Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Views of Lyndon LaRouche

All of these are red links. (I checked "Political views of..." and Political positions of..." for these individuals, and those are also all red links.) I could go on further, but I think you get the idea. Doesn't this strike anyone else as a bit absurd? We don't have "Views of..." articles for some of the most influential philosophers and statesmen in American history, but we do for a guy who has never won any political office, has had no real effect on American government or society, and has perhaps a few thousand followers at most? This is a clear and blatant violation of our policies on undue weight.

More than that, this article has been a net detriment to Wikipedia ever since it was created. It has served as a platform for POV-pushing (on both sides), sock puppetry, and incivility. Whatever marginal encyclopedic merit it might have is far outweighed by the trouble it has caused. One article on Lyndon LaRouche is enough. *** Crotalus *** 22:37, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Your argument is basically WP:WAX. We don't have Views of Abraham Lincoln, but does that mean we shouldn't? Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 22:41, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A decent article could certainly be written on the subject, but generally I would think that a political figure's views and beliefs should be covered in their biography, especially when those beliefs (and, in the case of statesmen, the actions resulting from said beliefs) are why the person is important in the first place. *** Crotalus *** 00:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There are numerous reliable sources for Views of George Washington, besides those of the other named persons. I might find them quite encyclopedic. I have often asked myself what Washington or Jefferson would have to say about the recent world conquests and adventures of the U.S. military. Edison (talk) 23:06, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, those might be good articles to have. My point, however, was that LaRouche is a far more marginal figure that that, and yet we have a huge page on his views consisting of undue weight and POV-pushing. *** Crotalus *** 00:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Should such content maintained on the page about the holder of the view? I.e. I would expect a page about Locke to discuss the political and philosophical views of Locke, and by the way that's where I would look for them if I were looking for them in Wikipedia. I suggest that a merger of this article with Lyndon LaRouche is the appropriate course of action. philosofool (talk) 23:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. All of our articles are "a net detriment to Wikipedia"... unless you take into account the reason Wikipedia exists in the first place. This page provides a (more or less) balanced overview of a topic with respect to which balance seems to be sadly lacking elsewhere; if people are reading it and learning from it, then it is helping to achieve Wikipedia's mission. As for your undue weight argument, you are arguing not from the premise that people are more interested in the views of Locke, Smith, Lincoln, etc than in the views of LaRouche, but from the premise that they ought to be. One might just as well argue that all our Pokemon articles should be deleted until such time as we have an article on the Philosophy of John Locke, since the undue weight in that case is surely much more absurd than the example proffered here. Hesperian 23:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with your above argument is that almost nobody actually does read the Views of Lyndon LaRouche article. According to stats.grok.se, it only had 1,548 page views in August 2008. And keep in mind that a lot of these were probably by Wikipedians editing, or edit-warring, on the article. Bulbasaur, a relatively marginal Pokemon-related article, has 18,517 hits in that same time frame — more by an order of magnitude, and hasn't caused anywhere near the amount of trouble. Articles on the historical figures I listed above do much better; John Locke has 78,312 hits in August 2008 while Lyndon LaRouche's main article has just 22,198, many of them from patrollers and edit warriors. (Barack Obama, a contemporary political figure who people in the real world actually care about, has over 1.3 million hits, while John McCain has over 900,000. Their VPs do even better, probably because people don't know a lot about them but genuinely want to know more.) Yes, popular culture is overrepresented compared to important political and philosophical issues; but at least an argument can be made that people actually care about popular culture. Outside of Wikipedia, though, no one gives a damn about Lyndon LaRouche. Now, just because an article gets a tiny handful of page views doesn't mean that it is a bad article or should be deleted. But, traditionally, we have deleted articles when they are both marginal in terms of importance and they create a great deal of trouble on the wiki. Examples of this include Brian Peppers, Allison Stokke, Daniel Brandt, and Public Information Research, among others. *** Crotalus *** 00:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. This article may well deserve to be deleted. Unfortunately, this AfD nomination fails to make any valid argument for same. The non-existence of the other named articles is not, in and of itself, an argument that this article should not exist. If the article has problems with OR and POV, fix them, but that is not a reason for deletion. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 00:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep I'd prefer to see it shortened somehow and merged into Lyndon LaRouche. KJS77 Join the Revolution 00:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]