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. If anyone would like the article userfied, let me know. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:06, 5 April 2018 (UTC) reply

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

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WP:BLP of a city and county councillor. As always, politicians at this level of office are not extended an automatic presumption of notability just because they exist, but must be referenced as the subject of enough press coverage to be deemed significantly more notable than most other politicians at the same level everywhere else. But that's not what the sources here are showing: apart from a light smattering of specifically campaign-related coverage, this is otherwise referenced to glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage of other things, not to sources that are about him for the purposes of properly demonstrating his individual notability. This is textbook reference bombing: trying to load the article with as many sources as possible so that notability looks "obvious", even though he isn't the subject of anywhere near enough of the sources to actually get over WP:GNG. Bearcat ( talk) 21:14, 28 March 2018 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:10, 28 March 2018 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Maryland-related deletion discussions. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:10, 28 March 2018 (UTC) reply

• Delete per nom. Fails WP:NPOL. Nothing more than a local poltician, like hundreds of thousands of others. I agree with nom's WP:REFBOMB call. Narky Blert ( talk) 23:12, 28 March 2018 (UTC) reply
• comment Late here, so not going to comment on notability, but I agree on refbombin, and will run a TNT operation just so my nuking skills don't get rusty. L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 02:03, 29 March 2018 (UTC) reply

I am a new article writer for Wikipedia who is trying to learn how to do it. This is my first article and I am hoping to write more. I have spent months researching the subject of this article and just as long trying to learn how to code it and load it in. I have tried to follow every requirement. It is sad to me that an at-large council member who has passed hundreds of laws over a period of more than 25 years in a county with more than a million people might not be considered notable by wikipedia standards. Especially since the article I was asked to edit to reach my ten edits was about a drummer in a band. In addition, there are other council members with wikipedia pages. Today I was planning on cleaning up the sources where I have duplicates but I am having trouble figuring out how to do that but I am working on it. If you want to know which sources focus only on him please read the Contrarian article. Many of the Bethesda magazine articles focus more on him. As we get into a situation where there are fewer and fewer newspapers in the world, you will find you need more and more smaller sources if you are to follow the rule of no original material. Montgomery County is a huge suburb of Washington DC. In the past few years, two local newspapers have gone out of business and we no longer have a newspaper. So the only coverage we get is occasionally from the Washington Post. It is notable that this council member has had so many Washington Post articles mention him. This is evidence that he is significantly more notable than other politicians of the same level. The metro area of the Washington Post is huge. In addition, in the current world climate, more and more people will be interested in what you are considering lower level politicians. It would be nice if they could find information about the people who run their government from wikipedia rather than elsewhere. I would appreciate any constructive criticism that can help me make the article acceptable. In the meantime, I will keep working on cleaning up the citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12A23B34C ( talk • contribs) 14:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC) reply

The county's right next to DC as it is, so getting coverage in the Washington Post is not, in and of itself, enough to make him a special case — it still represents local coverage of the type that all county councillors are simply expected to receive in their local media, not wider coverage that's expanding beyond the purely local. Bearcat ( talk) 15:22, 29 March 2018 (UTC) reply

Respectfully,an article solely about the leadership style of a politician in a County of 1 million in the Washington Post (citation 12) which covers a metro area of more than 6 million and has a national reputation, is notable. I understand that a lot of citations can be construed as trying to make something notable that is not, however, that is not what is happening here. As a newbie I am under the impression that you cannot write anything that is not sourced. So in the Transportation section, if one article mentions a proposed 98 mile bus rapid transit system and does not define it more than saying how many miles it is...and another article defines it as a type of tram-bus but does not say how many miles it is, isn't it correct to use two sources for that sentence or is that viewed as overkill? 12A23B34C ( talk) 14:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC) reply

One more thought about the notability comment above. The contributor mentioned that county council members are politicians so are expected to make laws and thus if they are doing that it is not notable. Then would it not be correct to remove most authors, film stars, film directors etc. Authors are expected to write books. Actors are expected to act and appear in films. They are just doing their job. In addition, I would argue that a lot of books written by authors and documentaries made by directors are not seen or read by a million people, which is the jurisdiction of a Montgomery County Council member. Senators are expected to make laws as are county council members. I would argue that council members are more notable as the laws they create impact residents more directly. 12A23B34C ( talk) 14:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC) reply

We don't keep articles about every actor or every writer who merely exists, either — we keep articles about actors and writers who have credible claims to being special, such as by winning or getting nominated for major national awards or by getting a broad range of coverage in publications not limited to a single local area. So actors and writers are already getting treated the same way we treat politicians: they're not automatically kept just because we can verify that they exist as people who are doing their jobs either, but are kept only if they have a strong claim to being notable for more than just existing as people who are doing their jobs. Bearcat ( talk) 17:30, 30 March 2018 (UTC) reply

Agreeing with Bearcat's comment. Wiki indeed has articles about actors, writers, and other people who merely exist. Sooner or later, they tend to wind up here in WP:AFD. They, including local politicians and failed election candidates, do so because they fail WP:NBIO: insufficient coverage in independent sources. I'm a WP:INCLUSIONIST, but I will cheerfully nominate or argue against the inclusion in Wiki of people like that.

A city just down the road from where I live (UK) has a population of over 1,000,000 (compare DC: 690,000). None of its councillors is notable just for that.

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a known bad argument in WP:AFD. Narky Blert ( talk) 23:52, 30 March 2018 (UTC) reply

• Delete- County politicians are not given auto-notability. The article is also very promotional, it looks like it was copy and pasted from a campaign flyer.-- Rusf10 ( talk) 02:21, 31 March 2018 (UTC) reply
• Delete per nom. I do think that WP:POLOUTCOMES should be more explicit about county legislators and county executives to explicitly state that they are evaluated on their own merits, rather than being categorically lumped together in accessing notability. -- Enos733 ( talk) 21:28, 2 April 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.