Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barry Buchanan (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. Consensus is that there are insufficient quality sources to meed WP:NPOL and WP:GNG -- RoySmith (talk) 12:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Barry Buchanan (politician)

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Doesn't meet WP:NPOL or WP:GNG. Boleyn (talk) 19:24, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. North America1000 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. North America1000 19:26, 29 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. County council is not a level of office that confers an automatic WP:NPOL pass — but the sources here aren't getting him over WP:GNG in lieu, as they're predominantly primary sources or unreliable blogs, and even the few that are acceptable reliable sources are mostly just namechecking his existence within coverage of the council as a whole. There aren't even close to enough sources here that are both reliable and substantively about him. Bearcat (talk) 01:13, 31 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 . Bearcat, I know you disagree with this reasoning elsewhere, but there is clearly no bright line that determines which county councils are big enough or important enough to have articles. WP:NPOL merely states that notability is not automatic, not that all county councilors must be excluded from Wikipedia. Barry Buchanan, as the council president, gets more than the average amount of press coverage, and is often quoted speaking on behalf of the council. It's true that a Merge with Whatcom County Council is an option, but because of Buchanan's earlier political history as president of the Bellingham City Council it seems to make more sense for him to have a stand-alone page. I recognize that this is a marginal case, but I don't see the harm in leaving this page and letting it grow. Almccon (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The population of a county is irrelevant to whether a county councillor clears a Wikipedia notability standard or not. It's not enough to assert that the county has made decisions of national importance, or that he gets quoted: any press coverage has to be specifically about him, not just namechecking his existence within coverage whose subject is something else, to count toward getting him over WP:GNG. But none of the references being cited here are doing that at all. The harm in keeping an article about a person whose standalone notability to an international audience hasn't been properly demonstrated is that the next guy who comes along with no genuinely solid notability could use this as a precedent to demand that we keep his article too — and then we're nothing more than a worthless LinkedIn clone in two weeks flat. Bearcat (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete WP:POLOUTCOMES states local politicians often meet the standard for notability when "if they have received national or international press coverage." The Vancouver Sun article only namechecks the subject, as does the other reliable sourced material. While I would agree that there are some counties (or other non-city) local governments where they represent an "internationally famous metropolitan areas " but I would not try to define a definition for those offices - which would not encompass the Whatcom County Council. --Enos733 (talk) 17:26, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong delete 200,000 is not of such a large size that council members get default notability at the county level. This is especially true because the county involved is not so much a center of an urban area, but part of a larger urban area. My county (Macomb County, Michigan) has over 800,000 people, but I would not argue that county comissioners are default notable, not even back when they were more accurately described by that term since they were the joint executive body for the county, with both legislative and executive powers. I do not think even all members of the Wayne County, Michigan comission, with a population approaching 2 million are default notable, Whatcom County is way below default notability status. I would not argue that all cities in the US of over 200,000 confer default notability status on city council members either.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:26, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * One specific rebuttal: Whatcom County isn't considered to be part of a larger urban area, not by the locals, nor by any official government agency. See Seattle metropolitan area for various statistical definitions of the greater Seattle area, none of which include Whatcom. Washingtonians think of Whatcom and its county seat Bellingham as a distinct and independent area within the state. Almccon (talk) 05:00, 4 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.