Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mike O'Shaughnessy

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. Sandstein 19:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mike O'Shaughnessy[edit]

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Article on a local councillor, failing both WP:GNG and the subsidiary WP:POLITICIAN. For procedural reasons it is not eligible for PROD (having been proposed and declined on an earlier occasion), but there seems nothing here that meets the notability requirements. Hence the AfD. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:46, 14 August 2016 (UTC) Euryalus (talk) 05:46, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete non-notable city council member.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Winnipeg City Council: These used to be routinely kept (~2008), but, per DGG (discussed here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brenda Leipsic (2nd nomination)), the consensus has changed in the intervening eight years. Indeed, I don't see Winnipeg on the list of Global cities; here's a ranking of top 40 cities from 2015: link. I believe a redirect may be appropriate as the subject appears on the list in the target article. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:01, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

DGG was wrong, for the record, about what the existing consensus is. It is not "NYC and Chicago, and nowhere else"; it is "all global cities". There once was a time when Wikipedia's article on global city directly contained a list of all cities which were so ranked, and Winnipeg was in it — the criterion for "global city" was not "within only the Top 40 highest global cities by power ranking, with anything ranked #41 or below out", but "named within our article about global cities at all, regardless of where it ranks in a higher-lower list". Again, I'm not necessarily opposed to a consensus being established to remove Winnipeg, and the "not alpha, beta or gamma class" cities in general, from the list of cities whose councillors qualify — but simply misrepresenting the fact that an existing consensus explicitly established that they did qualify is not the way to get there. What it requires is a discussion that centres on specific reasons why the existing consensus should be changed, not simply handwaving the existing consensus away as never having existed in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 17:39, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Update (Aug 16, following discussions with Bearcat): The prior consensus was established with the understanding that Winnipeg was a global city (I've located the listing in the article on global cities, 2015 version). While acknowledging that consensus formerly accepted Winnipeg as one of the cities where a city councillor was accepted as notable under NPOL #2, I believe that it shouldn't anymore because Winnipeg is listed under "Category 6 (Sufficiency)". I believe this is insufficient to qualify it as a major international hub of business and political power, where a city councillor could be presumed to be notable:

Alpha++ cities are London and New York City, which are vastly more integrated with the global economy than all other cities.
Alpha+ cities complement London and New York City by filling advanced service niches for the global economy.
Alpha and Alpha- cities are cities that link major economic regions into the world economy.
Beta level cities are cities that link moderate economic regions into the world economy.
Gamma level cities are cities that link smaller economic regions into the world economy.
Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be obviously dependent on world cities.

For comparison, other North American cities in the last category as Des Moines, Greensboro, Sacramento. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:59, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@K.e.coffman and Bearcat: It seems questionable that we would assess the notability of a municipal politician based on their city's "connectivity measured through 'advanced producer services': accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, and law." While I see the rationale behind having different criteria for "global cities", I don't know that this is the right way to go about it. Graham (talk) 21:22, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:02, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:03, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Following some discussion with K.e.coffman to clarify our respective issues, I see that he's now revising his nomination rationales to accommodate my primary concerns — as noted, I'm not wedded to the idea that Winnipeg's city councillors need to be kept as notable, but simply objected to the fact that some editors seemed willing to simply ignore the fact that the prior consensus ever existed at all. If any prior consensus could be erased simply by refusing to acknowledge that it existed, and didn't require any actual discussion and debate about the reasons why it should possibly be changed, Wikipedia would instantly become a giant pile of anarchy. An argument formulated this way, however, I can agree with: the "sufficiency" class of cities should not be considered notable enough to hand its city councillors an NPOL pass anymore, and Winnipeg is not for any substantive reason a city where broad national or international reader interest transcends its relatively low class of "globalness" the way a national capital might. Accordingly, I support the nomination as now formulated: my issue was the way in which the argument was being conducted as if no consensus for these ever existed in the first place, not any strong believe that Winnipeg should retain that status permanently. Bearcat (talk) 21:37, 16 August 2016 (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.