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. There is a fundamental disagreement here on whether the sources are sufficient to establish notability that I don't think will be resolved with a third relisting so I'm coming down on "no consensus". LizRead!Talk!04:30, 19 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Comment Mayor of
Greenville, South Carolina from 1983-1995. The current sourcing does not appear to meet our expectations for a mayor, but with Greenville's prominence in Upstate South Carolina, there is a likelihood that there are off-line sources available that expand on the policies that the subject accomplished while serving as mayor. --
Enos733 (
talk)
22:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep I was readily able to add three more paragraphs, with three additional online sources, since this proposal for deletion. Based on revision history, the article was previously more than twice its current size, though much of that former content was deleted in May 2020 among copyright concerns. —
ADavidB23:39, 29 January 2022 (UTC)reply
Delete. The amount of new work that's been done since this nomination was initiated is a start, but it isn't a finish. Greenville isn't large enough that its mayors would be deemed inherently notable just for being mayor per se — and while it might certainly be possible to write an article long and substantial and well-sourced enough to get him over the bar, that still takes a lot more than just three new sentences about his mayoral career sourced to just two new pieces of local media coverage. As written, this is still a depth of substance and sourcing that every mayor on earth can always match — but the inclusion bar for mayors requires evidence that he's a special case of significantly greater notability than most mayors, which is not what's been shown here.
Bearcat (
talk)
17:44, 31 January 2022 (UTC)reply
Such a negative spin. I didn't say it was a finish, just that I readily found more information online, and that there used to be much more in the article. I
added three paragraphs, including nine sentences from three new sources. I've read
WP:POLITICIAN and get that there's no guaranteed notability, but much of what you write as necessary seems to go beyond what's written in that guideline. "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage" are presumed to be notable. The associated note includes that such a person, "has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists." As the previous commenter noted, Greenville is significant within its region and Workman was its mayor for 12 years. No, the article as currently written doesn't confirm notability, though I'm not convinced the required journalistic coverage is non-existent. —
ADavidB22:59, 31 January 2022 (UTC)reply
Sure, you added three paragraphs, but only one of those paragraphs, consisting of three sentences, addresses anything potentially notability-building about his mayoralty, while the other two paragraphs address personal life trivia that does not speak to notability. So your statement about three paragraphs and my statement about three sentences can both be correct at the same time, because only three sentences within your three paragraphs actually speak toward whether he's notable or not. And as for whether you are or aren't convinced that the required journalistic coverage is non-existent, that's immaterial — we don't keep inadequate articles just because it's possible that better sourcing might exist than anybody has actually shown, we keep inadequate articles only when somebody proves that better sourcing absolutely does exist to salvage it with.
Bearcat (
talk)
15:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep Although not super strong as a notable person/politician, he does meet the criterion of "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." The articles in the Spartan-Herald and the obits confer notability, albeit not beyond that locality.
Lamona (
talk)
03:59, 2 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep Appears to pass
WP:GNG. Article is not what it was when nominated for deletion, I think the nominator's rationale of "Not notable" has been successfully refuted.
NemesisAT (
talk)
12:35, 6 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Delete mainly because the sources don't seem to be that usable for notability. For instance three of them are obituaries from local news outlets. Which don't work for notability. A couple more are announcements in local news papers about his run for office. Which literally anyone running for local office gets. What else is there besides that? Something about a local police officer settling a law suite. "Glimpses of Greenville: 1980 to 1990", "Mayor Knox White runs for seventh term — decades after he promised term limits", and "Lost Restaurants of Greenville" all literally have nothing to do with him. So it's laughable to say he's received significant press coverage. The only thing that might work is one of the obituaries, but that's about it and I'm pretty sure there needs to be more then that. So there's zero basis for this guy to be notable. --
Adamant1 (
talk)
08:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Please re-read WP:NPOL regarding local politicians, and its note as to what significant press coverage means. Many of the sources were in fact prompted by Workman's death, but are by journalists, not paid obituaries. White ran against Workman and succeeded him as mayor, as that source includes. The "Lost Restaurants" book notes Workman's city redevelopment, and the "Glimpses" article notes his bringing international cultural ties to the city. There are three Spartanburg Herald-Journal source articles that focus on Workman's run for a U.S. House seat. —
ADavidB08:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
As far as I'm aware the reason obituaries are bad indicators of notability has nothing to do with them being paid for or not, and journalists can write them as much as anyone else. Or I'd like to see a guideline that says otherwise. Unless I'm wrong like Pilaz says they are silent on obituaries. As far as your other points, none of them are indicators of notability. Literally all mayors are involved in city redevelopment and bring 'international cultural ties", whatever that means, to the city that they are mayors of. In the meantime, NPOL is pretty clear that runs for office aren't notable on their own. Which I assume would include someone running for the House. --
Adamant1 (
talk)
10:26, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
My understanding is that paid (funeral home-generated or classified ad-style) obituaries would not be independant, thus negating their proper use. Journalists can potentially skew most all of their writing, but we use what they write that is published in reliable sources. Most mayors do attempt to lead their cities well; not all of them are successful at it. —
ADavidB11:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Hhhhmmm, OK. Obviously the guidelines are pretty vague on a lot of this stuff and I don't really feel like arguing about it. So we will have to agree to disagree. Although I am interested to know where the sources said his good leadership as mayor or whatever had anything to do with the buildings being built. The blog says he and the city council "took a risk," but it's a blog and that doesn't really have anything to do with his leadership. All city councils/mayors take risks when they approve projects. Outside of that I think another reference said he was mayor at the time, but nothing else. So where exactly does it say his "successful leadership" resulted in anything, let alone beyond what most mayors are usually involved in? --
Adamant1 (
talk)
00:01, 10 February 2022 (UTC)reply
I've added more content and sources, which may provide more support considered necessary. Many (not all) leaders take risks, yes, though those who are repeatedly or greatly successful in doing so are generally given credit for it. Which source is a blog? —
ADavidB01:06, 11 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Delete. Local press coverage only, fails
WP:NPOL and
WP:NBIO (and possibly
WP:BIO1E - his death). He is not, unlike claimed above, a major local political figure who have received significant press coverage. The only seemingly-reliable sources that cover him with some depth are the Greenville Journal, The Greenville News, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, The (Orangeburg) Times and Democrat, and maybe WHNS. The first two are from the city where he served as mayor, and Spartanburg is 35 minutes away.
WHNS is also based in Greenville, and the (Orangeburg) Times and Democrat appears to be only
the 13th largest South Carolina newspaper (and that's excluding free circulation). All of this coverage is local and not outside the specific region as demanded by
WP:NPOL.
Pilaz (
talk)
09:24, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
To elaborate on the failure of
WP:NBIO, I've always found obits to be a poor indicator of notability. Not only are many of them paid for (hence not independent), but they always happen in the context of the death of the subject (
WP:BIO1E) and usually do not fall under the editorial policy of the newspaper in question (there's often just an obit department doing its own thing). This is a personal preference and Wikipedia guidelines are silent on obituaries, but it is the reason why I don't usually count them towards the
WP:GNG, especially if they are local. 3 million people die in the United States every year, and hundreds of thousands of obits are published every year in the US alone. Imagine if we had to determine the notability of every dead person in the world through the lens of obituaries.
Pilaz (
talk)
09:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Where, specifically, is 'outside their area' stated as required of sources for major local politicians? Areas where WP guidelines are silent don't seem a proper area in which to make assumptions against notability. Relatively few dead people receive full coverage by journalists, so the referrals to "3 million" and "every dead person in the world" are non-applicable exaggerations. —
ADavidB10:33, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Actually, my mistake: I incorrectly thought that
Wikipedia:Notability (politics) had already been adopted, due to the fact that we continuously refer to
WP:POLOUTCOMES when looking for precedent. I've consequently corrected my original comment. Under that proposal, #9 has "outside their specific region" added to "major local political figures who have received significant press coverage", but it's clearly not in NPOL. Per
WP:POLOUTCOMES, we usually tend to only retain mayors who belong to cities of regional prominence; and Greenville isn't
even in the top 300 largest US cities nor in the top 5 of
largest SC cities. Being a mayor of such a small city hardly qualifies for a "major local political figure", and the fact that coverage is almost exclusively hyperlocal confirms that. The failure to meet
WP:NBIO due to quasi-total reliance on obituaries from local media (with its
WP:BIO1E concerns) remains valid in my eyes.
Pilaz (
talk)
11:52, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Also, I am free to determine whether sources are reliable on a case-by-case basis, especially when the guidelines are silent on said sources, since sources need to be reliable to count towards the GNG. Obits are notoriously paid-for, edulcorated biographies not subject to the same editorial guidelines as other journalistic pieces. This is something that has come up at
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard several times.
As an example, throughout her carreer, obit writer Kay Powell of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has written about notorious people such as "The church choir singer who had a frontal lobotomy and donated his brain to science, the girl who sang at Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral, the woman who was Flannery O’Connor’s secret pen pal for 30 years". Of course local newspapers are going to be writing about every dead mayor when the bar is so low.
Pilaz (
talk)
12:07, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
We differ on whether Greenville is regionally prominent (not nationally or necessarily state-wide). It is the seat of Greenville County, the most populous county of the Upstate region and the state, with the largest school district in the state. The Greenville News circulation is at or near fifth in the state. If the writers or publishers of Workman's source articles are known to be unreliable in their journalistic standards, you may have a point. Otherwise, referring to other newspapers and writers is tangential. —
ADavidB18:41, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
The way I usually side with the whole "regional coverage" thing is that I determine if what the paper is covering is a local story or not. Obviously regional news outlets have a vested interest in covering topics that are local to them. So they will, even if it's something that's not otherwise notable. But if it's a news story about something in the "Greenville region" then I'd say it's fine as a regional source. Really though, if it's a topic relating to Greenville then it isn't regional coverage. Outside of that the Whole discussion about what is or isn't a regional news outlet is a little pedantic. Especially these days with the internet and most local outlets being connected to the Associated Press or bought out by bigger news companies. Like most local newspapers in my region now are owned by the same company, which also owns USA Today. So there's an extreme amount of overlap in what they cover. Plus a lot of news stories from USA Today. So the whole "regional/local" thing is really a moot point. --
Adamant1 (
talk)
00:11, 10 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep Article appears to have sources outside of obits, so
WP:BIO1E is not a problem. Passes
WP:NPOL as this person has "been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists". It doesn't matter if this coverage is local either, as it is here.
Swordman97talk to me21:17, 9 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep article has significant coverage demonstrating notability.
WP:NPOL is not meant to exclude politicians who do not meet the criteria set out there if they meet
WP:GNG; this article should be kept not as an NPOL pass but as a GNG pass.
Elli (
talk |
contribs)
01:09, 11 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Workman is more than trivially mentioned in many of the sources, and he does not need to be the main topic of such source material, per WP:GNG (read it). Also, "There is no fixed number of sources required ... but multiple sources are generally expected." In WP:NPOL, the requirement for 'major local political figures' is multiple sources of significant coverage. The article has grown greatly since nominated for deletion, and the content is fully sourced. —
ADavidB09:12, 14 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep There are numerous sources here that are specifically about him. I don't understand the objection to obituaries - presuming that they are not of the paid notice variety (and these seem not to be) they are a testament to the perceived importance of the person. I also think that local newspapers that are actual newspapers, not freebie coupon papers, are good sources. In fact, the local newspapers here have WP articles, which says something about their stability and perhaps reliability.
Lamona (
talk)
15:25, 15 February 2022 (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.