Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zlatko Radić

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. (non-admin closure) Desertarun (talk) 21:02, 27 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Zlatko Radić[edit]

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Can't see how this passes WP:NPOL or WP:GNG. Most of the references in the article are to primary sources, and seem to largely be cursory mentions. Joy (talk) 20:03, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians and Serbia. Joy (talk) 20:03, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Radić was a member of the Serbian parliament. Politicians elected to national assemblies are automatically notable per WP:POLITICIAN. CJCurrie (talk) 20:09, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He's still failing WP:GNG. I mean, seriously now, the Serbian Parliament described him like this: there is no biography, and there's just a single word for his profession. Sure, technically this passes the guideline on politicians, but Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. I can fathom that this backbencher is worthy of an article in the Serbian Wikipedia, but English? --Joy (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This strikes me as a misreading of the policy. WP:POLITICIAN indicates that all members of national assemblies are automatically assumed to be notable. WP:Notability indicates that an article topic is presumed to be notable if it "meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG)." It is therefore sufficient that Radić passes WP:POLITICIAN; whether or not he also passes WP:GNG is immaterial.

Also, I'm inclined to think that an individual being notable on the Serbian Wiki (or the Croatian Wiki, or the Hungarian, or any other Wiki one could name) would generally make them notable on the English Wiki as well. CJCurrie (talk) 21:59, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, what can I say... I continue to be saddened by arguments apparently based on pure technicalities. --Joy (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep - Being a member of parliament of a sovereign state automatically passes WP:NPOL. BlakeIsHereStudios (talk | contributions) 20:43, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep passes WP:NPOL. Mccapra (talk) 21:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mccapra @BlakeIsHereStudios can we reflect on the spirit and letter of WP:NPOL as well as WP:GNG, please? --Joy (talk) 21:51, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What is there to reflect on? He was a member of a national parliament. Slam dunk. Mccapra (talk) 21:53, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let me remind of some of these fine linked guidelines: "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article—perhaps because it violates what Wikipedia is not, particularly the rule that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Fundamentally, how does the average English reader benefit from being told so many details about this person, when e.g. a redirect to List of members of the National Assembly of Serbia, 2003–2007 would suffice. Oh, wait, we don't even have a list of all of them in there. The stated goal of the guideline on politicians is to ensure that our coverage of major political offices, incorporating all of the present and past holders of that office, will be complete. Having this standalone article adds excessive detail while we are clearly lacking the basic general coverage, which is incongruent. --Joy (talk) 22:01, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll reiterate something I wrote above: WP:Notability indicates that a topic is presumed notable if it "meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG)." It is therefore sufficient that Radić passes WP:POLITICIAN; whether or not he also passes WP:GNG is immaterial. CJCurrie (talk) 22:07, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep - Blatantly obvious that it passes WP:NPOL and should be closed by WP:SNOW. CJCurrie has made some excellent points regarding WP:Notability. If the nominator has an issue with WP:NPOL, this should be discussed outside an AFD. ⁂CountHacker (talk) 22:34, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Some really odd comments by the nom showing complete misunderstanding for how Wikipedia works. I assumed the nom was a new editor, then I see they've been here 22 years and is an admin! Nom says the subject fails WP:NPOL which explicitly says national legislators are notable. Nom says "Fundamentally, how does the average English reader benefit from being told so many details about this person" - not making a great case for a lack of notability and then says "I can fathom that this backbencher is worthy of an article in the Serbian Wikipedia, but English?" which is a pretty extraordinary statement. So American or British backbenchers are worthy of coverage but not Serbian ones? Heard of WP:GEOBIAS? AusLondonder (talk) 09:47, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@AusLondonder what is extraordinary about wanting a politician's coverage to be commensurate to the person's significance? On the Serbian Wikipedia, there's probably a lot more content about Lapovo, so if they go into an appropriate amount of detail about whatever other local features, characteristics, people, ... they can go into the same amount of detail about the local politicians. Likewise, the English Wikipedia will contain an amount of information relevant to English readers that wouldn't necessarily be seen exactly the same on the other language Wikipedias. This is perfectly normal because it caters to the readers.

I'm still not sure in what universe an average English reader would be interested in how some guy spent four years in the Serbian Parliament after getting in as a substitute, apparently did not do anything worth mentioning other than get into a bar fight back home (!), and then was later candidate number 189 or 229 and didn't get elected there ever again. The fact he later finished third in a mayoral election with 600-odd votes, but did serve on the municipal council, is likewise largely meaningless. This is like a compendium of useless factoids about a person. Does nobody have any qualms that this violates WP:NOTWHOSWHO?

At this point I am genuinely perplexed why y'all care so much for keeping this largely trivial information in a standalone article and don't even want to bother coming up with a rationale on who are these readers who we would be serving by keeping this as is. --Joy (talk) 12:20, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree this will likely never be a Featured Article on the English Wiki, it still passes the threshold for notability. And while this is a separate issue, the information included in the article pertains to the subject's time in public life and is not just a random collection of facts. CJCurrie (talk) 12:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not random, but it is just that - information. An encyclopedia is supposed to be a summary of knowledge, not just information. We can summarize the relevant knowledge about this person's public life in a single list caption as it is now, perhaps referencing it to a couple of those primary sources and to the paragraph in that Politika summary article on parliamentary immunity in Serbia. If they ever do something else of note (WP:POTENTIAL), then they can still get a standalone article. --Joy (talk) 13:11, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: I'd like to see this article buffed out a bit more with stuff he did in office, but the subject clearly passes WP:NPOL, which is not a merely arbitrary guideline but exists to help mitigate nominations such as this. These types of political figures tend to always (like in 99.5% of testcases) have coverage of their activities in office, even if you cannot see it using Google (i.e. in things like newspapers that have not yet been digitized; this is basically an estimator of when WP:OFFLINE coverage is likely to exist). If the current state of an NPOL-passing article does not yet surpass WP:NOPAGE, then it can be redirected to a list of legislators; this article clearly does pass that threshold. Curbon7 (talk) 16:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Curbon7 would love to see 99.5% of these testcases, esp. in relation to Serbia where the political scene is generally well documented. --Joy (talk) 19:46, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let me put it this way: to my knowledge, no post-1900 WP:NPOL-passing politician has ever been deleted at AfD in the past 15 years on notability grounds. To repeat myself, that is not merely for no reason; a member of parliament will literally always have coverage of their activities, even if that coverage is not easily accessible on Google, whether that be in newspapers that have not yet been digitized or those that are in inaccessible or paywalled archives. Curbon7 (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Article should certainly be flagged for improvement, but members of national legislatures are inherently notable per WP:NPOL #1. The argument here isn't actually that politicians are exempted from GNG — national legislators virtually always pass GNG, and the real issue is that we haven't always invested sufficient effort into finding all of the best GNG-worthy sourcing to write the most substantial article with, and that's especially going to be a problem for politicians who served in countries where the strongest sourcing would be written in foreign languages that many contributors to the English Wikipedia can't read. But again, it's not that better sourcing doesn't exist, it's that Wikipedians haven't put enough work into finding it, which isn't the same thing — and that's precisely why we have SNGs alongside GNG, because the current state of an article is not always the end of the story in and of itself. Bearcat (talk) 18:30, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Bearcat that's the thing. I couldn't find anything substantial about this person online, let alone proper secondary sources. For a 21st century Serbian politician, that's just not great. --Joy (talk) 19:48, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify what specific resources you actually checked? Do you have access to a proper database of archived Serbian media coverage from 15 to 20 years ago, or did you just do a simple Google search? A politician who was in office from 2004 to 2007 obviously isn't going to have a lot of recent coverage that would still Google well in 2024, but that doesn't constitute proof that at-the-time coverage didn't exist in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 — so you need to be more specific about where you searched, because stuff can fall through the cracks if we don't completely exhaust every possible resource. Bearcat (talk) 20:13, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, a general Google Search failed to produce much of anything about this Zlatko Radić. It found some others, but apparently not this one. I also tried with site:rs specifically, and in Cyrillic as well. If our readers have to have the skills of a private investigator to verify our article about something, then that's not really in the realm of general notability. --Joy (talk) 20:28, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The realm of general notability does not require all or even most of our sources to be recent news coverage that googles, and does permit older news coverage that has to be found in archives. So since Google is not a place where media coverage from 20 years ago would have been expected to turn up, did you actually check any databases of archived Serbian media coverage where articles from 20 years ago would have been expected to turn up? That doesn't require the skills of a private investigator to do, it just requires the skills of a marginally competent researcher. Bearcat (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2024 (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.