Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David W. Force (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. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:00, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

David W. Force (politician)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Article fails Notability - WP:Politician Subject has never held Statewide Office, as well as WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV, press coverage is all local and trivial. WP:PROD removed without explanation. MilaPedia (talk) 07:45, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:38, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:38, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Maryland-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:38, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

A banner was posted using the “proposed deletion/dated format, with concern = Article fails Notability - WP:Politician Subject has never held Statewide Office”
 * Keep Nine articles regarding Howard County Executives/Commissioners/Councilmen have been recommended for deletion based on not meeting only one of the three polices in WP:Politician by User:MilaPedia with an account created 9 August 2013.

WP:Politition states- 1.	Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature. This also applies to those who have been elected to such offices but have not yet been sworn in. 2.	Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. 3.	Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". In the case of candidates for political office who do not meet this guideline, the general rule is to redirect to an appropriate page covering the election or political office sought in lieu of deletion. Relevant material from the biographical article can be merged into the election or political office page if appropriate.

The banner stated - If you can address this concern by improving, copyediting, sourcing, renaming or merging the page, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you improve the article or otherwise object to deletion for any reason. Although not required, you are encouraged to explain why you object to the deletion, either in your edit summary or on the talk page. If this template is removed, do not replace it

Following the specific instructions, the concern was met by meeting section 3 of WP:POLITICIAN by additionally citing each article from a book, in addition to existing citations. The notation was marked in the summary, and the AFS tag removed as instructed. The following entry was posted on MilaPedia’s talk - Thank you MilaPedia for your efforts to make sure all new articles related specifically to Howard County Elected Officials are to be deleted. The articles are works in progress, however each has been significantly cited from a variety of sources which meet criteria #3 of WP Politician (listed below). Some of the articles recommended for deletion are politicians that have also sought higher office and are also notable for their influence in their respective fields. In addition, the guidance clearly states alternatives to AFD "deletion" as a first step. I hope you will direct your future efforts toward expanding and improving these articles with accurate information and relevant citations.

Recommendations were given in Lieu of deletion. Six of the same articles were recommended for deletion again August 14, 2013 with the following notation – "Article fails Notability - WP:Politician Subject has never held Statewide Office, as well as WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV - Press coverage is all local and trivial. WP:PROD removed without explanation." Each article is in progress, and has been well-cited by a variety of sources, and extra care has been taken to exclude the extensive amount of voting history and procedure that may be considered trivial or not independent of the subject. Although notability is subjective, each is relevant in the history of a rural county that became one of the 10 wealthiest counties in America during their terms and provides supporting information to historical articles. Notification was provided to the user, and noted in summaries. The AFD’s recommended are very specific with similar articles in the same categories not facing the same scrutiny, such as Janet S. Owens or Calvin Ball, III. FlugKerl (talk) 15:32, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - Fails notability. Apparently someone believes that being a county executive/board member qualifies people to have a page of their own.  Lack of any references where the person is named as anything other then "candidate" or simply listed as holding said office.  In fact for at least a couple the only articles about the person is their obituary.  Caffeyw (talk) 16:22, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * * This particular article did not use an obituary as an source, just 3 books, two weblinks, five newspaper articles and 3 weblinks. FlugKerl (talk) 18:33, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - For some strange reason, "Caffeyw" decided to post the above, exact, same "delete" vote in 6 AfDs all over the course of 2 minutes time. Something odd seems to be up with this user IMHO. Guy1890 (talk) 08:43, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Caffeyw also cast a "Delete" !vote at Articles for deletion/Benjamin Dara in which he/she used the pronoun "her" for the male subject of the article. This !vote was registered at 17:37 GMT; Caffeyw had edited a different AFD at 17:34, and edited yet another at 17:39.  Caffeyw's contribution history shows edits to lots of AFDs in a very short span of time, which suggests that he/she's not spending a great deal of time researching before !voting.  Ammodramus (talk) 12:44, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Replied. Now, everyone: stop copy-pasting your comments. Mysterious Whisper 12:54, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, I agree with Ammodramus, and have left a comment on User talk:Caffeyw noting these concerns. Mysterious Whisper 13:12, 16 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. A Google search for ("david force" OR "david w force" "howard county") turned up lots of links to the park, but nothing else suggestive of notability.  Searching Google News archives for the same terms yielded several 1960s Baltimore Sun articles; unfortunately, these were pay-per-view.  Reading the one-sentence abstracts suggested that many of them were routine local-politics coverage: who's running for re-election and the like.  Whatever marginal notability Force may have seems to be associated with his co-approval of the Columbia project, and that's adequately covered in the "History" section of the Columbia article.  Ammodramus (talk) 18:42, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * :: * Thank you for taking more than a cursory glance. Google is a great resource, however, just because newspaper articles are pay-per view or only partially searchable on-line should not be the deciding factor if someone had an impact on Howard County (or any) history. This is precisely why Wikipedia lacks detail on figures from this period. Hopefully this article will not be AFD'ed before it can be completed with information not available online. FlugKerl (talk) 19:02, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Could I suggest that you userfy the article? Your userspace is the appropriate place to work on it until you've accumulated enough material to establish notability.  That's a much better approach than using the mainspace for what amount to early drafts, with the promise that citations to etablish notability will be inserted at a later date.  Ammodramus (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment - Sorry to cause concern. I copy/pasted the same comment after doing a search on each, and coming up with the same results.  It wasn't done without thought.  Non-notable, fails to rises above local office, and all searches bring up links to articles where the only mention is they're running for office/got elected type material.  In one case the only possibly reliable material was an obituary which doesn't give weight to being notable.  It seems someone has decided that all office holders of this office are worthy of an article.  Even if the office was notable (which I don't believe it is) notability is not inherited.  Caffeyw (talk) 20:22, 16 August 2013 (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.