Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barbara Brenner (politician)


 * 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. The arguments to keep are largely that there is sufficient media coverage, but the majority of the discussants felt that the coverage was from local media which report on local politicians as an obligatory function, and thus this coverage does not meet the requirements of WP:GNG.

There was a reasonable suggestion to redirect this to Whatcom County Council. That suggestion had some support, but there were also people who argued against the redirect, noting that the connection to the county council is transient. So, I'm not going to include the redirect in the consensus. At the same time, there's no prohibition against somebody creating it on their own. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:17, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Barbara Brenner (politician)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Doesn't meet WP:NPOL or WP:GNG. Boleyn (talk) 04:54, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 05:43, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 05:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 05:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete fails GNG. Not enough sources available to demonstrate notability. Lepricavark (talk) 12:28, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. County council is not a level of office that satisfies WP:NPOL. The lowest level of office that automatically guarantees a Wikipedia article to every holder of that office is the state legislature, not county anything — but the sourcing here is pretty much the routine level of coverage that any local officeholder could simply be expected to generate in the local media. Most of it, in fact, namechecks her existence while not being substantively about her to the required degree — and while there are a few that are substantively about her, there aren't enough of those. To be deemed notable just for serving as a county councillor, the bar she would have to clear is that she could be shown as significantly more notable than most of the tens of thousands of other county councillors across the United States and Canada and England and Ireland who don't have Wikipedia articles — but the sourcing here isn't demonstrating that at all. Bearcat (talk) 23:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note the Wikilink to WP:ROUTINE in the above !vote. Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem that warranted a special attention-calling reply being...what, exactly? Bearcat (talk) 17:38, 8 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete county council members are not default notable, nothing else to show notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete doesn't pass WP:POLITICIAN or WP:GNG.  WikiVirus  C (talk) 12:51, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree that county council members do not automatically get notability, however this person is certainly more notable than the average county councillor. Whatcom County has a population of over 200,000 people (ranking 306 out of 3000+ counties in the US), and the council has recently been involved in decisions that have national and global impacts . As a council member, this person is notable as a pivotal swing vote, and for her unusually long tenure on the council, and for being the only woman on the council. I know that these are all very marginal arguments, but we should error on the side of providing more information to potential readers, rather than to aggressively follow WP:NPOL as a rule rather than a guideline. I don't see the harm in keeping this page and letting it continue to grow, while watching it closely. This is all publicly available information, but there is no place to get all of this information in one place from a neutral source, other than on Wikipedia. Why not allow Wikipedia to be a source of information to help voters be more informed? Almccon (talk) 04:45, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The population of a county is irrelevant to whether a county councillor gets over NPOL or not; according to your rankings, there are 305 counties larger than Whatcom, whose county councillors would thus be more notable than Whatcom's — but they still mostly don't have articles. And to make Brenner more notable than the norm, it's not enough to just show that she's voted on stuff you deem nationally important — she has to be the subject of a source, not just namechecked within a source whose primary subject is something else, for that source to count toward GNG. At any rate, when it comes to politics our role is to be a source of information about officeholders at the federal or state levels, not necessarily the municipal — the argument that we need to be a source of information for everything voters might want to know would also apply to town councillors and school board trustees and non-winning candidates for political office and other local committee members, which are also classes of people that we don't normally accept as notable, and is not unique to county councillors in Whatcom County. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Your claim that county size is unrelated to notability is logically refutable by thought experiment, as a county with a larger population will be correlated with an increase in media attention to that county. Unscintillating (talk) 22:14, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * All county councillors in all counties always get media coverage, because covering local politics is local media's job. Notability at the county council level is not "media coverage exists" — it's "she can be shown as significantly more notable than the norm because a lot more media coverage exists than we could routinely expect". And that's not what's been shown here at all. Bearcat (talk) 00:27, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:ROUTINE applies to events. County counselors are never events.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:16, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * As has been explained to you multiple times before, WP:ROUTINE is not a question of whether the article topic is an event or a person — it is a matter of the context in which any particular piece of coverage is being given. ROUTINE does include examples such as wedding and death notices and crime logs and local-person-wins-award stories, which are types of coverage that pertain to people. And WP:EVENT does also contain other content which makes clear that it does not apply solely to the question of whether an event qualifies for an article about the event or not, but also the question of whether or not certain events are notable enough to warrant being addressed in articles about people, such as whether or not a politician's article needs to include content about every single time they ever attended an event to hand over a giant novelty cheque representing a government donation. So no, ROUTINE is not irrelevant just because Brenner isn't an event — because ROUTINE isn't a question of whether she's an event or not, it's a question of whether the thing she's getting coverage for is a notable event or not. Bearcat (talk) 17:51, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * AfDs are not case law. A history of non-policy-based closes does not justify continued non-policy-based closes.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * As to WP:ROUTINE, it is a redirect to WP:Notability (events). This guideline applies to whether an event article should be standalone or redirected to a larger topic.  The WP:N nutshell states, "We consider evidence from reliable independent sources...".  Nor does GNG have a formula for discounting sources as "routine".  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:Notability (events) plainly states that it also addresses matters such as whether an event is notable enough to make the people involved in it notable enough for Wikipedia articles or not, and WP:ROUTINE plainly includes examples, such as wedding and death notices, crime logs and stories about local people winning local awards, that speak to whether those "events", or their attendant "coverage", constitute substantive sources for the purposes of getting a person over GNG. If you'd prefer that I link to run of the mill instead, then consider that done — it absolutely also applies here, because there are tens of thousands of local county councillors across the United States and every last man-or-woman jack one of them is sourceable to some degree, but there's no way that Wikipedia could feasibly maintain articles about every one of them, and therefore the key to getting one into Wikipedia is to demonstrate that she's somehow a special case over and above all or most of the others. But I'm not incorrect about how WP:ROUTINE works: you are. Bearcat (talk) 17:36, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You raise a valid issue about maintainability, but Wikipedia has yet to mature to the point that we have operational definitions to apply the concept. People are not produced by a mill.  The applicable policy is that Wikipedia is not a newspaper.  The topic here is a part of the history of the world, and we know this from reliable sources.  The topic is not, from the viewpoint of history, a statistic or an event that lacks the viewpoint of history.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Every single person who has ever existed at all is, by definition, part of the history of the world — and a good many people have been documented in reliable sources without having accomplished anything that would they would qualify for an encyclopedia article for. I would qualify for an encyclopedia article if "reliable sources have noticed me" were all it took, and so would everybody who was ever president of a condo board or a church bake sale committee. All parts of history too — just not notable parts of any history that requires dedicated international retention. Bearcat (talk) 00:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep No one disputes that this politician has been written about over a 25-year period of time in reliable sources.  There is a question of if the topic should be a standalone article or merged somewhere, but since there is no discussion of a merge, the only remaining alternative is a "keep".  Unscintillating (talk) 22:14, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Every county councillor in every county has always been written about by media, because covering local politics is local media's job. The key to making a county councillor notable enough for a Wikipedia article is not just to show that she's gotten media coverage, because every county councillor could say that — it's to show coverage which demonstrates a reason why she could be considered significantly more notable than the norm for an otherwise non-notable level of office: a reason why she could plausibly claim to be one of the most important county councillors in the entire United States, not just local coverage of her doing normal county councillor things. Bearcat (talk) 15:57, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:NPOL#3 states that a "local official...can...be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of 'significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article' ". There is no requirement of exceeding some norm, so you can adjust your understanding of what constitutes a notable local official from "significantly more notable than the norm" to "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".  By this means I hope you now agree that the topic here is notable according to our standards.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:16, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't need to adjust anything — you need to familiarize yourself with actual practice at AFD. Every single county councillor, city or town councillor, school board trustee, etc., who exists is always the subject of some degree media coverage, because covering local politics is local media's job — but Wikipedia has an established consensus that the local level of office is not an NPOL pass, and thus a politician at the local level of office does have to be demonstrated as significantly more notable than the norm for that level of government before they qualify for a Wikipedia article. It is not enough that some media coverage exists, because every county councillor would always qualify for an article if "some media coverage exists" were all it took — and so would the woman who lives a mile down the road from my parents, who got some media coverage a few years ago for waking up one morning to find a pig on her front lawn, and so would every teenager who ever got a human interest piece written about him in the local media because he tried out for the high school football team despite having only nine toes. So no, the existence of some media coverage does not confer an automatic GNG pass on every single person who ever got any media coverage at all — the coverage still has to be in the context of something that satisfies a notability criterion. Bearcat (talk) 17:51, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Notability is neither conferred nor bestowed. Since notability is not conferred, giving examples of things that don't confer notability is setting up and knocking down straw men.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You've claimed, "The key to making a county councillor notable enough for a Wikipedia article is...to show coverage which demonstrates a reason why she could be considered significantly more notable than the norm". If you think that "significantly more notable than the norm" should be a consideration for AfD, what you can do is write an essay.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2017 (UTC)
 * i don't need to write an essay to propose that an inclusion criterion that's already well-covered by WP:NPOL and WP:POLOUTCOMES and WP:ROUTINE and WP:MILL should maybe become the consideration that consensus has already established it as being. Bearcat (talk) 17:43, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I've quoted from NPOL and shown that it defers to WP:GNG. WP:GNG "is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow"; limited by the policy WP:NOTNEWSPAPER.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:33, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * NPOL does not "defer" to GNG. GNG and SNGs operate in tandem, not as mutually contradictory alternatives to each other. Yes, a person requires a GNG-satisfying volume of media coverage to qualify for a Wikipedia article — but that GNG-satisfying volume of coverage does have to either be occurring in a context that satisfies an SNG, or go really far beyond the scope and range of what could merely be expected to exist. Bearcat (talk) 00:43, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I stated, "I've quoted from NPOL and shown that it defers to WP:GNG. and your reply is, "NPOL does not 'defer' to GNG".  But the reply does not integrate the quote I provided.  So repeating my previous sentence with the quote, it says, "WP:NPOL#3 states that a 'local official...can...be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of 'significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article' ".  If readers want to know the relationship between the GNG and SNG, this is found in the lede of WP:N, where GNG and SNG are independent paths.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, GNG and SNG are paths that operate in tandem, not independently of each other. Lots of people have claimed to pass an SNG that they really didn't, so an SNG pass still requires reliable sources to support it and cannot just be claimed without sources — and lots of people have gotten media coverage for reasons that are not remotely encyclopedic, such as the various examples I've given in other comments here: the woman a mile down the road from my parents who found a pig in her front yard, presidents of condo boards and church bake sale committees, bands who play the local pub every Friday but have never accomplished anything that would pass WP:NMUSIC at all, winners of high school poetry contests, nine-toed amateur football players, every non-winning candidate in every election ever held anywhere at all, and everybody who ever worked as a DJ on any radio station. So to pass GNG, the coverage still has to demonstrate a substantive reason why the person would merit an article. It is not enough that media coverage exists, because media coverage exists of lots of people who don't actually have any substantive reason for belonging in an encyclopedia. Bearcat (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  A  Train talk 12:58, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete lacks the sort of IMPACT or WP:SIGCOV that could make a county-level politician notable.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:36, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. (partly as the devil's advocate).  This does meet WP:GNG.  "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list."  The news coverage is both local in nature and WP:MILL, but neither of those are relevant for GNG; it discusses her (25+ year) history on the council thoroughly.  As far as WP:NPOL, "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." is likely. Power~enwiki (talk) 19:18, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - Can someone direct me to where this significant coverage is? Because of the sources in the article(ignoring the blogs and other self-published references), there are a lot of simply trivial mentions, such as the only thing in article is simply mentioning her as a member of the council, a mention she was the lone no vote for this or that vote, a mentioning of her participating in a sit in, or a mention she is running for office. There are a few that have more than just 1 line, but so far in this AfD the two sources provided don't even mention her. I have tried different searches trying to filter out Barbara Brenner the cancer activist, and other Brenner's who show up above this one, but either I am doing it wrong, or there isn't a significant amount of coverage out there as I am seeing just the same type of trivial stuff already mentioned. If one of the passes GNG votes could directed me to where they are seeing it, then I may change my vote.  WikiVirus  C (talk) 19:54, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * An interview at has detail on her; but it's a primary source.  There's plenty of WP:MILL news coverage on Google news.  There's also non-reliable coverage at sites like . Power~enwiki (talk) 20:10, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I just added as another minor WP:RS. There's no existing page for Giraffe Heroes Project, but many other Wikipedia articles include it as a source. Also, the primary local paper The Bellingham Herald doesn't have online archives more than about 10 years ago, so it doesn't cover a significant part of Brenner's tenure on the council. There are probably sources that aren't available online. (I know, that doesn't help establish notability) Almccon (talk) 20:59, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Delete WP:POLOUTCOMES states local politicians often meet the standard for notability when "if they have received national or international press coverage." All of the reliable sourced material is local in nature and appear to no be "significant press coverage" ("A politician who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists" - WP:NPOL). --Enos733 (talk) 17:37, 3 August 2017 (UTC)--Ifnord (talk) 20:59, 8 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and Bearcat, who reminds us that local politicians will always be mentioned in local media but that their influence (and notability) rarely radiates more than that. --Ifnord (talk) 20:59, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Question: Can any of the delete !voters explain why a redirect to Whatcom County Council per WP:ATD is not preferable to deletion? Regards  So Why  09:42, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * A delete result does not preclude the recreation of a new redirect from the redlink if desired. So the difference between a delete vote and a redirect vote hinges on whether there's any value in retaining title's edit history as a base for potential future recreation — the mere fact that the title is a viable redirect isn't determinative of how the AFD should conclude, because a redirect can still happen either way. Bearcat (talk) 15:02, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Future re-creation of the article is not the only purpose for the edit history. A look at WP:Insignificance shows quotes from WP:REDIRECT.  Reason #7 is, "The redirect could plausibly be expanded into an article..." Reason #1 is "They have a potentially useful page history..." This particular topic IMO is best handled under our policies as part of a list of related biographies, but as is often the case, the editors making the content contributions prefer the simplicity and modularity of individual articles, and the editors making notability arguments (which should lead to merge !votes) prefer delete !votes at AfD, and neither seem to be interested in merging articles into a less-convenient but more-policy-compliant bio list.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:00, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, they're not "best handled as a list of related biographies", either — the "list" is not allowed to contain extended biographical sketches that function like mini-articles, either. The list just contains their names, the end. Bearcat (talk) 00:54, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Waiting for answer's to SoWhy's question.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L3X1 (distænt write)   )evidence(  12:57, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Redirect per WP:CHEAP and . Bearian (talk) 13:51, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't think a redirect to Whatcom County Council is a long-term solution. Once the subject stops being a current member of the County Council, the way the current page is set up, the redirect would no longer be appropriate. (If there were a complete or partial list of former councilmembers, that would be a different story). --Enos733 (talk) 23:21, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment 's point is why I prefer deletion to redirect, she isn't discussed in that article, and yes, as it stands her name will just be deleted completely from article when she's replaced. By expanding the article, that issue could be solved. I don't have strong feelings either way about it being a redirect if that happened, but I wouldn't want readers to be mislead, which could happen as it stands. Boleyn (talk) 05:55, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment As others have said, the redirect is only useful while she is on the council(which could be for a long while, but temporarily either way). The only page that even links to her page is the Whatcom council page that is being suggested as the redirect. While someone familiar with Wikipedia naming policies might search for Barbara Brenner (politician), or see it in search while typing just her name, the council page doesn't have information about her in it's current state.  WikiVirus  C <b style="color:#008000">(talk)</b> 12:56, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete -- subject lacks encyclopedic relevance. Local politicians are rarely notable, and this one misses the mark. The coverage is local and routine. This content can just as effectively be housed on the county's web site. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:46, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Both local and routine sources contribute to WP:GNG. Unscintillating (talk) 01:00, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, they don't. GNG is more than just "media coverage exists" — if "media coverage exists" were all it took, we would have to keep articles about me, my brother who used to be in a band that never accomplished anything notable beyond the city limits of our hometown, the woman a mile down the road from my parents who woke up one morning to find a pig in her front yard, every teenager who ever tried out for his high school football team despite having only nine toes, everybody who ever worked for any radio station, and every single person whose death ever resulted in a paid-inclusion death notice in the newspaper classifieds. If you're going for "GNG passed because media coverage exists", because the person has no notability claim that passes an SNG, then the media coverage's depth, breadth and range does have to be significantly out of the ordinary for the level of significance that their notability claim sits at. Bearcat (talk) 00:36, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The point is not that there are topics to which WP:NOT applies, or that there are sources that are not independent, or that the WP:N lede says that "determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity", etc.; the point is that being local or being routine does not exclude a source from WP:GNG. It is a simple statement.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:28, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It's "well-established" that this type of article must meet WP:NPOL as an exception to a surface-reading of WP:GNG. If you object, please comment at the Village Pump. Power~enwiki (talk) 02:34, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I consider the lede of WP:N as the authority for the relationship between GNG and SNG. WP:N "is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow..."  Unscintillating (talk) 02:48, 16 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete As there is no national, nor international coverage of this politician, as is required by GNG guidelines. The fact that this is a slightly bigger county than others has no bearing on whether or not to have an Wikipedia article or not. More simply, what has this person done that is notable? Nothing more than other local politicians, that's for sure. Valeince (talk) 23:58, 16 August 2017 (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.