Talk:List of Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign staff members

Mass reversion to unverified state

On the morning of the election, KidAd (talk · contribs) reverted the entire article to a previous, unverifiable, state, without any cogent explanation:

• (removed excessive scrubbing)

In most cases, there are no citations at all. KidAd removed the {more citations needed section} template.

The recent AfD had decided that only persons who were notable and had wikipedia articles should be included.

The recent AfD had also depended on WP:LISTN, that requires "One accepted reason why a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources, per the above guidelines...." I'd carefully examined the sources, and only one was about such a list. (The section Economic Policy has such a list.)

Moreover, elected officials are never "campaign staff". They are never paid by the campaign. In many/most cases, they are honorary titles.

For that reason, I've reverted.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

@William Allen Simpson: I disagree with your reversion, and also for your unjustified 2nd level warning of vandalism you left for KidAd. I felt they were correct in their edit summary of 'excessive scrubbing', (by you, I think) in which you had removed names and citations supporting the majority of non-wikilinked entries. It would be appropriate to remove all names that were neither wikilinked nor supported by a citation - that I would agree with. I also disagree with your concerns over removal of the more citations needed in the 'Inner Circle' section. All names there are wikilinked, and all but one of them showed me immediately they were part of Biden's campaign team simply when I moused over the pagelink using Navigation Popups. We do not demand citations to each entry in a list of notable alumni of a school or college (providing each linked article demonstrates that they genuinely attended there). Likewise here, too, even though having them might be nice.

So, I am going to revert your deletion of content and then remove any entries that are uncited, or add a {{cn}} template where it is not immediately obvious that the named person is likely to be a key member of the campaign. They can be added back in if sources can be found (and if they're genuinely important players within the campaign group, of course.) I am not going to check each citation, but assume they do support verifiability. They can, of course, be removed if they fail that test. I would reflect on your words about the eve of the election and say that deleting names with citations is itself a most unusual way to behave at this precise moment time. I would also advise you not to use individual discussion comments made at AFD as rationale for your editing behaviour, especially as there was a non-admin closure by Buidhe at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign staff members, which set no conditions. Nick Moyes (talk) 14:34, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not going to check each citation, but assume they do support verifiability.

Unlike you, I have checked the citations. As already noted in my edit summaries. For example, the old first citation in the lead literally has no mention of any names. All it verifies is that there is a campaign, and it has staff.

If your concern is that the non-admin closer didn't include the conditions that the keep users made on their support, then it's time for an administrative appeal.
William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2020 (UTC)