Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UK Community Issues Party (3rd 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 Keep. A sufficient amount of sources to establish notability. Malinaccier (talk) 00:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

UK Community Issues Party

I'm proposed this article (and several others) for either deletion or for merger into a list of small British third parties. My reasoning is that there are a decent number of minor parties which while not notable enough to merit their own page (for having contested very few elections and/or effectively having acted as the electoral vehicle for one or a few candidates) may be notable enough to mention on here. This is in part a result of there being a 'grey' area between clearly non-notable parties (those that never ran for any office) and notable ones (Labour and the Tories come to mind), and there being no clear guidelines; it partly results from the ease of party registration in the UK (and a few other Commonwealth countries).Tyrenon (talk) 06:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I'd like to see a clearer reason for why this article should be deleted; the nominator is expressing a fairly reasonable concern, but I feel like there ought to be a concrete justification for this page in particular. For reference, please see the two previous deletion debates (1st, 2nd) Avram (talk) 07:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Thanks for the expanded explanation. Working from the notability standards as they currently exist, this article should be fine-- it has nontrivial (albeit limited) coverage in independent sources, it is fully verifiable, and it is informative. While this is surely a very minor and possibly defunct party, the notability standards are not to be replaced by editors' own ideas of "obscurity". Avram (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Well, there are two reasons. First, there's what came up in the Dan Goldstick article debate: Simply running for office doesn't qualify an individual for notability, and I don't feel that it qualifies a party for notability, either. Second, and more on point, nothing they're doing seems to have, from what I can tell, made any substantial impact, and I sincerely doubt that any candidate they have run has netted even 500 votes. All of the coverage that has been cited has been in a local paper (there's nothing in, for example, the BBC), and at least one of the articles in that paper (http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2021549_petition_to_pm_calls_for_council_boss_to_go) even refers to it as an obscure party. When a party's local paper calls them obscure, that's probably not a sign of notability.

The best way to explain this is that while they may have be notable on a very local scale, I don't feel that they are notable enough to merit a full page on their own. Wikipedia readers and wonks who look through election returns notwithstanding, I sincerely believe you will be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of Surrey who has heard of this party, and not too hard-pressed to find plenty within that area who haven't heard of it.

Also, as an alternative to outright deletion, I'm suggesting rolling this and a raft of other parties (the Local Community Party, the Free Scotland Party, and a bunch of other minor ones) into a single article on minor British political parties (and such an article could probably take up a decent number of the other parties that -have- been dumped from Wikipedia if their inclusion was felt appropriate). Tyrenon (talk) 08:26, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Some of the articles listed have survived a deletion discussion, some more than once. Should it not be incumbent on those proposing deletion to explain what has changed since those decisions? Groomtech (talk) 16:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In this particular case, the decision both times was no consensus. As noted in the first instance, it was an odd case: The original nominator withdrew his nomination while the author of the article was arguing to get rid of it. In the second instance, there was again no consensus on it. A large part of the problem is that while the party has received some coverage, all of the coverage that was cited is in a single local paper. I sincerely believe that the party did not meet and continues not to meet WP:N. As it stands, with one exception, the arguments in favor of deletion last time were much stronger than those against deletion (half of the latter's votes being based on either the fact that the article either was not a hoax or that standing in an election justified the inclusion of the article, neither of which I agree mean that the party was notable). Also, this isn't a case where I'm seeking to overturn a pre-existing consensus, which I do believe shifts at least some of the burden back on the article itself, which again I don't believe has shown notability outside of a single local source.Tyrenon (talk) 18:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

More to the point, of the others with prior AfDs, one (Your Party) is actually a fine example of me bungling up the formatting on a nomination and generating the appearance of two nominations (I've still got butterfingers with some of the editing stuff). The second (Scottish Jacobite Party), one of the two is me bumbling around. The other was a debate over whether the party was a hoax or not. It's not a hoax, but just because something is real doesn't make it notable.Tyrenon (talk) 18:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Groomtech (talk) 06:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Detailed article with sufficient sources to meet WP:N. Artw (talk) 19:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I've added the rescue tag to a number of the other nominations as well, as with expansion and sourcing I beleive they are perfectly keepable. As for the idea of a gigantic merge between them all, I'm not sure AfD is the forum for it. Artw (talk) 19:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Just for reference, acc. to WP:N (and I know some people disagree with it) "attention solely by local media is not an indication of notability". Notwithstanding the links to the party's page and the Election Commission listing (the former not counting as it's strictly promotional material by the group, and the latter being a largely undetailed listing), the only source is a local media source.Tyrenon (talk) 23:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. —Artw (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 03:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notable <> importance. If we have sources then that's fine. And you can expect to see lots more small parties now that the major parties have lost public support. Worst case is that we assemble them into an omnibus article. Deletion would not be helpful in this. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:09, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. First, the only source other than the Elections Commission (purely a procedural entry, which indicates next to nothing on its own due to the relative ease of registering a party name) and the party website (again, not an indicator of notability) is a single local paper. That doesn't scream notability outside of an extremely local area, and the party's lack of electoral success suggests that it isn't particularly notable within the area. As to there being lots of new parties, it's one thing if they actually either win a substantial number of votes, run a large number of candidates, etc.; it's entirely another if it's someone out on a lark registering a party name, putting themselves and a friend or two up for election, and losing their deposit by a wide margin. Just because there are a lot of parties running around does not mean that they are notable in any way, shape, or form (particularly as many will likely be a momentary flash in the pan and then vanish).Tyrenon (talk) 02:40, 31 May 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.