Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernest H. Rosasco


 * 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. Reasonably good consensus here that WP:NPOL is not satisfied. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Ernest H. Rosasco

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Fails WP:NPOL. Mayor of small city. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 18:07, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 18:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 18:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Was WP:POLOUTCOMES considered in this nomination? specifically, "
 * 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" And you might as well nominate every other mayor of that city for deletion as well (that's 23 articles). Eddie891 Talk Work 19:50, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete the source would not show anyone was notable. Nothing about him makes him inherently notable, and we would need widespread, indepth, non-routine and not just what is expected for a mayor coverage to show notability, which is entirely lacking.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. The core notability test for mayors is WP:NPOL #2, "major local political figures who have received significant press coverage" — WP:POLOUTCOMES is just a clarifying statement, not the notability test in and of itself. Mayors are not always automatically kept just because they existed; they're kept if they can be reliably sourced as the subject of enough media coverage to clear WP:GNG. But the only source here is his own alma mater, supporting only the fact that he graduated from there, with no substance and no sourcing being shown at all for his notability as a politician — and North Adams is not large or prominent enough to hand him an automatic presumption of notability in the absence of any valid sourcing. A mayor of North Adams could certainly be kept if the article were well-sourced and substantive, but there's no need to keep a primary-sourced stub that just says "he existed, the end". No prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can do much better than this. Bearcat (talk) 20:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete as per JPL and Bearcat, NPOL failure.--Rusf10 (talk) 22:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Signifcant figure in the history of North Adams and its Ialian-American community in particular. A tribute was made to his long service on the floor of the U.S. Congress in 1985. A debate on his Pension involved Edward Markey and received subatantial coverage. There is a category including numerous mayors of North Adams and a comined article is worth considering, but deletion would be inappropriate. Plenty of sources on Google Books documenting his work and activites.FloridaArmy (talk) 18:08, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Every single person who was ever mayor of anywhere could always claim to be a significant figure in the history of their own community — so if that were a notability freebie in and of itself, we'd have to keep an article about every single mayor who ever mayored anywhere at all. A mayor gets a Wikipedia article by being reliably sourceable as the subject of enough coverage to demonstrate wider significance beyond just their own community, not just because you can assert "significance to his community" in exactly the same way as every other mayor in all of human history could assert too. Bearcat (talk) 18:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep I've been considering this article for a while, and have decided to vote keep. The United States Congress gave him tribute. He was a mayor, judge, etc. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:06, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "Was a mayor" is not an automatic inclusion freebie, because by definition every mayor in all of human history "was a mayor", and neither is "was a judge", for the same reason. Notability is demonstrated by sourcing and substance, not by "he existed". Bearcat (talk) 18:50, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete -- does not meet WP:NPOL & significant RS coverage not found. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:58, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Weak keep - I've added four in-depth references about Rosasco to the article and expanded the article significantly and think the article now passes WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:N. I've also written up a short statement because Rosasco happens to be a really interesting case to me. I'm find with the statement being read, replyed to, or ignored, but I'm indulging myself and including it.Smmurphy(Talk)
 * Comment - This is an incredibly good test case for an important issue because North Adams is, according to List of municipalities in Massachusetts, the smallest town in Massachusetts with a mayor!
 * The local paper for Rosasco, the North Adams Transcript, is available at newspapers.com (if interested, check out WP:TWL for gratis accounts). He is mentioned in thousands of articles at the site, the vast majority in that paper (https://www.newspapers.com/search/#query=%22ernest+h+rosasco%22+OR+%22e+h+rosasco%22+OR+%22ernest+rosasco%22+OR+%22ernie+rosasco%22). Focusing on key years in his life, I found a number of articles that include in depth profiles of him:
 * In 1951 when he was elected mayor: Thumbnail Biographies of Winners in Election. The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts) 7 Nov 1951, page 7
 * In 1956 when he was nominated to the governor's council: Name Former Mayor Rosasco To State Judicial Council. The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts) 5 Jan 1956, page 3
 * In 1958 when he won a state-wide citizenship award: Good Citizenship Citation For Ex-Mayor E. H. Rosasco. The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts) 2 Sep 1958, page 2
 * In 1962 when he took his seat at the bench: Rosasco Accepts Judge's Seat With Pride, Humility, The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts) 15 Oct 1962, page 4
 * So to me this individual clearly passes WP:V and WP:NOR. There is some discussion about WP:NPOV and WP:N. In particular, regarding NPOV, I think the question is, "can local sources be independent enough to be truly reliable to to write a sufficiently neutral article?" Regarding N, I think the question is the same. I don't think there is any reason why local coverage alone means an individual isn't notable qua important and thus isn't suitable for the encyclopedia, although some disagree with me. Some might point to WP:NOT, perhaps thinking of WP:NOTWHOSWHO. I don't think this applies in many cases about local politicians where the individual had a long public career, even if a rather provincial one. This is not a case where our information is only a name in a list or something like that.
 * So the question is, "can local sources be independent enough to be truly reliable to write a sufficiently neutral article?" I don't know the answer. I think local sources of large localities are very likely to be reliable. In particular, a main newspaper in a city of over 50,000 or 100,000, or the main newspaper in a state or large part of a state is probably reliable for most issues where no obvious COI exists. For smaller papers, the issue is probably real; the relationship between Rosasco and the Transcript is more likely to have effected coverage of Rosasco than than the relationship between a paper and mayor in Boston or even Framingham (note: I don't know much about Framingham, so perhaps there are idiosyncratic reasons that is a bad example). But looking at those four clippings, there isn't anything in them that is particularly suspect.
 * I don't know how this discussion will go, but as I've expanded the article based on those sources, my guess is that the article will not be deleted - there are 4 in-depth reasonably reliable references, numerous passing mentions, and tons of unexplored search results including a congressional tribute (which I think might not mean much). I think this is the right outcome because I think the article does not violate WP:DEL-REASON or any core policies or guidelines and because WP:NOTPAPER. I also think that notability = Wiktionary:notability is a bad practice. I am uncomfortable with the idea that small towns individuals should pass a higher bar because their local media is often of lower quality.
 * But the more interesting issue to me is that without the contribution of articles from a local paper, there is a fair chance the article would be deleted. The lesson, then, is that an article on a small-town politician, civil servant, athlete, actor, businessman, etc. may be keepable if we can access local newspaper archives, but nay not be kept if it is not clearly, overtly demonstrated that an article can be written which doesn't violate DEL-REASON, etc. I'm not sure if I like or dislike this outcome. On one hand, the existence of a bad page on Rosasco may be a nice magnet for volunteers to improve the article. It also prevents people from creating a new bad page on Rosasco by filling in redlinks at a list of mayors page. On the other hand, a bad page on Rosasco is below the standards of many experienced editors and may be worse than no article. The current concensus occasionally leans towards the later. I think that is fine, as I think experienced editors who like articles on small town figures (including myself and ███specific█examples█redacted███) should do better. But I hope that the concensus continues to be that even a small town individual may be suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia if their article is not a vanity article (for instance, I'm usually disinterested in articles about living people without at least a state-level public profile), passes the core content policies, etc. Smmurphy(Talk) 18:47, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, the issue is not that local sources are necessarily less reliable than big-city media in principle — it's that purely local sourcing is merely expected to exist for all mayors. So because all mayors aren't automatically accepted as notable just because they exist, merely being able to dig out a couple of pieces of local media coverage isn't in and of itself enough to distinguish a notable mayor from a non-notable one. What we need, to make a smalltown mayor notable enough, is either (a) evidence that his coverage has expanded beyond just the local media, giving him a profile closer than usual to the statewide level that you yourself say is your usual minimum for really giving a hoot), or (b) an article that's really substantial and well-sourced to quite a lot more than just a few pieces of coverage. (Or, ideally, both a and b at the same time, but one or the other is enough.) Certainly it is possible for a smalltown figure to clear those bars — but it's never an automatic given, and I'm definitely not down with the notion, expressed by some people in some recent AFD discussions on mayors, that we should always automatically keep every article about any mayor of anywhere whose existence can be referenced to a glancing namecheck in a list. Bearcat (talk) 00:22, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * To me, the first part of your reply reads similar to exclusionist interpretations of SNGs (ie. that the conditions of an SNG are both sufficient and necessary) or the sixth and eighth bullet at POLOUTCOMES. My counter is that with access to a local paper, it is often possible to find evidence that can arguable meet, "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." part of bullet point 6. In comparison, bullet point 8 seems impossible to meet once a definition is given for "small town" (I've seen less than 50,000 or 100,000). I don't have much to say about that, some editors !vote along those lines and others don't. I'm generally opposed to exclusionist interpretations of SNG, but I don't know how to convince someone one way or another.
 * The middle part of the reply suggests that the "multiple" in multiple in-depth reliable sources should be a larger number the less significant the source. One doesn't get much less significant than the North Adams Transcript; is there a number that you would look for? This case is an outlier, as Rosasco gets 2000+ passing mentions with many multi-paragraph outlines of his career in the paper. I don't think I said that statewide coverage is a usual minimum; I meant to say that major newspapers in a state are very likely independent and also that I think articles on living individuals with less than state-level notoriety generally do not interest me.
 * The last part of your reply I mostly agree with. I am sorry that such articles aren't improved, as I think it is almost always possible to write a more substantial article (given that it was for Rosasco, who was a mayor in such a singularly small place). Anyway, thanks for indulging me, and feel free to continue the conversation elsewhere (as I don't think it is absolutely relevant to this AfD) or to ignore my reply. Smmurphy(Talk) 02:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think that bullet point 8 is an impossible standard. Local officials can, because of a controversial actions, become a well-known politician (see Kim Davis). Similarly, a local official could become significant because they were elected to the presidency of a national organization, such as the National League of Cities. --Enos733 (talk) 07:02, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * True enough. Smmurphy(Talk) 17:47, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   20:06, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. tributes reprinted in the Congressional Record are inserted at the request of the member for that district of the state, and represent nothing but service to constituents.They're not only not sources showing notability, but aren't even reliable as the is no editorial control nor even institutional responsibility.  DGG ( talk ) 21:23, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment - I've just added a bit more. Most historically important, Rosasco was a key opponent of the referendum which changed North Adams from having a Plan D city charter to a Plan B in 1957 and then was the leading proponent of the referendum which changed North Adams from having a Plan B city charter to Plan A in 1965. I don't know how common or rare such changes are, but his role was covered in other western Massachusetts and southern Vermont newspapers. Smmurphy(Talk) 22:56, 13 February 2018 (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.