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 delete. Sandstein 12:34, 22 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Third party (Canada)

Third party (Canada) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log)

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Messy and poorly sourced essay that misdefines its topic. "Third party", in Canadian politics, is not used in the American sense of "all parties below the dominant duopoly" -- rather, it is used in a strictly ordinal sense to denote the party that currently has the third largest caucus in the relevant legislature. For instance, the current standings in the Canadian House of Commons are Liberal government, Conservative official opposition, Bloc Québécois third, NDP fourth, Green fifth -- and in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, it's currently Conservative government, NDP official opposition, Liberals third, Green fourth; and in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, it's currently Saskatchewan Party government, NDP official opposition, and no third party at all since none of the other parties that ran candidates in the election last month won any seats.
In other words, it is not a sweeping umbrella term for "every party but the Liberals and the Conservatives", but a context-dependent procedural term for whatever party happens to currently hold the third largest number of seats in the legislature (which can sometimes be the Liberals or the Conservatives too!), and by trying to define the term in a more American sense this article misfires. And for added bonus, its sole source is a ten-year-old piece of election coverage, which is not being used to support the actual definition of the term but merely the results of one specific election. Bearcat ( talk) 15:42, 14 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 15:42, 14 November 2020 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 15:42, 14 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete Outright bizarre original research that appears to try to shoehorn Canadian politics into American concepts really poorly. blindlynx ( talk) 18:24, 14 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete. This seems to be WP:OR and a particularly awkward case. As said, the page is applying an American term to Canadian politics, and it simply doesn't make sense here: not only are there typically more than three parties that vie for attention (in recent years there have been as many as six), making "third parties" a misnomer, but they each have differing levels of support, success and relevance— so they would almost never be lumped together and talked about collectively (on the rare occasion they are discussed collectively, "smaller parties" seems to be the term used). — Kawnhr ( talk) 19:11, 14 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete per nom. There is no single third party; instead, we have a passel of smaller parties who get significant numbers of candidates elected. Clarityfiend ( talk) 00:18, 15 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Delete per lead of article, which conveniently explains that the term doesn't really work in a straight forward way, as it does in the US. -- Rob ( talk) 00:54, 15 November 2020 (UTC) reply
• Weak keep or Renamed/Reworked as the page's most then-recent contributor, that focuses on the recent history on Canadian politics, for now I want to see it as an weak keep; until it could renamed something like between Political Party evolution of Canadian politics or Minor Party (Canada) as an possible examples, as well needed more sources to keep it from prevent this, again if this page survived or not. Plus, I think as long Canada (along its provinces and territories) has continue to using the First-Past-The-Post for all their elections. Is likely the reason why the page existed here, until this point. Chad The Goatman ( talk) 03:15, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Why not just start a brand new article, written around a clear topic (instead of fitting a topic to rambling content), with the content based on sources (instead of fitting sources to content), citing as you go from the beginning? -- Rob ( talk) 14:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  What? I just contribute the page only from 2018 up until this year, but I'm not definitely the page's creator, if you look at the history of this page was created around 2004, not 2017, when I officially joined Wikipedia as a full-on contributor. Chad The Goatman ( talk) 15:37, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you made the article, or to blame you for problems of the article. But, you suggested that it might be good to keep the article in some form, maybe with a different name, and scope. I was replying to that idea, and saying it's better (for anyone wanting to do the reworking) to instead just have a fresh start. -- Rob ( talk) 17:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

  Seems like a clear cut case for WP:TNT to me. blindlynx ( talk) 17:38, 16 November 2020 (UTC) reply

• Delete Inappropriately applies an American concept to Canada: while third parties in the US have been basically the same everywhere for decades, in Canada it is different provincially and federally and in different regions with many changes over time. The lack of sources shows this is entirely OR as a single idea. Reywas92 ^Talk 04:41, 16 November 2020 (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.