Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William W. Bennett

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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 keep. Spartaz Humbug! 10:04, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

William W. Bennett[edit]

William W. Bennett (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Non-notable mayor, fails WP:NPOL, has local coverage only. Rusf10 (talk) 18:46, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:29, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of New Jersey-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:29, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:30, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:36, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete the sources are all local, and none come close to identifying an actual claim to notability. Also, there is no indication of on-going secondary coverage of Bennett.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:16, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? The first reference is from October 20, 1995. What part of GNG demands national or international coverage? --RAN (talk) 05:08, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Every single person who was ever mayor of anywhere always gets covered in their local media — so we would always have to keep every article about any mayor if a few pieces of local coverage were all it took. To make a mayor of a small town notable enough for a Wikipedia article, what needs to be shown is that he's significantly more notable than most other mayors of most other small towns, by virtue of his coverage widening beyond the purely local and/or digging out a lot of sources that support a lot of genuinely substantive content about his mayoralty. Bearcat (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And those local stub biographies on mayors of X can be merged into one article "mayors of X", and if "mayors of X" is too small of a list it can be incorporated in the article on the location X. --RAN (talk) 19:58, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. There is no assertion of notability in the article. It appears to be a bio of a mayor who lived an ordinary life. There are refs but they substantiate that he lived a very humdrum life. Szzuk (talk) 15:07, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The assertion of notability as the township's first mayor is backed by coverage covering a 100-year span, from the encyclopedic biography in History of Bergen County, New Jersey, through coverage at the end of the 20th century; if that's not ongoing, I'm not sure how anyone could ever meet that standard. I'm not sure what the "very humdrum life" standard means, but its coverage in reliable and verifiable sources that's the standard for notability, not "non-humdrum". Alansohn (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment- RAN has moved the page to William Weaver Bennett. I am pointing this out to avoid confusion.--Rusf10 (talk) 00:39, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep  Invalid argument for deletion, as GNG doesn't distinguish between non-local and local sources.  Unscintillating (talk) 17:06, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Historian Griffin wrote that William W. Bennett "was the obvious (and unanimous) choice to serve as Teaneck's first township committee chairman, roughly the equivalent of mayor and manager combined."[1]

References

  1. ^ Griffin, Robert D. "The Father of Teaneck: William Weaver Bennett". www.teaneck.org. Teaneck Public Library Online. Retrieved 26 April 2016.
Unscintillating (talk) 05:27, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Merely having a job and run of the mill coverage doesn't pass GNG. Niteshift36 (talk) 20:12, 13 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - In addition to founding Teaneck and serving as its first Mayor, Bennett drew and formed present-day municipal boundaries of modern Bergen County. No small achievement. Scanlan (talk) 01:34, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If he did in fact have a larger role in Bergen County government, now would be the time to present the sources for that because the current article makes no mention of it. Was he put in charge of drawing the municipal boundaries or was he part of a multi-person committee? Provide some more information and I might reconsider my position. Because the article right now only tells me was the first mayor of Teaneck and not much else.--Rusf10 (talk) 01:55, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Everybody who was ever mayor of anywhere at all always gets local coverage, so citing just three or four purely local sources is not enough to get a mayor over GNG in and of itself — if that were all it took, then every mayor of anywhere would always clear GNG without exception. The inclusion test for a mayor is that he can be demonstrated as significantly more notable than the norm for mayors, by virtue of being able to cite more and/or wider coverage than every other mayor could also show — but that's not what's in evidence here, and being the place's first mayor is not an automatic notability boost that exempts him from having to clear the same inclusion standards as other mayors. Bearcat (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • The standard for inclusion comes from our core content policies, especially WP:V and WP:DUE.  The post's "inclusion test" is not Wikilinked, and since Wikipedia's notability metric is binary, the concept of more and less notable is a corruption (Google search: 2. the process by which something, typically a word or expression, is changed from its original use or meaning to one that is regarded as erroneous or debased.).  Unscintillating (talk) 22:43, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • You really need to stop trying to derail AFD discussions with logical non sequiturs. As I've already explained above and am entirely correct about, the simple fact is that every single person who has ever been mayor of anywhere can always be sourced to three or four or five pieces of purely local media coverage — but we do not accept, and neither should we start accepting, that every single person who has ever been mayor of anywhere is always notable enough for their own Wikipedia article. (And by the same token, we do not automatically accept every single person who ever wrote or published a book as being a notable writer, nor do we automatically accept that every single person who can be sourced to local media coverage as having played high school football is a notable sportsperson.) All mayors of all places are not automatically notable just because they were mayors — the difference between a notable mayor and a non-notable mayor most certainly does depend on being able to demonstrate and properly source that the mayor in question is in some substantive way a special case over and above most other mayors of most other places. No mayor of anywhere would ever fail GNG if all we had to do was count up the footnotes and keep any article that had more than two of them, as you seem to think — to deem him notable enough for an article, we require evidence that he's a special case over and above most other mayors of places the size of Teaneck, not just the same volume and range and depth of sourcing that every mayor of anywhere could always show. Bearcat (talk) 23:07, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • A "special case"?  Do you have a Wikilink to source your claim?  Unscintillating (talk) 02:03, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've already been quite clear about my (entirely correct) understanding of the state of AFD consensus when it comes to the notability of mayors. So how about you explain to me your standard for distinguishing a notable mayor from a non-notable one? All you ever do is try to undermine anybody else's understanding of AFD consensus about what it takes to make a mayor notable, without ever proposing any other standard of your own — if an article about a mayor has just two sources (something which every mayor in existence could always show), then you argue that we have to keep because GNG has been met, and if an article about a mayor has just one or zero sources, you argue that we still have to keep because GNG is not determined by the state of sourcing present in the article (and yet you never actually make any attempt to show that any better sources are actually available.) Is it your belief that every mayor of anywhere at all is always inherently notable, such that we have to keep every article about any mayor of anywhere at all? Because you've also claimed in the past that you don't agree with that, and yet you continually try to undermine any attempt whatsoever to distinguish notable mayors from non-notable ones. You argue against people whose understanding is based on the size of the city; you argue against people who state that it requires more than just the local sourcing that any mayor of anywhere could always show; you argue against people who state that it requires more than just one or two sources confirming that he exists; you've argued against people who just asked for more than just one glancing namecheck of the mayor's existence in the wedding announcement of his son; you've even argued against people who just asked for the article to contain more than one sentence stating that "John Smith is a mayor who existed, the end". So what's your actual inclusion standard for mayors, if you agree that not all mayors are automatically notable enough for Wikipedia articles (as you claim to) and yet you oppose literally every possible way of determining which side of the line any given mayor falls on? Bearcat (talk) 02:27, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd say that my views regarding mayors are pretty much straight-line policy.  As said in the first sentence of older versions of WP:V, and still preserved as a footnote, the threshold for inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability.  Since mayors are inherently part of a larger topic, I think it is safe to say that notability is never the threshold for inclusion of a mayor.  If people are opposed to standalone articles on mayors, and want central decision-making, we need to establish the AfEP (Articles for Editing Policy) forum to decide how to organize the material.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:50, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • So, basically, every mayor who who ever mayored anywhere at all. Wrong, and about as far from "straight-line policy" as one can get, but good to know. Mere verifiability is not, and never has been, the inclusion threshold in and of itself, just for the record — that governs what an article's content is or isn't allowed to say, but whether the article is or isn't allowed to exist in the first place is a matter of notability and not just verifiability, because verifiability covers off very nearly everything or everybody who exists at all. Bearcat (talk) 05:33, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, every single mayor who ever mayored does always satisfy your stated criteria for how to define the distinction between a notable mayor and a non-notable one. If it takes just two sources to get a mayor kept because he passes GNG according to you, and there's not a single mayor in human history who couldn't show two sources in reality, then putting those two facts together means we always to keep every mayor who ever mayored. Yet, if you agree that every mayor who ever mayored is not automatically notable, but your own stated principles for determining the notability of a mayor do make every mayor who ever mayored automatically notable, then what other standard do you propose for distinguishing a notable mayor from a non-notable mayor?
    Again, all you ever actually do is point out reasons why you think the existing consensus standards are wrong — I have yet to see you ever propose any alternative standard that would ever actually result in any mayor ever being considered non-notable at all, because "every mayor who ever mayored is always notable" is exactly the result of the standards you seem to apply. Bearcat (talk) 18:24, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Moving the discussion back to Wikipedia's notability doesn't work, because a topic need only be significant to be included in the encyclopedia.
    For your standards strangely you are never able to provide Wikilinks, like your "inclusion test" and your "special case".  Unscintillating (talk) 00:15, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 22:44, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The problem for most mayors is that you can only write a few lines to a paragraph about them when all they have is a single paragraph obituary and a few sentences about their election when they were elected. I think most would agree that those can be combined into a single list of the mayors of a particular location. It is actually quite rare in the pre-Internet age to find full biographical material on almost anyone. Most newspaper local obituaries run a paragraph or two. --RAN (talk) 05:24, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That's all that many Wikipedia contributors actually bother to do for most mayors, because people are lazy and don't actually invest any effort in locating sources beyond what they can find in a two-minute Google search of open web. But it's quite emphatically not all that it's possible to do for most mayors. And at any rate, the key to making a mayor notable is not the finding of biographical material about his life outside of politics, as nice as that is to provide when we can — finding and sourcing actual substance about his political activity does far more to determine whether a mayor is notable or not than whether or not we're able to find the names of his wife and kids or where he went to high school does. What an article about a mayor needs to do to be useful and encyclopedic, but this doesn't, is talk about what he actually did in the mayor's chair. How did he govern? What city-building projects did he launch? That's what people need to know about mayors: their mayoralty much more than their prior career, their politics much more than their family. Bearcat (talk) 05:51, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Like an acorn, a stub can grow into a large article, but you have to start with something. --RAN (talk) 16:08, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I'm not invested in this article (at all), but the idea (stated above) that an article with potential could (and maybe ought to be) researched better to provide historical depth and breadth, 'meaning' and substance to the biographical article about the Mayor (beyond a mere stating of what in the present article seems like - and maybe is - really humdrum). MaynardClark (talk) 03:39, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep sources on page establish WP:SIGCOV.E.M.Gregory (talk)
  • Delete - The context of sources has always been essential to applying GNG. A collection of routine local sources is not considered unusual (or, in other words, notable) for any mayor of any town/city. What matters is wide significant coverage describing the subject, not the anticipated reports that come with the position.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 17:53, 17 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Notability defines significant coverage as "addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content", what part of the current article is original research? WP:Routine defines routine news as "wedding announcements, sports scores, crime logs ... sports matches, film premieres, press conferences". I do not see any of that in the references used, just standard references works on the history of the township and on the history of the county. --RAN (talk) 04:29, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I do see the coverage/sourcing, in several books over the course of many decades, as being more than routine. In my judgment, he meets WP:NPOL. Moreover, his career, the path tho success taken by an immigrant boy in working class family who becomes mayor, his war record (mastering the craft of house-wright in the Union Army and making a carer of it afterwards,) and,especially, his relationship with the powerful William Walter Phelps make his life story a significant part of the origin story of the town of Teaneck. Because the sourcing is reliable, deletion damages the project by making Wikipedia less useful.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:24, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep - I agree with Unscintillating. In particular, the coverage on this figure is in depth enough to satisfy WP:V and WP:NOR. There is not clear reason why the local nature of the reportage creates insurmountable WP:NPOV issues and satisfies other parts of WP:V. I have no problem with local coverage being used when it is reliable, and have no problem with in depth local coverage being used to satisfy NPOV, as is the case here. Smmurphy(Talk) 19:36, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- reasonable sourcing for a local politician. If it were a BLP, I would weigh the arguments for deletion more, but since the subject is long dead, the article is neutral in tone, and sufficiently well sourced, it's a "keep" for me. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:21, 23 December 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.
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