Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Zimmerman (politician)

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. Other than couple sources from The Standard, nothing else really constitutes significant coverage. His notability is borderline at best, but the coverage is minimal. —fetch ·comms 22:21, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Paul Zimmerman (politician)

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Contested PROD of BLP. Non-notable politician who doesn't hold office (according to the article, he ran and was not elected.) Even if he had won, holding a LegCo seat in Hong Kong is not assumed notable. Nothing else in the BLP suggests notability. Article was also created by current IP sock of a banned user, but that doesn't need to be relevant, it would make it eligible for CSD... SchmuckyTheCat (talk) 11:54, 24 July 2010 (UTC) -[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hong Kong-related deletion discussions. —Empty Buffer (talk) 11:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. —Empty Buffer (talk) 11:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, non-notable per WP:POLITICIAN; no significant coverage online from WP:Reliable sources. Empty Buffer (talk) 12:04, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment article has also been nominated for speedy deletion, db-g5. Empty Buffer 12:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

* Keep. [1] Is it non-notable with 129,000 results? 116.49.135.38 (talk) 12:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC)_{socks of banned users don't get to make their opinion}[reply]

declined speedy delete article can stand on its merits as it does not appear to be bad faith. Even if the creator does not ahve the favour of the community. However being a candidate for these elections is not notable in itself. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The lowest of all possible barriers should be placed before active politicians for inclusion in Wikipedia, in my estimation. Politicians are inherently public figures and having their neutrally written biographies here one of Wikipedia's greatest public services. Carrite (talk) 13:30, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Which is outside the consensus of WP:POLITICIAN, and would result in an explosion of self-promotional biographies. Besides - he's not active, failed twice in a row and isn't currently running for anything. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Delete There's nothing that says that all active politicians are inherently notable, and thank God for that, otherwise we'd have an article for every asshole and his sister running for public office. Persons who get elected to certain offices are presumed notable. I hasten to point out that the word "politician" as used in Wikipedia tends to follow the British English definition rather than the American English one. Mandsford 19:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, nothing in here meets the notability requirements. Hairhorn (talk) 02:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Has anyone commenting above actually checked to see if the subject is notable by looking for sources? It seems not, as none of the comments make any reference to such searching, and discussion is revolving around a minor part of the subject's public life. Basic searches such as this show that the claim to notability is not based on his candidacy for LegCo, but on his work on promoting the development of Hong Kong's harbourfront, so this discussion should be about whether sources such as [2], [3] and [4] satisfy the general notability guideline, rather than about the irrelevancy of his election candidacy. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:28, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
keep with the articles that Phil Bridger provided above, two of them primarily about the subject of the article and another substantially covering his actions and comments as part of an organization, this more clearly meets "significant coverage in reliable third party sources" than many other articles that have passed AfD. Active Banana (talk) 20:40, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can we have some articles that are not from The Standard? Has SCMP ever written about him? We do want multiple sources. Can you rework the article to remove the writing emphasis on his being a politician? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

No free article about him, but his activism is noted and he is quoted by forbes and time and asia sentinal to name a few. And the fact that the article needs to be a little refocused is not a reason to delete. Active Banana (talk) 21:54, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The idea of a wiki is that anyone who wants something reworked can simply do it, rather than ask someone else to do it. And why don't you check yourself whether the SCMP has written about the subject (hint: Forbes says that it has)? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:52, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Havent actully worked the new sources in yet, but the lead cites him as an activist and not politician. Is that better?Active Banana (talk)

Comment: There is no requirement for multiple sources to establish notability unless the single source does not provide in-depth coverage. To quote the policy: "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability." In this case, there are at leat two articles in The Standard that are relatively long and solely about Zimmerman. I believe that constitutes "in-depth" coverage Wikipeterproject (talk) 18:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep he has hundreds of thousands of Google hits for him and appears to be written about by multiple reliable sources. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 21:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as failure of WP:BIO. Being quoted in a newspaper article about another topic does not count as "significant coverage". "Paul Zimmerman" is quite a common name and most Google hits are simply mishits. There's 78 GNews hits on "Paul Zimmerman" "Hong Kong" and most of those are simply not about him. The only reliable source actually about him is the one from the Standard [5]. cab (call) 03:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore I'll take this opportunity to point out that Asia Sentinel is a glorified blog entirely lacking any editorial oversight --- they regularly reprint anonymous bloggers with an axe to grind, and don't bother fact checking them at all, e.g. [6]. IMO it fails both WP:RS and WP:ELINK. If Paul Zimmerman's article is kept, that Asia Sentinel post should not be used as a source. Thanks, cab (call) 03:35, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Coverage about subject does not appear to be significant. --Pink Bull 14:39, 1 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Zimmerman appears to be (mildly) notable as an activist, but not as a politician. A failed candidate, as a rule, does not meet the notability requirements of WP:POLITICIAN. Therefore, we need to look at the general notability requirements, as mentioned above. The policy states that a "...person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." The Standard has at least two articles soley about Zimmerman: the one mentioned by CaliforniaAliBaba, above and [this one]. On that basis, I think there is (just) enough to meet the notability policy I quoted. Wikipeterproject (talk) 18:25, 1 August 2010 (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.