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 keep. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:47, 8 January 2018 (UTC) reply

Craig Covey

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

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WP:BLP of a small-town mayor, without enough reliable source coverage to clear WP:NPOL #2. His main claim to being more notable than the norm is that he was the first openly gay mayor in the state -- but that's not entirely accurate, as he was merely the first to win a general election of the voting public rather than getting selected as mayor by an internal vote of the city council. And even if we corrected the claim, being the first member of an underrepresented minority group to hold an otherwise non-notable office is not actually a notability pass that would automatically make him more notable than his predecessors or successors -- it might make a difference if he could be shown to have garnered nationalized coverage for it, but that's not what's being shown here: there are just four sources, of which two are routine election results announcements in the local community newspaper, one is a glancing namecheck of his existence in an article about Dustin Lance Black, and one is a source I can't even find at all to verify whether it says enough about Covey to count toward GNG or not. This is simply not enough to make a smalltown mayor notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and just being gay isn't enough to exempt him from having to be sourced better than this either. Bearcat ( talk) 19:32, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 19:34, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Michigan-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 19:34, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Keep. A person being the first elected gay mayor is just as notable than being the first selected. Additionally, Craig Covey now sits on the Oakland County, Michigan Board of Commissioners. Oakland, per its article, has 1,000,000+ residents. Most counties with over 1,000,000 have county board members whose sole political office (outside of small town stuff) is the county board. An example of this can be seen with Cook County Board of Commissioners.

Except that (a) regardless of whether a mayor was elected or selected, being gay is not an automatic notability boost over and above any other mayor of the same small town in the absence of enough reliable source coverage about him to pass WP:NPOL #2 ("local political figures who have received significant press coverage"), and (b) county commissioners don't get a free notability pass in the absence of enough reliable source coverage about them to pass NPOL #2 either. In a nutshell, neither of those things is an automatic notability pass in the absence of much more reliable sourcing about him than has been shown here. Bearcat ( talk) 21:24, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Weak Keep- First gay mayor elected in the state helps make the argument. The technicality about not actually being first is a valid point, but its easier to appoint someone than for someone to actually win an election. Not that being gay is a valid reason to vote for someone, nor is it a valid reason not to vote for someone. He did receive some national press, here's a USA Today article about his campaign to regain the position of mayor. [1]-- Rusf10 ( talk) 21:54, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

We require evidence of sustained national coverage, not just one piece of one-time coverage — before we can deem him notable. And anyway, that's not an original piece of content being written by USA Today itself, but merely a reprint of a piece written by a journalist for the Detroit Free Press — so it's not real nationalized coverage, but just reaggregated local coverage. There's a Canadian smalltown mayor, for example, who received a tiny blip of nationalized coverage earlier this year solely on the "news of the weird" criterion that his sole challenger in his reelection bid had exactly the same name as he did, forcing them both to add their addresses to the ballot to ensure that the townsfolk actually knew which one they were voting for — but that's not automatically a "more notable than the norm" criterion just because a couple of nationalized sources could be shown to support it, because it didn't sustain beyond that one isolated blip. Bearcat ( talk) 22:09, 16 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Strong delete I am a resident of a north of Detroit suburb, keep up fairly well on news in the metro-area, and have to say I have never even heard of Covey. Note that the sources are not even the Detroit Freepress and Detroit News, but local papers to Ferndale, even though Ferndale borders Detroit. Being the mayor of a city, especially one as insignificantly small as Ferndale, and being a member of the Oakland County Commission are both not at all signs of notability. No county commissionership in Michigan is a notability sign, especially considering that Oakland County has over 20 comissioners. The sources do not show widespread, indepdent, non-routine coverage, and it is high time we stopped this incessant rush to more and more first openly x categories. I am also a little skeptical about some first openly x categories. For one think, I have seen to many places that have said Bishop Robinson was the first openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop. This is false. The Episcopal Diocese of Utah had an openly homosexual bishop back in the 1990s. With neither the News nor Freeepress being sources here, I have a sense the claim has not been vetted well. Also, being the first x-type mayor in a state is not a clear sign of notability. I am 95% positive we do not have an article on the first African-American mayor in Utah, although we do on the first female African-American mayor in Utah, but only because she is now a member of congress. That is the way politician articles work. We do not create articles on cities with about 20,000 people unless we have a really good collection of sources. 2 extremely local articles and a report on a speech at a college, a college that is local to the paper giving the report, do not add up to the level of sourcing needed to justify an article on a mayor of a place with well under 25,000 people. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 04:31, 17 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Here's [2] a search of the Detroit Free Press, showing coverage of Covey's positions of medical marijuana legalizaiton, gay issues, other policy issues and campaigns, albeit no dedicated profile. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 18:10, 7 January 2018 (UTC) reply

"I am 95% positive we do not have an article on the first African-American mayor in Utah..." — That is an OTHERSTUFF argument. Carrite ( talk) 19:06, 21 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Comment Since Ferndale borders Detroit on the north, we would need sustained, multiple articles for the local dailies, not just one time write ups. A person like James Fouts is notable, but he is mayor of a city with well over 100,000 people, that is also a much bigger economic powerhouse than Ferndale, and due to his audacity in charging the croonyism of King Hackle and his goons, has faced a smear campaign involving engineered false records. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 04:34, 17 December 2017 (UTC) reply
• Keep WP:HEY I added a few sources, but saw plenty more WP:SIGCOV. After becoming Mayor he was an elected County Commissioner. There is coverage of issues addressed in his mayoral administration; environmental measures in particular. Pre-elected office, he was a pretty major gay rights activist in the area, working for a gay civil rights org. and founding Detroit's gay pride parade Motor City Pride; also founded an annual blues festival that gets coverage every year - including mentions of his role in it. Plenty of WP:INDEPTH to support notability and support a better article. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 15:17, 17 December 2017 (UTC) reply
• Keep - First elected gay mayor in the state (and that fact's associated coverage) is enough for a GNG pass, even if the elected post by itself is not. Carrite ( talk) 19:05, 21 December 2017 (UTC) reply

• Delete. Lack of coverage in major Detroit newspapers. Small town major without big achievements. Lack of significant independent/in-depth coverage. desmay ( talk)

• Er.... The Detroit News is one of the two major dailies in Detroit. And there is SIGCOV in other papers, such as Boston Globe. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 12:24, 3 January 2018 (UTC) reply

• Keep - Passes the GNG. I don't understand what all of the discussion is regarding the larger regional newspapers. Is there a notability guideline that I'm not aware and that no one has yet linked to that states that small city politicians have a higher bar than the GNG and need coverage from the larger circulation regional newspapers? -- irn ( talk) 14:49, 3 January 2018 (UTC) reply
• Keep Being "the first openly-gay mayor of any municipality in the state of Michigan" is a big deal. Zigzig20s ( talk) 14:57, 3 January 2018 (UTC) reply
• Keep Just because there is not coverage in Detroit newspapers doesn't mean that this is not notable. Jefstevens ( talk) 06:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC) reply

• There was, in fact, coverage in the Detroit papers. User:Desmay got his facts wrong, failing, for example, to notice that a Detroit News article "Ferndale elects first gay mayor" was already on the page. sigh. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 12:16, 7 January 2018 (UTC) reply

• Keep. At the very least, meets the WP:GNG. Thank you, User:E.M.Gregory, for improving the referencing! gidonb ( talk) 13:50, 7 January 2018 (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.