Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Sargent Pillsbury, Jr.


 * 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 Keep. Black Kite (talk) 08:21, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

John Sargent Pillsbury, Jr.

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Delete. Poorly sourced biography of a person whose most substantive claim of notability is having been a non-winning candidate in a party primary. This is not a claim of notability that passes WP:NPOL -- and the only potential claim of preexisting notability here, that he was president of an insurance company, isn't sourced to any media coverage about him in that role. The sourcing here isn't substantive enough to get him over WP:GNG -- two of the three references are to paid death notices in the classifieds, of the type that every person who exists at all gets regardless of their encyclopedic notability or lack thereof, and the third is a biographical sketch on the website of the organization that holds his personal papers, which is thus effectively a WP:PRIMARYSOURCE. None of this is enough to demonstrate that he had the notability necessary to earn an encyclopedia article. Bearcat (talk) 19:38, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Minnesota-related deletion discussions. Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ (talk) 20:52, 28 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. The article has its faults, all of which appear to be omissions, but Pillsbury undoubtedly was notable.  In addition to heading an insurance company, he headed two trade associations, was chair of the Minnesota Orchestra and active in the building of Orchestra Hall, trustee or director of other organizations, and won sailing awards. ,.
 * None of what you just said constitutes an automatic notability freebie in the absence of proper reliable source coverage about him to support it. And of the two links you provided at the end of your comment, one of them is a paid death notice that's already in the article and has already been addressed in my nomination statement, and the other is a Google Groups posting (which is not a reliable source, as Google Groups content is user-generated and can misrepresent the publication details or the content of a source.) Bearcat (talk) 23:26, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Will this transcription of the Pioneer Press obituary suffice? It was not a paid notice; the author was a reporter with the St. Paul Pioneer Press.  Kablammo (talk) 18:25, 30 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Another user has now confirmed that the article appeared in the Pioneer Press on March 30, 2005. See, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Minnesota. I will edit the article accordingly. Kablammo (talk) 21:34, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

The article now has four independent reliable sources. One is a news article authored by a reporter with the largest newspaper in St. Paul, Minnesota (and second largest in the state). The article appeared in the B (local news) section of the paper shortly after Pillsbury's death. Another source is the Minnesota Historical Society, a highly-regarded and well-staffed state-chartered organization which is active in all facets of Minnesota history, with a central museum and document repository and dozens of staffed historic sites around the state. It sponsors exhibits and programs, publishes a magazine and books, and has its own wiki-- with vetted content authored by identified and qualified authors. Its publications have been relied on in numerous Wikipedia articles, at least two of which are featured. It is incongruous for Wikipedia-- itself but a website hosting articles written in many cases by amateurs-- to dismiss the MHS as unreliable.

I have rewritten the article, removing sources which were derived from paid obituaries, and adding other sources. Kablammo (talk) 22:23, 1 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep per my standards for lawyers' articles. In addition to running for a major office, the subject was president of a major company, and served on several civic boards and committees: chairing the boards of the Minnesota community chest and a major orchestra, and serving on several important civic boards. He was also a partner in an AMlAw 100 law firm. Bearian (talk) 21:09, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Here is a source available from WP:BEFORE D1, that also draws attention to the fact that "J.S. Pillsbury, Jr." is an alternate search term for the topic:
 * Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Analysis Nomination states (emphasis in original), "two of the three references are to paid death notices in the classifieds, of the type that every person who exists at all gets regardless of their encyclopedic notability or lack thereof..."  One of those two appears to be from the Rome News Tribune dated Mar 31, 2005, ref.  This same article appears in the Washington Post, one of the most famous newspapers in the U.S, on Mar 30, 2005 ref, where the material is marked as copyright by the Associated Press.  According to our article, "Cutbacks at rival United Press International in 1993 left the AP as the United States' primary news service..."  I see no evidence that either the AP or the Washington Post or Rome News Tribune was paid for this article.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Analysis Nomination states, "...the third [reference in the article at the time of nomination] is a biographical sketch on the website of the organization that holds his personal papers, which is thus effectively a WP:PRIMARYSOURCE."  An inspection of the material shows that it is copyright "(C) 2015 MHS".  There is no evidence that this material is anything other than secondary material.  As secondary material it is effectively secondary material.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The source is an archival organization which directly holds a fonds of his personal papers because those papers were donated to it. That makes it an affiliated source, which makes it a primary source. It's not exempt from being a primary source just because he didn't personally publish the "inventory of this fonds" page himself — it's still an inventory of primary source documents which were directly donated to the organization by him or his estate. Bearcat (talk) 21:24, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Bearcat, I still am not following your argument. The biographical note published by the Minnesota Historical Society is the Society's biography of Mr. Pillsbury.  The note itself is not a mere inventory (and even if it were, the MHS is both a secondary source and reliable).  MHS is not only a depository of primary source documents; it has those, and much more.  It has a complete editorial staff (including factchecking) and is publisher of 450 books in print in the Society's three imprints.  Eric Morse, who write on the Canadian fur trade, has thanked the MHS for its work in his field, and I have used its sources for probably a dozen articles, including a featured article.
 * The MHS is an independent, secondary, and reliable source. Kablammo (talk) 23:39, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The MHS's page about Pillsbury is a catalog of an archival fonds of primary source documents donated to the MHS by Pillsbury or his family. The MHS may be a valid source in some other contexts, but it's a primary source in this context — not because of what the organization is, but because of what the page is. Bearcat (talk) 02:14, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The biography was contributed by the MHS, an independent and reliable party. The fact that the MHS also keeps his records is not relevant.  Even if it were, the source would still be reliable-- the Society's characterization of those records would still be writings of an independent third party.  The MHS did not generate those stored documents.  Kablammo (talk) 00:28, 18 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Analysis Nomination states, "The sourcing here isn't substantive enough to get him over WP:GNG..."  This is an assertion that notability has content requirements, but notability has no content requirements except for a special case involving lists.  As per the WP:N nutshell, "The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article."  Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * In other words, your position is that anybody can get into Wikipedia just by asserting that any particular thing they did was noteworthy in and of itself, without having to adequately source their notability per the demands of WP:GNG? Bearcat (talk) 21:24, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I'm saying that our WP:N guideline says that Wikipedia notability is defined outside of Wikipedia. Unscintillating (talk) 22:47, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, and reliable source coverage which satisfies WP:GNG, in the context of something that counts as a notability claim, is how one shows whether notability has been "defined outside of Wikipedia" or not. So what you're saying is not in contradiction with what I said. Bearcat (talk) 02:14, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem I saw is the inference that looking in the article was a sufficient test to determine that the topic failed wp:notability. Since notability has no content requirements, looking in the article may tell if the topic is notable, but it doesn't help in determining an absence of notability.  Maybe WP:BEFORE D3 explains it better, "If you find that adequate sources do appear to exist, the fact that they are not yet present in the article is not a proper basis for a nomination."  Unscintillating (talk) 22:42, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Analysis Nomination states, "None of this is enough to demonstrate that he had the notability necessary to earn an encyclopedia article."  It is a truism that "X is not enough to demonstrate that the topic had the notability necessary to earn an encyclopedia article." as notability is not earned.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:20, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete He was president of an insurance company that hired a famous architect to build its office building, had relations to people in the food industry, and lost in a primary election. None of this is notable, and the obituaries are not enough to establish notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 19:55, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep We see in, "Katharine Clark to be June Bride; her Marriage to John Sargent Pillsbury Jr, to Take Place in St. James's Church. New York Times, May 23, 1936.", that this Minnesotoan's marriage at age 24 was considered news in New York.  We have evidence stretching from 1936 through to a book published in 2011.  Obviously Wikipedia notable.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:51, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
 * To whatever limited to non-existent extent that a mere wedding announcement on the social pages could actually count as WP:GNG-conferring coverage in and of itself, the fact is that Katharine Clark, not John Pillsbury, is the primary subject of that headline. Her parents lived in New York City at the time, according to the wedding announcement, and thus her wedding announcement would have appeared in a New York City newspaper regardless of the notability or non-notability of whatever random dude she was marrying — it exists because her, not because him. Wedding announcements fall under WP:ROUTINE, so a wedding announcement does not speak to GNG just because it's in The New York Times. Bearcat (talk) 02:26, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Please provide the link that shows this announcement. Unscintillating (talk) 13:15, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:ROUTINE is for event notability such as the Balloon Boy, and even for events doesn't change how to interpret WP:GNG. Unscintillating (talk) 13:15, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ROUTINE explicitly includes wedding announcements in its examples of coverage that doesn't assist GNG. Bearcat (talk) 15:54, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked at the reference, and I'd have to look at the edit history and maybe the talk page to understand why the exact words "wedding announcements" are listed. But I can say that the context shows no coupling to WP:GNG.  The page itself is concerned with event notability, such as Balloon Boy.  The specific paragraph you've identified refers us to WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, the specific name of which was a part of policy I helped to codify.  We are not using this topic, the Pillsbury topic, to announce a wedding in 1936.  We are not violating WP:NOTNEWSPAPER.   The paragraph itself says that such material may be useful in non-event topics, "Routine events such as sports matches, film premieres, press conferences etc. may be better covered as part of another article, if at all."  The other side of this is that, as I said before, WP:GNG has no restrictions for "routine" coverage.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:02, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Nobody's saying that a published wedding announcement cannot be used for supplementary verification of the wedding and the name of the subject's spouse and other biographical details after the topic has already cleared GNG on other sources. But if you're evaluating the basic question of whether the subject has enough coverage to pass GNG in the first place, a published wedding announcement does not count as a data point in and of itself toward tipping the scale into "yes". Bearcat (talk) 14:51, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The policy term is "significant coverage", not "data point". As "significant coverage", this headline contributes to WP:GNG notability.  From WP:GNG, "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material."  Unscintillating (talk) 23:47, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * And just when I went ahead and characterized "John Kerry wasn't elected either" as the most impressive feat of completely missing the point that I'd seen on Wikipedia in the 2010s, you had to go and top it almost immediately. One evaluates whether GNG is met or not by counting the number of references that qualify toward the meeting of GNG, so a reference can quite validly be called a "data point" without needing the phrase "data point" to be specifically reflected in the exact wording of GNG itself — we are not restricted to arguing solely on the basis of the exact literal wording of a policy statement, but are permitted to use alternate words to make the same points. The point remains, a wedding announcement does not count toward the meeting of GNG: anybody can place a wedding announcement in the wedding announcements section of any newspaper by paying for the announcement. So a wedding announcement is not GNG-conferring coverage just because it can technically be called "substantive"; a wedding announcement is not GNG-conferring coverage just because it appears in The New York Times, when the bride's parents lived in New York City and therefore would be expected to place their daughter's wedding announcement there; a wedding announcement is not GNG-conferring coverage just because the bride and groom are technically named in its headline. A wedding announcement simply is not GNG-conferring coverage, period. Bearcat (talk) 21:15, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I've quoted from the guideline, and your analysis has not identified errors in my analysis, so my statement stands. Yes, if it was paid, that would change my opinion...was it?  You've said that it was on the "social pages", and another editor called it a "news article".   As to the idea of using counting of entire references to assess GNG, the general rule is "two good references", but it is theoretically accepted that 50 or 100 references each with minimal significant coverage must also be considered.   No, "confer" means "bestow", and notability is not bestowed, so saying that "X does not bestow notability" is always a true statement, or a truism.   I believe that the point remains that WP:ROUTINE does not define GNG, and only becomes a factor to raise the bar when GNG is met and the topic is an event.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:48, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Again with the trivial semantic quibbles? Whether notability is "conferred" or "demonstrated" by the sources is immaterial to the substance of the matter. And some people who are desperate to get their pet topic into Wikipedia will call anything a "news article", including press releases and entertainment event calendars and brief blurbs, so long as it happened to get printed by a newspaper — I've even seen people try to claim that newspaper advertisements satisfied GNG because newspaper (which they don't).
 * But given the fact that the only version of that source anybody in this discussion can actually see is a garbled no-text abstract behind a paywall in the NYT archives, we have to evaluate it based on the content of the headline itself — and we know that (a) the headline is primarily about the bride, and (b) "local girl gets married" is not a thing newspapers assign their newswriters to write journalism about, but a thing that got published on the social pages in that era and is typically relegated to the "life events" section of the classifieds alongside birth and death notices today.
 * Plus I was able to find a very similar "article" about Katharine Clark marrying John Pillsbury in the New York Sun archives on Google News, which was (a) dated just one day earlier than the NYT article listed here, (b) very plainly in the "weddings and deaths" pages rather than the news pages, and not bylined by an NYS journalist, and thus very plainly a paid wedding announcement, and (c) very definitely not substantial or GNG-demonstrating.
 * And again, "non-famous local girl to marry" is not a thing newspapers print in their GNGable sections; it's a thing they print on their "weddings and births and deaths" page. This is a known fact about how newspapers work. So the source in question is not "real GNG-eligible news article until proven otherwise"; it's "non-GNGable paid wedding announcement, quite possibly even the exact same announcement I showed above from the New York Sun, until proven otherwise", because that is, and always has been, how newspapers "cover" the weddings of non-famous daughters of local residents. Bearcat (talk) 02:10, 21 October 2016 (UTC)


 * The location in the headline as argued would change the amount of attention given to the topic. I suppose you could say in WP:GNG terms that the depth is less for an out-of-town spouse.  I'm basing this on the headline, as I've not seen the announcement.  But this argument doesn't change the existence of non-trivial coverage that goes to WP:GNG, just the depth of coverage.  Unscintillating (talk) 13:15, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Your welcome &#124; Democratics Talk→  Be a guest 09:03, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

''Note to closing administrator: The nomination has been relisted twice. Many of the new comments on this nomination page continue existing discussions started before relisting, rather than being added below the relisting notice(s).''

Continuing the discussion just above: The New York Times has multiple news on John S. Pillsbury, Jr.: The text of all of these is hidden behind a paywall. Kablammo (talk) 17:18, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * news article on wedding; (1936) (garbled link; clearer in NY Times search tool) This article has been obtained and cited. Kablammo (talk) 20:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * appointment to the board of Northwest Bancorporation (now Wells Fargo (1963)
 * election as chair of Life Insurance Association; (1966) This article has been obtained and cited. Kablammo (talk) 20:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * election as chair of North Atlantic Life; (1967) This article has been obtained and cited. Kablammo (talk) 20:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I have obtained and cited three of these four articles. Kablammo (talk) 20:34, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: moved to new log Your welcome &#124; Democratics Talk</b> 11:21, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Your welcome &#124; <b style="color:blue">Democratics</b> <b style="color:red">Talk</b> 11:21, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Historical bios such as these are often lacking in online sources. I'm willing to WP:AGF that offline sources exist and it's simply an editing issue.  Articles such as this are one of the reasons Wikipedia exists.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:54, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Summation This article was proposed for deletion one month ago. It was relisted three times, the most recent one week ago.

When nominated, this article had 85 words with three sources, two of them independent and reliable. It now has 1124 words and twenty sources.

Four readers have voted "Keep", while two voted to "Delete".

It is time to close this AfD as Keep. Kablammo (talk) 16:19, 28 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep as a historical biography which is reasonably well sourced at this point. There's a touch of WP:MEMORIAL going on, but it's not overwhelming. The article presents a picture of civic involvement and I believe this is sufficient for notability. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:31, 6 November 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.