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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 keep. (non-admin closure) CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 20:56, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Warren Church

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Warren Church (politician) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Can't find any non-local coverage to indicate they pass WP:GNG. Local politician who does not pass WP:NPOL. Onel5969 TT me 14:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Article moved from Warren Church to Warren Church (politician) by me, during AFD. I believe/hope this should cause no confusion. --doncram 23:02, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Doncram: Both Warren Church (politician) and the dab page Warren Church now have AfD tags, but this AfD entry is clearly about the politician so I removed the tag from the dab page (in the hope my action doesn't screw up this AfD!). Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 14:02, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I don't think that will cause any problem, but a bot had added the AFD tag there and may do so again. If so the AFD tag there needs to be removed after this AFD about the politician is completed. --doncram 14:15, 10 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Onel5969 TT me 14:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Onel5969 TT me 14:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Borderline case. The 5, regionally-elected county supervisors are the executive authority for Monterey County, which with a pop. ~ 450,000 is sort of like a city council in a mid-size city without a Mayor. Most Monterey country supervisors are not bluelinked. One area where he may be notable is in his land use regulation and park-creating efforts in Monterey County - one of the most treasured scenic regions in the U.S. (Big Sur). Claims that he took a leading role in creating parks for local use, County's first park, and the county Parks Department appear to be valid.E.M.Gregory (talk) 15:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • The operative issue is the 250,000 population of Monterey County at the time, not its present population.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:49, 29 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • Population understates the importance of Monterey County; it is important for its rugged coastline and campgrounds/beaches/parks and more, is known by many millions who have driven California Route 1(?) in order to see the scenery. Carmel is a rich, expensive place which must spill out; the development pressures must be huge. What goes on in Monterey is more newsworthy than elsewhere. A pioneering preservationist and county supervisor there is simply a lot more important than they would be somewhere else. --doncram 21:36, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. County supervisor is not a level of office that constitutes an automatic WP:NPOL pass in and of itself — it's a level of office where an article might be acceptable if it could be sourced well enough to get him past WP:GNG, but it's not a role that entitles him to an article just because he existed. Of the 39 sources cited here, however, close to half are primary sources (reports and meeting minutes from the county's own internal records, raw tables of election results, etc.) that cannot assist notability — and of the ones that represent reliable source coverage in media, even a large proportion of those are glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage that isn't about him, or even entirely tangential to him (frex, reference #30 links to an article which verifies stuff about the Humble Oil refinery fight but completely fails to even mention Warren Church's name in conjunction with it.) All of which leaves us with very few sources that are both reliable and substantively about Warren Church — and every last one of those few sources represents the purely routine level of purely local coverage that would simply be expected to exist for any county councillor. So the sourcing shown here does not constitute evidence that he belongs in an international encyclopedia. Bearcat (talk) 15:34, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete a non-notable county level politician.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:47, 29 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Warren Church received significant independent coverage in multiple, reliable secondary sources. I have reviewed the notability guide and can find no mention that he needs “non-local coverage” I could not find any mention of a requirement that the sources be geographically distant from one another. I have been asking around to other editors, and no one has heard of that requirement. Only the guidelines on WP:GNG.
  • Articles do not need to be about the subject, “Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.” WP:SIGCOV. As Warren Church received his notability pre-Internet, all the sources are newspaper articles. I have reviewed many and they pass the “more than a trivial mention” requirement. Bearcat, you say that half of the 39 sources are to reports and meeting minutes, which is what I had to use to prove elements of the article, mainly the Committees area. They were not used to prove notability which is what is being challenged in this AfD. Citation #30 is the only online article that exists on Humble Oil. I used it as an element of the Humble Oil section, it was not used to prove notability.
  • Notability is not temporary WP: NTEMP. His contributions were decades ago, prior to the Internet’s existence. The sources I have used prove that during the years he was active he was notable.
  • Warren Church is an important part of local land use history in Monterey County. Multiple notable sources have acknowledged him as the father of the Monterey County parks system. These sources state this in different publications, and over many years. Warren Church has coverage for a significant period of time, starting at the beginning of his political career, through his 12 years as a supervisor; “sustained coverage is an indicator of notability.” WP:SUSTAINED.1stCoastal (talk) 06:19, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For starters, you say that you had to use reports and meeting minutes to prove elements of the article — but if you had to source things that way because there was no media coverage for them, then by definition those things aren't notable enough to be addressed in the article at all. If the media didn't care enough to report those things, then neither do we.
Secondly, "an important part of local land use history in Monterey County" is not a notability criterion. To get a person into Wikipedia on a claim like that, the coverage of the claim would have to nationalize into sources on the order of The New York Times or The Washington Post, and purely local coverage in Monterey County's own local media wouldn't cut it. Yes, we most certainly do require the coverage to go beyond the purely local in many cases — for instance, we don't keep smalltown municipal councillors just because local sourcing exists; we don't keep county supervisors just because local sourcing exists; we don't keep standalone non-chain restaurants or retail stores or other small businesses just because local sourcing exists; and on and so forth.
The simple reality is that every town or city or county that has a public parks system will always have its own local person who can be described and locally sourced as the "father" or "mother" of the system (as well as its own "father" or "mother" of the library system, and on and so forth) — so what's needed is not just local verification that he did the same things as every other "parent" of a local parks system, but evidence that he's somehow a special case over and above most of the others. What's needed isn't a reason why readers in Monterey County might be interested, but evidence that readers on the other side of the world need to care more about the father of Monterey County's park system than they do about the founder of their own local park system who doesn't have an article. Bearcat (talk) 18:43, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Warren Church is not notable for being the occupant of an office that "came with a typewriter and $300 a month for incidentals" but rather for someone who, if chosen as the topic for a mid-semester "someone who could serve as a role model for public service" report by a 7th grader, Wikipedia could be a proper and valuable source. Also, Warren Church's "'12 years is as long as anyone should consecutively hold any one elective or appointive position... New ideas are necessary..." is quoteworthy, especially because "he did not miss a single board meeting... 558 consecutive regular board meetings and 100 or more special meetings." Trink24 (talk) 16:18, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I withdraw my "keep." From his Obituary, he's not such a role model for a 7th grader:
Our notability standards are based on sourceability, not whether 12 year olds might pick him as an essay topic. Bearcat (talk) 21:32, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: This person died on Saturday (after the initial listing) [1]; re-listing in case any of the obituary coverage shows new notability.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Power~enwiki (talk) 20:37, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The Monterey Herald obituary which someone added to the article is substantial. It is fairly natural and common that articles get created about notable persons when they are dying or have just died, when the absence of an article is pretty salient. Some editing down of the article to report on his life in a more summary fashion would be appropriate. --doncram 21:27, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
An obituary in the local newspaper is routine, not notability-establishing, coverage, because it would simply be expected to exist. Get back to us when he's obituaried in The New York Times, not just the Monterey Herald. Bearcat (talk) 21:33, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, most deceased persons don't get any obituary written by a newspaper as a news obituary (as opposed to family-written paid obituaries, or no obituary at all), which this appears to be. I am not saying everyone getting such an obituary is Wikipedia-notable, but IMO this one's content is substantial. You have made it clear you think otherwise, we can just agree to disagree. --doncram 23:21, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, not every deceased person has their death automatically treated as news. But every deceased person who held a role that made them locally prominent — every mayor, every city councillor, every county councillor, every school board trustee, etc. — most certainly does get obituaried in the local newspaper. Bearcat (talk) 15:41, 9 September 2017 (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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