Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Mutton

John Mutton

John Mutton (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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WP:BLP of a person notable primarily as a municipal politician in Coventry. The city is not large enough to confer automatic notability on its city councillors, and it's one of the many English cities where the Lord Mayor is a purely ceremonial role that rotates annually among city councillors rather than having any executive authority in its own right — and the sourcing here consists of one reference in which he's only briefly named in a news article which is fundamentally about his successor as Lord Mayor rather than about him. So he doesn't get an automatic presumption of notability for either role under WP:NPOL, and the sourcing isn't strong enough to put him over WP:GNG either. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 16:26, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 16:26, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

• Comment - specifically to Bearcat (talk · contribs) who has created somewhat of a strawman by focusing on the "Lord Mayor" as councillor, and ignoring the fact that he was leader of the Labour Party group within the council. Because Coventry is an urban area, it has tended to favour Labour, so being far from being "Lord Mayor" on a rotational basis, he was "Leader of the Majority Party", and therefore the most important councillor politically, for a significant period and this does have something going for it that is conveniently ignored by the nomination. In terms of WP:POLITICIAN, the result is marginal, and may depend on sourcing to news articles; the result will be far closer than the open-and-shut case presented erroneously by Bearcat (talk · contribs). The presentation of such an argument doesn't really inspire confidence. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:56, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

If a city isn't large enough to confer automatic notability on its city councillors, then being leader of the majority group on council doesn't make him any more inherently notable than any other city councillor — and if enough substantive coverage of him can actually be added to get him past GNG, then he'll get past GNG regardless of whether he was leader of a council bloc or just a regular councillor. So no, I didn't "ignore" or "strawman" the distinction — it simply doesn't make a difference either way. Bearcat (talk) 17:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

By an extension of that logic, the leader of a country is equally as notable as any old MP. This clearly is an argument that is anything but intelligent or logical. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:28, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Unlike city councillors, all MPs are always notable enough for articles under WP:NPOL regardless of whether they were a Prime Minister or a backbencher — so that distinction doesn't actually impact anything either way either, and hence there's nothing unintelligent or illogical about it. Bearcat (talk) 22:31, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

But what you might be failing to grasp is that notability is not a dichotomy between "notable" and "unnotable" but a cline with grey areas (this does unfortunately seem to be a common misunderstanding). A leader of a dominant political group for a significant period is more notable than a councillor who isn't a leader or there for a significant period. Such leaders have been known to receive significant honours (e.g. as CBEs and knighthoods (although not in this case)), and such are in one of these grey areas. It would be better to acknowledge this than presenting the false (and patently ridiculous) case that "all councillors are equally unnotable". Barney the barney barney (talk) 22:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"Notability" on Wikipedia is a function of the degree of reliable source coverage that can or cannot be provided about the person, not an inherent property of the person themselves. We've never accepted articles about city councillors, except in an extremely narrow range of metropolitan world cities — and we've never had a consensus to accept councillors in cities outside of that range just because the councillor held a special title (such as "deputy mayor" or "leader of a political party or faction") within the council. If the city isn't large enough to confer automatic notability on all of its city councillors, then the only way any city councillor (deputy mayor or not, leader of a dominant political grouping or not) qualifies is if you can add a volume and range of sourcing that gets him over WP:GNG completely on his own steam, per NPOL's provision for "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage." If the necessary volume of sourcing were present, I would have let this go under GNG — but there's only one source here, and it isn't even about him. Bearcat (talk) 23:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Well please try to make your mind up and be consistent Bearcat (talk · contribs). In your nomination the expressed reason to delete is that he's extremely unimportant, down to the level of only being "a common and garden councillor" - when it's pointed out to you that this isn't actually true as he's more important than that, you try to pretend that this is irrelevant. A better person would have accepted their error and moved on. However, you have now tried to change your original argument about importance and instead frame your argument around "coverage". Well of course, coverage is partly a function of importance, and there are some sources available (WP:BEFORE requires that you look). Also, to address another point that you keep going on about, Coventry is a fairly large city (it's not quite top 10 in England but it's close), to pretend that that too is unimportant is either a continuation of the attitude of the original nomination in which inconvenient facts are conveniently ignored so that you present a strawman case. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, you're the one making up strawmen here. Almost everything you're saying here is a complete misinterpretation of the facts of either what I said, or of Wikipedia policy, or both. Let me summarize this one more time: Wikipedia's long-standing consensus, as documented at WP:NPOL and WP:POLOUTCOMES, is that city councillors are only granted an automatic presumption of notability in a narrow range of internationally famous world cities with populations in the millions (the textbook UK example is London.) A city with a 2011 census population of 316,900 does not fall inside that narrow range, so a city councillor in Coventry is only notable enough for a Wikipedia article if he specifically gets past WP:GNG as an individual — he is not entitled to keep a Wikipedia article that's based on only one source which isn't even principally about him, but merely mentions his name in passing as a predecessor of the person the article is actually about.

And it doesn't matter whether they're a "garden variety councillor", a "leader of a dominant political bloc within the council", a "deputy mayor" or a person who got to step into the "everybody gets a turn" rotation of a ceremonial and non-executive mayoralty — they still have to pass WP:GNG in their own right, or they don't get to be on here. Even Wikipedia's consensus about mayors doesn't boost him, because it applies only to directly elected "executive" mayors and not to appointed or rotated "ceremonial" mayors. My point has been the same all along: Coventry is not large enough to confer an automatic presumption of notability on its city councillors under Wikipedia's consensus about how big a city has to be to confer notability on its city councillors, so he has to pass WP:GNG in his own right to qualify for an article on here — but this article, as written, does not demonstrate that he passes GNG in his own right. Sure, Coventry is large enough that it could absolutely be kept if the sourcing were beefed up enough to get him past GNG — but it's not large enough that he's automatically entitled to keep an article on here just because he was a city councillor, even if that article only cites one actual source.

I've been consistent all along in this discussion — talking about whether the volume of coverage passes GNG or not is not a "change of tactic", because kindly note that I referred to the volume of coverage vis-à-vis GNG right in the initial nomination — and I'm not "strawmanning" anything or "ignoring" any facts that actually make a difference in this situation. You're the one making up stuff that isn't consistent with Wikipedia's established consensus on articles about city councillors, not me. Bearcat (talk) 16:49, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

No. If you go back to the (hint it's above), you'll find you misrepresented (deliberately or not) the facts, then when this what pointed out to you, you first tried to pretend the facts weren't relevant, then you switched your argument to talk about coverage rather than importance (which was the focus of your original argument). The only thing Bearcat (talk · contribs) has actually been consistent about is the illogic of some of your arguments and the inconsistency with which they were presented. It matters not whether the Leader of the Council is directly elected by a popular vote or indirectly elected by councillors who were themselves elected by popular vote because they're still the Leader of the Council. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:33, 20 August 2014 (UTC)