Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Helen Berg

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 was that the article meets at least WP:HEY and the WP:GNG. (non-admin closure) gidonb (talk) 02:23, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Helen Berg[edit]

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Non-notable politician whose only office was mayor of a city with 54k people. Only references are from local newspapers. If Berg is notable, then every mayor with coverage in the local news is also notable. Does not pass WP:NPOL. I am also nominating her husband's page, because he has even less of a claim to notability (mayor of the same city whose only reference is being mentioned in an article on Helen's death):

HAWTH OFF HEAD TALK 18:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete mayors at this level are not default notable, and the sourcing is not enough to show notability otherwise.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:35, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless somebody can improve the articles. Corvallis is certainly a significant enough city that a mayor could get in the door if his or her article were substantially well-sourced, but it isn't large enough to confer an automatic inclusion freebie on all of its mayors in the absence of a demonstrated WP:GNG pass — and while Helen does include a bit more content about specific aspects of her mayoralty than inadequate articles about mayors usually do, that means it's starting down the right path but doesn't mean it's reached the finish line. If all you've got for sourcing is two death announcements and her announcement of her retirement, all in the local media where coverage of mayors is simply expected to exist, then that's not enough in and of itself. And Alan's even worse, being cited only to a namecheck of his existence in his wife's death notice rather than any coverage about him, and offering literally none of the substantive content about his mayoralty (specific projects he spearheaded, specific effects he had on the development of the city, etc.) that would required. The bar for mayoral notability is considerably higher than just being able to offer minimal verification that the person exists or existed as a mayor — it requires a lot more substance, and a lot more sourcing, than either of these articles is actually attempting to show. Bearcat (talk) 18:35, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Helen Will pass WP:GNG as sources are incorporated in the article. Corvallis, Oregon is not large enough for its mayor to be seen as automatically notable, but as Bearcat mentions can pass if it can be demonstrated that there is more than verification the subject served in office. Beyond the obituarites in the article, we have this oral history interview through Oregon State, the creation of an award in her honor as past president of the Oregon League of Cities and some picture of their charitable donations. --Enos733 (talk) 22:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Interviews in which Helen is the speaker do not support notability — she has to be the subject that other people are speaking about in a source, not the person who's doing the speaking, for that source to support her notability. The creation of an award named after her is not a notability clincher if your source for that is the awarding organization's own self-published content about itself, and not journalist-written news content about the award's creation in an actual media outlet. Making charitable donations is not a notability clincher if your source for that is a donation recipient's own self-published brochure about itself, and not journalist-written news content about the donation in an actual media outlet. The notability test isn't the things she's done, it's the amount of journalism that has or hasn't been done by the media to cover the things she's done. Bearcat (talk) 15:13, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 12:16, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A elected official is distinct from other biographies since there is a voluminous public record of their actions. What is needed for an entry for an elected mayor is to show that there is independent sourcing to indicate more that the subject served in office, so we can create a biography for a global audience. In this case, the sources I found create a full picture of who the subject was (and all of those sources, while may not count toward determining notability, go toward developing a portrait of the subject's life [and I will say the write up of the interview is an independent source that would count toward GNG]). From the sources (and other links), we know that the subject served as President of the Oregon League of Cities (and has subsequently been honored by the organization with an award named after them), donated large parcels for conservation, has their papers saved in the Oregon State archives, has a post office and a plaza in Corvallis named after the subject, and a partial record of the projects the subject worked on in office. --Enos733 (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A correction: the 2007–2008 bill to name a post office after her failed to pass the US Senate, and I don't see any evidence that they tried again later. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:48, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's also distinct from other biographies because you should always be able to find local sources for local politicians, but all of those are considered routine. This is a small town and the only available information on her in the article is sourced directly from the small town, including the other articles posted above. We've consistently held that's not enough to be notable for an entry. SportingFlyer T·C 18:15, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We have done no such thing. Notability for corporations has a no-local-sources clause. General notability does not. It only requires that the sources be reliable, independent, and in-depth. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, you and SportingFlyer are both partly right and partly wrong. Mayors don't always have to have nationalized coverage in order to be notable — that doesn't hurt, obviously, but the thing a mayor has to have to qualify for an article is not necessarily nationalized coverage per se, but sufficient coverage to write a genuinely substantial article about his or her political significance rather than just technical verification of his or her existence. Below the level of the mayor, however, for the likes of city councillors and school board trustees much more clearly nationalizing coverage is necessary, and even just getting a mayor over WP:GNG still requires a lot more than just the two or three death-notice hits from the local media that were the article's entire sourcing when it was first nominated. Bearcat (talk) 16:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, interviews are not independent or notability-supporting sources at all. It's not a question of determining the notability and reliability of the media outlet that's publishing the interview — an interview represents the subject speaking about herself in the first person, not independent analysis of her impact or importance by people independent of herself, which means it's subject to all the same issues as self-published content would be. So an interview can be used to verify stray biographical facts that aren't notability claims per se, such as the subject's birthdate or where they went to high school, but they don't count toward the process of determining whether the person is notable in the first place. It's not just a question of who's publishing the piece, it's also a question of who's doing the speaking in the piece. Bearcat (talk) 16:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's actually debatable, and WP:INTERVIEW explains the debate. The argument for is that reliable sources don't waste their time or page space doing long indepth interviews with people who aren't notable. So if they print the interview, they have taken note of the person, which is the point of Wikipedia:Notability, "sufficiently significant attention by the world at large ... from reliable and independent sources". --GRuban (talk) 16:43, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the source labeled as an interview has an introductory page with in-depth non-interview coverage of the subject. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:55, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Enos733 (talk) 18:53, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Helen, ~~neutral for Alan~~. Helen M. Berg has top citation count 277 on Google Scholar, but then dropping off (another 128-citation paper, "Effect of taurine on sarcoplasmic reticulum function and force in skinned fast‐twitch skeletal muscle fibres of the rat", appears to be by a different Australian researcher with the same name). However, under her earlier name, "Helen M. Lowry", she has another 107-citation paper and several more double-digit ones. All of these works appear to be on gender differences in statistical economics. Alan B. Berg has top citation count 500 (for a paper on forestry) but then again steeply dropping off. So both cases for WP:PROF#C1 are plausible but borderline, with Helen's looking stronger to me (because her well-cited works are multiple and her dropoff is less steep). We also have GNG-level in-depth coverage of Helen, beyond the routine coverage of her that we would expect from local newspapers from her terms in office, in the Oregon State Library "Women's Voices" exhibit and in an in-depth local newspaper obituary (not paid death notice), and in another news story about a city plaza being dedicated in her name plenty of material for an article. Obviously, mayor of Corvallis is not automatically notable per WP:NPOL, but that does not prevent notability through other criteria (WP:PROF or WP:GNG in this case), and I think she has that. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:12, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment. I have significantly expanded Helen's article based on the coverage already discussed in this AfD, two new national-level (non-Oregon) newspaper stories that quote her regarding two different challenges she was facing as mayor, and non-trivial non-local coverage of her in a journal article on religious politicians [1]. At this point the article is a lot more detailed than many, so I suspect any remaining objections to it can be classified as either misreading GNG as being about significance rather than availability of adequate sourcing, or misreading NPOL as denying notability to local politicians even when they pass GNG. I also learned through this expansion that her father and probably her second husband are notable, but of course this does not really add to her own notability. Still neutral on Alan. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I still don't think she's notable. It's not a falsehood that we exclude mayors of small localities who have only received routine coverage. I see no non-routine coverage here, and WP:PROF is very marginal. SportingFlyer T·C 15:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - If you compare the news coverage that you can find for Alan Berg vs Helen Berg you will see the true difference between routine and non-routine (I have searched and found almost nothing beyond the existence of a park named after him in which someone got murdered). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:01, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - PS delete Alan. With only one well-cited paper and no in-depth coverage that I could find, I don't see a case for either PROF or GNG. If the article on Helen is kept, we might consider a redirect from Alan to her. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:31, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment In addition to her coverage in the local small-town papers, the Oregonian (Portland-based) had an obituary for her. That her collected papers are held by Oregon State tends to indicate that Oregon State believes her to be notable. She has one paper [2] with a moderately high number of citations: I don't think it's enough for a pass of WP:NPROF C1, but it certainly doesn't detract from notability. (Edit conflict, overlapped with David Eppstein's response above.) Russ Woodroofe (talk) 20:25, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Helen Berg per the excellent work done by User:David Eppstein. --GRuban (talk) 18:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep Helen per GNG, with some support from NPROF. Redirect Alan to subsection of Helen, with 1-2 sentences about him. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 12:26, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Sources don't seem to meet the WP:SIGCOV rules from my perspective. HarrietsCharriot (talk) 14:49, 22 December 2020 (UTC) — HarrietsCharriot (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic and has been blocked for abusing multiple accounts.[reply]
Keep Helen and redirect Alan to a section or subsection in the article about Helen. I think Russ Woodroofe's summary is accurate. XOR'easter (talk) 20:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per WP:HEY, now seems to meet WP:GNG. Redirect Alan to Helen's article. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 17:21, 24 December 2020 (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.