Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1996 Chorley Borough Council election

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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 delete. I beg people to please review

This other AfD binds this one". Once I did that, the clear consensus is to delete this article. Guerillero Parlez Moi 12:36, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

1996 Chorley Borough Council election

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1996 Chorley Borough Council election (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Reviewed during new page patrol. I wasn't sure what to do with (ones like) this one and opened a discussion at NPP and there were mixed thoughts/ no clear answer there. Accordingly, I would like to request a thorough large-participation review as the results this might set a direction or provide guidance. This is about a 1996 election in an area with approx 107,000 residents. It consists about 99% election results data with the other 1% being a few intro sentences. There is nothing unusual about the election. Wp:not is not explicit on this but in a few places seems to preclude this type of article. There was doubtless some local coverage. Saying that "presumed local coverage" alone should green-light it would mean that there probably I'd guess about 100,000,000 stats-only local election articles that could be green lighted. I believe there is no applicable SNG, nor precedent documented in wp:outcomes. The editor appears to be in the process of creating separate article for each election / year for this borough. Thanks in advance for your thorough review of this. North8000 (talk) 15:35, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was mistaken, there is an SNG which is Wikipedia:Notability (events). IMO it pretty clearly fails that, but being an SNG, that still leaves the overall wp:notability question open. North8000 (talk) 15:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Events are probably notable if they have enduring historical significance and meet the general notability guideline, or if they have a significant lasting effect."
"Events are also very likely to be notable if they have widespread (national or international) impact and were very widely covered in diverse sources, especially if also re-analyzed afterwards (as described below)."
"Events having lesser coverage or more limited scope may or may not be notable; the descriptions below provide guidance to assess the event."
"Routine kinds of news events (including most crimes, accidents, deaths, celebrity or political news, "shock" news, stories lacking lasting value such as "water cooler stories," and viral phenomena) – whether or not tragic or widely reported at the time – are usually not notable unless something further gives them additional enduring significance."
"In evaluating an event, editors should evaluate various aspects of the event and the coverage: the impact, depth, duration, geographical scope, diversity and reliability of the coverage, as well whether the coverage is routine. "
The election 1) does not have enduring historical significance, 2) does not have widespread impact, 3) has limited scope of coverage, 4) is routine.— rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:11, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete IMO, per the normal decision making process there are two different guidelines (
    WP:Not including, by being a near "stats only" article, falling far short of "mostly prose". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:12, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    Why did you !vote on your own AfD? Elli (talk | contribs) 19:52, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In seeking a broader discussion on an open question rather than a particular outcome) I wanted to put a thorough and neutral description in the nomination and not make the case for deletion in the nomination. And so I put my input, including analysis and resultant rationale elsewhere. North8000 (talk) 18:29, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I am rather concerned that this AfD has apparently taken place without any involvement by participants in either Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom or Wikipedia:WikiProject Elections and Referendums, both of which regard the very similar 1998 Burnley Borough Council election article as being within their scope. The latter article is certainly currently somewhat more informative and better cited than this one - but the topics of two articles are very similar (Burnley is only a few miles from Chorley, and the councils themselves are generally comparable), and it is almost certain that the better sourcing of the Burnley article is due to more competent searches for (and use of) reliable sources rather than any inherent differences in the quality of those sources. (Indeed, while I don't have the expertise to get at such sources myself in any reasonable time, I would reckon that all the cited sources for the 1998 Burnley election would have almost precisely equivalent ones, from the same publications, for the 1996 Chorley one.) I would therefore strongly urge that the two projects are informed of this AfD, and that the AfD should be held open for a few more days for them to be given the chance to make their own assessments of this article and respond. PWilkinson (talk) 15:05, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The concern is not about reliable sources. The concern is the election 1) does not have enduring historical significance, 2) does not have widespread impact, 3) has limited scope of coverage, 4) is routine. Sources need to be found that contradicts at least one of those points for the election to be notable. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:09, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd echo what rsjaffe said. I'd also add that the types of attributes described typically would end up with substantial prose-type coverage of those type of things. And so an article lacking that or being a 98% "stats only" article can tend to be an indicator of that. When I opened this I requested a thorough review / discussion. I'd like it help open long enough for that to occur. So please keep this open until at least July 1. But I'd like sincere discussion on the general issues mentioned, not just hitting an area likely to come up with "keep" votes and I'm concerned that people focused on the particular geographical area involved might be that. I was hoping for a discussion of this type of thing in general which might help provide general guidance. Putting a note at a notability page might also be good....I think I'll do that. North8000 (talk) 17:00, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: This doesn't look like a good way to structure this information to me, and I think it should probably be reduced to a summary paragraph in the parent article (which would require reorganizing that article somewhat). The level of detail here is useless to the reader without further context. There is also the sourcing issue, but even if the current primary source for the election stats were replaced or supplemented by an independent secondary source, it wouldn't really change things. If there were, hypothetically, good local sources giving context and analysis (or ideally historical analysis) of the election, such as could support an article, then the fact that those sources are local should not matter. Beyond that, I don't think AFD is a good place to have this discussion, because (a) it is highly unlikely to attract a representative cross-section of knowledgeable editors, and (b) AFD is by nature a zero-sum discussion (see !votes above), but this seems like an issue that could be brought to a positive-sum solution through ordinary processes of editing and consensus. -- Visviva (talk) 18:32, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Local scope matters for notability. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 19:58, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • My own experience of this type of just stats UK local council election article was that I moved some to draft space for improvement and requested deletion of the redirects (before I got page mover rights). The over enthusiastic admin deleted the articles themselves as G13 even though they'd just gone to draft - he was later de-admined for other issues and retired. Later the creator of the articles requested their un-deletion and moved them back to mainspace. I'd had enough of them by then, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 23:53, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: I'm relisting this AFD as there is concern that interested editors are unaware of this discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 00:23, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Wikipedia has become one of the few remaining sources for detailed local election results, some from the very beginning of Wikia itself. They are honest, true, accurate, and encyclopaedic. They've survived AfDs before on the basis of being records of electoral results and should do so again. doktorb wordsdeeds 17:40, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the post. My main goal here is to try to "sort this out", and so my following post is towards that end rather than for a particular outcome. Well, Wikipedia is only supposed to contain information that is published elsewhere. Perhaps you meant "on line" or "easily searchable on line". But that argument would seem to be an argument for a complete transformation of Wikipedia. A quick ballpark guess is that there have been about 100,000,000 governmental elections. Right now having GNG type coverage is the additional criteria to screen them. With a "stats only" article condition being perhaps a flag for that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:30, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep the outcome should be the same as for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2022 St Albans City and District Council election, which was open at the same time. Any apparent difference in consensus is likely to be because that one was listed under England deletions whereas this was not, the tendency for later votes to follow the earlier ones as editors like to keep their AFD stats looking good, and the nonsense about 100,000,000 articles. Even assuming we had the results of similar numbers of elections around the world, that many would mean either going back a few millennia, or separate articles for each parish council election (unnecessary even if they were notable, as they are usually only 1, 2 or 3 wards) or equivalent. Chorley borough elections only go back to the 1970s for the current district (and the 1880s for the former municipal borough, which was smaller). I think that non-metropolitan district/borough elections are an appropriate level of coverage, and that is what consensus has always been. 82.132.186.25 (talk) 00:06, 2 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A quick guess of 100,000,000 elections is plausible, not nonsense.Every governmental entity that has elections for every year in history could easily hit 100,000,000 elections. North8000 (talk) 13:58, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 08:08, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment The St Albans AfD was closed after only two comments, so it's not an exhaustive opinion of WP editors. It shouldn't set a precedent that can never be overturned. I am worried by this. There are over 200 elections of this size every year in the UK alone, and because WP is a global encyclopaedia, we have to consider how many similar elections take place across other countries that expect coverage here: the US (obviously), Canada, India etc. etc.; we will be adding thousands of articles a year, most of which contain nothing but statistics that could easily be found elsewhere. Yes, there will be press coverage - there always is for an election - but there is no lasting interest, and if all we report is the results, then we are merely mirroring primary data as laundered through a secondary source, rather than truly secondary-sourced material. There is no doubt the information ought to be available to the public, but it's not encyclopaedia stuff. Elemimele (talk) 08:25, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment In promoting this as an example article and requesting thorough debate, I think that there could be two useful outcomes. One is that referring to to this AFD might be useful taken in the context of it being for the particulars of this election and the particulars of what is and isn't in the article and its sources. The second is that if we can get a very thorough close which summarizes the discussion, I think that that would also be very useful. And so I'd like to request such a thorough close. What this would NOT be is using the a mere "keep" or "delete" result as a blanket indicator for all election articles. North8000 (talk) 13:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete fails the criteria for EVENTCRIT. It does not have widespread (national or international) impact. These types of local elections are
    WP:ROUTINE and not really newsworthy or important, except to a relatively small local population. Fails GNG by lacking a sufficient amount reliable sources. A statistical chart or official government publications and notices are not independent reliable sources. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 18:47, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
A single AFD would have no such reach, and I never said otherwise. But a thorough discussion on a real edge-case example would be useful. North8000 (talk) 15:20, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it would because it would set a precedent that can be referred to in later AfDs. You said as much in your nom with "the results this might set a direction or provide guidance". The inevitable result of a delete here would be a mass nomination of thousands of articles with similar structure/content for UK elections alone. SpinningSpark 10:58, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Spinningspark: You view the potential impact of this AFD to be much larger than I do. And BTW it's much more plausible to take my statement that you quoted in it's context (including me saying that i wasn't concerned about the overall result) and intended meaning. Which is that the particulars of an in-depth conversation could be helpful for future discussions. North8000 (talk) 13:02, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: No clear consensus yet, but very recent ongoing discussion, which may be useful.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, TigerShark (talk) 00:53, 16 July 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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