- 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. Sandstein 21:30, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
- Daniel Canan ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Mayor of a smallish city, not big enough to give an automatic pass per WP:NPOL, and no significant sourcing beyond stuff associated with his city office to meet WP:ANYBIO John from Idegon ( talk) 22:34, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 23:15, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Indiana-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 23:15, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
- Merge to Mayors of Muncie since 1996. WP:PRESERVE is a policy, and we have a nice set of three similar articles that can be merged. Unscintillating ( talk) 01:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
- Delete, without prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can do better. Muncie is a large enough city that a properly sourced article with some actual substance to it would be kept, but nominator is correct that it's not large enough to hand him an automatic "must-include" freebie just because he exists. And I don't see why we would want a list of mayors of Muncie since 1996, as a separate concept from mayors of Muncie before 1996 — and even if we did keep an actual list, it would be a list, and not a compilation of merged minibio blurbs, so there'd be nothing else to merge from here besides his name and term dates.
Note that while his successor's article isn't any better (actually it's even worse), and thus will be listed for AFD shortly too, it at least cites a source which provides the names of all of Muncie's past and present mayors and thus enables the creation of List of mayors of Muncie, Indiana without having to "since 1996" anything. So this can be redirected to that if that's felt to be useful, but there still won't be anything from here to merge. Bearcat ( talk) 18:58, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
- Merge to Mayors of Muncie, Indiana is fine, as long as we are clear that that includes the verifiable material from these articles. Unscintillating ( talk) 03:39, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
- Lists of mayors are just lists of the names and term dates; they are not padded out into omnibus compilations of minibios of the individual mayors. And anyway, the list is at List of mayors of Muncie, Indiana, not just "Mayors of Muncie, Indiana". Bearcat ( talk) 16:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- Delete my city has over twice the population of Muncie, and we deleted an article on the man who served as our mayor for 20 years. There are not sources here to show notability. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:39, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
- WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD are policies. Why did you !vote delete? Do you not care about the work that these editors contributed to the encyclopedia? Do you not care about the work it is going to take to restore this material when the encyclopedia becomes more developed? Unscintillating ( talk) 03:39, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
- There is no obligation to preserve everything that gets added to Wikipedia just because somebody worked on it. There are lots of types of content that are not worth preserving — "we need to preserve this just because somebody worked on it" is actually explicitly listed at WP:ATA as an argument to avoid in deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 18:54, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. JPL, you're not a new user, you know better than this. - The Bushranger One ping only 10:03, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- Delete per WP:ANYBIO. No matter how long they served or even served, sources matter. I agree with Bearcat about recreation as well. Excelse ( talk) 05:33, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- Keep. Despite the local paper apparently not showing more than a couple of years of archives, and the Indianapolis Star being newspapers.com, to which I don't have a subscription, I was able to flesh out the article using several references. He was the first mayor of Muncie to serve three consecutive terms (and the first Republican mayor to be re-elected in over a century, and they named a downtown park after him. I believe that's adequate coverage, albeit regional, to make him notable.
Yngvadottir (
talk) 06:30, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- If I am reading NPOL correctly, detailed coverage of his political career must extend beyond local and or detailed coverage must exist for some notability beyond politics. All you've added are stories on him being a mayor. If the NYT or even one of the Chicago rags would have a fairly detailed bio of him, that would tip it to notable. I see nothing in the guidelines to indicate that being a historic mayor or an effective mayor makes a difference. He's the mayor of a smallish city and no one outside central Indiana has made note of him. John from Idegon ( talk) 06:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- Mayors of places this size are kept if they can be shown as the subject of substantial press coverage that marks them out as significantly more notable than the norm for most mayors — every mayor of anywhere could always cite purely local press coverage, so we don't keep an article about a mayor just because it has five footnotes of local coverage in it. Dig out 30 or 40 or 50 footnotes of local coverage, supporting a really substantial article, and then local coverage would be fine — but to get a mayor of a place this size kept on just five footnotes, those five footnotes would need to represent nationalized coverage and not just localized. And having had stuff in the city named after him after leaving office isn't a notability criterion for a mayor per se — at an educated guess, somewhere between half and two-thirds of everybody who'd ever been mayor of anywhere would have a Wikipedia article if having had a street or an arena or a park or another piece of municipal infrastructure named in his honour were an automatic inclusion freebie. Party affiliation isn't even an inclusion criterion per se (not even if it ran counter to the city's usual partisan leanings, which in the case of Muncie it clearly doesn't since the list of mayors contains more Republicans than Democrats on the whole), and neither is the number of times the mayor won reelection. Bearcat ( talk) 16:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
- Delete - While Yngvadottir makes a good point, I think the rationale's of John from Idegon and Bearcat are pretty much spot on. If he had been the first R mayor of the city, that would be another thing (or the first D for that matter). Being the first mayor to serve a certain number of terms and having a park named after them simply isn't enough. Onel5969 TT me 11:55, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
- WP:ATD and WP:PRESERVE are policies, so even if you are correct that the new Wikipedia standard for Muncie is four terms as a mayor to be Wikipedia notable[sez who?], your !vote is not policy based. Unscintillating ( talk) 18:19, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Onel5969 said no such thing as "the new Wikipedia standard for Muncie is four terms as a mayor". Wikipedia's notability standard for mayors depends on adequate sourcing, not on how many terms the person served — a well-sourced article about a mayor who served just one term can be kept, and a poorly sourced article about a mayor who served ten terms can be deleted, because it's the sourcing that determines notability, not the number of terms served. Bearcat ( talk) 18:49, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Most of your response is a hypothetical; because your response ignores what the OP actually said, we aren't talking about the general case of articles with sourcing problems such that deletion is policy based, and notability is not a deletion argument when WP:PRESERVE and WP:ATD apply. The case here, even if we agree that the topic should not be standalone, this is a problem within WP:Editing policy, and AfD is not cleanup. Unscintillating ( talk) 19:36, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Actually, I'm not ignoring what the OP actually said; my reading of what the OP said was exactly 100 per cent correct and you're the one who read something into it that isn't there. HTH. Bearcat ( talk) 21:34, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Well Onel said that you are spot on and you say you are 100% correct, and now John from Idegon says, "Strict adherence to ATD would effectively render AfD moot." Looks like more than just a little bit of avoidance there of discussing policy, in an AfD in which policy dictates that no AfD discussion is relevant. Unscintillating ( talk) 22:23, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
( edit conflict)**To which I would add, Unscintillating, since AfD is near 100% about determining Notability, and as Notability is a guideline, not a policy, virtually any argument, whether keep or delete, is not policy-based. Further, PRESERVE is not, contrary to your insistence, policy. ATD is, however I think even rabid inclusionists would agree, if it is the only argument you've got, you essentially do not have an argument. Strict adherence to ATD would effectively render AfD moot, and as several articles are deleted via AfD daily, that is obviously not the community's desire. Effectively, your arguments do not rise above filibustering. If that's your intention, run for Senate. John from Idegon ( talk) 19:48, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Well, PRESERVE is a policy and it is
WP:DEL8 that is deletion policy. Further,
argumentum ad populum is a fallacy. In addition to
WP:IGNORINGATD, see also
WP:INSIGNIFICANCE. Thank you,
Unscintillating (
talk) 22:23, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- The PRESERVE rule is to preserve appropriate content, not to unconditionally preserve all content — and DEL8 says that failure to meet the relevant notability guideline is a valid and appropriate reason for deletion, not that it isn't as you seem to think. You have yet to advance any actual reason why this would need to be retained besides "somebody worked on it" — John is right, you're basically just filibustering rather than contributing anything useful to the discussion.
Bearcat (
talk) 23:06, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Glad to see that you have discovered DEL8. WP:ATD is just as much as a part of deletion policy as is DEL8, so you can't cite DEL8 and ignore ATD. Sorry, but your own action in creating a new redirect target for the topic and retaining your "Delete" !vote shows that you either don't understand or don't care about making policy based !votes. And you've already alluded to your position here, which is to work to undermine the minibios concept that works against many of your deletion arguments, as well as against JPL's deletion arguments.
Unscintillating (
talk) 00:05, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
- "Work to undermine the minibios concept?" What the hell "minibios concept" even exists to be undermined in the first place? And neither have I "just discovered" DEL8 — nothing I've said in this discussion at all contradicts DEL8 in any way whatsoever. DEL8 is completely consistent with the position I've been expressing all along, because DEL8 says and means that failure to satisfy a notability criterion is a valid reason for deletion of an article. Bearcat ( talk) 00:18, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
- Glad to see that you have discovered DEL8. WP:ATD is just as much as a part of deletion policy as is DEL8, so you can't cite DEL8 and ignore ATD. Sorry, but your own action in creating a new redirect target for the topic and retaining your "Delete" !vote shows that you either don't understand or don't care about making policy based !votes. And you've already alluded to your position here, which is to work to undermine the minibios concept that works against many of your deletion arguments, as well as against JPL's deletion arguments.
Unscintillating (
talk) 00:05, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
- The PRESERVE rule is to preserve appropriate content, not to unconditionally preserve all content — and DEL8 says that failure to meet the relevant notability guideline is a valid and appropriate reason for deletion, not that it isn't as you seem to think. You have yet to advance any actual reason why this would need to be retained besides "somebody worked on it" — John is right, you're basically just filibustering rather than contributing anything useful to the discussion.
Bearcat (
talk) 23:06, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- Well, PRESERVE is a policy and it is
WP:DEL8 that is deletion policy. Further,
argumentum ad populum is a fallacy. In addition to
WP:IGNORINGATD, see also
WP:INSIGNIFICANCE. Thank you,
Unscintillating (
talk) 22:23, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
- 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.