Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas Lankey

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. Sandstein 07:54, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thomas Lankey[edit]

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Despite Edison crossing the arbitrary 100K mark in population, Lankey is still a local politician with none of the broad reliable and verifiable coverage needed to establish notability, either in the article or available by a Google search. Alansohn (talk) 20:52, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:35, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 21:35, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Keep" Article has existed since 2014, demonstrating consensus to keep. Edison is 5th largest town in NJ, with over 100,000 pop.Djflem (talk) 22:53, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The amount of time that an article has existed does not constitute evidence of a consensus to keep — since it's always possible for anybody to create an article about anything, but the determination of a deletion or retention consensus requires somebody to notice whether it's complying with our rules or not, the length of time it takes for the latter thing to happen is entirely irrelevant to whether the article is keepable or not. And the 100K test is not a permanent notability criterion in and of itself — over 100K, mayors are initially granted a temporary presumption of notability pending the addition of better sources, but they don't get a permanent inclusion freebie just because the city's population has passed that arbitrary mark: they can still be deleted if the sourcing and substance remains inadequate two or three years after their election.
Which is the case here: all this does is state that he exists and then briefly delve into his past résumé, and it's referenced entirely to a mix of primary sources and routine local coverage of the mayoral election itself — there's no substance and no sourcing being shown here at all about anything he did in the mayor's chair: it does name one goal he articulated while he was still just the mayor-elect, but contains no content to clarify whether he actually succeeded in achieving that goal or not once he was the actual mayor.
To be kept on a permanent basis, a mayor has to be shown as the subject of enough reliable source coverage about his mayoralty to clear WP:NPOL #2: mayors of cities over 100K can still be deleted if they aren't properly shown to have that, and mayors of cities under 100K can be kept if they are. It's the quality of sourcing that constitutes the difference between keep and delete for a mayor — the only thing the size of the city controls is whether the initial creation of the article gets a temporary "grace period" to allow for improvement or not. It does not confer any permanent exemption from having to be better-sourced and better-substanced than this three years later. Bearcat (talk) 17:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment While I agree there is a desire for better and more complete sourcing in all of the articles, I don't understand your conclusion. I am not sure why you are making the distinction of "notability pending the addition of better sources?" Broadly most SNG policies discuss a presumption of notability, which does not rest upon routine sources, the local nature of the source, or primary sources (the latter can be used to develop an article [see WP:Primary: "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge"]). If an individual is a public figure and meets the notability guidelines WP:NPOL (supplemented by WP:POLOUTCOMES, then all we really need (and have required) in terms of sourcing is that the individual held the position described in the article (which can be an official source).

To me, there is a large distinction in how we treat individuals based on who is a public figure and who is (or will likely remain) a low-profile individual. In general, without being explicit about the distinction, we have treated losing candidates, and elected officials holding relatively minor posts* (*not a term of art, but to me encompassing most city and county council members, small city mayors, and the like), as low-profile individuals. With low-profile individuals there is a greater presumption of privacy, and as such, greater scrutiny of the sourcing to see if the subject meets WP:BLP. --Enos733 (talk) 18:21, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Except that the notability guidelines for politicians are quite clear that a mayor's notability depends on the sourcing. There is no population cutoff beyond which a mayor is automatically kept forever despite lacking any sources or any real substance — adequate sourcing and substance being present in the article is the notability test for a mayor of any size of city. The old "population test" that used to get bad articles kept anyway has been deprecated as not applicable to the notability of a mayor anymore — it's now adequate sourcing or bust, regardless of whether the place has a population of ten thousand, a hundred thousand or five million. Bearcat (talk) 22:42, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the population test has been depreciated, as I remember when there were healthy discussions of whether 50,000 was adequate for the presumption of notability (and I was one who said that that standard was too low) and for city councilmembers, there was some discussion about "global cities" (also depreciated), I don't recall a point where the population standard was depreciated to a degree that it serves no purpose. I still see value in a population threshold (because at some point you have elected officials crossing the line from being a low-profile elected official to a major public figure [and yes, I know those terms do not quite align with the standard for notability]). While extreme, there are some candidates for office who are unopposed for election or may not even be known to much of their city's residents. At the same time, there is a certain threshold of being in the public spotlight to run as the chief executive of a large city. Where that distinction 'really' lies is a matter of interpretation, but Wikipedia's guidelines treat low-profile individuals differently (and with more deference to individual privacy) while a public figure has a lower threshold. Similarly, there is a recognition that the quality of journalism is generally different between a purely local paper and a regional paper. Local papers may be a repository of press releases (reprints of primary sources), while a larger paper might do more investigative work and independent fact-checking. So, in this case, size does matter, at least to me. --Enos733 (talk) 23:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per my response to Bearcat @18:21 and that the subject serves in the office of mayor of a large city (greater than 100,000) and is the subject in multiple articles in the The Star-Ledger, the largest newspaper by circulation in New Jersey. --Enos733 (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Only two articles in The Star-Ledger are being shown in the article as written. Any mayor of anywhere could always show two sources in the local paper, so it takes quite a lot more than just two sources to get a mayor kept. Bearcat (talk) 22:48, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have the time to go through all of the sources, but a quick check of Google News has about 1,490 hits for "'Thomas Lankey' Edison" Some of them are reports about the local election, others appear to be a bit more about the subject and his work in office. (Story plus interview here) --Enos733 (talk) 23:32, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak~~ Keep ~~for now~~ – Somehow, the interview mentioned above has got into an Indian newspaper ([1]), yet with a different start to the article. Both have got leads, thus failing to count low and do have SIGCOV outside of that interview. This is definitely outside local sourcing, and with my standard that local sources count as half a source, 2 sources are met. Also, is nj reliable? I'm asking this because then notability wouldn't be so dubious. J 947^{^{^{( c ) ^(m)}}} 04:10, 14 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, nj is local as well. Also, the NYT—in which I agree is only local in this area—goes here as well. Denouncing New Jersey coverage of this mayor as 'local' is very similar to denouncing national coverage of a mayor in Akureyri, Iceland. This is definitely local coverage for example. The Washington Post and The New York Times have both got a reputation for reliability, and even so they are both in a different state to Edison and should at least be counted as half a source each. Some math in my head shows that the number of full sources is 3 or above, so I've removed the 'weak' on my rationale. J 947 ^{^{^{(c · m)}}} 19:27, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:46, 18 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The coverage is routine and not enough to show notability. We have had articles since 2006 that routinely come up for deletion and are deleted. The number of articles in Wikipedia in propotion to the number of editors, combined with the fact that it is a four step process to delete (do a before study of sources, edit the page, write a deletion nomination, post it on the deletion log page, and this is ignoring the need to generally post more notices of it), which takes a lot of time and energy to be good at, means that an article existing for any amount of time shows no consensus for anything.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:27, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that the coverage is routine. He is mentioned in the New York Times responding to a racist mailing opposing him. A similar article was featured in the Washington Post. Even if the City of Edison was not considered a city of regional prominence, our expectations for a local mayor is the receive national coverage. However, I contend that in cities of a certain size, over 100,000 makes sense to me, and where the subject was independently elected (as opposed to being selected by their city council), the mayor becomes a public figure regardless of which secondary sources cover the individual and their actions. --Enos733 (talk) 06:52, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that the New York Times has national distribution doesn't reify it into national coverage for the purposes of GNGing the mayor of a town that's located inside the NYT's local coverage area. It just demonstrates that the local media are paying attention to him in exactly the same way that local media always pay attention to local mayors, and does not prove that he's recognized as a national figure who's getting attention beyond the local media. It's the place where the coverage originates that has to expand away from local before a notability standard that requires nationalized coverage can be said to have passed, not the local media's distribution range. Bearcat (talk) 23:34, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:09, 25 November 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.