The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: Withdrawn. If only this hadn't required an MfD... (non-admin closure) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:42, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:William B. Gunter[edit]

Okay, this is odd, and I'm testing the waters with this. There has essentially been no substantial change to this draft in the whole 6 years it's been there; except for occasional once-every-6-months-minor-edits-to-stave-off-G13 (such as this, or this or even via AWB, such as this). This seems like an absolutely obvious gross violation of the spirit of the guidelines/borderline system-gaming (draftspace is not an indefinite place to hold single-sentence articles which will never make it into mainspace - unlike the creator's and sole maintainers claims that some subjects have inherent notability - an unsustainable position, this person simply does not appear to have attracted any coverage in reliable sources; the only thing I could find being a database entry which I don't even know if it is reliable). This is a clear case of the second issue listed here, and applies to a whole bunch of such boiler-plate single sentence drafts. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:34, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep, and whack nominator with a wet trout. It is not possible for the nominator to have conducted even a borderline competent search for information on the subject without finding substantial coverage. The subject was a justice on the highest court of the state of Georgia, served in the state legislature, and was later appointed by the President of the United States to resolve a dispute in another state. Wikipedia's longstanding notability standards at WP:JUDGE, of which the nominator is ignorant, state that "The following are presumed to be notable: Politicians and judges who have held international, national, or (for countries with federal or similar systems of government) state/province–wide office, or have been members of legislative bodies at those levels". A state supreme court justice by definition holds a statewide office. Additional sanctions may be necessary in this case. BD2412 T 17:15, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. State supreme court justices are notable under WP:NJUDGE, a standard that is generally understood to supply automatic notability. The idea that it "will never make it into mainspace" thus couldn't be further from the truth (and is in any event irrelevant for MfD purposes). The accusation of gaming-the-system isn't defensible either: BD2412 has been doing yeoman's work with these articles, so it hardly seems right to punish him for taking his time instead of adding hundreds of single-sentence stubs into mainspace (which he would be well within his rights to do, incidentally). More broadly, I don't see how deleting a draft on a wholly notable figure being written by a good-faith administrator with a long track record is, in any sense of the phrase, conducive to writing an encyclopedia. If nothing else, WP:IAR would seem to apply. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:18, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Notwithstanding an essay (what you are citing) which clearly hasn't been updated in a while (WP:NSOLDIER, among others, has been deprecated a while ago, and NSPORTS has also been under intense scrutiny for a while) and doesn't even accurately reflect guidelines which it refers to, there is no such thing as automatic or inherent notability. That is a sentiment which has been upheld time and again at many AFDs of subjects meeting an SNG but failing GNG. As for the rest, look at the diffs I provide, they are rather clear enough. It doesn't in any way help that this is one among hundreds of similar drafts which have been kept alive on artificial life support (AWB edits every 5-6 months) all these years. It's much better, for the readers (WP:RF) and for other editors (far more likely to notice something in mainspace), if instead of making "open draft" templates and programming AWB runs to switch between them, actual time had been spent looking for sources instead. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:40, 25 September 2021 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.