Jump to content

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rosemarie Bryan

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 redirect to Ward 1 Etobicoke North. Those arguing to delete are entirely correct in pointing out that awards and achievements that have no secondary, intellectually independent coverage do not contribute toward notability. Setting those arguments aside, whether or not WP:BLP1E is applicable rests on whether the individual in question ends up receiving lasting coverage in secondary sources; and the evidence provided for this is weak. The argument to redirect has not been rebutted, but it should go without saying that recreation without substantive new material would be disruptive. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:05, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Rosemarie Bryan[edit]

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

Rosemarie Bryan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

WP:BLP1E of a politician, not properly sourced as having a strong claim to passing WP:NPOL. The notability claim is that she was appointed to Toronto City Council a few weeks ago and then immediately resigned her seat within a few hours after somebody caught some old social media stuff that had been missed in the vetting process -- and while Toronto City Councillors tend to be presumed to pass WP:NPOL #2 in principle, it's not an absolute guarantee: their notability depends on doing noteworthy things in office and getting GNG-worthy coverage of their work in office, and a person whose entire term on council began and ended on the same day cannot be deemed permanently notable forever just because she technically served on council for a few hours.
Further, this doesn't make much of a case that she had preexisting notability for other reasons prior to her fifteen minutes of fame, or that she would pass WP:GNG: this is referenced almost entirely to a mix of primary sources that are not support for notability at all (the city council's own website, the self-published websites of non-media organizations directly affiliated with the statements, etc.) and community hyperlocals covering her in local-interest contexts that aren't encyclopedically notable -- of the just four footnotes that come from real GNG-worthy media, one is just verifying her resignation; one won't let me read it to see how much it actually says about her, but is dated 14 years ago and is being used only to support her birthdate and the death of her mother rather than anything noteworthy; and two just glancingly mention her existence in the process of being about her predecessor, and thus don't help to establish her notability as she isn't their subject.
Serving on city council for a grand total of five hours is not "inherently" notable enough to exempt her from having to have a lot more GNG-worthy sourcing than this, and there's no real claim to be made that any of this would pass the ten year test for enduring importance. The only content we need about this can be covered off by the two sentences about it that were already present in Ward 1 Etobicoke North two full weeks before this standalone BLP got created -- but none of it is "inherently" notable enough to get her a standalone BLP at all. Bearcat (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians and Canada. Bearcat (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep If the article was rewritten to indicate she was the shortest serving city counsellor, it would be more of a "hook". Plenty of GNG sources if you search for websites from Canada, almost too many to list here. Oaktree b (talk) 20:17, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The only sources that exist are the one-day blip of "councillor appointed and then resigns the same day", with absolutely no non-trivial coverage outside that brief period. Don't be fooled by the raw number of hits that her name seems to generate on Google News: just four of them are actually about her at all, and are all from that same-day blip, while all of the others are either glancing namechecks of her existence in coverage about Michael Ford or accidental hits on unrelated news stories that have absolutely nothing to do with either her or Michael Ford, but briefly had her name present in an "other news" sidebar on the one day that she was newsworthy (e.g. this, which doesn't mention her name at all even though her name does appear in the Google News summary of it, because her name happened to be in a sidebar headline for a brief period on June 24 — and her coverage is so limited that this link came from the first page of Google News results). Bearcat (talk) 20:25, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I created the article and I don't feel good that it was nominated for deletion without me being notified. Fortunately, I follow it, so caught this. I contend that she is notable and it's her very short term in office that makes her notable. If being a city councillor in a medium sized nation's biggest city isn't enough, that's OK, because she was the subject of an article in Jet Magazine in 2008 about her weight loss goals and her mother's death. She's the founder of an organisation. She won an award that was issued by the Premier of the province. There's tons of media about her very short time in office. If that was the only thing, I might not have created this due to WP:BLP1E reasons, but in the context of the other stuff, I think she meets WP:GNG. I don't think that the sources being local is a negative thing, I don't think WP:GNG says anything about that. Comparing her to her peers, who the nominator says tend to be notable, ironically I think her oddly short time (she resigned in newsworthy circumstances) makes her more notable. CT55555 (talk) 21:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Her weight loss goals don't help to make her notable at all. Awards don't help to establish notability if you have to depend on the awarding organization's own self-published website about itself to source the claim — an award has to be sourceable to GNG-worthy media coverage, establishing that the award itself is a notable one, before it can make its winners notable for winning it. Founding an organization is not a notability freebie if you have to rely on primary sources to support the claim because GNG-worthy media coverage about her founding of an organization is lacking. There isn't "tons" of media about her time in office; there's a one-day blip of local-interest coverage in Toronto's local media, and absolutely nothing before or since. And on and so forth: none of this is "inherently" notable in the absence of much, much better sourcing than what's been shown here. Local media isn't always verboten in Wikipedia articles, but if a person has purely local media coverage in purely local-interest contexts that isn't necessarily always enough to get them over WP:GNG in lieu of having to actually pass an SNG. Bearcat (talk) 21:09, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Most media occurred on 25th June 2022. But some later too :
  1. you can read mentions about it days later here: https://www.thestar.com/local-toronto-scarborough/news/2022/06/29/north-etobicoke-residents-need-toronto-council-advocate-community-says.html?itm_source=parsely-api
  2. Canadaland discussed the incident on a podcast here: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/793-you-dont-both-sides-human-rights/
  3. And here: https://thecaribbeancamera.com/tag/torontos-councillor-resigns-hours-after-appointment/
WP:NOTBLP1E informs us well and reminds us that it's OK to have articles about people who are mostly known for one thing, if the other things are small and brief and not notable individually.
Canadaland podcast is not local reporting, it's national. CT55555 (talk) 21:21, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Mentions" of her in coverage about something else don't help to make her notable at all, and podcasts are not reliable or GNG-building sources. It doesn't matter whether Canadaland is "local" or "national" — it's a podcast, which means it isn't notability-supporting sourcing regardless of where anybody thinks it falls on a local-vs-national scale. And The Caribbean Camera is a weekly publication, which means the fact that its article was dated June 30 isn't evidence that an event that happened less than a week before that was getting any kind of sustained coverage — that just means it published an article about the incident in the first possible issue for it to have published an article about the incident in, and you haven't shown evidence that it's continued to cover her or the incident since then. And it's a community hyperlocal in Toronto, which means it isn't national or international coverage either. Bearcat (talk) 21:26, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why you put mentions in quotation marks, I didn't say mentions. Two of three provides significant coverage. She's the subject of one and discussed in the third. And I think the guideline doesn't match what you say. From WP:GNG Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. So I think indeed as long as it's significant, she does not need to be the main topic. It's a 52 minute podcast, it talks about various things. CT55555 (talk) 21:30, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The first of those three links ("North Etobicoke residents need Toronto council advocate") is a trivial mention; it merely glancingly namechecks her existence in an article whose core subject is something else. A person doesn't have to be the sole subject of an article for it to count, but she does have to be more than just a name that happens to get mentioned in it.
And I never said that the problem with Canadaland hinged on whether she was the sole subject of the entire episode or just a part of it — the problem with Canadaland hinges on the fact that Canadaland is a podcast, and podcasts are not notability-making sources at all. Bearcat (talk) 21:35, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I sense we're not going to agree here, so maybe we should end it here. (I do agree one of three was trivial) But just one question, is the preclusion of podcasts your opinion, consensus, policy or guideline? Can you point to something on that? CT55555 (talk) 21:49, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've not seen anything conclusive regarding podcasts, but the topic does pop up on talk pages from time to time, e.g. Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Archive_65#Add_podcasts_to_user-generated_content. -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:26, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If its case by case, then please note I'm quoting one of the most popular podcasts in the country and it was presented by a notable political journalist. CT55555 (talk) 22:32, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on process I think most editors would object to not being notified of a proposed deletion. And I object again that the justification to delete has been changed after I've already defended the first version of the justification. Normally editors strike things out once someone has replied to them. CT55555 (talk) 22:14, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fixing a typo hardly counts as a major, unreasonable or objectionable change to the deletion rationale. Bearcat (talk) 00:50, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLP1E is a very specific justification, whereas WP:BLP is wide ranging. I'd have responded differently if you started by mentioning BLP1E. The edit without any strikethrough now makes it looks to anyone reading that I avoided the BLP1E issue. If anyone reads this far, the earlier award, the magazine article, the organization she founded, are all reasons that WP:BLP1E doesn't apply and the essay WP:NOTBLP1E excellently explains that even minor stuff before or after a major event remove the commonly-misunderstood BLP1E justification to delete. CT55555 (talk) 01:44, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I already explained above: the award is not a notability claim if you cannot source it to media coverage to establish the notability of the award; awards that have to be sourced to the awarding organization's own self-published content about themselves cannot make their winners notable for winning them, and only awards that get media coverage can do that. Founding an organization is not a notability claim if you have to depend on the organization's self-published content about itself to source her founding of it; that only becomes a notability claim if you can source it to media coverage about her founding of said organization. You explicitly said that the magazine article discusses her in the context of her personal weight loss goals, which means it isn't support for notability — it would be fine for use as sourcing for stray facts after her notability for other reasons was already fully established, but it does not contribute to making her notable because it isn't about her doing anything that would constitute a notability claim. If the only notable thing she has any media coverage for is resigning from city council just five hours after her appointment, then she most certainly is a BLP1E — awards that don't get media coverage don't contribute to notability, work that doesn't get media coverage doesn't contribute to notability, diet and exercise profiles don't contribute to notability. Bearcat (talk) 02:06, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree that BLP1E applies. I referenced WP:NOTBLP1E and you've not comemnted on that, so I'll be more explicit. BLP1E says not to have an article only if three criteria are met. One of them is If that person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual
She's been appearing in the news since a while ago. Maybe you missed page 46 here Sadly it's a scan off an offline source, so I don't know the source, but I think it's fair to conclude that this award-winning, organization-founding, news-appearing person who took a role at city council is not current and is also not likely going to remain a low profile individual. CT55555 (talk) 02:17, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't "miss" that; it's a primary source, self-published by a directly affiliated organization, which is not support for notability at all as it isn't GNG-worthy third party media coverage. An award can only make its winners notable for winning it if it's an award that gets GNG-worthy media coverage to establish the notability of the award; an award cannot make its winners notable for winning it if you have to depend on content self-published by non-media organizations she was directly affiliated with. Bearcat (talk) 02:25, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think "Program aims at helping Jamaica's kids" (and sorry, page 47 in the link above) is self published. And I don't accept your dismissal of the Jet Magazine article either. For BLP1E to apply, you need to somehow justify rejecting both of them and also argue that she's going to remain low profile. All that needs to apply for BLP1E to justify deletion. CT55555 (talk) 04:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Share is still a minor community hyperlocal in Toronto covering her in a purely local-interest context that doesn't meet any Wikipedia notability criteria, and even if you can find something that looks like a newspaper article it still isn't a usable source if there's no way to identify the date on which it was published — one absolutely essential feature of any source is the degree to which it is or isn't recoverable (e.g. from archiving databases or newspaper microfilms) if the currently-available weblink ever dies, so a proper source always needs to provide all of the information needed to locate it if somebody ever has to go hunting for it again because the existing weblink gets taken down. So a copy of a small hyperlocal newspaper's article being embedded inside an otherwise primary source PDF is not a GNG-worthy source if it doesn't identify the date on which the newspaper actually published that article, because it doesn't provide sufficient information to recover the article if that PDF is ever taken off its host site.
GNG is not just "count up all the media sources and keep anybody who surpasses an arbitrary number" — GNG does also take into account the context of what any given source is covering the person for, so a source that exists in the context of a person's weight loss goals simply is not contributing anything to the notability equation. It would be fine as supplementary verification of stray facts after her notability had already been nailed to the wall by sources that were covering her in notable contexts, but it doesn't add notability points because it isn't about her doing a notable thing. It's the same principle whereby a person isn't necessarily notable enough for an encyclopedia article just because the homes section of their local newspaper did a profile on the interior design of their condo — having a lovely home isn't a notability criterion per se, so a source that's covering somebody in that context is not a GNG-building source just because it came from a newspaper. It could be used to support additional facts if the person already had sufficient other coverage in more notable contexts to pass a Wikipedia inclusion test, but it doesn't make that person notable because it isn't about them doing an encyclopedically notable thing.
As for the question of "high" vs. "low" profile, a person's place on that scale isn't determined by weight loss profiles and local community involvement awards that have to be sourced to the awards' own self-published websites about themselves: it's determined by the extent to which somebody does or doesn't have a claim to broad significance to the entire country or world. A person might have a significant profile in her own local community, and still not be high-profile for the purposes of an international encyclopedia — I live in Toronto and had never heard of Rosemarie Bryan in my life until June 24, and it's profoundly unlikely that the average resident of Vancouver, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Montreal, New York City, Stockholm or Johannesburg had ever heard of her (or will ever hear of her again) either. So for the purposes of an international encyclopedia, the highness or lowness of her profile isn't a question of how much profile she does or doesn't have and is or isn't likely to retain within Ward 1 Etobicoke, it's a question of how much profile she does or doesn't have and is or isn't likely to retain across Canada and/or internationally. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Robin Buxton Potts would beg to differ. And even deletion here wouldn't preclude the recreation of a redirect to the ward; deletion and redirection are not mutually contradictory outcomes, and the only difference hinges on whether there's any value in retaining the edit history of a full standalone article behind a redirect or not. Bearcat (talk) 00:48, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While every listed councillor in the links above has a page, indeed you are correct that one other very recently appointed councillor does not yet have a page. I'll probably create one for her in the next few days, now that I know this. I hope people will see the larger point, that Toronto City Councillors very much tend to have articles. CT55555 (talk) 02:02, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've been trying to create an article about Robin Buxton Potts — the depth and quality of reliable GNG-worthy sourcing needed to do it just isn't there. As much as I might wish it were, because she's my city councillor now, it just isn't. Toronto city councillors tend to get articles, yes, but that's because they tend to have substantial and ongoing coverage of their work on the council, enabling us to write substantive articles about their political significance that pass WP:NPOL #2; it's not an guaranteed inclusion freebie that exempts a person from having to serve on council for more than five hours before resigning. Bearcat (talk) 02:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do respect that. But as @Oaktree b first pointed out, quitting within hours of a high profile appointment is unavoidably newsworthy, unique, notable, maybe we should fine the Guinness Book of Records and alert them about the new entry they need to make. CT55555 (talk) 02:24, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's a reason for the two sentences that already existed in the ward's article. It is not a reason for a full standalone BLP of a person who has no other basis for notability because you have to depend on primary sources to expand the article due to a lack of other media coverage. Bearcat (talk) 02:28, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
She works for the Salvation Army here in Toronto, I was hoping to find something about that, but, not much else turns up. Oaktree b (talk) 02:39, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete/redirect As per comments by Beccaynr above and not wanting to repear the same arguments, I'm not seeing enough for me to say it passes WP:GNG. There is some independant coverage, yes, but not what I'd call significant. WP:TOOSOON at best. -Kj cheetham (talk) 08:52, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I have just found this bundle of documents, that includes three media articles about the subject. The first three pages includes media articles are follows:
  1. Tamara Shephard, Etobicoke resident to send toys to Jamaica for Christmas, 6 Dec 2000, Etobicoke Guardian
  2. Sabrina Divell, Etobicoke woman offers expertise to Jamaican government, 4 Aug 2000, Etobicoke Guardian
  3. Tamara Shephard, Sharing hope across the miles, 3 Dec 2000, Scarborough Mirror
This has allowed me to add details about her education and her meeting with the Jamaican prime minister in 2000. reducing the reliance on content written by her or her employer. Coverage is local, but the essay WP:NOTBLP1E speaks to that. And while the articles involve interviews, I think they suggest notability and speak to the WP:BLP1E issues that I've disagreed with above, specifically rejecting the idea that she is known for one event and also rejecting the idea that she is a low profile individual. CT55555 (talk) 03:16, 25 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per the Who is a low-profile individual explanatory essay linked from WP:BLP1E, in the media attention section, low-profile includes May have been quoted or even profiled in a local or special-interest newspaper, website, magazine or other publication, so local interview-based coverage does not appear to help mitigate the concern about WP:BLP1E, and limited secondary content does not contribute much to WP:BASIC/WP:GNG notability. Beccaynr (talk) 14:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I agree with everything Bearcat writes above. It looks like the article is really about a tweet which prompted her resignation and the rest was built around that to support its inclusion (that's not the order in the article, but I'm guessing it was precomposed offline.)CorrTimes (talk) 01:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Judging from CT55555's contribution history, it looks like the real purpose of the Bryan article was to promote Canadaland news editor Johnathan Goldsbie, whose tweets got her fired. Not a good reason to have a negative article about someone so obscure. CorrTimes (talk) 04:35, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify its WP:TOOSOON >> Lil-unique1 (talk) — 23:22, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, per Bearcat and Beccaynr. She fails BLP1E handily, and the idea that the "Spirit of Etobicoke" award has more than an epsilon fraction of the prestige necessary to pass ANYBIO or any other award-based criterion is frankly baffling. This woman is a low-profile individual whose sole alleged source of notability is a trivial event that will be exceedingly unlikely to attract sustained coverage. Scrounging up scattered mentions and trivia from hyper-local papers actually makes this even more unencyclopedic as it just increases the ratio of UNDUE:DUE content. JoelleJay (talk) 06:53, 28 July 2022 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rosemarie_Bryan&oldid=1101157664"