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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. Noone seems to dispute the verifiability of the article content, but there are differing opinions on whether or not Kernighan meets our notability guidelines. Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 14:01, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Patricia Kernighan

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Patricia Kernighan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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WP:POLITICIAN Notability of article subject: 1) City councilmember is not a statewide/provincialwide office. 2) A search failed to find significant press coverage. 3) There are no reliable sources, independent of the subject, which indicate Kernighan to be a major political figure with significant press coverage. Callanecc (talk) 13:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Copied from the article's talk page.
  • notable for Independent Run-off Voting advocacy
  • notable for election to city council of 8th largest city in state, covered extensively in that role
  • Previously notable as district 2's chief of staff
(also, remember to search for "pat kernighan", not just "patricia kernighan") --HectorMoffet (talk) 23:05, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Whilst independent run-off voting maybe an important issue. To reach the required level, it must be demostrated that she is both a major local political figure and that she has received significant press coverage. I submit that neither of these has been established. Callanecc (talk) 14:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Please note that callanecc is the nominator, and has thus already !voted above. Kevin (talk) 22:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC) [reply]
  • Keep Appears to meet and have established wp:notability. Also has RW notability, council-person for a city of 390,000 people, with some extra prominence & coverage for advocacy. North8000 (talk) 15:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Seven years running a major US city = plenty of RSes for WP:BASIC. Article is still young and stub-ish, but subject is a notable local politician covered extensively over the past decade. --HectorMoffet (talk) 00:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Extended comment-- please, don't get all deletey, gang.
Let's remember about WP:POLITICIAN: "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; A person who fails to meet these additional criteria may still be notable under Wikipedia:Notability."
Kernighan does not automatically get notability for her seat, but she's been covered extensively over the past few decades in the local, regional and sometimes national media. She's been covered in multiple independent sources across a variety of sources, subjects, and timeframes.
Notable means "worthy of notice"; that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded".-- not "famous".
The point of notablity is that just that we need reliable sources to be able to talk intelligently about a subject. The point of notability is NOT 'importance' of subject. Notability means sufficient RSes exist that we can create an article, it's not a 'badge' we bestow on a subject based on our own judgement.
I realize city councilperson may not seem like a very 'notable' person to most people in most places. But if you're a resident of oakland, the city with the fifth highest crime rate in the nation, your city councilmember would probably matter a lot to you. and indeed, we see this reflected by all the Reliable Sources that make mention of this leader too.
Too long to read? WP:BASIC is obviously met, even if WP:POLITICIAN isn't obviously met. --HectorMoffet (talk)
QUOTE: "I realize city councilperson may not seem like a very 'notable' person to most people in most places. But if you're a resident of oakland, the city with the fifth highest crime rate in the nation, your city councilmember would probably matter a lot to you. and indeed, we see this reflected by all the Reliable Sources that make mention of this leader too."
You could make that argument about just about every local councillor everywhere. If these reliable sources exist, why aren't they in the article? Also why do you keep saying she's a leader? None of the sources give her any kind of leadership role?
Okay then let's take WP:NOTABILITY: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list. "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material."
I'd submit that certainly on the basis of the sources currently in the article, she definitely does not meet notability criteria. Let's take the refs in turn....
Ref 1 Seems to be a very local paper reporting election results. Nothing exceptional about that. Just about every local councillor will have their election reported somewhere.
Ref 2 news in passing and a blog to boot therefore likely not a reliable source.
Ref 3 is about Danny Wan and she gets a brief one line mention. Definitely not the type of in depth coverage we're looking for here.
Ref 4 from the East Bay Young Democrats, can definitely be dismissed as it is not independent of the subject.
Ref 5 is behind a pay archive but the title "local elections carry weight" hardly seems promising. Lacking access, I'd say an educated guess would suggest that it's about the change to the electoral system, not about Kernighan.
Refs 6 and 7 are from fairvote.org which seems to fail reliable sourcing criteria as a pressure or special interest group.
Ref 8 Kernighan isn't even mentioned, so we can forget that.
Ref 9 about the introduction of a new voting system, briefly mentions that she co-sponsored the legislation, doesn't cover her in any depth.
Ref 10 the same as ref 9, with the added disadvantage of being in a very local paper.
Ref 11 is dead but seems to suffer the same issue as refs 9 and 10.
Ref 12 is from the Oakland city homepage, not independent of her and can therefore be dismissed.
Ref 13], has her doing the type of thing that every local councillor does: supporting very local legislation. The focus in the source is the legislation passed, not her.
There are a few more links messily tagged on at the end. Of those this is a blog and therefore doesn't count per WP:BLOG. An official bio from the council page, again not relevant for judging notability per ref 12 reasoning above. One of them, which I just removed, duplicates ref 4 above. This one a blog albeit from a larger newspaper, is mostly about the resignation of a police chief, with Kernighan supplying a few quotes.
As sources go The New York Times is a bit better, but again isn't about her, let alone covering her in depth. It's about the marijuana issue.
Finally, we're left with an interview in the Berkeley Daily Planet. While that's getting closer to what we need, the source itself is of questionable quality. Here's what Wikipedia currently says: "The Berkeley Daily Planet was a free weekly newspaper published in Berkeley, California, which continues today as an internet-based news publication. The Daily Planet is politically progressive, and offers endorsements of progressive and liberal to left leaning candidates." That doesn't sound like a reliable source to me.
BDP isn't a RS?!? An unorthodox conclusion indeed. Biased, perhaps-- but journalistic organizations with biases can still be reliable sources-- especially as used here, to establish basic, undisputed facts. --HectorMoffet (talk) 21:51, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Hector. The BDP is a reliable source, especially in the context of interviewing a local politician. It has editorial oversight, is a recognized news organization, and at the time the piece was published had a print edition that was widely distributed in the area and employed fulltime journalists. (of course, having a print edition is certainly not a requirement for reliability.) Kevin (talk) 22:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So in summary what are we left with? Lots of sources in the article yes, but a classic case of quantity not quality. Not all of them even mention her and when we get down to it, they either are associated with her, are unreliable sources or mention her very briefly. The in depth coverage in reliable sources is therefore lacking and WP:GNG is therefore not met. Valenciano (talk) 20:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds more like the crux of your argument is that the current version of the article isn't very good. But a young article does not imply a non-notable subject.
As you look through the references, none of them claim "this person is famous". But notability is the standard. The Councilwoman is notable-- indeed, SF bay area media have been 'taking note' of her for many years now. Even the NYT has taken note of her.
The article could be better-- there ARE many more sources out there-- but let's invoke WP:SOFIXIT, not deletion. --HectorMoffet (talk) 21:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Notability as in, "she got a few brief mentions here and there in passing in stories about other issues or people" is NOT the standard. The standard is at WP:NOTABILITY: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list. "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." The coverage in almost all the sources listed is about issues. Not about her. I completely disagree that the NYT has taken note of her, its article is plainly about the issue of marijuana, not about her, that applies to the bulk of the other sources, as I've detailed above.
The crux of my argument isn't that article isn't very good, that's fixable. It's that the sources in the article aren't good enough to sustain an independent bio and further that searching for other sources per WP:BEFORE doesn't turn up anything better. Valenciano (talk) 22:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I guess your ideal Wikipedia is just a lot thinner than my ideal Wikipedia. Oakland has a population about the size of the nation of Iceland-- the citizens of those places deserve Wikipedia's help in documenting the basic verifiable facts about their leaders. Sometimes there may not any RS to go on, but in this case, there are. --HectorMoffet (talk) 06:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See my reply to George Louis below. Valenciano (talk) 13:42, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Agreeing with HectorMoffet. My "Keep" was for meeting WP:GNG, not for meeting a "being famous" criteria which does not exist. North8000 (talk) 20:14, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The sources already present pass the GNG, and more are likely to exist (not all news sources in the area have online archives that are indexed by google news.) She's an influential city council member in a large city who has received at least some media coverage focused on her, and, additionally, all of the tangential mentions of her already posted mean that there are certainly enough sources to write a well verified article about her. Kevin (talk) 22:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Such arguments often come up in these type of discussions: "Readers have a right to find out info about person X" or "Wikipedia has a duty to its readers to provide info about..." but they have absolutely no basis in policy, readers have no such right and wikipedia has no such duty. In fact such arguments are specifically discouraged. WP:INTERESTING says: "Wikipedia editors are a pretty diverse group of individuals, and potentially, any subject or topic may be of interest to some editor somewhere. However, personal interest or apathy is not a valid reason to keep or delete an article."
The question per policy that we need to ask ourselves in deletion debates are: has the person met the notability criteria or have they met the criteria for their profession? The person clearly fails WP:POLITICIAN. On WP:NOTABILITY, (If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list. "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention) I've detailed above why the refs provided are insufficient, being as they are either blogs, sources connected with the subject (East Bay Young Dems/Oakland council page) or trivial mentions which do not address the subject directly in detail, are about other people (the police chief, another politician) or in some cases, fail to mention her at all.
We need to consider this on the basis of what Wikipedia says is notable, not on what editors believe should be notable. Valenciano (talk) 13:42, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep She seems to have adequate coverage to qualify for notability. See [1] and [2] which show multiple stories about her in multiple Independent Reliable Sources, at least two of which (the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle) are regional rather than purely local in scope. Valenciano please note: notability is independent of the article's current state. Whether or not you consider the sources currently provided in the article to be sufficient, sources DO exist which prove notability. --MelanieN (talk) 16:38, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:28, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Relisting comment. I was going to close this as "delete" or "no consensus" after discounting the "X needs to know about Y" type !votes and consensus is that the sources currently in the article don't cut it but MelenieM has suggested that there is independent significant coverage from regional news sources found by google news but not currently in the article so I'm giving this some more time to consider such sources. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Kevin (talk) 01:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, a losing candidate? So I take it - you haven't read the article? Kevin (talk) 23:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Meta Comment: What's it like on this side of deletion.
My time is surprisingly valuable to me. I have family duties, I have work duties, I balance them all.
I gave Wikipedia a gift of my time. I gave it a little piece of my life.
If you keep and improve it, I will be vastly more inclined to donate even more of my time in the future.
If you take my time and throw it in the trash, I will have a different reaction. I probably won't feel very welcome here at Wikipedia, and I probably won't feel very open to giving Wikipedia any of my own time-- after all why waste more time on things that will just get deleted??
Again, the point about isn't me personally-- I'm just one person, not an important one, and I'll probably keep contributing anyway. But u guys need to know-- deletions have a very real, lasting emotional consequence that cripples editor morale. Make sure you realize that, make sure you remember that "Delete !votes" carry a cost to our mission.
I do understand-- we must have deletions-- bad-faith contributions, illegal contributions, etc. And I understand my personal feelings can't influence this deletion discussion-- that'd be inappropriate.
But in future-- if we continue deleting our inexperienced volunteers contributions, left and right, for failure to comply with byzantine codes of rules that are indecipherable to newcomers- we will see recruitment dry up, at least with "normal people".
(End Comment, pls disregard these remarks in closing, I recognize they're meta-issues not relevant to the actual issue at hand, but this seemed best venue) --HectorMoffet (talk) 20:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: the above "meta-comment" was also posted at the Village Pump, and the discussion is taking place there. --MelanieN (talk) 16:17, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep it because she is a Notable person, having been elected to a public office and having the required Reliable Sources, not simply because she is Interesting to any individual Editor. Yes, some of the sources are rather self-serving, but they can be discounted in favor of the neutral sources. It really doesn't matter how big or small the city is: The criterion is Notability. She and the other Oakland City Council members are Notable and should be included in WP when there are Reliable Sources to prove it. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:21, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My initial plan was to try to generate good articles for all the oakland city councilmembers who meet GNG, but obviously, only if Wikipedia wants me to attempt to do so.--HectorMoffet (talk) 02:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment; being a city council member doesn't make someone instantaneously notable. We had a series of recent AfDs regarding city council members from Sacramento, some that were deleted, others were kept. They were judged by the same standards of GNG, BIO, and POLITICIAN like any other politician. Now due to the level of one's office a subject maybe considered automatically notable, such as a mayor of a major city, however past consensus was that Council Members are not automatically notable as their office hasn't been considered notable in and of themselves. For instance should there be an article for every councilmember of a City of population greater than X? If so what is X? --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 16:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't decide in advance, we let the reliable sources dictate it for us. If you're on city council of a sleepy little village with no real budget and major agenda, then you won't get covered in the major press.
If your city council role is very important, then journalists will have taken note of it, and we in turn will be able to write an article using only reliable sources.
We can write a thousand words of policy creep, but notable just means "Enough Reliable Sources available to write a good, verified article". --HectorMoffet (talk) 19:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Postscript-- if we were to set a 'target goal', I would shoot for trying to write good articles for elected officials who represent 100,000 or more people-- that's about how many constituents a UK MP has, for example. But that number's pretty meaningless-- WP:RS means we have to decide on case by case basis. --HectorMoffet (talk) 19:18, 29 February 2012 (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.
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