Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raymond A. Watson

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. v/r - TP 13:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Raymond A. Watson

Raymond A. Watson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Election to a unremarkable county board of supervisors doesn't pass WP:POLITICIAN, especially without significant third-party coverage. JaGa^talk 05:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we might be able to get more info about him. See these links. Three WP articles link to this gentleman. Special:WhatLinksHere/Raymond_A._Watson. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:17, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 20:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Agree with nom, there are neither sources WP:RS nor offices held WP:POLITICIAN to establish notability. Googling suggests they don't exist. Msnicki (talk) 20:42, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete He doesn't seem to have attracted any coverage at all of outside of Bakersfield. --MelanieN (talk) 22:48, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or redirect - the subject may not be notable outside of the campaign, therefore it is maybe WP:TOOSOON (although it primarily deals with entertainment related articles, some of the essays statements maybe relevant here). Perhaps the article should be redirected to the article United States House of Representatives elections, 2012. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 00:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? He's a county supervisor. If he has anything to do with the Congressional elections, the article doesn't mention it. --MelanieN (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disregard, I made these comments after my web browser had crashed, and previously I must have been looking at a AfD regarding Ricky Gill, and reposted here by mistake.

Delete - subject does not appear to be sufficiently notable to pass WP:ANYBIO or WP:POLITICIAN. Perhaps at best this article can be redirected to an article about the Kern County Board of Supervisors. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 10:52, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Unremarkable? Anybody who thinks Kern County, which is larger than many countries and has more oil than most of them, is "unremarkable" should spend a hot summer there. Sincerely, a friend to all, GeorgeLouis (talk) 15:21, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Even if Kern County could be agreed by all as "remarkable", that wouldn't make every county supervisor job in Kern County or every individual who held one of those jobs remarkable. County supervisor is not a top political office anywhere in the US. Msnicki (talk) 15:40, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

California contains 58 counties, each of them "remarkable" in its own way, but that does not mean that every member of every county board of supervisors is notable. "Just being an elected local official...does not guarantee notability," per WP:POLITICIAN. --MelanieN (talk) 16:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. rereading nominator's comment: I don't think they were saying that Kern County is unremarkable (the county does, after all, have a Wikipedia article). I think they were saying that the Kern County board of supervisors is unremarkable, and that may be true. Nobody seems to have written a WP article about the Kern County Board of Supervisors. --MelanieN (talk) 16:22, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

MelanieN's point is valid; maybe an article of that title should be written, now that she has red-linked it. Nevertheless, it seems to me that these remarks demonstrate a rather snobbish attitude toward rural areas in America and writing off a large segment of potential WP readers. Also, distancing Wikipedia from any kind of Notability, rural or not, is not helpful toward Building the Encyclopedia. As for boards of supervisors not being "top political offices anywhere in the U.S.," that is really a matter of opinion: I urge everybody to look at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors as well as the "Five Little Kings" of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Anyway, Mr. Watson seems to have had his share of references in reputable publications, large and small, and he is linked to other WP articles. It is true that just being an elected official does not guarantee Notability, but it certainly depends whether the elected official is a policy-maker, as is a Supervisor, or the county dogcatcher or tax collector. Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis (talk) 12:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Article needs improvement, but the Google News sources provided by the nominator show the subject's notability. NYyankees51 (talk) 14:20, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been mentioned at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Conservatism: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete One of a board governing a population under 900,000, apparently not chair of any committees (do they do it that way?). Seems of purely local interest. And per Herostratus's good arguments below.Johnbod (talk) 23:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Local or not this guy is a character: and because of that reliable sources are covering him. – Lionel ^(talk) 23:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. First of all, this guy is county supervisor, and that is his sole and only claim to notability. It's not like he's even the county executive. We don't go down to this level, and it'd be crazy to start doing it. Kern County is large, but bear in mind that Bakersfield (and Delano &tc.) have their own municipal governments. People in the area who would meet the lowest criteria of WP:POLITICIAN would be 1) the Mayor of Bakersfield (probably) and the county executive of Kern County (possibly), and that's it. If you want to broaden WP:POLITICIAN, fine, but do that first.

Second of all, essentially all of his coverage is in the Bakersfield Californian. That's not multiple sources, and its a local paper, not notable outside the county and questionable even as reliable source. There is a little other coverage, in the Mountain Enterprise, which describes itself as "this tiny mountain weekly newspaper", some quotes in stories in the Central Valley Business Times and the local TV news station and a website, and mere mentions in some other small publications of the "Supervisor Ray Watson was then invited on stage and made brief comments" variety. If there were articles about this guy in the San Francisco or Los Angeles papers or in Time Magazine or whatever, that'd be different. But there aren't. If you want this guy to be notable, get someone outside the county to write at least one story about him.

Third of all, what's the utility of this article? Is this just an excuse to put a bunch of gossip about this guy into the Wikipedia? Looks like it:

"Carpool, 2011. Watson told newspaper columnist Inga Barks that, despite having posed for a billboard urging residents to carpool or walk in order to "Make 1 difference" in the fight against air pollution, he did not walk to work but would be glad to carpool if 'someone is also going in.'"

Oh, OK, Carpoolgate. This is sub-notable local gossip. It's not part of our encyclopedic mission of documenting the historical record of the United States to get down to this level of detail.

Fourth of all, to synthesize all the above, if we go do down this path, it'll be a nightmare. "Residents of Pine Mountain Club were angered by Watson's opposition to the county paying for a permanent ambulance or firefighter paramedics in their small town in the mountains above Frazier Park". OMG. We're going to have to deal with sorting out the reliability and neutrality of material for every local county council feud about whether to hire another deputy or a school secretary in East Jesus, Montana? I sure hope not. Herostratus (talk) 03:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. If East Jesus, Montana, had as much oil, cotton, prisons and country music as Kern County does, I should hope somebody would write an article about the Notable people who make up its governing body. (Being new to this county and having lived in metropolitan areas all my life I have never before experienced such rank prejudice against rural areas as I have in reading some of the comments above. Now I know what discrimination feels like.) OK, I will add the part about Ray Watson being elected chairman of the Board of Supervisors — there is no county executive—but you'll have to settle for The Californian again, since it would be hard to cite the local radio station and TV station, which also use that news, and, believe it or not, kinda find it Notable.. And last I looked, there is a citation to the Los Angeles Times in the article. I must say that this nomination is resulting in the article's getting better and better. And I don't even like the guy's politics; I would vote against him in a flash. Sincerely, still your friend, GeorgeLouis (talk) 10:55, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, anyway, I found some television-station cites, and stuck 'em in. GeorgeLouis (talk) 11:54, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The population of Kern County is about the same as Indianapolis, and I wouldn't want or expect an article on a city councilor in Indianapolis. But it's worse than that: Bakersfield has its own city government. They hire their own police and fire and teachers and pave their own streets and have their own city ordinances and so forth. Because of this, the county government doesn't have that much effect on Bakersfield which has about 40% of the population of Kern County. And ditto for Delano and Arvin and so on. So it's more like a city councilor in Indianapolis if Indianapolis neighborhoods mostly had their own mayors and budgets and provided their own services. Also, I don't see the LA Times in any of the refs. There are (at this writing) 14 refs, and 7 of them are the Californian. Of the other 7: 2 are KGET-TV, 2 are the Taft Midway Driller, and the others are the Mountain Enterprise, Frazier Park Online, and Watson's page at the Kern County website. These are all local refs. Herostratus (talk) 06:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I suspect that the subject might be a borderline case with respect to WP:GNG, although I don't feel very strongly about deleting the page or not. However, I have a WP:BLP concern about the page. Much of the sourcing refers to events that can be construed as presenting the subject as a sort of crackpot, with the result that the page comes across as mocking the subject a little bit. It seems to me that BLP permits such a page, but only if the sourcing meets a very high standard, and that might not be the case here. Either there needs to be more material establishing the subject as a substantive public servant, or there needs to be more sourcing of a clearly non-local and non-gossipy nature. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:48, 8 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• L.A. Times link Somehow that paragraph got deleted. It has now been returned to its rightful place. Also, WP:Reliable does not require sources to be in metropolitan newspapers that are headquartered some 112 miles away from the subject of the article. (Click the link to see how far.) Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I'm not talking (now) about WP:RELIABLE but WP:NOTABLE. Let's take a look at the article Joe Blow (schoolbus driver). Mr Blow drove a school bus in Quincy, Massachusetts for 40 years, and when he retired the Quincy Patriot Ledger (circulation 66,000; the Bakersfield Californian has 70,000) published a feature article on him in the Our Town section ("Local School Bus Driver Drove 3 Generations of Quincy Schoolchilren"). About 20 years ago there was an accident where a child was injured, and this was a big deal in Quincy, and Mr Blow (who was involved but not at fault) was interviewed, briefly profiled, and extensively quoted in a front-page article. There were a couple of smaller articles about the incident where Mr Blow was mentioned, and his testimony at the inquest was quoted in another article. In addition, Mr Blow was an active in the local Elks Lodge and was noted on the paper three times in this connection: once when he was made Exalted Ruler of the local lodge, once when he announced that the lodge was making a large donation to a charity building schools in Afghanistan, and once when he was feted for long service. He was mentioned and briefly quoted when his son was drafted by the Detroit Tigers, and again when his wife won a blue ribbon at the Quincy Flower Show. He was quoted in a article describing a rally protesting the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health ruling, there were a couple of other mentions of his name in various notices, and then there was his obituary. That's 14 refs, two of them being extensive pieces substantially about him and several others quoting him. So my question is should Joe Blow (schoolbus driver) have an article? If you agree with Brandon Mendelson he should, and in that case Mr Watson is in also along with a substantial percentage of the population of my town (and yours). I think that'd be unsustainable and any ability to maintain these articles would collapse under the weight. Granted, we're not going to actually add 40,000,000 new biographical articles under the new "Raymond Watson" precedent, but that just highlights that there's no reason we should make an exception for Mr Watson. Herostratus (talk) 05:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Representation. Commenting on some statements made by my friend Tryptofish: There are only three incorporated cities in Mr. Watson's district—Wasco, Taft and Maricopa. Wasco contracts with Kern County for fire and police. Taft and Maricopa for fire only. Health, libraries, social services, etc., in those cities go through the county. Mr. Watson may represent just a tiny part of Bakersfield, but not much that a squib, according to the map at http://www.taftmidwaydriller.com/highlight/x1249735123/Kern-Supervisors-district-being-redrawn?photo=0. Thank you. GeorgeLouis (talk) 21:22, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you mean me, or someone else? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those are electoral districts, not administrative districts, I assume, so that doesn't matter. Herostratus (talk) 02:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My dear Tryptofish: I am so sorry. I had your post confused with that of Mr. or Ms. Herostratus. Mea culpa, mea iterum culpa. GeorgeLouis (talk) 03:40, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say "OK" in Latin, but I don't know how! :-) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 10 September 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.