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. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:15, 21 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Robert C. Williams[edit]

Robert C. Williams (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Fails WP:BIO; little depth of coverage in reliable sources. Fails WP:ANYBIO; appears to have made no widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record. Fails WP:POLITICIAN. Magnolia677 (talk) 21:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Purely of local interest, with local being a small township in Canada. LaMona (talk) 21:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• A small township of tens of thousands of people, housing Bramalea, Canada's first satellite city, who had to negotiate its place within Brampton, which quickly became one of Canada's largest cities. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The sourceability of his role within those negotiations is poor to nonexistent, so that protestation doesn't assist in the slightest. See below. Bearcat (talk) 04:34, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: While Dr. Williams did not win an Order of Canada, Magnolia677 deleted a variety of Order of Canada redlinks from lists of people for Peel. I posted on his or her talk page that the Order of Canada was the country's second highest civilian honour, implying to him to back off. Regardless of whether this article qualifies as notable, this users should win an "out of spite AfD nomination" barnstar. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, or at least move to the draft namespace, passes WP:POLITICIAN, he just exists in a pre-Internet age, in a jurisdiction that's been randomly missed by newspaper digitization projects. He was still being quoted by the Toronto Star, Canada's highest circulation newspaper, on topics at least as late as 2003, thirty years after retiring as a politician. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Quoted on topics" doesn't make a person suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia in and of itself. It might suggest the possibility that enough coverage of the person in other contexts might exist to make him notable — but giving soundbite in coverage of other topics doesn't make him notable in and of itself, because he isn't the subject of what he's saying. And Brampton is within the local coverage area of the Toronto Star — so it doesn't confer the depth of coverage needed to make a smalltown mayor notable just because coverage exists. Especially not when I've got access to this magic tool called ProQuest, which enables me to determine exactly how much useful pre-Internet sourcing actually exists: I can pull out TorStar sourcing all the way back to 1894 (and no, that's not a typo — I really do mean the 19th century). I'll detail below, but you've massively overstated the case. Bearcat (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Draft and userfy at best because this article is still currently questionable. SwisterTwister talk 05:01, 12 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:47, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Unfortunately, there are these nifty little things called news archive databases, which magically turn pre-internet-era sourcing into internet-accessible sourcing. So per ProQuest, what we've actually got here for "quoted in the Toronto Star in 2003" is (a) a one-line soundbite about his opinion on the location of the Brampton Civic Hospital, and (b) a one-line soundbite about his opinion of the Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey by-election in 2002, where the entire quote from him is "there really hasn't been a hell of a lot to talk about". Neither of these offer any evidence of enduring notability. And for coverage during his career I get just 11 hits, of which one is the presence of his name in an employment ad for a job opening at Chinguacousy's municipal office, and all of the others are pure "smalltown mayor does smalltown mayor things and gets WP:ROUTINE coverage for them in the local newspaper" — none of them offer any real substance to make him more notable than the norm for smalltown mayors. So WP:NPOL #3 has not been passed here, because that criterion cannot just be claimed as true. It must be reliably sourced as true — and the sourceability here simply does not cut it, if ten routine mentions of his name, and no coverage that counts as substantive, in the nearest local daily newspaper is the best I can find. Delete. Bearcat (talk) 04:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete because sources are simply not sufficient. But, User:Bearcat, I know that you're inundated with these campaign articles, and maybe you have looked at the track records of the editors weighing in here and know that they are folks who should know better, but let's try to hold the snark. After all, I assume that most editors creating and defending candidate articles are carried away by enthusiasm for a candidate, and participating in an election campaign is an admirable and honorable thing, even when it does lead to the WP equivalent of littering the town with campaign posters.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:33, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for the record, this isn't an unelected candidate for office — it's a dead former smalltown mayor who never even attempted a run for higher office that I've been able to locate. The by-election soundbite I alluded to above was not quoting him as a candidate — it was quoting him as a voter and observer (which is even less of a basis for a notability claim than having been a candidate would be). And while I admit that my writing style can be blunt sometimes, I'm not seeing where I crossed any line into "snark" at all. YMMV. Bearcat (talk) 19:43, 18 February 2016 (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.