Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mayors of Orangeville, Ontario


 * 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. There also was a merge suggestion but if no sources exist for the to-be-merged content that makes the objections grounded in WP:Verifiability a weighty counterargument. If folks find sources later they can add new content to the Orangeville, Ontario article at their leisure, subject to discussion on its talk page and all applicable policies and guidelines. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:07, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

List of mayors of Orangeville, Ontario

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List of mayors of a small town, not reliably sourced as accurate. The town has a population of just 28K today, so its mayors would not generally qualify for standalone biographical articles -- literally the only two people here who actually have articles both have them for going on to hold much more important political roles at the provincial level rather than for being mayors of this town per se (and, in fact, even those two people were also left unlinked in this list until I caught them just now by searching to see if anybody in the list actually had articles at all, because until I did that the only wikilinks present in the entire list were to the town's article and the general concept article on mayors.) And on the sourcing piece, there are just five footnotes present here, none of which are solid ones: one is being used solely in the infobox to verify the mayor's current pay grade, which is not significant information; three are WP:ROUTINE local sources being used solely to verify the names of three of the most recent mayors, with 44 of the 47 mayors still completely unsourced; and one is a local history book which certainly mentions the names of a few of the mayors, but not all of them, and is actually being used here solely to footnote the phrase "dates estimated" at the very bottom of the list rather than any of the actual content. And furthermore, there are six years in the 1960s for which the mayor is simply listed as "unknown" (further demonstrating that the history book doesn't list all of the mayors!), and while somebody recently posted to WP:CANTALK with the name of a person who served as mayor for one of those six years, we still can't locate any sources that verify anything about the other five years. In other words, this is an inadequately sourced and incomplete list of almost entirely non-notable people -- and I can't think of any compelling reason why keeping a list of mostly non-notable smalltown mayors would be critically important enough to override all the other problems with this. Bearcat (talk) 18:15, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 18:15, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 18:15, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 21:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 12:30, 17 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Note AFD is not cleanup. A WP:BEFORE should be done to verify these mayors' existences, especially in places like ProQuest and Newspapers.com. ミラP 21:44, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Both of those have already been checked, and most of the mayors remain unverifiable because neither of those databases contain any newspapers where regular coverage of municipal politics in Orangeville would be expected to exist. Bearcat (talk) 19:10, 18 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete not enough sources to verrify the list.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:37, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge with Orangeville, Ontario or Delete per nom Doug Mehus  T · C  00:49, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete the problem with these sorts of delete !votes is that Bearcat has already summarised everything I'd like to say. SportingFlyer  T · C  09:16, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge into Orangeville, Ontario, this article is not notable due to the towns population, however I think it has a place under government section on Orangeville's main page.Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 00:49, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , Yeah, that was my first preference, but it seemed unlikely given the supporting rationale presented. So, I copied the list and pasted it on Talk:Orangeville, Ontario for future merging if this closes as delete (provided someone can source the information). Doug Mehus  T · C  01:00, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge per previous arguments. Another non-notable listcruft fork from a notable topic. UnnamedUser (open talk page) 02:50, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Subject fails GNG and the list substantively fails WP:V. The page is 95% unsourced which effectively precludes a merge. Article title is not a realistic search term so a redirect is not a reasonable alternative. Sadly that leaves us with one choice. -Ad Orientem (talk) 03:24, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , I disagree that the fact that it is currently unsource precludes a merge. A merge could still take place and, if it doesn't happen within a reasonable period of time (say 2-3 months), then it would be renominated for deletion with prejudice. Doug Mehus T · C  06:21, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, we don't keep unsourced material on the basis of "maybe we will find sources one day." And we don't add unsourced material to articles. That's a fairly carved in stone no no. WP:V is policy and there is no three month waiting period. -Ad Orientem (talk) 06:25, 24 November 2019 (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.