Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim Fonteno

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. T. Canens (talk) 03:25, 27 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jim Fonteno[edit]

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Fails WP:NPOL. Most of the sources are now dead links, although to start with they appear to have either been routine local political coverage or his obituaries in local news media. Also appears to have been created by a family member so most likely a case of WP:NOTMEMORIAL as well. GPL93 (talk) 23:05, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:08, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:08, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Notability is shown by the attention he was shown by the U.S. Congress, which enacted a special law just to name a post office building after him. This is a case of a local official earning a national reputation. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 00:34, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Because Post Offices are federal buildings, any change in name must be done via act of Congress. Generally speaking dozens of these bills are submitted at a given time by Members of Congress who represent the districts in which said Post Offices reside, interns and low-level staffers check to make sure that the subject isn't controversial, and then they are approved en masse without any real thought by the other members when voting. There are over 30,000 post offices in the United States and a good number are named after somebody. Best, GPL93 (talk) 00:58, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Nearly all the current references are dead, but I did turn up this article from the Houston Chronicle that might pass WP:ROUTINE/WP:SIGCOV. Will do some more digging when I have time. —Rutebega (talk) 01:36, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The existence of a local obituary in the local media, where obituaries of local figures are very routinely expected to exist, is not in and of itself an instant notability freebie for a county councillor. If a county councillor in the Houston area was so prominent that he had gotten his obituary into the Chicago Sun-Times or the New York Times or the Washington Post, then the obituary would count for something — but an obituary in the local media doesn't clinch anything by itself. Bearcat (talk) 17:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Having a public building named after him is not an instant inclusion freebie that would exempt a local political figure from having to demonstrate his notability in the same way as any other local political figure: receiving significant coverage that expands beyond the local media market where such coverage is merely expected to always exist. At a guess, a very large percentage everybody who's ever served on a municipal or county council anywhere at all has had something in their town or city (a street, a building, a park, a new housing subdivision, etc.) named after them. And since the naming of post offices in the United States always has to be handled by an act of Congress, the fact that such an act was passed does not speak to Fonteno having achieved more nationalized notability than everybody else Congress has ever named a post office after. So we can only evaluate this in terms of whether he gets over WP:NPOL #2 on the sourcing or not — but by far the majority of them are primary sources that do not count as support for notability at all, and the few that are actually reliable sources are merely the expected level of local coverage, which means the answer to that question is no. Bearcat (talk) 17:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per Bearcat. Only Congress can change the names of post offices in the United States and many are changed every year, so no special notability is gained from that. He was just a local WP:RUNOFTHEMILL politician and fails WP:NPOL. Newshunter12 (talk) 11:58, 26 May 2019 (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.