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. slakr^{\  talk /} 02:32, 28 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Robert Johannson (  | 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, and as a non-winning candidate for higher office. 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; the article cites just four pieces of WP:ROUTINE local coverage of the type that would be expected to exist in the local media, six primary sources and a letter he wrote to the editor. That's simply not the kind of sourcing it takes 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) 19:58, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 20:00, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Manitoba-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 20:00, 9 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Strong Keep. This should be a SNOW, but based on how these issues are now approached I understand why it might be considered for deletion. In this instance, Johannson's position on the city council is to his disadvantage. If he were only a playwright and scholar, I doubt that this would even be considered. But in the enthusiasm for applying a tier-based distinction of cities, lots of entries are getting unfairly nominated. That he is a low level councilmember shouldn't be held against him; he meets GNG standards for all of his other work. That he was not as successful in politics as he was in other areas is not a reason to delete. Bangabandhu ( talk) 00:04, 12 February 2017 (UTC) reply

WP:GNG is a measure of sourcing, but there's exactly zero valid sourcing here for any of his work outside of politics. For example, a person does not get an automatic notability freebie as a writer just because his book has an ISBN number — a writer has to be the subject of reliable source coverage about his writing (e.g. book reviews, news articles about him winning a literary award, that kind of thing) to actually pass WP:AUTHOR. He does not get a free pass over GNG just because his book happens to have an ISBN number, because all books have an ISBN number — but the only sources present here for his writing of books are, guess what, the books' ISBN numbers. So no, there's no basis here for claiming that he passes GNG for his other work — if he passed GNG for his other work then it would never have been nominated for deletion, because passing GNG is a question of the quality of the sourcing. Bearcat ( talk) 08:45, 16 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Is it exactly zero? There's links to his playwright profile in the entry right now. Sure, that's not the highest quality source, but its something. I bet there are more refs if we dig. Bangabandhu ( talk) 19:18, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply

The "playwright profile" is on the website of a professional organization which the playwrights with profiles on it are or were members of, so it's a primary source. That is, it can be used for supplementary verification of stray facts after WP:GNG has already covered off, but it doesn't count as a data point toward the basic question of whether he clears a notability standard in the first place. The plays need to be sourceable to reliable source coverage before you can say the plays constitute notability as a writer — a primary source membership directory shows existence, not notability. Bearcat ( talk) 14:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• Delete a local politician without the level of sources to justify having an article on him. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 19:50, 20 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• And that level would be...?  Unscintillating ( talk) 07:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• Comment  WP:ROUTINE is an event guideline, and the topic here is a biography.  Unscintillating ( talk) 07:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC) reply

The matter of whether ROUTINE applies or not is not a question of whether the topic of the article is a person or an event; it applies to whether the context of what the sources are covering him for is "substantive coverage about him" or "glancing namecheck of his existence in coverage of events". That is, if a person gets his name into the local newspaper because of his involvement in events that would be expected to have garnered coverage in the local newspaper — such as local election campaigns — then that coverage does fall under ROUTINE. It's a question of the context in which the coverage exists, not just a question of whether he is personally an event or not.

Put another way, what we have here for reliable sourcing is not coverage about Johansson per se — it's coverage about events, in which Johannson gets namechecked because he was involved. But if he wasn't involved a virtually identical article about the event, different only in the sense that it wouldn't contain the phrase "Robert Johansson", would still have existed anyway. Covering local elections is the local media's job, so any candidate for any office could always be sourced to three or four pieces of local media coverage — the election campaigns here did not garner special coverage because Johansson was specifically involved in them, but would have garnered the same coverage regardless of who was or wasn't running. So ROUTINE does apply, because the coverage is fundamentally about the events rather than about Johansson. Bearcat ( talk) 16:13, 25 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• Keep  Not a hoax, no one is arguing delete IAR.  Sufficient GNG-satisfying local sources can be found in the article.  Unscintillating ( talk) 07:38, 24 February 2017 (UTC) reply

It takes more than just local sources to get someone like this into Wikipedia. With no automatic pass by virtue of having held any WP:NPOL-passing political role, he has to be sourceable as more than just locally notable to pass GNG. If local sources were all it took, we would have to keep an article about everybody who ever got into her local newspaper three times for being president of her church bake sale committee. And no, the Globe and Mail citation does not prove that he's garnered more than local coverage; it's a letter to the editor with Johansson as its author, not a news article that a G&M journalist wrote about Johansson as a subject. Bearcat ( talk) 16:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC) reply

• Delete - Fails WP:NPOL, and per Bearcat's reasoning, also fails WP:GNG. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 23:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC) reply
• Delete Per previous "delete," subject fails "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature." As a local politician, didn't receive wide scale coverage per WP:NPOL. The search tools produce no mentions, let alone dedicated websites, articles, etc. Time to go. Tapered ( talk) 04:01, 27 February 2017 (UTC) reply
• Comment Can the "keep" editors factually state that they're not residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and that they've never been residents of Winnipeg? Tapered ( talk) 04:04, 27 February 2017 (UTC) reply
• delete simply being a local councillor does not cut it. nor does his other achievements. LibStar ( talk) 05:01, 27 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.