Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glen Eira city councillors

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 All. Nishkid 64 03:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Glen Eira city councillors

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Delete - The above articles are about a set of non-notable mostly former councillors of the City of Glen Eira, a local authority covering a region of about 100,000 people within metropolitan Melbourne, who can only pass by-laws (parking, building permits etc). The main contents of all but one or two are a series of statistics about how they got elected.

There are about 1000 Local Government Areas in Australia, each of which holds periodic elections. It would be almost impossible to establish notability for any of these individuals. The articles also escalate a single decision which received very little publicity (to sack the council in 2005) into a major event. I know of several Australian councils which have been controversially sacked (City of Joondalup, City of Wanneroo and City of South Perth come to mind) where the parent article addresses the issue adequately. I have left Margaret Esakoff's article off the list only because she is the present mayor and was the only survivor of the above sacking, so *may* be notable. Orderinchaos78 03:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all per nom. LGA councillor is not sufficient notability per WP:BIO, if anyone has notability outside of this role they may be an exception. --76.210.62.6 05:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all or perhaps merge into a parent article (not sure what.)--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 05:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletions. -- SkierRMH 07:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all without prejudice against recreation if any of them turn out to be notable. Regards, Ben Aveling 07:43, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per Ben Aveling. The sacking should be covered in City of Glen Eira but the list of councillors there linking to these articles should be deleted. --Bduke 08:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per nom Akihabara 09:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per nom, unless someone raises issues here to illustrate that one may be notable besides being a councillor. John Vandenberg 10:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
DO NOT Delete any of these articles I come here today to inform you all that we are part of making history. How come we don't know who was mayor of Caulfield in 1963? How come I can't find it on Google or Yahoo? Because it is rarely documented. If we delete these people's name, we destroy history. If we are going to destroy councillors' history, then why don't we destroy every MP in the world's history? I beg of you all to rethink and change your vote to don't delete.

These councillors caused the famous and controversial sacking of Victorian local council. Alan Grossbard was Glen Eira's first mayor and a former Caulfield councillor.

Veronika Martens was Glen Eira's first female mayor and was acouncillor for Caulfield and Glen Eira for nearly 30 years, I repeat 30 years.

The mayoralty vote between Jamie Hyams and Bob Bury broke a 140-year tradition of confidential voting before the official vote so that the mayor was elected unopposed - that caused a lot of controversy.

Peter Goudge and Rachelle Sapir were both political candidates for their respected political parties in 2002 victorian state election.

And who can forget Noel Erlich, also a former Caulfield councillor, been involved in brawls with Grossbard and David Feldman (before he was even elected to council). Erlich is said to have been the major cause the Bury vs Hyams mayoralty vote and the sacking of the Glen Eira Council.

The councillors after the sacking also caused history. David Feldman, Kate Ashmor and Nick Staikos are all councillors in the same ward under the age of 30. Nick Staikos is the youngest Glen Eira councillor in history and Steven Tang is the second youngest.

All these councillors are apart of history. Delete them, and you rather's well destroy the Internet and burn every history book on your bookself, because delete them will be deleting history. I rest my case. CatonB 10:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately (and I do sympathise with your position more broadly) I still can't see how any of these points establish notability for each of these individuals. Very few of these things matter outside an immediate local area, and probably not even to many people within that area. Most of these records you cite relate to events within one council - extend it to Melbourne-wide or even Australia-wide, and remember this is an international encyclopaedia, and you find the same sorts of things are going on everywhere. Many of these things (eg the 1963 Caulfield mayor) would be locatable in the State Library and various local libraries in the Local History section. My own council, for example, produced a 300 page book offered for loan or sale through all libraries, and neighbouring ones have as well which adequately document many areas, although admittedly have a pro-council POV and leave many gaps.

The councillors under 30 - doesn't Greater Dandenong have a mayor under 30? "Glen Eira's first female mayor" doesn't mean much when the council only goes back 12 years - the one I live in, for example, has 136 years of history and first had a female mayor in the 70s. Political candidacy does not ensure notability without any other criteria - if they don't win, their notability fades. However they would deserve a note under the electorate in which they ran. A decent piece on the sacking (I've attempted to write one at City of Glen Eira based on the published reports) belongs in the council article. If the only notable thing about a councillor is that they've been sacked, there's a councillor in my area who got sacked one year ago and was on the lead on Seven News, but whom I doubt is notable even as a 22-year councillor. There is at least one councillor in WA who has been in for - get this - 62 years. Read WP:BIO carefully - it almost expressly excludes local politicians unless they have some notability *outside* their time in office.

My suggestion would be to do what I'm doing for my home region and write a book about the local area. You'd be amazed what you can turn up in State Records and the State Library, and it may end up being a far more interesting narrative than anything you'd be allowed to publish here. Orderinchaos78 11:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the suggestions. But I still think we need in the Glen Eira page to mention events and issues that occurred in Glen Eira eg mayoralty votes, sacking (which you've started on), brawls, and catergorise them. How about that in the page, but no biographies? CatonB 12:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That IMHO is exactly where it belongs - in the council article. It passes verifiability thresholds (reportage in the Age, the independent report which is online and no doubt other media sources, even local Leaders or whatever, could be used to improve what is there now) and could probably be developed into compelling and interesting prose which meets all Wikipedia standards. If we can get more information (not *too* much though) on its ancestor councils - Caulfield and any others - and put them in a history section that would also be good. Should always be aiming for Good Article/Featured Article status with these sorts of things, even if it only gets to B-class (the level below Good Article). Orderinchaos78 12:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can I make a suggestion that all articles that will be deleted be merged into the same article. But this time it will be part of an article called History of Glen Eira Council and one of the subheadings would be Glen Eira Councillors. How about that? CatonB 00:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That actually has precedent - History of Burnside (the history of a local council in Adelaide) has reached featured status on Wikipedia. Most of the content of the present articles are statistical in scope, but there is some information that could be brought in, such as the brawl etc. Orderinchaos78 02:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The result of the above lengthy discussion was the creation of History of Glen Eira - an article which, while needing a lot of work, will achieve the aims and intentions of the 16 articles covered in this AfD without the need for them to continue to exist. Orderinchaos78 10:56, 15 January 2007 (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.