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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. MBisanz talk 23:06, 4 September 2016 (UTC) reply

Winnipeg city councillors

Donald Benham (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Jeff Browaty (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Ray Brunka (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Bill Clement (politician) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Shawn Dobson (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Bob Douglas (politician) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Delete. At one time, Wikipedia consensus accepted Winnipeg as a city large and notable enough to give its city councillors an WP:NPOL pass just for serving as city councillors, because it was a member of one of the classes of city listed in our article about global cities at the time the discussion was undertaken. However, consensus has now changed: Winnipeg is not named in that article as it exists today, and more recent discussions have established that it is not internationally prominent enough to retain "city councillors are notable" status anymore. Accordingly, the Winnipeg city councillors listed here are no longer appropriate article topics, as they have no stronger claim of notability and are not sourced well enough to claim WP:GNG instead. This affects a significant number of existing articles, so I'll be listing them in small batches rather than all at once. Bearcat ( talk) 22:04, 27 August 2016 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 22:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Manitoba-related deletion discussions. Bearcat ( talk) 22:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • Delete These city councilors are not such in significantly major enough cities for them to be default notable, I would say the same for similar significance cities in the US like Des Moines, Iowa. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 05:31, 28 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • Delete as not meeting WP:NPOL; recent related AfDs closed as delete. K.e.coffman ( talk) 07:49, 28 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • Comment@ Bearcat and K.e.coffman: I didn't get a reply to my concern at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mike O'Shaughnessy. Why would we assess the notability of a municipal politician based primarily on their city's "connectivity measured through 'advanced producer services': accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, and law"? Graham ( talk) 02:37, 29 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • @ Graham11: I did not participate in the earlier discussions (around 2008 when some of the Winnipeg city councillors came for deletion), but my interpretation is that at that time these subjects were considered to meet WP:NPOL #1, due to Winnipeg being listed as a global city. Since then the consensus appears to have evolved, so that these city councillors are no longer accepted as qualifying under NPOL #1. So the criteria at this time is that they need to pass GNG for their articles to be kept. This does not appear to be the case, hence I voted delete. I hope this helps. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • Graham, that's not exactly what's happening. The notability of a city councillor is always dependent on meeting WP:GNG through sourcing. However, if a city is in the global city class, then its councillors are extended a presumption of notability — meaning that the article is allowed to stand even if it's not in a fully GNG-passing state of development yet, because there's a reasonable expectation that GNG will be met even if all the necessary work hasn't actually been put in yet, and there's enough broad reader interest in the local politics of major world cities that a broad audience for the article can be reasonably expected. Outside of the global city range, however, there's much less of a guarantee that a city councillor will fully satisfy GNG and less of a guarantee that enough people will be interested in the article to keep the wikimodel working properly — I'm Canadian, for example, and even I can name some of the city councillors in New York City and Washington DC and San Francisco and Chicago and London, because I've heard of them often enough in nationalized or internationalized media coverage, yet at the same time, I couldn't name you most of the city councillors in the suburbs of my own city, because they don't get the same degree of extralocalized coverage. So outside of the global city range, a city councillor does not get an automatic presumption of notability just for existing, but rather their notability and sourceability have to be shown up front before they qualify for inclusion. Technically, any city councillor in any city has the possibility of satisfying WP:NPOL's "major local political figures" criterion if the content and sourcing are good enough — the only difference is in whether the article is allowed to exist before the content and sourcing are good enough (global cities), or has to wait until after the content and sourcing have already been shown as good enough (everywhere else). Bearcat ( talk) 15:36, 31 August 2016 (UTC) reply
  • I landed here after puzzling through the Jeff Browaty and Mark Lubosch AFDs. My news archive search establishes tat each of each of these 2, and presumably some or all of the others, has had demonstrable impact on municipal affairs (stuff like public smoking regulation; bike lanes). There can be no doubt that have had more impact than most members of the New Hampshire legislature, and yet there are sound reasons for deeming members of provincial legislatures as a category, but not city councilors of cities below a certain significance. Where that border lies is always going to be fuzzy, (I have only been ot Winnipeg once in my life, and know little about it) and yet I have little trouble putting Winnipeg on the "too small" side of that fuzzy line, not least because pop. of metro area is under 1 million, but also because it truly does not have much of a profile in the world. I think that I would iVote to keep a city council member in a city this size if I found that he had played a significant role in shaping something local that became a model for other cities, or if he got even minor attention in the media beyond the region (and even then, only if the attention was for some accomplishment, not because he happened to have the same exact name as a British Prime Minister (I recently iVoted to delete the other Theresa May). I just looked at WP:POLOUTCOMES and it seems pretty good. Feel free to ping me if you think any of the pols on the list merits a closer look. Otherwise, I'm comfortable deleting Winnipeg city councilors with no claim to notability beyond coverage of their political activities in the Manitoba media. E.M.Gregory ( talk) 20:56, 31 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.