Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Bailey (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. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 14:21, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

David Bailey (politician)

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Résumé-like BLP of a mayor, not properly sourced as passing WP:NPOL #2. The place he's mayor of has a population of just 36K, which is nowhere near large enough to hand him an automatic presumption of notability -- the notability test he would have to pass is not just the ability to verify that he exists as a mayor, but the ability to write and source some genuine substance about the political significance of his time as mayor. But other than pre-political career background and routine reportage of the municipal election, the only other claims of significance being attempted here are that he was the first openly gay mayor of his own town, which is not an instant inclusion freebie in and of itself, and that he won minor awards like the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal and a local Rotary Club award, which don't pass WP:ANYBIO as "inherently" notability-making awards. And as for the sourcing, there are five primary sources that are not support for notability at all, four pieces of routine local reportage of the municipal election, three glancing namechecks of his existence in articles that aren't about him, and two articles in weekly community hyperlocals that are covering him in non-notability-building contexts like being a volunteer and expressing his own local-interest opinion on the local impact of a national political issue. (And no, he doesn't get an article just because his predecessor has one, either -- his predecessor has an article for having been a provincial MPP, not for having been a mayor per se.) This is just not what it takes to make a smalltown mayor notable enough for Wikipedia. Bearcat (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:46, 23 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete a non-notable mayor, per the nominators very detailed explanation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:09, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Agree totally with the nominator and the above user JW 1961   Talk  21:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Reviewed as per the re-listing comment, my Delete stands, sources are local press coverage of a local mayor JW 1961   Talk  10:17, 30 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep added 11 references. There's no end of local coverage of him, with lots of detailed, in-depth coverage. There's also mentions in major media publications going back 20 years. Meets GNG. Nfitz (talk) 01:57, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The expected local coverage in local media does not clinch the notability of a smalltown mayor — every mayor of everywhere can always show some evidence of local interest coverage in their local media, so if that were how it worked then our entire concept of distinguishing between notable and non-notable mayors would be completely meaningless, because no mayor of anywhere could ever actually fall below the bar anymore. Rather, the way mayoral notability actually works is that in this size of town, a mayor has to show nationalized coverage, not just "within his own local media market" coverage, to warrant a Wikipedia article. Bearcat (talk) 23:38, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As it meets GNG, that's all irrelevant - we don't throw away GNG. It's hardly stunning that a mayor of a city (I'd hardly say town, let alone small town ... St. George is a small town, but Paris isn't a small town - how can the combined municipality be a small town? Population is three times larger than the City of London, and the last 31 of those were notable. Perhaps it's as simple that a mayor in a media market with multiple newspapers and radio stations is probably going to meet GNG. Nfitz (talk) 01:49, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The population of the County of Brant is 36,707; the population of the City of London is 383,822. And even Paris only has a population of 12,310, which is also still a small town by any normal definition of that term. I don't know what numbers you were looking at, but the population of Brant isn't three times the size of London — London is larger, by a factor of ten. It's probably true that a mayor in a major media market can meet GNG on predominantly local coverage — but Brant isn't a major media market. GNG does test for more than just the number of media hits, and always has — it does test for geographic range, and it does expect wider regional or national attention in some contexts than it does in others. Bearcat (talk) 07:47, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That has to be the most outrageous false statement that I've ever heard. Where, User:Bearcat do you get the population of the City of London being 383,822? The city is famous for having virtually no population.Their own website clearly states that they had 7.400 residents in the last census! My gosh, you'll say absolutely anything to support a snap judgement you've made. I'm increasingly concerned about your competency to edit. Nfitz (talk) 08:10, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Get off your fucking high horse. I just made a simple mistake, erroneously thinking you were talking about London, Ontario — and considering that you raised it as a comparison to towns in Southwestern Ontario, the London in Southwestern Ontario is the rational reading of "London" in that context. That doesn't make me incompetent or a liar — it makes you a person who made a very counterintuitive comparison, which I read in a way that even if it was a mistake, it was an entirely logical and understandable and rational one. (And after your accusation that I nominated another article to "retaliate" against a person who had absolutely nothing to do with it, let's just call my misreading even-steven since I can just point the exact same finger right back at you anyway. But I digress.) At any rate, it's still not a useful comparison: the City of London UK is not a standalone community of 9,000 people that exists in isolation, it's a local government area covering the central business district of a massive metropolitan city of 8 million. The structure of municipal governance in the United Kingdom is nothing like the structure of municipal governance in Canada, so the Lord Mayor of the City of London is not equivalent to a mayor of a town of 9K people in Canada — if he has any equivalent in Canada at all, it would be a fairly high-ranking figure in Toronto, not a smalltown mayor. And even if you ignore all that and just focus on the population anyway, most of its Lord Mayors still have other preexisting notability claims well beyond a "smalltown" mayoralty — mostly actual knighthoods, in fact. Bearcat (talk) 08:57, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah ... Ontario never crossed my mind. Though given I linked it, and the Lord Mayor (you well know that mayors aren't called that in Ontario), then your time would better spent actually reading what you are replying to that using unacceptable language. How you could possibly think that I'd suggest the London Ontario was bigger than Paris Ontario makes no sense. On one hand, your are correct, that being in the central business district it is more prominent ... but being the in charge of tiny London borough is surely less prominent than mayor of single tier municipality. City of London has relatively few responsibilities. Either way, the WP:CIVIL violation is beyond the pale - please apologize. Nfitz (talk) 16:34, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, you never used the expression "Lord Mayor" to clarify anything at all — hiding it behind a link I didn't have any responsibility to click on at all if I thought I already knew what you were talking about is not the same thing as using the phrase in the body of your comment for clarification. So there's no reason that I should somehow have "known better" just because you piped it out of a wikilink, if you didn't actually use it in visible text. And if you think that makes me negligent for not double-checking the links, then I'm just going to point you right back to your failure to double-check who had actually created the Dylan Perceval-Maxwell page before accusing me of listing it for deletion just to "retaliate" against a person who had absolutely nothing to do with it. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, eh? Wikipedia also does not have, and has never had, any rule that using a swear word is automatically verboten, or a WP:CIVIL violation — in exactly no version of reality would a Wikipedian ever be blocked just for very occasionally using a swear word. CIVIL is about attacking people, not forbidding the use of swear words. Bearcat (talk) 17:42, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hiding it behind a link? How did you not see that when you clicked on the link? How did you not AGF when I noted that a city of 1/3 the size and click on the link for London? The bottom line is that you failed to properly read the comment, failed AGF and assumed that I didn't know how big London Ontario is. You then proceeded to blame me for your errors, using unnecessarily uncivil language. I apologized and retracted my error - will you do the same? (while not rhetorical, I can guess the answer). Nfitz (talk) 18:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, what the hell part of "I thought I knew what you were talking about and did not click on the link" did you not comprehend the first time? Secondly, what part of "you'd best just drop this line of attack now, because anything you can say about my oversight here I can just throw directly back in your face over the much more serious error you made in another AFD" did you not comprehend the first time? Bearcat (talk) 23:26, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: More analysis and commentary regarding the sources added to the article would be beneficial here.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 06:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete The article is not properly referenced. No notability as well. Ashishkafle (talk) 07:42, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Could User:Ashishkafle expand on what they mean by "not properly referenced"? Nfitz (talk) 22:10, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep per Nfitz. The subject passes GNG, and I do not agree with the NPOL guideline so that issue does not concern me. Bearcat's argument about OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST just means we ought to create articlees on all those other mayors as well. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and there is no size limit. The point of notability should be to determine whether a subject has significant coverage to write a useful article, not whether they meet some arbitrary standard for importance. &minus;&minus;&minus; Cactus Jack 🌵 19:50, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete does not pass WP:NPOL, the article is written sort of like a CV so fails WP:PROMO, and all of the coverage is hyper-local. Clear delete. SportingFlyer  T · C  17:49, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, 78.26  (spin me / revolutions) 15:18, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Fails WP:NPOL policy. Mayor of very small county. On top of that the article is extremely promotional.   scope_creep Talk  22:51, 15 July 2020 (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.