what they are now, if that makes any sense. In philosophy there's this notion that there's a benefit of not getting fixated on a particular viewing angle. Intellectual detachment is healthy: fluid thinking, seeing again with new eyes, being flexible, being willing to re-think things. Seeing things in black and white, either-or, notable or non-notable, can be problematic. We live in a world which changes, so we shouldn't knot up the mainsail. We build sandcastles on shifting sands.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:46, 20 March 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.