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 delete. MBisanz ^talk 03:24, 29 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Claudette Cain (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

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Fails WP:POLITICIAN, along with her fellow mayors of Gloucester, Ontario, who are also up for deletion. Local coverage only. Clarityfiend ( talk) 08:08, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 09:02, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 09:02, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete Not that notable. I agree with the nomination. It clearly fails WP:POLITICIAN. I mean Gloucester today, is a suburb of Ottawa. Not even its own city anymore and even if it was, it would not be a major one (10th largest, if you compare it to the other cities in the province). All the sources are from local news agencies and the individual, Claudette Cain, has not received significant news coverage because a quick Google search has revealed nothing of key importance. Lefcentreright Talk 09:40, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep Google news is NOT a reliable metric for news coverage of events before 2010. For example, Caludette Cain is mentioned in a Globe and Mail article from 1997:"Mayors reassured taxes won't rise: But Ontario won't revive subsidies" on page 1 (photo on page A6) on 12 Aug 1997. Some Wikipedia editors appear to be under the mistaken impression that if it isn't available to them online, then it doesn't exist. Coverage of subject went beyond the Gloucester region even based on the existing references. -- Big_iron ( talk) 19:40, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• A mere mention in a newspaper article doesn't count as significant coverage, online or not. Clarityfiend ( talk) 19:46, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

As stated, this was in support of my first point, that Google News is woefully inadequate as a measure of news coverage other than for recent events. My second point was that the Ottawa Citizen which is already cited hardly qualifies as a local paper, being the primary English-language printed news source for eastern Ontario including the Ottawa valley as well as for western Quebec. -- Big_iron ( talk) 23:28, 21 September 2019 (UTC) reply

The question of whether a newspaper is "local" or not, for the purposes of demonstrating the notability of a person who has to pass notability criteria that depend on having more than just routine local coverage, is not a question of the newspaper's distribution range — it is a question of the context of what the person is getting covered for. Even The New York Times is not "nationalizing" coverage for the purposes of making a municipal councillor in Yonkers or New Rochelle more nationally special than other smalltown municipal councillors — those towns are inside the NYT's local coverage area, so even the NYT is still just local coverage in that context. Bearcat ( talk) 14:15, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Also GNG specifically states Notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article so this nomination is seriously flawed. -- Big_iron ( talk) 11:10, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• I disagree. I mean Gloucester today is a SUBURB of Ottawa. If it still was a "city", it would not be the largest. It would have been the tenth largest. Just being a mayor of a city (not even the largest, if it still existed. It doesn't even exist anymore, so that is enough reason for the article not existing) is not enough reason for a Wikipedia article to be created. WP:POLITICIAN reads: "Just being an elected local official...does not guarantee notability." WP:POLITICIAN also reads: "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." A mere mention in a newspaper could not possibly be considered significant press coverage. Lefcentreright Talk 11:19, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• To be fair, a city's ordinal ranking in a list of cities-by-size is not part of Wikipedia's notability criteria for mayors at all. Neither affirmatively ("largest city in X" is not a notability freebie that exempts a mayor from having to be substantive and well-sourced enough to clear NPOL) nor negatively (ranking tenth is not a demerit if the article is substantive and well-sourced enough to clear NPOL.) It's simply not relevant whether a town or city ranks first, tenth, fiftieth or five millionth on any given list. Bearcat ( talk) 14:20, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• NEXIST only applies to the extent that suitable, notability-improving sources are demonstrated to exist, and does not magically shut down an AFD discussion if all you do is speculate about the possibility that suitable sources might exist. Bearcat ( talk) 14:15, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Again please read the standard: "before proposing or nominating an article for deletion, or offering an opinion based on notability in a deletion discussion, editors are strongly encouraged to attempt to find sources for the subject in question and consider the possibility of existent sources if none can be found by a search". Also, on a separate point, news items on the contest for mayor of Ottawa were classified as news of "national" interest by the CBC. Also, the point that Gloucester is now a suburb of the city of Ottawa is not relevant since that does not relate to the post of mayor at the time that this person held the post. -- Big_iron ( talk) 17:14, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Political notability is judged exclusively in terms of offices that the person held, and has absolutely nothing to do with any office they ran for but lost. So the fact that the Ottawa election got more nationalized coverage than Gloucester's mayoral elections ever did does not contribute any new notability points, because she didn't win the Ottawa mayoral election. Bearcat ( talk) 22:44, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Keep. Gloucester is large enough that its mayor would have enough reliable sources to have a Wikipedia page. Of course there's not going to be that much on the web, she was mayor in the 1990s.-- Earl Andrew - talk 05:26, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Articles are not exempted from having to be substantial and well-sourced just because their notability claim predates the Google News era. We are allowed to cite print-only coverage, such as newspapers and books, but we judge notability based on the depth and quality of the sources that are shown to exist — merely speculating about the possibility that better sources might exist does not change the equation if you don't put in the effort to find and show them. Yes, poorly sourced articles can be kept if better sources can be shown — but we still only consider sources that people show, and not sources that people merely speculate about. Bearcat ( talk) 14:15, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete Glouchester is not a city that gives the mayor default notability. So unless actual sources are produced we delete the article. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 07:04, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete unless article sees significant improvement. The old idea that a city's population size confers an automatic "inherent" notability freebie on a mayor regardless of the article's quality and depth was deprecated nearly a decade ago, as was the idea that mayors are automatically notable just because the local media routinely reports the election results. The notability of a mayor, rather, is demonstrated by writing a substantial article about their political significance — such as actually addressing specific important projects that they championed, specific issues that they were involved in, and on and so forth. For an example of a good article about a mayor of a place much smaller than Gloucester, ponder Marie Curtis — Long Branch was far too small to confer inherent notability on its mayors just because they existed, but an editor was able to find enough sources to support a genuinely substantial and detailed article that makes a strongly credible claim that she's much more special than the norm for smalltown mayors. And for an example of a city about the same size as Gloucester where the mayor's article is still clearly superior to this, consider Nancy Diamond, where the sources were carefully selected to ensure that the article's content addressed specific things she did as mayor (which not nearly enough articles about mayors do) rather than simply to verify and reverify that she got elected and then re-elected and then re-elected again (which is what far too many articles about mayors actually do). And conversely, places much larger than Gloucester have had their mayors deleted if the article just stated that the person existed as a mayor, and couldn't be improved with substantive content about their political importance.
  The notability test for mayors is not simply the ability to write and source that they existed, it is the ability to write and source that their mayoralty was important in a substantive and informative way — but this article, as written and sourced, is doing the former, not the latter. No prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can find enough sources to support enough substance to move it from the former to the latter, and I'm certainly willing to reconsider this if somebody can get her over the real notability bar for mayors before this discussion closes — but local reportage of local election results doesn't do that, glancing mentions of her name in coverage of other people or things besides her don't do that, and on and so forth: we need sources that analyze and contextualize the importance of her mayoralty, not just sources which verify that she existed. Bearcat ( talk) 14:36, 22 September 2019 (UTC) reply
  • I know you do have an imaginary population limit (or perhaps an arbitrary limit of a city's "importance"), because you have created near-stub mayor articles before for medium sized cities (larger than Gloucester, granted, but not cities of 1 million people either). Anyway, I'm fairly certain a well written article can be created on Claudette Cain, if User:Big_iron is willing to do the research in time. -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC) reply
    • Sure, I used to, just as we all did, back when a population test was the consensus. As soon as it got deprecated, I stopped, and only very rarely create articles about mayors at all anymore — I now only do it when I'm motivated to put in the kind of work that the current notability standard for mayors now demands, and there are only a very small handful of cities that I have anything approaching enough knowledge about to bother trying. I've even happily nominated some of my own past work on mayors for deletion if I couldn't get them from the old "population = automatically in" standard to the current "sourcing and substance has to be on point" standard. Under the current consensus for the notability of mayors, when I start an article about a mayor it looks like Doug Craig (politician): significant content about his mayoralty to make the article substantive and informative, and referenced to sources that support a lot more than just "he was elected and then re-elected and then re-elected again". Bearcat ( talk) 15:48, 23 September 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple ( talk) 01:42, 25 September 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete. Fails WP:SIGCOV and WP:GNG. 4meter4 ( talk) 02:50, 29 September 2019 (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.