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 existence of an obituary blurb in the New York Times is not in and of itself an automatic notability freebie, especially for a person whose notability claim is local to the NYT's local coverage area. It can certainly be used, but it doesn't clinch anything all by itself.
Bearcat (
talk)
16:11, 13 August 2018 (UTC)reply
Delete I don't really see significant coverage of the subject except in the Asbury Park obituary. The NYT obit is only a couple paragraphs long. In any case, the legal notability is simply policy: the article must nevertheless pass
WP:GNG. Happy to revise my vote if better sourcing is found.
SportingFlyertalk02:33, 8 August 2018 (UTC)reply
Delete, without prejudice against recreation if somebody can do much better than this. Nothing stated here is an automatic inclusion freebie that entitles him to have an article just because he existed, but the sourcing is not strong enough to get him over
WP:GNG — three of the seven sources aren't doing anything at all, because one is a
primary source, one just glancingly verifies the existence of a scholarship that was named after him (which is not a notability clincher) while containing no content about him, and one verifies an entirely tangential fact about his widow rather than being about him. And while the other four are better, they aren't convincingly adding up to enough coverage to confer a "notable because media coverage exists" pass — they all represent the local level of coverage that any county prsecutor in any county would simply be expected to have in the local media, and the fact that a person's local media market happens to have The New York Times in it does not reify into an instant notability-clincher in and of itself either. Given the length of time he held the position, it's plausible that enough coverage to get him over GNG might exist if somebody digs deeper than this — but improved coverage would have to be shown to exist, not just theorized as possible, before it changes the notability equation, and the volume of coverage shown right now is not enough.
Bearcat (
talk)
16:11, 13 August 2018 (UTC)reply
Delete- There was basically a consensus to delete the first time (especially if you discount the wikilawyering and
WP:ILIKEIT arguments). There is nothing particularly notable about his career. And the resurrection of the New York Times obit = automatic notability argument is really aggravating. That has been shot down as a claim to notability in so many other deletion discussions. The second New York Times article doesn't really help much, it is about a new police academy that just happens to be named after him. Having a building named after you is not auto-notability either (especially since that building would not meet notability standards for its own article).--
Rusf10 (
talk)
03:48, 14 August 2018 (UTC)reply
They don't "just happen" to name police academies after people, buildings like the John H. Stamler Police Academy are named to honor notable public figures. The naming of this Academy in Stamler's honor is reliably sourced and notable.
E.M.Gregory (
talk)
18:55, 14 August 2018 (UTC)reply
Yeah, and the list of people who have had buildings named after them includes every single mayor who ever mayored in every town that ever had mayors at all. So the fact that a piece of public infrastructure happens to have been named after someone is not in and of itself an encyclopedic notability freebie in the absence of a GNG-passing volume of career coverage while the person was alive, which isn't what's been shown here.
Bearcat (
talk)
05:41, 19 August 2018 (UTC)reply
Keep Obits in major newspapers (like the East Coast Edition of the New York Times,) are a standard indication of notability at Wikipedia. The fact is that SIGCOV of his work as prosecutor is available in news archives, even though CRIME stories like this one about Rolando Marcelo, a recent Yale grad, who lost his job, picked up a knife, and: (Block Party Ends With Slaying of 4: [FINAL Edition]
San Francisco Chronicle (pre-1997 Fulltext); 30 May 1989: A4.; Suspect Fights With Guards, AP. New York Times, 03 June 1989: 1.30.) would probably have an article is it happened now. But
Wikipedia:Deletion is not cleanup. Passes
WP:BASIC.
E.M.Gregory (
talk)
18:55, 14 August 2018 (UTC)reply
No, having an obit, even in the New York Times, is not an automatic free pass over GNG all by itself if it's the only GNG-assisting source being shown. Every individual person who died on 9/11, frex, got an NYT obit, but they weren't and aren't all encyclopedically notable.
Bearcat (
talk)
05:41, 19 August 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.