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 2024 Rochdale by-election as a minimally contentious ATD. Owen× ☎ 19:31, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

David Tully[edit]

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David Tully (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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WP:BLP of a political figure, not properly sourced as passing WP:NPOL. As always, the notability test at NPOL is holding a notable office, not just running for one, and non-winning candidates get articles only if they already had preexisting notability for other reasons that would already have gotten them an article anyway. (That is, for example, why the winner of this by-election already had an article before the by-election: not because he was a candidate in Rochdale, but because he had already been an MP in the past.)
The existence of a small handful of run of the mill campaign coverage, further, is not sufficient to say that a person has passed WP:GNG and is therefore exempted from NPOL -- every candidate in every election everywhere can always show a handful of campaign coverage, so if that were enough to exempt a candidate from NPOL then every candidate would always get that exemption and NPOL would be rendered meaningless and unenforceable. So the campaign coverage just makes him a WP:BLP1E, not a person who has suddenly passed the ten year test for enduring significance.
Obviously no prejudice against recreation in the future if he wins a future election to a notable office or accomplishes something else that would pass another notability criterion, but coming in second in a by-election is not enough in and of itself. Bearcat (talk) 15:13, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: per nominator's arguments and other delete voters. Tehonk (talk) 06:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:BLP1E and nom. Sadustu Tau (talk) 14:07, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some people here are making statements as if they apply on every occasion when this is not the case but, as ever, it requires consideration of the *context*.
It is said "non-winning candidates get articles *only* [my emphasis] if they already had preexisting notability for other reasons that would already have gotten them an article anyway." This cannot be true because it would mean that no matter what a non-winning candidate went on to do and no matter how notable they then became, they would *never* get an article unless they had notability for an article from the start before they failed to win the vote.
It's said "coming in second isn't notable". However, this is also not a complete 'this means it isn't notable'. Instead, it is that coming in second is not *normally* notable. However, this wasn't a normal by-election. Instead it had unique circumstances in which one of the main parties expected easily to win had had to withdraw support for the candidate that continued to appear with the party name on the ballot and this left the race unpredictable. Support for the two biggest parties of national politics collapsed and indeed voters couldn't really vote for one of them. For no mainstream parties to feature in the top two candidates in a result is highly unusual. This gives Mr Tully, as one of them, some notability.
However, the coverage so far is not much above the single event. Nonetheless, he has been mentioned today by the winning MP, whose notoriety is enough that he is likely to get significant media coverage for some time to come, and Mr Tully now features as referred to by Mr Galloway in a politically controversial dispute between the Prime Minister's statement on Friday (1st March) and Mr Galloway's statement this afternoon (4th March). Depending on whether Mr Galloway continues to use not just the votes he has got but also the votes given to Mr Tully in saying both of them have roundly beaten Mr Sunak's party, Mr Tully's achievement, even in not winning the election but in getting nearly twice as many votes as the governing party, may yet continue to make him of notoriety.
We don't know how much, if at all, Mr Galloway is going to continue to refer to him yet and what impact his statements may have. It is too early to say that Mr Tully has lost notability after surfacing from obscurity - is this going to be a brief appearance before obscurity again or is his achievement going to persist in political debates in Parliament that may well get more attention due to involving Mr Galloway? We expect Mr Galloway's tenure as an MP to be brief and for the Labour Party to win the replacement seat at the general election.
Nonetheless, these next months before whenever the general election comes may well have Mr Tully repeatedly referenced by Galloway and could see him have long-lasting notoriety to be remembered for decades, even if we are not there yet. He is clearly known in Rochdale due to his repair business. However, I do not consider that this alone gives him an article as it clearly didn't before he surfaced with the success in the election, which is the beating of the Conservative governing party into third place not his coming second (which is the failure to win the seat).
Nonetheless, maybe off-topic I don't know, there is an article for Willy's Chocolate Experience but how notorious is this really as a single event that, in the grand scheme, is much more likely to fade away and not occur again whilst Mr Tully does have potential for his achievement to continue known beyond one event in a single year? People are seeing the immediate, in which it is also difficult right now to judge what is going to happen with Mr Tully, rather than looking at whether this is a long-lasting article on Wikipedia in decades to come. It is difficult to know whether some events in our immediate are likely to gain historical impact for future generations. aspaa (talk) 16:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is based on significant coverage in reliable sources. Someone is not notable because they are mentioned in the media by another person, and we don't keep articles just because somebody may become notable. Regarding the fact that Willy's Chocolate Experience has an article, we don't base deletion decisions on other articles existing because there's no guarantee that the example you've provided is also notable enough to have an article, and this discussion is about this article, not that one. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:36, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very true, and lets just keep in mind the uniqueness of the Rochdale by-election, given it ended with a Workers Party 1st place and 2nd place independent. The fact Tully came before both Labour and the Conservatives, even in the fraught conditions both parties are currently in, can't be said to be unworkable and worthy of recognition. Le0nidasOfCorinth (talk) 09:52, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's absolutely worthy of mentioning on the article about the by-election, but it doesn't mean he's eligible for his own article. Just finishing second is not enough to get someone over the bar of being notable just because they were a candidate. SportingFlyer T·C 14:47, 5 March 2024 (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.
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