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 no consensus. No administrative action is required here. Nobody proposed redlinking any title and there is no justification for deleting the page history. Whether or not the British and Candadian etc houses have sufficient commonality for an overarching article is not a question best resolved at AfD. SpinningSpark 09:52, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

House of Commons[edit]

House of Commons (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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If someone wants the HoC in Britain or Canada, they'll probably get to this page and click the links in the specific bodies section to get to their house where they can get much more comprehensive detail into their HoC. This article just seems a bit redundant and prevents people from getting to the disambig page faster. ~ NottNott let's talk! contrib 18:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect, to House of Commons of England, as that is the organization that first used the term. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 19:42, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Surely most readers will be looking for House of Commons of the United Kingdom? Martinevans123 (talk) 09:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree with that. ~ NottNott let's talk! contrib 18:38, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps simply go straight to the House_of_Commons_(disambiguation) page. It still plays a huge role in Canadian politics of course. ~ NottNott let's talk! contrib 20:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In my mind, neither the UK nor Canadian government has sufficient claim to be an indisputable WP:PRIMARYTOPIC here, hence my proposed solution below, making this the disambiguation page. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that was an attempt at finding an unambigious primary topic...Deleteing and moving House of Commons (disambiguation) here is a better idea, though redirecting to the disambiguation page would work as well. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 22:36, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, and then move House of Commons (disambiguation) to this title. Fundamentally, that's what this is already: a disambiguation page, albeit one that's not at all compliant with WP:DABMOS. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:38, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:38, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Keep - This is effectively a wordy disambiguation page when we already have a disambiguation page. Agree with the above: delete and move House of Commons (disambiguation) into its place. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Switched to keep in an effort to have this closed with consensus. As I say below, I don't have a strong opinion as to which we keep. It seems unusual to have what is effectively a disambiguation page contain so much prose, but that it's non-standard doesn't necessarily mean it's problematic, and it still does the same job, more or less. Will redirect the disambig to this title when it's closed. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The page seems fine as the title should clearly be a blue link. It's the rival House of Commons (disambiguation) title that can be dispensed with. Andrew D. (talk) 23:35, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't have a very strong opinion as to which we keep. My choice for the other one is more or less based on my impression that disambiguation pages (which this is and should be) shouldn't also be articles (effectively). Am I wrong about that? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:24, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (possibly pruning it). At the very worst we need to keep this as a dab-page. Details of the history of the British HoC (such as the subject of rotten boroughs) would be better dealt with in the article on the UK House of Commons. However, an article on all of them together, if brief and leading to more specific main articles is useful. Redirect House of Commons (disambiguation) here. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:31, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete to move the existing dab page to this title. Srnec (talk) 00:19, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, and delete House of Commons (disambiguation), per WP:DABCONCEPT. Too much information is lost from the encyclopedia if this is deleted. bd2412 T 16:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
• Keep, and delete House of Commons (disambiguation). There are plenty of sources that compare the parliamentary systems in Canada, the UK, Australia, etc. (like this source). All this article needs is a few citations, but deletion is not the way to go. Wikipedia's deletion policy states that "[i]f editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page" (see WP:ATD). This is a clearly a case where we should focus on improvement rather than deletion. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 08:06, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• What does Australia have to do with this? It doesn't have a house of commons. Srnec (talk) 23:59, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Srnec, the article discusses "[r]oughly equivalent bodies," including the "Australian House of Representatives". I simply included the source above as one example of the numerous sources that compare parliamentary governments that utilize a House of Commons or an equivalent form of legislature. For a straight comparison of British and Canadian Houses of Commons, see this article. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 00:08, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• This is the wrong article for that. We have Westminster system for that job. We also have lower house and bicameralism. What we have here is a glorified dab page, like House of Representatives. They should be pared to down to simple dab pages, since all that the various entities have in common (and distinct from like things) is the same exact name. Srnec (talk) 00:16, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• I am not familiar with how the Australian government works, so you may be correct that comparisons in this article are unwarranted. However, it looks like the various Houses of Commons discussed in this article share much more than a name. Apparently, they share common historical antecedents in the English Parliament, they share similar functions, they share some procedures, and they share similar duties to the electorates in their respective countries. But the important consideration for the purposes of this AfD is that there are sufficient sources discussing their shared history and functions. See this source, this source, this source, this source, and this article that discuss the relationships between various Houses of Commons. Per WP:GNG, "[i]f a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article". -- Notecardforfree (talk) 01:34, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect House of Commons (disambiguation) to House of Commons, and move the DAB page content to House of Commons (per Peterkingiron's suggestion above). WP:DABNAME states that the disambiguation page name should be that of the ambiguous topic unless there's a clear primary topic. I think we're agreed that there isn't a primary topic in this case, and that the page shouldn't have any content other than the standard disambiguation elements. Neither page needs to be deleted for this. Tevildo (talk) 11:06, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tevildo, why do think the page shouldn't have any content? Per WP:GNG, "[i]f a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." I have listed plenty of reliable, verifiable sources (see above) that discuss the shared history and function of the various Houses of Commons. A simple google search will reveal many more sources. I think a good analogy for how to proceed here would be to follow the model used article for senates. There are many senates around the world, but there are also enough reliable, verifiable sources about the common features of senates to justify a standalone article. At the bottom of the article for senate, there is a list of the various senates around the world. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 15:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree this is an acceptable approach for articles such as Senate and National Assembly, where the term is both widely-used and has a clear historical background. However, I wouldn't consider "House of Commons" to be an equivalent term, as it's not a widely-used name for legislative assemblies - "the various Houses of Commons" is really just the UK and Canada, rather than a more general concept. I would put any shared history between the UK and Canadian houses into the individual articles, and any more general history of equivalent bodies into Lower house. Tevildo (talk) 16:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete and redirect to House of Commons (disambiguation). Agree with Tevildo immediately above: it makes sense to have a generic article about lower houses of parliament in the same way it makes sense to have a generic article about senates, but this article doesn't fall into that category – it just covers the couple of lower houses that happen to be called the 'House of Commons'. Aspirex (talk) 22:03, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I don't think anyone is proposing that the article itself should be deleted, making House of Commons a redlink. The issues are:

(a) Should House of Commons contain substantial content, or just be a standard disambiguation page?

(b) If it's to be a disambiguation page, should it be at House of Commons or House of Commons (disambiguation)?

No admin action should be required to implement any of these solutions, and, if we decide to convert the existing article to a dab page, I see no objection to keeping the current page content in the edit history. Perhaps the article talk page is a better place for this discussion. Tevildo (talk) 10:48, 11 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and delete the DAB page, as per several other editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:17, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Replace the content of this page with that of House of Commons (disambiguation), and then make that page redirect to this one. (Usually one bolds "Keep" or "Delete" or so on, but in this case I'm not sure which word best describes my proposed solution.) The problem with the current article, is it suggests that the "House of Commons of the UK" and the "House of Commons of Canada" have something in common, beyond having the same name, which they do not also have in common with other legislative bodies without that name, which is not true. The mere fact that Canada chose to stick with the "House of Commons" name, but other Dominions went with a different name, doesn't make the Canadian body more like the British one than (for example) the Australian or New Zealand equivalents. SJK (talk) 22:09, 24 October 2015 (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.