Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pat Noble (3rd nomination)


 * 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. Does not meet WP:NPOL or WP:GNG. RL0919 (talk) 14:54, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Pat Noble
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Appears to be a non-notable politician who was elected to a local school board. There is a single HuffPo story and one from what looks like a local paper out there from when he was elected to the school board (referencing his youth and political affiliation), but that's about it. Article has been deleted twice before this. valereee (talk) 10:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. valereee (talk) 10:53, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. valereee (talk) 10:56, 14 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep He's a national director of a national organization, seems notable enough and given outsized coverage for his one schoolboard position (normally hardly covered at all in local pages). JesseRafe (talk) 14:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment The national organization has 1500 members, I think. valereee (talk) 15:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete According to the NPOL “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 general notability guideline.” No general notability qualifications are shown here at all. Trillfendi (talk) 19:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep The website for the Socialist Party USA states that the subject is a national co-chair. WP:POLOUTCOMES mentions that leaders of national political parties may be kept, "despite their party's lack of electoral success." Using this criteria, the stories about the subject's school board election and article in the Huffington Post and mentions in other stories about the party lead to a WP:GNG pass. The previous XfD discussions occurred before his election as national co-chair. --Enos733 (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. Being national cochair of a small political party is not a free notability pass that automatically entitles a person to have a Wikipedia article just because he exists, sourcing be damned — it can get a person over the bar if he can be shown to clear WP:GNG for it, but it does not make him so critically important for us to cover that having to source him properly becomes optional. But the references here are a Blogspot blog, two blurbs tangentially covering stray facts about the party which completely fail to even mention Noble's name at all in the process, and two raw tables of election results — so not even one of the sources actually present in the article is contributing squat toward making him notable at all. And if literally all you can find on the Google for new sourcing is one piece by a Huffington Post blogger and local media coverage of the type that any school board trustee would simply be routinely expected to receive in his local newspaper, then no, that's not enough coverage to make him special. GNG is not just "count up the Google hits and keep anyone for whom n meets or exceeds 2" — it tests for depth and range and context, not just number. Bearcat (talk) 00:08, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment To start, the sourcing includes a profile in NJ.com, and the Huffington Post article. There is also an article profiling the subject as he ran for a freeholder position in 2011. I would admit, if the subject were just a local school board member (and looking solely at the local elected official position in WP:NPOL), this sourcing would not be sufficient. However the subject is not just a school board member, but also a co-chair of a national political party.
 * In this case, the NJ.com and RedBankGreen profiles (independent of the subject and each other)  provide a baseline of information to create a verifiable article about the subject, that is more than "he exists." There is no question that the subject is both an elected school board member and a co-chair of Socialist Party USA. There is additional verifiable information about the subject in reliable sources that could flesh out the article (even if each source by itself would not establish notability), through the form of quotations in mainstream newspapers (such as this article in Philly.com), interviews, or in relationship with other activities of the party (such as this AP article about the formation of a socialist USA chapter in Maine). So, I assert that the depth, range, and context equate to a GNG pass for a person who is "worthy of notice" because of his national position, that coverage of the subject exists over a period of time and in different contexts, and that the profiles in the New Jersey papers provide sufficient depth to write a solid article about the subject in combination with other RS material.  --Enos733 (talk) 18:53, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * To start, I already addressed both the NJ.com and Huffington Post sources in the comment you replied to. NJ.com is the local coverage that every school board trustee everywhere could always show, thus not evidence that he's special, and Huffington Post is a second-tier source at best: acceptable for some additional referencing of stray facts after notability has already been covered off, but not in and of itself a notability clincher if it is the strongest evidence of notability on offer. And both of those are covering him in the context of being elected to a school board, not in the context of the role that could actually get him over the inclusion bar, so they're not building a strong case at all.
 * So let's move on to the new sources: RedBankGreen is an internet-only community hyperlocal, not a notability-making major media outlet — and being quoted about other subjects in newspaper articles that aren't about him doesn't help to bolster his notability if it hasn't already been nailed down by stronger sources, so none of those other sources are contributing a damn thing toward the question of whether he clears GNG or not. We're looking for coverage about him, not coverage about other things in which he happens to give soundbite.
 * So no, none of this is enough. Bearcat (talk) 23:20, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The question is not necessarily local v non-local sources (per se) for a position where "a genuinely substantial and well-referenced article" would generally be kept, but as you wrote in WP:Articles_for_deletion/Denis_Law_(politician), the question is "whether the sources support enough substance about the mayor to make the article worth bothering to read." My position is that the NJ.com profile (which is not usual coverage of a school board election, especially considering NJ.com is a statewide news organization) in combination with the RedBankGreen article and the glancing coverage in other sources, provides sufficient information to draft a substantial article about the subject (again, whose position as co-chair of a national political party, may normally be kept). While we may disagree whether the profiles do provide sufficient substance, those articles do provide information about the subject's educational background and political platform. Other RS articles cover his election to co-chair of Socialist Party USA. --Enos733 (talk) 18:02, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Denis Law is or was a mayor, so he's not a relevant comparison here. The inclusion standard for mayors just requires us to be able to write a genuinely substantive article, and doesn't hinge as strongly on the localness or non-localness of the sources per se, but the inclusion standard for school board trustees is (purposely) much tighter and much more restrictive than that. A mayor can sometimes be considered notable without nationalizing sources, although he would still need more coverage than anybody demonstrated Law to actually have (which is why Law got deleted in the end) — but a person always requires much more nationalized coverage before they can be considered wikinotable for serving on a school board. So of the sources which have been shown so far, the couple that are substantively about Pat Noble are covering him only in the not inherently notable context of being elected to a school board, while the sources that have anything to do with the context that might make him notable are all just glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage of other things or people. So no, none of this is enough: the substantive sources are covering him in a non-notable context where a person requires much more coverage than that to be deemed notable in the first place, and the sources that actually verify his potential notability claim aren't substantive at all. And no, the fact that you can combine a couple of substantive sources in a non-notable context with unsubstantive sources that namecheck his existence in a potentially more notable context, while failing to say anything meaningful about his work in that potentially more notable context, does not add up to grounds for special treatment, either — to deem him notable, what we would require is sources that enabled us to write genuinely substantive and informative content about his work as a political party chair. Bearcat (talk) 22:53, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There is no disagreement about the inclusion standards. My point in making the comparison is that WP:NPOL and WP:POLOUTCOMES appear to indicate that our community would treat mayors and political party chairs similarly. And, fundamentally, a position embedded in the SNGs is that the positions covered within them are notable and of note for a global encyclopedia (and as such, there is an expectation of a certain amount of verifiable coverage of the subject). But, as it may rightfully be pointed out, a political party chair is not covered in WP:NPOL, and I would not disagree. The proper standard in this case is WP:GNG, which does not discriminate about where verifiable information comes from and about what part of a person's life. In this case, most of the RS coverage of the subject does stem from his election to the school board and there is verifiable coverage of his holding of the position and some actions as a national political party chair. There is more primary source material about his work as political party chair, not currently included in the article - but that is not necessarily bad information, just that we cannot base an "entire article on primary sources" WP:PRIMARY. To me, what we have is RS, independent coverage, of the subject that an article can be based upon, lots of confirmation about the position that would generally make the subject notable (see WP:POLOUTCOMES) through primary sources and namechecks and quotes in other articles. Is this the greatest amount of sourcing for a subject - most likely not, but it is a) much more (and much more nationalized) than an average school board trustee, and b) his national party co-chair position makes him an individual that readers of this encyclopedia may be interested in (especially his background, which is all verifiable). This all said, I may be advancing a position that may not gain consensus here, and I am ok with that, but I do think we should think about the broader context of the position a person holds, general interest in similar positions, and whether there is sufficient verifiable information to write an article that is more than "they exist." In any case, if the position is not kept, there should be enough value to redirect to Socialist Party USA. --Enos733 (talk) 00:15, 18 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete Lack of coverage from secondary RS to establish notability. Cllgbksr (talk) 03:53, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete – there is a lack of coverage to justify notability. Fails criteria one of WP:NPOL: Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage.  CookieMonster755 ✉  06:44, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Simply not enough coverage from secondary sources to establish notability. Best, GPL93 (talk) 14:15, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete fails WP:NPOL, WP:GNG per Bearcat. SportingFlyer  T · C  05:48, 16 January 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.