Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dianne M. Keller (4th nomination)

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 delete. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:38, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dianne M. Keller[edit]

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The subject of mayors of Wasilla is out of proportion to the importance of the job. We all know why this is, because a certain famous person once occupied the role. Notability is not inherited however and a close read reveals that much of what is in the sources is more related to what she thinks of Palin than anything to do with her as a person and a mayor of a suburb. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - The most common argument in the first three nominations is that the article should be expanded. It is really difficult do do that, especially when the only sources she has been in date from 2008 (Link to alternate search), all of which have to do with her thoughts regarding Sarah Palin per the nominator. Yoshiman6464 (talk) 04:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For a sense of scale, the local government of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, of which Wasilla is a just a tiny portion, has no article, and neither do any of the leaders of the Borough Assembly, a body governing an area of nearly 25,000 square miles and containing nearly 90,000 people. This is not because nobody has gotten around to it yet, it's becaue local government people are generally not particularly notable and an assosciation by simply occupying the same office as someone who went on to bigger things does not confer notability on every future holder of that post. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:15, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The real problem I see is not so much a lack of notability as a lack of "popularity", which becomes all too obvious when participants in this AFD have made the discussion one about Sarah Palin, while at the same time barely or not even acknowledging Keller's existence. For another sense of scale, the Mat-Su Borough is the second most populous municipality in Alaska per 2015 estimates. It does not have a strong mayor, but the holder of that office has other possible claims to notability, primarily from competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. What's really out of proportion is the weight we've given to the office of mayor of Juneau, also not a strong mayor, especially since the coverage of the untimely death of the last regularly-elected holder of that office epitomized "slow news day reporting". The obsession certain editors have had with that office boils down to the trivia-like aspect of it being the mayor of a state capital, nothing more. We have an editor living in Juneau who has shown a fondness for cherry-picking data to claim that Juneau is Alaska's second-largest community. As a "unified municipality", the Census Bureau reports a single population figure (31,275 in the 2010 Census) for the central city, all of its suburbs and thousands of square miles of wilderness. Fairbanks, which is really Alaska's second-largest community, reports a similar population figure within corporate limits that are 1/100th the size, while over twice as many other people live in the borough outside city limits. There's a point to all this. The claim that Wasilla is "a place with a population of just 8K" is highly misleading and that figure is being manipulated for approximately the same reason as I outline above. The Census Bureau's FactFinder site reports a population of 33,742 for the eight census tracts containing portions of or directly abutting Wasilla city limits. It also reports a population of 52,168 for the 99654 ZIP Code area. Wasilla does have a strong mayor, as one of the above-listed Google hits points out, and is a retail hub serving a population base approaching or into the six digits, so this office is a lot more important than it may appear on the surface. As we are in no way consistent in the manner in which we define communities on the encyclopedia, except perhaps to endlessly regurgitate certain census data, a statement such as "a place with a population of just 8K" can only be used to gain unfair advantage in an argument. We already have the POV-ish problem of every piece of big-city minutiae being treated as inherently notable while other places are covered as content for content's sake, belittling local knowledge and sources even when they provide useful information, in this case favoring the New York Timeses and Washington Posts of the world showing up and saying nothing important about Wasilla. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 05:15, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The coverage is because a former holder of the office became notable (I think it was her immediate predecessor) and local media coverage of local events. This is just not enough to justify an encyclopedia article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The fact that one former mayor of Wasilla went on to become notable for other reasons beyond the mayoralty does not, in and of itself, create an automatic inclusion freebie for all of her predecessors or successors — each mayor of Wasilla still has to clear WP:NPOL completely on his or her own steam, because a place with a population of just 8K does not hand its mayors an automatic pass. Third discussion also hinged far too strongly on the flawed notion that the second discussion, six years earlier, automatically settled things for all time despite the total lack of substantive improvement or the fact that consensus can change. There's just no substance here to warrant an article, however; the only "nationalized" coverage here is cursory coverage of her endorsement of her much more famous predecessor's campaign for national office — but endorsing a candidate in another election is not a notability claim in and of itself either. Bearcat (talk) 17:25, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – The sentiment I saw expressed throughout the previous AFDs was that the community should learn to respect the context of the local area. It's rather sad to see that in the case of a community which is celebrating its centennial this year, Wikipedians are still content to forever tread water on one tiny blip of national media attention from eight years ago. It almost begs for the creation of WP:OTHERSOURCESEXIST. Speaking of which, I discounted the Google results Yoshiman referred to above, as they merely parrot the same old Palin worship. Those stories all point out that Keller was the incumbent mayor who succeeded Palin, but I'm not seeing one mention of how she was weeks away from leaving office and whether this was due to her being term-limited or due to the contentious relationship she had with the city council. A NewsBank/NewsLibrary search proved more illuminating. Still, I'm going to say delete based on that. While coverage did continue strong after she left office, including hints of continued national media coverage, there's very little after early summer 2009. Most of it had to do with the city council asking her to resign and with a land use dispute which turned personal, both of which could be viewed as BLP problems. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 05:15, 3 January 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.