User:Hartboy/Notability (proposed legislation)

See Talk:Performance Rights Act#Old act and notability for the genesis of this essay

This essay is an attempt to establish more certain guidelines to be used when determining whether a specific piece of proposed legislation merits its own article. Questions about the notability of certain pieces of pending legislation have arisen several times, but to date no attempt has been made to address the issue as a whole, nor does it show up in the common outcomes of articles proposed for deletion.

"Proposed legislation" can refer to one of two types of legislation:

1. Failed legislation - Legislation that was introduced in a previous legislative session but never passed
2. Pending legislation - Legislation that is pending in a current legislative session, and which may or may not eventually become law.

It's safe to say that proposed legislation in either form is not inherently notable. The United States Congress alone sees over 10,000 proposed bills a session — now consider how much legislation is proposed every year around the world (not to mention what's proposed in state and provincial legislatures). Your average piece of proposed legislation is simply a run-of-the-mill item. The burden is on the editor to show notability — without some indicia of notability, proposed legislation, whether failed or pending, should be presumed non-notable.

The bottom line is, considering the vast amount of bills proposed every year worldwide, the slim percentage of those that actually do get past, and the small amount of those that historically pass Wikipedia's notability guidelines, it is fair to say that pending legislation should be presumed not notable. This does not mean proposed legislation cannot be discussed in already existing articles where the bill is related to the topic. It only means extreme caution should be used when creating a new article for proposed legislation – much more so in the case of pending legislation than failed legislation.

Guidelines for determining notability of failed legislation

The fact that a bill failed to become law weighs heavily against notability, but some unsuccessful bills do merit their own articles. The Equal Rights Amendment, the Clinton health care plan of 1993, and the Annexation Bill of 1866 are just several examples on Wikipedia that are notable. Existing guidelines and policies are usually sufficient to determine notability of failed legislation. Based on previous debates for proposed deletion of failed legislation, special attention should be paid to the guidelines on notability of events — has the proposed legislation had lasting effects beyond any debate it may have sparked while it was pending? Have those effects been re-analyzed in reliable sources? Has coverage of the bill extended beyond a flash-in-the-pan period, and is that coverage from diverse sources? All of these are indicias of notability.

The archived debate for the proposed deletion of the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 serves as an example of how notability of proposed but ultimately failed legislation is demonstrated.

Along with Wikipedia's general notability guidelines, the following circumstances specific to legislation should weigh against notability:

• If the bill is a prior, substantially similar version of a bill that eventually became law

Guidelines for determining notability of pending legislation

When contemplating the creation of an article on a particular piece of pending legislation, the editor should ask herself, "if this legislation fails to pass, will it still be notable?"

Generally speaking, pending legislation will eventually result in one of the following outcomes:

1. It fails to pass and is forgotten
2. It fails to pass, but a similar bill is passed in a later session
3. It fails to pass, but achieves notability based on subsequent events
4. It passes and becomes law

The first example is, by and large, the most common outcome for any piece of pending legislation. The amount of legislation proposed worldwide (and subsequently forgotten) compared to the amount passed justifies the presumption that any given pending bill is presumed to be not notable.

The second example can lead to clutter and confusion if notability guidelines aren't adhered to. To see the extent of what can happen in the second case, check out Patent Reform Act of 2005, Patent Reform Act of 2007, and Patent Reform Act of 2009. According to the article histories, each one was written when the legislation was pending.

The third and fourth outcomes also weigh against establishing notability for pending legislation. A bill that spurs subsequent events is not notable prior to those events; a bill that later becomes law achieves notability upon becoming law.

Keeping these ideas in mind, Wikipedia editors should keep in mind the following:

Pending legislation is analogous to current events

Pending legislation that does attract a lot of attention from the press and other sources – thus making notability debatable — often does so because it is connected to a larger political movement, national controversy, or rising political persona. Often it is the case that discussion of the pending legislation is better served as a subsection in an article on the topic that is causing its popularity. This avoids notability debates.

The likelihood that a proposed bill will become law may be factored into a notability analysis if that likelihood can be established through reliable sources. However, this alone should not determine notability or lack thereof. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. This guideline cuts both ways though. Oftentimes, a FUD campaign against a proposed bill will lead to its popularity on certain channels of the internet, including discussions of the dire outcomes that will assuredly result from its passage. Arguing that a bill will "lead to jack-booted thugs knocking down the doors of ordinary citizens to steal their children" or what-have-you is not enough to establish notability.

It is important to keep in mind the distinction between notability and newsworthiness. Existence does not equal notability, and Wikipedia is not news. Pending legislation is analogous to current events, so the guidelines relating to notability of events should be closely followed.

Pay attention to sources

Verifiability of sources used in articles on pending legislation should be thoroughly scrutinized when discussing notability. As several proposals for article deletion suggest (see, e.g., WP:Articles for deletion/American Sovereignty Restoration Act) debate over what constitutes reliable sources can become very contentious.

Pending legislation, on its own, is never notable. That is, the text of a proposed bill can not establish notability. All proposed legislation itself is tracked by numerous official and unofficial websites and services. In the United States, for example, one can read the text of pending legislation at http://thomas.loc.gov, http://www.opencongress.org, and http://www.govtrack.us, just to name a few. Primary sources of a bill's text itself like these cannot be used to establish notability.

Watch for red flags. A claim that a piece of relatively unnoticed legislation will change vast swaths of law in a fundamental way needs to be backed up with exceptional sources.

Issues caused by the political process

"Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made."

Establishing the notability of pending legislation poses a special challenge because of the nature of the political process. It should not be a secret that many of the tools used by those jockeying for political advantage are diametrically opposed to Wikipedia's policies of maintaining a neutral point of view and using reliable sources. Wikipedia often finds itself in the crossfire of debates over particularly contentious pieces of legislation, with both sides attempting to shape the truth the way they see it.

Many articles created about pending legislation are created to promote a tangentially-related bias. This coatracking can mask the notability of the proposed bill itself. Pending legislation does not inherit notability from the larger issues or debates that it is connected to. Reference to pending legislation may, however, be appropriate in articles concerning those larger issues or debates.

Inclusion of otherwise non-notable proposed legislation may contribute to Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Politicians are not immune from Fringe theories, and proponents of fringe theories see some proposed bills as evidence of their espoused beliefs. What better place to right great wrongs than in an article about a piece of proposed legislation that people need to know about else all is lost.

Best practices

Before creating a new article for a specific piece of pending or failed legislation, you should ask if the following can be done instead:

• Can a subsection be created for the bill in an existing article? For example, a U.S. bill on bankruptcy reform could be mentioned in Bankruptcy in the United States#History.
• If the legislation is most notable for spawning a wider movement, should an article be created covering the larger movement in general rather than the specific legislation? That was the consensus reached in discussion about the No Child Left Inside Act of 2009.

Previous Wikipedia discussions on specific pieces of proposed legislation

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gas tax holiday
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988
• Talk:Performance Rights Act#Old act and notability
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Sovereignty Restoration Act
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/No Child Left Inside Act of 2009