Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bill Watson (sheriff)


 * 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. North America1000 10:02, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Bill Watson (sheriff)

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This sheriff doesn't quite reach the label of being notable. Being a sheriff has no inherent notability. He has been covered quite a bit    in relevance to an event with a high-speed chase involving the mayor of his town, and a few mentions outside of that , but no in-depth coverage. menaechmi (talk) 19:38, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:22, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:22, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:23, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete To be honest I was thinking of putting this up for AfD myself. Anyway non notable sheriff, police officers get in high speed pursuits everyday, maybe not with the mayor of the town they are serving in but it does happen a lot.  Whispe ring  19:13, 2 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete actually the chase involving Sheriff Watson was a slow speed chase, not a high speed chase, but that hardly changes anything at all. Wikipedia is not news, and that is what that would indicate. Wikipedia is generally not meant to be a complete directory. There are two exceptions that are fully agreed to, one is members of national legislatures, although the hope is to not just be a directory there, but we generally allow any article on a national legislature member to pass as long as it can be proved the individual was actually such. The same in theory applies to highest level sub-national legislatures, but that has not been as consistently applied. The other is that Wikipedia aims to be a gazeteer, with articles on every distinct place in the world, although if we are dealing with neighborhoods, there is some level of some notability guideline passing. Everything else, there is an expectation of some level of coverage, at least in theory. In the case of Watson, although his title is sheriff this is an outgrowth of the unique way Virginia is set up politically. In any other US state his title would be police chief, and we would ask if the police chief here is notable. I would say James Craig (police chief) is a clear case of a notable police chief, but we are comparing a city with under 100,000 to a city with well over 600,000 people. That even misses the point, Detroit is at the center of a metro-area with several million people and the largest city in Michigan. Plus Craig was appointed police chief at the height of the city going through the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history, he has outlasted a significant slew of predecessors (not hard considering how sort some were in place), and he has impacted the city in a postive way to the extent that people have put up "thankyou Chief Craig" signs. Plus, while Craig makes local news regularly because of big drugs busts, the ever present daily new murder investigation, having to field questions about corrupt cops being arrested, the green light program that is making people willing to shop at places where a murder has happened in the last year (OK, maybe my own actions are not a good indication, I once road a Detroit bus just because it was the only one of the top five crime Detroit bus routes I had not ridden). Craig however made waves back in 2014 with his call for the law abiding citizens of Detroit to arm themselves against the thugs. Criag is a go to figure in the local media. Our article on him does not even begin to give a good sense of who he is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:51, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Being a senior police officer provides no inherent notability. Watson seems to be mostly only covered in context of doing his job with no significant in-depth coverage such as profile pieces in national media. AusLondonder (talk) 14:54, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - I was surprised to see that the gutting of this article was done by the creator. Ordinary reportage of sheriff-type activities. Carrite (talk) 06:48, 6 September 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.