Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Caroline Dunsmore

I was asked a question about the close, and I copy the talkpage conversation here:

Hi, this AfD seems to be a clear no consensus which in my understanding should default to keep rather than delete. Could you reconsider this decision? -- Banj e b oi   11:05, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a complicated one to answer. When closing a discussion, and administrator generally only has recourse to reading rough consensus.  This, however, is a biography of a living person, and the appropriate section of the deletion guidelines for administrators obliges us to consider the BLP policy in addition to this rough consensus.  In a sense, the discussion indicated to me that there was the usual WP:NOT argument vs. the WP:N notability argument.  Bearing in mind that an administrator is meant to weigh comments carefully when the guideline/policy quoted is incorrectly used, I noted that the keep arguments did not refute the portion of the portion of WP:N that indicates that short-burst news stories are an exemption to the general notability guideline.  So I considered outright closing this as delete, but I think I'd be receiving endless messages on my page if I had done! :)
 * If there had been a merge target to shift the material to an article about the trials, etc. as was suggested implicitly within the discussion, I might have done so, but there is little or no material in the article beyond a mini-biography of the convict in question, so a merge would have been unsuitable as it would still be a biography under a different name, which prompts all kinds of WP:BLP1E and WP:COATRACK-type issues that are rightly discouraged by our BLP policy.
 * At the end of the day, because notability was ambiguous, and on my required assessment of the article against our WP:BLP policy per the guidelines for deletion, the deletion of the article seemed the reasonable outcome of the discussion. My wording of "no consensus - default to delete" was intended more to reflect the fact that I had been obliged to look past the rough consensus (there was none in my reading of the discussion) and also examine the BLP issues.  I am happy to discuss this point further with you if you have any other questions or concerns about it - apologies for the length! Fritzpoll (talk) 12:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)