Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Obama administration health care proposal (2nd nomination)

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2010 January 20.
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. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:15, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Obama administration health care proposal

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article doesn't seem to have anything to do with any specific "proposal" by the Obama administration Rather, it's just a coatrack of quotes and opinions. Nowhere in this article is any actual proposal described (and it is unclear what that proposal would be). There are some opinions stated in the lede and then some "arguments," many of which have little to do with Obama and are more about the health care debate in general. Actually, this appears to be a content fork of Health care reform debate in the United States where these topics are described in greater detail. Loonymonkey (talk) 22:38, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*Note that this is not the second nomination, it is the first. Twinkle conked out on me the first time through and I had to self-revert. --Loonymonkey (talk) 22:40, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Article is definitely a coatrack and collection of synthesized material. --Danger (talk) 01:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: this fork of Health care reform debate in the United States is an abomination. Werner Heisenberg (talk) 02:55, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional Keep The subject is notable enough to deserve its own article, but the current version has many problems. Keep if someone steps forward to improve it, otherwise delete. Throwaway85 (talk) 05:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the issues addressed in the article are notable, but there is already a more extensive (and better written) article about this (see above). Also, it's not clear what the subject of this article is supposed to be, as there isn't any single proposal by the Obama administration. Rather, there is an evolving series of political compromises that are still being hammered out with congress (and will continue to change until the bill is signed or killed). No specific speech or position paper is being referred to as the basis for this so-called proposal so what is the article actually about? --Loonymonkey (talk) 16:49, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

KeepThe subject is obviously notable, and the article started out as a summary of the administration's proposals sourced to the White House website. For a while, it was organized into bullet points: the White House position and argument, and counter-arguments from reliable sources. Then, people started deleting things (e.g., the organizational structure, or arguments they didn't like) so it now looks quite different. Loonymonkey, instead of always deleting, try to add something; you might find it makes for a nice change of pace. Meanwhile, I will try to restore some of the structure so that the article shows there is in fact an administration proposal, with arguments pro and con.TVC 15 (talk) 06:11, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

update: I've made the changes as promised, and added a link to the White House Health Care page where the proposal is titled "The President's Plan"[1]. To those of us south of the Canadian border, his plan is certainly notable. The changes have hopefully met the conditions required by Throwaway85 also. Anyone who based an opinion on the previous version (with many deletions by Loonymonkey - but no additions except tags) will, I hope, read the article as it stands before reaching a conclusion.TVC 15 (talk) 08:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Notability was never the issue as described above. The fact remains that this article is a content fork of an older, more extensive article. As an aside, you might want to read WP:ATA regarding personal attacks, etc. --Loonymonkey (talk) 18:00, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The "extensive article" to which you refer has become so long that WP is automatically suggesting it be broken into smaller articles. If any part of that article deserves its own article, surely "The President's Plan" does. He is, after all, the President of the United States. Regarding WP:ATA, I am trying to assume good faith, but your edits to this article seem irreconcilable: first deleting material as a way of 'contributing' and then nominating the resulting straw man for deletion.TVC 15 (talk) 18:43, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The original format of the articles, with bullet points and numbering, was unencyclopedic. We must present articles in clear prose when possible; a list was ungainly in this case. The article was also based almost entirely on primary sources (i.e. the White House website), which was also unacceptable. I changed the article in order to make it conform more closely with Wikipedia standards. --Danger (talk) 18:23, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've added another secondary source, bringing the total to 19. Even the 3 primary sources include the CBO and the White House, i.e. somewhat more notable than the average primary source. Saying the article should be all prose because numbered points seem 'unencyclopedic' is a bit like saying all vehicles should look like station wagons, because cars and trucks differ too much from the norm: covering an ongoing debate intelligibly requires a clearly visible organizational structure; different vehicles serve different purposes on the road and on Wikipedia, and trying to delete all bullet points and numbering from Wikipedia would surely be a counterproductive and thankless task. Try re-writing this AfD page without bullet points, and I think you will see it becomes much more difficult to read.TVC 15 (talk) 18:35, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The effort is appreciated, but your recent edits made the article far worse, not better. For starters it doesn't conform to WP:MOS or read like a Wikipedia article in any way. You've simply copied some statements from the Whitehouse website and then "countered" each one with "However...." followed by some attacks or criticism (or, in many cases, your own original research and synthesis). Basically it just reads like some "debunking the whitehouse" website. It's a terrible article, and has no reason to exist as a better article covering the same subject already exists. --Loonymonkey (talk) 02:23, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Loonymonkey, you cite many policies when summarizing your many deletions, but the policies usually don't support the deletions. For example, you cited WP:WTA while removing quotes from (and links to) reliable sources (including Reuters),[2] but the WTA page doesn't condemn any of the words or phrases you deleted, and in fact it says there are no words that can't be used on WP. Now you cite WP:MOS to say the whole article should be deleted. If you think the style should be improved, then improve it, but randomly citing policies as pretexts for deletion does not enhance your credibility. Or, since you have stated repeatedly that your agenda is to delete the article entirely, the least you can do is let it be judged on its own merits rather than distorting it into a straw man for you to knock down. Really, you should take the time to read the sources before deleting them: above, you wrote that "there isn't any single proposal by the Obama administration;" can you please now acknowledge that, according to the White House website, he does in fact have a plan? After he "changed his mind" and announced a plan that contradicted profoundly what he had campaigned on, his approval dropped 25 points, so it seems surprising that you would be unaware of it.TVC 15 (talk) 02:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

TVC, this AfD is not a referendum on Loonymonkey. If you have issues with their editing, kindly take it to an appropriate forum. --Danger (talk) 13:13, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Understood, although there is obviously some overlap. Loonymonkey (the nominator) first deleted content from the article and then created this AfD with a misleading paragraph of, basically, misinformation ('the President doesn't have any proposal'). Assuming good faith, the nominator's overenthusiasm for deletions must have prevented him/her from reading that the article was about The President's Plan, and even that the President has a plan, meaning the AfD nomination was at best a mistake. Although that still doesn't explain the deletions leading up to the nomination, it goes as far as any explanation can while still assuming good faith.TVC 15 (talk) 19:58, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per arguments above. Highly synthesized POV article whose material is covered much better elsewhere. PhGustaf (talk) 01:03, 18 January 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.