Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political scandals of the United States

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2010 December 4.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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 delete. Spartaz ^Humbug! 11:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Political scandals of the United States

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This coatrack-like article currently stands at 571 kB and continues to grow every day. I have been deleting a large number of unsourced BLP violating entries, but the article is so huge that going through it is a time sink. The current article does have a number of sourced entries, but I've also found a lot of unsourced ones, as well as entries on people who were "suspected by never found guilty of any wrongdoing". Article as it stands would be a nightmare to clean up and/or bring into compliance with BLP. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 18:30, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: what the hell... way too long and yet probably uncompleteable. The criteria alone take up an entire screen. This is better suited to a category. Hairhorn (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: This might work well as a category. Not as an article/list. - The Bushranger _{Return fire}^{Flank speed} 18:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - No reason to keep like this. perhaps somebody should create a category to replace this as suggested above. NotARealWord (talk) 18:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

keep Perfectly good article about a subject of interest to many people. If it were a category, then it would be attacked it as lacking a place to to put explanatory comments that an article can, and this article does, contain. Most of the entries are sourced either directly or though their linked WP articles--the comments above are misleading. 'Too long' is not a reason to destroy WP content; at most, it is a reason to split up the article. Incomplete is also not a reason to delete a list; most lists are 'incomplete'; WP is a place for improvement, not deletion. By the way, BLP only applies to living people, not dead ones. Hmains (talk) 19:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of which way this goes, please do not restore the blatant BLP-violating material. We cannot have unsourced allegations against people remain in a Wikipedia article, such as the charming "was once accused of having sex with a 14 yr old" entry for a city mayor. Tarc (talk) 23:40, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - This is an inherently unworkable nightmare of an article premise. If there are notable scandals that can be reliably sourced, then the info can be added to the relevant articles if not there already. There's nothing to justify a grouping of every bad thing that every public figure has ever done, and all that is happening now is that every whiff of controversy that hits the front of Google News becomes and entry here. Utterly retarded. Tarc (talk) 23:40, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Very good article and inherently notable. --Monterey Bay (talk) 02:41, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Good" and "notable" aren't reasons to keep BLP violations. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Notable and encyclopedic list, the fundamental strength of the Wikipedia system will bring this article into balance eventually. jengod (talk) 06:09, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I have been working my way down the article adding references and removing unsourced entries as I go. The few unreferenced BLP issues you discovered and didn’t bother to look up, are older entries. Sorry if I’m not going fast enough. An attempt to shorten the article led to Political Sex scandals and Convicted Politicians which are well researched. But you want to delete those too. This important article is neither “huge” nor a “nightmare.” Your efforts to delete only hamstring efforts at improvement. Richrakh (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. —Hmains (talk) 01:22, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP - A good article on a difficult subject. Lots of info not available elsewhere I hope it gets even bigger.Leeroy10 (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)Struck out vote by obvious sockpuppet[reply]
Delete Contains people only vaguely or marginally culpable, not objective criterion has been followed. Much is unsourced. And much is clearly POV (calling Joe Wilson;s outburst a "scandal" is likely POV, especially since his is nthe only "scandal" of the Obama admin. Also note that BLP is violated in a few places to boot. Best to simply delete at this point. Collect (talk) 15:02, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This is the classic example where there are no BLP problems. It is an accepted principle of BLP that the restrictions do not not apply when there are reliable sources for public figures and the material are relevant to their notability. For people whose notability is positions of public trust, such as politicians, this is always relevant content Anyone who thinks this is a bLP problem should propose a different standard of BLP than the one we are using. This is one area where we should have stable policy, for inclusion as well as exclusion. If where is unsourced material it should be sourced--this is rather trivial, as it just means copying the source from the main article. DGG ( talk ) 17:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So it is not a violation of BLP to say "so and so was accused/convicted of a crime" and to not provide a reference for it? That's news to me. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 18:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Not necessarily a BLP problem (although there are currently a few), but horribly indiscriminate. Wide-ranging with poorly-defined inclusion guidelines (what constitutes a scandal?). If any of these are worth mentioning they'll already be in the biographical articles. Alzarian16 (talk) 18:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - If any individual "scandal" is notable or important, they should be covered in other articles. Really seems unencyclopedic to keep all this information together in one place. (I already wrote "delete" earlier. See above)NotARealWord (talk) 17:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I dont see how you could possibly do an article like this without having unverifiable sourcing and dont see how you could lump them all together without violating [[1]]. If there are sources to include and have indexed then the figure involved would be notable enough for a separate page. Good suggestion with creating the category, instead of the article. Wolfstorm000 (talk) 19:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The very first entry in the article, Joe Wilson's "You lie!", violates the article's own guidelines for inclusion. What Wilson did was not illegal, only led to a reprimand, was not exceptional (there's been harsher language in Congress over the years) and did not lead to expulsion. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clinton's blowjob was trivial and also not illegal (there's been far worse actions over the years), but does anyone contend it was not a "scandal?"Richrakh (talk) 20:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

comment The article now has 391 citations. None of which would be possible with a category, which for that reason would be quickly deleted. Is anyone reading it? Hmains (talk) 03:40, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
COMMENT There are currently NO unreferenced citations, living or dead. The issue now becomes, "Should the article exist at all?" (it's been here for years) and "Is it too long?" (A recent attempt to split off state scandals was blocked.)Richrakh (talk) 20:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The whole reason Monica Lewinsky doing some peter puffing was a scandal was that Clinton lied, not only to the press and officials, but to the American public on live national TV and then later said, oops , yeah, I was walking across the room and tripped and oopsy. it fell right in. Then to add insult to injury we have the whole Linda Tripp action. You could almost do a whole article on the entire scandal, including Clinton being impeached and all the rules and laws he and others broke, just in that one scandal. It would be way too much to do all of the even verifiable scandals in one article. Wolfstorm000 (talk) 03:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dont delete anything. if something isnt true they have nothing to fear —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.224.122 (talk) 08:50, 4 December 2010 (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.