Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeff Johnson (labor leader)

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. — CactusWriter ^(talk) 22:20, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jeff Johnson (labor leader)

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BLP of questionable notability. I encountered this page during New Page Review and after discussion with the author provided some time for additional sourcing. However, after a couple weeks the sources provided do not meet the standard for WP:NBIO or WP:GNG. A quick review:

Source 1, 5, 13, and 19 are oral histories or personal papers/writing by the subject and thus primary sources. Source 5 also includes an unattributed biographical note, but it is published by the Labor Archives of Washington, which cannot be an independent source on the topic of Jeff Johnson, a local labor leader. The union alliance that Johnson led is listed as a major funder of the archives and Johnson was himself a board director of the Labor Archives.
Source 2 is to WP:BALLOTPEDIA, about whose reliability there is no consensus.
Sources 3 and 8 are to a newsletter published by Johnson's organization and thus not independent.
Sources 4, 6, and 7 are to a labor-specific industry publication and thus ineligible for notability per WP:TRADES.
Source 9 and 11 are local news blogs that are mostly reprints/paraphrases of an organizational press release.
Sources 12 and 14-18 are WP:ROUTINE coverage of Johnson in articles that focus on other issues on which he is invited to comment.

In my analysis, that leaves only Source 10 to count as significant coverage, and we'd need to see more for this to pass notability thresholds. Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: People, Politics, and Washington. Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You previously stated in my discussion with you that the article from the Tacoma News Tribune counts as a reliable secondary source. If that and source 10 count as significant coverage, I believe the page should be allowed to stay up. In addition, I would argue that the other coverage of Johnson in the Seattle Times and Everett Herald constitute significant coverage from reliable secondary sources. The Herald and Tribune are real independent news organs (not just blogs) from Tacoma and Everett, Washington, which are the 3rd and 7th largest cities in the state, respectively. Labor history is a traditionally underrepresented field of history, and coverage of leading figures like Johnson on Wikipedia helps promote research. Deleting this article would be contradictory to Wikipedia's efforts to increase diversity in biographies. Mathieulalie (talk) 17:07, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On further review, I realized the Tacoma News Tribune piece is mostly a reprint of a press release, which makes it a primary source. Dclemens1971 (talk) 19:51, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added a JSTOR source, hopefully that will prove notability. Mathieulalie (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

JSTOR itself is not a source, it's just an index (like Google News). In the underlying source by Myers (see here), Johnson is briefly quoted/referenced on two pages of a nearly 300-page book. That's a WP:TRIVIALMENTION, not significant coverage. Dclemens1971 (talk) 23:57, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source 2 is fine for now - as you say, @Dclemens1971 there is no consensus about Ballotpedia, so, unless the source is deprecated in a future discussion, it is perfectly usable.

Sources 4, 6, and 7 are marginally useful, but not unusable. I don't see a reason to dismiss them per WP:TRADES, unless it can be established that the sources are directly connected to Johnson, and therefore not independent.

Sources 12 and 14-18, as you mention, make only cursory mentions of Johnson - but WP:ROUTINE, per my reading, says that routine events are not in and of themselves notable - it does not say that articles covering routine events are completely unusable for any purpose. Here, they are not being used to establish the notability of a routine event, they're being used to establish the notability of Johnson, by showing that he has been invited to make published comments on a variety of issues.

Plus, there's source 10.

Overall, while Jeff Johnson is obviously not a major, epoch-shaping world-historic figure, I see more than enough published material to establish that he is a notable figure in the world of modern labor organizing in the USA. For someone who is studying that topic, this article may be interesting and useful. I see no compelling reason to delete the article, so let's keep it and let interested editors continue to improve it. Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:16, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Philomathes2357: WP:ROUTINE is specific to WP:NEVENTS. Biographies go off of WP:BASIC and the "trivial coverage" mention there. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:58, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was my general impression, thanks for the clarification. Philomathes2357 (talk) 05:39, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per User:Philomathes2357. There is enough evidence of notability in the published sources.--User:Namiba 13:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I see just enough sources to pass GNG. This is especially true if the biographical note and the content description to the Jeff Johnson papers are independent. --Enos733 (talk) 15:38, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They're not, though -- they're published by the Labor Archives of Washington, on whose board Johnson serves and which is funded by Johnson's organization. See here: https://labor.washington.edu/labor-archives#about Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:24, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Labor Archives of Washington is part of the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, and the biography to his finding aid was written by a UW Special Collections staff member, funded by the Washington state budget. Johnson's papers were processed independently of his input. Finding aids are academic research materials, not promotional materials. The article was not written to promote Johnson's political career (even if it were, it would have little effect since he is retired) but as a public service to promote knowledge about the state labor council's activities, specifically its role in farmworker organizing and the 15Now campaign. Furthermore, neither the Labor Archives nor Johnson receives any money from people viewing his papers (or any other collections). Mathieulalie (talk) 23:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Johnson appears to serve on a board of an entity that supports the Labor Archive, not the archive itself. And in this particular context, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that the former president of a local labor union would be asked to join the board of a non-profit focused on a labor archive. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:53, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Labor Archives also isn't a nonprofit or a business, it is part of the University of Washington Libraries. Mathieulalie (talk) 16:11, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, with that second sentence above I was meaning to refer to the Friends of the Labor Archives organization. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 16:17, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A biography about someone who's on the board of an organization that exists to give money to an entity and whose own organization is a donor to the entity cannot be truly independent if written by staff of an entity. See WP:COISOURCE, "less direct interests can be harder to see and more subjective to establish." Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:29, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Week keep or redirect to Washington State Labor Council - there is smoke here. The problem is that we can't track down where the fire is. If you'll allow me to be morbid for a moment, I strongly suspect Johnson will immediately and unquestionably meet our notability guidelines the moment he dies and has obituaries written about him in several Washington newspapers. Fortunately for Johnson, he is still alive. But for our purposes and at the present time, the sourcing is thin (as the OP notes). What's available often briefly quotes Johnson by virtue of his position as the head of the union, and does not dive into specifics about the person themselves. I'd be fine with either keeping this article or merging its content into the organization that he ran. To me, the following sources count towards notability and have swayed me:

Ballotpedia with its bio + "In 2015, Ballotpedia identified Jeff Johnson (Washington) as a top influencer by state."
The biography written by archivists in charge of his papers should also count, as we have no reason to assume that the decision that Johnson's papers were important enough to archive was swayed by outside factors.

Sources I don't think count toward notability include:

I don't believe nwLaborPress/Northwest Labor Press can count towards notability because it's a newspaper that specifically focuses on unions in Oregon and Washington. To me, it's the definition of a trade publication within this topic area, and our guidelines say that "there is a presumption against the use of coverage in trade magazines to establish notability."
The Tacoma News Tribune source is a press release with a little added text. For our purposes, it's a republished WP:PRSOURCE.
The Seattle Times's first reference has Johnson mentioned twice for an email that he wrote to politicians. Subsequent references appear to also briefly quote him, although I've run out of free articles and haven't been able to view all of them. If that holds true, they don't meet the standard at WP:BASIC: "trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not usually sufficient to establish notability". An example of trivial given in footnote 7 there is "a mention in passing ('John Smith at Big Company said...' [...] ) that does not discuss the subject in detail."
The Olympian is close as there is some context given. However, it's thinly written without much depth.
HeraldNet articles 1, 2, and 3 don't meet WP:BASIC. Johnson is briefly quoted in all of them.
Patch is not reliable per WP:USERGENERATED. (See the disclaimer at the top: "This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.") Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:53, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: In addition to the sources accepted as reliable, multiple mentions elsewhere add to notability. In addition to sources accessible on the internet, as a union leader it is highly probable that the subject has also been covered in as yet undigitized print media.--Ipigott (talk) 13:13, 22 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Just enough evidence of notability and does no harm. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep minimally satisfies the WP:GNG. Regards,--Goldsztajn (talk) 07:22, 24 May 2024 (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.