Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harriet Mazel Szanto

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 of the debate was delete. —Cleared as filed. 13:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Harriet Mazel Szanto

Question of notability. She's a hospital administrator and married some prominent people but doesn't seem to be that noteworthy herself, at least not in the encyclopedic sense. Very few Google hits. Also, look at the user name of who created this page. Possible family vanity. —Brim 07:04, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete as per nomination. Spondoolicks 10:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
• Harriet Mazel was a prominent hospital executive and ran Edgewater Hospital in Chicago. She was active politically. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.98.134.160 (talk • contribs)
• Merge with Paul Szanto. It would be a pity to lose the information about Ms Mazel, but (on the information provided), she probably doesn't warrant her own article. Good nomination, by the way, Brim: you explained why you believed the article should be deleted, and refrained from voting or hurling smartarsed insults. Well done. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 15:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I think we need more women listed in this Encyclopedia. Wikipedia could distinguish itself in the long run by including info and articles not included in a more conventional encyclopedia.

Are we trying to recreate the Encyclopedia Britannica? I don't think we can do that, but we can make this even better.

I think if we follow the ideas of Brim, we will have very few women included. I'm a little bit tired of having the vast majority of biographies in encyclopedias only about men.

I also think that Wikipedia could distinguish itself by including articles on subject not included in conventional encyclpedias. That's what I hope to see. People will have the incentive to go to Wikipedia if it has interesting articles not already covered in Britannica. I don't want people just going to Wikipedia just because it is free. Is that the real goal of the open source community?

The Chicago Tribune had a very large eulogy about Harriet Mazel. I don't really see why this is something that should be deleted.

We need more articles about women in encyclopedia articles. Fuddlemark, very good idea about merging, but I do think there is a good case for keeping the article. Finally, I think that this article will eventually be expanded to include more details about her life.

Google should not be a test of whether something should be included in this encyclopedia. We certainly don't want to include information about only things that are popular and well known.

I think that when somebody is doing a report on women in hospital administration, it would be nice to have an example of a woman ceo from 1982.

I also think making a reference to family name of poster is not the best argument. We should rely on the strength of the information available and not make conclusions based on somebody's family name.

I am impressed by your enthusiasm and well-thought-out defense in support of keeping the article. Perhaps other Wikipedians will see your side and vote in support of keeping the article. To convince others to vote with you, I think you'll need to convince them of the notability of this person. Notability is obviously very subjective, as it depends on the readers experiences and personal biases. However, Wikipedia has made attempts at establishing rough guidelines to notability, in particular notability for people in biographies. You should read Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies.

There are a lot of people in this world. People living and people living long ago. Obviously everyone has done something notable to some degree. But not many people have done something notable enough to be included in a general encyclopedia like Wikipedia. I think my mom is pretty notable. I could write several screenfulls about my mom, and she and I would think it's really neat, but would the general readership want that? No, of course not. The rest of the world doesn't care about my mom, because to them, she is no one special. That's a bit of a silly example, but I hope you get my point. What if every person of even the slightest notability were included in Wikipedia? It would be ridiculous. There are a lot of people who are notable in the community, a lot of very industrious people, a lot of business owners, policemen, but we don't have articles about all of them. As such, we don't have articles about all hospital administrators, because, there are just too many of them, and outside of doing their job of administrating, they haven't done much more notable stuff. Would anyone want to read an article about my hospital's administrator? No, probably not.

Not everyone agrees on what we should include. We have guidelines, but not everyone agrees with those. That's why we have voting, and a somewhat democratic system here. You may want to make your voice heard over on Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_inclusion_of_biographies. Once again, I'm sincerely glad to hear you stick up for your cause. Good luck. —Brim 01:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete per nomination. Jtmichcock 23:10, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Harriet Mazel was the first woman head of a hospital in Chicago. This even by itself makes her noteworthy enough for this encyclopedia. Unless it is the goal of those concerned to limit this encyclopedia largely to men, I cannot imagine good cause to delete this article.

Wikipedia is not an affirmative action program. Other than fulfilling some desired quota of vague parameters, I don't see any argument that this person is noteworthy enough for inclusion. Jtmichcock 03:26, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete Subject is not notable enough. Many other people who have been given substantial obituaries in leading newspapers are also not notable enough for Wikipedia, regardless of their gender. Bwithh 04:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

She is notable enough simply for the matter of being the first woman director of a hospital in Chicago and one of the first in the nation. I really think this type of attitude is going to result in 90% of the biographies in this encyclopedia being men, and that's rediculous.

You're the only one who sees her as a woman. Nobody else has mentioned her gender in their reasons above. Man or woman, this person simply is not notable enough for inclusion in this type of encyclopedia. There are plenty of actual noteworthy women you could write articles about. Why don't you go look at a list of requested biography articles and choose one of them to write about? Just glancing at the list, I noticed there are several women on it. —Brim 08:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

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There are plenty of women who are more notable and have achieved more than the subject of this article. Why not choose one of those other women to write an article about? Or you might consider writing an article about the Hodgini Circus Family, of which Harriet was a member - a brief bio of her could be part of this page. Incidentally, if you're taking a feminist position on this, Harriet becoming a director by stepping in for her husband when he passes away (in 1986! is she really one of the first hospital female directors in the nation?) is not really the ideal feminist lesson (perhaps, if it were 1886) - and even less so is her being married to several famous husbands. Her circus career might be highlighted instead.

Bwithh 13:35, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to weigh in on this discussion as well. I think Harriet Mazel Szanto has led an extremely interesting life. Going from a circus performer, to wife of a lt. governor, to finally head of a hospital. And do you think she achieved this only by being married to Dr. Mazel? Would you argue the same about this with Hillary Clinton in the Senate in 2002? Also, it appears here that all of the posters are men.... Would this have some influence on the process? It's unfortunate that it seems like there are so few women involved with Wikipedia. Cokie Roberts just published a book called the "Founding Mothers" in it she analyzing the lives of the women married to the men who founded this country. Their influence and ideas did have a tremendous impact on the formation of country. Even as late as the 1980s, the only way women could often get important roles were through their husbands. It's still rather rare for a hospital administrator to be a woman. I firmly believe Harriet Mazel Szanto led an interesting, noteworthy, and achieved enough to be included in this encyclopedia. This is what an open source community is all about. Hannah Podlevsky, 19 November 2005

Additionally, I think that Harriet Mazel was an important part of Chicagoland history-HP

• I'm not quite sure what you mean by "this is what an open source community is all about". This is a selective encyclopedia with submission guidelines enforced through voting processes (like the voting happening here - you need to state your vote and sign your comment with your User name and time), community editing, and administrators. Also note that comments from new users with nothing in their user history except their entries in the discussion in question might be ignored by the administrator under the prevailing guidelines. Harriet Mazel is not comparable to Hillary Clinton. I'd still like to see her as part of a Hodgini circus family page though. The Hodginis sound like fun.

Bwithh 16:14, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

• Neutral & Comment: The rational for keeping this article is an example of what I call "cumulative notability": none of the subject's individual experiences or accomplishments, in my opinion, really meet WP:BIO, but when added together (circus performer + prominent hospital administrator + married to weakly notable person), might recognize that the person has achieved a particular degree of public recognition and notability. There are a lot of articles like this, most of which are (rightly) deleted; hard to say about this one. MCB 01:01, 21 November 2005 (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.