Talk:Independent candidate

It is important not to place redirects on Wikipedia pages when there is no proper reason to do so.

Not only is it a slight to the editor who has volunteered valuable time preparing the page, but it amalgamates topics which deserve to have a separate page - as in any Encylopaedia. The lumping together of too many different strands of a subject on one page creates an unreadable hotchpotch.

There is a great difference between an Independent Candidate and an Independent Politician and that is why the pages should not be redirected to each other but the option "See Also" should be used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Londonlinks (talk • contribs)

I have two questions about this. Firstly, what is that difference? Secondly, this page appears to be almost exclusively about "how to stand" and Wikipedia is not for howtos. I therefore support returning to this to a redirect.128.232.241.211 (talk) 20:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This should be redirected. It's clear this is substantially the August 2009 Electoral Commission publication "Standing at a UK Parliamentary general election in Great Britain", regardless of the claim of User:Londonlinks revert claim that it is a "summary in entirely different words". Heck, I'm not even sure it's mostly different words. So:

First, as 128.232.241.211 mentioned, Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, regardless of whether the words "how to" appear in the document.
Second, http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/copyright makes clear that "You must not copy or reproduce any graphics or substantial amounts of text without our written permission." I think one would be hard pressed to see the content of this article as anything but "substantial amounts of text", occasional word-mixing notwithstanding.
Third, I don't recall any Wikipedia guideline saying it is "important not to place redirects on Wikipedia pages when there is no proper reason to do so". I do, however, recall Wikipedia:Content forking, which pretty much says the opposite: that it is important to not split an article when there is no proper reason to do so. As 128.232.241.211 notes, there is no evidence there is a difference between an "Independent candidate" and "Independent Politician". The title "Independent (politican)" is phrased that way only for disambiguation anyway. Any attempt to make a new distinction would appear to fall into WP:NEO and have to be justified by an explanation in reliable sources.

It seems rather clear that, without any evidence from reliable sources to the contrary, this a novel theory of what a phrase means, subject to WP:NEO, by a person (User:Londonlinks) who has a Wikipedia:Conflict of interest as someone involved in publicity for The Coalition of Independent Candidates. On a side note: It is also probably not in one's best interest, when has been reverted by multiple other editors independently, to then draw attention to the topic of what constitutes a "slight". --Closeapple (talk) 02:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]