Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allan Kauffman

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. Ad Orientem (talk) 02:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Allan Kauffman (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Poorly sourced WP:BLP of a former small-city mayor. The city has a population of just 33K, which is not large enough to hand a mayor an automatic presumption of notability just for existing -- but this isn't sourced well enough to get him over WP:NPOL #2 as the subject of significant press coverage, as its only source is a transcript of his own "state of the city" speech on his successor's self-published campaign website. There's simply not enough sourcing, or enough substance, here to deem him notable. Bearcat (talk) 20:37, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Indiana-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete one source is not enough to show the mayor of such a small place is notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:15, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment  From WP:ATA's WP:BIG,

  "Delete An Internet forum with 3,000 members / a magazine with 37,000 subscribers / a micronation with a population of 9,400 is not notable. – Notbigenough, 04:56, 7 August 2006"

    posted by Unscintillating (talk) 20:59, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment  The nominator currently has 15 Indiana mayors nominated for deletion.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:19, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

So the hell what? Bearcat (talk) 15:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Then why the cursing?  Unscintillating (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're in for a real lifetime of hurt if you think someone saying "hell" is a serious enough offense to attempt to shame them for it. You do know that, right? Bearcat (talk) 05:26, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment  Notability is not defined by sources in the article, see WP:N.  Nor do topics on Wikipedia require notability.  There is no evidence of a problem here.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:19, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, notability is contingent on sourceability, and topics on Wikipedia do require notability. If neither of those things were true, we would have to keep an unsourced article about every single person who ever existed at all. Bearcat (talk) 15:33, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, the claim that "topics on Wikipedia...require notability" is erroneous.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not. If topics on Wikipedia did not require notability, then we would have to keep an article about every single person, and every single thing, that exists at all. Bearcat (talk) 03:07, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Argumentum ad absurdum doesn't make fallacious arguments stronger.  I suggest that if you don't know that topics don't require notability, and you haven't figured out that I'm generally careful with my statements of fact, then find out instead of arguing with me.  The first sentence of WP:IGNORINGATD is, "The fact that a topic is not notable is not, in and of itself, valid grounds for deleting a page, its content, or its history."  Unscintillating (talk) 21:29, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an argumentum ad absurdum in the least. It's exactly the logical conclusion of saying that topics don't have to be notable to have encyclopedia articles. Bearcat (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The issue of unsourced articles is not directly related to Wikipedia's concept of notability, as notability is not a content guideline and notability is defined outside of Wikipedia.  Unsourced articles are a problem

Yes, notability is defined outside of Wikipedia — by reliable source coverage in media that's independent of the topic's own WP:SPIP — and there's no evidence whatsoever that this person meets that definition. Bearcat (talk) 03:07, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  This is a case in point, because we now know that this AfD went for 13 days without any attempt being made to ascertain GNG notability.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:01, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We do not keep a poorly sourced article about a person who doesn't pass an SNG just because it's possible that better sources might exist. Poorly sourced articles are only kept if and when somebody does the work to show that enough sources to make the article keepable do exist. Notability is defined outside of Wikipedia by the existence or lack thereof of sufficient sourceability. That's what you're missing in your persistent campaign to separate sourceability from notability. A person can't have notability without sourceability, because by definition notability is contingent on being able to source an article properly. Bearcat (talk) 17:37, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Mayor of a town with a population of about 31,000. The usual practice is to delete articles of local elected officials unless there is national or international coverage of the subject, beyond what is usually expected. There is nothing to indicate the subject is the recipient of national coverage for his role as mayor. --Enos733 (talk) 06:37, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep  From reading the WP:BEFORE D1 snippets not mentioned in the nomination, there is sufficiently significant significant coverage to satisfy GNG.  Once the encyclopedia's history of Goshen is better developed, this article might be merged to a listicle of Goshen mayors or a history article.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:48, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We do not keep "listicles" that contain extended biographical sketches of mayors; we keep lists that contain the mayors' names and term dates and nothing else. Bearcat (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - Local and routine news reports, in fact, do not satisfy WP:NPOL and WP:GNG; sustained national or, better yet, international coverage would if it existed for this mayor. However, in my WP:BEFORE search I found nothing but small-time regional coverage expected of a small-time politician. One editor here can shuffle and skew policies all they want by outlandish means but it does not change the lack of notability of this subject.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:ROUTINE is an event guideline, whereas the topic here is a biography.  Claiming that GNG rejects local sources is a proof by assertion.  Claiming that GNG requires national coverage is also a proof by assertion.  The mayor was mayor for four terms, so how much attention does he have to have to consider it sustained?  Further, a WP:DEL8 argument does not ignore the WP:Deletion policy#Alternatives to deletion.  It is our policy to preserve the suitable contributions of others, and this is relevant history of Goshen.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:11, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• As has been pointed out to you before, ROUTINE lists numerous examples which are types of coverage that pertain to people, such as birth and wedding and death announcements and run of the mill crime reports. So yes, ROUTINE is still applicable to people, because half of its own examples of what it means are about people. It does not pertain only to whether the topic of our article is an event or not, but most certainly does also pertain to whether or not certain types of coverage of certain types of events assist in demonstrating the individual notability of the people involved in those events. And a mayor of a small town most certainly does require significantly more coverage than most other mayors of most other towns of comparable size could also show before he's considered notable enough for an encyclopedia article, namely by having his coverage expand beyond where it's merely expected to exist. And we only have a practice of trying to preserve properly referenced and notable content — we do not have a policy of trying to preserve everything that anybody ever added to Wikipedia regardless of its failure to cite adequate sourcing or demonstrate an actual reason why it would belong here. We keep lists of mayors' names if we can find a reference that supports them; we do not keep unsourced biographical information about them beyond their names and term dates. Bearcat (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.