Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anil Mukim

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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The result was Keep, nomination withdrawn by nominator. Please note this was a non-admin closure. Handschuh-talk to me 04:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anil Mukim

Anil Mukim (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Contested prod. Appears to be an anonymous Indian bureaucrat with responsibility for ... something in Gujarat, a large city of 5M. (He is not mayor.) He may even have moved up to a Delhi post but it is not clear how notable. In any case the one source does not establish notability. If there is notability in any of these positions, {{context}} applies. Dhartung | Talk 08:18, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Nomination withdrawn, no need to further ill feelings. --Dhartung | Talk 21:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Comment - Gujarat is a state in India with a population of 50 million, not 5 million. The ... you are talking about is the largest city in Gujarat, and the 7th largest in India, with a population of 5 million. For an analogy, take the example of Dave Cieslewicz, a mayor of Madison, Wisconsin - population of 223,389. Ahmedabad is around 25 times larger and Gujarat 250 times. - Aksi_great (talk) 09:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Keep - I created this article, so my voting keep does not stand for much. But there is a problem which must be addressed with this AfD. Ahmedabad is the 7th largest city of India with a population of 5 million and growing. 3 people are in charge of all administration of the city - the mayor, the municipal commissioner and the police chief. Prior AfDs have come to the conclusion that this meets the criteria for notability. But the problem arises when these people go out of power. Once notable people suddenly lose press coverage, and even the small amount of coverage that they get does not appear on the web. What should be done in such cases? Should we delete the articles? Or should we keep them in order to preserve the articles related to the civic administration history of Ahmedabad on wikipedia? I don't understand why past New York City Police Commissioners or mayors of New York can have their own articles and not Ahmedabad. - Aksi_great (talk) 08:28, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Please avoid what about x? arguments. This isn't comparing Gujarat or Ahmedabad to New York. If there are prior AFDs which have discussed municipal commissioners, please list them. Our article on municipal commissioner is unsourced and only contains information about the Swedish instance. The article Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai suggests this could be an important position, but it is also completely unsourced. Vadodara Municipal Corporation is a better article by far and suggests that this is something close to the role that a professional city manager might play when that role exists in a mayor-council municipal government (a situation rare in the US). The "MC" appears to report to the council as well as to Delhi (?), so it isn't an executive position per se. I'm assuming this is some structural holdover from the Raj that would once have been filled by a British civil servant; is that correct? --Dhartung | Talk 09:57, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
That the article does not have much information is correct. I do not know where he studied, or whom he married, etc. But the article clearly states that he was a municipal commissioner of an important city and also provides a RS for that claim. And that is enough for notability according to our criteria. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
And as you are slowly finding out, the position of municipal commissioner is a very important post in city administration of India. I did not know that our articles of municipal commissioner are not well written, but then, that isn't my problem, is it? A glance at Ahmedabad article would have told you about the importance of the post. - Aksi_great (talk) 10:58, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
No, the Ahmedabad article (sorry for confusing the state and the city, by the way) only tells me that it is a very large city. It does not tell me anything about the importance of the municipal commissioner in city governance. Notability is not inherited, and technically all city officials (of any city, anywhere) fall short of inherent notability as defined under WP:BIO. Either we must justify them using general notability standards (i.e. in-depth coverage from multiple independent sources) or there must be some consensus of the importance of the person through their role. --Dhartung | Talk 12:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletions. —Aksi_great (talk) 08:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, non-notable, there is a fundamental distinction between a known administrator of a city like New York and a city in Western India like Ahmedabad. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 09:07, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    Well, there is no fundamental difference. Both cities are major cities. Take Paul Richard for example. Or Stephanus Van Cortlandt. Only claim to fame, ex-mayors of New York. Or Christopher Seeley - his only claim to fame is being the mayor of Linesville, Pennsylvania with a population of around 1000. Or Shane Mack (mayor) - population 666. Anil Mukim on the other hand has been the municipal commissioner of a city with a population of 5,000,000+. Surely he is more notable than the hundreds of mayors and police chiefs of US on whom there are articles. - Aksi_great (talk) 09:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    Comment: Aksi, I think the article atleast needs an expansion for notability. Maybe some of the significant events during his career in which he had to play a crucial role would be notable info in the article. Else he just remains a figure-head whose notability will be questioned... -- ¿Amar៛Talk to me/My edits 10:23, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    Well, wouldn't the fact that he became the municipal commissioner qualify as a significant event according to your definition? - Aksi_great (talk) 10:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    I would not object if somebody listed those articles for deletion as well, since we establish notability on Wikipedia by providing reliable and independent sources. I would tend to agree with Amar though, if you are able to find multiple, reliable and independent sources on the subject of the article, maybe we would be able to save it. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 10:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    The fact that he was the municipal commissioner of Ahmedabad is enough to serve notability criteria. This has been established previously too by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P. C . Sanalkumar, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/I. P. Gautam and other related AfDs. - Aksi_great (talk) 11:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    W-w-waitaminit! There are tonnes of available sources here – [1]. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 11:12, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    Those other AFDs contribute to my understanding, but please be aware that it is a form of WP:WAX or WP:ALLORNOTHING to say that because one article is kept, other similar articles should be. If mayor-type positions were automatic includes under WP:BIO, then it would be "enough", but otherwise I think we need to make sure we're sufficiently asserting notability in the article. Listing his civil-service cadre and such has no meaning outside India. --Dhartung | Talk 12:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. This nomination and some of the arguments used (e.g. "there is a fundamental distinction between a known administrator of a city like New York and a city in Western India like Ahmedabad") look like a textbook case of systemic bias. Phil Bridger 11:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
    Yes, I did think about it. I soon found that there is no dearth of sources that can be used for this article. But I still think that notability guidelines and WP:CSB would remain in conflict with each other for a long time to come. — Nearly Headless Nick {C} 12:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Please note I did not use that argument in my nom, and I agree it represents systemic bias. --Dhartung | Talk 12:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I have been asking direct questions and getting no direct answers. What are any of those positions and how are they important? We don't seem to have articles explaining this. If they are important municipal functions in India, we need to provide people such as myself with some context. Honestly, why would I know that a "district collector" is not some kind of garbageman? --Dhartung | Talk 13:16, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • OK, I see we do have District Collector and "District Magistrate" is buried in Magistrate#India. It's still not entirely clear what an administrative magistrate does from that, but obviously district collector is a term that has grown to encompass much more responsibility than just taxes. I admit I'm having trouble with the top-down arrangement because other than Washington, D.c. the federal government has nothing to do with municipal governance. But this is exactly what I'm getting at. There are some missing articles here and there's a need to go beyond assumption. --13:33, 15 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhartung (talk • contribs)
I don't know what you are trying to prove here. The article had all this information before you nominated the article for AfD. The article says that he has been District Collector of 2 districts of the state of Gujarat in India. Now you may not have known what a district is, so you could have looked at Districts of India. The article clearly says that "the Deputy Commissioner or District Magistrate or District Collector, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, in charge of administration and revenue collection". We also have an article on District Collector which clearly says "District Collectors are officers of the Indian Administrative Service and are the most powerful government officials of the district.". Similarly Magistate#India would tell you about what the magistrate does in India. Of all these information, I do not find anything buried. The world does not work the way US does and that is not my problem. If you take the effort to search and read the articles you will understand the difference between a district collector and a garbageman. - Aksi_great (talk) 16:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Final reply I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I was just trying to find out what a municipal commissioner does and whether it was notable. Although the other posts have some information on Wikipedia, the articles were not wikilinked. I'm sorry if my use of the Socratic method ruffled feathers, but my questions were in good faith, and I just wanted answers. I will pursue those answers on user and wikiproject talk pages. --Dhartung | Talk 21:48, 15 November 2007 (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.