- 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. Michig ( talk) 08:23, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
- Susan Weber ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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WP:BLP of a person notable only as a local school board trustee and an unsuccessful candidate for the local fire department board -- neither of which is a claim of notability that gets a person into Wikipedia per WP:NPOL. At this level of purely localized office, the media coverage of the officeholder has to nationalize before they can claim to have passed WP:GNG as an alternative path to inclusion -- but the coverage here is exclusively local, and thus demonstrates no reason why an international encyclopedia should concern itself. Delete. Bearcat ( talk) 01:51, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 03:58, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 03:58, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Comment: I'm not finding anything in GNG requiring national coverage, and I've never before encountered such a criterion raised in a deletion discussion. Care to fill me in? Rebb ing 04:02, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Purely local figures, such as school board trustees, are not eligible for Wikipedia articles on the basis of purely local coverage — they have to be demonstrated as significantly more notable than the norm, by virtue of getting unusual levels of coverage well beyond the ordinary level of local coverage that any school board trustee can always expect to get in the local media.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:47, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- So you're saying that coverage must be spread over a relatively large geographic area to qualify as "significant" under GNG? I don't see this in our guidelines anywhere. Routine coverage is already disregarded under
ROUTINE regardless of territorial distribution. I see no need to read a "national coverage" criterion into the notability guideline, and I am somewhat concerned about the systemic bias such a requirement might introduce.
Rebb
ing
07:0207:07, 11 May 2016 (UTC)- In my experience, it's become necessary to avoid invoking
WP:ROUTINE when discussing local media coverage of a purely local interest figure, like a school trustee or a small-town city councillor — while I am personally among the many editors who hold that it does apply, there are other editors who insist that ROUTINE only deprecates things like birth and death and wedding announcements in the classifieds, and/or "this weekend's events" calendar listings. The principle is the same either way — if the political role that the person holds is of exclusively local notability and doesn't automatically pass NPOL in and of itself, then the media coverage has to demonstrate a substantive reason why the person could be seen as more notable than the hundreds of thousands of other people who hold comparable roles and generate comparable levels of local coverage — but applying ROUTINE to any coverage that exists in the news section of any newspaper tends to generate a lot of pointless circular debate about whether it applies or not, thus causing the discussion to stray off topic.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for your explanation. I see your point about ROUTINE's scope being controversial. Looking at this again, I think it ought to come down to GNG. The sort of news coverage local politicians receive typically runs something like this:
- X Running for Mayor;
- Meet X, a Local Bookstore Owner (four sentences and a few words about local issues);
- X Wins Race;
- X Performed Routine Executive/legislative Action Y;
- X Runs for Re-election...
Such coverage is frequent but trivial, and I think it can be said to fail GNG's "significant coverage" prong without invoking ROUTINE or considering local versus national attention. On the other hand, I would likely consider to be notable a local politician who actually received significant and independent yet entirely local coverage. (For comparison, despite receiving regular media attention, I doubt any of my mid-size city's politiicans have had coverage sufficient for GNG.)
Thanks for humoring me; I'm relatively new to AfD, so I lack the wisdom that only experience brings.
Rebb
ing 17:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you for your explanation. I see your point about ROUTINE's scope being controversial. Looking at this again, I think it ought to come down to GNG. The sort of news coverage local politicians receive typically runs something like this:
- In my experience, it's become necessary to avoid invoking
WP:ROUTINE when discussing local media coverage of a purely local interest figure, like a school trustee or a small-town city councillor — while I am personally among the many editors who hold that it does apply, there are other editors who insist that ROUTINE only deprecates things like birth and death and wedding announcements in the classifieds, and/or "this weekend's events" calendar listings. The principle is the same either way — if the political role that the person holds is of exclusively local notability and doesn't automatically pass NPOL in and of itself, then the media coverage has to demonstrate a substantive reason why the person could be seen as more notable than the hundreds of thousands of other people who hold comparable roles and generate comparable levels of local coverage — but applying ROUTINE to any coverage that exists in the news section of any newspaper tends to generate a lot of pointless circular debate about whether it applies or not, thus causing the discussion to stray off topic.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:53, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
- So you're saying that coverage must be spread over a relatively large geographic area to qualify as "significant" under GNG? I don't see this in our guidelines anywhere. Routine coverage is already disregarded under
ROUTINE regardless of territorial distribution. I see no need to read a "national coverage" criterion into the notability guideline, and I am somewhat concerned about the systemic bias such a requirement might introduce.
Rebb
ing
- Purely local figures, such as school board trustees, are not eligible for Wikipedia articles on the basis of purely local coverage — they have to be demonstrated as significantly more notable than the norm, by virtue of getting unusual levels of coverage well beyond the ordinary level of local coverage that any school board trustee can always expect to get in the local media.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:47, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Delete No in-depth coverage of Weber. All coverage is purely trivial mentions. AusLondonder ( talk) 09:59, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
- Weak delete. In my view, the available coverage is not "significant coverage" as contemplated by GNG. Rebb ing 17:22, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
- Weak delete I think the coverage is sufficient and need not be national or even heavily regional; (I don't like to see WP:ROUTINE raised in these cases) but here, we have a relatively minor local officeholder with insufficient special notability and that is why I think not adequate. Feels like a vanity piece. Montanabw (talk) 18:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
- Delete. There is obviously nothing inherently notable about local officials in a county of 250,000 (or in general, for that matter). The school district that Weber represented is one of ten in the county. She would have to be a particularly remarkable or interesting school board president for her to meet Wikipedia's notability standards, and I don't see any coverage in the sources provided that goes above and beyond what you would expect of someone in her position. IgnorantArmies (talk) 13:06, 17 May 2016 (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.