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 keep. Shereth 21:43, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate[edit]

List of bills sponsored by Barack Obama in the United States Senate (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Violates WP:NOTDIR and WP:IINFO. Anything relevant here can and should be incorporated into Political positions of Barack Obama. Besides, if we have a page like this for Obama, we'll need one for every significant member of a national assembly worldwide to avoid POV problems, and doing that would get way out of hand. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 18:32, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cross reference - There is a similar AfD at List of amendments proposed by Barack Obama in the United States Senate. -- Bebestbe (talk) 00:49, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if we delete all the political articles about politics we won't have much left. Savidan 00:48, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can't see how this could possibly be described as indiscriminate. Senators introduce bills; important senators introduce many of them. It's not like we're listing the people on his street or high school graduating class. Savidan 00:46, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, given the number of papers, magazines, and other print media that cover the United States Senate - Congressional Quarterly, The Hill, and The National Journal come to mind - every bill introduced probably meets our general notability criteria. I agree with the coatrack problem except that I believe that this page will end up highly watched. --CastAStone//₵₳$↑₳₴₮ʘ№€ 01:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The article is clearly appropriate according to the policies listed. It is not an "indiscriminate collection of information", because the exact number of bills listed matches a source cited and several sites interested in government will yield precisely this list of bills sponsored by Obama. It is not a list with non-notable entries, because most of the bills I've looked up so far have at least some discussion in third party sources, though sometimes they are quite obscure. It is not a "coatrack" or a "can of worms" because there is fairly little discretionary content, and where substantial content exists about a particular bill an article can be started on that one piece of legislation.
The list format serves a particularly useful role because it allows readers to sort by title, allowing them to find multiple introductions of a particular bill. It also allows searching by bill number for specific queries.
It is true that this can (and should) be done for other senators. However, Obama is clearly of special interest at this point in time. It is conceivable that at some point this list could be superseded by a well-written page that customizes a comparable list for any Senator from all sessions of Congress, but it is my impression that such a page would not work quickly or efficiently without fundamental revisions in the core software. There really is little waste of space in creating separate lists of bills sponsored or amendments proposed by each senator, since each has only one sponsor.
A merge into the political positions of Barack Obama is undesirable, because the full table would overwhelm that article, and anything less would involve an arbitrary selection of certain bills as more important than others. Also, there is arguably a distinction between political positions and concrete legislative actions. It was actually the limitation of the Barack Obama article, and the unavoidable bias that occurs when only a few bills are selected for discussion, that led me to create this table. Mike Serfas (talk) 01:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What is Wikipedia for? If Wikipedia can cover the 2005 Texas Longhorn football team and the December to Dismember (2006) pay-per-view event, Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (all of which are current featured articles), then why should it be taboo to have an article about each and every major piece of legislation introduced in one of the world's better known legislatures? And in turn, to have lists of such legislation crediting them to their primary sponsors?
We all know what Moore's Law is. Year by year, the number of articles that Wikipedia can hold using a fixed amount of money and serve to the general public in a fixed period of time will grow in an exponential manner. What will these new articles be about? Should we dream only that they should cover each wrestling pay per view event, but not dare to touch on issues of politics?
I have another idea. I think that as Wikipedia's reach grows, that the time will come when each new bill, on the day of its introduction if not sooner, will receive its own Wikipedia entry linking it to its founder and news coverage of the circumstances leading to its introduction. I think that there will be a "U.S. Senate" Wikiportal where people will see each of these articles as a "Did you know?" fact for the day, among other relevant entries. I think that each bill will be linked into a list of bills sponsored by so-and-so, and summarized as appropriate in a shorter summary of the political positions of so-and-so. I think that the vast majority of these articles will be started by supporters who do not deny their partisan opinions, but that they will be adorned with links to other sourced criticism in a timely fashion by those on the other side. I think that most of the time this process can happen in a relatively civil manner overseen by the neutral bloc of editors and admins primarily devoted to Wikipedia policy. And I think that the result of this process will be that more Americans (in this case) will read these bills, will ask relevant (if pointed) questions in the discussion pages, will rephrase these questions with less restraint on political talk forums in the external links, and will in this manner yield genuine, informed feedback on the bills. By causing the voters to yield more relevant, better timed, better thought out feedback directly on legislation, Wikipedia will not only assist in the formation of better bills, but will generally put pressure on Washington insiders to treat their constituents with more respect than they have been accustomed to.
I don't deny that the full implementation of this idea requires hundreds of lists and tens of thousands of articles just to cover the United States alone. But Wikipedia will be adding millions of new articles in coming years, and these should be among them. I also don't deny that the creation of an article is a method by which people can express a personal bias in favor of its subject matter. But that is true for articles about video games and rugby teams as much as it is about politics. When so many people have such strong opinions, Wikipedia will not be free of electioneering, but we can choose what kind of electioneering we want: do we want the kind where individuals express their sympathies by writing up new articles with sourced, accurate information, or the kind where individuals cluster at AfD discussions and try to get one another's information deleted? Mike Serfas (talk) 21:51, 21 June 2008 (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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