- 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 06:40, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
Jessica Fitzwater
- Jessica Fitzwater ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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County politician, sourcing is local and routine. Nothing that meets WP:POLITICIAN Rusf10 ( talk) 04:08, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. MT Train Talk 05:07, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Maryland-related deletion discussions. MT Train Talk 05:07, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete Evidently the scouurge of overcoverage of excessively local politicians has moved beyond New Jersey. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 05:09, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- It always did. New Jersey just happens to be where somebody has been undertaking an active cleanup project these past few weeks to comprehensively address the issue, but we have always had a problem with overcoverage of local city and town and county councillors and small town mayors and school board trustees everywhere, never just in New Jersey alone. Bearcat ( talk) 17:08, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Strong Keep Subject is widely discussed outside the role that she has on the County council. All of the other members of the Council have similar entries, though none have a record outside of govenment that is extensive. The creation of her page followed a lengthy discussion, some of which is in Talk:Kirby Delauter and the page's discussion. Bangabandhu ( talk) 05:35, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- 1. "Subject is widely discussed outside the role that she has on the County council." Not really, the NEA website is not an independent source, nor is "vice chair of the organization's arts caucus" a notable position. All other sources whether about her as a politician or otherwise (there's only one
[1]) are from local newspapers. 2. All of the other members of the Council have similar entries, though none have a record outside of govenment that is extensive. See
WP:OSE and my counterpoint would be maybe other stuff shouldn't exist. 3. The creation of her page followed a lengthy discussion, some of which is in
Talk:Kirby Delauter and the page's discussion. Again, OSE, but the Kirby Delauter article is clearly of question notability too since its deletion discussion ended in "no consensus".--
Rusf10 (
talk) 05:55, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Why are you mischaracterizing previous discussions and the contents of this article? If you want to start a guidelines-based discussion, would you please read
WP:POLITICIAN? There's a presumption of notability for membership on the council. Even if there weren't, her work as activist of the year, stance for refusing to take an oath on the bible, and other sources not in the article are more than adequate to prove notability.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 07:01, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- There is no such presumption in
WP:POLITICIAN. It says "Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article"." She has not met the criteria because the coverage is local and routine. Every politician everywhere get coverage in the local newspaper.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 14:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Why are you misrepresenting guidelines? "Politicians and judges who have held international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide) office, and members or former members of a national, state or provincial legislature" If Fitzwater were a candidate for office you might have a legitimate concern that she doesn't satisfy WP:POLITICIAN. She holds elected office and represents tens of thousands of people. The entirety of the Council is notable. Would you please read WP:COMMON and apply it here. Bangabandhu ( talk) 02:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- You didn't respond to my question above. Again: Why are you misrepresenting the contents of this article and its subject. Did you really write All other sources whether about her as a politician or otherwise are from local newspapers I would rather make a meaningful mainspace contribution than review every one of the 19 references. You could simply look at reference 19 about her work as an activist. Or if you really wanted to be helpful, you could look at what national coverage there is that you could add to strengthen the article. For example,
this article in the Washington Post about her legislative efforts or
this one, also in the WP, a national newpaper.02:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- I am not misrepresenting the article, you are. And you're also misrepresenting the guideline at the same time as you are quoting it. She is neither an international, national, sub-national officeholder, nor a member of a state legislature, so notability is NOT assumed under the guideline. The coverage in the Washington Post is not indepth coverage of her, it is coverage of a bill under consideration by the council. She is not the subject of those articles, they just mention her. And reference #19 is an article from a small town newspaper which proves my point.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 02:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Are we talking about the same article here? Did you read, or do you just not care to acknowledge her role in the State Representative Assembly. Its right there in the sixth sentence. There's your statewide office. Nor are you correctly interpreting WP:POLITICIAN, it says nothing to confirm your perception that the Frederick County Council is somehow not notable, just that Statewide legislatures are presumed notable. Is the Washington Post a small town newspaper? You do realize that just because this is a talk page you need to justify your assertions.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 03:20, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- You're way off here, I don't see how you possibly could have read
WP:POLITICIAN the way you did. She was a " union delegate to the Maryland State Education Associations’s State Representative Assembly". That's not even an elected office! You're trying to tell me that a union delegate qualifies as a statewide officeholder under NPOL #1?--
Rusf10 (
talk) 03:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Look, every single reason you have for this nomination is baseless. When are you going to withdraw this so that I and other editors can make meaningful contributions? She holds significant elected office at the local and state level. She has abundant coverage in national, state, and local press. Thanks.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 03:50, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- "Union delegate to the Maryland State Education Associations’s State Representative Assembly" is not a role that passes
WP:NPOL. It is not the state legislature, but merely the internal governance body of a non-profit organization, so no, being a delegate to its convention is not a notable state-level office for the purposes of NPOL #1.
Bearcat (
talk) 17:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- You do realize that I'm not claiming notability on the basis of that position alone, don't you? I'm saying that its one of many elements. Even if you raise an objection to every single source (and I'm sure you could, if you're creative) you really should look at the totality of all the sourcing, citing, previous accomplishments and record. Bangabandhu ( talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- "Union delegate to the Maryland State Education Associations’s State Representative Assembly" is not a role that passes
WP:NPOL. It is not the state legislature, but merely the internal governance body of a non-profit organization, so no, being a delegate to its convention is not a notable state-level office for the purposes of NPOL #1.
Bearcat (
talk) 17:00, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Look, every single reason you have for this nomination is baseless. When are you going to withdraw this so that I and other editors can make meaningful contributions? She holds significant elected office at the local and state level. She has abundant coverage in national, state, and local press. Thanks.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 03:50, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- You're way off here, I don't see how you possibly could have read
WP:POLITICIAN the way you did. She was a " union delegate to the Maryland State Education Associations’s State Representative Assembly". That's not even an elected office! You're trying to tell me that a union delegate qualifies as a statewide officeholder under NPOL #1?--
Rusf10 (
talk) 03:34, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Are we talking about the same article here? Did you read, or do you just not care to acknowledge her role in the State Representative Assembly. Its right there in the sixth sentence. There's your statewide office. Nor are you correctly interpreting WP:POLITICIAN, it says nothing to confirm your perception that the Frederick County Council is somehow not notable, just that Statewide legislatures are presumed notable. Is the Washington Post a small town newspaper? You do realize that just because this is a talk page you need to justify your assertions.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 03:20, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- I am not misrepresenting the article, you are. And you're also misrepresenting the guideline at the same time as you are quoting it. She is neither an international, national, sub-national officeholder, nor a member of a state legislature, so notability is NOT assumed under the guideline. The coverage in the Washington Post is not indepth coverage of her, it is coverage of a bill under consideration by the council. She is not the subject of those articles, they just mention her. And reference #19 is an article from a small town newspaper which proves my point.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 02:41, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- There is no such presumption in
WP:POLITICIAN. It says "Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the primary notability criterion of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article"." She has not met the criteria because the coverage is local and routine. Every politician everywhere get coverage in the local newspaper.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 14:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Why are you mischaracterizing previous discussions and the contents of this article? If you want to start a guidelines-based discussion, would you please read
WP:POLITICIAN? There's a presumption of notability for membership on the council. Even if there weren't, her work as activist of the year, stance for refusing to take an oath on the bible, and other sources not in the article are more than adequate to prove notability.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 07:01, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- 1. "Subject is widely discussed outside the role that she has on the County council." Not really, the NEA website is not an independent source, nor is "vice chair of the organization's arts caucus" a notable position. All other sources whether about her as a politician or otherwise (there's only one
[1]) are from local newspapers. 2. All of the other members of the Council have similar entries, though none have a record outside of govenment that is extensive. See
WP:OSE and my counterpoint would be maybe other stuff shouldn't exist. 3. The creation of her page followed a lengthy discussion, some of which is in
Talk:Kirby Delauter and the page's discussion. Again, OSE, but the Kirby Delauter article is clearly of question notability too since its deletion discussion ended in "no consensus".--
Rusf10 (
talk) 05:55, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete does not pass WP:POLITICIAN and not otherwise notable under WP:GNG. SportingFlyer talk 21:45, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the
list of Women-related deletion discussions.
Coolabahapple (
talk) 00:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, how did you arrive at that determination? Its not true, even on the basis of the abundant existing sources. But the current sourcing is not even the entirety of the coverage about her. Please see
this article or
this one which are just a couple of what else is out there.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 02:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- She doesn't have presumptive notability under WP:POLITICIAN (hasn't held a national or statewide political position, and hasn't received major independent political coverage) and isn't otherwise notable outside of her political career (all articles are local articles except for her activist of the year award, which isn't enough.) Classic case of local political cruft. SportingFlyer talk 06:51, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Furthermore, those additional articles you posted are not about her, but are instead about the council.
SportingFlyer
talk 06:53, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Even if you're right that there's no presumption of notability for her membership on the Council, there's no presumption of non-notability for her Council role, either. If you want to impugn any single source I'm sure you can do that. Of course the articles are about her council, advocacy, and leadership work. What are you looking for, a Celebrity Buzz-type article about her private life? You'd probably dismiss that as being non-newsworthy. Thee fact of the matter is she has received abundant attention in national publications including the
Washington Post,
the Baltimore Sun,
NPR,
USA Today among others.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 10:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- There has to be indepth coverage, not just a namecheck. If any of those publications wrote an entire article about her that would be fine (and it does not have to be about her personal life).--
Rusf10 (
talk) 19:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- That comment is really unhelpful. What
is this profile entirely dedicated to her? Answer: one of many more articles about her, which you might be aware of if you did research rather than just nominated articles for deletion.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 20:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Unfortunately after doing a deep search I wasn't able to find any sources which discuss her outside of her role as a local politician, so I'll maintain my delete vote. SportingFlyer talk 02:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- A local magazine that no one has ever heard of, you're proving my point for me.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 20:51, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- What point are we proving here? If its that you're arbitrary and should check yourself, you're right. Read WP:GNG. It doesn't require anything at the national or even regional level, brah. Source is legit even if its not your choice read. Bangabandhu ( talk) 21:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- That comment is really unhelpful. What
is this profile entirely dedicated to her? Answer: one of many more articles about her, which you might be aware of if you did research rather than just nominated articles for deletion.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 20:46, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- There has to be indepth coverage, not just a namecheck. If any of those publications wrote an entire article about her that would be fine (and it does not have to be about her personal life).--
Rusf10 (
talk) 19:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Even if you're right that there's no presumption of notability for her membership on the Council, there's no presumption of non-notability for her Council role, either. If you want to impugn any single source I'm sure you can do that. Of course the articles are about her council, advocacy, and leadership work. What are you looking for, a Celebrity Buzz-type article about her private life? You'd probably dismiss that as being non-newsworthy. Thee fact of the matter is she has received abundant attention in national publications including the
Washington Post,
the Baltimore Sun,
NPR,
USA Today among others.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 10:21, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, how did you arrive at that determination? Its not true, even on the basis of the abundant existing sources. But the current sourcing is not even the entirety of the coverage about her. Please see
this article or
this one which are just a couple of what else is out there.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 02:05, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete She is a county commissioner, that is, a member of an elected body of 5 commissioners who select and hire a professional county executive - this makes her the equivalent of a member of the city council of a city of 250,000 with a Council–manager government. Problem is, coverage appears to be routine. So I took a close look at the sources cited by Bangabandhu just above. Frederick is a D.C. suburb, and the WaPo coverage is local (in the "Maryland Politics" section,) The USA Today article is in the delmarvatoday edition of the paper. Ditto for the regional daily Baltimore Sun. And the radio story ran on WYPR, Baltimore Public Radio (regional). All four cover her role in articles covering a specific policy debate, and all are regional. What I would need to WP:HEYMANN see to rate her notable, is non-campaign profiles or feature stories focused on Fitzwater, or inclusions of her in media outside the region. She is very active, so it is probably merely WP:TOOSOON. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 22:54, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
- While this is one of the more interesting and well-considered comments in this thread you seem to believe that there is something fundamentally non-notable about her role on the County council. There's enough content in here - beginning with her award as teacher and activist of the year - that she could have a page in her own right separate from her position. But suddenly she doesn't deserve a page when she gets a position below the state level in government. Imagine if she won the Nobel Prize for her stand against taking the oath on the bible. You'd probably say dismiss that, because it was something she did in her role as a County Councilmember. And what is the threshold for coverage, anyway? Show me something that says national coverage is required? She has more cites than most state politicians, yet of course none of that counts, because she's got the Scarlet Letter of County Council service. You dismiss all the national coverage because you say that its in a regional section, essentially creating a new requirement for notability, when really its just because nothing can shake the tarnish of the County Council in your mind. Any reasonable assessment would just be impartial to what level of government she serves.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 19:59, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- For starters, no, she does not have "more cites than most state politicians", either — of the 19 citations here, fully half are
primary sources that cannot support notability in a Wikipedia article at all, and the half that are actual media coverage are purely local media coverage of the type and volume that's merely expected to exist for all city councillors everywhere. Any reasonable assessment would not just be "impartial" to what level of government she serves — we have a rule on here that the lowest level of government that entitles a person to have an article is the state legislature, and that the only way to get a person at the local level of government in the door is to demonstrate evidence that she's substantially more notable than the vast majority of other people at that same level of government. A county councillor does not get in the door just by showing six or seven cites to her own local media, because there isn't a single county councillor anywhere on the planet who couldn't show six or seven cites to her own local media — there is only one way to make a county councillor notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and that is to show a lot more than most other county councillors could also show: a much higher number of citations, a much wider geographic range of where the coverage is coming from, deeper citations (e.g. somebody wrote and published an entire book about her), etc. "Exactly the same as every other county councillor could also show" is not good enough. Show a lot more than every other county councillor could also show. No ifs, no ands, no buts: show more than most other county councillors could show, or it goes.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- If only you were as considerate in your response as you are verbose. Of course, 19 sources isn't even the beginning of what's available. There are more than half a dozen cited in this thread that aren't in the article. Why wouldn't you consider those in your count? Do you really need me to collect them all in one place - or are you going to accuse me of WP:POINT. Are you sure that if we start comparing cites counts we're not violating WP:OSE? Bangabandhu ( talk) 21:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- For starters, no, she does not have "more cites than most state politicians", either — of the 19 citations here, fully half are
primary sources that cannot support notability in a Wikipedia article at all, and the half that are actual media coverage are purely local media coverage of the type and volume that's merely expected to exist for all city councillors everywhere. Any reasonable assessment would not just be "impartial" to what level of government she serves — we have a rule on here that the lowest level of government that entitles a person to have an article is the state legislature, and that the only way to get a person at the local level of government in the door is to demonstrate evidence that she's substantially more notable than the vast majority of other people at that same level of government. A county councillor does not get in the door just by showing six or seven cites to her own local media, because there isn't a single county councillor anywhere on the planet who couldn't show six or seven cites to her own local media — there is only one way to make a county councillor notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and that is to show a lot more than most other county councillors could also show: a much higher number of citations, a much wider geographic range of where the coverage is coming from, deeper citations (e.g. somebody wrote and published an entire book about her), etc. "Exactly the same as every other county councillor could also show" is not good enough. Show a lot more than every other county councillor could also show. No ifs, no ands, no buts: show more than most other county councillors could show, or it goes.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- While this is one of the more interesting and well-considered comments in this thread you seem to believe that there is something fundamentally non-notable about her role on the County council. There's enough content in here - beginning with her award as teacher and activist of the year - that she could have a page in her own right separate from her position. But suddenly she doesn't deserve a page when she gets a position below the state level in government. Imagine if she won the Nobel Prize for her stand against taking the oath on the bible. You'd probably say dismiss that, because it was something she did in her role as a County Councilmember. And what is the threshold for coverage, anyway? Show me something that says national coverage is required? She has more cites than most state politicians, yet of course none of that counts, because she's got the Scarlet Letter of County Council service. You dismiss all the national coverage because you say that its in a regional section, essentially creating a new requirement for notability, when really its just because nothing can shake the tarnish of the County Council in your mind. Any reasonable assessment would just be impartial to what level of government she serves.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 19:59, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete. The county level of government is not an automatic
WP:NPOL pass for every county councillor who exists — it can occasionally be valid grounds for inclusion if and when a county councillor can be
reliably sourced to a volume and depth and range of coverage that marks her out as significantly more notable than the norm, but it is not an automatic notability freebie that automatically gets every county councillor in the door just for existing as a county councillor. But the referencing here is not getting her over
WP:GNG in lieu, because half of it is
primary sourcing that does not assist notability at all, and the half that is reliable sourcing is purely local reliable sourcing of the type and volume that's merely expected to exist for all county councillors in their own local media. (And as for Bangabandhu's new sources above, those are still local coverage in the Baltimore-DC corridor, not national coverage that makes her special — even the "NPR" citation is not to NPR's national news division, but to its local station in Baltimore.) This simply is not cutting it in terms of making a county councillor notable enough for inclusion.
And WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, so the fact that some or all of her other colleagues have articles too isn't a reason why this has to be kept — they may need to be deleted as well, and/or may have a stronger claim to surpassing the "more notable than the norm for county councillors" condition. (For example, I've heard of Kirby Delauter often enough to recognize his name on sight even though I'm Canadian, but even he still may just be a WP:BLP1E rather than a subject who's actually earned a genuinely substantive claim to being more notable than his colleagues.) So each of those articles will need to be individually reviewed for whether they're actually meeting our requirements or not, but none of them are entitled to articles just for existing as county councillors either, so they do not constitute evidence that Fitzwater has to be kept. Bearcat ( talk) 16:54, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, but did you bother to read any of the comments in this thread? No one is claiming that she has notability solely on the basis of her position on the Council. The issue is that she has the notability scales tipped against her because she's on the Council. If this were a fair hearing she wouldn't have to go to these lengths and no one would be dismissing her ample cites. What's more, your comments about Delauter further highlights what has been the elephant in the room throughout this discussion:
that she is the sole female seat holder under 40 in all of Maryland politics. Was she really nominated at random for deletion by editors (who I think are) entirely male? When there are many other pages about male seat holders, all with a fraction of the cites? But its okay you can just remain oblivious and claim
WP:OSE.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 20:14, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, I did bother to read all the comments in this thread — and I hate to break it to you, but I'm the most opposite of "oblivious" person you're ever going to meet in your lifetime. And incidentally, holders of generally non-notable offices, like county councillors, do not get automatic inclusion freebies just because of their age, race, gender or sexuality either, so being "the sole female seat holder under 40 in all of Maryland politics" is irrelevant to her notability or lack thereof — and that's not even what the article says, which is just that she's the only woman under 40 serving on a county council. And on top of that, we'll never mind that the Maryland Reporter is a WordPress
blog, which means it's an unreliable source that never counts as acceptable support for notability under any circumstances: even if being female was an automatic notability freebie that automatically made a county councillor special, which it isn't, you still couldn't use that as a source for anything in the article. The problem isn't that county council is somehow tipping the notability scales unfairly against her notability for other things — you have yet to actually demonstrate that she has any other things that count as notability claims at all.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, you're making it worse. You would not go to such lengths to indict that source you and others weren't on this anti-Councilmember and possibly anti-woman jihad.
Why didn't you just bother to find the original source mentioned in the post that confirms her unique status as one of the only under 40 elected officials at that level? Answer: because its easier to insist on this misinterpretation of
WP:POLITICIAN.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 21:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- Regardless of whether it's true or not that she's one of the only under 40 elected officials in the state, what is true is that being under 40 is not a notability claim that automatically makes a county councillor a special case, over and above other county councillors, in and of itself. I am not misinterpreting
WP:POLITICIAN at all, nor am I on any sort of "jihad" — county councillors are quite simply not automatically notable just for existing, and the inclusion test for actually getting a county councillor in the door is that they can be shown as significantly more notable than most other county councillors, by virtue of being able to show more coverage, wider coverage and/or deeper coverage than every county councillor always gets in their local media.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with you that if the sole claim for notability were that distinction it would be a weak case. But that isn't the only claim to notability. She's got complete profiles dedicated to her. She's proposed and passed legislation that's been covered in newspapers with a national reach. She's taken important stands like refusing to swear on the bible. She's held a statewide position and won award. Again, you can indict any one of these accomplishments or the source and individually they are inadequate. But please look at it as a whole. Unfortunately it is not as simple as a statewide politician who receives automatic notability.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 14:34, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Firstly, the only "complete profiles dedicated to her" shown here are in local media — which is once again a thing that every county councillor everywhere could always show, not a thing that inherently makes this county councillor a special case over and above most others.
- Secondly, the localness or non-localness of media coverage is not determined by a publication's reach, but by its point of origin — if her notability claim exists within the local coverage area of the Washington Post, then the fact that WaPo has a wider-than-just-local distribution is not enough to make her special. By comparison, a county councillor in the New York City metro wouldn't automatically get a free pass over NPOL just because their routine local coverage happened to be located in The New York Times either. If publications away from the local market, such as the Chicago Sun-Times or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, were covering a county councillor in the NYC or Washington metros, then there'd be a case for notability, but the extralocal distribution of the New York Times or the Washington Post does not reify into "nationalized" coverage for the purposes of making their local coverage of local county councillors more notable than the equivalent local coverage of local politics in every other newspaper.
- Thirdly, refusing to swear on the Bible is not an important stand that makes a county councillor notable in and of itself.
- Fourthly, this article does not state that she held any statewide position that would count as a pass of WP:NPOL #1 — that refers to the state legislature, not to the boards of directors of NGOs — and the only award that she's stated as having won is not shown or sourced as a notable award that would make a person notable for winning it (which is not a thing that every award automatically does just because it exists — an award's ability to make a person notable for winning it is exactly coterminous with the extent to which the media report the granting of that award as news.)
- I am looking at it as a whole — the whole simply doesn't cut the mustard at all.
Bearcat (
talk) 18:03, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I think at the core of the disagreement here is that you think that notability is a yes/no on every point rather than a cumulative score across lots of different areas. You're right that each one of these on their own is totally inadequate to prove notability. In their entirety, they add up to something immense and are more than adequate. Do you really think that every local politician has this level of coverage? 22:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think it's true that every local politician has the level of coverage actually shown here — I know for a fact that it's true that every local politician has the level of coverage shown here. And no, the claims don't add up to something immense and more than adequate in toto. Bearcat ( talk) 17:34, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
- I think at the core of the disagreement here is that you think that notability is a yes/no on every point rather than a cumulative score across lots of different areas. You're right that each one of these on their own is totally inadequate to prove notability. In their entirety, they add up to something immense and are more than adequate. Do you really think that every local politician has this level of coverage? 22:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I agree with you that if the sole claim for notability were that distinction it would be a weak case. But that isn't the only claim to notability. She's got complete profiles dedicated to her. She's proposed and passed legislation that's been covered in newspapers with a national reach. She's taken important stands like refusing to swear on the bible. She's held a statewide position and won award. Again, you can indict any one of these accomplishments or the source and individually they are inadequate. But please look at it as a whole. Unfortunately it is not as simple as a statewide politician who receives automatic notability.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 14:34, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Regardless of whether it's true or not that she's one of the only under 40 elected officials in the state, what is true is that being under 40 is not a notability claim that automatically makes a county councillor a special case, over and above other county councillors, in and of itself. I am not misinterpreting
WP:POLITICIAN at all, nor am I on any sort of "jihad" — county councillors are quite simply not automatically notable just for existing, and the inclusion test for actually getting a county councillor in the door is that they can be shown as significantly more notable than most other county councillors, by virtue of being able to show more coverage, wider coverage and/or deeper coverage than every county councillor always gets in their local media.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, you're making it worse. You would not go to such lengths to indict that source you and others weren't on this anti-Councilmember and possibly anti-woman jihad.
Why didn't you just bother to find the original source mentioned in the post that confirms her unique status as one of the only under 40 elected officials at that level? Answer: because its easier to insist on this misinterpretation of
WP:POLITICIAN.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 21:08, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, I did bother to read all the comments in this thread — and I hate to break it to you, but I'm the most opposite of "oblivious" person you're ever going to meet in your lifetime. And incidentally, holders of generally non-notable offices, like county councillors, do not get automatic inclusion freebies just because of their age, race, gender or sexuality either, so being "the sole female seat holder under 40 in all of Maryland politics" is irrelevant to her notability or lack thereof — and that's not even what the article says, which is just that she's the only woman under 40 serving on a county council. And on top of that, we'll never mind that the Maryland Reporter is a WordPress
blog, which means it's an unreliable source that never counts as acceptable support for notability under any circumstances: even if being female was an automatic notability freebie that automatically made a county councillor special, which it isn't, you still couldn't use that as a source for anything in the article. The problem isn't that county council is somehow tipping the notability scales unfairly against her notability for other things — you have yet to actually demonstrate that she has any other things that count as notability claims at all.
Bearcat (
talk) 06:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, but did you bother to read any of the comments in this thread? No one is claiming that she has notability solely on the basis of her position on the Council. The issue is that she has the notability scales tipped against her because she's on the Council. If this were a fair hearing she wouldn't have to go to these lengths and no one would be dismissing her ample cites. What's more, your comments about Delauter further highlights what has been the elephant in the room throughout this discussion:
that she is the sole female seat holder under 40 in all of Maryland politics. Was she really nominated at random for deletion by editors (who I think are) entirely male? When there are many other pages about male seat holders, all with a fraction of the cites? But its okay you can just remain oblivious and claim
WP:OSE.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 20:14, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
- Keep. Subject has received significant coverage from reliable secondary sources, independent of the subject. ~ Quacks Like a Duck ( talk) 12:37, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
- If the amount of media coverage shown here were enough in and of itself to get a county councillor over GNG and thus exempt her from having to pass NPOL, then every county councillor on the planet would always get over GNG and there would never be any such thing as a non-notable county councillor anymore. We have an established consensus, however, that county councillors are not all automatically notable just for existing as county councillors — so the key to making a county councillor notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia is not "the same coverage that every county councillor could also show", but "significantly more coverage than most other city councillors could also show". Which is not what's in evidence here.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- No, this is wrong. Not all Councilmembers have the same amount of media coverage. Evidence: when Fitzwater was first elected there was a fraction of this coverage about her. She was not notable then. Now there's an extensive set of sources. She is notable, and not like "all" Councilmembers, especially those just starting out. Bangabandhu ( talk) 22:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- If the amount of media coverage shown here were enough in and of itself to get a county councillor over GNG and thus exempt her from having to pass NPOL, then every county councillor on the planet would always get over GNG and there would never be any such thing as a non-notable county councillor anymore. We have an established consensus, however, that county councillors are not all automatically notable just for existing as county councillors — so the key to making a county councillor notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia is not "the same coverage that every county councillor could also show", but "significantly more coverage than most other city councillors could also show". Which is not what's in evidence here.
Bearcat (
talk) 14:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete per Bearcat and EM Gregory. There is an expectation that county elected officials receive significant national or international coverage to meet WP:NPOL. -- Enos733 ( talk) 04:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Why are you more interested in blindly following what Bearcat says than what guidelines dictate?
WP:NPOL says nothing about any requirements for national or international coverage. It expects extensive coverage, which has been amply demonstrated. Since Bearcat seems too oblivious just unwilling to state it clearly, the requirement is "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage" meaning "A politician who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists." Do you need me to paste the feature articles and extensive coverage here? They're listed above.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 06:10, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Probably a good time to review
WP:BLUD.
SportingFlyer
talk 06:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Look, I apologize if I was overly emphatic in this discussion. But editors are on the verge of harming readership and the project's mission. I feel strongly about this. Also you have put me in a difficult position. If I invest hours of more time to format dozens of cites I then risk losing even more if this isn't resolved the way that it should be. Bangabandhu ( talk) 14:13, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- User:Bangabandhu this isn't personal, it's just that we have rules and guidelines of the sort necessary to any complex system, in fact, I do hope that you have taken a careful look at WP:POLOUTCOMES. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 10:54, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I have seen that page before. It's critical that you not mistake that for guidelines. Those are not guidelines. They're previous outcomes, some of which may have been mistaken. If you consider them guidelines they're self reinforcing and encourage a herd mentality where everyone makes the same mistake over and over again. I see that the editor who proposed this AfD is trying to make those guidelines with respect to local politicians. I am going to weigh in on that, it is outrageous.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 14:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- First of all, my reason to delete this article is based off of
WP:POLITICIAN, not
WP:POLOUTCOMES. County politicians are not given auto-notability under WP:POLITICIAN. You have failed to demonstrate that the subject received in-depth coverage beyond a couple local newspaper articles. Then you made an argument that she should get notability because of her gender (find that in the guidelines) and alleged that myself and others voting delete were sexist which is basically a personal attack, see
WP:AFDEQ. The only reason this received more than one keep vote is you
WP:CANVASSED it here
[2] which is also against the rules.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 17:27, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- That wasn't directed to you, but since you wrote I'll respond. You said a few sources were unacceptable because they were from a local publication.
WP:POLITICIAN says nothing about requirements for national coverage, only significant coverage, which has been demonstrated. Its
WP:POLOUTCOMES, which is not a guideline, that mentions national coverage. Editors' move to target the sole female office holder for deletion is sexist. That's not a personal attack. It's not canvassing to contact previous editors who have made significant contributions to an article, please familiarize yourself with guidelines before you cite them. If I were to really canvass I'd have legions of support on this page as its right now only reviewed by the insular group editors who frequent this page.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 22:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Read WP:ONLYESSAY. Precedents defined at WP:POLOUTCOMES are binding in the absence of a compelling reason to make a special exception to them — which you haven't shown. The path to notability for a local county councillor, the question of whether the coverage is "significant" enough to get a person over NPOL #2, is defined by (a) coverage that nationalizes well beyond what could merely be expected to exist for any county councillor anywhere, (b) coverage that drills down much deeper than the norm, such as the person attaining such iconic status in their own local area that they've actually had one or more book-length biographies published about them, or (c) coverage that volumizes well beyond the norm, such as the ability to cite dozens of pieces of media coverage and not just eight or nine. The simple fact that some local media coverage exists is not enough to get a county councillor over NPOL #2 in and of itself, because there is no county councillor anywhere for whom some local media coverage doesn't exist. Bearcat ( talk) 17:45, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
- That wasn't directed to you, but since you wrote I'll respond. You said a few sources were unacceptable because they were from a local publication.
WP:POLITICIAN says nothing about requirements for national coverage, only significant coverage, which has been demonstrated. Its
WP:POLOUTCOMES, which is not a guideline, that mentions national coverage. Editors' move to target the sole female office holder for deletion is sexist. That's not a personal attack. It's not canvassing to contact previous editors who have made significant contributions to an article, please familiarize yourself with guidelines before you cite them. If I were to really canvass I'd have legions of support on this page as its right now only reviewed by the insular group editors who frequent this page.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 22:28, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- First of all, my reason to delete this article is based off of
WP:POLITICIAN, not
WP:POLOUTCOMES. County politicians are not given auto-notability under WP:POLITICIAN. You have failed to demonstrate that the subject received in-depth coverage beyond a couple local newspaper articles. Then you made an argument that she should get notability because of her gender (find that in the guidelines) and alleged that myself and others voting delete were sexist which is basically a personal attack, see
WP:AFDEQ. The only reason this received more than one keep vote is you
WP:CANVASSED it here
[2] which is also against the rules.--
Rusf10 (
talk) 17:27, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- I have seen that page before. It's critical that you not mistake that for guidelines. Those are not guidelines. They're previous outcomes, some of which may have been mistaken. If you consider them guidelines they're self reinforcing and encourage a herd mentality where everyone makes the same mistake over and over again. I see that the editor who proposed this AfD is trying to make those guidelines with respect to local politicians. I am going to weigh in on that, it is outrageous.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 14:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Probably a good time to review
WP:BLUD.
SportingFlyer
talk 06:42, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Why are you more interested in blindly following what Bearcat says than what guidelines dictate?
WP:NPOL says nothing about any requirements for national or international coverage. It expects extensive coverage, which has been amply demonstrated. Since Bearcat seems too oblivious just unwilling to state it clearly, the requirement is "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage" meaning "A politician who has received "significant press coverage" has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists." Do you need me to paste the feature articles and extensive coverage here? They're listed above.
Bangabandhu (
talk) 06:10, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
- Keep - has runned in the council election. Article is well sourced. Has recieved extensive coverage by reliable third party sources. WP:GNG applies here whether people like it or not. BabbaQ ( talk) 08:34, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
- Running in a county council election is not a notability claim in and of itself — the state legislature is the lowest level of office at which the fact of holding office constitutes an automatic notability pass. At the county level, what has to be shown to make a person notable is a depth and breadth and range of coverage that goes significantly above and beyond what every county councillor could always show, and the sourcing here isn't doing that. Bearcat ( talk) 17:45, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
- Delete. No exceptional coverage. Sources cited are all local & routine to the area, on par with what any official would receive in a local paper. Feel free to import this content (with attribution) to another wiki that focuses on local content. But Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. fwiw, I don't see the case for Kirby Delauter either. czar 14:29, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
- 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.