Talk:2023 San Antonio mayoral election

5% Rule for Infobox

To @BottleOfChocolateMilk: First of all, as per WP:5%R, the five percent rule is not a policy nor a guideline. That being said, it does state clearly "Several RFCs have established that third party candidates must poll over 5% to be included in an infobox". I have reviewed the various RFC discussions mentioned in this article, and local municipal nonpartisan elections are not clearly mentioned. In municipal elections such as this, there is no third party candidate, as there is no third party. All municipal elections in Texas are nonpartisan, and therefore all candidates have no party whatsoever. I attempted to make a compromise edit by including the second-place finisher who did have a significant turnout in the polls, but in all previous articles for the San Antonio mayoral election, there has never been an addition of all candidates in the infobox that have polled 5%+. You can see 2017 San Antonio mayoral election, 2015 San Antonio mayoral election, 2013 San Antonio mayoral election, and others for examples. And there are multiple other municipal election articles that do not include this 5% candidate in the infobox. Some have them, some don't. In San Antonio, there are many people who run for mayor just because (I live local and I know this personally), and the fact that they score about 5% in the election is nonsignificant to the outcome. Once again, I am willing to go back to my compromise edit (which was not a reversion) of keeping the second-place finisher, but there's no need in the infobox for more than that. The excessive candidates in the infobox makes it look tacky and sloppy especially since they're not significant enough to even have a photo available. - SanAnMan (talk) 13:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

• The question of "significance" is completely subjective and not based on any concrete criteria. Wikipedia has always maintained the policy that it shouldn't be the job of editors to determine who is and isn't a "significant" or "major" candidate (except in presidential races where we have to only include major candidates because there are simply too many candidates to list them all). The 5% standard is used commonly across nearly all election pages and is an actual, concrete criteria as opposed to "they're insignificant because I say so." There's nothing unique about San Antonio and the 3 examples you listed don't outweigh the many other examples I listed of mayoral elections where every candidate with >5% of the vote is in the infobox. Also, the argument that "they're insignficant because they have no photo" is completely irrelevant. There is no correlation between significance and whether or not there happens to be a publicly available photo of someone. If I drove to Texas, took a selfie with Gary Allen, and uploaded it to Flickr with a Creative Commons license, would that automatically make him significant? Also paging DukeOfDelTaco who previously added candidates to the infobox that got >5% of the vote. BottleOfChocolateMilk (talk) 17:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
• You're still not answering the fact that 5% rule distinctly states it is not a policy or a guideline, and you fail to mention the fact that the 5% rule specifically applies to third-party candidates. There are no third-party candidates in a Texas municipal election. Your statement that other articles do have the extra candidate is a textbook example of WP:OSE; if you want me to find other examples of articles of elections not using the 5% rule, I'm sure I could, but you still haven't addressed the simple fact that the 5% rule specifically applies to third-party candidates only. - SanAnMan (talk) 17:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
• It has been nearly 4 days, and there has been no further reply or objection to the compromise edit proposed which includes only the second-place candidate. If there is no feedback on this after another 24 hours, this is notice that the proposed compromise edit will be posted. - SanAnMan (talk) 15:20, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
• I see no reason why this article should depart from the 5% rule. While it's not a guideline or policy, the rule appears to be well established consensus in several RfC's and should be used to create consistency across election articles. There is essentially no other way to determine relative significance between the candidates for an infobox mention. I think it would be correct to include Nirenberg, Schuchardt, and Allen. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 19:45, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Iamreallygoodatcheckers: I've read through the various RFC's on this subject, and municipal elections aren't discussed at all anywhere. Plus, as I mention in my primary argument, the main article specifically states that the 5% rule specifically applies to third party candidates, and in Texas municipal elections, there is no third party candidate as all candidates are nonpartisan; all Texas municapal elections are nonpartisan. Thoughts? - SanAnMan (talk) 20:11, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  Sure WP:5%R doesn't mention municipal elections, but I think the distinction in this context is insignificant. I haven't seen a compelling argument as to why the 5% rule shouldn't apply to presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and municipal all alike. Yes, you are correct that Texas municipal elections are nonpartisan, but I think its an overly strict reading of WP:5%R to conclude that it doesn't apply merely because the election is nonpartisan. Nonpartisan elections can have leading candidates in the same way of a partisan election with a Republican and Democratic candidate. I would say Nirenberg and Brockhouse would have been considered leading candidates in 2019 in the same way Trump and Biden were the leading candidates in 2020. So there are de facto third parties in these elections -- they would probably be called "minor candidates" in this context. Frankly, Allen and Schuchardt could both be considered minor candidates because Nirenberg was almost certainly going to win. Your argument that Allen is insignificant is understandable and I agree with it, but elections like this don't have enough reliable source attention to truly identify the significant candidates. Our opinions about Allen are OR. Therefore, I'm just going to err on the side of caution and follow what is customary for election infobox's. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 20:32, 14 July 2023 (UTC)