Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mike Plummer

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. Kurykh (talk) 00:30, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Plummer[edit]

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Candidate for the general election—but unelected candidates are not necessarily notable per WP:NPOLITICIAN. Getting a payment from a county council and organizing a walking bus doesn't clear the general WP:BIO hurdle. —C.Fred (talk) 00:18, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (✉) 02:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (✉) 02:20, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Plummer is a highly influential government official in Poole, Dorset, UK. He was created a Wikipedia page due to the importance of the 2017 snap election in this specific constituency. He is due a surprise victory. His achievements should not be downplayed as done so by C.Fred. The walking bus is the largest ever in history and his prominence in UK local government speaks for itself. GGLD (talk) 09:32, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, Mike Plummer meets the following criteria: - Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature.[12] This also applies to persons who have been elected to such offices but have not yet assumed them He held subnational office. England is a nation. Being a councillor is therefore sub-national. Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage.[8] He has received significant press coverage. Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". See above. GGLD (talk) 09:34, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Local offices (city councils, borough councils, county councils, etc.) do not satisfy the "subnational office" criterion. In the UK, that criterion covers the Scottish and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, not offices at the county or municipal levels. And what you're showing for "coverage" of Plummer is not references that are substantively about Plummer, but references that happen to namecheck his existence in the process of being about something else. Bearcat (talk) 14:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ The only evidence I see of notability is related to the political campaign he is currently running. As noted above, being a candidate for political office is not notable in and of itself. Power~enwiki (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Local political officials are covered under the Wikipedia terms. GGLD (talk) 21:45, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Curious. A new, single-purpose account removed the AfD tag and attempted to request page protection. Are you suggesting that you are using that account also? —C.Fred (talk) 23:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[Re GGLD's comment "I would delete the AfD on here if so.… Wikipedia are monitoring this due to the politicised nature of the article."] And you would promptly be reported for disruption if you had. If Wikipedia were really monitoring, a Foundation account would have either chimed in or contacted me directly. Neither has happened. —C.Fred (talk) 01:40, 6 May 2017 (UTC) (context added 18:06, 7 May 2017 (UTC) after GGLD deleted a remark he made)[reply]

This is getting excessively heated. I've retracted some of my remarks. Power~enwiki (talk) 02:27, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not Wikipedia's job to be an "unrestricted" source of all possible information — we have specific notability standards that have to be met for a Wikipedia article to become appropriate. If all you had to do to get a person into Wikipedia was show that they had received one or two pieces of media coverage, and the context in which that coverage was being given didn't matter at all, then we would have to keep an article about the woman a mile down the road from my parents who woke up one morning and found a pig in her front yard.

Also, Wikipedia is not a "citizen journalism" project, and we don't keep articles based on people's predictions about who's "due" to win an election that hasn't happened yet, either. After the election results are in, we start new articles about the newly-elected MPs who didn't already have one yet — but they don't get advance articles on here just for being candidates, except in the exceedingly rare instance that you can show their candidacy to be a lot more notable than the norm on the basis of a lot more media coverage than what every candidate for office could always show. Bearcat (talk) 13:55, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~ - After reading more about the recent local elections, I've changed my mind on this issue. Wikipedia policy is to maintain pages for elected officials at the national and sub-national authority levels, but not below. In most English-language countries (Canada, US, Australia, even Scotland and Wales) these are well-defined. In England, they are not; the recent elections created positions such as "Mayor Of Greater Manchester" for the first time. Power~enwiki (talk) 02:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete WP:POLOUTCOMES states, "local politicians whose office would not ordinarily be considered notable may still clear the bar if they have received national or international press coverage, beyond the scope of what would ordinarily be expected for their role." Furthermore, "to claim notability on this basis, the coverage must be shown to have nationalized or internationalized well beyond their own local area alone." In this case, the subject is the recipient of local coverage of his service on the Poole Borough Council, and has not been the subject of national news. The community consensus on WP:POLITICIAN has not been to extend the term of sub-national office to include local borough councils or similar municipal or county office (The text of the policy is explicit to state "statewide/provincewide"). Because the subject does not fit within WP:POLITICIAN, the appropriate standard is WP:GNG - the sourcing in the article and through a news search fail to show significant coverage. --Enos733 (talk) 04:14, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Regardless of what party they're standing for, people do not get Wikipedia articles just for being candidates in elections — if you cannot demonstrate and properly source that he was already eligible for an article for some other reason independent of his candidacy itself, then he has to win the election, not just run in it, to get an article out of it. And serving on a local borough council is not, in and of itself, grounds for a Wikipedia article either — municipal councillors are presumed notable only in major metropolitan global cities on the order of London, not in every city, town or village that exists. And every candidate in every election would always clear GNG if four or five pieces of local campaign coverage was all you had to show to get them over the bar — coverage of a non-winning candidate for election to Parliament has to nationalize before it builds a case for GNG.
And for added bonus, even the media sources here largely aren't about Plummer; three of the five just namecheck his existence in coverage of something else; one of the remaining two is a letter to the editor, not news content written by the newspaper's staff; and the last is a purely WP:ROUTINE candidate sketch plainly submitted by his own campaign. None of this constitutes enough substantive coverage about him to mount a valid "passes GNG" claim. And, by the way, I'm Canadian, and about the only difference between the UK's election system and ours is the whole "UK runs all the ballot boxes to a single central count location while Canada counts them onsite at the original polling station" thing, which has no bearing on candidate notability at all — so GGLD can spare me the "you don't understand why the UK is different" angle.
GGLD, further, is getting dangerously close to disruption with their continual unfounded allegations that this has anything to do with ideological bias — and, frankly, given that (a) this is the only topic GGLD has ever worked on, and (b) the "LD" part of their username happens to imply a direct personal connection to the very LibDem party that Plummer is a candidate for, my conflict of interest radar is beeping rather loudly here. Bearcat (talk) 13:44, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He obviously has a conflict of interest, and probably doesn't even know they're disallowed. Power~enwiki (talk) 00:13, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any way that the media references constitute notability. My claim is that, due to the government structure in England, local authorities should be considered the "sub-national government level". There's no equivalent body to the Parliament of British Columbia between the local council and the House of Commons. Power~enwiki (talk) 00:13, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For the purposes of NPOL, the "national" level is the United Kingdom as a whole, not England in isolation. Westminster is the national parliament, and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies are the subnational level — if Westminster ever actually followed through on the proposals to create a separate assembly for England and/or various English regions, then those would pass the first-order subnational criterion, but their absence does not reify the local authorities into an NPOL-passing level of government. Bearcat (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - not seeing any significant coverage in reliable source Amisom (talk) 14:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - to reiterate my position: Mike Plummer is a highly influential government official in Poole, Dorset, UK. He was created a Wikipedia page due to the importance of the 2017 snap election in this specific constituency. He is due a surprise victory. His achievements should not be downplayed as done so. The walking bus is the largest ever and his prominence in UK local government speaks for itself. Furthermore, Mike Plummer meets the following criteria: Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature.[12] This also applies to persons who have been elected to such offices but have not yet assumed them (He held subnational office. England is a nation. Being a councillor is therefore sub-national.) Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage.[8] (He has received significant press coverage.) Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". (See above.) Local political officials are covered under the Wikipedia terms. (talk) is correct in asserting that subnational in the UK would be local authorities. This is a point I have been trying to make. How can Amisom claim no reliable sources? There are 5 real newspaper articles from the politician's region. I am covering the local election here for my citizen journalism blog and would not upload the other candidates (exc. the MP) to Wikipedia as, unlike Plummer, they have no important history record online and would not make for an article. By the way, GGLD are my initials. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GGLD (talk • contribs) 19:15, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is not that "He was created a Wikipedia page", *you* created a Wikipedia page for him, and you have been arguing on his behalf. You don't seem to understand the Wikipedia rules regarding conflicts of interest. While I'm not suggesting you have any particular role in his campaign, you are clearly biased on his behalf. You make no argument that this seat is more notable than any of the other 600-odd seats up for election this cycle. The claim that election to a local council constitutes notability is a policy one, and no amount of media coverage will aid it. References in the article to primary sources on his previous elections (i.e. election results, or press coverage containing quotes from him on his election to the council) might be useful, however. Power~enwiki (talk) 19:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An officeholder at the local level of government does not pass GNG just because five pieces of local media coverage exist; five pieces of local media coverage always exist for every person who holds office at that level anywhere. For a local authority councillor to clear NPOL/GNG because of the local position itself, the coverage has to expand to a volume far out of proportion to what would be routinely expected to exist — such as nationalized or internationalized coverage. For instance, if he did something so hugely attention-grabbing that sources from Canada or the United States could be shown to have started covering him, then he would have a valid claim of notability as a local authority councillor — because that coverage would show him more notable than the thousands of other local authority councillors. But at the local office level, Wikipedia does not extend an automatic presumption of notability to all councillors — the sourcing has to mark him out as a special case for some reason beyond the norm.

And, as has already been pointed out to you, Wikipedia is not a "citizen journalism" project. We do not exist as an extension of your blog, and we do not exist to hold the results of your personal citizen journalism efforts in the domain of local municipal politics in your own hometown. We have specific notability standards that have to be achieved for an article to become earned, and we are not just a free platform for anybody to write about just anything they want to. Bearcat (talk) 16:05, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please read what I wrote: I am covering the local election here for my citizen journalism blog and would not upload the other candidates (exc. the MP) to Wikipedia as, unlike Plummer, they have no important history record online and would not make for an article. That's my only "bias" which can hardly be called that. I made my argument that it's important as this is tipped to be a surprise victory. Please listen to me for a change instead of berating a new contributor. I have submitted a formal complaint to the foundation for your treatment. Moreover, I have added multiple more reliable sources. GGLD (talk) 11:12, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While the Liberal Democrats' profile may be used as a source to support information, it doesn't hold water for notability purposes because it's not an independent source. The BBC, obviously, is an independent and reliable source. —C.Fred (talk) 14:18, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Being a candidate for office does not make you notable per WP:NPOL. Notability must be proven separately and Plummer has credible claim to notability. AusLondonder (talk) 04:46, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~ - sources are varied, reliable and aplenty. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GGLD (talk • contribs) 21:02, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sources are a mix of primary sources that cannot assist notability at all, and purely WP:ROUTINE coverage of the election in the election area's own local media — which, as has already been pointed out to you several times above, is not enough, in either volume or geographic range, to make an as yet unelected candidate for office notable just for being a candidate in and of itself. And you don't get to "vote" more than once in an AFD discussion — you can comment as many times as you like, but you don't get to preface any followup comments with a "keep" once you've voted keep once. Bearcat (talk) 01:07, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I've changed my mind a second time. Without a single reference covering his election to a local council, or any contemporaneous news coverage of his actions while a member of the council (apart from Parliamentary campaigns), the page must be deleted. Very specifically, I see no proof that the phrase "Newtown ward councillor" on the LibDem bio refers to an elected government position, and not a position in the Liberal Democrat political party. Power~enwiki (talk) 21:46, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete GNG not met. The antics of the article's creator definitely haven't helped their case. Wikipedia isn't a playground. Exemplo347 (talk) 11:52, 11 May 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.