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.
Reviewed under new page patrol. No indication of notability under GNG or Geo SNG. Abstract districts like this are specifically excluded under the Geo SNG. North8000 (
talk)
13:49, 28 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Keep. This is a future provincial constituency, which is automatically notable. Expect lots of discussions of its demographics (remembering the role of ethnicity, religion and social class in elections) and voting patterns during the lead-up to the next provincial election. Eastmain (
talk •
contribs)14:51, 28 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Keep per
Eastmain and
Bejnar. This article will prove useful as it's expanded and elections are held. Wikipedia has extensive articles for 435 House of Representative districts in the United States, so there's ample precedent that this is not an abstract district.
Response The "435 House of Representative districts in the United States" referred to are national US districts. More analogous is state level US districts. I did a spot check on those and it looks like only a small minority of those have articles. I looked at the noted list and the majority of those are "stats only" articles. I think I handled it in accordance with the guidelines but whatever y'all decide is fine with me. North8000 (
talk)
18:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)reply
A small number of US state legislature district have articles only because no one has written them yet (because it is quite a mammoth task), not because they aren't notable.
Curbon7 (
talk)
22:26, 28 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I was only addressing that particular point made, it was not the basis for my nominating. Also, I was not arguing for inherent non-notability of provincial legislature districts. But IMO mass creation of "election stats only" articles is the other extreme. But again, I think I handled it in accordance with the guidelines but whatever y'all decide is fine with me. Sincerely, North8000 (
talk)
22:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Keep. Electoral district articles aren't subject to
WP:GEOLAND — their relevance to Wikipedia is political, not geographic, in nature. The thing is, because
WP:NPOL #1 considers state/provincial legislators to be inherently notable, their articles need to be able to link to an article that explains what the district that they represent in the legislature is: we need for readers to be able to learn where the district is located, what communities or neighbourhoods are within it and what communities or neighbourhoods are not, the political history of whether it's a "safe" district for one party or a "swing" district that bounces back and forth between different parties at different times, and on and so forth. I'll grant that since it was newly created in the recent electoral redistribution, and won't be represented in the legislature for the first time until the upcoming election that may still be a year away, an article about it may seem trivial right now — but even if we killed it off right now, it would still have to come back in 2024 anyway. And the voters in Saskatoon also need the information too, so that they know what district they're going to be in next year: if they want to consider running for office, for example, they need a way to find out what district they're even supposed to register their candidacy in. So even if the primary content that validates articles about electoral districts isn't already here yet, the article is still already serving a useful purpose anyway. And US state legislature districts probably should have articles too: the fact that they mostly don't isn't because they can't, it's just because people mostly aren't actually getting that work done. To be fair, one obvious challenge is that while Canadian provincial electoral districts actually have proper names, US state electoral districts mostly just have numbers, which can make tracking their political histories much more complicated: the numbering system can be completely overhauled, so that a redistribution results in Illinois House District 1 moving all the way from Carbondale to Chicago, so you get into questions about whether it's more important to track the history of the number regardless of how much the political context of what the number represented in the first place had changed, or the history of who represented Carbondale regardless of how much the numbering had changed. Canadian electoral districts don't have that same problem at all, so Canadian editors haven't been nearly as "screw it, I ain't got time to deal with it" about them as US editors have — but it's not that state legislature districts can't have articles, they really should have articles if the people who represent them in the legislature are considered to satisfy NPOL, and editors just aren't getting nearly as many of the the articles done as we would like them to.
Bearcat (
talk)
17:29, 31 August 2023 (UTC)reply
The US ones may be better covered in a different format because they wipe the slate clean whenever they draw a new map. Maybe an article for each reapportionment cycle? I reckon constituencies which have some sort of continuing claim to a specific place are probably different.
SportingFlyerT·C18:26, 31 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Like so many things in the United States, there are 50 states doing different things governed by 50 different state constitutions.
I think one could make the argument, based on the fact that all holders of these constituencies are notable, that these constituency articles fall under
WP:NLIST as non-traditional lists; rather than a
leading zero, there is a leading "List of legislators of".
Curbon7 (
talk)
22:04, 31 August 2023 (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.