Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Luther Burgess

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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. Daniel (talk) 23:43, 17 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

David Luther Burgess[edit]

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David Luther Burgess (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Biography of a person not reliably sourced as notable. The Military Cross, while a valid notability claim if the article were well-sourced, is not "inherently" notable enough to confer an automatic notability freebie on every recipient in the absence of a WP:GNG-worthy volume of reliable source coverage — it was presented to 37,104 people in WWI, so they can't all get an instant notability pass without having to actually source anything — but his military career is dispatched here with one short paragraph referenced to an unreliable source that isn't support for notability at all. Instead, the article (and its sole other source) are much, much more profoundly focused on his unsuccessful candidacies for political office as a civilian — but people don't get articles just for running as candidates in elections they did not win, so this isn't a basis for notability in and of itself either. The key to making him notable enough for inclusion would be to find much more solid sourcing, and write much more substance, about his military career than this, but I've tried the databases of historical media coverage that are available to me, and all I'm actually finding about him is temporary blips of campaign coverage in the context of his unsuccessful candidacies, with nothing that would bolster his notability on WP:NMIL grounds at all. Bearcat (talk) 22:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. CommanderWaterford (talk) 22:31, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Notwithstanding the somewhat slapdash state of the article, there's plenty of substantial coverage about him. Examples: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7. He also got his MBE—not currently mentioned in the article—which could put notability beyond doubt by itself, and, certainly, appears to do so when combined with the Military Cross and other coverage. And even leaving aside such indicia of notability, the articles linked here are clearly "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." --Usernameunique (talk) 00:37, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Two of those are literally just photographs of him unattached to any substantive news story, which is not a type of "coverage" that helps to secure notability — and most of the rest of them are campaign coverage in the context of his unsuccessful runs for office, which is also not a type of coverage that secures the notability of a person all by itself. Every candidate in every election everywhere can always show a handful of campaign coverage, so the existence of a handful of campaign coverage does not automatically make a candidate more special than other candidates all by itself in the absence of any substantive coverage outside that context. Bearcat (talk) 13:38, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep we normally keep flying aces and that, his MBE and the combined coverage identified by Usernameunique satisfy WP:GNG. Mztourist (talk) 06:46, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There may be other grounds for keeping this, but being an MBE is not one. It is a higher honour that I have ever received, but it's still pretty minor and commonplace. He would need to be at least two levels higher, a CBE, before we could think about WP:ANYBIO. Phil Bridger (talk) 10:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per very well reasoned argument of the nominator.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:14, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. We have always kept flying aces. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:52, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Not without any reliable source coverage about their purported flying ace status, we haven't. Bearcat (talk) 15:49, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The claim is sourced in the article on his pilot, James Fitz-Morris (see "Guttman (2002), pp.22–23"). Perhaps Dawkeye, who added this source, could chime in here with the relevant excerpt. But in any event, being a flying ace is only one path for Burgess to establishing notability. There are at least four others:
  1. The MBE ("a well-known and significant award or honor" establishes notability for any biography)
  2. The military cross (ditto, making two such awards)
  3. The "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (establishing the notability of any topic); and
  4. The "significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject" (establishing the notability of any person)
Notably, the latter two do not exclude campaign-related coverage from their ambit—and in any event, almost all of the articles I linked above include significant biographical information, and only one is primarily about an unsuccessful campaign. --Usernameunique (talk) 23:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Coverage that exists in the context of an unsuccessful campaign for political office does not help to establish a person's notability all by itself. As I already stated above, we have an established consensus that candidates are not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia just for being candidates per se — but since every candidate in every election everywhere can always show some evidence of campaign coverage, then if the existence of some campaign coverage were all it took to hand a candidate a WP:GNG-based exemption from WP:NPOL then we would have to deprecate that consensus and always keep an article about every candidate for anything. So a candidate is exempted from having to win the election and hold the office only in one of two specific scenarios: either (a) they can be well-sourced as passing WP:GNG for some other reason independently of the candidacy, or (b) they can demonstrate a compelling reason why their candidacy was somehow much, much more special than everybody else's candidacies, in some way that would pass the ten year test for enduring significance. The simple fact that some campaign coverage exists is not in and of itself enough, because there is no candidate in any election for whom some campaign coverage doesn't exist.
Now, as for your assertion that "only one is primarily about an unsuccessful campaign": out of those seven hits, I count four that exist because of his unsuccessful campaigns ("Contests Seat With King Today", "Candidate For Civic Office, David L. Burgess, 69, Dies", "I First Saw" and "The Burgess Story: An impressive record of service"); one that's a mere photograph of him (also not a type of source that helps to support notability); one that just briefly blurbs him in the 1960s equivalent to a listicle, without saying anything about him that would give him an instant notability pass; and one that's just local coverage in the local media of his own hometown in a not inherently notability-making context.
GNG is not just about counting the number of footnotes that a person has, and keeping anybody who happens to surpass some arbitrary number: GNG also tests the footnotes for the context of what they're covering the person for, and deprecates some types of coverage as much less notability-making than other types (such as campaign coverage during an election campaign counting for much, much less than political reporting about actual officeholders between elections.) Bearcat (talk) 02:41, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Except for the nom, the delete !votes are "per nom" and the keep !votes are "he's a flying ace". This warrants further discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:42, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should respect RandomCanadian's relist here. Most of the newspaper.com coverage is of him as a candidate, but we don't keep articles about losing candidates. Some are about his work with the Legion, but pretty much every local newspaper in North America would cover their local fraternal organisations, so that doesn't lend itself to notability. His local obituary refers to him as a "candidate." If you remove all the routine political coverage we don't normally consider, I just don't think notability's been established. SportingFlyer T·C 22:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: seems to be trending towards keep, but perhaps one more go-around will help us get to a consensus
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Go Phightins! 01:09, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The article is not very well written or sourced, so it should be marked for those necessary improvements. The subject barely meets the WP:GNG guidelines but in my opinion is notable. I don’t think it should be deleted, but it definitely needs cleaned up and formatted better. Go4thProsper (talk) 03:19, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the argument by Usernameunique. Also, discounting his failed political campaigns, someone who is a flying ace, MBE, and MC is not someone not notable. A single MBE may not make someone notable, but having three of them is quite notable. This barely pass WP:GNG but passes nonetheless in my opinion. SunDawn (talk) 11:36, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • If we enforce the general principle that unelected candidates aren't notable off the back of routine campaign coverage, I don't see how he passes WP:GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 13:40, 10 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep based on the strength of materials presented by Usernameunique. I believe the argument should be improved, not deleted. Julius177 (talk) 01:19, 13 March 2021 (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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