Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Santa Clara County Park Ranger


 * 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. (non-admin closure)  Jim Carter (from public cyber)  07:07, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Santa Clara County Park Ranger

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nonnotable local park authority, no refs other than organization. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 14:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - This article is for a public agency similar to hundreds of police and park ranger pages currently found on Wikipedia, it is for an agency of over 250 employees, 1,400 volunteers and with visitors in the tens of thousands each year. If this page merits deletion than so does countless similar articles of this type. (CaptainKona (talk) 04:25, 26 August 2014 (UTC)]])


 * Keep - I see no reason that this article would be nominated for deletion as it is public agency with a $67 million annual budget, is a multi-sourced article, with more than a dozen news media links on the agency, and whose facilities are used by countless people each year.MKP2106 (talk) 17:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:53, 26 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete (changing to Move/Keep, see below) Even if we remove the puffery ("Santa Clara County Park’s five decade legacy of providing outstanding recreational opportunities in beautiful natural locations"), the subject fails WP:ORG and WP:GNG. All of the references in the main body of the article (in other words, the first 10 references) are self-referential. The remainder, for the "In the news" section, do include half-a-dozen references from the San Jose Mercury News, which is a regionally significant Reliable Source, but the coverage is not about the park rangers; it either doesn't mention them at all  or else mentions them in passing.  There is a little bit of actual coverage from small hyper-local papers like the Gilroy Dispatch, which does not satisfy GNG in my opinion. I see no point in a redirect to Santa Clara County, California since that is where people would go anyhow looking for information about this agency. --MelanieN (talk) 22:36, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * BTW in response to the claim that Wikipedia has "countless similar articles of this type": I could not find any other articles about county park rangers at Category:County government agencies in California or Category:County law enforcement agencies of California. In fact the only article I found about park rangers was National Park Service Ranger, which seems a little more notable than a county-level agency. --MelanieN (talk) 22:42, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. It should be noted that nominator was correct at the time of nomination to say "no refs other than organization". The marginally-related articles now listed as "In the news" were added after nomination. There's nothing wrong with that - adding sources is a perfectly legitimate way to try to improve an article to the point of getting kept. I was just pointing out that the nominator's original statement was true. --MelanieN (talk) 21:12, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note that the text described as "puffery" has been elided from the article as copyvio. Unscintillating (talk) 00:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment: -MelanieN, I hate to provide this list to refute the, there are not numerous similar law enforcement pages, these are just from California and show many LE agencies of smaller note that have articles. I hesitate as this provides other sources for persons of an ideological motivation to figuratively burn books they do not like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencies_in_California As the person who nominated this for deletion as created articles much less notability; “California Massage Therapy Council "dedicated to happy endings for everyone"”, “Northern California Innocence Project”, “Hayward Gay Prom”, and many others, I question the motivation to remove law enforcement articles. Inspectorabsinthe (talk) 02:30, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the list, but I don't feel refuted. The list shows that there is an article for California State Park Rangers, but I don't see a single article about county park rangers on that list - except for this article. In any case, the issue is not "well, other agencies have articles" (see WP:OTHERSTUFF). The issue is that any individual agency must meet WP:GNG to have an article, and this one doesn't. --MelanieN (talk) 15:40, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Move to Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department To give this discussion some context, if Santa Clara County were a U.S. State, in population it would be larger than 13 other states.  It should be obvious that we don't remove governmental units from the encyclopedia just because they fail notability criteria.  This type of inclusion is limited by WP:DUE, yet the nomination ignores WP:ATD. My main problem with stating "Keep" is that I can't verify the name of this topic.  For example, a Google web search on ["Santa Clara County Park Ranger" site:.gov] turns up nothing.  The MOU with the Santa Clara County Park Rangers Association names only "Santa Clara County" along with three job titles which are covered.  The website which according to our article is the "official" website seems only to cover Junior rangers.  My limited research skills  preliminary research certainly don't  doesn't prove that there is no verifiable topic here, but since the Parks department is currently a red link, there is potentially nothing lost by moving this topic to the larger entity.  There are 29  28 parks to be covered, described as one of the larger sets of county parks in California. We also see from this article that Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is a redlink, which is another topic of opportunity for South Bay editors.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:09, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 02:24, 2 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Move to Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department and rework as appropriate per Unscintillating. Government departments of this size are likely to receive significant coverage. There is quite a bit in GBooks. They are also referred to as "Santa Clara County Parks Department" and "Santa Clara County Parks". James500 (talk) 09:00, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Quite apart from that, an obvious redirect like this should never be brought to AfD. James500 (talk) 09:14, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This is not an "obvious redirect"; it is a suggested move to a new topic, necessitating a major rewrite. Is someone volunteering to do that major rewrite? If the person who is going to do the rewrite has not been identified, this article should be deleted (very little of it would merge into the new article anyhow, the article would have to be 80-90% new material) - and someday someone who feels like it can write a new article about the Park and Rec department. If we do the move but no-one does the rewrite, then we have moved from the current situation (an article about a non-notable topic) to a worse situation: an article about a non-notable topic which also has an incorrect title. --MelanieN (talk) 14:05, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The present page name is an obvious redirect to Santa Clara County and will never be deleted. WP:R is very, very, very strict and will not allow that. It isn't a move to a new topic or an incorrect title because the rangers division is part of the department. Deleting an article because it requires a major rewrite would violate WP:IMPERFECT. Nor would it be consistent with that policy to demand that anyone promise to perform the rewrite. I could just advise you to do it yourself (WP:SOFIXIT). It isn't obvious that there is "very little" mergeable content, but even if there was, that isn't good enough. There has to be zero mergeable content (WP:PRESERVE).This article will obviously fix itself in the fullness of time and should just be allowed to develop. James500 (talk) 23:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * In any event, it will not require a major rewrite to make the article acceptable. You could write a new introduction, or stubify the article, in a matter of minutes. James500 (talk) 23:46, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I often have rewritten/refocused articles when I thought they deserved to be renamed and kept. In this case, my !vote remains "delete", so I won't be volunteering. And in spite of all the "keep" talk here, I don't see anyone else volunteering either. --MelanieN (talk) 04:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. 18 minutes from start to finish. James500 (talk) 05:37, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So now we have an article which is entirely about the park rangers, except for the title and the lead. Not even a list of the parks, much less any history of the park and rec department, the management, or any of the things one would expect to see in an article about the department. Those are things I would have considered necessary, if I were trying to refocus the article to be about the department. --MelanieN (talk) 15:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Problems that can be fixed by editing, such as lack of balance, are not grounds for deletion. Our editing policy makes that very clear. James500 (talk) 20:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep and rename to Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department. Large enough for its own article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note to closing administrator: the article has been renamed to "Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department". --MelanieN (talk) 15:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Redirect the new name to Santa Clara County, California, and redirect the old name there too. none of the refs provided (added after i afd'd it) show notability for the parks and rec department, only that it exists as part of the county. The agency can have a sentence or two at the county article. this is not a rewrite that qualifies as an article. no prejudice against building up from the redirect if any significant refs are ever found. I agree it has a large budget, but wikipedia is not a directory of every government agency on earth. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:31, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Whether the sources are cited in the article at the moment is irrelevant. What matters is that they exist, or are likely to exist, in GBooks and elsewhere. That is how we determine notability. Not by looking at the citations presently included in the article and nothing else. James500 (talk) 09:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * There do appear to be some sources for the Park and Rec department, although nobody here can be bothered to cite any. I am planning to rewrite the article over the next day or two, to refocus it on the Park and Rec department. I don't understand why some people will recommend keeping a poorly conceived and badly sourced article without doing anything to improve it, but since that seems to be the developing consensus here, I will do what I can to make it into a decent Wikipedia article. If I succeed in that, I will change my !vote to keeping the renamed and refocused article. --MelanieN (talk) 15:08, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment The statement "none of the refs provided...show notability for the parks and rec department", makes me wonder if the nominator is expecting the sourcing to show wp:notability to be included in the article.  This is a WP:SOFIXIT problem.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment I find the comment "...if any significant refs are ever found" to be evidence that the nominator has not made a WP:BEFORE D1 check on this topic, including Google newspapers, Google scholar, and Google books.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep the moved and re-targeted article about the Parks and Recreation Department. It is now a proper article. The minimum cleanup that was made necessary by the move: all new categories and a new infobox. Material I added because it's now a different article about a different agency: a history section (which provided the necessary independent sources) and a list of the parks, with wikilinks back and forth as appropriate. Material I added just because if you're going to do something you might as well do it well: images. --MelanieN (talk) 20:44, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Withdraw nomination, I could have looked for refs on the department, only looked at what was provided, assuming an editor interested in showing notability would actually do that. thanks to MN for doing what i didnt.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:07, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't apologize; you were correct. You nominated an article about the Park Rangers - a subject which was and is non-notable. Nobody here has provided any additional refs about the Park Rangers, or any evidence that the Park Rangers are notable or deserve an article. On the contrary, your nomination basically resulted in a consensus recommendation of "merge/redirect" to an article about the Park and Rec department - an article which did not exist at the time, but does now. --MelanieN (talk) 06:09, 7 September 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.
 * 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.