Talk:Patricia Arab

Early Life

Is there a citation that shows the facts of Arab's early life are true? Arcadian ns (talk) 01:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

As long as there are independent sources to cover off her basic notability as a politician, basic biographical details that have no bearing on her notability are allowed to be sourced to her own claims about herself on her own website — and I'm not seeing anything in there that actually raises doubt as things currently stand (except for her parents' names, but that's a question of privacy of names of non-notable relatives rather than an issue with credibility.) So unless you have a specific reason to raise doubt about the accuracy of a specific piece of information, there's no actionable request to be dealt with here. Bearcat (talk) 02:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Patricia Arab's prayer to make hotdogs "halal"

After noticing an editor deleted the cited news coverage of the MLA praying over hotdogs to make them halal, I have re-added this information. Please discuss the issue here, if you believe this information should not be on Wikipedia.

The news coverage of Patricia Arab's religious and political error made national news (CTV), local news (The Coast, the Chronicle Herald, Five at 5, CBC) and spanned several days.

While a search engine search of Patricia Arab's political work indicates she spoke in favour of the patronage appointment of Liberal candidate Glennie Langille, and is mentioned in a campaign called "Landlords for Liberals", these events did not make the news. (Other than CBC TV's coverage of Patricia Arab's ties to wealthy landlords during an election campaign, which was not picked up by other media). But the very unusual story of Patricia Arab serving hotdogs she claimed were halal seems to have garnered her significant media attention. Arcadian ns (talk) 20:59, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm not the editor who removed the material in question, but still need to ask: is there any reason why this should be viewed as an important matter that should be reflected in an encyclopedia article about her? As far as I can tell, its only discernible purpose is to make her look bad, without actually conveying anything substantively important — and as the only content in the "political career" section at the present time, it's also a potential violation of the WP:WEIGHT rule (giving way too much attention to unimportant details while eliding more valuable content.) It's not Wikipedia's job to exhaustively document every single time an article topic happens to get her name into a news article for any reason whatsoever — our job here is to filter the signal from the noise, and keep the important stuff while not obsessively documenting the trivia.

I'm certainly willing to listen to other perspectives rather than removing it arbitrarily, but I'm not exactly seeing a compelling reason offhand why we would need to keep it. Bearcat (talk) 21:05, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Patricia Arab is curageos and strong woman. Do not run female politicians down. I do not care about hotdog issue. Small stories like Joachim Stroink cultural error or Patricia's religious error do not deserve more attention. She is Cabinet material. Recent opinion poll show Nova Scotians agree with Liberals. Let us move on and not discuss this further. AND SHE APOLOGIZED FOR THIS ERROR IN A WRITTEN STATEMENT. Truth NS (talk) 00:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Media coverage of this story has given this issue weight. Now, as time goes on, this politician way very well get in the news for other issues, but journalists' did not cover this story "to make her look bad" but because it was a very unusual story that garnered provincial and national attention. Arcadian ns (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

There can be, and is still a sizable gap between "what the media covers for a day or two" and "what warrants being permanently enshrined in an encyclopedia as a definitive aspect of her career". Lots of people doing lots of things have gotten media coverage without warranting an encyclopedia maintaining a permanent record of those things. (We don't, for instance, document each and every time a politician holds a press conference just to say "I'm concerned about X issue", or every time they get into the local press for making a "the government has agreed to give $500 to the local library" announcement — it's a core policy of Wikipedia that we are WP:NOTNEWS.) So again, my question wasn't "did this get covered as news", but "why is this important enough to belong in an encyclopedia?" — and you still haven't really answered that. Bearcat (talk) 21:29, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

In reviewing a wide variety of Nova Scotia politicians' Wikipedia entries, there are many examples of biographical details that did not garner as much media attention as this event with Patricia Arab's blessing to create halal hotdogs, including minor private members bills, their family members, and passages including references to being a "noted community leader and volunteer." I do not see those items as being 'important' enough for a biography, but I do see this incredibly unique story of an MLA saying a prayer over hotdogs to make them halal as being important enough. Similar stories, from expenses to racism and sexism appear across Nova Scotian politicians' Wikipedia pages. Arcadian ns (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

The mere existence of media coverage is not the determining factor in whether something is relevant for us to note or not. As I already explained, lots of things get covered by the media that don't justify encyclopedic attention. Politicians regularly get media coverage for standing on a stage and handing over a plastic novelty cheque to a community group, but that doesn't mean we need to document each and every time that happens. Politicians, including some who aren't actually notable enough to have articles at all, frequently get a one or two day blip of media coverage for saying or doing something silly — there was, for example, a smalltown mayor in New Brunswick who earlier this year garnered at least as much, actually quite a bit more, media coverage than this matter got, for saying something dumb about food trucks — but when somebody tried to create an article about him on that basis, AFD kiboshed it because he didn't meet our basic inclusion rules for mayors, and the blip of media coverage wasn't substantive or important enough to make a special exception. House fires get media coverage, church bake sales get media coverage, and on and so forth — but that doesn't mean we keep an article about every house fire or every church bake sale, or that we maintain note of such things in our articles on other topics either. The mere existence of media coverage of an incident does not automatically mean we have to maintain content about it.

Rather, our job here is to apply filters to separate what's important for us to take note of and what isn't. Introducing a private member's bill, for example, is legitimately important — no matter how minor you may think it is, an actual piece of legislation actually getting taken up by the legislature for debate is always a notable thing in and of itself, whereas simply issuing a statement of opinion about a political issue or making a passing comment in a media scrum might not be. Rob Ford smoking crack is important; Rob Ford declaring an unenforceable war on raccoons is not. And on, and so forth — just because media coverage of the matter exists does not, in and of itself, mean that the matter is automatically important enough to belong in an encyclopedia.

And at any rate, you're still just asserting that this is important enough to warrant coverage here, while failing to provide any actual reason, beyond "because I say it is", why this is important enough to warrant coverage here. Why, for example, might this be this something people are still going to need to know about her five or ten or fifty years from now? Why might it be something that somebody who lives in Singapore would need to know about her? Those are the kinds of questions I'm looking for answers to — not "can you source that it happened?", but "what substantive encyclopedic purpose is the information serving?" Bearcat (talk) 22:09, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I think the hot dog issue is a farce. At best it's trivial at worst it's smear. Patricia Arab received much more positive and relevant coverage a few days after the hot dog incident when she announced Premier Stephen McNeil's immigration panel. I don't claim to be an expert on what is relevant from an encyclopedic standpoint, but at the very least the article should also mention her role on the provincial government's immigration panel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nspoliwiki (talk • contribs) 23:45, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Bearcat. This recent news story is irrelevant. I have had trouble removing a section like this at Morris, Manitoba see Talk:Morris, Manitoba when expanding the article and was also met with strong opposition. That section (which describes racist behaviour by the residents takes half of the history section and has 8 references) is still there titled as 'recent history'. Why editors want to keep these items on Wikipedia baffles me especially when they are meant to embarrass an individual or a community.-- Kayoty (talk) 00:02, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this is a case of undue weight on this incident. It distorts Wikipedia's representation of her. Surely there must be a lot more to her career that this. If the Political career section were fleshed out more, then this would be an anecdote, and not inappropriate. As it is one of two items in the entire section, it is given equal weight with the immigration panel announcement, which it clearly does not deserve. Ground Zero | t 03:39, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Truth NS While I disagree with your assessment that this event should not be part of this politician's Wikipedia entry, you do make a valid point that Patricia Arab apologized for the incident. I will edit the entry to reflect this. Arcadian ns (talk) 10:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Nspoliwiki I think the halal hotdog story is actually far more important that the fact that the MLA introduced people at an immigration announcement. People have deleted the reference on MLA Joachim Stroink's page regarding another incident involving prejudice, and deleted references on Premier Stephen McNeil's page involving patronage. But Wikipedia entries should be balanced - and not just present one side. Arcadian ns (talk) 10:46, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd still like to see an actual explanation, rather than a mere assertion of what you personally think, of how and why it's more important than the immigration panel. Your original argument was that the hot dogs were important because they got her media coverage — but the immigration panel got her media coverage too, so by your own stated criteria it should be of equivalent importance to the hot dogs. But now you're saying that the hot dogs are more important than the immigration panel — which means there's another reason, outside of the "it got media coverage" test, for distinguishing the relative importance of the two matters. But whatever that reason is, you're still just asserting that the hot dogs are more important than the immigration panel, and failing to provide an actual explanation of why they're more important than the immigration panel. Clearly the hot dogs represent, to you, something important about her that you're not being completely up front about — so what is it?

You are, in principle, correct that Wikipedia articles are allowed to contain "negative" content about our topics, as long as it's properly sourced and relevant — but per WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT, they also have to be balanced so that they're not focusing disproportionately on negative stuff to the exclusion of more positive coverage. So the question still pertains: why is this an important detail that a reader needs to know about Ms. Arab? Why is the negative coverage incident more important than the positive one? Bearcat (talk) 17:24, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

You've asked for an explanation of why the story about Patricia Arab saying a prayer over hotdogs is more important than the story of her immigration panel announcement. The short answer is that the immigration panel announcement was made by Liberal Minister of Immigration Lena Diab, and not Liberal MLA Patricia Arab, as noted in the edit by another user, Hilwee33.

Negative content is not more important than positive content, however. When Patricia Arab is in the news again for a few days I am sure that information will be added here as well. Looking at other pages of politicians in the province editors have worked on over the years, negative stories on meal expenses, topless photos, and racism all appear. Arcadian ns (talk) 18:37, 20 September 2014 (UTC)