Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wesley Bell (mayor)


 * 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.  Sandstein  11:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Wesley Bell (mayor)

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Small town mayor and unsuccessful candidate for several other offices. Does not meet WP:NPOL guidelines. Rusf10 (talk) 01:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Rusf10 (talk) 01:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. Rusf10 (talk) 01:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete He was the mayor of a township. I have doubts about the head of any township anywhere in the US being notable, but if I give that as an absolute fact someone is going to come back with a deeply sourced enough article on a head of Clinton Charter Township in Macomb County, Michigan to prove me wrong. However this place has 26,000 in a county where another township has 92,000 people. Townships generally are not the locations of major businesses and industries, although the matter is trickier in some areas, so often they have suburbanized populatiopns that largely work elsewhere so they can often seem more important by mere population count than they actually are. In this case he is clearly not notable. We seem to have a glut of articles on non-notable heads of places in New Jersey.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Stafford Township NJ is not significant enough to confer an "inherent" notability freebie on its mayors, and unsuccessfully running for higher office doesn't get a person into Wikipedia in and of itself either — but this article leans predominantly on primary sources (raw tables of election results, etc.) that are not support for notability at all, and the few sources that actually represent real coverage in real media don't represent enough real coverage in real media to deem him more notable than the norm for smalltown mayors, which is the bar he would actually have to clear. Bearcat (talk) 16:22, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak delete per above, WP:NPOL. Arguably, he could be notable as a perennial candidate, but that is not the consensus. Bearian (talk) 02:04, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep WP:NPOL is clear that "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" (emphasis added). This person clearly does. Stripping out the primary sources leaves the following:
 * Pais, Matt (27 March 2008). "Ex-Stafford mayor Bell dies after fall from billboard, one of many he owned". Asbury Park Press.
 * Weaver, Donna (27 March 2008). "Wes Bell, Stafford's ex-mayor, dies at 70". Press of Atlantic City.
 * "Stafford Official Facing Ocean County Trial Today; Bell, Committeeman Supervising Police: Accused of Hampering Investigation into Friend's Automobile Accident". New York Times. 7 January 1974.
 * "Mistrial Declared in Mayor Bell Case". New York Times. 12 January 1974.
 * "High Court in Jersey Rules in Stafford Case". New York Times. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
 * Janson, Donald (2 February 1985). "A TOWN WITH 2 MAYORS FINDS MORE IS LESS". New York Times. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
 * "Former Stafford mayor dies after fall from billboard". The Star-Ledger. 27 March 2008. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
 * The New Jersey Press coverage is far from small papers. Press of Atlantic City, Asbury Park Press, and The Star-Ledger have the fourth, third, and first largest circulations in the state. The other coverage is all the New York Times. Yes, it's scandal, but Bell is in the titles, so even if we cannot access all the articles, we can infer that they contain a lot of information about him. But for those we can access, it is clear that they significantly cover Bell, the second in considerable depth. That is sufficient to make him notable, and to merit keeping this article.
 * I know I'm close to the wire, so I'd ask the closing admin to re-list.--Chaser (talk) 01:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete - I have considered Chaser's additional sources, and while it is a valiant effort, I don't think the sources succeed in providing notability. Obituaries and stories about him falling from a billboard are routine news coverage and not notable in an encyclopedic sense; if there were wider coverage about it being interesting that a man fell from a billboard, then maybe, but that is not unique or notable in of itself. I also think the 1974 mistrial is routine news coverage and doesn't confer encyclopedic notability; the subject wasn't known for that and it seems like a minor passing event in the subject's life, not worthy of mention in an encyclopedia entry about the subject. The source about the state high court affirming his mayorship is routine news coverage of a court case that ultimately didn't solve any interesting legal problem and may have been impactful on the subject but wasn't ultimately impactful on state law or the world. If other people ultimately think that these things together provide notability, then so be it, but I don't think that this individual has achieved notability as the article stands. Ikjbagl (talk) 05:11, 4 May 2020 (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.