Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mary Van Stevens


 * 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. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:56, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Mary Van Stevens

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Completely unsourced article about a former mayor of a small town with a population of just over one thousand people, which is nowhere near large enough to hand a mayor an automatic presumption of notability just because she existed. The key to getting a mayor past WP:NPOL is to show that she's been the subject of significant reliable source coverage, not just to state that she existed. Bearcat (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Bearcat, I added all the sources. As I mentioned on your talk page I was in the process of getting all my sources lined up before it was proposed. If you take a look at the page, you'll see I have more than enough all with the proper citations. Please don't delete this page. Although a small town, it's notable that she was the first woman mayor. I propose closing this debate.Herr.geschichte (talk) 03:14, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * We don't automatically accept the first woman mayor (or first LGBT mayor, or first mayor of colour) of every place that ever had mayors at all as an automatic notability freebie — since every town will always eventually have had at least one mayor who could make such a claim (and maybe even reach three mayors who could each make one of them), that would result in thousands upon millions of mostly unmaintainable articles about people of little to no broader interest. If she'd been the first woman mayor anywhere in the entire United States, then there'd certainly be notability in that — but if a town isn't large enough to presume its mayors notable because mayor, then its own first woman mayor isn't automatically more notable than the others unless sources expanding significantly beyond just the local newspaper, such as The New York Times and the Washington Post, consider her notable enough to pay attention to. Bearcat (talk) 17:11, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 02:45, 15 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment As per the AfD discussion guidelines, "If the reasons given in the deletion nomination are later addressed by editing, the nomination should be withdrawn by the nominator".  Unscintillating (talk) 18:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * None of the followup editing has adequately addressed the reasons given in the deletion nomination. Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment Agree with @Unscintillating here. it seems like bullying when a nomination for deletion keeps shifting the goalposts.Egaoblai (talk) 03:35, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Who shifted any goalposts? Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment WP:NPOL obviously isn't met, but it isn't really relevant. WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO is what would be relevant here.  All 21 references are to the Heppner Gazette-Times. I'm going to re-list this since the article has changed significantly since nomination. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 01:38, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 01:39, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per Herr.geschichte. All he's added are news reports about her, i.e. primary sources, and if these really are "all the sources", nothing else exists.  Nyttend (talk) 02:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * So "delete because the author hasn't put enough sources in the article to satisfy me". Unscintillating (talk) 02:48, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Did you even read what I wrote? The author has done WP:BEFORE and is saying that no further sources exist.  Nyttend (talk) 04:43, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Had you read my !vote, there was already evidence in this AfD that the author of the article had not provided all possible sources available through WP:BEFORE D1. Are you aware that this article was nominated for deletion 34 minutes after creation?  Had the nominator of the article reported the WP:BEFORE D1 results, you wouldn't have had to wait for my !vote to get some feedback about those results.  Had you done WP:BEFORE D1 yourself, you would have known based on your own research that the author was not providing a WP:BEFORE D1 report.  As for the ambiguity you reference in the word "all", I found that the author posted on the nominator's talk page, stating, "Hello! I'm fairly new to Wikipedia, so the article was nominated before I could complete all my sources. I've added them. How do we go about getting the proposal to delete removed? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Herr.geschichte (talk • contribs) 02:53, 14 November 2017 (UTC) .  Since the objection of the nomination was that the article was unreferenced, the author had reason to believe that after adding 21 references, the article would not be unreferenced, and that there would be no further purpose to the AfD.  Unscintillating (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Regarding your assertion that news reports are "primary sources", are you saying that you exclude newspapers in considering GNG sources? Thank you, Unscintillating (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * In most cases, but not all. News reports are primary sources, but retrospective articles are secondary for the past events.  It's a basic matter of historiography.  "Mayor does X" is a primary source on the mayor, since it's not looking back at the mayor's action from the future: it's part of the event, rather than being a later evaluation of sources from the time of the event.  Your typical "Past mayor did X" is based on the primary sources rather than being a part of the event, so it's a secondary source, but occasional exceptions exist, so you have to evaluate the article, lest you assume that a personal retrospective is actually a secondary source.  Nyttend (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep Good article, developing notability to full potential.  Sources in the article demonstrate GNG, except that WP:BEFORE has some hits needed to avoid the argument that those in the article are or might be only one source.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:48, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The sources in the article are entirely to her own small town's own local newspaper, a type and volume of sourcing which is simply expected to exist for any mayor of anywhere. To consider a mayor of a town this small notable, we require evidence of wider coverage beyond just her hometown pennysaver alone. Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * User:Bearcat Do you have an essay to back your claims, or are "our" requirements really only your proofs by assertion? Unscintillating (talk) 18:51, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Have you ever paid attention to the actual outcomes of actual AFD discussions on similar topics? Have you ever read WP:POLOUTCOMES? Everybody who'd ever been mayor of anywhere always gets local press coverage, because that's what local media are for, but Wikipedia does not accept that everybody who's ever been mayor of anywhere is always notable enough for an article — for small towns, a mayor's notability is dependent on being able to show more sourcing than most other mayors could also show, such as nationalized coverage or entire biographical books being written about them, and not on simply being able to show just what any mayor could always show. Bearcat (talk) 14:40, 27 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete She served as mayor of a tiny town for a little over two years and all of the references are to the routine small town coverage of her was published in that tiny town's newspaper. All local papers write about their current mayors, and such a coverage is run of  the mill. When she resigned, she disappeared from the historical record. There is no known coverage in regional newspapers, in magazines or in history books. If she is notable, then every mayor ever elected is notable and there is no consensus for that in WP:POLITICIAN or in the outcomes of deletion debates. This is taking inclusionism to an extreme that I cannot personally accept. Cullen328   Let's discuss it  07:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per Cullen. --Enos733 (talk) 16:46, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. No significant coverage in RS. My very best wishes (talk) 18:13, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete sources are way, way below what we would expect for an article on a mayor. With perusal of archives and local library collections, we could create articles with at least this good sources on everyone who had ever been a mayor of any place in the US that was a city between 1900 and 1980. This is not a worthwhile goal.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:27, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment Actually some would argue, especially in some areas, First African-American mayor, first Latino mayor, first mayor who is seen as a Latino in contemporary intepretation since even though the true first Latino mayor was part of Latino organizations, as a Sephardic Jew he is not recognized as Latino by many current Latinos (sort of like what we had on the supreme court). For that matter, there are standing debates on whether all Jews are "people of color", so we might have to have an article on the first Jewish mayor, first "person of color" mayor who was not Jewish. There is no resonable end to this. I don't think we even have an article on the first mayor in the entire state of Utah who was African-American (I have forgotten his name), we do on the first female African-American mayor in the state of Utah, but she is a current member of congress so notable on other grounds (true, I created the article before Mia Love announced her first run for congress, but I have come over the years to realize that my previous inclusionist streak would create an unsustainable system in Wikipedia. I have even nominated for deletion several articles that I created, some of them despite wanting in my heart to keep them, such as the one on Angela Trusty, but knowing that a one-newspaper advice columnist would need much better sourcing to justify keeping the aritcle.) I have come to the view unless there is indepth, widespread coverage of a person for making a first, then we should not create an article on it. Then there are some firsts which are just silly. I once saw Ella Fitzgerald listed as the first African-American to win a Grammy award. She was actually one of two African-Americans to win grammies in the first Grammy Award Ceremony ever, so not entirely clear (she may have been the first of the two to get the award at the ceremony), but not really all that interesting at all. Fitzgwerald is clearly notable, but listing her as a first in this way tells us nothing about her stature. There may well be other African-Americans who would have won a grammy earlier if they had existed earlier.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:37, 24 November 2017 (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.