Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jaime Watt


 * 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. Davewild (talk) 07:30, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Jaime Watt

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Full disclosure: I was an early contributor (possibly even the original creator, but I can't verify that under the circumstances) to this article, over a decade ago when Wikipedia's notability and sourcing rules were very different than they are now. But because watchlisting wasn't a thing Wikipedia had at the time, it wasn't an article that I (or many other administrators) stayed on top of actively monitoring or improving — with the result that a lot of other contributors tarted it up over the years with a lot of unsourced WP:BLP violations. (The content in question was actually an accurate assessment of what he's most known for, but of course that still doesn't make it appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia if it isn't properly sourced.) So last year it got quite rightly pruned back and oversighted, but at least one anonymous IP is now trying to get the unsourced BLP stuff readded, while citing mainly circular references (i.e. sites that are simply mirroring our own pre-oversighted version) rather than reliable source coverage.

But even more importantly than that, Wikipedia's notability rules for politicians have tightened up considerably over the years — while a decade ago being a backroom staffer in a political administration was often accepted as a legitimate claim of notability in and of itself, that doesn't hold true in 2015. You now have to assert a lot more than the person's mere existence to get them into Wikipedia on that basis — and as things stand now, there's just not enough substance here to claim that he's notable on that basis anymore. (Several of his other colleagues in the Mike Harris campaign team also once had Wikipedia articles, all of which have since been redirected or deleted as lacking adequate sourcing and/or a sufficient notability claim — see Deb Hutton and Leslie Noble for other examples. Watt's is the only article out of that bunch still standing today, even though he's no more inherently notable and no more widely sourceable than any of the others.) In reality, under our current standards for the notability of non-elected backroom political figures, any possibility of his actually being notable enough for a Wikipedia article is entirely dependent on being able to properly source up the very stuff that had to get pruned and oversighted — but even that would really just make him a WP:BLP1E.

What little content about him we actually need can be adequately addressed by simply mentioning his name, unlinked, in the other articles where he's relevant — but we don't need a standalone BLP if we have to violate BLP rules to make him notable enough to have a standalone BLP. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 13:02, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 13:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 13:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 23:11, 8 May 2015 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 00:29, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete - Simply not notable with no significant or notable coverage and searches here, here, here and here found nothing. SwisterTwister   talk  19:16, 17 May 2015 (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.