Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don Slobojan

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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. - Mailer Diablo 15:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Don Slobojan

Contested PROD, nominator stated "NN local politician withg copyvio issues" (bio is largely from the local paper). The copyvio issue may be fixable, assuming that other reliable sources can be found to substantiate the details of the mayor of a small town, but per WP:BIO it is highly unlikely that being mayor of Thunder Bay, Ontario is a significant national office which in and of itself confers encyclopaedic notability. For comparison, this town is rather smaller than Reading, Berkshire (where I live). I know one of Reading's former mayors, he is a schoolteacher at my son's primary school. The two roles are of roughly equivalent importance, in my view. The world has many tens of thousands of mayors, most of them worthy and sincere individuals, but only one of them is Clint Eastwood, and it's not this one. Just zis Guy you know? 12:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I have a few points I want to get out:

  • I've been reading through Wikipedia:Candidates and elections, and the Sources section specifically says that local newspapers are an acceptable source of information. I was also very careful to attribute the article, as I did not want to make it seem as if it was plagiarization - I wanted it to be clear that there was a source, and that source was attributed
  • After reading the Information to be included section, I see that I haven't really put much of value into this article from a historical perspective - I will fix this up, however I believe that 5 days is too short a time. Can I request that a deletion decision be deferred until 1 month from now, Sept. 30th 2006? By then, if the article hasn't been updated or reached an acceptable level of content, I will tacitly agree to it's deletion
  • I would propse that, if this article is pegged as being worthy of deletion, that a thorough cleanup be done on the Ontario municipal elections, 2003 page as there are numerous articles that I have seen there which contain less information than this one (see Wayne Thomson, Karen Farbridge, Rob MacIsaac, Lynn Peterson)

User Talk:Straxus 13:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Wayne Thomson = former incumbent mayor. Karen Farbridge = former incumbent mayor. Rob MacIsaac = current incumbent mayor. Lynn Peterson = current incumbent mayor. This line of argument holds no water whatsoever. Bearcat 19:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Lynn Peterson was the mayor of Thunder Bay - even though her article is a stub, it's still a valid encyclopaedic topic. Stub is not a criterion for deletion. Checking the rest, they are either mayors of former mayors of reasonably important cities - not Iron Bridge, Ontario, but Thunder Bay, Ontario. Encyclopaedic. WilyD 13:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • He was never mayor of Thunder Bay - he ran, and lost (according to the article.) I'm pretty sure every mayor of Thunder Bay is an encyclopaedic topic, but I don't think the same is true of failed candidates. Major local political figures who receive (or received) significant press coverage would almost certainly be true of any mayor of a large city (and Thunder Bay is the largest city within about a thousand kilometers) But he lost. WilyD 13:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Update on the above list of candidates: Hmm, it appears I did miss the fact that they were all past mayors. However, what about Donna Upson? User Talk:Straxus 19:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


An interesting mix of viewpoints is being shown - on the one hand, it is stated that Thunder Bay is too small a city to really merit much attention (User Talk:JzG above). On the other hand, it's being claimed that the city is a big one and that as a result the mayoral article should be preserved (User Talk:WilyD above). In a multi-contributor environment like Wikipedia, I realize that it's very difficult to apply editorial consistency, however I would refer again to the Wikipedia:Candidates and elections page and say that I will attempt to bring this article up to that standard in one month. I'm also not trying to turn this into some sort of contest - it matters not to me who won or lost a given election, but rather that historical background on the election is present for readers to analyze. As far as my own opinion about Thunder Bay, I lived there for 18 years and it is definitely the largest city within a long range. It's approximately 800 km to any city which is larger than it, and it serves as the nerve centre for Northwestern Ontario (of the population of 250,000 in the region, it contains about 110,000). I believe that it qualifies it as a local 'major city', and the much lower population densities in Canada mean that the major cities are significantly smaller than in the UK. User Talk:Straxus 13:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


  • This is not proposed for deletion due to being a stub, it's proposed because the subject does not meet the notability guidelines, which are a rough and ready guide to who is likely to achieve sufficient external coverage to allow a verifiably neutral biography. Just zis Guy you know? 14:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - being a failed candidate in an election for a mayor whether it be for Thunder Bay or Toronto is not sufficient, unless there's other reasons for notability. -- Whpq 13:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per Whpq: Failed candidates for mayor are not intrinsically notable. --Huon 14:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per Whpq. I can respect the effort the author is putting in, but finishing 4th in an election with barely 3600 votes does not make this individual notable enough for an article. Resolute 17:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


I've done some further research, and it turns out that mayoral candidate is not the only historically interesting information about this person. It appears that he was both Board Director and Chairman of the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce, and he is also currently on the Board of Directors of the Thunder Bay Airport.

References:

Does this raise the level of historical interest enough? User Talk:Straxus 18:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete. Chamber of commerce role and airport directorship don't really make much of a difference. Agent 86 19:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Chamber of Commerce still doesn't cut it. ~ trialsanderrors 19:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia precedent has generally permitted articles on people who have been elected mayors of cities, even small ones, but the same precedent has determined that unelected mayoral candidates are not notable enough for WP articles unless the person meets WP:BIO in other ways. Frankly, nothing here meets WP:BIO. Not running for mayor and losing, not being on the Chamber of Commerce, not being on the board of directors of the airport. Delete. Bearcat 19:20, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Did I mention that he invented the Internet? ;)

Sounds like I'm not going to win this one - I guess the electrons in this article are going to be recycled into something else. Can't say I didn't try though! User Talk:Straxus 21:45, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment Everyone knows he didn't invent the Internet - that was Al Gore! Dlyons493 Talk 20:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
  • recycle electrons per nom and per Agent 86. Brownie points for Straxus for effort, but this one is a landslide. As a would-be politician, he came second from bottom in the municipals. Ohconfucius 03:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete per Wikipedia:Candidates and elections. -- pm_shef 22:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
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.
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