Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rick Singh


 * 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. Sarahj2107 (talk) 13:48, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Rick Singh

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Delete. WP:BLP of a person notable only as a property appraiser at the local level in one single county. This is not a role that gets a person over WP:NPOL in and of itself, but there's simply not much else here to hang a standalone article on. Content about the SeaWorld lawsuit would be perfectly appropriate in SeaWorld Orlando's article but is not enough to justify a standalone BLP of Rick Singh himself as a separate topic from that, nothing else here is particularly noteworthy at all, and the article is referenced only to the kind of local media coverage that a county appraiser would be expected to generate in their local media -- neither the volume nor the range of coverage shown are enough to make him more notable than the thousands of other people at his level of significance who don't have and won't be getting Wikipedia articles. Bearcat (talk) 18:46, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Keep - Almost all articles are examples of in-depth coverage. Passes WP:GNG, regardless of WP:NPOL. Usterday (talk) 18:49, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Incorrect. For a political figure of purely "local to a single area" interest, such as a smalltown mayor or a non-metropolitan city councillor or a county clerk, WP:GNG is not passed just because local media coverage exists, if its scope and volume falls entirely within the WP:ROUTINE scope and volume of local media coverage that would be expected to exist for a person at that level. If they do not objectively pass NPOL by virtue of the office held, then the media coverage has to show them as significantly more notable than the norm for their field of activity, such as by nationalizing beyond the local media. Every single county appraiser in existence would always qualify for a Wikipedia article if local coverage were all it took to get them there — but it's not a level of office at which we can or do extend automatic notability to all of them, so a county appraiser has to be individually demonstrated as significantly more notable than most other county appraisers before he can be deemed notable enough. Bearcat (talk) 19:03, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * By that argument, one would have to research the potential for GNG of hundreds of appraisers before you would be satisfied. GNG says nothing about showing someone is "more notable than similar people", it merely discusses in-depth articles. What is your evidence that there are "thousands like him?" other than an assumption that in-depth coverage is common for local politicians? I would argue it is not at all common, and that this level of press does show him as more notable, especially with the high profile of the cases he has dealt with (and in-depth articles about these focussing on his role). Usterday (talk) 19:28, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No, it's not an "assumption" on my part that local media coverage of local political figures exists; it's a simple, easily verifiable fact, because covering local news stories is what local media are for. It's not the case, for example, that some smalltown mayors or municipal councillors or county officials get covered by their local media while other smalltown mayors or municipal councillors or county officials get ignored by theirs; all mayors and municipal councillors and county officials always get coverage in their local media, and could always be claimed to pass GNG if local media coverage were all it took. Bearcat (talk) 19:32, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Not "all" property appraisers are from one of the largest counties in the US, and deal with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and citizens like SeaWorld. It is a false equivalency to compare this person to, say, someone from central Arkansas or Iowa. The page has evidence of GNG, and you are indeed merely stating "everyone else will obviously have the exact same coverage", without providing evidence of why you believe this other than assumption. Anyhow, we are allowed to disagree here. I just don't see any actual evidence of your position here, and believe that GNG should not be read as you are reading it. Usterday (talk) 19:55, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Again, not my own personal "reading" of GNG. It's not enough to be familiar with the simple letter of Wikipedia policy — you need to also have a familiarity with the reality of how GNG is actually understood and applied at AFD in those cases when its passage or non-passage is debatable. And one of those realities is that for a political figure at the municipal level of governance, GNG is not deemed to have been passed on the basis of exclusively local coverage — people at the county level of office, sometimes even right up to the actual county executive, are often deleted if there's no non-local coverage to show, even with as much or more local sourcing as you've shown here. That's not my own tendentious interpretation of GNG; it's just the facts of how GNG works for topics at this level of interest.
 * And according to List of United States counties and county equivalents, Orange County FL only ranks 33rd in the US by population — which is not a high enough ranking to make "one of the largest counties in the United States" a compelling exemption from having to satisfy the same standards of more-than-just-local prominence that any other county-level official would have to meet. Even the largest county in the entire United States, Los Angeles County, California, still doesn't hand an automatic inclusion freebie to its county assessor on purely local media coverage alone, if nothing extralocal can be shown to demonstrate that anybody outside that county needs to care.
 * I said the stuff about the SeaWorld lawsuit could be addressed in SeaWorld's article, for example. But it's not strong evidence that we need to maintain a standalone BLP of him separately from that. Bearcat (talk) 00:18, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * They're not among the largest in US population; they are though in terms of revenue, and property values, which is what property appraisers deal with. That said, diminishing a State such as Florida as "merely part of the US" is strange to me. If the largest US county's assessor had this much press, in my mind, they'd qualify too. But the 1000s you referred to earlier, you are right, probably do not. More than that though, there is no wording in GNG that supports your reading of it. Point one is about "significant coverage", which this page has. Point two is that the sources must be reliable, which they are. Point three points to the use of non-primary sources, check again. Point four is that they are independent of the subject (sources that is), check again. Point five states that GNG is not a guarantee that something is notable. Are you arguing point five? That you don't believe GNG is good enough here? Otherwise, there is not "letter" in GNG that you can point to. Only the "Ignore all rules" aspect of the policy. There is, despite the protestations of many people on Wikipedia, nothing that dismisses local coverage from GNG. Even still, are you calling Forbes, the Orlando Sentinel, and NBC "extralocal" (a word not found in GNG to begin with). You keep stating "it's obvious" or "it's the way it is" to support your arguments, but that's not evidence for your point. Again, I agree to disagree, but am also happy to have an in-depth discussion of GNG if that's what you want. An AFD may not be the most appropriate place for that though. Usterday (talk) 02:32, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm going to say this again: the letter of GNG is one thing, but there are many ways in which it's still up for debate how GNG actually applies in actual practice. For that, you need to familiarize yourself with the actual corpus of AFD discussions on similar topics, to see where consensus lands on points of debate. I am not making up my own personal interpretations here; the actual established precedent at AFD is that purely local media coverage is not enough to satisfy GNG for a political figure at the county level of office.
 * Every single mayor of every city, town or village that exists at all would always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. Every single municipal councillor in every city, town or village that exists at all would always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. Every single police chief in every city, town or village that exists at all would always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. Every single fire chief in every city, town or village that exists at all would always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. Every single school board trustee that exists at all would always pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. Unelected candidates for office would pass GNG if local coverage alone were enough. But our rules are intentionally designed to keep articles about smalltown mayors and smalltown councillors and smalltown police chiefs and school board trustees and unelected candidates out of Wikipedia.
 * The thing is, as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, we have to keep in mind that our articles are highly vulnerable to getting misused: people routinely try to overwrite our articles about them with their own self-penned public relations puff bios, and other people routinely try to dirtwash our articles about people they don't like with WP:BLP violations and WP:POV commentary. The only defense we actually have against either of those things is the oversight of other editors — but that only works on topics that are of broad reader interest, and fails to be effective when it comes to more limited-interest topics. In an article about a municipal or county-level official who's known only locally, and does not have nationalized prominence, an inappropriate edit can linger in the article for months because not enough people are actually seeing the article to notice that an inappropriate edit has taken place. I am not making this up: earlier this year, I actually came across an article about a county-level political official which was making the unsourced claim that its subject had been arrested for smuggling small children into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to rape and cannibalize them. Yes, it's a blatant BLP violation, and yes, I revdelled it right away — the problem, however, will be more evident when I reveal to you how long that claim was sitting unchallenged in our article, because no responsible editor had actually seen it before I did: three full years. Yes, we really did spent three years calling a local politician a cannibal pedophile, because his article wasn't generating enough traffic to get that inappropriate content noticed and dealt with.
 * We can't properly maintain an article about a topic that isn't generating a broad and relatively consistent volume of readership — which is one of the reasons why our rules around local political figures are designed to be much more restrictive about their includability than we are for statewide or nationwide officeholders. We have to protect ourselves from the possibility of getting misused as a PR platform, and we have to protect both ourselves and our article subjects from the possibility of the article getting misused as an attack-edit magnet — and when it comes to local politicians at the municipal or county levels, the only way we can do that is to not have articles about them except where they can be shown to have wider prominence beyond just one local area. I did not make this up myself as my own personal tendentious rule; AFD established a consensus around this.
 * Oh, and by the way: NBC's local affiliate in Orlando is not the same thing as the national news division of NBC News — the WESH reference is local coverage from WESH, not nationalized coverage from the NBC network. And the Forbes piece is not about Rick Singh, but just namechecks his existence and provides a brief soundbite from him in an article about something else. So no, that's not "coverage about him" either. Bearcat (talk) 22:56, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:02, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete per Bearcat's rationale (local coverage of a civil servant). Noting also that Usterday has been blocked as a sockpuppet. --kelapstick(bainuu) 22:36, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Speedy delete per CSD G5. Creator of page is a sock of Jeremy112233. — MRD2014 (talk) (contribs) 16:47, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Retracted. Wasn't blocked until after page was created. — MRD2014 (talk) (contribs) 16:50, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — UY Scuti Talk  18:34, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Bringing a lawsuit against a company doesn't grant notability. We would have articles on anyone who had ever sued anyone for spilling their hot coffee on them when they wern't warned it was hot if we did. Amortias (T)(C) 19:06, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete I agree that a local assessor doing their job and challenging property valuations is entirely routine. Local coverage about such cases happens all over the country. The article seems to be to be highly promotional, perhaps written to influence a reelection. MB 04:15, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete A county property appraiser needs to be notable for more than a single action to justify an article. His suit against Disney interests might be worth some sort of article, but that does not justify a biographical one on him.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:34, 20 September 2016 (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.