Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

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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 no consensus.  Sandstein  09:32, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Fails WP:Notability (web) and WP:Notability (organizations and companies), because there is not significant, sustained coverage of this website where uselectionatlas.org itself is the primary subject. In fact, there is not a single instance of any coverage at all about Dave Leip's Atlas, and we do not know anything about it except what the site claims about itself at http://uselectionatlas.org/BOTTOM/about.php

This is a classic example of confusing the criteria in WP:Notability with WP:Reliable sources. All of the citations given, and the discussion at the article's talk page, are about third parties that have either cited Leip's Atlas, or have attested to its reliability. None of them actually says anything about the site, or gives any details about why they say it's reliable, or that they have fact-checked anything they found on the site. These citations might support an argument at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard that we may cite Leip's Atlas, but no amount of this type of evidence is sufficient to justify having an article about it. Even at that, this website has no editorial oversight, and is entirely the work of one person who has not published in the field and is not a recognized expert in election data, failing WP:SELFPUBLISH and Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Exceptions. Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete It would seem the article's creator has a COI and is using Wikipedia for promotional gain. It would seem on this site that the author is using Wikipedia to substantiate claims that this atlas "...has been used a reference for U.S. election and political data by major media outlets. Leip's Atlas has been cited as a "preferred source for election results" by statistician and political pundit Nate Silver" Otherwise, this is just a collection of data, that also exists outside of this atlas, making the subject of this article not meet WP:N.  {MordeKyle}  ☢ 23:26, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. If the website is self-published, it is an illogical argument to say the publisher "is not a recognized expert in election data" when the opposite is objectively obvious, as the article makes clear in the ten references. There aren't articles about baseballreference.com or allmusic.com or other statistics websites that have Wikipedia articles either. That's the nature reference sites. You don't talk about them, you use them or cite them. 2005 (talk) 02:37, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • You should click through and read the guidelines I referenced. The more complete quote at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Exceptions is: "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications." They're saying whoever this guy is, he would be need to have had his writings on the subject published in a book, magazine, journal, etc. in order to verify that he is an expert on this subject. Leip has not been published elsewhere on this subject, and in fact this is not his field at all.

      Baseball-Reference.com and AllMusic are irrelevant, as explained at other stuff exists. Although, now that you mention them, I wouldn't bet money that they would survive a deletion discussion. The notability of those is only slightly less dubious than Dave Leip's Atlas. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

      • Your argument makes no sense. The article has multiple references showing Leip is published. Th Wikipedia uses his material in hundreds of articles. If you point is the trivial one that he hasn't written papers on what it is like to aggregate elections statistics, who cares? That's not the important aspect of how his work is published. As for the "other stuff exists wikisilliness, let's not go there. If you have nothing better to do with your Wikipedia time than also try to delete articles about Baseball Reference or AllMusic, I'd suggest finding a more productive focus. 2005 (talk) 19:44, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        • The article has zero references showing Leip is published. Zero. The guidelines say "an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications". Nobody but Leip has published Leip's work. Sources cited Leip, but they didn't publish his work. Meeting the reliable source criteria is not the same as meeting the notability criteria.

          You are free to disagree with the established guidelines, but I don't think you should be terribly shocked when an editor like me supports deletion on the grounds that it fails to meet the plain meaning of our guidelines. You're entitled to your opinion that WP:OSE or WP:WAX are "silly", but those principles are widely accepted and you should expect to have a frustrating experience if you react this way every time you meet someone who follows the guidelines. A good use of your time might be working to change the guidelines, rather than sniping at those just getting on with the work of building the encyclopedia.

          We don't create articles when the subject only gets passing mention, or trivial coverage, and we don't create articles just because the subject is cited a lot. Citations, often nothing but a footnote or a web link, are not significant coverage. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:08, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete as it is written like an advertisement. See WP:PROMOTION. -KAP03(Talk • Contributions) 04:47, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein  11:54, 26 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 04:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 04:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- an endorsement by Nate Silver is a strong indication of notability and significance, as far as election web sites go. For example, WaPo provides this paragraph, calling the web site "great":
  • "Dave Leip's great-if-not-super-modern Atlas of Presidential Elections has collected data on contested primaries going back to 1992 -- including vote totals by state for primaries and caucuses, when possible. It allows us to estimate with some certainty how many voters cast their votes for candidates. But, perhaps more interestingly, it lets us figure out which voters actually mattered -- that is, the votes cast before and after a candidate clinched the nomination."
PolitiFact calls the web site "indispensable". Etc. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, these arguments would support reliability. This is evidence that you can cite this source. It is not evidence of notability. A blurb saying, "this is awesome the best five stars would go there again" is great, but is not significant coverage. It's an endorsement. Two different things. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 07:37, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

The fact that the article currently contains Reception section suggests to me that we are dealing with a notable entity here. If this web site were a book, as widely cited as this web site, and with reviews/evaluations by independent 3rd party sources, we would not delete an article on it, I don't think.
Here are additional sources:
In totality, I'd say this passes GNG. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Did you read wp:GNG? Right at the top, it defines 'significant coverage'. You haven't cited anything that meets those criteria. Dennis Bratland (talk) 09:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In total, there are currently seven sources that pass a judgement on the subject, not just cite from it. To me, this amounts to WP:SIGCOV. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:24, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Passing judgement is not significant coverage. Significant coverage tells us facts about the subject. Facts we can put in the article. Quote: "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." These blurbs, no matter how enthusiastically they endorse the website, tell us nothing about the website. What is the point of having a Wikipedia article? To give readers information. Where do we get the information that goes in the article? From the significant coverage found in our sources. What information do we have about Leip's Atlas? Nothing. We don't know anything about the website, except that a bunch of other sources trust it. Not a single one of these endorsements even tells us why they trust the site. Your entire article consists of no verifiable information except a litany of sources that give Leip's Atlas a thumbs up. Try this: delete everything from the article that is not verifiable in a third party source. What do you have left?

All of which is just another way of saying that reliability is not the same as notability. Hats off to sources that are reliable. All respect. But we don't write an article about every reliable source. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:53, 29 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

These three sources provide facts that can be put in the article, not just endorsements:
K.e.coffman
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.
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