Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wilfred Roy Cousins, Sr.

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. If people want to change the inclusion criteria for state lawmakers, Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) would be the right place. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:58, 3 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wilfred Roy Cousins, Sr.[edit]

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The article was thinly sourced at best, apparently conflating two or more individuals with similar names into one topic. Additional attempts to seek out external sources were very unsuccessful. In addition, this individual falls far short of the general notability guideline as well as the "Politicians and Judges" guideline, which only covers leaders who have held international, national, or state/province-wide office or major local leaders who have received significant press coverage. The only coverage this guy got was a blurb in the local government website indicating when he died -- hardly notable. Michepman (talk) 04:06, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Question I'm confused. Are you saying that he was not a member of the Texas Senate? If he was, then he is presumed notable (and there will almost certainly be coverage in contemporary newspapers). RebeccaGreen (talk) 04:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 04:45, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 04:45, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 04:45, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep He was definitely a member of the Texas Senate, and is therefore presumed notable per WP:NPOL. More sources can be added. The name of the article is wrong - the father was William Roy Cousins, and the son was Wilfred Roy Cousins (if the son doesn't already have an article, he should). It would have been simpler to move Wilfred Roy Cousins, Sr. to William Roy Cousins and create Wilfred Roy Cousins than to bring this to AfD. RebeccaGreen (talk) 05:18, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment To clarify, this was previously discussed and stated by Magnolia677 on the talk page of [Beaumont,TX] the region for which Cousins served as a locally elected lawmaker. It is clear from the discussion that this person is not notable and that this article was created solely as a fork in an effort to cram these names into that article despite falling short of notability and having insufficient reliable sources in existence. They even failed to create one of the articles, because no sources could be submitted. Michepman (talk) 20:10, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - He was a member of the Texas Senate, so he's presumed notable. See [1]. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. State senate is an office that passes WP:NPOL #1 right on its face. That criterion is not limited to the state governor, but most certainly does include members of the state legislature. Yes, this needs some referencing improvement, but for a person who held office beginning over 100 years ago and ending in 1934, the bulk of the sourcing will be in news archiving databases rather than out on the Googles — but we don't judge the includability of a person like this solely on the state of sourcing already present in the article, we judge it on the state of sourcing available in the world, and the simple fact is that no state legislator in the history of US state legislators has ever gone completely and totally uncovered by any reliable sources. Further, the discussion the nominator alludes to does not "establish" that Cousins is non-notable; it merely questions the utility of a city's list of notable people always listing everybody who ever represented it in the state legislature when there's also a category for people from the same city already. Bearcat (talk) 22:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - I of course agree that it would be unfair to judge the article solely by the sources already within the article. What I was trying to say above (and I apologize if it was unclearly worded previously) was that there are no sources available, other than a brief passing mention, even when going through archival materials such as what can thus be found on places like newspapers.com. It's not at all clear that the information present in the article is even referring to the same person as the subject, since as noted above the person who created this article even used the wrong first name of the alleged senator and also combined materials from both the subject and his erstwhile son in a way that is dificult to tell which sources are relevant and which are verifiable (not to mention the few which are both). While this article may barely clear the bar for verifiable sources as written, digging in the details as I have done will indicate that a lot of the material was inappropriately transcluded and is actually related to the son, who may or may not be notable in his own right, and not the elder. Michepman (talk) 03:37, 28 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Newspapers.com is not the only possible place to find sources for a state legislator. There can be other news archiving databases which include more Beaumont-area and/or rest-of-Texas newspapers that would have covered him; there can be books that would have covered him; and on and so forth. As well, in that era one would almost certainly have to search for multiple different forms of his name, including "Wilfred Roy Cousins", "Wilfred Cousins", "W. R. Cousins", "W. Cousins", repetitions of the "Wilfred" searches under the possible misspelling "Wilfrid", and on and so forth. So, yeah, if the creator messed up and conflated Wilfred Sr. with his son, then by all means we can fix it — but I don't believe that no sources exist at all, just because you couldn't find anything in one specific database that doesn't necessarily include every newspaper in the United States. It would actually be deeply unusual, literally to the edge of completely unprecedented, for a person to serve in a state legislature for 20 full years without ever having received any reliable source coverage anywhere at all. Bearcat (talk) 14:49, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually he was William Roy Cousins - W.R. Cousins Sr, but not Wilfred Roy Cousins Sr, confusingly ... that has been one of the problems with the article. So the automated "Find Sources" here doesn't help at all! RebeccaGreen (talk) 11:46, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - clearly notable and passes WP:NPOL as member of state legislature. Bookscale (talk) 00:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and then of course fix the issues. Every member of a state senate ever is notable. As long as the sources demonstrate he was such, we keep the article. Since he held office in a state wide legislature, it does not matter how important to Beaumont he was. He was involved in making laws to effect the whole state, appropriating money for the whole state, ect.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:36, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:POLOUTCOMES, WP:SNOW. Although consensus can change, the long-standing precedent is that state senators in the United States are presumed to be notable. The burden shifts to the nom to prove, once verified, the this person did not serve or is not otherwise notable. Bearian (talk) 15:30, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:POLITICIAN. Member of a sub-national legislature. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep was elected to and served in the Texas Senate for two different districts. Best, GPL93 (talk) 21:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:POLOUTCOMES, WP:SNOW --SalmanZ (talk) 21:06, 2 August 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.