Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jacquelyn L. Williams-Bridgers


 * 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. Stifle (talk) 11:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Jacquelyn L. Williams-Bridgers

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Article does not meet WP:GNG, WP:BASIC or WP:ANYBIO. BEFORE showed routine, mill coverage for a normal government employee / political appointee.  // Timothy ::  talk  17:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.   // Timothy ::  talk  17:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions.   // Timothy ::  talk  17:48, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:NPOL (I guess). We have an article for her post—Inspector General of the Department of State. If the post is important enough to warrant an article, I'd say the person holding it is too. And I know notability isn't inherited, but isn't NPOL premised on the assumption that notability is inherited from certain prominent positions? Also, here's a capsule bio for some of her other achievements: AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , do you need some coffee my friend? :)  // Timothy ::  talk  18:56, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The answer to the coffee question is always: yes. The answer to the substantive question is: NPOL is, IMO, rather an unusual standard. In my, admittedly limited, recent experience at AfD, it has been held to confer notability on officials largely independent of whether coverage that would meet GNG has been shown. Some examples I can think of offhand are Articles for deletion/Chandra Kalindi Roy Henriksen, Articles for deletion/T. C. West, and Articles for deletion/A. D. Duffey. In the first instance, the position was not listed explicitly at NPOL; it was in the second and third cases. My thought on this AfD is that surely if we confer automatic notability on state legislators without any substantial degree of coverage or demonstrated legislative achievements, we should do the same for top-level civil servants in major government departments. An Inspector General of the Department of State meets that standard, in my view. Hence my !vote to keep. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 20:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, NPOL is most certainly not predicated on the idea that some people inherit notability from a political position even if they don't actually have press coverage. In fact, NPOL-passing politicians always do have press coverage — we're not always on the ball about actually finding and using it to make all of our articles about NPOL-passing politicians good ones, but that's not the same thing as the coverage itself not even existing in the first place. So NPOL isn't so much a case of "some roles are so important that people who've held them are exempted from having to clear GNG at all" — it's "some roles are so important that people who've held them will literally always pass GNG even if Wikipedians have been lazy about actually finding and using all of their coverage, so don't waste everybody's time on articles that may be inadequate in their current form but are entirely repairable". But this isn't a role where the existence of GNG-worthy coverage is a foregone conclusion — it's a role where GNG-worthy coverage may or may not exist, so her includability depends on showing hard evidence that she passes GNG rather than just asserting that the role hands her an automatic inclusion freebie. Bearcat (talk) 01:16, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but what's the practical difference between (1) keeping an article on State Legislator X because they happen to be a state legislator and their notability is inherited from their position (i.e., the wrong view); and (2) keeping an article on State Legislator X because there is sure to be coverage about them (i.e., the right view)? The article is kept in both cases, and the same amount of coverage (i.e., 0) is actually shown. Most state legislators have far, far less influence on policymaking and the events of the day than inspectors general, and as a matter of fact there is not much coverage about the vast majority of them. By contrast, my search of ProQuest shows that Williams-Bridgers is discussed and quoted in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and NYT . AleatoryPonderings (talk) 00:27, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Most importantly, "quoted in" has absolutely nothing to do with notability at all — to assist in establishing a person's notability, sources have to represent that person being written or spoken about, in the third person, by people other than herself. Sources in which she's "quoted" as a giver of soundbite about a subject do not help to establish notability at all. And she also has to be a major subject of the source, not just have her existence namechecked in an article whose main subject is somebody or something else — so that New York Times link, which is primarily about Jean Kennedy Smith and just happens to glancingly mention Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers' name a single time in the process of not being about Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers, is doing absolutely nothing to help, and that's the only specific article you've actually named as evidence. Secondly, there's no such thing as a state legislator who can't show any press coverage at all. As a Canadian, admittedly, I devote a lot more time and attention to Canadian provincial and territorial MPPs — but they're never, ever unsourceable either, and I've never had any difficulty finding sources for an American state legislator when one's been on my plate (e.g. Wally Straughn, Corey Corbin). I know it's popular to dismiss US state legislators as uniquely unimportant, but they do get coverage whether you personally pay attention to it or not. Finally, please read WP:NEXIST. As nice as it would be if people always responded to a poorly sourced but improvable article by substancing and reffing it up to FA status right away, that's not a requirement of our process — if sufficient sources are shown to exist, and thus the article is improvable, then we no longer care whether actually getting the sources into the article takes five minutes or five years. Perhaps we should, but we don't. Bearcat (talk) 01:09, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I admit that NYT article was not very useful. (There are more, to which your objections probably still apply: ). Mainly I just find it incredible that a top civil servant at a major federal government department could not be considered notable. (I'd say André Marin, for instance, is roughly, roughly analogous in the Ontario context.) I know: this is probably just an WP:ITSNOTABLE claim, and the closer will likely disregard it. But there it is. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 01:53, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 17:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 18:26, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete just because we have an article on a post does not mean every person who held it was notable. No reading of politician notability would extend it to this post. The sourcing here is not enough to show notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:34, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete unless somebody can show much more evidence that she actually has significantly better sources than this. Just because we happen to have an article listing the past holders of a government bureaucratic job does not in and of itself confer an automatic notability freebie on every single person named in the list — if she were properly demonstrated to have enough reliable source coverage to clear WP:GNG, that would be one thing, but the role isn't "inherently" notable enough to justify leaning almost entirely on her own employer's self-published content, along with just one news story about an incident that would just make her a WP:BLP1E if it's really all the media coverage she's got. Again: if she were much better referenced than this, then sure, but it's not such a vitally important role that she would be exempted from having to have better sources than this just because she held it. Bearcat (talk) 01:16, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete I agree with the last two delete voters. Although the position has an article about it that doesn't mean it's a guarantee that everyone who held it automatically gets a free pass when it comes to the notability standards. Which in this case, are not met. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:12, 21 September 2020 (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.