Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Gordon Rogers


 * 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. WP:NPOL shown to be not met. No other notability criteria was presented. 78.26 (spin me / revolutions) 21:03, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Harry Gordon Rogers

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Poorly sourced biography of a person who has potentially valid notability claims that might get him a Wikipedia article if he could be reliably sourced over WP:GNG for them, but none that would exempt him from having to be much better referenced than this is. The only "references" being cited here are his routine wedding announcement in the local newspaper and a primary source directory entry, and there's no evidence of reliable source coverage about him in real media being shown at all. Nothing stated in this article confers an automatic notability freebie just because he existed, however -- and there's a deep level of completely unsourced personal life detail here (the names of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc.) that (a) is entirely irrelevant to his notability or lack thereof, (b) violates WP:BLPNAME, under which the names of non-notable relatives may not be included in an article at all if they aren't supported by reliable sources, and (c) makes it completely unsurprising that the creator's username matches the name of one of the subject's daughters, in violation of our conflict of interest rule against starting articles about your own relatives. No prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can find much stronger evidence that he actually clears our notability and sourceability standards, but nothing here is "inherently" notable enough to entitle him to keep an article that's referenced this poorly, and his own family don't get to put him here themselves regardless of his notability or lack thereof. Bearcat (talk) 17:30, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 18:04, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. North America1000 10:40, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep -- Meets WP:NPOL #1 as the holder of a national office, namely former Comptroller General of Canada. His term ended in 1984, making it unlikely that most RS will be online. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 14:45, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * NPOL #1 extends "national office" status to legislative offices, i.e. the House of Commons and the Senate, not to civil service positions like "comptroller general" — even Canada's current comptroller general does not have a Wikipedia article, and isn't likely to get one since he's not the subject of any significant press coverage in his own right and the role itself isn't an automatic NPOL pass. And it doesn't matter if the sources are online or not, but it does matter whether reliable sources are shown or not. I ran a database search for older media coverage, in fact, and found a decent number of glancing namechecks of his existence in articles about other things, but not a lot of coverage about him for the purposes of establishing that he would pass WP:GNG. Bearcat (talk) 16:14, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Why do you think NPOL extends only to legislative offices and not to civil offices? I think you just made that up.  It seems unlikely that the policy would specifically include members of the legislature in the second clause if the first clause only applied to legislative officers.  Such an interpretation would violate the rule against surplusage.  And as you probably know well, whether or not Canada's current comptroller general has an article is completely irrelevant.  NPOL says that he/she could have an article, it's just that no one's written it yet. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 16:56, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't "make stuff up". For starters, I've been contributing here for well over a decade, and was personally involved in a lot of the discussions that created our inclusion standards as they currently exist — so I'm quite familiar with what NPOL was intended and not intended to cover. NPOL #1 does not refer to civil service offices: it covers members of the legislature, executive offices such as president or governor, and cabinet-level offices in the jurisdictions (i.e. the US) where the cabinet is outside the legislature and thus a cabinet member isn't sitting in the legislature but is still otherwise equivalent to a cabinet minister anywhere else. It does not cover positions in the civil service bureaucracy; people in roles such as comptroller general have to clear WP:GNG on the sourcing, and are not handed an automatic presumption of notability under NPOL just for existing. For one thing, a civil service role does not make a person a politician — it makes them a bureaucrat. Bearcat (talk) 17:20, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Is this consensus written down anywhere? It seems like a natural place for it to appear would be in NPOL. If there's really a consensus, why don't you edit the policy to include it, because it's not at all obvious that that's what it means. Furthermore, the first time you mentioned this consensus you said that it was that NPOL only applied to legislative offices. Now you say it only applies to executive offices and legislators. Now it seems like you're altering it as you go. Also, are you claiming that politicians from nondemocracies can *never* satisfy NPOL, since those governments don't have legislative or executive offices per se? That also seems unlikely. And, you know, it's super interesting to learn how long you've been contributing. As far as I can see that doesn't give your opinion at AfD any more weight than mine.  Anyway, I've been contributing for longer than a decade. So what? 192.160.216.52 (talk) 17:29, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Firstly, yes, it is obvious that I'm correct about what NPOL means — NPOL explicitly says, right in its own name even, that it's about the notability of politicians. Secondly, presidents and governors and US cabinet offices do still have legislative roles, so there's no contradiction between what I said the first time and what I said the second: the first was just a shorter summary, while I went into more precise detail in the second. And thirdly, you're making quite the leap of logic with the "nondemocracies" stuff — autocratic or otherwise nondemocratic governments do still have legislative and executive offices, with the only difference being that they're filled through some process other than direct election by the general public in a multipartisan competition. (For example, China still has a president and a legislature, and the only thing it doesn't have is multiple political parties competing for those offices.) Any notion that politicians in nondemocratic countries somehow fail NPOL completely fails to follow from what I actually said, because I said nothing about NPOL notability being contingent on whether the position was elected by the general public (which would even exclude Canada's senators) and/or holding office in a multipartisan democracy rather than an autocratic or one-party state. So no, I'm not taking responsibility for that strawman argument. Bearcat (talk) 17:38, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If it's so obvious, why not edit it in to NPOL so we can see if there's actually a consensus. And you're just wrong about the US President and Cabinet, and state governors in the US. Not only do they not have legislative roles, they're explicitly forbidden by the constitution from having legislative roles. And if non-elected rulers in non-democratic countries are still politicians, how in the world are civil servants in national level offices not also politicians? After all, their offices are "filled through some process other than by direct election." Why is the president of China a politician rather than a civil servant, for instance? Can you tell me how you define "politician"? Because at this point, far from your criteria being as obvious as you insist they are, I can't actually comprehend them enough to disagree cogently. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 17:44, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The president and/or a state governor in the United States do not sit in the legislative body, but that does not mean that their roles are inherently non-legislative in nature — for one thing, they can exert an incredibly powerful influence over the agenda pursued by the members of the legislature (e.g. making demands about what they expect to see or not see in the budget, pushing for or against proposed bills, etc.), and for another, a piece of legislation actually becoming law is contingent on whether the president or governor agrees to sign it or not, and they have much more power to veto a bill on partisan grounds than a GG or LG in Canada does. So it's not a non-legislative role just because the president or governor doesn't sit in the legislative body — it's a role that still has a very strong legislative component to it. And the definition of "politician" is "a person who holds a political office", so a civil servant appointed to a non-political job does not reify into a politician just because some politicians in undemocratic countries were also appointed to their political offices instead of being elected to them. Bearcat (talk) 17:59, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Civil servants can also have an incredibly powerful influence over the legislative agenda. So can large donors. That doesn't make them legislative officers. If influence defines legislative offices there's no serious way to exclude civil servants, like e.g. the heads of the CIA and the FBI. And if you're going to define a politician as someone who holds a political office, can you define what makes an office political? It's not being elected to it, it's not that it's legislative, what is it? What about countries where the president is essentially powerless and it's the head of a single party that runs everything, like the Soviet Union? Would you say that the head of the CPSU doesn't meet NPOL but the president of the USSR does? That seems incredibly implausible. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 18:07, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't say anything whatsoever about "legislative officers", for starters — I said legislative roles, not legislative officers. If NPOL notability were limited to legislative officers, then even 75 to 80 per cent of legislature members would fail to qualify under NPOL, because most members of a legislature are backbenchers rather than officers of the legislature. No, the president or governor aren't legislative officers — but I never said they were, and most actual members of the legislature aren't officers of the legislature either. And no, civil servants do not have influence over the legislative agenda — their job may certainly have advisory aspects, such as writing policy analysis reports about the effects of a current or proposed policy, but they have no power to decide policy for themselves: their role is to receive and implement policy directives from the politicians, not to give directives to the politicians. And while donors can influence the political agenda, they aren't covered under NPOL at all — they're covered under other notability standards for the prior careers that gave them enough money to become donors, such as businesspeople or actors. What makes an office "political" is that it has the power to make political decisions that can change what directives the civil service is given to carry out. And again, you're really setting fire to another strawman if you think contrasting the head of the CPSU vs. the president of the USSR is a rebuttal to anything I said about a civil servant in Canada. Bearcat (talk) 18:30, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the confusion. In the US members of the legislature are legislative officers in the sense that they hold office in the legislative branch.  But your distinction between who receives and implements policy directives won't help in the US either.  The president, e.g., is not political by your definition, as she/he is forbidden from deciding policy in one sense.  In another strong sense civil servants in the US can decide policy through implementing regulations.  So far you've shifted the need for a definition from "politician" to "political" and now to "policy" but you're no closer to making yourself clear.  Really, the head of the CIA can make decisions that can change what directives the civil service is given to carry out as long as those decisions and the subsequent directives are found by courts if challenged to be rationally related to implementing the enabling legislation.  Anyway, you convinced TheGracefulSlick, who I'm not pinging because they threatened to arrange for me to get two in the head if I ever pinged them again, and that's enough to convince me that it's time for me to save my electrons for a discussion where everyone but me doesn't already agree. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 18:45, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete - Fails every aspect of WP:NPOL; I trust Bearcat's, and my own assessment of the guideline, is quite accurate. This also includes the complete lack of reliable sources and there is no evidence that convinces that sources exist offline.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 18:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete I do have to wonder if the distinction between civil service and policy creating roles needs to be reassessed in some articles we have on USA government functionaries. However Rogers clearly does not fall into the built-in NPOL exemption to other rules, and this article lacks the sourcing to justify having it. This political v. civil office dichotomy might also be need to be reassessed in considering weather we should have articles on some of the Indian police functionaries we have articles on.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:54, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. This biography may need to be trimmed, but this is a recently-deceased person who served for along period of time in a high-level office and there are almost certainly enough sources to write a decent article. Anah Mikhayhu Leonard (talk) 00:15, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete civil servants are not the same things as politicians. Bearcat's analysis here holds true. He does not meet our criteria for inclusion. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:53, 23 April 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.