Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don Anderson (mayor)


 * 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. RL0919 (talk) 09:37, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Don Anderson (mayor)

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Disputed PROD. Mayor of a minor suburban city (ranked 12th in the Seattle metro area by population) who has not held another office. His only national coverage came from a single incident (a train derailment) but has not persisted and was never focused on him. Even The Seattle Times, the largest metro newspaper, only has ten articles that mention him, with only one centered around him.  Sounder Bruce  03:53, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  Sounder  Bruce  03:53, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  Sounder  Bruce  03:53, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions.  Sounder  Bruce  03:53, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep as page creator I think User:SounderBruce makes a clear enough case for the subject's notability. National coverage for a major event? Only ten Seattle Times mentions? KidAd (talk) 04:10, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I would also appreciate a source for the "12th-largest city in the Seattle Metro area". Per this, it only reveals that Lakewood is not one of four major cities in the Seattle metro area. KidAd (talk) 04:22, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:BIO1E makes your point about national coverage moot, as it was not sustained and ultimately not directly connected to him. I'm going off the 2018 Census estimate, which can be easily parsed from List of cities in Washington.  Sounder Bruce  04:54, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Then local and regional coverage will have to do. 10 Seattle Times mentions isn't nothing. And per WP:POLOUTCOMES, "Municipal politicians are not inherently notable just for being in politics, but neither are they inherently non-notable just because they are in local politics. Each case is evaluated on its own individual merits. Mayors of cities of at least regional prominence have usually survived AFD, although the article should say more than just "Jane Doe is the mayor of Cityville". Mayors of smaller towns, however, are generally deemed not notable just for being mayors, although they may be notable for other reasons in addition to their mayoralty" Using this metric, Anderson should survive AFD because the article states more than "Don Anderson is the Mayor of Lakewood"; it also mentions his "other reasons" (i.e. the train crash) KidAd (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - fails GNG, as interpreted by NPOL. He's a local politician with no sustained widespread coverage for anything else (except commenting on a disaster, which does not show notability), and the nature of his political career does not rise to the level any presumption of notability would occur. It doesn't matter in the slightest how much his political career is covered in Seattle. It isn't anywhere else, and being the mayor of a suburb is not an automatic notability pass. Sorry our new colleague is having trouble understanding this, but unless this fella climbs higher on the political pole, he's not going to have a chance for a Wikipedia bio. John from Idegon (talk) 05:20, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * If I am the "new colleague" you're referring to, I would like to point out that I have been editing Wikipedia for several years, and exactly two with a registered account. While I respect your opinion, I do not appreciate your condescension. KidAd (talk) 05:32, 15 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. Lakewood is not large enough to hand all of its mayors an automatic presumption of notability just because they exist, but the sourcing here is not rising to the level necessary to get him over the bar. The existence of a few hits of local media coverage is not automatically enough to get a mayor over the bar — every mayor of everywhere can always show some evidence of purely local coverage, so if that were all it took then we would always have to keep an article about every mayor who exists, and no mayor would ever fall below the notability bar anymore. Which is why we have a longstanding consensus that mayors of smaller towns and cities have to show evidence of nationalized significance to qualify for articles — but the very small amount of "nationalized" coverage shown here isn't sufficient to demonstrate that — it's about a train derailment and just includes Anderson giving soundbite, which is not the same thing as coverage that has Anderson as its subject. The key to making a mayor notable enough for a Wikipedia article is to document the importance of his mayoralty, not just the existence of it — and if a mayor has just eight footnotes of which two are primary sources that aren't support for notability at all, three are routine verification of election results, and three are not about him but just mention his name in the context of being about a non-political event that happened in the city, then he's falling on the wrong side of that distinction. Bearcat (talk) 14:00, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete some cities of 58,000 are major regional centers. Lakewood is not the largest city in its county, and even the largest city Tacoma, is overshadowed by the true heart of the urban region, Seattle. Lakewood is not even a regionally significant city, so by no measure is the mayor going to be default notable. The sourcing is atrocious otherwise.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:26, 16 December 2019 (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.