User talk:Apocheir/Archives/2021/December

Mass redirects of law enforcement agency articles

Hi Apocheir. I see from my watchlist that you have recently redirected a bunch of law enforcement agency articles to their parent city/town/county etc. Although I am slightly sceptical as to whether you conducted a thorough search for notability for every single one, given the rapid pace of editing, I don't fundamentally disagree that most of those articles would end up being non-notable, but I think in what appears to have been a rush, you have missed quite a few things. It seems to have started at Binghamton Police Department, where you did at least tag for a merge with Binghamton, New York for a week, but then after redirecting the PD article you only removed content from Binghamton, New York (describing it rather curiously as "out of date trivia"), rather than merging anything in. A quick look at Southampton Town Police Department (diff) suggests some definite potential for notability, but again this was simply redirected without any content being kept anywhere, and I suspect there will be other examples. I am also disappointed to see that you do not appear to have attempted to merge any of the other articles, nor have you left the redirects tagged in their categories, which would have been useful and is common practice for cases like this where the organisation has a (semi-)independent existence but is not sufficiently notable for an article. Most of what you've done therefore amounts to out-of-process deletion, because it's not within the scope of WP:ATD, and there is no consensus for it, and that's quite a big issue. I absolutely appreciate that you've acted with good faith, but there is no deadline for this sort of stuff, and with a bit more time and attention most of this could have been done without causing these issues. I'm probably going to go through and try and pragmatically fix a lot of this myself, because it's just going to be easier and more practical than reverting it all, but we shouldn't really be in this place to start with. ninety:one 10:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I have the same concern with Suffolk County Sheriff's Office. Leschnei (talk) 11:25, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Leschnei: @Ninetyone: First let me note that I also dealt with some articles on local fire departments in the same way: I didn't single out law enforcement. I am fairly confident in my rapid review of the articles, which was largely based on the article's references. Most fell into one of these groups:

• None at all
• Links to the agency's own website
• Routine coverage (this agency responded to an incident, this agency released a statement about so-and-so, John Doe was elected sheriff, memorial sites, etc.)
• Links that were so broken that I couldn't determine the intended target.

If the article had any references other than those but was still dubious, I only added a notability or primary sources hat, such as on Albany County Sheriff's Department (New York) and Genesee County Sheriff's Office (New York). If not, then the article wasn't even in the same ballpark as establishing notability. With the other pervasive issues in local articles like these – conflicts of interest, outdatedness, bad or no sources, etc. – I thought it best not to reuse any of that material. The vast majority was clearly unusable anyways: trivia about the agency (here's the model of squad car we use), outdated staffing numbers (like Binghamton). In many cases, the redirect target had a better section already: compare Suffolk County, New York#Law enforcement to the previous content of Suffolk County Sheriff's Office.

It sounds like you agree that most of these articles are better off as a section on the municipalities' pages, if there is in fact anything to note about the agency. I'll be curious to see if you wind up reusing anything at all from the old redirected pages. -Apocheir (talk) 17:25, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm concerned about all the tagging of fire department articles: "The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline". I'm not sure how this improves these articles. If you used this tag, it means you have already done a Google search and are confident the article does not meet the notability criteria. Just do an AfD. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 21:39, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: On the contrary, Template:Notability says:

Add this template to the top of any page whose article subject is, in your judgment, reasonably likely to be non-notable (not the sort of subject that Wikipedia ought to have an article about). When an article is certainly, hopelessly non-notable, then you should nominate it for proposed deletion or take it to Articles for deletion instead.

These are articles that are probably non-notable, but I'm not certain enough to propose deletion or redirect them. (I'm less confident in my judgement of entities outside NY State, where I live, since I'm less familiar with how local government is structured and things like that.) That seems like exactly what I should be using this template for. -Apocheir (talk) 22:24, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd also like to chime in here as I saw you tagged quite a few pages with notability tags. I don't understand this course of action. If you think the subject should be merged into the page regarding the municipality itself, then please either boldly do that or, if it appears likely to be contested, then raise the topic on the talk page. If you think the page should be deleted, then nominate it for AFD. But mass tagging pages with the notability tag is not helpful in the long run as that's not really what you seem to be getting at. In other words, I think it's clear that coverage exists for many of these entities such that GNG is met. If we want to have the discussion about merging, let's have that discussion. But please don't just spam tags on hundreds of pages like this.DocFreeman24 (talk) 22:12, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@DocFreeman24: I disagree about your notability assessment for these entities: nearly all of the coverage cited in these articles is WP:ROUTINE. Anyways, see my response to Magnolia. -Apocheir (talk) 22:42, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Process to determine non-notable local government agencies

It might be helpful to explain my process here for identifying articles that need to be merged, deleted, or at least tagged. These are a handful of points from WP:ORG that I saw articles fail over and over. From most important to least:

• Is the article cited at all?
• Is it third-party? Memorial sites and trade organizations don't count.
• WP:AUD: Is it all local coverage?
• WP:ORGIND: is it independent? For these, it usually boils down to: is it a regurgitated press release? Here's a good example from the recently merged Ellis County Sheriff's Office‎: [1]. This one actually comes out and says it was written by a sergeant at the police department! Most of these are only in the local news but sometimes these creep into regional coverage.
• Is it trivial? See the "trivial coverage" section in WP:ORG. Even if it's independent, there's a lot of routine coverage like "so-and-so got promoted" or "we got a grant/vehicle/building/etc."
• Is it significant? These organizations get a lot of coverage that says, "so-and-so department responded to an incident." That's not necessarily significant, even if the incident was significant.
• Does anything in the page text indicate that it is notable in a way not covered by its references?

It is possible that an article fails all of these points but the topic actually is notable. Even in the cases where coverage that demonstrates notability exists but that isn't included in the pages, it's often only a couple, and makes sense to merge into the municipality's page. This is very similar to WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, which are also subject of a lot of non-significant coverage. (Also often have connected contributors...) WP:POLOUTCOMES for local politicians is also relevant.

I would remind everyone that not being notable is not a value judgement, it's just a judgement about Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Every town in the country has a school, fire department, and police department. How well or badly they do their job isn't relevant to the notability guidelines.

If you have actual citations for an article that demonstrate notability (rather than speculation about it probably meeting GNG somehow), go ahead and revert it and add the references. That's just regular WP:BRD. If you're confused why I tagged or merged your article, please ask me. In both cases, please read WP:ORG all the way through first. -Apocheir (talk) 00:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, I misunderstood WP:RCAT, so I am fixing my mistakes with those redirects by restoring the categories that make sense under WP:INCOMPATIBLE, WP:SUBTOPICCAT, etc. -Apocheir (talk) 23:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Editor's Barnstar
	you da man DanielCrockett299 (talk) 19:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Lincoln County Sheriff's Office

If you would like to change Lincoln County Sheriff's Office to a redirect, Lincoln County Sheriff's Office (Nebraska) may be a better choice. It would probably be considered an unambiguous partial title match on Lincoln County - these are often removed. Leschnei (talk) 23:28, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I was struggling to figure out what to do with that dab page. Apocheir (talk) 01:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent page blanking and merging

Just so you know, I rolled-back your blanking and redirects of the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. There is substantial wiki "case law" concerning the inclusion of law enforcement agencies within the project. If you feel an article needs to be deleted and/or merged with another article, you should take it to the article's talk page and gather a consensus. Those are the only two articles on my watch list that I see you modified. If you have blanked and redirected other articles, I would suggest returning them to their original state, and start a discussion on the article's talk page and merging. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to message me on my talk page! Cheers!It's me...Sallicio!^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 14:27, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sallicio: Rather than vaguely gesturing at past AfDs or whatever you mean by "case law", I encourage you to review WP:ORG and then add references to demonstrate that these articles, and any other articles of yours I may have edited recently, are in fact notable. Those sources should satisfy the SIRS criteria (significant coverage, independent of the subject of the article, reliable, and be a secondary source), and be from a regional or larger news source. (Other sources can be included in the article, they just don't demonstrate notability.) No organization is inherently notable, including law enforcement agencies. Hope this helps. -Apocheir (talk) 02:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Apocheir: I really do understand you are well-intentioned, and I'm not upset at all. Rather than hastily blanking and redirecting, I encourage you to take the time to fix whatever you feel is wrong with the article. A notable example is your recent tag for merger for Maryland DNR Police. A (very) quick google search returned multiple includable references (viz., a local article here, a joint effort from the Colony of Virginia here, history of registration and legislation here, etc.). This project benefits from rules and regulations; however, I would suggest a more "spirit of the law" approach, rather than a "letter of the law". If you still feel an article does not meet WP:NOTE, take the time to merge it properly. Even if the article is not (strictly) notable, there is still a lot of good information that would make the primary article better. My suggestion to you is to slow down, don't worry about increasing your edit count, and concentrate on quality, not quantity. If you put as much effort into saving articles as you do redirecting them, the value of this project would increase ten-fold. I took the liberty of adding the aforementioned references to the "History" section of the DNR article. The agency is historically-significant and has more non-primary sources now. Also, don't forget to assume good faith with people who disagree with your wiki-methods (your response was a bit condescending). Remember: new Wikipedians are watching; be a good example! Merry Christmas! It's me...Sallicio!^{$\color {Red}\oplus$} 15:36, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, it's clear that I'm not going to change your mind here, so I encourage you to take part in the merge discussions at the articles in question. -Apocheir (talk) 19:16, 28 December 2021 (UTC)