Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gayle McLaughlin

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. Consensus is for the article to be retained. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:42, 17 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Gayle McLaughlin[edit]

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De-prodded with the false rationale that previous service as Mayor of a city of 100,000 indicates inherent notability. Fails the notability criteria set out at WP:NPOL which states "Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability" and which means this article must meet WP:GNG namely having "received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", which this individual has not. All of the sources are effectively useless. They are either hyper-local coverage of the Mayoral election, non-secondary and non-independent sources or a single Fox News Channel source about the Mayor attending a political rally. I would appreciate if anyone arguing in favour of keeping could provide clear evidence of a NPOL or GNG pass AusLondonder (talk) 00:18, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. AusLondonder (talk) 02:00, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As a preliminary matter, the deprodder was right that this article is not suitable for prod. It's hardly a "false rationale" to believe that an article about someone who was twice elected to be mayor of a city over 100,000--especially in this case, where her election made Richmond the largest city in the country to elect a Green Party member as mayor--deserves the full review of an AfD rather than the summary procedure that WP:Proposed deletion reserves for deletions that are reasonably expected to be "uncontroversial". On the merits of notability, the search string <Gayle McLaughlin Green Mayor> yields hundreds of potential sources, including national coverage not only of the unusual circumstances of her election and re-election, but also of such policies as (a) her unusual proposal to use eminent domain to acquire defaulted mortgages from the lending banks (New York Times [1]; The Nation [2]; Associated Press, reprinted in multiple newspapers around the country [3][4][5][6]; USA Today [7]); (b) her support for worker owned co-ops as a remedy for urban poverty (Los Angeles Times [8]); (c) her advocacy of a tax on soda and sugar (New York Times [9]); and her challenges to the city's dominant employer, Chevron (In These Times [10]; Los Angeles Times [11]; Moyers & Company [12]). I think notability is clear here. --Arxiloxos (talk) 02:09, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that coverage of the circumstances surrounding her election as a local small city Mayor or routine coverage of her work as local small city Mayor such as coverage of her "support for worker owned co-ops" in the local newspaper demonstrate notability of her as an individual. Doing her job as a mayor does not equate to lasting significance. There are approximately 500 larger cities in India. Is everyone who ever served as a mayor in those cities notable for just doing their job? AusLondonder (talk) 02:13, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, the Los Angeles Times is not the "local newspaper" for Richmond, which is part of the San Francisco metropolitan area and almost 400 miles from Los Angeles. The sources I noted above are national media reporting on the unusual activities and policies of the mayor. There is a lot of such coverage. By definiton, that's notability. --Arxiloxos (talk) 02:47, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That particular article was published on the "local" section of the Los Angles Times website. It is only a passing mention of McLaughlin anyway, as the subject matter of the article is worked-owned cooperatives. Does it demonstrate notability of Mercedes Burnell, also mentioned in the article? AusLondonder (talk) 02:57, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If their articles are adequately and reliably sourced, then yes, they are. They certainly wouldn't get an unsourced or minimally sourced inclusion freebie just for existing, but they are notable "for just doing their job" if there's enough reliable sourcing about them doing their job to clear WP:GNG. Bearcat (talk) 08:35, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The fact that the LA Times includes the mention in the local section, shows they think she is a local politician, despite what others may think is and is not local for the LA Times. There is not enough coverage to rise above routine and justify having this article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:59, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep 1) The subject was an independently elected Mayor of a city well above the usual cutoff for the presumption of notability for mayors. 2) The coverage shown by Arxiloxos indicates nationwide and significant interest in the subject, well above what is usual for a similarly positioned elected official. 3) While other stuff exists, there are multiple mayors of Richmond that have articles. --Enos733 (talk) 04:02, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Enos733: Given that would create a situation in which tens of thousands of people gloablly would be entitled to article can you please link me to a discussion or guideline supporting you assertion that a city of 100,000 is "well above the usual cutoff for the presumption of notability for mayors"?

WP:POLOUTCOMES states "Mayors of cities of at least regional prominence have usually survived AFD." A couple of AfD's with 50,000 as a threshold have been Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jess Green and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard W. Suscha --Enos733 (talk) 22:42, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Seems to meet the minimum threshold for WP:GNG.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:26, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. By the very nature of what a mayor is and does, the bulk of her coverage is always going to be predominantly local — so the localness or non-localness of the sources is not the controlling factor in and of itself. If she had been a city councillor and not a mayor, the presence or absence of more than just local sourceability would carry a lot more weight — but for mayors the bar to inclusion in WP:POLOUTCOMES is markedly lower than the bar for councillor inclusion, so as long as there's a reasonable volume of sourcing it is not as critically important that the coverage encompass an unusually large geographic range.
To be fair, AusLondoner is drawing from British standards for mayoral notability, where with a handful of exceptions the mayoralty of most places is a rotational "Buggins' turn" position where the most senior person on council who hasn't had their turn yet automatically gets to be "mayor" for a year, and thus has very little direct executive power and very little substantive coverage — but that's not the way it works in most North American cities, where the mayors are directly elected and have considerable power over the direction of city business. And that's the thing I think he's missing: the notability standard for mayors does hinge significantly on the question of whether that city's mayoralty is a directly elected position or a "thanks for coming out" ribbon.
So for a directly elected executive mayor, a population of 100K certainly wouldn't entitle her to keep an unsourced stub — but it is absolutely large enough to get a mayor included in Wikipedia if the article is adequately sourced. 50K, 10K, even 5K is enough if the article is genuinely substantive and well sourced — the population size test actually only comes into play if we're in a position where we have to figure out how much benefit of the doubt to extend to a poorly sourced article on the question of whether better sources are likely to be found or not. It's irrelevant if the article is already well-sourced and substantive, however — even the mayor of a village of just 10 people can get a Wikipedia article if they've been properly shown to clear GNG for it. Bearcat (talk) 08:29, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat: Your take on this article seems to be rather different to your take at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linda Cohen. AusLondonder (talk) 09:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Linda Cohen's notability was stacked on just three citations to the same local newspaper, and unreliable local blogs otherwise, not anywhere near as many citations to a variety of newspapers as has already been shown here. "Local" wasn't the controlling factor there either — it was (a) the fact that the volume of RS coverage being shown wasn't a clear cut GNG pass in the first place, and (b) regardless of locality or non-locality there was only one newspaper involved rather than several, and all of the articles in question were of the WP:ROUTINE variety ("Cohen wins election" on election night, etc.) rather than substantive coverage about stuff she did in the mayor's chair — local coverage of the latter type does count for more than local coverage of the "reporting the results on election night" type does, and the coverage in this article is significantly more than purely local anyway. Bearcat (talk) 14:31, 13 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Ms. McLaughlin has had much coverage in RS, plenty more than is necessary to meet GNG. Her administration's initiatives have been the subject of many reports in regional and national media such as this widely carried story [13]. SteveStrummer (talk) 01:04, 14 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - She does seem to meet the notability criteria for WP:NPOL. CAPTAIN RAJU (✉) 19:31, 17 March 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.