Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/H. L. Willis


 * 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. MelanieN (talk) 01:49, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

H. L. Willis

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Not notable mayor of a small city. Under 7,000 people at the time Willis held office. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 17:31, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Louisiana-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 17:47, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 17:47, 26 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. Fails WP:GNG, WP:BIO and WP:POLITICIAN. Then also delete the other mayors of Pineville, Louisiana, who have the same notability problems, and the mayor template. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete another article on a non-notable mayor of Pineville, Louisiana.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:34, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. Smalltown mayor with no strong claim to passing WP:NPOL, and none of the non-localized sourcing it would take to make him more notable than the norm for a smalltown mayor. It warrants mention, as well, that the creator has been banned from editing Wikipedia — although that's not a deletion rationale in and of itself if the article wasn't created by a confirmed sockpuppet after the original block, it doesn't exactly help the case for retention here either. (To be fair, a mayor's includability is not dependent on the population the city had at the time he was mayor — even New York City once had a population of below 7,000 too — but rather, if a city is large enough now to hand its mayors an NPOL pass, then any mayor the place has ever had can have an article, as long as it's properly sourced, regardless of how big the city was or wasn't in that person's era. But with a population of just 14K today, Pineville still isn't large enough.) Bearcat (talk) 18:23, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Local official with five newspaper sources. Pre-Internet; left office in 1950s. Qualifies under local official with sourcing. The rules say nothing about the elected local official, whether mayor or another office, or the size of municipality.64.134.51.41 (talk) 16:35, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep It appears to meet WP:GNG which doesn't specify that local papers cannot be used to denote Wikipedia notability. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:25, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
 * If local newspapers were enough to GNG a topic of purely local notability, we would have to keep articles about every small town fire chief in existence, every municipal councillor in existence, every single mother who ever opened a furniture store on Main Street, every teenager who ever got a human interest piece written about him in the local media because he tried out for his high school football team a year after losing two toes in a lawnmower accident, and on and so forth. So yes, if a person doesn't have an automatic pass of an SNG by virtue of the size of community that he's mayor of, then the media coverage most certainly does have to expand beyond the local before he gets a GNG pass. Bearcat (talk) 23:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:GNG says: "significant coverage in reliable sources" as most mayors get. Lawnmower man gets mentioned once, but not in biographical detail. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:49, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The coverage that exists of "lawnmower man" is not one bit less "biographical" in nature than any source here is — just within the past year alone, I've seen at least four articles about four different high school athletes with a non-standard number of appendages — two different nine-toed football kickers, a one-armed basketball player and a quad-amputee wrestler — all of which most certainly were "biographical" enough to count as quality sourcing if the mere existence of media coverage conferred a WP:GNG pass regardless of whether its context passed an actual notability claim or not. You're inventing a personal distinction, not reflective of what the sources actually contain, just to justify treating this differently than a person whose sourceability-to-notability ratio is otherwise identical. Bearcat (talk) 18:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete fails all three criteria of WP:NPOL, does not meet criteria for ANYBIO, and fails GNG. For comparison of what it would take to be a notable mayor, look at any mayor of New York City, or most mayors of Baton Rouge (List of mayors of Baton Rouge, Louisiana), or any mayor of New Orleans (List of mayors of New Orleans). Steve Quinn (talk) 04:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. NN small-town politician. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. "Local politician" with statewide sources. "Local politician" is not defined in the Wikipedia rules and can include small-town mayors.204.32.229.190 (talk) 12:54, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's necessary to be familiar with actual AFD practice and precedent. All mayors are not automatically accepted as notable just because mayor — a mayor's notability does depend on factors such as the size of the city and/or the depth and range of sourcing that can be provided to support it. Every mayor in existence, even the mayor of a village of less than 50 people, would always qualify for a Wikipedia article if the existence of purely local media coverage were enough to confer GNG on a small-town mayor, because local coverage of all mayors always exists. Accordingly, WP:POLOUTCOMES specifically states that mayors are only presumed to pass NPOL in "cities of regional prominence" (which is commonly defined by many as a population of at least 50K, though even then a mayor isn't on truly safe ground until 100K if their sourceability isn't still significantly stronger than the norm), and the sourcing does have to expand beyond the purely local before the existence of media coverage confers a GNG pass in and of itself. No, it's not impossible for a smalltown mayor to clear the bar as "more notable than the norm" for some substantive reason — but smalltown mayors don't automatically clear the bar just because they and their local media coverage exist. Bearcat (talk) 18:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep The amount of coverage appears to meet WP:GNG, even if most of it is from local papers. It's true that not every mayor of every town automatically merits an article, but I believe this one does. CrispyGlover (talk) 20:28, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 18:53, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If local newspaper reports were accepted as conferring notability then both of my parents and both of my children (and possibly my wife and I, because we were once the subject of the main front-page article in a local newspaper serving a population of about 200,000) would be considered notable. I'm sure that any of those would find it totally ridiculous that they should have an encyclopedia article written about them, as they are simply normal people going about their normal lives that by circumstance get reported in the local press. A mayor of a city of 7,000 is similarly such a normal person. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:42, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." You have to have "received significant coverage in reliable sources" plural. Everybody gets one article in a local paper. It also has to be "significant coverage" in that you can write a biography using the information in that coverage. Most people you can write a few sentences about, and a some you can write a paragraph about. To sustain a Wikipedia article you need "significant coverage in reliable sources". You also have to have some sort of notability in the lede, surviving a house fire would be excluded by WP:notnews. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:52, 3 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete Concur with nom. Small town mayor without any claim to notability. The article is inflated with irrelevant info, like the name of the street his father died on and a lightening strike. Mayoral career is covered in one sentence; he was appointed to complete a term after a resignation. I imagine that someday there will be a Wikibio with entries for everyone and links to genealogy, but WP is not that. MB 16:07, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete -- does not meet WP:NPOL. This is largely a WP:PSEUDO biography and possibly WP:MEMORIAL. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:31, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Meets WP:NPOL: Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. 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".24.153.207.70 (talk) 15:41, 6 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment But where is the "significant coverage"? Refs 1 & 2 just confirm his parents' deaths. Ref 3 is about his non-notable job as a building superintendent.  Ref 5 apparently is about a lightening strike - not him.  All that is left is 4 & 6 from the The Alexandria Daily Town Talk which may or may not be the same article since neither contain working URLs.  This is not "significant coverage". MB 18:05, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Dane 2007  talk 02:37, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete I concur with the observation of that the coverage is not significant. Lepricavark (talk) 04:02, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as certainly not convincing for WP:POLITICIAN, and there's certainly by far no notability from being a "grounds superintendent". SwisterTwister   talk  05:57, 18 September 2016 (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.