Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jon Ossoff

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. Recall that WP:NPOL is only a guideline; it has been well-demonstrated in this discussion (and consensus has been reached) that this individual meets the general notability guidelines.) NW (Talk) 14:06, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Jon Ossoff

Jon Ossoff (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Most of the coverage is either trivial or routine. Fails WP:NPOL. Should really be a redirect, but keeps getting re-added. If this person wins, then the article should be reinstated, but right now he's one of several minor players in a run-off election. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 03:22, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Jbh ^Talk 03:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. Jbh ^Talk 03:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Redirect and protect He's not presently notable, but his name is a valid search term for Georgia's 6th congressional district special election, 2017. I created this as a redirect to see newly registered accounts (sock or meatpuppets possibly) try to force this into an article. It should be a redirect for the time being and hopefully an admin can protect it so that it can't be edited until a convincing case for GNG can be made. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:27, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment: Totally agree Muboshgu, and that's what was attempted. Unfortunately those who don't understand what the notability criteria mean continued to reconstitute the page. So I figured we should bring it here to bring about the result you suggest above. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:10, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Delete no objection to redirect but only if it is full edit protected to avoid further issues, fails WP:POL. Probably is a candidate for WP:SALT based on the complaints of recreation above. Jbh ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC) Last edited: 14:44, 23 February 2017 (UTC) (UTC)
  • I think it would be better to protect it as a redirect because he could become notable, possibly even if he loses. If he wins he's a member of the U.S. Congress. Either way it's clear an admin should prevent it from becoming a full article unless there's good reason to do so. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Redirect Per Muboshgu. Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 03:46, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Keep Favored candidate on the democratic side, leading the polls, and generating national press, endorsements, and fundraising. - modern_seneca (talk) 03:57, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Please read WP:GNG and WP:POLITICIAN. He doesn't (yet) meet those. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:08, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't WP:POLITICIAN be satisfied via item 2? Receiving significant local press coverage and endorsements from 3 of the biggest Democratic figures in GA? By my reading of WP:GNG it is satisfied, which bullet point there would you say is not met? - modern_seneca (talk) 06:06, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
      • The significant coverage has to be in the context of holding office, not in the context of merely running for it. Every candidate for any office always generates "significant" coverage in the local media, because covering local elections is the local media's job — so campaign coverage falls under WP:ROUTINE. If it could get a person over WP:GNG by itself, we would have to keep an article about everybody who was ever a candidate for any elected position at all, because local coverage of local election campaigns always exists. Bearcat (talk) 18:45, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Case for Meeting WP:GNG

• "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.
  • I would argue that this coverage from ABC News having a large photo of Ossoff as the article header and 4 sentences devoted to Ossoff's accomplishments. This should constitute more than a mention. -- Seneca ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• "Reliable" means sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline. Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language. Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability.
  • I think ABC News, NY Mag, Independent, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Daily KOS aught to be considered reliable enough. -- Seneca ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
    • Daily Kos is not a reliable source for our purposes — it's a publication whose content is created by activist bloggers, not by professional journalists. Of the other sources, three of them are just glancing namechecks of Ossoff's existence in an article about a related topic (two are coverage of the race itself, which would be expected to exist because special elections always get coverage, and one is about a film), while the only one that's substantively about Ossoff is in the local media (where, again, deeper coverage of the individual candidates in a local election would be expected to exist.) None of this suggests that he's garnered more than the WP:ROUTINE level of coverage that all candidates in an election at this level of office could always expect to garner. Bearcat (talk) 15:57, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
• "Sources" should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. Sources do not have to be available online or written in English. Multiple publications from the same author or organization are usually regarded as a single source for the purposes of establishing notability.
  • Again, ABC News, NY Mag, Independent, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Daily KOS should constitute multiple secondary sources. -- Seneca ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• "Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent.[4]
  • Again, ABC News, NY Mag, Independent, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Daily KOS should be considered independent of the subject -- Seneca ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—perhaps because it violates what Wikipedia is not, particularly the rule that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.
  • This criteria appears a bit subjective, but at this point it seems reasonable that we have created the "assumption not the guarantee" that Ossoff warrants an separate article. -- Seneca ^Talk 03:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
• Redirect to the election article, without prejudice against recreation on or after election day if he wins. A person does not get a Wikipedia article just for being a candidate in an election they haven't won yet — if they haven't already held a notable office, then they have to be shown and sourced as having already cleared our notability standards for another field of endeavour. Coverage of local elections always exists, so such coverage cannot be used to show GNG — if it could, then we would have to keep an article about everybody who was ever a candidate for anything at all.
  And no, whether a person is favoured or projected to win or lose the election does not boost their notability either, as Wikipedia does not deal in the realm of election predictions — candidates who were "favoured" during the campaign have gone on to lose the election (if "favoured" always necessarily translated to winning, then Hillary Clinton would be sitting in the White House right now), and different sources can make different projections of which candidate is "favoured" during the campaign (see the dispute during the 2012 election over whether Nate Silver's read of the polls as favouring Obama was more or less accurate than Dean Chambers's "unskewing" of the polls as favouring Romney), and the question of who's "favoured" to win the election can have different answers at different times in the campaign (Canada's national election in 2015 started out with the NDP favoured to win and Tom Mulcair favoured to become the new prime minister, but at about the midway point Justin Trudeau's Liberals overtook them in the polls and became the new favoured winner.)
  So, in a nutshell, if he wins the election he'll be entitled to an article and it can be recreated quite quickly. But unless you can demonstrate and source that he was already notable enough for an article before being named as a candidate, then the campaign coverage is not enough in and of itself to make him notable just for being a candidate per se. Bearcat (talk) 18:45, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment A lot of material currently on the page is very poorly sourced. The part about him studying under Albright needs to go, as the only cite is ALbright's bio. I'd like to see the unsourced text removed, the cites mentioned above added, and then I'd make a call on this. Bangabandhu (talk) 04:41, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• Delete / redirect. Presently fails WP:NPOL and coverage is routine for a candidate for office. AusLondonder (talk) 22:07, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
• Redirect and protect This special election is already attracting national attention and thus satisfies WP:GNG. If Ossoff wins outright or makes it to a run-off, restore the page. toll_booth (talk) 18:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• Redirect and protect At this point, the race is notable, not necessarily the candidates. No objection to recreation if the subject wins their election or obtains a level of national coverage that approaches that of Christine O'Donnell. --Enos733 (talk) 20:37, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• Strong delete if Ossoff is elected to congress he will be notable. Until that time he is not notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:35, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
• Keep I added two more sources, he's getting national coverage from respect news outlets and will be receiving more as we get closer to the election. I would suggest it is expected that someone who has not been elected fails to meet WP:NPOL, but suggest he does meet the base requirement of notability in general. Also, of those saying he is only receiving routine coverage because he's a candidate or that only the race is notable, I would ask if you can name the other candidates in this race.

There's a complete list of them in Georgia's 6th congressional district special election, 2017. So no, he's not the only candidate in the race that anybody can identify on the basis of the race's media coverage. Bearcat (talk) 13:46, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

With respect, that's not the point. He's the only candidate in this race who is receiving national coverage in major newspapers and news. --Nuujinn (talk) 19:13, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

With respect, what you said is "name the other candidates in the race at all", not "measure out how much coverage each candidate in the race is or isn't getting". And at any rate, the basic principle on here is that for a not yet elected candidate to be deemed notable enough for a Wikipedia article because candidate (as opposed to because he was already notable enough for an article for some other reason before being a candidate), the volume of coverage pretty much has to go full-on Christine O'Donnell. It's not enough to show coverage of the race which namechecks the fact that he's a candidate in it but isn't fundamentally about him per se (and mostly doesn't single him out as the only candidate getting his candidacy namechecked, either), and it's not enough that a couple of those articles do single him out for a bit of closer attention than most of the others — it takes evidence that the candidacy itself is making him so much of a household name that people are likely to still be looking for an article about him ten years from now regardless of whether he wins or loses in the end. I live in Canada, for instance, and Christine O'Donnell was getting into our media here — so even up here in beaverland, you can still just say the name "Christine O'Donnell" and Canadians will still know exactly who you're talking about. Ossoff simply hasn't attained that depth of name recognition yet, so as of right now he's still in the "if he wins" class of candidates, and not in the "notable because candidate in and of itself" class yet. Bearcat (talk) 20:19, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

• Keep He is getting national coverage from the Washington Post, ABC, and others. This will be one of the most important special elections in the United States and he is the leading democrat. A news search of him clearly shows he is WP:N.Casprings (talk) 03:23, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comment He clearly now meets criteria #2 of WP:POLITICIAN. His national coverage is significant.Casprings (talk) 03:27, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
• Again, a person does not clear GNG on namechecks of his existence in coverage of the election campaign, when both coverage of the election campaign and namechecks of the candidates within it are routinely expected to exist. The coverage needs to demonstrate evidence that he's notable for more than just the fact of being a candidate in and of itself, offering a credible reason why people will still be looking for an article about him ten years from now, before it can make him notable enough for inclusion. The coverage of Ossoff has to explode into Christine O'Donnell territory (which it hasn't done) before Ossoff can be deemed notable because candidate; absent that, it's either "was already notable enough for an article before he became a candidate" or "does not become notable enough for an article until he wins the election". And no, it's not an ideological bias, because the same restriction applies to the Republican candidates too. Bearcat (talk) 18:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

• Strong Keep Mr. Ossoff is a notable public figure and the upcoming election will be a major event in American politics. He clearly now meets criteria #2 of WP:POLITICIAN.Jkfp2004 (talk) 18:29, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

NPOL #2 is not met by campaign coverage, except in the rare event that the campaign coverage explodes into Christine O'Donnell proportions. Every candidate for every political office that exists at all could always claim to clear NPOL #2 on the basis that campaign coverage existed — but we do not accept all candidates as notable until they can be shown to have garnered a lot more than the expected volume of coverage, and/or to have passed the ten-year test for enduring significance beyond the current news cycle. Bearcat (talk) 18:58, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you have some policy that says NPOL #2 is not meant for campaign coverage. If so, can you link? Casprings (talk) 23:43, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:POLOUTCOMES, specifically the third bullet point for "Candidates who ran but never were elected for a national legislature are not viewed as having inherent notability." Bearcat (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

That is not policy. Says it right at the top. The point I am making is that policy isn't as prescriptive as you are stating. There are some documents meant to help editors, which you linked. But it is false to cite those as deterministic. For this article, given this is the first real test after an odd and historic election, I believe he is WP:N As such, I think it is likely that in 10 years, the public would benefit from articles that provide information concerning him and the national coverage of him (and not just the election), is an important indication of future relavence.Casprings (talk) 00:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

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.