Talk:2021 Ohio's 11th congressional district special election

Nina Turner endorsements

Considering the three criteria at WP:ENDORSE, many of the endorsements listed for Nina Turner do not belong here. Firstly, whether or not one must have a WP page to be considered notable within this scope is TBD at the article level; consider this discussion how that will be determined. Secondly, endorsements MUST be covered by reliable, independent sources (and namely not just a tweet). Right now, literally one of the endorsements listed (Ro Khanna) clears that bar; all others are sourced only to tweets or unsourced entirely. Thirdly, all endorsements must be phrased with endorse or a similar word. Some of the tweets listed here (i.e. Joe Sanberg) are unclear in that regard and thus cannot necessarily be taken by WP as a political endorsement for this specific campaign. Willing to discuss further, but I believe that as of right now, the majority of this section needs to be removed altogether with more info to be added later on. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 05:46, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:SELFSOURCE, "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves". Seems to me that a person saying "I endorse X" would count as an information about that person insofar as "did they really endorse X" is the matter at hand. It's probably not a bad idea to replace the tweets with more conventional sources when possible, but I'm not personally seeing a violation here. --Pikavangelist (talk) 22:17, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

There are plenty of violations here. Per criterion two of WP:ENDORSE, sources for political endorsements cannot be just a social media post, and per WP:SELFSOURCE, self-published sources like tweets cannot involve claims about other people, cannot comprise the majority of an article, and should be used de minimis. None of these criteria are adhered to in this article. I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but Wikipedia has tons of specific policies for literally this exact incident, and not following them would be unwise. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 22:44, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:ENDORSE directly refers to WP:RELIABLE, though, of which WP:SELFSOURCE is a subset. I completely agree that a tweet from the endorsee would be an inappropriate source (let alone a third party tweet), but I'm not convinced that the same is true of one from the person actually making the endorsement.--Pikavangelist (talk) 16:53, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

An endorsement, by nature, involves a claim about another person, as in "X endorsed Y." The way I interpret the guidelines at WP:RELIABLE and WP:SELFSOURCE is that a tweet saying something that isn't a WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim (for example, "I was born on Jan. 1") would be OK to use a source for that person's BLP. However, any claim made involving another person or about politics in general needs to be handled very seriously. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 21:24, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

AllegedlyHuman, Pikavangelist, am I overlooking something here? Item 2 is very clear that an endorsement from an individual has to be covered independently to meet the bar for inclusion. Hence no tweets, which it spells out: "Lists of endorsements should only include endorsements which have been covered by reliable independent sources. This means endorsements should not be sourced solely to a Tweet or Instagram post, for example." What am I missing? Innisfree987 (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Tagging in IOnlyKnowFiveWords, who has recently added many endorsements. I want to make sure you’re aware of the policy on these sources and ask whether any currently sourced to Tweets have a reliable independent source that could be swapped in? It would of course be great to keep the ones that do (assuming they meet the other criteria as well). Innisfree987 (talk) 23:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Innisfree987, the policy on this regard is very clear that any endorsement listed must be independent. As such, any tweets should be removed and the only references should be news articles, as I noted in my first post in this thread. The only exception to this stated in WP:ENDORSE would be for an organization as opposed to an individual, which AH bharara helpfully pointed out below. (I still have no idea why the guidance there is different). AllegedlyHuman (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Per [WP:ENDORSE], endorsements by organizations can be linked to official website or social media account.

So Gravel Institute and D4A endorsement clears that bar. Hadi (talk) 03:17, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to that. Any guess as to why that's more lenient than for an individual? AllegedlyHuman (talk) 03:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I find it a bit odd that an individual's endorsement is not deemed reliable unless a third-party WP:RS covers it. As far as common sense goes (whose use is advocated with content guidelines like WP:ENDORSE), if an individual tweeted an endorsement from a verified Twitter account, that is tantamount to said individual stating it out loud. To me the sub-text of criterion 2 reads like it refers to unreliable third parties stating it on Twitter or Instagram. It reads like a reliability criterion, not a notability criterion that would require validation from a RS. Criterion 3 discusses what constitutes as an endorsement: "In most cases, this would require use of the word "endorsement" by the person endorsing or by media coverage thereof." And Twitter is widely used as a means of "saying" things ("use of [...] word[s]" in the above excerpt) just as you would in a live interview. Selvydra (talk) 00:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Selvydra, I’ve been rereading the RfC votes and your disagreement is really with the community consensus. If you believe it has changed since last December, you can start a new RfC. But this is really very clear that in this RfC,the community insisted on independent coverage and did not accept tweets. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Resuming this discussion

Are we in agreement at minimum that ENDORSE does not allow other expressions of support that don’t specify an “endorsement”? Just to pick one I clicked on at random, this would exclude Matt Deitsch, sourced to a tweet about donating? I ask because to me the page is getting out of hand; it looks like a campaign ad and IMO violates the basic principle of WP:NOTCATALOG. It needs trimming or maybe forking but it would be a tall bar to prove “list of endorsements for an unelected candidate” wiki notable. Innisfree987 (talk) 22:15, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

"Just gave $27 to help get Nina Turner into Congress." reads to me like as "Other language which can be understood as unequivocal endorsement" (under criterion 3. in WP:ENDORSE). A clearly stated intent to help get somebody into Congress seems comparable to the "I'm backing candidate X" example in the aforementioned guideline – only one candidate can win, after all. Selvydra (talk) 00:51, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

This should not be in contention. Criterion 3 specifically mentions "comments about donating to a campaign" as enough for an endorsement, which Deitsch's quote qualifies for, IF it weren't just a tweet. It is, however, and should not be included for that reason instead. More broadly, though, I want to clarify that some messages (i.e. a retweet, a simple "good luck," or something even more nebulous than that) should not be included under any circumstance as a specific political endorsement for this campaign. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 01:02, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough re: criterion 3. I've posted re: criterion 2 below. Selvydra (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

More to your point, I think the WP:ENDORSE criteria can be used to whittle the list down – i.e. by establishing a notability threshold for endorsers and ensuring that the expressions of endorsement are reliable and explicit. Also, the page might need entries for the other candidates to add to balance, if that's a concern. Selvydra (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Definitely agree, Innisfree987. The policy is very clear: social media posts and, more generally, statements not expressly stated as "I endorse X candidate in Y race" or something very similar will not fly. I'd like to point out here that from the edit history, it seems the vast majority of these vague semi-endorsements linked to a tweet or something similar were made in one edit, as a large dump onto the page, and may in fact be worth reverting with the few good sources to be added individually and more credibly-sourced endorsements to be added later closer to the election. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 00:57, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Could you explain the thinking behind why a social media post cannot constitute an "express statement" of an endorsement? So far in this discussion, I've only seen the invocation of criterion 2 of the WP:ENDORSE guideline – not reasoning as to why. Common sense interpretation of the guideline tells me statements from one's verified Twitter account should be tantamount to a live statement. The news media has long already covered politicians' tweets as their express statements. Selvydra (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Selvydra, if you can find instances covered by (reliable) newsmedia, please substitute that ref and the endorsement can stay. That would be very helpful. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:17, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Continuing this conversation in the above section, in a reply to your other comment. Selvydra (talk) 01:20, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 December 2020

Add Andrew Yang to "Endorsements" under the "Notable Individuals" section. Guybeingdude (talk) 04:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think just one tweet can allow him to be put there. h 05:17, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

He's certainly notable, but User:Lettherebedarklight is correct. Unless there's an independent source saying Yang endorsed Turner (which there may be, or there may be one soon!), we can't add him to the endorsement section per WP:ENDORSE. AllegedlyHuman (talk) 06:14, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

References