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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mayors of Traverse City, Michigan

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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. While not the most scintillating topic to have a list on, this is a properly sourced and verifiable collection of information. This information could properly be presented in the article on the city itself, so it is permissible to have a freestanding article on the topic so long as there are sources for the freestanding topic. bd2412 T 00:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

List of mayors of Traverse City, Michigan[edit]

List of mayors of Traverse City, Michigan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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The PROD rationale summarizes the situation succinctly: "WP:LISTCRUFT - a list of mayors of a ~14000 pop town is not notable." According to the last census estimate, that number would be closer to 15,500, but it's nowhere near the 140K claimed by the editor who removed the PROD. (There might be that many people in the full micropolitan area, which includes four counties, one other city and 12 villages.)

There's no evidence that the topic of the mayors of this city meets WP:GNG, so this list warrants deletion. Imzadi 1979 → 04:40, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 04:54, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Michigan-related deletion discussions. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk • mail) 04:54, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Which of the seven listed forbidden things in WP:NOTDIR are you referring to? Which of the four in WP:INDISCRIMINATE? If you are going to quote a guide, show us a quotation, anyone can wave around words. --RAN (talk) 20:17, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Those are examples, it doesn't have to explicitly list mayors (or politicians). Wikipedia is not a directory of every person who has ever governed anywhere.--Rusf10 (talk) 21:54, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly, just substitute in the words "popes and presidents" into the banned topics in the two guidelines and you can see why WP:NOTDIR WP:INDISCRIMINATE ban us from listing presidents and popes. --RAN (talk) 22:10, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not that's ridiculous, if the members of the list met notability guidelines on their own (like popes and presidents), we wouldn't even be having this discussion. What is the point of maintaining a list of people who neither by themselves nor collectively have done anything notable?--Rusf10 (talk) 22:33, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- or better yet, Make a policy. We had this discussion about several towns in New Jersey that don't even elect a mayor. Rhadow (talk) 12:33, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Merge WP:Not paper Useful information. 130 years of informmation and you think its not important? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:17, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral (for now) - I find it rather pointless to create a list article that is almost by definition, going to be sourced to a single source, a PDF from the city's website. On the other hand, an historic list of mayors is endorsed content for a settlement article per WP:USCITY, and this list is quite long, so perhaps it is a valid WP:FORK. Neither useful, or important, are criteria for having an article on Wikipedia; notable is. John from Idegon (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep If we are allowed to list the mayors in the article on the town and that list gets too large, we break it out into a standalone list. Also a standard almanac entry, which is a Wikipedia pillar. --RAN (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let's just create lists of totally non-notable people. As per WP:LISTPEOPLE, A person is included in a list if "The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement" & "The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources." The people in this article do not meet the notability requirement. It also say "In a few cases, such as lists of board members or academics holding notable positions, the names of non-notable people may be included in a list that is largely made up of notable people, for the sake of completeness." (emphasis mine). Since no one on this list is notable, it should not exist. Also, find me an almanac that lists historical names of mayors for every town.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:24, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Find me a general encyclopedia with every movie released in the US. --RAN (talk) 20:14, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We're not talking about movies. Perhaps there are too many movies on wikipedia, but that's irrelevant. You made the statement that this is a "standard almanac entry", prove it.--Rusf10 (talk) 21:54, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment -- By my read of the law [1], the mayor of a city like Traverse City is a member of the council. The distinguishing feature is that the mayor is elected at large. The executive duties of the city are assigned to a paid city executive. So why are we arguing over this? Rhadow (talk) 22:15, 12 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- does not meet WP:LISTN and significant RS coverage not found. Only one member of the list has an article; the rest are non Wiki notable. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:09, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • None of the entries have an article. The one is an interwikilink to a Wikidata item, d:Q47253231, created today for Moses Orville Champney. Imzadi 1979 → 02:55, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was just going to say that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe linking to wikidata like that is standard practice (nor am I familiar with wikidata's standards for inclusion).--Rusf10 (talk) 02:58, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep  WP:SPINOUT articles are not a function of notability.  If someone objects to the spinout, the remedy is to unspin the article, and doing so is a content discussion that begins with a bold edit and if needed moves to the talk page of one of the articles involved.  Unscintillating (talk) 07:49, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree with Unscintillating. WP:SPINOUT articles are not a function of notability.  If someone objects to the spinout, the remedy is to unspin the article, and doing so is a content discussion that begins with a bold edit and if needed moves to the talk page of one of the articles involved. The argument about a list of non-notable movies is irrelevant and a fallacious Reductio ad absurdum or Straw man argument,. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:20, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - as per nom and the WP:LISTN put forth by K.e.coffman. Spinout is not relevant in this instance, since the information should most likely have not been included in the city article to begin with, as per WP:INDISCRIMINATE: " As explained in § Encyclopedic content above, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia." Onel5969 TT me 00:22, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete Wikipedia is not supposed to be an indiscriminate collection of information, and that is all this list is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:36, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:LISTN. We don't need lists of every mayor of every county or division unless there are many notable ones, which in this case there aren't any. Ajf773 (talk) 09:49, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Somebody's bothered to upload this. What does it serve to remove this? Who is helped by it no longer being here? What people value WP for and brings them here is the information we have, not the information we have removed. Even if only a handful of people a year would have read this information, that is now a handful of people we would not be serving. What is the supposed upside to balance not serving them? This is not the kind of random intersection discussed in WP:LISTCRUFT - a mayor is a well-defined public position. Nor is this WP:INDISCRIMINATE - it's a systematic collation of a particular aspect of a town's history, usefully separated into its own page, so if anyone doesn't find it relevant it's not going to get into their way. So, to those who would delete, please do answer: who would a deletion benefit? Cui bono ? -- Jheald (talk) 12:01, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The arguments above are convincing. The content is verifiable and there is plenty of local coverage of the mayors. While not each independently notable a list article is an appropriateway to handle the content which is notable in relation to the town but would be undue were it to be included in the town article. FloridaArmy (talk) 22:23, 14 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The sources are there and this is an appropriate and encyclopedic fork to be spun out of the parent article for Traverse City, Michigan. Alansohn (talk) 02:29, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 08:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep "Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable..." (where the rest of the sentence suggests that at their discretion, editors may limit lists to notable subjects). "Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability." - WP:N. In this case the position of mayor is notable, and the information is "a systematic collation of a particular aspect of a town's history" (per Jheald). --Enos733 (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as an appropriate fork of the Traverse City article, and as a non-outlier among the numerous existing lists in the subcategories of Category:Lists of mayors. It is content suited to the kinds of specialized almanacs (in this case, U.S. state government almanacs such as the Oregon Blue Book) that Wikipedia aspires in part to emulate. An alternative format worth mentioning is the approach taken by List of mayors of Tallahassee, Florida, which is a redirect to an expandable/collapsible list in the Tallahassee article. --TimK MSI (talk) 22:17, 16 January 2018 (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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