Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ariel S. Ballif


 * 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. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 19:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Ariel S. Ballif

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Fails WP:NPOL, WP:ACADEMIC, and WP:SIGCOV. 4meter4 (talk) 02:31, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Lack of Notability.  Brascoian    (talk to me)  05:31, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Utah-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete fails WP:NPROF and WP:GNG. --hroest 14:05, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete as per above Jamzze (talk) 14:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Ballif was also mayor of Provo, Utah so we need to consider as well if he passes politician notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:58, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is a biographical sketch published because he was mayor.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep With the added source connected with his being mayor I believe we have enough sources to justify the passing of politician notability as a mayor of a significant city, Provo, Utah.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:22, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per the source that Johnpacklambert found, plus the likelihood that a search of Utah newspaper archives would uncover many more reliable sources. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  19:31, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete The article lacks notability and has no reliable sources of information.Aloolkaparatha (talk) 03:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete fails WP:GNG and WP:NPOL - mayors for cities are not clearly notable. If he is notable, it'll be under NPROF. SportingFlyer  T · C  15:36, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I don't think he passes WP:PROF. But I also disagree with SportingFlyer's apparent assumption that mayors are automatically non-notable, without examination of the sources. Mayors may be notable, or may not be, depending on the sourcing available. Here we have an in-depth and apparently reliable source giving a retrospective of his work as mayor and another apparently reliable source with a paragraph of depth about him, as president of the NZ mission . I think these two sources are enough to give a borderline pass of WP:GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:17, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not an assumption - while it may not be completely true that every town has a mayor, pretty much every town has a mayor, so local sourcing which only shows that he was the mayor isn't enough in my book. It's different for larger cities or if coverage is beyond local. The mission.net site also fails because it clearly states "Submitted by James Child Phillips, one of his missionaries." so is not independent. SportingFlyer  T · C  21:12, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
 * "local sourcing which only shows that he was the mayor" is not what we have. What we have is sourcing that goes into considerably more depth than that. And locality of sourcing is nowhere mentioned as a constraint in GNG. And discounting sources as non-independent because they are written by people who might actually know something about the subject is a stupid idea that would leave us dependent only on hermit-philosophers who write about what the world might be like outside their cave but never leave the cave to check whether their fantasies have any validity. What makes a source reliable and independent is not the level of ignorance of its source of information, but what happens afterwards: being edited and published by a disinterested party with some attention to accuracy. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * By that logic, obituaries are independent of the subject because a newspaper publishes them, even though they're submitted by families. The fact the disinterested party submitted it does not matter in this instance. We also have a long-standing consensus that mayoral articles require something more than local sourcing in order to demonstrate notability, as not to flood the encyclopaedia with articles about mayors. SportingFlyer  T · C  00:15, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Paid death notices (not newspaper-written obituaries) are not known for going through any sort of editorial process: the newspaper takes the money and prints what they write. That does not appear to bear any resemblance to the sources used here; it is a total red herring. We also do not have any consensus that mayors are exempt from our general notability guidelines and must go through some special non-local notability process; that exists only in your mind. The actual notability guideline says nothing about locality. The only notability guideline that actually includes a non-local provision is WP:AUD in WP:ORG. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:20, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We absolutely have a consensus on mayors. See WP:POLOUTCOMES. SportingFlyer  T · C  10:41, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We have a consensus that being a mayor is not automatically notable. There is not a consensus that being a mayor is disqualifying for notability or for the sources used for notability that describe being a mayor. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:50, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The consensus specifically is that mayors are not notable if they only receive routine local coverage of them being a mayor. See Articles for deletion/Marcel Van Goolen, Articles for deletion/José Manuel Mouzo, Articles for deletion/Kiyoshi Iketani as recent examples. Considering Ballif was only an interim mayor for less than two months and the website we're using to show notability was written for the city council, I don't see how either of them can work together to make him notable. SportingFlyer  T · C  19:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I could point to examples too. "Routine coverage" means that they were mentioned and/or quoted in an article about city business, or we have an article briefly covering the election in which they won the position. It absolutely does not mean in-depth retrospectives about their mayoral career. That goes totally against NPOL's subservience to GNG and against GNG's insistance that coverage, not significance, is what determines notability. You appear to want a notability criterion based on how significant someone's achievements were, rather than on depth of coverage for what you feel are insufficiently significant accomplishments. I encourage you to work towards changing Wikipedia's notability criteria to be based on significance rather than coverage. But please, stop twisting yourself in knots trying to pretend that in-depth coverage is not in-depth merely because it is coverage of someone you don't think is significant enough, or that GNG is based on anything other than depth of coverage. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:16, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, a retrospective of seven weeks of being an interim mayor, commissioned by the town council, is not independent; a listing on a website submitted by his child is not independent either; and NPOL, like other SNGs, work together with the GNG to define what sort of coverage qualifies for the GNG, as do several other guidelines where coverage does not necessarily equal notability. Your definition of routine coverage would flood the encyclopaedia with small town mayors. SportingFlyer  T · C  11:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keepIt feels like there is just enough information to keep an article about the subject. The page on the Provo Library includes several references (that may contain more information about the subject) and it is unclear if the obituary in the Deseret News is staff written. --Enos733 (talk) 00:57, 27 June 2021 (UTC)
 * A quick newspapers.com search shows the same obituary word-for-word in the non-staff-written part of the Provo newspaper, which also claims he was the "interim" mayor, which is substantiated by the library page - it appears he only served as mayor from November 1961 to December 31, 1961. Also, the Provo Library page includes information written in a book which appears to be commissioned for the city council - I don't know what that means for its independence. SportingFlyer  T · C  01:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete As I further review this case, it appears that Ballif was only an interim mayor. I do not think this is enough to qualify him for having an article. Provo currently has over 100,000 people. However it had a population of 36,000 people in 1960 when Ballif was mayor. Utah County now has over 600,000 people, but was only at 106,000 in 1960. Provo was not as clearly the economic center of the county then. BYU, the driving force behind Provo had many fewer students then. Right now it has just over 36,000 students. 1961 is the year the university issued its first doctoral degrees. I just do not think we can justify having an article on an interim mayor of a place with roughly 36,000 residents without much better sources.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:19, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Completely agree with John Pack Lambert. The sources about his interim mayorship are not significant enough, and he does not meet WP:PROF. — F ORMAL D UDE  ( talk ) 04:43, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 14:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete Considering all of the views and information people have found above, I feel this should be deleted, though not terribly strongly. It seems he does have some notability in various ways. The biggest is that he was a mayor at one point. As it was just interim though and for a short period I don't see the notability of that stand alone terribly strong. As the rest of the information about him is not notable, it it doesn't add up to quite enough. -- Tautomers (T C) 23:34, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - Fails WP:GNG as there is no significant coverage about him. Alvaldi (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2021 (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.