Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mayors of Farmington, Missouri

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 Move to draft space.. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 08:43, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of mayors of Farmington, Missouri[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

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

List article of mostly not notable politicians aka Mayors of a place of under 20,000 people. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 02:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 02:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 02:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Missouri-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 02:07, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Strictly speaking, the question of whether the mayors would qualify for their own standalone biographical articles or not is not relevant to the question of whether there's merit in maintaining a list of their names or not. Lists with closed-ended inclusion criteria, such as lists of holders of a specific political office, aren't subject to the "an article must already exist before an entry can be added to the list" rule that applies to open-ended lists where self-promoting wannabes keep trying to add themselves for publicity — for a list like this, the overarching principle is completeness rather than bluelinkedness. The more important problem here, rather, is that the information isn't actually reliably sourced as being accurate: the only "references" present here at all are some (but not all) of the listed mayors' Find a Grave entries, and a user-generated list on Ancestry.com. So if somebody were to edit this list to change one or more mayors' names, there are no genuinely reliable references in place to verify which information is right and which is wrong — and if we can't be entirely sure that it's even accurate, then we shouldn't be keeping it at all. Bearcat (talk) 18:20, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I agree with Bearcat's reasoning, in that the list itself may be notable, and the only question is whether it is properly sourced. My preference would probably lean toward adding a "needs addition references" tag or draftifying the article before deletion, as the current information is not reliably sourced (largely because it is possible to find the proper sources of the current officeholder and work backward). --Enos733 (talk) 05:12, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Enos733. Article should be draftified in place of deletion. Centralknights (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2019 (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.