Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mario Ferri


 * 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. Consensus herein is that the subject is notable per Wikipedia's standards. Discussion about article improvements can always continue on the article talk page. (Non-administrator closure) NorthAmerica1000 06:36, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Mario Ferri

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Recreation of an article, previously deleted at Articles for deletion/Mario F. Ferri, about a city councillor in a city not large enough to confer notability on its city councillors under WP:POLITICIAN. Does not qualify for speedy deletion as a G4, as both the content and the sourcing have been expanded significantly — however, the sourcing relies extremely highly on local community weeklies which do not pass our reliable sourcing rules due to insufficiently wide distribution (the number of footnotes here would be more than halved if I stripped all of those), and this version still doesn't actually resolve the basic notability problem since he's still just a city councillor in a non-metropolitan suburban city. The long-ago consensus to redirect all of Vaughan's city councillors to Vaughan City Council on notability grounds still holds true, and this latest iteration of the article still does not actually demonstrate that he's somehow attained more notability than any of the others. In addition, it warrants mention that this version was created by the same person who persistently argued in the previous discussion that the deletion nomination was motivated by ideological dislike of Ferri as an individual, rather than by the neutral reading of Wikipedia's inclusion rules that it actually was — to be perfectly honest, I actually suspect an outright conflict of interest by a member of Ferri's own campaign staff here, although I cannot definitively prove that. Redirect, yet again, to Vaughan City Council and salt the earth. Bearcat (talk) 21:51, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:55, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:56, 2 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - You probably wasn't aware of it, but you can view a longish discussion at, but this was reviewed by (the early version only),  and myself, who reviewed it before it was moved into main space, so this isn't a bad faith "recreation" and certainly wasn't a disruptive one.  As for notability, there isn't any singular event that necessarily pops but his overall work as an activist is fairly well documented (and sourced) and the totality of it seems to pass WP:GNG.  As for salting, the fact that he approached me as someone who participated in the previous AFD, and others were involved with assisting him, and didn't move it into mainspace until it was clear that others thought it was possibly notable, just shows salting would be overkill.  Dennis Brown &#124; 2¢ &#124;  WER  00:07, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - Dennis pinged me since I had previously given an opinion on the question of a new article. In my view the previous version was validly deleted per Articles for deletion/Mario F. Ferri but the article is now changed enough to be worth keeping. Ferri's notability is primarily due to his work on the Keele Valley Landfill controversy, an environmental issue that unquestionably deserves coverage. In my opinion the article is still a bit fluffy and it might be shortened to focus on the landfill issue. His being an elected councillor and a Deputy Mayor of Vaughan are interesting enough to mention though they wouldn't justify an article on their own. Most of the lead is fine but only the last sentence of the lead is starting to shade off into less important material. His service as a guest lecturer doesn't need mention in  the article, unless one of his speeches is widely quoted or syndicated. Administering community recreational facilities is less important and is not in the same league as being a community organizer. There appear to be too many references and they could be pruned. EdJohnston (talk) 01:40, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment As the article creator was not notified of this discussion, I have taken it upon myself to notify him. Dennis Brown &#124; 2¢ &#124;  WER  01:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep: Bearcat, a little decorum may be in order as the conflict of interest dis is, imho, out of order. I've also edited articles on other politicos such as Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps but have yet to receive an Order of Canada medal.  Hmmm.  I did note however that you, Bearcat, yourself edited the Mario Ferri article twice as shown on these diffs here and here, prior to Ferri declaring himself a Liberal Party candidate, after which time his bio article was deleted, which is highly curious.  If I previously thought your action might have been 'ideological' kindly forgive me, but perhaps you might explain those diffs: were they wrong in editing his article prior to his Liberal nomination, or was it wrong in having the article deleted afterwards? More importantly Mario Ferri is, again, imho, notable under WP:GNG for being a community activist as clearly discussed in the article's lede, and that's established by more than 25 articles sourced from major media, specifically the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, National Post and the Toronto Sun. There are at least 50 photos of him leading protests, victory celebrations or other community events among the articles (specifically 26 discrete photos of him at events, plus 25 'stock' photos the papers used for political stories). There were likely more photos of him as well as many text-only news articles were pulled out from electronic databases.  Best: HarryZilber (talk) 03:13, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You don't do yourself any favors by personalizing this. Please just comment on the merits of the discussion and avoid talking about other editors.  In the end, the merits are the only things that the closer will consider and you hurt your case.  Per DGG below, now would be a good time to go and clean up the article even more, removing the more minor things.  That is the best use of your time.  Dennis Brown &#124; 2¢ &#124;  WER  11:59, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Points noted—I agree that the merits of the article are salient. Per the suggestions here the article has been trimmed and refined; the two quotes by Ferri have been removed and two sections have been combined. If there are other criticisms of Ferri in reliable sources I will also included them, please note them on my Talk page. HarryZilber (talk) 13:42, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete because of the promotionalism. Possible keep if and only if the tone is improved by radical deletion of the promotional and duplicative material. What I mean by the promotional term is the very large amount of self-serving quotes and inclusion of minor issues, the inclusion of detailed material on the landfill controversy that should rather be in the article on it (which is possibly but not certainly  a general public issue justifying a separate article), and in the use of adjectives of judgment and praise throughout. Such uncited material is wholly appropriate in a BLP. I regard the inclusion of such material as diagnostic of improper promotionalism, and as reasonably raising questions of COI, though certainly many well-meaning editors write this way here because they see so much of it here that they understandably but wrongly think it acceptable, and because so much of the rest of the world writes in that manner.  (if the editor has  been writing on other politicians, they should now recheck them for similar problems)  I don't think Bearcat was wrong to raise the question, tho I would have just hinted at it because  I think it would be obvious in any event.
 * When my opinion was asked on Dennis Brown's talk p., I said that I personally would probably !vote for deletion, but that it ought to have another chance at AfD. I know myself more deletionist than average about local people and events, but in giving advice, I say what I think the community is likely to do, not what I think it ought to do.  In doubtful cases, the community should be asked directly, as it is being very properly asked here.
 * , I see no indication at all of what you seem to charge about :  such gross bias (as distinct from more subtle usually unconscious influences)  is very rare here. Almost everyone here will make routine fixes on an article when we see them without necessarily judging it for inclusion on WP, and that's what seems to have happened here.  Further, I and many of us will try fixing an article, sometimes making multiple non-trivial edits, before finally deciding we can not fix it enough, and then nominate it for deletion.  And, additionally,  people change their mind-- sometimes making snap judgements that they come to think better of. And, finally, the best of us make a few percent of plain errors, and a larger number of omissions, and I hope we all of us have the grace to correct them when we realize.  Ideally, Bearcat should have noticed Dennis in the edit history and checked, but I too will often look primarily at the article as it stands,  without checking every earlier version.  His only real error, as I see it, was in not notifying the editor. The only way we will ever prevent such errors is to do it by bot.    DGG ( talk ) 06:10, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment: The article is a reasonably written description of Ferri that also includes criticisms, specifically: "...for a perceived conflict of interest related to the use of a community centre building where he met with constituents to consult on community issues and his nomination to regional council, [71] as well as his participation in a Santafest parade float on the eve of an election. [72] " The latter article referenced was written partly in jest using phrasings such as "Cries of Humbug Over Santa Parade" and "Ferri, co-chair and founder of the local Santafest Committee, is being roasted like a chestnut".  Both articles are sourced from the Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation newspaper.  Ferri's role as an activist who took on a provincial government over 14 years to correct a significant source of watershed pollution that would feed into Lake Ontario (where dozens of cities, both Canadian and U.S. draw their drinking water) was noted on national media and qualifies him under GNG; that he also became a politician does not detract his notability or disqualify him from Wikipedia.  Its also worth pointing out that the premise for deleting the Ferri article due to him being 'a Vaughan councillor' was incorrect.  As noted earlier Ferri was also deputy mayor for Vaughan who led both council and the city when the mayor was absent (including one city hall session that became so rowdy that he called in the police).  Attempting to delete an article for a person being a local councillor while disregarding his role as deputy mayor has the appearance of being unbalanced. HarryZilber (talk) 12:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Being the deputy mayor doesn't get a person any closer to passing our inclusion rules than any other city councillor — in most cities it's not a role that one person holds permanently, but rather a role that rotates among all city councillors at different times during a council term (and would thus completely nullify our inclusion standards for city councillors). And in all cities it's little more than a courtesy title which only means he chairs the meeting if the mayor's away and gets first crack at stepping up to the plate if the mayor dies or resigns, and confers virtually no special authority of any kind. A deputy mayor, for example, has exactly no authority to start implementing his own political agenda, different from that of the mayor, just because he's chairing a meeting or two. Bearcat (talk) 17:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The claims that Ferri, as Deputy Mayor of a medium size city has "no authority to start implementing his own political agenda" and that "in most cities [the Deputy Mayor] it's not a role that one person holds permanently, but rather a role that rotates among all city councillors" are disingenuous at best. Vaughan's Mayor himself is the nominal head of council with only one vote of nine on issues that are decided by vote, meaning anything of importance.  The Mayor thus has no more independent authority to implement his own political agenda and must negotiate with the others on council to achieve his/her goals, just as is the case with the Deputy Mayor.  Since the Deputy Mayor of Vaughan is NOT a rotating position, but is elected by the Regional Councillor receiving the greatest number of votes (described in the article which you apparently missed), Ferri was elected to his position as Deputy Mayor. Since he was elected to his position as deputy mayor and as he was  effectively 'a heartbeat away' from being mayor of the medium-size city, which all other councillors knew when dealing with him,  he merits more respect and consideration for inclusion under WP:NOTABILITY than an ordinary councillor, wholly aside from his WP:GNG notability as a community activist/organizer.  HarryZilber (talk) 18:26, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, a person does not merit special notability consideration just for being a deputy mayor. If the city they were deputy mayor of is not one whose city councillors are considered notable just for being city councillors, then the deputy mayor does not get any special status above any of the others. And the fact that different cities choose their deputy mayors in different ways — some cities directly elect them, some just automatically accord the title to whichever councillor happened to achieve a particular distinction (such as the highest vote total among councillors), some give the mayor the power to choose the deputy of his choice, and some rotate the position so that everybody on council gets to hold the title for a specific length of time — does not change anything either, so the fact that Vaughan chooses its deputy mayor differently than Toronto or North Bay or Sudbury do does not make "deputy mayor" a more notable title in Vaughan than it is anywhere else. Bearcat (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Ferri is notable under GNG's "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". Arguing that his news articles in national press media don't qualify because.... seems to be stretching it. Your interpretation of "significant coverage" differs greatly from WP:N which says:  ""Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material."  Every single news article in Mario Ferri addresses him and his work directly, either for the complete article, or major parts of it, or inserting paragraphs of material on him and quoting him directly. Most of the articles in the major newspapers were on his community activism and organizing, with 2 or 3 of them on his role as a councillor (besides 25 articles on his work in local/community papers).  Nothing in "significant coverage" even mentions news media requiring national  or international distribution.
 * As well, WP:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes states: "Municipal politicians are not inherently notable just for being in politics, but neither are they inherently non-notable just because they are in local politics . Each case is evaluated on its own individual merits."
 * As well, under WP:Notability for politicians, the criteria for notability describing non-1st and non-2nd tier government officials is:
 * 2) Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. [7]
 * 3) Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article".
 * As well by your definition, these articles should be wiped out of Wikipedia:
 * Peter W. Heller (born 5 September 1957) ) is a former Deputy Mayor of the City of Freiburg im Breisgau/Germany, environmental scientist, and venture philanthropist... # Dardan Sejdiu is the current deputy Mayor of Pristina and Director in the Department for Economy and Local Development... (Pristina is in Kosovo by the way) # Justin Swandel is a City Councillor [1] and Deputy Mayor in Winnipeg, Manitoba.... # Sekesai Makwavarara is the former deputy mayor and acting mayor of Harare... # Tadeusz Trzmiel (born 1945) is the Polish politician who has been Deputy Mayor of Kraków... # Meron Benvenisti (Hebrew: מירון בנבנשתי‎, born 1934) is an Israeli political scientist who was Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem... # Richard Michael Barnes (born 1 December 1947[1]) is a British former [councillor in the London Borough of Hillingdon ], who was the Deputy Mayor of London from 2008 to 2012, and the Member of the London Assembly for Ealing and Hillingdon from 2000 to 2012.... # Ian Clement (born 1965 in Bexley), [1] was Deputy Mayor of London with responsibility for Government and External Relations... # Robert F. Wagner, Jr. (deputy mayor) (January 6, 1944 – November 15, 1993), also known as Robert (Bobby) Ferdinand Wagner III, was a noted New York City civic leader who served as the Deputy Mayor of the City of New York # David Hay was the Deputy Mayor of Auckland City Council (1991–1998, 2001–2004 and 2007-2010) for the Citizens & Ratepayers ticket... # Phil Davison is a former councilman and Deputy Mayor for the village of Minerva, Ohio... # Svenn Erik Kristiansen (born 30 May 1940) is a Norwegian teacher turned politician. He served as deputy mayor of Oslo... # Ian Duncan McKinnon CNZM QSO JP is a New Zealand educator and local politician, and is a former Deputy Mayor of Wellington... # Grant Haskin (born 1968) is the former Executive Deputy Mayor of Cape Town... # Saul Green is the former Deputy Mayor of Detroit, Michigan...
 * The above are only a fraction of the deputy mayors on Wikipedia, part of a very lengthy listing. I'm fairly open to accepting people's dediction to public office, and would keep most, if not all of them. Even the deputy mayors of Pristina or Minerva, Ohio.  In summation, WP:N doesn't rule out deputy mayors, while Ferri's lengthy record and press as an activist and community organizer give him robust notability under WP:GNG. HarryZilber (talk) 00:43, 9 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. For what it's worth, I deleted the prior version of this article per the consensus at that AfD, and this one is much improved. Also, the author did attempt to consult with me prior to the recreation of this article, but I'm not that terribly active these days, and didn't respond in a timely manner. My reasoning here is similar to DGG's, I'm just more willing to let the article exist in mainspace while the hoped for improvements take place. This article is crufty, and certainly has the feel of one maintained by editors close to the subject; but currently this is not so egregious that the article must be deleted. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  13:30, 5 July 2014 (UTC
 * Keep The article is adequately referenced so that it does meet the qualifications of the notability of a politician in that it meets the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". Likewise, the article does provide insight into the turbulent nature of politics in Canada's largest city and environs (the GTA is more than six million in population ranking it among the largest cities in North America), and for that reason, it is acceptable and even, timely, given the nature of Toronto's recent municipal squabbles and the notoriety of its chief magistrate. Although I can see the reasoning of earlier editors and the administrator who deleted the article, it does not seem to be an egregious or blatant attempt at advertising, which would have been a more serious issue to lead to its elimination. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC).
 * The GTA is not a city; it's a metropolitan area with several cities within it. There is no level of government anywhere below the provincial legislature which is inclusive of both Vaughan and Toronto, and this article offers no insight into anything involving Rob Ford. (If you want that, you're going to need to read stuff pertaining to Toronto City Council — neither Vaughan's nor Toronto's city councils have any authority at all over anything pertaining to the other city.)
 * In addition, it warrants mention that city councillors are not a class of topic for which some of them garner local media coverage and others don't; all city councillors in any given city garner coverage in local media, and thus all city councillors in any city could technically be said to pass WP:GNG on that basis. However, Wikipedia deprecates exclusively localized coverage, and exclusively localized claims of notability, as evidence that a person actually warrants permanent coverage in an international encyclopedia — we deprecate city councillors not because media coverage of them fails to exist, but because there's rarely any substantive reason why anybody who lives outside of that councillor's own city needs any information about them. Topics that don't have appeal or interest to a broad international readership are extremely vulnerable to BLP or NPOV violations, precisely because there aren't enough eyes on those articles to ensure that they remain compliant with our content policies — which is the key reason why city councillors have been deemed a topic that we normally don't want to maintain articles about. We simply don't have the human resources necessary to keep that many articles about people of exclusively local notability properly monitored and maintained.
 * If we did accept city councillors as notable, we'd literally have to accept thousands of low visibility — and thus extremely highly vulnerable to policy violation — articles about people who aren't really topics of genuinely encyclopedic interest. GNG wouldn't sort them out, because all city councillors, not just some of them, get covered by the local media (they just usually fail to garner coverage anywhere outside of their own local media market.) So the standard for city councillors has always been evidence that a national or international readership, not a handful of readers living in one single city, could credibly know or need to know about the person. (Joel Burns, for example, didn't get over the bar for being a city councillor — he got over the bar by releasing an online video which made him an international household name whose career started garnering international coverage.) And what I don't see here is any substantive or meaningful reason why Ferri is somehow of more encyclopedic interest than Sandra Yeung Racco or Alan Shefman or Gino Rosati, or any of the other city councillors in Vaughan who still don't qualify for articles because the city is not large enough to confer an automatic presumption of notability on its city councillors. Nothing here lifts him above the normal level of notability for a city councillor — he hasn't done more than any of the others have, he hasn't garnered more coverage than any of the others did, and he hasn't become any better known outside Vaughan than any of the others are. There's simply nothing here that makes him more relevant in an international encyclopedia than his other colleagues are. Bearcat (talk) 19:49, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Where you wrote that "[Ferri] hasn't garnered more coverage than any of the others did, and he hasn't become any better known outside Vaughan than any of the others are", you keep avoiding the 36 odd articles and the 25 odd photos of him in major newspapers (Toronto Star, National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun) that discuss Ferri's work as a community activist and organizer, as well as some other odd articles in those newspapers that discuss his political work. Its apparent to me in your nomination at top and your other posts above and below that you cherry pick your points to try to keep moving the goalposts on what constitutes "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". As well, since the Vaughan Weekly (paid circ. 52,000 in the early 90's) is on microfilm with Library and Archives Canada, your position that its only a "local community" paper can't be supported, imho.
 * But aside from Ferri's work as a Regional (not local) Councillor and Deputy Mayor of a medium sized city (which you dismiss out of hand), he is more notable for leading the fight to close Canada's largest waste dump. He was consistently in the national media during the '90s up to 2003 for his work helping to close the Keele Valley Landfill for good reason:  had the 20-story high dump continued in operation its leachates would have led to gross contamination of Lake Ontario's drinking water since the landfill is situated on top of an Area of High Aquifer Vulnerability (as imposed by Ontario Government regulation in 2002). Ferri's work closing North America's third largest waste dump was duly noted, with one article stating directly "Ferri made it happen".  That's something that Sandra Yeung Racco, Alan Shefman and Gino Rosati, the councillors you refer to above, never did. HarryZilber (talk) 03:10, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not "avoiding" anything or moving any goalposts — I could easily find 36 articles about Sandra Yeung Racco in the exact same newspapers; I could easily find 36 articles about Alan Shefman in the exact same newspapers; and I could easily find 36 articles about Gino Rosati in the exact same newspapers. They all garner comparable levels of coverage to each other, and Ferri has not garnered a special level of coverage beyond any of the others.
 * I could easily find at least 36 articles about each and every individual city councillor in the entire province of Ontario, in fact — any city councillor who's doing their job at all will turn up in at least 36 articles per year in their local newspaper, let alone over the course of their entire career. So 36 articles is not an impressive or unusual level of coverage for a city councillor; it's par for the course. There is no such thing as a city councillor who doesn't get covered by local media; there are only city councillors who don't get covered outside their local media — and that group includes the vast majority of city councillors in the vast majority of cities, which is the reason why the vast majority of city councillors in the vast majority of cities are not notable for our purposes. And a Vaughan city councillor getting into the Toronto Star (or the National Post and the G&Ms local Toronto sections, which are not distributed anywhere outside the GTA) doesn't improve the case, because Vaughan is part of those newspapers' local coverage area — it does not represent "national" coverage the way coverage of a city councillor from Calgary in the same papers would, because they're part of Vaughan's local media landscape. The amount of coverage you've cited simply does not demonstrate that a city councillor in Vaughan has received enough coverage to override a consensus against the notability of city councillors in cities the size of Vaughan and claim "national" significance, because they are not non-local coverage'. Bearcat (talk) 03:53, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * News articles on Sandra Yeung Racco, Alan Shefman and Gino Rosati were likely NOT written for community activism and leading demonstrations (such as hundreds in front of the province's Premier's home), or for shutting down a toxic waste dump, the third largest in North America—which is still producing an ever expanding underground plume of carcinogens and other lethal ingredients, as listed on Keele Valley Landfill's article, and are well documented, still spreading and could in the future still threaten Lake Ontario's drinking water, used by dozens of cities in Canada and the U.S.
 * The article's 25 or so discrete photos of Ferri organizing, leading protests, victory celebrations, etc... reinforce the point that the 36 national media articles listed (and more than a dozen others that weren't added to the article due to being overkill) were news stories of importance receiving widespread distribution.
 * All of the articles in national media include page numbers (some of the regional/local news articles do not). Of the national media articles currently referenced I can identify only 7 of them that appear to be printed in a local news edition, i.e.: listed as pages  "14EAST", "7E",  "SC3", "N5", "NY2", "NY3" and "NY2".  The remaining news articles from the major print media are distributed as follows:
 * The Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation paper, is distributed widely across the entire province (current population ~ 13 million), with its stories being picked up and forwarded to other news chains by the Canadian Press and Associated Press. As well the Toronto Star owns and reruns articles in its Hamilton Spectator, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record (now named the Waterloo Region Record), the Guelph Mercury  (all of which are daily papers), plus the Metroland Media Group which publishes over 100 community/local newspapers using six printing plants across the province.
 * The Globe and Mail is Canada's major newspaper of record, formerly with several editions across the country and widely noted by other news redistributors.
 * The Toronto Sun and the National Post both belong to national chains and have their stories redistributed. AS WELL, the Toronto Sun, part of Québecor Média which operates Sun TV, which has long produced video reports for its associated TV network and website, and which reported on the Keel Valley Landfill with Ferri being interviewed for a video news report on site, shown here at top, published along with their article "Toronto's Old Dump Slated for Parkland", in 2011 WHEN HE WAS NOT A POLITICIAN. Their published news on their website is not only viewed nation-wide, but international. HarryZilber (talk) 17:11, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The majority of references amply support Ferri's work as a community organizer and activist making the article conform to Wikipedia's GNG requirements. Even discounting his 25 "stock" photos in both national media/local papers and the approximate 25 news articles that were published in local/community papers (many on microfilm with Library and Archives Canada) and the articles printed on his work as the Deputy Mayor of a medium sized city, you are still left with the salient fact that news stories on him and his work received widespread distribution and that he qualifies handily under GNG. HarryZilber (talk) 14:47, 8 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Further comment: The local community newspapers the deletion nominator refers to at the very top are not ‘coupon clipper’ papers as might be inferred. They do in fact meet the requirements of "reliable sourcing" at Identifying reliable sources by reason that none have a "poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight". Wikipedia's requirements for reliable sourcing make no mention of "insufficiently wide distribution"; although common sense dictates that a home-printed paper mailed out with a circulation of 300 might scrimp on fact-checking, the circulations of these local newspapers ranged from 23,000 up to 52,000, which is hardly dismissible, with most being paid-circulation papers during the 1990s. Also note that none of them are listed as problem children on Reliable sources/Noticeboard. The smallest newspaper referenced (for a single article) appears to be Vaughan Marketplace, which actually had a well written piece. All of the local newspapers reported on their subjects factually with no evidence of bias, and their journalism was substantial the same as for most regional newspapers found in medium-sized cities, with a number of them including the bylines of their writers. All of these newspaper articles were "hard news" pieces, i.e. non-opinion articles. Three of them were published in the Vaughan Citizen, which is a subsidiary of the Toronto Star. Most of these local newspapers are also listed on, and some are available on microfilm, at Library and Archives Canada, a Federal agency headquartered in Ottawa.
 * Even discounting the 32 articles obtained from local newspapers, the deletion nominator has failed to explain why the 36 articles from reliable source major newspapers (Toronto Star, National Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun) fail to meet the requirements for WP:GNG or WP:POLITICIAN, i.e. why these articles, which included some 25 discrete photos of Ferri, are not "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". Further, almost all of these articles were reporting on Ferri's community activism and organizing, with perhaps 3 of them related to his work as a politician. How does that not qualify him under WP:GNG? HarryZilber (talk) 15:58, 6 July 2014 (UTC) [Note: several newspaper references have been pruned from the Ferri article, reducing the figures noted in this paragraph HarryZilber (talk) 17:29, 6 July 2014 (UTC) ]
 * I did not say that community weeklies are considered less trustworthy than major dailies. However, because they are less widely-distributed than major dailies, and give much more extensive coverage to people and topics of exclusively local interest, coverage in community weeklies does not constitute proof that a person has attained sufficient notability to warrant an article in an encyclopedia with an international audience. Bearcat (talk) 19:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - Passes GNG as an elected politician and community activist. I absolutely despise the stacked footnotes in the piece; these need to be fixed through the normal editing process. Carrite (talk) 16:06, 6 July 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.