Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lewiston, Maine City Council


 * 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 redirect to Lewiston, Maine. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:38, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Lewiston, Maine City Council

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City Council of a city of 36,000. No evidence of significant coverage in independent sources. Hirolovesswords (talk) 07:52, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep I am the creator of this article, which I modeled on the Portland, Maine City Council article. Lewiston is the second-largest city in Maine after Portland, and as such, its government has a significant impact not just on the 36,000 people who live there, but also on the state as a whole.Kiernanmc (talk) 15:22, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 08:54, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 08:54, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Maine-related deletion discussions. Baby miss  fortune 08:54, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete 36,000 people is way too few for a seperate article on a city council. We don't have an article on Sterling Heights, Michigan city council and Sterling Heights has over 130,000 people.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:03, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The absence of a page for Sterling Heights does not mean Lewiston should get shafted. Portland, Maine is just over half the size of Sterling Heights, yet it has a page for its city council and no one has nominated that page for deletion. I would also note that Sterling Heights, whatever its population, is not the second-largest city in its respective state. Lewiston's city council plays a significant role in Maine politics.Kiernanmc (talk) 00:03, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep Wikipedia has not (to my knowledge) established rules about when a page like this is justified and when it isn't. In the absence of clearer guidelines, I vote to keep. We ought to err on the side of inclusion (especially when no one is saying the material in question is incorrect, biased, etc.).Kingmanatee (talk) 02:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. In its current form, the article is absolutely lacking in sources, and it's barely more than a directory listing. Thus—and after doing a Google search—this article appears to fail WP:GNG. Regardless of what any specific guidelines for notability say, the general guidelines always apply: if the subject doesn't get significant coverage in independent reliable sources, it may not have an article. —C.Fred (talk) 02:55, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 14:40, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep and (probably) partial merge to Lewiston, Maine. I was surprised to find that the main article for Lewiston, Maine has no text about about the government of the city or its school district. Compare the articles for similarly-sized Maine cities that do contain sections describing their governments: Bangor, Maine, Portland, Maine, South Portland, Maine, Auburn, Maine, etc.  I didn't see anything in the article history indicating that there had ever been such a section, though I might well be missing it.  In any case, the main article should have a section describing the basics of the city government's structure, and this could start by incoporating the first part of the City Council article.  On the other hand I doubt that the list of current members is appropriate Wikipedia material.  --Arxiloxos (talk) 00:33, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge to Lewiston, Maine. I agree that the city council is not independently notable. I can imagine circumstances where relatively small cities' governing bodies are independently notable, so I would be opposed to a general rule against the notability of small cities' governing bodies, but this subject fails GNG per C.Fred. Best, Kevin ( aka L235 ·&#32; t ·&#32; c) 18:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. City councils are a WP:MILL thing: every city that exists at all has a body to govern it, so they can't all be handed an automatic presumption of notability just for existing in the absence of enough reliable sourcing about them to clear WP:ORGDEPTH — and it's vastly overstating things to claim that the city council plays a prominent role in state politics, because the city council has no authority at all three feet outside the city limits. So it's not enough to just assert that this city council plays a more prominent role than other city councils — you need to show the sources which tell us that that's actually true. A city council's notability or lack thereof is not based on where it ranks in a population contest — it's based on whether or not reliable source coverage about the council can be shown to support some actual substance. What we're looking for, to justify an article about a city council, is not miniature BLPs of the incumbent councillors — we're looking for content about the council as a council, such as its voting structure and some evidence of notable decisions and on and so forth. Portland's isn't better than this, but WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a valid argument that this has to be kept — rather, you may just have made the case that Portland's needs to be deleted too. The city's article can and should contain some basic content about its municipal government, yes, but the key is to add it, not to use its lack as a reason why this is needed as a standalone article. Bearcat (talk) 22:59, 26 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Merge to Lewiston, Maine. I agree essentially with Bearcat's analysis above.  However, the missing politics section in the Lewistn article can be added by judiciously trimming and merging this article into the Lewsiton article. -- Whpq (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete- a city of 36,000 falls way below any possible discussion about this being a notable city council. A list of names in the Lewiston, Maine article is all that is needed, no redirect either.--Rusf10 (talk) 05:37, 5 March 2018 (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.