Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Henry Ahrens


 * 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. Michig (talk) 07:12, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

John Henry Ahrens

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Fails WP:politician. Mayor of a small city with no other claim under WP:GNG MB 03:55, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as not convincing for WP:POLITICIAN. SwisterTwister   talk  04:46, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep La Crosse is Wisconsin's 12th largest city, a county seat and Wisconsin's largest city on its western border. Ahrens was also mayor during an important time in American history. The article need to be expanded, not deleted. Igbo (talk) 16:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The notability of a mayor is not contingent on the city's ordinal ranking as a population centre — it's contingent only on the raw population number itself, and 50K is not large enough to give its mayors an automatic "include because he exists" pass if they're not sourced well enough to pass WP:GNG. And "served during an important time in American history" is not a credible notability claim either, if you can't demonstrate and source that his mayoralty had any direct bearing on making it an important time in American history. Bearcat (talk) 17:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 16:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wisconsin-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 16:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. Yet another NN small-town mayor. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. A well-sourced and substantive article about a mayor could potentially be kept regardless of the city's size, but WP:NPOL does not confer an automatic presumption of notability on all mayors. A city would have to be twice the size of La Crosse before his mere existence as a mayor was a compelling enough claim of notability in and of itself to get the "keep and flag for refimprove" treatment rather than the "delete" treatment. Bearcat (talk) 17:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete This article runs afoul of the "no original research" guidelines. The sources are A-the social security death index, which merely establishes someone claimed his death benefits, and is not even a secondary source. 2-the 1930 US census, another non-secondary source that can say nothing substantive of the subject. 3-an autobiography. At least this is moving out of original research, but it still is in the not indepdent of the subject and by no means reliable area. Thus I am unconvinced we have any secondary sources, reliable or not, all sources are primary. Lacrosse only had 47,000 people in 1950 when he was mayor. Even if we allowed for ordinal inclusion, I fail to see how we would ever allow default inclusion past maybe the 10 largest cities in any state, and even that seems unwise. The "important time in American history" argument makes no sense to me. How is 1949-1955 "an important time in American history"? How is it more so than any other given time in American history? I have to admit that this is one of the worst articles for sourcing I have come across. No original research is rarely so fully violated. Wikipedia editors should not be drawing sources from the US census or social security death indexes. No Wikipedia article should EVER cite the census report on an individual as a source. It might mention something said in the census, if that has been mentioned in a secondary source, but people should not go digging through the census to learn about individauls.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:38, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete -- being a mayor of Wisconsin's 12th largest city is not exactly a claim of notability; merely a local politician. Sources would need to be much stronger, indicating they were notable for something else, to be able to keep this article. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:26, 11 October 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.