Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward D. Hays


 * 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 keep. WP:SNOW. Copying directly from a US Government source is lazy, but allowed. For future reference, the preferred venue for copyright concerns is WP:Copyright problems rather than AfD. (non-admin closure) Curbon7 (talk) 20:23, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Edward D. Hays

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

The subject passes WP:POLITICIAN as a former member of the US Legislature. However, the reason I nominated this article for deletion is not about his notability. Rather, it's about my concern about copyright violations. Currently, the article has only one reference, https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/H000403. When I opened it, parts of its text looked similar to the content on the Wikipedia article. After that, I decided to run some plagiarism checkers, which did not give me any useful results (Earwig's Copyvio Detector and Duplication Detector were supposed to be my best bet but were not working). Then, I came across this site, which also has text that looks similar to Wikipedia's article. Is it a WP:MIRROR though? Anyway, I decided to check the revision history of the article and saw that its first revision looks copied and paraphrased from its only source. In other words, there isn't a less-copyvio revision I could revert to. I would appreciate it if anyone (myself included) could find any unique sources. LPS and MLP Fan (Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony Fan) 21:58, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians and Missouri. Shellwood (talk) 22:22, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment -, shoddy a practice as it is, copying a US government publication isn't a copyright violation. The copyed document is in the public domain. 174.212.236.66 (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Bioguide.congress.gov is in the public domain because it is a work of the US federal government, so there are no copyright issues with copying from/paraphrasing it. I've added Template:Bioguide to make clear where the content came from. Famedborn.com is clearly a mirror: all of its content is taken from Wikipedia articles. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:37, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. As has been pointed out, the original source is not copyrighted as a work of the US government. Sometime there simply aren't that many ways of repeating the same biographical information... Atchom (talk) 02:26, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep members of congress are default notable, full stop. I would like to see much better sourcing. I am convinced that there will be better sourcing from contenporary sources. He is by far and away clearly notable. All members of national legislature that we can verrify we keep articles on. The style here and the sourcing need improvement, but AfD is not for cleanup.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:56, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I just found this which is a published obituary for him in the New York Times. It says he was "assistant attoney general". I am not sure if that was his exact title, or if this is a reference to what he did when serving in office. I am sure we can find published references to him, since he was twice elected to congress and served in congress for 4 years. His being mayor of Jackson, Missouri, a city then of about 2,000 or a little less might not be much, but that is the county seat of Cape Girardeau County. We might be able to dig up some sources on his career even before he was elected to congress. I have improved the article a little, but it still needs a lot more. For example I can see the New York Times obituary exists, but I do not have access to it. Here  is the political graveyard link, but it may just be based on the congressional bio.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:09, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I have edited the article to make it more readable. I moved from 1 paragraph after the opening to 4. I added some links, and made it more clear that Hays' moves until he went to congress all amounted to moving within the same county.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:14, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep Clearly meets WP:NPOL. Sourcing can (easily) be improved. KidAd  •  SPEAK  19:16, 25 April 2022 (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.