Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mary Ann Smith

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS, and this isn't RFD. dbenbenn | talk 21:47, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Mary Ann Smith
This page has no information about Mary Ann Smith other than alderman, is not necessary and even if embleished, does not improve Wikipedia. (VfD comment left unsigned by User:24.17.255.164 at 09:58, 28 Feb 2005)

There is now a very clear concensus that Chicago alderman are not inherently noteworthy. In that case then, are they notable enough that they warrant their own redirects? In this specific example, a Google search for "Mary Ann Smith" -Chicago results in over 14-thousand hits. Given the ambiguity here, should this particular redirect be kept or deleted? GRider\talk 18:45, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty indifferent. If a notable Mary Ann Smith appears we can change the redirect into an article on her. As it is nothing links here, and I really doubt people will be searching for this alderwoman (anyone typing in the name will probably just as likely be looking for another person with the same name), so the redirect is pretty useless, but pretty harmless. Very marginal keep. -R. fiend 19:23, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, very common names should never be redirects. Instead, a disambig page should be formed.  There must be tens of thousands if not millions of Mary Smiths, Mary Ann Smiths, Mary Anne Smiths, Marianne Smiths, etc etc etc.  A quick Googling reveals an actress, an artist, a Scottish musician, an Eastenders character, a children's book character, and a 1932 movie called Alias Mary Smith.  This is ripe disambig material here. Andrew Lenahan - St ar bli nd  20:13, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete and add disambiguation. Concur with Starblind. Megan1967 23:03, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: Before we start making disambiguation pages for names for which we don't have articles, we should ask ourselves how many of these other Mary Ann Smiths are in any way encyclpedic. Basically any name is going to had by more than one person, and we don't go making disambiguation pages for everyone. And since this page is titled "Mary Ann Smith" we don't want to mention every Mary Smith who doesn't have an "Ann" in her name. I checked the "Mary Ann Smith" actress, and she's credited with 4 roles, none major (some without names), in minor films. Not exactly encyclopedia material. Looking at a few others on google makes me less than convinced that we're missing articles here, What would a disambiguation page say? "Mary Ann Smith is the name of a whole bunch of people. Wow. Look at this. We have an alderwoman, an actress, some PhD, looks like a secretery or two, teacher, some sort of business executive or something... Man, alot of Smiths named their kid Mary Ann..." Because I'm not sure how much more you can say without other articles to link to. And I really don't see articles being made for most of these people. When another Mary Ann Smith turns up on wikipedia we can make a disambiguation page. There must be thousands of Sam Thompsons in the world, and we don't have a disambiguation page there. -R. fiend 23:29, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Please point me to ths "consensus" that Chicago aldermen are not notable. keep if someone adds detail; otherwise merge. Meelar (talk) 05:31, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * That would be on Votes for deletion/Policy consensus.
 * I presume you mean Deletion policy/Local politicians, where I count a vote of 8 to 5. Please don't use a slight majority in an underattended discussion to claim "consensus". Meelar (talk) 18:38, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Um, did you read the article? It's a redirect. I don't see how one can merge a redirect. Right now the question is should the name redirect to the aldermen page, or should it be deleted. It probably should be listed under redirects for deletion. -R. fiend 21:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * That's because it was made into a redirect during the Vfd process; original text, which I support merging of, was "Mary Ann Smith is a Chicago Alderman". Meelar (talk) 22:32, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete this redirect on the grounds that this name is far too common and the redirect is for a non-notable Mary Ann Smith. As cheap as redirects are, no further action beyond deletion of this redirect would be required &mdash; the relevant one-liner^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H two words of text have already been merged.  &mdash;RaD Man (talk) 11:47, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep redirect as is until we get another Mary Ann Smith - David Gerard 16:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.