Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Donna Johnson (mayor)

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 no consensus. Stifle (talk) 10:48, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Donna Johnson (mayor)

Donna Johnson (mayor) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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While an African-American first, Libertyville has a population of ~20,205 which is less than the 100,000 generally used for Mayors. She is not the first black woman to be a mayor in Illinois. A newspaper search of NewsBank and the Chicago Tribune does not reveal anything out of the ordinary about her legal career. I struggle to see how she does not fail to meet the notability guidelines for judges and politicians. Also, as a general preemption, I plan to include this essay written by User:Sebwite that an article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing Mpen320 (talk) 04:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians, Africa, and Illinois. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 04:55, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 04:58, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Libertyville is a village that is part of the sprawling northern suburbs of Chicago. I spent some time in Lake County, Illinois last year and could not have even named Libertyville as being in that county. This is a county with a population of 714,000 . Waukegan, the county seat, has some name recognition, but is still only at 89,000. There are at least 5 other communities in the county with more people than Libertyville. These numbers pale in comparison to the population and significance of Cook county to the south. Unless we had way better souring such an article is not justified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:26, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep she meets the General notability guideline 1) "Significant coverage" - the two sources direct the topic directly and in detail, no original research is needed. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. 2) The Chicago Tribune and CBS news are reliable and Johnson is the subject of the article; 3) the sources are "Independent of the subject"; and 4) as the first elected Black mayor of a city that is 86% White and only 1% Black makes her notable especially in these times where there is much talk about race, representation, and equity. There are only two current Black mayors in Lake County, a county of over 700,000 people and the state's third largest, and just a handful of Black female mayors in a state with over 1,100 cities.Patapsco913 (talk) 15:02, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If she were the first Black mayor or first Black woman to be a mayor in Illinois, I'd be fully in support of keeping this article. However, she's not. I don't even think she is the first Black woman to be the mayor of a majority-white municipality. Lake County currently has at least three Black mayors (Leon Rockingham in North Chicago, Donna Johnson in Libertyville, and Billy McKinney in Zion). Being more accomplished than I could ever hope to be does not mean one is notable for WIKIPEDIA. Also, again "an article about someone you like isn't necessarily a good thing for that person."--Mpen320 (talk) 20:16, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - An objective assessment of multiple independent and reliable sources, including Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune 2018, Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune 2019, Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune 2020, Libertyville Elects First Black Woman As Mayor In Village History (CBS2, 2021), An Interview With Donna Johnson, Libertyville’s First Black Woman Mayor (CBS2, 2021), Johnson takes the helm in a year of change on the Libertyville village board (Daily Herald, 2021), as well as reporting about her actions while mayor, (e.g. Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune, 2022, Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune, 2021) supports WP:BASIC/WP:GNG notability. Beccaynr (talk) 17:59, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem here is that all of those sources are very local and not outside the scope of usual local politics. Wikipedia:Subjective importance also states that prestigious position (local officeholder) and fame (local coverage) are not automatic indicators of notability.--Mpen320 (talk) 20:16, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I included the link to that essay in my comment above because it emphasizes the need for sources to objectively support notability, i.e. A common misconception about notability is that importance or uniqueness equals notability. Beccaynr (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article about her taking the helm as the election changes things in the city is the type of article you will see one way or another every time there is an election in the city. What we need to see is coverage that is very far afield from her. I created the our article on the first African-American female to be mayor in another state, it was in a city with about 7,000 more people than Libertyville, but it was not a case where the person was one of three African-American mayors in the county. I actually did not create it until she announced her candidacy for US house. Looking back, I think even that article was premature, although there was coverage from much further away than we have in this case. I think we really should not have had an article on that person until she became a member of the US house, as she did in 2014. That despite the fact that I was able to locate an indepth article on her from when she was not an active candidate in a newspaper outside her county from about 6 years before she was elected as mayor. The level of coverage we have on her here is esentially the level of coverage we could find on every single mayor of every singles place in the US that has over 15,000 people. At least if you look beyond what the headlines say and pay attention to how much is actually said in the articles. If we look at the extra county stuff we have 1-an article about a grand program that name drops here, 2-an article about a local tax proposal that name drops her, 3-inclusion of her among bios of everyone running for office in Libertyville. If this sort of stuff is held to lead to showing notability, than we would double the size of Wikipedia, end complaints about sports people being over covered, make Wikipedia a more prose intensive alternative to some voter information websites and a the prefered platform for cnadidates to put up their campaign literature, and have 37% of articles on Wikipedia on elected public officals, and 42% of articles on Wikipedia on people who ran for office and got a short bio write up in a newspaper, but were never elected. Sportspeople bios will be reduced to 13% of bios, and the remaining 8% of bios will cover everything else.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:31, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • My concern is with whether the WP:BASIC/WP:GNG guidelines can objectively be met, and based on what I was able to find, there is in-depth biographical and career information available that can allow the article to be further developed. Even if the Chicago Tribune and CBS Chicago could be considered local coverage, the WP:BIO guideline does not exclude local coverage from consideration. There is WP:SECONDARY coverage of her becoming the first Black woman mayor of this municipality, as well as previous and ongoing coverage of her and her career, and the coverage does not appear to be trivial per the objective WP:GNG and WP:BASIC standards. Beccaynr (talk) 20:59, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Municipal politician fails WP:NPOL. KidAd • SPEAK 18:27, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Lake County is 6.5% African-American, but over 22% Hispanic. Are there any Hispanic mayors in Lake County? Has there ever been a female Latina mayor in Lake County? Can we even agree on who is and who is not the first Hispanic to hold an office? For example, who was the first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court. For the record there is no simple answer to that last question. Of, and Lake County is 8.25% Asian? Are there any Asian mayors in Lake County? Has there been an Asian female mayor? Were the Asian mayors Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Camboaian, Laotian, Filipino, Indian, Bangaldeshi, Pakitani or something else. For that matter maybe we need to cover the first Puerto Rican, first Mexican, first Guatemalan, first Salvadoranian, first Cuban, first Peruvian and so on mayor. Some might say I am being silly, however I showed that there are almost 3 times as many Hispanics as African-Americans in this county, and Asians outnumber African-Americans, so these are not odd speculations on what might be, they are quite obvious points of what is.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:40, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Libertyville, Illinois with a very short mention of her being the first female African-American mayor in that city, and maybe in the county, there. The coverage shown is basically all local coverage of local events, but a brief mention there is justified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:40, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge/Redirect to Libertyville article, she could be a subsection in an article about the town, not every mayor needs their own article.Oaktree b (talk) 03:54, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The following is the whole government section at the Libertyville article: Donna Johnson was elected mayor of Libertyville in April of 2021. She is the first African-American, and the second woman, to hold the position.^[1][2]

• • Libertyville is represented by Jennifer Clark on the Lake County Board.^[3]
    • I would say in general our government sections are extremely weak. We too rarely tell if the place has a mayor-council/city manager-council, or comission style of government. Probably we should either in the government or history section trace the change of such a matter over time. Also we should at least tell how large the governing council is. The Libertyville article is far better than many of our place articles, but it still is not good. It also does not seem to adequately incorporate the 2020 census results.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:31, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Notification was made about this AfD at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red. - Beccaynr (talk) 15:53, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect or merge to Libertyville. I agree with others that the amount of coverage on her is commensurate with that of basically any small-city mayor and is not indicative of encyclopedic notability. JoelleJay (talk) 23:36, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep or merge to List of mayors of Libertyville, Illinois, while retaining a paragraph-ish biography intact. Category:Lists of mayors of places in Illinois and other state categories include articles for many cities smaller than Libertyville.--Pharos (talk) 18:15, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Meets GNG with enough coverage. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 02:30, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Additional discussion regarding the sources presented in this discussion, especially discussion in the context of WP:NBASIC, would be helpful in clarifying what the consensus is.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:14, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Verify about population rules for mayor. Knight Skywalker (talk) 13:30, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. There is no "100K" rule for mayors — the notability of a mayor does not hinge on the population of the city, it hinges on the ability to write and source a substantive article about the mayor's political impact. If that can be done, then a mayor can keep an article even if the place they were mayor of was a no-horse village with a population of five, and if it can't be done then a mayor gets deleted even if the place they were mayor of had a population well into the hundreds of thousands. I offer no opinion on whether Donna Johnson actually clears the bar or not — I'd certainly prefer to see more content and coverage about things she's accomplished in the mayor's chair, where this is still far too focused on premayoral background information that's irrelevant to establishing mayoral notability — but just wanted to point out that the nominator's claim that there's a "100K" cutoff for mayors simply isn't how this works, at all: it hinges on depth and quality of sourcing, not on how many people do or don't live in the municipality the person was mayor of. It is true that big city mayors are more likely to be able to clear the bar than smalltown mayors are, but it is still entirely possible for a smalltown mayor to clear the bar and entirely possible for a big city mayor to miss it. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 10 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 09:35, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: Fails WP:NPOLITICIAN Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 21:50, 12 March 2022 (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.