Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Premiership of Stephen Harper: Difference between revisions

Premiership of Stephen Harper

Premiership of Stephen Harper (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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This article and the others about to be added to this AfD constitute spam, especially in the context of the current federal election. There is nothing in this puff piece that cannot be in the main Stephen Harper article and there is no other equivalent article for any other Canadian Prime Minister (in fact, the term "Premiership" is not used in Canada at all); there are also separate "ministry" (what we call a cabinet and also comes off long a foreign-imposed or wiki-spawned term). The "X Policy of the Harper government" articles also are clearly part of a politically-controversial effort/edict from the PMO to re-style/re-brand the Government of Canada as "the Harper government" and in that light those titles can only be seen not only as POV but also blatant spam and political rebranding. They also have nothing in them of note that cannot be in the main Harper article, and in their current state constitute gross undue weight on this one person. No other Canadian politician of any era has such intense/overbuilt coverage on Wikipedia. Skookum1 (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC) I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reasons, with extra emphasis on the re-branding term "Harper government" but also because these come off like elaborate press releases and directories of this regime's policies/legislation, with only cursory NPOV critique, and in totally UNDUE fashion. They are unredeemable, despite suggestions in WP:CANTALK from time to time they be merged into the "Premiership" article though it has no valid reason to exist. They are all "political ego confabulation" and to say much more about the political machine that lay behind their creation would get more POV than necessary; suffice to say that one wag's comment about Harper is the only thing growing faster than his waistline is his ego, and after that his press machinery. Again, no other Canadian PM (many much more notable) have any such series of articles nor over-focus on his policies and in his chosen language; some like the foreign policy article make statemetns about past policies that are clearly slanted; saying "oh, rewrite them to make them less POV" is not sufficient partly because the amount of work that is, and because of the decidedly POV nature of Canadian news sources, many of which simply replicate PMO statements; the heavy reliance on mainstream media sources vs more independent sources of information is also problematic to these articles, though not limited to them. There is no point in merging them, or de-POVizing them; they should never have been let to exist at all, and now given their effective free-advertising nature in the context of this media-manipulated election campaign, it's time for them to be gotten rid of. Not next week, but NOW (i.e. not in the 3rd week of teh campaign, but the 2nd).Skookum1 (talk) 22:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign policy of the Harper government (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Economic policy of the Harper government (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Environmental policy of the Harper government (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Domestic policy of the Harper government (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Delete --papageno (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy delete Wikipedia is not a Canadian election campaign advertising site. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 05:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is not a valid reason for speedy deletion. Outback the koala (talk) 20:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Being in contravention of the law is, and also being SPAM, UNDUE, SOAP, and violations of even more Wikipedia rules. Unless you're willing to provide balance by de-POVizing their content and creating articles for Chretien, Martin, Trudeau, Mulroney and Pearson and so many more, and also to provide proper balance of the sales pitch all of them are about, you have no valid reason to oppose their deletion....except partisan favoritism.Skookum1 (talk) 02:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete although I'm not confident on the policy grounds to base my argument. First off, I'm Canadian and I do plan to vote in the upcoming federal election. I've never seen these articles before and have read through them now. Looking at the "X policy of the Harper goveernment" articles, I note two items. The article titles are a branding exercise, make no mistake about it, a little while ago official government publications were ordered to be rebranded in tha fashion, that of itself has received significant coverage in reliable third-party sources. That could be fixed though, but much worse is the sheer volume of apologia contained in these articles. They do not appear anywhere close to the standard of NPOV that we expect, they are basically puff-pieces that explain why everything the government hsa done is uniformly good. I'm frankly stunned at the scope of this, I don't see any way to correct the imbalance given the sheer volume of material to go through. To take just one example, GST tax rate reductions are discussed without mention that virtually every trained economist in the world would say (and many did say) that consumption taxes are the very last ones you should reduce. And these problms go on, in almost every paragraph. It's a bit of a walled garden of approval for a political party. The primary article also seems problematic, though marginally less so, as it does acknowledge at least a tiny bit of controversy and perhaps an odd mistake or two. But these articles all fail the NPOV test, and it seems rather lopsided to say "oh well, just fix all those NPOV problems in all those articles, we'll rely on the Google links while the campaign plays out". I do respect the primary authors of these articles, so I'm torn on this. And I've personally defended the Wikipedia articles of Canadian politicians whose views I strongly disagree with, because this is Wikipedia. But this is a big mess, so I think deletion is the way to go here. Franamax (talk) 08:41, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

*Merge with 28th Canadian Ministry - Pictureprovince (talk) 14:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Skookum, that's a lot of reading for one Afd. From what I can see, these articles (very nicely formatted and composed) are basically summaries of the various press releases by the Canadian gov't. over the last six years. These are content forks from other articles where this level of detail and lack of critical sourcing wouldn't be allowed Perhaps weeks of editing, merging, and stripping down could arrive at one good article, perhaps located at Pictureprovince's suggestion, I can't see the benefit. The titles alone make any argument of neutrality moot. Perhaps we should db-hoax them as the concept of "the Harper government" is a figment of the PMO's imagination? The Interior (Talk) 18:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• • Comment/reply Harper's importance/notability is certainly a hoax, in a sense, though his impact on CAnadian politics - not represented at all in these articles - is certainly notable; but a highly POV topic to even begin addressing. I had a look at the "ministry" article that PictureProvince suggested merging this to, but it has no political content and simply moving the POV/promo/spam material here there is not a solution, and those articles are really only listings of cabinet members, not policy records of any kind; the Economic policy items are properly part of the budget articles, but as noted I don't see their relevance in encyclopedic terms either. What we're seeing here, also, I maintain is quite clearly paid editing and of course highly COI in origin; somebody in Tory or PMO staff has taken a lot of time to study Wiki format/citations etc but the spin doctoring is obvious; trying to "balance" articles by applying criticisms of existing structure in the article is just playing within the walled garden, as Franamax calls it; it's not objective in origin and can't be made so. Surely articles such as Canadian environmental policy are conceivable, but that begins with Trudeau (and somewhat before, in fact) and runs a gamut of other politicians, many of whose policies are much more notable (and actually environmental, as opposed to anti-environmental) and of course involves non-politicians such as Suzuki and Paul Watson etc. I've heard "merge" here before but that's not a quick process, and though formally the campaign doesn't begin until April 11 we're really in the thick of it now aren't we? So these are very clearly ad-material and I do in fact wonder what the Chief Elections Officer might have to say about them; Wikipedia may be free space but their value as advertising has a dollar value, as does the money spent on making them. Nothing past the Stephen Harper main article deserves to exist, and no doubt it has POV problems of its own (I can't stomach reading political bios anymore, and de-listed Campbell's a while back and avoid Christy Clark's though still keeping an eye on it). "Balance" here would be Environmental policies of the Ignatieff Liberals r Economic policies of the Layton New Democrats, but again there'd be nthing in them that couldn't/shouldn't be in the respective bios or party articles. The problem here is how to get rid of these forthwith as they constitute S-P-A-M and a host of other wiki-violations. Sure, it's hard to prove paid editing, but what else could they be? Somebody did all this work on their own free time, for completely altruistic reasons?? I highly doubt it, as must you. Overall there needs to be a policy to deal with the use of Wikipedia by politicians, their parties and their p.r. staff/consultants, and some way t deal with them expeditiously, not via a long-drawn-out AfD - where potentially "votes" could be coming from people not familiar with politics especially Canadian politics. Recognition that such content violates election spending laws should be enough to get the Council interested, as it's something like violating libel and hatred laws and copyright etc.....more on this later, I'm packing and cleaning but wanted to push aside this notion of "merge" as I always hear that kind of thing, which t me is just a delaying tactic, and the people proposing it are never the ones who actually do it once mandated. But what's to merge? Repetition of Tory/GOP lines in e.g. the Foreign Policy article that speak negatively of past Canadian=US relations in a US-favourable light? What we see here, all unreadable but well cited mass of it, is nothing more than Harperite propaganda. Notability alone is enough reason to dump them; but they can't be allowed to stand after April 11 (the start of teh campaign) or Wikipedia might be in violation of campaign spending laws.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:06, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply/change of vote to keep While the information currently presented my need to be de-POVed, the fact that there are pages like the Premiership of David Cameron, Howard Government (redirected from Premiership of John Howard), Presidency of Barack Obama, etc suggests that there should be such pages for Canadian prime ministers. Whether these should be titled "Premiership of X", "X Government" or housed in the existing "Nth Canadian ministry" pages is a matter for debate, but pages of this sort belong on Wikipedia. - Pictureprovince (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I agree with the other discussants who make the point that this article is really just another 'puff piece' for an individual who is well known in Canada for his extraordinary degree of control over his public persona and that of other members of his party. As already noted, the term "premiership" is extremely odd in Canada and suggests that the term was used in order to create the appearance of a new topic, zooming the public in fact. The term "premier" actually refers to the leader of a provincial government so it is doubly odd. This overemphasis on Stephen Harper is matched on Wikipedia by an equal overemphasis on the wrongdoings of the Opposition parties in Canada. Specifically, there is an entire entry on Liberal attack ads for one election year, with no other similar entry for the Conservative party's attack ads, which have been widely censured in Canada for the 2011 election year (and other years). I have recommended that that entry be deleted. This issue is especially salient now as there is currently an election in Canada, with only 2 more weeks to go in the campaign. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MJeanHellyer (talk • contribs) 18:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merge and Redirect Take what can be salvaged to the Stephen Harper article; and the rest to the various parliamentary sittings (ie 40th Canadian Parliament, etc). Redirect to Stephen Harper directly. This will save info here, not elsewhere and save us time with fixing the links. Outback the koala (talk) 20:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe some of it can be merged to the party page also. Outback the koala (talk) 20:32, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• • • replies @Koala- then get busy; I'm not going to waste my time moving advertising/political-spam to another article where it doesn't belong either. I hear this "merge and redirect" stuff all the time, but those proposing it to defend a given article are never the ones who do it. These are blatant spam and UNDUE WEIGHT on a given Prime Minister and his media packets....@ PictureProvince's proposal; not much of these can be saved, especially since so much of the content (=nearly all) is blatantly POV/SPAM and also UNDUE. Saying that there should be a Premiership of Pierre Trudeau or Premiership of Brian Mulroney or Premiership of Arthur Meighen article is all fine and dandy except for two things: one is that "Premiership" is an unknown term in Canada, another is that those articles don't exist and for all the pretense that this one should survive because those ones might that's just defending the indefensible. We're in an election campaign here, PictureProvince, and these constitute illegal advertising and blatant violations of more than one Wikipedia guideline; as noted they may also be of concern to the Chief Electoral Officer and Wikipedia would be seen as a sponsor of donated-ads which are nonetheless counted as advertising by Elections Canada.....and have a clear dollar value. Why else was so much time/money spent on compiling them???? The election's at the start of May, these should not be tolerated any longer, they should be deleted as soon as possible. If you want stuff merged/moved, do it, don't say it can be done; nobody else wants to, or sees the point.Skookum1 (talk) 22:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • SO then just move the article - if its the word Premiership just move it to a more neutral wording, Policies in Canada under Harper or something along those lines. Outback the koala (talk) 00:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong Keep for the other 4 article. They are well cited and seem neutral to me and notable. Zero reason for deletion - My rational for the Premiership article does not change. Outback the koala (talk) 00:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply No they're NOT neutral, not in the slightest. Some of it's overtly partisan, they're intent is partisan, and some of it like Franamax notes is "subtle but clearly partisan"; deconstructing them for your education in Canadian politics is not what this AfD is for; if you're not Canadian and unfamiliar with our politics (your name indicates you're an Aussie but maybe that's not the case), you still have no rational basis to defend what are effectively election pamphlets with heavy POV content and overtly POV/advertising intent. THEY ARE NOT NEUTRAL'. Carefully worded and calm-sounding maybe, but they're sell-jobs and do not give proper NPOV weight to criticisms of this regime and its policies. They are also in contravention of election laws. Maybe that doesn't matter to you....whether you're in this country or another, but it's not inconsequential....Skookum1 (talk) 02:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Anything that could be in an article titled "policies in Canada" nder Harper should just very simply be in History of Canada or in the Stephen Harper article, and any of what that might be cannot be so much a replication of Tory press releases as repeated by CTV and CBC as these happen to be. The is ZERO reason to keep these, unless you're a pro-Harper person who doesn't care a fig for Wiki-neutrality and encyclopedism.Skookum1 (talk) 02:07, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]