User talk:Michael A. White/Archives/2018/February

speedy

Why do you want to remove the article on William R. Van Aken? I'm holding off on deletion till I hear from you, because it would seem a perfectly appropriate article, and easy enough to source. DGG ( talk ) 02:41, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

once more, Iask for an explanation. If some other admin should delete the page, I'll consider making an article myself unless there is some reason not to. If the reason is private, em-mail me from my user talk page. DGG ( talk ) 17:58, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I, too, would like to know. I'm not comfortable deleting this without a reason.----Fabrictramp | talk to me 05:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I am going to suggest you reassess the methodology you follow in requesting deletions. Both the articles for William R. Van Aken and Wayne L. Niederhauser indicated they held positions that clearly met WP:NPOL, thus there was no reason for a nomination for deletion, much less a speedy. These are not wonderful articles about wonderful people, but they follow the rules. If you notice a problem like this, instead of creating a commotion for others, follow WP:BEFORE, which simply means Google (or use another search engine of your choice) to find sources to improve the articles. Then FIX THE PROBLEM. That way you have used your editing skills to improve wikipedia, rather than needlessly discarding information we already do have.@DGG:@Fabrictramp:Trackinfo (talk) 15:47, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

The article William R. Van Aken was created by me with its only substantial content, so it meets the policy for speedy deletion. WP:NPOL is only a guideline. I tend to think that most subnational legislators are not notable. (Being a young genealogist at the time, I basically created the article because I was disappointed that Wikipedia didn't have any articles about people with surnames to which I'm related.) Notability inheres to the size or population of the electoral district, not the (legislative) jurisdiction. It seems like WP:NPOL was written by someone who couldn't quite make the realization that subnational legislators are about as notable as local executives, who generally aren't notable. I'd say only a small minority of subnational legislators are notable due to their influence. The fact that the only sources added are a passing reference for election results in a local paper and an entry in an encyclopedia of Cleveland history prove the point. The Wayne Niederhauser sources don't really meet the definition of "significant coverage" either. In the past few years, people have been creating state legislator articles en masse. I don't believe this is good, and it would also behoove Wikipedia to consider the effects on state politics of every subnational legislator having an article.--Michael White^T·C 01:30, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I too have my own views about what we should include, and for NPOL it's different from the standard, because I would include major party nominees in a two party system to avoid the present bias for the incumbents. But "notability" means whatever we decide it by consensus to mean, and in this case it matches neither my preference or yours. But when dealing with deletion as an admin, I follow the established guidelines--in a discussion, I will differentiate what I think we ought to do, because that's the purpose of discussions.

We can delete articles at the request of the main contributor, but we don't have to, since all contribution are irrevocable, If you think it should be deleted nonetheless, try AfD DGG ( talk ) 05:57, 15 February 2018 (UTC)