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

• 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.
  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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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.
  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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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:DUCK applies. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. 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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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: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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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 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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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

• Southport
• Dulwich
• Edinburgh North
• City of London (UK Parliament constituency) -- complete results for nearly 250 years (1713 to 1850)

Canada

• Thornhill
• Sudbury (electoral district)#Election_results
• Vancouver East

Australia

• Division of Ballarat
• Electoral results for the Division of North Sydney
• Hasluck

United States

• California's 8th congressional district

Ireland

• Kildare North
• Galway West

New Zealand

• Hamilton East
• Hunua
• North Shore

Note too that very detailed election results are often included in articles on the electoral process: see for example

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

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

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]

• Speedy delete per CSD:G4.
  talk) 15:36, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • If you are going to cite a policy, it's best to read it first.
    WP:CSD#G4 says "This does not apply to content that has been undeleted via deletion review", as is the case with this article (see Wikipedia:Deletion_review/British_National_Party_election_results). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:24, 8 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:NOT, and if they serve as a good example for what political articles should look like. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(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.