Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim Tobin (activist)


 * 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   no consensus. j⚛e deckertalk 15:54, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Jim Tobin (activist)

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Basically unsourced biography of a living person. Five of the six references point towards the subject's own website, and the other ref is an ABC Chicago report that barely mentions him. The few points in his biography that might merit notability (worked at the Federal Reserve? Taught twenty years at Elmhurst College?) are unsourced. bender235 (talk) 16:41, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:33, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:34, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete As currently written he lacks the sources required to meet the GNG and being a candidate does not automatically guarantee notability. 131.118.229.17 (talk) 21:18, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Weak keep I don't think we should go by the article as written. If we believe he has done notable things and those things are likely in the public domain, we should keep his article. His google news search results suggest that he is likely notable regardless of the state of the article.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:46, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Weak keep He gets a fair number of mentions in newspapers (and presumably other media that don't show up in a keyword search). According to this ad against his organization: " “Taxpayers United” is actually a tiny organization based in Chicago. It has only one full-time employee:  its president, James Tobin, a former Elmhurst College economics professor who reportedly founded the organization back in 1976." I would think that if people take out ads against you, you are probably notable. I'd leave the article but with a "needs sources" banner. LaMona (talk) 19:42, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, j⚛e deckertalk 00:58, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

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


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 02:26, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

 Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.  The article notes:"For 25 years, he has run a group called National Taxpayers United of Illinois, using that position and his newsletter to attack tax increases, seek tax cuts and decry wasteful spending. He claims to have the second-largest taxpayer group in the Midwest, with 10,000 members and 200 local affiliates around the state. That's probably exaggerated, but he's definitely not alone. Tobin gets his name in the newspapers a lot because if somebody proposes a tax increase, we can depend on him to be against it. We sometimes call him a conservative, but he prefers to think of himself as a libertarian. Either way, I'd say he's from the right of the political spectrum."  The article notes: "Tobin also took issue with non-uniformed public workers, most who can retire at 60 and earn a pension of $12,474 for the average worker; $21,321 for teachers. They would also receive Social Security benefits, which are a maximum of $22,000 a year. “These are pampered government employees who get outrageous pension benefits and salaries,” he said. “My personal case is, I’m going to have to work until I drop to pay my bills, plus their lavish salaries.” Tobin said he founded Taxpayers United in 1976. It has an annual budget of about $300,000, a mailing list of about 30,000 members and a staff of eight." <li> The article notes: "'If we don't have (pension) reform, the checks will stop coming,' Tobin said. This is the group's first trip to New York. It was created in 1976 by Christina Tobin's father, longtime anti-tax activist Jim Tobin, who in 2002 ran for Illinois lieutenant governor on the Libertarian line. The group has a long history of tangling with the public sector in that state: Last year, it went to court in a failed effort to block a near-doubling of tolls on Illinois highways."</li> <li> The article notes: "Over the years, JIM TOBIN has received a fair amount of ink in Illinois, playing the role of anti-tax crusader and sometime candidate - including an attempted run for governor as a Libertarian in 1998."</li> <li></li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Jim Tobin to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 03:02, 15 November 2014 (UTC)</li></ul>
 * If he has enough notability in reliable sources to qualify for an article, then I'd like to see somebody actually either update the article with better sources, or at least show some of them in this discussion — it's not enough to just assert that a topic has reliable source coverage without showing some concrete evidence of that. When I do the same Google News search that Tony the Tiger suggested, I get just two pages of hits, most of which aren't even about this Jim Tobin but about other people who merely happen to have the same name (the dominant ones being a VP for Monsanto and a university football coach) — and if I switch to general web search instead, I get mostly primary source hits and don't see evidence of enough RS coverage to pass WP:GNG. It's certainly possible that there may be better sources lurking in subscription news databases that I don't have access to, but there ain't much just sitting out there on Google as claimed. And at any rate, deletion at AFD does not create a permanent ban on the subject ever being allowed to have an article — if someone can write and properly source a better article about him in the future, then they are allowed to do that regardless of the AFD result. So I have to go with the delete as things currently stand — without prejudice against the creation of a better version, citing better sources, in the future. Bearcat (talk) 21:17, 9 November 2014 (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.