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. Kurykh ( talk) 03:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC) reply

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

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Delete. WP:BLP of a person notable only as a city councillor, in a city not internationally prominent enough to hand its city councillors an WP:NPOL pass. While consensus formerly accepted Winnipeg as a city that got its councillors into Wikipedia on the grounds that it was listed in the article on global city, that's more recently been deprecated because it was listed only in the "sufficiency" class of quasi-global cities and not as a true alpha, beta or gamma class world city. But what we have for sourcing here is not enough to get him over WP:GNG in lieu -- this is based on just two pieces of local media sourcing, neither of which is even about his political career: one just quotes his opinions on the economic situation seven years after he left office, and the second is about his son's new election to city council sixteen years later. This is not enough to demonstrate a city councillor as more notable than the norm, which is the standard that Winnipeg's city councillors now have to meet. Bearcat ( talk) 20:39, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 20:40, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Manitoba-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 20:40, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• Delete lack or sources and material. How lowly is a councillor not? L3X1 My Complaint Desk 20:46, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Weak delete. There just isn't enough about him for an entry. He seems to be notable in part because he is the father of a sitting representative and this information could be included on that page. Bangabandhu ( talk) 23:29, 11 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Notability is not inherited, so being the father of another person isn't a notability claim in and of itself — if he isn't notable enough for an article by himself, then having a possibly more notable son doesn't make him any more notable than he was before. Bearcat ( talk) 00:05, 12 February 2017 (UTC) reply

I wasn't saying he was notable because of his son. I was saying that it seems like any claim of notability would probably involve his family relations. Of course, that alone isn't enough to satisfy GNG, but it does suggest that he could be mentioned on his son's page.

On a related point, it seems like you're judging notability too unidimensionally. Is subject a politician of a city with X population? Where X is less than Y, then delete. I think its much more complex than that. A local politician of any area who does important things and has the supporting refs deserves inclusion. You might look at it more as a scorecard, where status as a local politician alone is not enough to satisfy the threshold. But a local pol who has done lots of stuff, got lots of attention (good or bad) - this should get additional points and satisfy the threshold for inclusion. Of course, that's not the case here. Bangabandhu ( talk) 01:21, 12 February 2017 (UTC) reply

You're misinterpreting what I'm saying. Of course it's true that a local politician who has done lots of stuff, and got lots of media attention for it, clears the WP:GNG bar — the "population of the city" test comes into play only in the sense of determining whether or not the person gets a presumption of notability for an article that isn't substantive or properly sourced yet. In the global cities (e.g. Toronto, New York City, London), we know that the necessary depth and volume of sourcing is virtually guaranteed to be available in nearly all cases — so we allow the article to be kept even if it's in an inadequate state of sourcing right now, because the articles are virtually guaranteed to be improvable. (It may still become deletable in the future if the sourcing fails to materialize — e.g. a person could theoretically win election as a city councillor, but then resign or die so soon afterward that we can never actually source anything else about them besides the fact of winning the election itself — but in that rarefied class of cities, we allow the article to exist up front and the GNG to build up as the article gets worked on.)

Outside of that range of cities, however, it's much more of a toss-up as to whether the necessary depth and volume of sourcing will exist or not — so those councillors can still get Wikipedia articles if the necessary depth and volume of sourcing can be shown, but are not guaranteed inclusion on the basis of just one or two sources. Note, for example, that I have not nominated several other people who also have not held any office higher than Winnipeg's city council, but whose articles are citing a lot more sources than the ones I have listed. That is, for example, why I haven't nominated Russ Wyatt's article alongside his dad's: Reg's article cites just two sources while Russ's cites 63 — which means Russ has been shown to clear GNG in a way that Reg hasn't.

In a nutshell, the size of the city doesn't matter if a city councillor passes GNG on the basis of solid and substantive sourcing — where it comes into play is the question of whether or not we give the benefit of the doubt to an article that isn't substantive or solidly sourced yet. Bearcat ( talk) 17:18, 12 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the clarification. From what I'd seen on other pages of legislators proposed for deletion, it seemed like the process was different. I wouldn't expect that winning office alone would be enough for notability and I support that criteria. But it seems that there is added scrutiny to many of the pages of these people. There shouldn't be a presumption of notability, but there also shouldn't be a presumption of non-notability, even if all the coverage is local. As many editors don't take the time to review sources before they reach a decision in the AFD discussion, there is a real bias towards deleting and an assumption of non-notability. Its easier to apply the "oh, its a small town politician - delete" rather than taking the time to look for sources. Again, its much better to err on the side of keeping something up so that additional sources can be found rather than deleting. Bangabandhu ( talk) 01:55, 13 February 2017 (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.