Colonel William A. Phillips

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I will never understand the reason why the irrelevant people who declined to run on the election page. I assume it is because there is originally a list of potential candidates - also including much baseless speculation - and as they say no, some editors choose to move them to a new section rather than actually remove them. Every single politician, and many times every non-politician, is a "potential candidate" or a "political player", and the fact that they decide to run for another office or nothing at all does not warrant inclusion, and the plain fact that they are not in the "running" section should make it pretty obvious they dropped out or declined to run! For goodness's sake, on this article a couple of people don't even have articles, and the other sources are well over a year old, before a field began to form. Although most current election articles still include these, all past election articles do not include them. I point you to these edits from 2010's elections. [1], [2], [3], [4], among others. Simply put, these people have zero connection to the race and should not be listed here. Reywas92^Talk 03:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At the very least I think they should be kept until the filing deadlines have passed. I believe Connie Mack IV of Florida, the Republican front runner, originally declined then changed his mind. Rxguy (talk) 04:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am concerned about several of the edits made by Michael Cavlan about his own candiddacy. Campaign statements are not appropriate in an encyclopedic article. There have been repeated reversals offered by other editors, and while none have disputed that all candidates should be included, citations are necessary and please place them in the General Elections section, if no primary is involved.

Michael, I would invite you to discuss what you want done in the TALK page (see WP:EW). I have no objection to your inclusion in that article, as you are a candidate. Be advised that it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to edit content about yourself WP:COI. I strongly encourage you to work with an experienced editor who is not part of your campaign to get yourself included here appropriately. Thank you. Uberhill 19:36, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree, and have advised Michael on his talk page of the consequences of edit warring. (To be a little more accurate, there's no policy totally forbidding editing while under a COI, but the kind of editing going on here is pretty far out of step with Wikipedia policies. I agree that restricting edits to this talk page is probably the best course of action.) -Pete (talk) 22:15, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]