Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Tally Smith


 * 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) 07:38, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Linda Tally Smith

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This woman is a local elected politician in the US state of Kentucky, but she simply doesn't measure up to our inclusion standards for biographies. Her elected position (a local prosecutor for two of Kentucky's 120 counties, and the first woman in the position for these counties) doesn't help her to pass the inclusion standards for politicians and unelected officeholders, since the only Kentuckians who automatically qualify are national and state politicians (e.g. Kentucky General Assemblymen, members of Governor Brashear's cabinet, and Kentucky Supreme Court justices), not local prosecutors. Of course, local prosecutors can qualify for inclusion if they get substantial coverage in secondary sources, but as far as I can tell, everything's just news coverage, which is a kind of primary source and not enough to qualify her for inclusion because it's not chronologically independent of the subject: we need books, academic journals, and government websites, or we need news articles that look back at her activities years after they occurred. If any of these get provided, I'll happily withdraw, but until we can find evidence that they exist, it's unverifiable speculation to say that she's going to get coverage in the solid secondary sources upon which encyclopedia articles are written. Nyttend (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Kentucky-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:52, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:52, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:52, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete as per Nyttend. Doesn't meet notability guidelines.  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:08, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete There is no evidence that the article's subject is notable. Being the first female Commonwealth's Attorney in Boone county doesn't meet notability guidelines (the county population is about 120,000 and there is only one Commonwealth's Attorney} and I see nothing else. The article seems to be a WP:COATRACK on which to hang coverage of the Willa Blanc case. Meters (talk) 17:41, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * She also covers Gallatin County, but given Warsaw's small size and Gallatin County's distinction as the tiniest county in the state, that shouldn't have a substantial effect. Even the Jefferson County Commonwealth's Attorney won't qualify for an article solely on the basis of holding that office.  Nyttend (talk) 18:35, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Help me out here. Although not particularly important, I can't find a non-self-published source that says she is the attorney for Gallatin County, only Boone. This source doesn't even mention her.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:27, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That's from Gallatin County, Montana; I'll check on Gallatin County, Kentucky. Location (talk) 20:12, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Here's one: . Location (talk) 20:14, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Think of me as a comedy of errors. In addition to the Montana thing, when I did my search I didn't spell Smith's middle name properly. The only thing I can plead is sleep deprivation.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:49, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep She's notable because she's interesting. I had other cases she worked on, but I was told those didn't matter. I think she's notable because the Commonwealth Attorney's positions is very important. I'm having trouble finding the Commonwealth Attorney's districts, I've found them before, so I know what I'm talking about, but the Commonwealth Attorney is above the County Attorney, and usually, there's 3 or so counties that's including in their district. Not only does she cover Gallatin and Boone, for sure, but there may be another county that I left off. Nyttend offers a mean smackdown for this article, so I won't be fighting very hard for this. I do appreciate Nyttend's approach, however, and now that I know that all state wide officials are fair game, that gives me something to work on. Being from Kentucky, I had to learn Civics on my own, and I'd guestimate that 90% of Kentuckians do not even know what a Commonwealth Attorney is, or who there representatives are. Maybe I can work on just the Civics side of it, here on wikipedia.


 * And on the argument that this is a Coathanger, it's not. Willa Blanc is actually a coathanger for Linda Tally Smith. You got it backwards. Linda Tally Smith was the main article I was trying to write. There's also like a dozen murder cases she's tried, but, hey, one citizen shooting another citizen. That's not up to wikipedia's standards. I understand this now. They have to be important people, or be a case that makes national headlines, or changes public policy, etc.


 * It would be beneficial for Jefferson County to get their Judges there sorted out, because they've got about dozen of them, and the Circuit Court Judges, and up, they're making over a $1 million in their 8 year terms. They have power, and money, and few Kentuckians even know who any of them are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarahrosemc (talk • contribs) 19:43, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Subjective personal assessments of whether the subject is "interesting" or not have nothing to do with our inclusion rules — please see WP:INTERESTING, which is a subsection of a Wikipedia guideline called "Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions". Either a person meets one or more of our inclusion rules on purely objective fact, or they don't. Bearcat (talk) 20:55, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:INTERESTING is an essay, not a guideline. WP:BIO, which is a guideline, begins with a definition of notability that refers to a person who is interesting enough to deserve attention. James500 (talk) 02:04, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Sarahrosemc, if you want to write articles about Kentucky politicians, you may do best to concentrate on current and former General Assemblymen. WP:POLITICIAN, the page describing our inclusion criteria for politicians and unelected officeholders, unambiguously permits articles about all state legislators.  Category:Members of the Kentucky House of Representatives has only about 400 articles (including numerous long-past members such as Ninian Edwards and Abraham Jonas), and we similarly have few articles about senators, so if you can find reasonable sourcing for previous assemblymen, you should be able to write hundreds of articles.  You can write on other people, of course; I simply think the previous assemblymen would be easiest.  Nyttend (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment. There are plenty of sources from 2000 to 2014 (mostly local, some national, a few international) that refer to Smith working in her official capacity, but this is to be expected in her position. I found three pieces in which she is actually the subject (i.e. magazine, newspaper, and book). Other than that, and possibly the Murder of Walter Sartory case, I'm not sure that there is a distinct "claim to fame". Location (talk) 20:09, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * While it might certainly be possible to write an article about her that's substantial and well-sourced enough to get her over WP:GNG, this article as written ain't it. Userfy in creator's sandbox for improvement, without prejudice against moving back into articlespace if and when it's in much better shape than this — but as written, it's not making or sourcing sufficient notability to warrant an encyclopedia article about her, and should be deleted from articlespace. Bearcat (talk) 20:46, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete Non-notable local official. Nyttend's suggestion about creating articles on Kentucky statewide officials is a good one.  Mini  apolis  22:57, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete - Local officials at this level are not notable. There is no substantial coverage about her, and the efforts to drag in the Sartory case seem like a last desperate effort to manufacture notability where none exists. I echo the many other editors on this: write about Kentucky's commonwealth-wide officials, and her legislators past and present, who do meet our standards for notability. -- Orange Mike  &#124;  Talk  23:44, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. She's a prosecutor and prosecutes cases. That's about it.--Bbb23 (talk) 05:12, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, having nominated this page for speedy deletion A7, I felt that the page did not meet notability requirements. From what I can tell from the article, it seems the only thing she did so far is be an attorney. I'm not sure what the notability guidelines are on attorneys but I'm sure that only those who worked on cases like OJ Simpson's would probably get an article. Given the evidence given in this discussion, I think it's time to snow this discussion. Aerospeed (Talk) 19:00, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This is far from a Snow, as there are many invalid or weak arguments here, like proposing that only attorney's who have worked on cases like the OJ Simpson trial merit articles, arguments from WP:ATA such as "per nom", that newspapers cannot be used to identify notability, and that this article was an attempt to coatrack a murder case. Unscintillating (talk) 21:50, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete county DAs can sometimes be notable, but not in a semi-rural county of 120,000 (Boone) & 8,000 (Gallatin), unless there are special factors. Routine casss are not such special factors. This has been a consistent criterion for local attorneys and judges. Conceivably we might want to change of practices, and expand our coverage to include them, but the consensus has been consistently against it for many years, and I certainly am not suggesting it.   I see no reason to make an exception here.  (But it's not snow, and should run the whole time, to make our guidelines clear. Snow in afds like this will leave the editors of an opposite opinion   unsatisfied that their case has been properly considered.) DGG ( talk ) 09:50, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Ummm, Boone County, Kentucky is part of the Cincinnati metro area, and includes the Cincinnati international airport. It is the fourth largest county in Kentucky by population.  Calling this metro area semi-rural is I think a bit like calling San Bernardino County, California mostly a desert.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:44, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Call the county partially rural then, if you prefer. Either way it has no bearing on the question of whether this article demonstrates the notability of its subject. She graduated form law school, she's the first female Commonwealth's Attorney for Boone County, she's married to a judge, and she prosecuted a locally-known trial (which wasn't sufficiently notable to survive as an article). That's all we have, all we are likely to get now, and it is not enough. Meters (talk) 04:58, 26 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete and Userfy per Bearcat. I've perused this new contributor's work, and I think she has the chops to write a lot of interesting articles (that we will gleefully keep), and as she learns the wiki-ropes, she may well be able to make this into a keep-able article.  Let's not bite this new contributor too hard, peeps! :)  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 11:04, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I too hope the editor will not be discouraged, but there is no point in userifying an article that describes a career that will never be considered notable here. DGG ( talk ) 22:16, 26 September 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.