Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Frances Prince


 * 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. (non-admin closure) CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 17:29, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Frances Prince

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Biography of a former mayor, which is just written as a basic summary of her birth and death details without any actual substance about her mayoralty. The city is one where the mayor is selected internally among the city councillors on a yearly rotation, not directly elected by the voters, so there's no automatic presumption of notability just for the fact of being a mayor. But there's not enough sourcing here to actually pass WP:NPOL #2: all we have here is an obituary in the local newspaper, a straight wire service reprint of that exact same article in another newspaper (which thus combines with that first reference as a single datapoint toward notability, not a separate datapoint in its own right), a legacy.com obituary (which is not a notability-assisting source at all) and just one article that was written while she was alive. As always, no prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can write and source something more substantial than this, but there's no automatic presumption of notability for the "everybody on council gets a turn" kind of mayor. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 16:23, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 16:23, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 02:51, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 00:59, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete being the "first x mayor of place y" is not alone a sign of notability. There is a lack of sources to show the coverage needed to show notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - this is not an obituary.Acnetj (talk) 05:29, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 10:47, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Just using the sources in the article, we see that the LA Times wrote an extensive article about the topic ten years after the topic left politics, stating, "It has been 19 [years] since she became this city's first woman mayor and more than a decade since she quietly bowed out of elective office. But at 59, Frances K. Prince remains a behind-the-scenes force in the community she nurtured through its adolescence...For a long period, 1969 to 1984, probably no one had more impact than Prince on the public life of Thousand Oaks."  There is no claim that the material is not reliable, or that WP:ATD should be ignored as per IAR.  In short, there is no argument for deletion here.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:37, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * One article is not a WP:GNG pass all by itself, and that article claims nothing about her that would constitute an automatic pass of any SNG in lieu. In cities where the mayor is "selected" by an internal "everybody gets a turn" rotation within the city council, there is no automatic presumption of notability at all unless they can be sourced to a much greater volume of press coverage than this. Yes, there is an argument for deletion here: it's called WP:NPOL #2 and WP:GNG, neither of which she's been demonstrated as passing at all. Bearcat (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:N is the guideline we use to determine if a topic should be standalone or merged to a broader topic. It is not a deletion guideline.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Clearly WP:BEFORE was not done. Just using the time period from 1964-2017 there are 12,816 matches for her in California alone in newspapers.com. She easily meets GNG, does not have to meet any secondary criteria., , pt 1 and pt 2, , , pt 1 and pt 2, pt 1 and pt 2 and the 2nd page of the 1997 article cited above clearly show that she was extremely involved and often noted in the media for things to do with city planning, regulating growth and conservation from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, i.e. nearly 3 decades. SusunW (talk) 06:43, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I can only BEFORE in resources that I have access to. You were able to find improved coverage in a database that you can access, and that's great, but you don't get to cast aspersions on my failure to somehow magically know that there was improved coverage in a database I don't have access to. I did check all of the databases I do have access to, and that's all anybody has the right to expect of me in the BEFORE test. Not everybody has access to the same resources, so any given editor's failure to find what you found does not mean that other editor isn't being diligent enough. Bearcat (talk) 19:49, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, Bearcat, that you can't be responsible for what you don't have access to. However, I found multiple sources in a basic google search indicating she had received multiple awards from local civic groups, the LA Times long article, as well as several books which I had no access to, indicating from the snippet she was involved in international relationships to create a sister city project with Armenia. As I am not in the US, my search is clearly different, but there were sufficient indications of notability before I dug into newspapers.com to make me search farther to improve the article. I apparently incorrectly assumed that you would have gotten those same google results. I apologize for my failure to AGF that you had done BEFORE. SusunW (talk) 20:33, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not that I didn't see the same Google results; it's that winning local awards from local civic groups isn't a notability claim at all. Bearcat (talk) 23:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, which is why I did not include them in the article, but the LA Times piece made it clear that she had a significant impact on the city and the Armenian link, which I couldn't find anything except a snippet about in newspapers.com also made it obvious that she wasn't your run-of-the-mill appointee. SusunW (talk) 00:04, 25 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Being a mayor is not automatically notable, but neither is it automatically non-notable. WP:NPOL #3 states "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". We have a contemporary in-depth profile in a major newspaper (the LA Times), three obituaries in other newspapers far from her center of activity, and lots of incidental coverage. That meets the criterion to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:16, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. The three editors above set out the case in fulsome detail, and I agree with them. Edwardx (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep and barnstar to . WP:HEY. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  17:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Carefully weighing the references and sources, also taking into account that I often agree with Bearcat on AfDs, I came to conclusion that it should be keep per WP:GNG. gidonb (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2017 (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.