Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/De facto head of state (2nd nomination)

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. Wifione _.......^{Leave a message} 00:08, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

De facto head of state

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This page is entirely original research. It has been tagged as being unsourced for over a year. Pete (talk) 13:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. —Pete (talk) 13:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, as there's no such position. Either one is 'Head of State' or isn't. GoodDay (talk) 15:07, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's a dumb article, and it doesn't appear from the history that this was ever sourced. Basically, it's the collective personal observations of a series of editors about Governors-General, officeholders who appear on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II in nations like Canada, Australia, etc. OR was piled on top of OR with someone else's observations about the successors of Kim Il-sung. On the other hand, the term is used in books to refer to persons like the Governor-General and even Kim Jong-il, so I can't say that the term is non-notable. Maybe in the hands of someone who doesn't have a "why should I bother with sources" attitude, it could be turned into something viable. Mandsford 17:50, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There is a de facto article which covers the same ground. The concept of de facto government is an important one in international law and requires careful explanation. The sense in which it is being used here when referring to Governors-General is unusual and I am not at all sure that it would be generally accepted. Governors-General are constitutional posts and act as agents of the head of state (ie for them and on their behalf); that is very different from the more usual situation where the head of a de facto government (say, the head of a military junta) is acting without the authority of the constitutional and internationally recognised head of state and usually in direct opposition. The article is positively misleading unless it explains all that, and that is best done in the de facto article, which can explain that the term can be used in different senses. AJHingston (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect in light of AJH's comment, to de facto, or Delete. As for, 'doesn't exist', there is an example in the news. Gabrielle Giffords' staff is arguably the de facto Arizona Representative. The term is used very widely, widely both in the sense of often (Google Books it), and in the sense of loosely. In an ideal world, it would be redirected to Acting head of state, which is the more popular term. Anarchangel (talk) 03:04, 1 February 2011 (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.