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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raymond A. Watson (2nd nomination)

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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. In closing this discussion, I examined both this AfD and the previous AfD, along with the DRV discussion that led to this relist. The first AfD centered around concerns that coverage of this individual was fundamentally local. The DRV referred the matter to AfD again because of the allegedly new non-local sources. It is clear from this discussion, however, that none of the new sources swayed any participants of the previous discussion.

The ANYBIO argument (based on the broadcaster award) has been soundly countered. A few editors favoring keeping simply made conclusory statements about the sources; these statements are entitled to substantially less weight because they are unsupported by reasoned argument and countered by well-reasoned comments favoring deletion. There are two reasoned keep comments, but they are insufficient to counter the well-developed delete arguments in this AfD and the previous one.

I have carefully considered this close and will not be amending it. Any editor dissatisfied with it may proceed directly to deletion review. T. Canens (talk) 05:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Raymond A. Watson

[edit]
AfDs for this article:
Raymond A. Watson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Procedural nomination per Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 September 21. Courcelles 23:46, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Radio-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The time this article was in WP:WikiProject Conservatism/Incubator was time well spent. Thanks to George's patience and diligence the article is fully referenced with independent reliable sources and flies past WP:BASIC. – Lionel (talk) 00:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Nothing has changed here essentially. Person continues his unbroken streak of being unnotable. There are are few more more refs, and they are all still obscure (and mostly local) publications, the exception being one single link to the LA Times (I can't access it, but it looks as if he's likely mentioned in passing, rather that it being an article mainly about him or something). Everything this person has done fits under the "typical accomplished person" rubric except possibly for his political office, and that's his sole claim to notability.
According to the article Board of Supervisors, California county supervisors are basically analogous to city councilors. Kern County has about the same population as Indianapolis. So Watson is basically analogous to an Indianapolis city councilor. But wait. Bakersfield is an independent city (so are some smaller municipalities in the county), so the county board has little sway there. So Watson is basically analogous to an Indianapolis city councilor, if Indianapolis city councilors had very much less power and importance than they do have.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes is not a policy or standard but simply a description of what has been kept and what deleted over the years. Its "Politicians" section doesn't mention county supervisors, but it does mention city councilors: "City councillors and other major municipal officers are not automatically notable, although precedent has tended to favor keeping members of the main citywide government of internationally famous metropolitan areas such as Toronto, Chicago, Tokyo or London." I would say that having an article on a public servant of Watson's unnotability would be well outside established practice, and if the Watson exception is to become general, we had better get ready for articles on the past and present members of the city councils of Lowell, Massachusetts and Columbia, Missouri and Biloxi, Mississippi and so forth. Would this be a good thing? I don't think so. And if it wouldn't be a good thing, why should we make an exception for this guy? I see no evidence that he's done anything extraordinary or attracted significant notice outside his county. I would like the people who want to keep this article to answer one simple question:
  • Should we also have articles on the other county supervisors of Kern County? How about supervisors in the other counties in California? And the other states? And the past and present city councilors of every mid-sized or even small city in America and (for that matter) the world?
  • And if so, why?
  • And if not, why are we making an exception for this guy? Herostratus (talk) 01:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If they have this degree of actual news reporting, then sure. What harm is there in covering someone we actually have solid sources for? That's really the heart of WP:N. I very much doubt this will open up the floodgates. We cover other people with fewer/poorer sources than this. I don't see why politicians should have to rise to a different standard. Hobit (talk) 14:20, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:ANYBIO. Subject was named broadcaster of the year. The county supervisor stuff is not part of notability. Binksternet (talk) 02:16, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Article needs improvement, but the Google News sources provided by the nominator show the subject's notability. NYyankees51 (talk) 02:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete So, although the article is almost entirely about Raymond A. Watson, the politician, notability is asserted based on his role as a broadcaster? And the article now passes WP:ANYBIO because he received "a well-known and significant award or honor" from the California Broadcasters Association, a state lobbying group whose article was created September 18 by the creator of this article? I don't see anything to merit overturning the September 11 decision to delete. --JaGatalk 03:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Herostratus' excellent reasoning both here and in the previous AfD. Article looks very well sourced, but as Herostratus shows without any doubt, that's deceptive. --Crusio (talk) 08:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: The subject is a undistinguished retired local broadcast executive with a single non-notable award from a non-notable political group. That's not very mcuh to show for a 27-year-long stint as VP of five TV stations. He has had a short and equally undistinguished career as a county supervisor. Scant, trivial and generally routine mention in anything but local news sources, and even the local coverage is not out of the ordinary for a county supervisor. Far too little to qualify under WP:POLITICIAN or WP:ANYBIO. The sourcing used to establish notability is basically puffery. The article contains little, if anything, of encyclopedic value, and can be deleted in its entirety. It appears that the motivation behind creating the article was political promotion.
As for the notability of the award by the CBA, googling "broadcaster of the year" and "california broadcasters association" turned up zero hits pertaining to the award or any other awardees except for the subject of the present article. Furthermore, the California Broadcasters Association is not a professional organization at all, but a relatively minor political lobbying group. A look at its page here on WP reveals nothing of any encyclopedic value or any evidence that the group itself is particularly active or notable. The last newletter the organization placed on | its own website was from April, 2010. Most revealing is the fact that the "Broadcaster of the Year" award isn't even mentioned on the organizations own website. This doesn't inspire confidence in the notability of the award. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 08:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep easily meets WP:N. Herostratus's arguments seem to be A) he's not done anything notable and B) the sources are local. My response is that A) our definition of "notable" is WP:N and his coverage clearly rises above that. And B) WP:LOCAL is an essay for a reason. Perhaps local sources should be treated as having less value toward WP:N, but even so the sources here are clearly significant and numerous. Finally, I think there is a serious misreading of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. There is no realistic claim he's automatically notable for his position. There is a solid claim he's notable for the coverage. In fact that's the core of our inclusion guidelines. Someone really wants "inclusion by deed" rather than by coverage, he likely passes that due to the broadcaster award. One might say "that's not a significant award" but that, IMO, just shows the slippery slope "inclusion by deed" is. Instead I believe we should focus on coverage. WP:N is a compromise--a way for us to generally have a fairly bright line on inclusion. Now we sometimes override it by local consensus (either to keep or delete), but a pure WP:LOCAL argument isn't a good enough reason to ignore this many sources. Hobit (talk) 14:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The key issue is whether winning the "Broadcaster of the Year Award" from the California Broadcasters Association confers notability. It doesn't. I did a web search for other winners of that award, and all that seems to come back are winners from a different association with a similar sounding name. The CBA is essentially a political lobbying group, so we are very far from Pulitzer territory here. In the previous Afd discussion, I had WP:BLP concerns about whether the page presented the subject as a sort of crank. After the rewrite, those concerns are diminished, but we are left with a page that goes on at length about the church he belongs to, and "He was chairman of the Employers Training Resource Private Industry Council of Kern, Inyo, and Mono Counties, Future Bakersfield Foundation, United Way of Bakersfield...." and so on. It's too much like a Facebook page and too little like an encyclopedia article. Delete, and merge some content into Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Why is that the key issue rather than, say, WP:N? Do you feel he doesn't pass WP:N for some reason? The sources certainly seem to be multiple, independent, reliable, etc. Hobit (talk) 14:22, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Since you appear to be asking me, the answer is that you left one adjective out of your last sentence: trivial. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        Yep, that was directed to you, thanks for responding. Trivial, in the context of WP:N, seems solely about the amount of coverage.
        Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material.
        For most of these sources is is the main topic of the source material and so the coverage can't be trivial in this sense. If you are referring to the word's use in "Self-promotion and indiscriminate publicity", I can't see how local newspapers can be said to be there to generate indiscriminate publicity. Could you clarify which use of the word "trivial" you mean here and how it applies to the sources at hand? Hobit (talk) 14:33, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not arguing IDONTLIKEIT. I'm arguing that the sources indicate that the award is trivial, and the award is the most notable fact cited on the page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've always found Hobit to be a very smart editor, so I decided that I should go back and look another time at those multiple sources. It seems to me that, after we set aside the unambiguously local coverage (Taft Midway Driller, Modesto Bee), and look at the sources that are unambiguously independent (Los Angeles Times, McClatchy-Tribune), the latter sources appear not to be focusing on the person, but on events having to do with local government issues – and not on the person's role in those events either. Thus, I stand by my original conclusion that we should delete, but maybe some material should be merged into Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the good thoughts! I think the issue is that you wish to discount or ignore local sources and I see no reason or basis in guidelines/policy to do so. WP:LOCAL is an essay and WP:N is controlling. I certainly understand that some people give WP:LOCAL a lot of weight. That's fine, but they shouldn't be too surprised when others don't and should understand that guidelines and policy are not on their side. I feel that trying to fit WP:LOCAL under the tent of WP:N by labeling local sources as "trivial" or "not independent" is too far of a stretch. "Trivial" in the context of WP:N is about the amount of coverage. "Independent" is there to exclude self-published work, press releases and the like. Certainly the coverage here is not trivial (entire articles on subject) and independent (I can't imagine some of that coverage being generated by someone who isn't independent of the subject in fact--it gets quite negative in places). All that said, WP:N is just a guideline. There are times and reasons to ignore it and local consensus can override it. I _do_ have a problem with folks claiming that he shouldn't be covered because he's "just" a supervisor or "just" something else. It's about coverage, not his role. And his role should not be a reason to not cover him. That flies in the face of WP:N. But arguing sources should be given less weight for one reason or another is exactly why we have discussions like this! Hobit (talk) 13:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And my best editorial judgment is that, in this case, with these specifics, only the most local sources treat the subject as a primary subject, which does, indeed, reflect the greater independence of those sources that do not treat the subject (or his role, or his whatever) as notable. Just as the award is from a trivial lobbying group. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Coverage is not exclusively local, nor is it exclusively routine and/or trivial, so I don't think either of those arguments holds water. With the depth and range of news reporting that he seems to have accumulated, I can't see how Watson fails WP:GNG/WP:BASIC. Maybe this means that the guideline is too broad and accepts articles that it shouldn't, but that would be much better discussed elsewhere and certainly isn't a reason for deleting in this specific case. Nor would retaining this article create a precedent of any kind, since the decision should (and hopefully will) be based on the article in question rather than any general principle. Alzarian16 (talk) 19:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment  The following is the comment I posted at DRV regarding the first AfD:

AfD was excessively influenced by the idea that the topic was only a county supervisor, not acknowledging that he was also chairman of the board (for one year) with there being no county executive.

  Unscintillating (talk) 02:28, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Understood, but chairman for one year suggests a rotating chairmanship, probably for the purpose of chairing meetings and so forth. If so, This means little or nothing. They don't have a county executive. If they did, the county executive of Kern County would probably rate an article -- county executive can be an important post, ask Spiro Agnew or Harry Truman -- but there's no indication that chairmanship is anything like this. Herostratus (talk) 04:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • So you agree that this person was the top official in the county for one year?  Unscintillating (talk) 18:02, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, probably not. At the board meetings, they have to have someone to officially open and close the meetings, moderate the meetings, and so on. If this is all the chairmanship amounts to, it'd be a stretch to call him the top official. I'm willing to be educated on this, but the one-year term makes it look like it's maybe a rotating thing, which most likely means it's essentially a parliamentary or ceremonial position. Herostratus (talk) 04:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep  I decided to examine the assertion that the topic does not meet WP:POLITICIAN, and conclude that this assertion is incorrect.  Point 2 of WP:POLITICIAN states, "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage."  Unscintillating (talk) 18:02, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK, but did you see the explanatory footnote attached to that statement? "Generally, a person who is 'part of the enduring historical record' will have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians. A politician who has received 'significant press coverage' has been written about, in depth, independently in multiple news feature articles, by journalists...". I'm not seeing that at all for this guy. The one single journalistic feature article that writes about him at any length as a person is this, at an online-only website for Frazier Park (pop. 2691) which begins "'Everybody Loves Raymond' is more than a television sitcom, it's how his constituents feel about Supervisor Ray Watson. Take your hat off and place it over your heart when you drive by Supervisor Watson's Frazier Park office...". We are quite a very long ways here from the kind of coverage envisioned in the guideline you cite, I think it fair to say. Herostratus (talk) 04:13, 4 October 2011 (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.
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