Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sean Casten

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 redirect to United States House of Representatives elections in Illinois, 2018#District 6. Ad Orientem (talk) 14:22, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sean Casten

[Hide this box]New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

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

unelected candidate for political office, not otherwise notable Vexations (talk) 16:48, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Wikipedia:Candidates and elections, which states "If elections are worthy of inclusion, it logically follows that information on the candidates in those elections should be included." This particular race has been recognized as one of the most significant US Congressional races of 2018.^[1]^[2] Furthermore, a significant portion of the article's content is drawn from reliable sources that were published years before the campaign began, demonstrating the subject's notability independent of the campaign.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]Cvm1983 (talk) 17:43, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

- Comment you cited deprecated 12-year-old policy. Per WP:NPOL, candidates are not inherently notable. SportingFlyer talk 07:57, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so sure that "a significant portion of the article's content is drawn from reliable sources that were published years before the campaign began". Here's the list of sources sorted by year:

- - 2007
    - http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-11-16/business/0711150938_1_recycled-renewable-energy1 November 16, 2007
  - 2008
    - https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0915/054.html#6f8ebcdd6d661 Aug 28, 2008
  - 2009
    - https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/will-waste-heat-be-bigger-than-solar-5577#gs.eR_yxFU1 January 24, 2009
  - 2011
    - https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/about/fellowships/emerging-leaders/emerging-leaders-class-20111 2011
    - https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/ELReport2011_ImmigrationDebate.pdf1 2011
  - 2014
    - https://energynews.us/2014/06/06/midwest/qa-why-combined-heat-and-power-is-a-no-brainer/1 2014/06/06
  - 2016
    - https://strattonreport.com/news/recycled-energy-development-sells-121-mw-tri-generation-portfolio-ironclad-energy-partners/1 September 22, 2016
  - 2017
    - http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/ct-nvs-sean-casten-congress-roskam-st-0908-20170907-story.html1 September 7, 2017 4:50 PM
  - 2018
  - undated, not related to candidacy
  - undated, related to candidacy

Vexations (talk) 01:49, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I mean I created the article as a redirect and someone took the liberty in actually creating the article. I've seen Wikipedia articles of failed U.S. House Rep. nominees and they're far shorter than this. Seeing Casten is the Democratic nominee and article is in good shape, I think he warrants an article. If not, keep it as a redirect how I normally intended the article to be until the election results are in. --TDKR Chicago 101 (talk) 17:56, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:36, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:36, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:37, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect I don't see anything in the article which is either about him independent of his campaign/feature articles on him or is non-routine political coverage. Feels promotional to me. A redirect is proper, adding necessary information to the election page. Delete if no redirect consensus. SportingFlyer talk 07:56, 4 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect. As the purpose of this page seems to be to promote a candidate. Certainly their "position" statements need to be removed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and/or redirect. Creator is picking the wrong interpretation of what our notability standards for politicians means — it does not mean that every candidate is guaranteed his own standalone biographical article just for existing, it only means that the election article should include the candidates' names in e.g. tables of election results rather than just listing the winners. The actual rule for making a candidate eligible for a Wikipedia article is that either he must already have preexisting notability for other reasons that would already have gotten him a Wikipedia article anyway, or the media coverage needs to explode to the point that he's got a credible claim to being a special case over and above most other candidates (the Christine O'Donnell path.) But the vast majority of the references here are primary sources that do not support notability at all — and the little bit that's actually media coverage is simply local media coverage of the type and depth that's simply expected to routinely exist for every candidate everywhere, so it's not close to enough to make him special. Bearcat (talk) 03:20, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I don't understand how you can make the assertion that "the vast majority of the references here are primary sources" when only 7 of the 30 references are to the campaign website, and those were only used to describe his positions, for which there are very few other possible sources. This use of a campaign website appears to be common and generally uncontroversial. Aside from news coverage of the campaign (which now includes articles from several national publications), there are several articles from national publications (including a 1600-word feature in Forbes) that were published years before the campaign began.Cvm1983 (talk) 16:19, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

His own campaign site is not the only thing that gets counted as a primary source. "Corporate Collaboration Council" is also a primary source that does not assist in building notability, as it's his "staff" profile on the website of an organization he's directly affiliated with. "Bloomberg Executive Profile & Biography" is also a primary source that does not assist in building notability, because it's a routine directory in which any CEO of any company can have themselves added, so having a profile on there is not evidence that he's special. Any organizational endorsement that's "sourced" to that organization's own self-published website about itself, rather than to media coverage about the endorsement, is also a primary source that does not assist in building notability. Any source which is simply his standard "candidate profile" on a website where every candidate gets to have a candidate profile, or is a Q&A interview in which he's answering the same set of questions that every other candidate also gets, is also a primary source that does not assist notability, because he's in direct personal control of what it says about him. Primary sources doesn't just mean his own campaign website; it means any source where he has any form of personal affiliation or personal control over what the source says about him.

And "Energy News Network" and "Green Tech Media", while not primary sources per se, still aren't notability builders for different reasons: Energy News is a Q&A interview in which he's speaking about something other than himself, so he fails to be the subject of the source, and Green Tech Media is a corporate blog, not an independent or reliable media outlet.

Literally the only citations here that would be acceptable reliable source coverage at all are #4, #5, #11, #12, #16 and #17 — all of the others are some form or other of primary sourcing that does not assist in establishing a candidate as notable enough. But Casten isn't the subject of 12, 16 or 17 — they all just glancingly mention his name in the process of being comprehensive coverage of all the Illinois primaries, rather than singling Casten out for dedicated attention in his own right, so they do not constitute evidence that his candidacy is a special case over and above everybody else who's also named in the same article. And #11 is routine coverage of his candidacy announcement in his own district's local newspaper, which does not help to establish a candidate as notable because every candidate always gets one of those, so it still doesn't mark his candidacy out as somehow more notable than everybody else's candidacy.

Which means that ultimately I can evaluate notability here solely on the basis of #4 and #5. And "preexisting notability for other reasons" is not covered off for a political candidate just because you can show one or two pieces of coverage that predate the candidacy — if he weren't a candidate at all, and you were trying to get this article into Wikipedia purely on "clean energy entrepreneur" grounds, those two sources would not have been enough coverage all by themselves to get him over GNG for that. Bearcat (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to United States House of Representatives elections in Illinois, 2018. Candidates for the U.S. House should be redirected to the appropriate page about the campaign. Wikipedia should not be a repository of campaign material and information. All relevant (reliably sourced) information about the nature of the campaign, including notable endorsements and polling, can be placed on the page about the election. Enos733 (talk) 18:33, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Wikipedia:Notability. I can see an argument for removing specific policy positions but I see no reason to remove the rest of the article regarding his work in the clean energy field. These sections are supported by plenty of independent sources and news articles, some of which are before his involvement in politics. He has been involved in some significant organizations and discussions in the clean energy field and I see no reason why that wouldn't be sufficient to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria. I added some additional sourcing to the article that might help. A link to the campaign site would probably be sufficient for current policy positions but the rest should be kept. Bucketship (talk) 20:56, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete not notable before he became a candidate, and still not notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:34, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to United States House of Representatives elections in Illinois, 2018. Simply being on the ballot for an election does not make you notable. I agree with everyone here who has cited WP:NPOL.—White Shadows ^{Let’s Talk} 05:13, 10 July 2018 (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.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]