Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Floyd D. Culbertson, Jr.

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 no consensus. There doesn't appear to be agreement on the rather subjective question of whether the sources provided push the subject of the article past the WP:GNG. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 12:09, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Floyd D. Culbertson, Jr.

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Only claim to fame is being mayor of a small Louisiana town. No online reliable sources available, and based on the titles of the other sources, there does not appear to be any deep coverage beyond the passing mentions you'd expect in local newspapers regarding a mayor. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 04:37, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Louisiana-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:21, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:21, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:21, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Local politician. Fully sourced with NINE newspaper references. Left office 72 years ago. Billy Hathorn (talk) 22:40, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment What does "fully sourced" mean exactly? Yes, it's easy to verify he was a mayor, but it's also easy to verify who was the class president of (name) Highschool in 2004. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:59, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Mayor of what is a pretty small town today and must have been much smaller when he was around. No real notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:40, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Question this Response. This person moved to delete the three previous articles on Minden mayors, all at 14:39 time on March 11. He moved against the Culbertson article at 14:40. He could not have possibly read the article in this time frame. He gave the same response for deleting all four articles. However, the Culbertson article is fully sourced, not a placeholder article as are the previous three. It has ten newspaper sources and 24 total sources, well beyond what is required for sources on local politicians. Billy Hathorn (talk) 16:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)Size of city is not a factor for a mayor. It comes under local politicians.Billy Hathorn (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- If you're referring to me, I do hope you're not suggesting I acted in bad faith. You might care to check out my user profile before you make such intimations. If by "placeholder article" you mean a WP:STUB, then so what? Stubs are perfectly acceptable, but they have to be about subjects which are notable in the first place. And yes, the size of a town is absolutely relevant to the notability of its officials if they're only notable for being officials of the town. I reiterate, there is absolutely nothing notable about this man. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Billy Hathorn. I can't accept arguments for deletion based on the size of the town or the sources being available only in print. I especially can't accept an argument for deletion based on the town being smaller in the 1940s because total world population was smaller then by a factor of about three. I especially can't accept an argument for deletion based on the titles of admittedly unread sources. James500 (talk) 06:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Standard local politician meeting GNG, offline resources are fine. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:21, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 04:33, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The fact that the article itself describes Minden as small shows that it is not significant enough to grant mayors de facto notability. He just does not pass the notability requirements for mayors.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:40, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. There are some forty sources. This easily passes with proper references for local politicians. Billy Hathorn (talk) 03:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All either genealogical stuff or local stuff you'd expect to find on any local office-holder anywhere. Still no notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:08, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. The sources may be local; the rules do not say they have to be in out-of-town newspapers. There is a considerable amount of material on him, or this article could not have been pieced together. Billy Hathorn (talk) 16:27, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Meets GNG, does not need to meet Additional Criteria, though it might. I haven't evaluated that. Stop dissing small towns and hurting people's feelings. Small town folk are people too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paperpencils (talk • contribs) 13:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Rewrite if kept I was asked by the author of the article, ~~who I do not know,~~ to comment on the AfD. It seems that it's content and sources are largely of genealogical value, which is not the purpose of an encyclopedia article. If it's kept, it should be rewritten to exclude the findagrave.com sources (i.e., content is generally added by contributors, and there's no editorial control), which are not reliable sources, and limit the extent to which primary records from ancestry.com are used. I would also recommend stating and citing the information from the obit, like any other source, rather than saying "the obituary says" unless there's a reason to question the obituary. It seems that there's marginal notability.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:21, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Struck out a part, I don't know him/her, but I just realized that I made a comment on another article.--CaroleHenson (talk) 22:26, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. The original article from June 6, 2009, was 4,400 bytes and was so sketchy that it did not even have Mr. Culbertson's dates of birth and death. The rewritten work is now 26,500 bytes. It is not possible to rewrite this: it has been vastly rewritten in the last three weeks. It cannot be redirected anywhere, as it is lengthy now and would not fit under another article. The more sources found, 45 in all, the more interesting the biography became in its preparation. The key point is that he is notable as a local politician with many sources found. All the sources were put together like a puzzle in the composition of this article. Billy Hathorn (talk) 23:56, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reply I'm not sure that stating that the article should stay because of it's size - if the article expansion is based upon unreliable sources. It would probably be better to revert to that earlier version and either find reliable sources for the uncited content or remove it.--CaroleHenson (talk) 03:25, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, the use of genealogy sources is really bad here. In some cases the link just goes to search results, often it's to family tree information on ancestry (not even to primary records, which would still be an issue, but at least based upon sources with some reliability) or rootsweb, and then there's reliance on findagrave. I've done a lot of genealogy work, I wouldn't use any of these for genealogy sources, which has a looser standard than an encyclopedia article. I've tagged a bunch of poor sources.
I'm going to remove all of the poor sources and see if what remains might be salvageable as an article.--CaroleHenson (talk) 17:08, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done I've removed most of the content from these sources - I left a cn tag for the information about two of the wives and the birth of his son. I made some edits and put info that starts veering off-topic into notes.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:36, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your hard work here. I was trying to fill in the citation needed sections but ran into an edit conflict. The siblings in the second paragraph are Floyd Jr.'s siblings, not his father's siblings. Floyd, Sr., lived from 1879 to 1958. Billy Hathorn (talk) 22:33, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a source other than ancestry.com for that? I'm not sure that you're aware, but the link that you provided goes to a page that was built by ancestry.com users. Yes, it's likely based upon primary sources, but there are issues in extrapolation of that data, that's why encyclopedia articles look to secondary sources for reliable sources. Genealogical data quality, particularly by individual contributors vs. trained genealogists, can be quite poor in some cases, and for that reason met with suspicion.--CaroleHenson (talk) 22:35, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the brothers and sisters are listed in the obituaries of both parents of Floyd Culbertson, Jr. Billy Hathorn (talk) 22:57, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We're getting away from the purpose of this page, I'll post the response on your talk page.--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:02, 28 March 2015 (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.