Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melvin P. McCree

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. T. Canens (talk) 15:13, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Melvin P. McCree

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Biography of a politician, notable only as a city councillor in a city outside the global city class and as a registrar of deeds. These are not offices that get a person over WP:NPOL, but the sourcing here -- entirely local, with the exception of a namecheck of his existence in a New York Times article about his father -- is not substantive enough or non-localized enough to claim WP:GNG. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 06:44, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. GSS (talk) 12:49, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Michigan-related deletion discussions. GSS (talk) 12:49, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Flint is not a "non-metropolitan" city as it is Metropolitan Statistical Area size rank 129. Register of deeds is a "sub-national" post (counties being a part of state government), part of the WP:NPOL standards, if not you have to spend months just listing for deletion various individual mayors of cities articles. The local paper (The Flint Journal) is also a (state) regional (metro) newspaper and the website (Mlive.com) that its articles are hosted on is a state wide news site. Also, I guess I assumed that additional sources would be found when I created the article. Spshu (talk) 19:04, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

City councillors get over WP:NPOL only in global cities with populations in the millions, on the order of New York City, Los Angeles or London — a city councillor in a city the size of Flint is not entitled to an article just because he exists, except in the vanishingly rare circumstance that he can be demonstrated as significantly more notable than the hundreds of thousands of other city councillors around the world in cities the size of Flint. And counties are not part of state government — they're a form of local government below the state level. It doesn't matter if a city is the 129th largest MSA in its country — the criterion for includability of a city councillor is "global city class, or hyper-WP:GNGable as vastly more notable than all the others", not "every city councillor in existence gets an inclusion freebie on purely local coverage alone". NPOL #1 is referring to state governors and state legislators, not to officeholders at the county level. Bearcat (talk) 01:14, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NPOL does not say that and that is not what you said. You open the Metropolitan door and Flint qualifies. On top of that, he was the president of the city council. Spshu (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You also have to read WP:POLOUTCOMES, as well as being familiar with how the documents are actually applied in actual AFD discussions. It's an established consensus that global cities are the only places that get to claim automatic "because they exist" notability for a city councillor, and that for any city below that range a city councillor gets a Wikipedia article only if he can be properly and extralocally sourced as having attained wider significance for something more than just the mere fact of having been a city councillor. And being president of the city council doesn't satisfy that, either — a city council president gets no special status in the notability sweepstakes, above and beyond any of his other colleagues on the council, unless he can be shown to satisfy the same "wider significance beyond the purely local" criterion that the rest of them have to meet. Bearcat (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Bearcat has [ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Melvin_P._McCree&diff=prev&oldid=725332875 refactored by redacting] his original AFD nomination, which makes it look like I misquoted him ( a volation of WP:TPNO). I correct the incorrect redaction to match WP:REDACT's instructions per WP:TPO as a proper redaction doesn't change the new meaning, but instead Bearcat reversed the correction. He removed the term "non-metropolitan" for the record. Spshu (talk) 13:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: a person is allowed to edit their own comments if it becomes clear that the intended meaning was being misconstrued. And a person is not allowed to edit or redact other people's comments, except in very limited administrative circumstances (such as striking the votes of banned or blocked users) that aren't applicable here. So you trying to undo my rewording of my own comments, and give me a warning on my talk page for it, was improper — I most certainly am allowed to reword my own comments in a discussion if it becomes clear that what I'm trying to say has been misunderstood. Bearcat (talk) 14:48, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Per the nom. I appreciate the creator put in good-faith work on this article but Flint is a city of 100,000 people. Being a councillor/official in such a city is not a notable position per WP:NPOL. Only local councillors in cities such as London, New York or Delhi would be likely notable. Registrar of deeds in a city of Michigan is not a sub-national post, it is a local post. Sub-national is clarified at NPOL as "statewide/provincewide". Coverage is purely local. AusLondonder (talk) 19:57, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: States in the US are unitary like the UK thus the state is local government. Secondly, the nominator hinted/indicated that a metropolitan city councilor like in Flint, where McCree was also Council president, could count as notable, but yes I pointed out the draw back (via the mayors' individual articles) in that London, New York and Delhi councilors should be targeted for AfD. The position is not "Registrar of deeds in a city of Michigan", but Register of Deeds for Genesee County. Spshu (talk) 21:29, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, states are not "unitary like the UK". There are three distinct levels of government in the United States — federal, state and local — and counties are a form of local government, not a form of state government. Bearcat (talk) 01:14, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but states per various Federal Court rules have declared that states in the US ARE unitary forms of government declaring state legislative representative for a house to be based on county (federalism between the state & county) as illegal. (Reynolds v. Sims. (n.d.) West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. (2008). Retrieved June 15 2016 from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Reynolds+v.+Sims : "The Court also rejected Alabama's contention that it should be allowed to apportion its Senate based on the equal representation of units of government, in this case counties, rather than of people. Alabama's argument was based on the so-called federal analogy, a reference to the U.S. Senate, where each state has two seats regardless of population. Warren dismissed this analogy, calling it 'irrelevant to state legislative redistricting schemes.'") In fact Flint and a number of other state government units were taken over by the state (Flint twice - challenged in court and upheld the first time around) setting aside its home rule government for an emergency manager (Financial emergency in Michigan). Spshu (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

None of which even has anything whatsoever to do with what I said. The fact that counties exist as a statewide system of local government subdivisions does not mean that every individual officeholder at the county level is a statewide officeholder — whether an office is "statewide" or "local" is a factor of the jurisdictional area that he's personally responsible for in that particular office, not whether it's an exemplar of a statewide system of offices. To be considered a holder of statewide office, he would have to literally be responsible for the entire state of Michigan — if he's only responsible for Genesee County, then he's a local officeholder. The apportionment of Congressional districts has nothing whatosever to do with the jurisdictional area of a county clerk. Bearcat (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it does have to do with your whole post: "[ No, states are not 'unitary like the UK'.]" State government is the local government. The issue was not Congressional district apportionment, the states attempt to link the counties status with the state similar to that of the state with in the Federal government Spshu (talk) 13:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, state government is not local government; there are counties and towns and villages and townships existing as another level of government below that of the state. A "unitary" government would have no separate level of government subdivisions below it, and would be directly responsible for the provision of all local services across the entire unit. A government is not "unitary" if it has further subdivisions of more locally-focused governments operating under it — you're definitely misunderstanding that federal court decision if you think it has anything whatsoever to do with this. Bearcat (talk) 22:12, 16 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am correct. Encyclopædia Britannica: "In the United States, all states have unitary governments..." "In a unitary system the central government commonly delegates authority to subnational units..." Spshu (talk) 13:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that county government is not state government; a registrar of deeds at the county level is not a state-level officeholder, but a county-level officeholder. Mayors and city councillors and town clerks and registrars at the county or municipal level are not officers of the state; they are officers of municipal government entities below the level of the state government. But for Wikipedia's purposes, the state government is the lowest level of office that guarantees a person automatic inclusion rights, while county or city governments do not — and arguing about whether the definition of "unitary" encompasses the relationship of states to municipalities or not does not change the fact that an individual county clerk is responsible for a jurisdictional area which does not encompass the entire state, but is limited to the area of one county within it. You're trying to compare this to the UK — but a registrar of deeds at the county level in the UK, or a run-of-the-mill city councillor without nationalized prominence in some midsize place like Salford or Milton Keynes, wouldn't get an article on those bases either. Bearcat (talk) 14:45, 17 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. NN local politician. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:04, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Flint is not a city that is large enough to confer on the members of the city council notability. I live in Sterling Heights, Michigan, a larger city than Flint, and I would support for deletion any article on our mayor, Michael Taylor, or any member of the city council, without enough sources to clearly pass GNG. The same applies for the smaller city of Flint.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment the register of deeds in Genesee County is an officer of the county, with power limited to the county, and not of the state. They are clearly not at the sub-national level of power, and no where near notable. A county prosecutor, who due to overseeing the decisions on pushing criminal charges, such as Kym Worthy is notable. However Ms. Worthy gets widely mentioned in Metro-Detroit area radio, and there have been days just in the last month in which she has been mentioned in the local news in relation to two non-related cases. Her role in such cases as that of the prosecution of the police officers accused of killing Malice Green may well have even made her notable back when she was only an assistant prosecutor, but I would not argue that the Wayne County Register of Deeds in notable, let alone the Genessee County Register of Deeds. I am not even sure I would argue that the Macomb County and Oakland County prosecutors are notable, and those 3rd and second most populous counties in Michigan.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:24, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as I carefully examined the article and simply found nothing nothing both for politicians and general notability, the article contains nothing else acceptable from there. His campaign was certainly not suggestive either. SwisterTwister talk 00:21, 23 June 2016 (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.