Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dave Wilson (Ontario 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. Randykitty (talk) 11:53, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Dave Wilson (Ontario politician)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

WP:BLP of a city councillor in a city not large enough to confer notability on its city councillors per WP:POLITICIAN. While there is referencing here, it all supports regular, everyday minutiae of a city council career and fails to make a particularly compelling case that he is in any significant way more notable, or more worthy of permanent coverage in an international encyclopedia, than most other city councillors. The fact that he unsuccessfully ran as a candidate in a federal election does not boost his notability, either, as candidates do not qualify for articles just for being candidates. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 21:06, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:06, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:29, 25 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete another article on a local politician who fails our guidelines for notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:38, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete this local ordinary politician, based on past outcomes and in accord with the nomination. Wikipedia is not designed to be a list of every local councillor. Bearian (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - Politicians are the one category of biographies to whom GNG is generally not applied; instead a Special Notability high bar is frequently used, giving automatic passes to elected members of national and provincial assemblies, tending to give easy passes to national and provincial party leaders, and dealing with unelected politicians harshly on a case by case basis. Elected members of city councils are a grey area, with those of major metropolitan areas almost always kept while those of tiny towns usually treated as self-serving promotion. And so here we have a bio that is in the grey area of the grey area, an elected city council member from a mid-sized city. My opinion is that we should keep this one and here's why: it's a well done piece, it's a well sourced piece, and Wikipedia is better off with the piece than without it. Ignore All Rules, Use Common Sense. Carrite (talk) 15:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not better off with than it is without biographies of people who aren't topics of broad interest to a national or international, rather than exclusively single-city local, readership — such an article is not viably maintainable for WP:BLP compliance if it doesn't attract a broad enough readership that vandalism or unsourced POV criticism can be caught promptly. Which is exactly the key reason why the consensus was established that city councillors do not pass our inclusion rules just for being city councillors except in a few very specific circumstances — we don't have the resources or the manpower to adequately maintain thousands upon thousands of biographies of city councillors for policy compliance. We need a politician's claim of notability to be credibly at least at the level of the province or state, precisely so that there is a broad enough audience for it to keep Wikipedia's content standards in force. Bearcat (talk) 17:39, 27 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete local politician, we're not Ontariopedia. Cavarrone 12:48, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:GNG. This was challenging to review, because all the sources are offline.  I've checked a few at random, to ensure they are legit.  Since they were, I'll trust the rest are.  I think 39 stories is pretty substantial coverage.  Of course, most weren't in-depth about him personally.  But, if you add up what they all say, you have a very substantial article.  This article contains far more *verified* facts than most MLA/MPP or MP articles.  I understand being an alderman or federal candidate does not grant notability, but it also should not revoke notability given by GNG.  I think throwing out such a heavily researched article would be a huge mistake.  If only every Wikipedian took the time to research a subject to this degree.  I think we've forgotten why we noramlly give articles to elected MPs and not alderman.  It's because we assume the MP is more likely to have substantial coverage than the alderman.  Yet, in this case, it's proven the alderman did get the coverage needed.  The nom dismisses the coverage as "minutiae", but that sets up an impossible standard.  You've predetermined that local politics is not signficant, and therefore dismiss any coverage of it, and than you find there's a lack of significant coverage.  We measure signficance by the level of coverage, and there's signficant coverage.  We should not impose our own opinions on what counts as important, but should instead follow the sources.   --Rob (talk) 09:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem is that all city councillors always generate sufficient coverage in their local media to get past WP:GNG on that basis. They are not a class of topic where some would get past that gate and others in the same city would not; local media have a legal and ethical obligation to cover local politics, so all city councillors technically always have a base level of coverage that would pass our GNG rule if an exclusively local claim of notability were sufficient. But we do not have the volume of editor manpower necessary to properly maintain the thousands upon thousands of biographies of city councillors that we would have to accept if nominally passing GNG on purely local coverage were the only criterion that had to be met — the wikimodel of allowing anyone to edit an article at all, and then relying on the oversight of other editors to ensure that the articles remain properly compliant with our content policies instead of becoming advertorial campaign brochures and/or hotbeds of unsourced personal criticism and partisan vandalism, only works for articles that attract a broad spectrum of interested readers, and falls on its ass very quickly for low-visibility topics.
 * Accordingly, the test that city councillors have always had to meet in the notability sweepstakes is not just the existence of local media sourcing — a criterion that wouldn't exclude any city councillors at all — but rather a claim of notability that's demonstrably and substantively more than strictly local in nature. Most city councillors can only do that by serving in a city that's large and internationally famous enough that its local politics actually generates national and international coverage in its own right, but a select few in smaller cities can still get over the bar by emerging as a nationally recognized spokesperson on a political issue (LGBT, environmental activism, etc.) that gets that person into national or international media. Either way, however, the test has always been that the person is likely to be known to a broad spectrum of readers that cuts outside the boundaries of a single city — because we cannot properly maintain the sheer volume of content that we would have to accept if merely being a city councillor were a sufficient claim of notability in its own right.
 * And what's lacking in all of the Hamilton city councillors that I nominated for deletion last week is any substantive reason why anybody outside of Hamilton itself should have any interest in them. Every city councillor in Hamilton has been mentioned in enough Hamilton Spectator coverage to get past GNG if a local-to-Hamilton claim of significance were all that we required — but for very good reasons, people who are notable primarily or exclusively as city councillors have to clear a much higher bar than merely local coverage or significance, because most cities simply do not have the ability to provide us with a large enough spectrum of responsible, committed editors to keep articles properly and adequately monitored for policy compliance if the topic's notability and "fame" is limited to that one city alone, and almost nobody outside of that one city is ever actually going to see the article very often, let alone have enough interest in the topic to actively keep it watchlisted. Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * If you think that there's a community consensus on WP:GNG that's substantially different than a plain reading of what it actually says, than you should seek a revision of it to match the version that you are promoting. What's happening is people who read what the guidelines say, carefully follow them, and carefully demonstrate an article meets those guidelines as written are making articles only to have a huge amount of work deleted.  We shouldn't expect editors to have to read through all the AFDs to find out what happens in their particular area of interest. --Rob (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not suggesting an alternate reading of GNG that differs from the existing consensus; I'm clarifying what the notability consensus actually is for city councillors — when they're deemed to have passed GNG or POLITICIAN and when not, and why that consensus is what it is. Virtually all of our notability cutoffs, including GNG, generally require far more than exclusively local coverage to deem that a topic has passed. A musician doesn't normally pass NMUSIC if her RS coverage and notability is exclusively local to one single city (even if you can cite 100 purely local articles, she still has to meet at least one criterion that would make her a topic of broader national or international interest); a television or radio personality doesn't normally pass our inclusion rules for those topics if the sourcing and notability claim is exclusively local to one single media market (even if you can cite 100 purely local articles, he still has to meet at least one criterion that would make him a topic of broader national or international interest); and on and so forth. We virtually always require, in fact, substantive evidence that a broader readership, not exclusively local to one single city, would or could have some interest in the topic. Even for GNG, purely local single-market coverage, supporting a notability claim that's exclusively local in nature, has been quite consistently deemed not to pass it when that's been tested at AFD. Bearcat (talk) 21:57, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
 * If consensus is what you claim it to be, than clearly WP:GNG as currently *written* does not match consensus, and should be changed. So, you should seek a change in the wording of WP:GNG to match the consensus, as you see it.  You keep on re-arguing what consensus is, but nothing you're saying can be found in what is written in guidelines.  The word "local" can't even be found in GNG or anywhere in Notability.  Most editors don't follow AFD as much as us, and have no way of knowing what this "consensus" is, since you're promoting something only found by your experience in AFD, and not written in guidelines.  How exactly do you think editors are supposed to know all of these rules you espouse, if they're not written in guidelines?  --Rob (talk) 22:32, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Delete per Bearcat. Bearcat has done some great work over the past few months in developing a greater consensus over the meaning of WP:Politician. Unless they otherwise meet WP:GNG, unelected candidates for federal offices merit a redirect to a relevant election page, local municipal councilmembers (unless part of a world-class city) and small town mayors are deleted. Ambassadors are scrutinized to see if they meet WP:GNG or another criteria. A greater consensus is also emerging on how large a city might be for the mayor to merit notability under WP:Politician. (Personally, I think the bar should be set at 100,000). This consensus is apparent for those people following these AfD debates on politicians, and is a good rule of thumb for this project. Enos733 (talk) 19:19, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I haven't done anything to change or develop a greater consensus over the meaning of WP:POLITICIAN. I may have been one of the more forceful and active explainers, in some recent discussions where there was some confusion or dissent, of what the existing consensus actually already is and why — but I certainly haven't created any new points of consensus that were in any meaningful way different from the existing standards. Bearcat (talk) 23:11, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Bearcat - agreed, but consensus is something that develops and redevelops over time - as editors come and go - as new information or understanding about sources change - or as editors change their minds about certain categories. In your work, what you and others are doing is reinforcing the existing consensus that has developed (and at this particular moment). So, in a sense, these AfDs are a part of a continuing process of how we understand the meeting of WP:POLITICIAN, WP:GNG, and what is and what is not notable. I just want to applaud your work. Enos733 (talk) 08:06, 4 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. Councillors in very large cities may be notable by virtue of their office, but Hamilton is nowhere near large enough to qualify. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:57, 2 July 2014 (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.