Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James H. Boyce

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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 per WP:BIO and lack of reliable sources. Also, the main author of the page is citing his own work, which violates WP:OR. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] James H. Boyce

James H. Boyce (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Local politico, highest office attained state party chairman. This is not considered passing the bar for WP:BIO which starts at the state legislature level. Dhartung | Talk 09:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply.Guidelines say "Politicians who have held international, national or statewide/provincewide office . . . "

This could easily be interpreted to include state party chairmen, who are elected, or even county chairmen, who are also elected in many situations.

Here is another state chairman on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Watson

Billy Hathorn 16:16, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete no indication of notability. In light of the creator's history, quite likely a copyvio from somewhere as well. - iridescenti (talk to me!) 10:15, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply.Not a copyright violation. Is it a copyright violation to give credit where the material comes from? And Mr. Boyce is self-evidently notable in state politics and as a philanthropist.

User:Billy Hathorn|Billy Hathorn]] 15:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete and if this is a third blatant copyvio by said user, dip him in chocolat and leave for Easter bunnies to eat. That stuff really pisses me off. Not the legality, the laziness!--killing sparrows 13:22, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep.State party chairman is a major position in any state. The individual is elected by the elected members of the state party executive committee. Mr. Boyce served four years in the position during the Watergate period. He had successes and failures in the post. He was also a philanthropist in Baton Rouge. Billy Hathorn 20:54, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete or reduce to a stub. I can see the argument for the notability of a state party chair. But right now there is almost zero content in this article that is attributed to something other than original research (Billy Hathorn's master's thesis). There probably are some decent, citable sources out there about the guy. Per killing sparrows, it's fairly lazy to settle for "Oh, I'll just cite my own master's thesis", especially given that if it's a thesis for a bloody Master's degree, you'd think it would be scholarly enough that it would, itself, cite those other, better sources. So, it's not like you have to do a lot of new research to find them. Mwelch 22:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Clarification.M Welch, Mr. Boyce died in 1990; he was out of active politics in 1976. He is largely a pre-Internet person. There are few Internet links directly to him. Most Internet links are since 1996 or 1997.

Billy Hathorn 01:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment. So what? Is there a reason that pre-Internet sources cannot be cited? The world of research does not end with Google. If you wrote a master's thesis in 1980, you have to be familiar with citing non-Internet sources . . . right? Mwelch 06:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Notable in my opinion and I don't care what WP:BIO says as it's just a guideline and most guidelines are created by a very small minority of Wiki users with no input from the masses. Xanucia 22:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Keep.Look at the state of Michigan under Saul Anuzis. He was the state party chair and has a full page along with other chairs from the state's history. This should be kept. User:tommyduva

  • delete Not for copyvio--the source is quite apparently the eds. masters thesis, because where else would this sort of thing be published, and I think we can presume he has copyright in it. But almost every one of the entire set of articles he has been adding violates the general idea of an encyclopedia, that articles are proportional to the importance of the subject. By some oversight, we seem to have guidelines that permit people of the most restricted importance as long as they have been elected once to the state legislature, and its probably time we changed that, because nobody would have conceived they could be used this way. But certainly we should not go any further--no party chairman, no city magistrates, no road superintendents, no local grocers, no community physicians. (all real examples.)
This doesn't mean someone in those groups could not be N; Anuzis may be N because of his individual work without that canonizing the position. Most of these articles are OR in another sense than just citing an unpublished thesis--they rely on citing government contract awards, prison records, tombstones, oral history collections,--these are the sort of primary sources used by historian to write history. They are not the sort of material used for an encyclopedia.
It might be reasonable to make an exception for brief notices--print encyclopedias normally have short articles of a paragraph or so for the people who just make it in. But this ed. is writing every article as if the subject were FDR. If these articles are held N, then they are good candidates for appropriate editing. About three sentences: paragraph. When he was born, when he was elected to the job that this ed. thinks made him notable, and one for when he lost it. And a 4th if he's dead. That might be the temporary solution to state assemblymen as well. There's no point doing it to this article now on the small possibility that it might be kept.
But its not as if dealing with this article and the other existing ones will end the problem. There was a new article today on Eugene S. Eason, who filled the remaining 9 months of someone's term in the state legislature and never won an election on his own. The article is filled with the detailed statistics of what every candidate received at each election which Eason tried.
As I said in an earlier AfD, Billy should turn the thesis into a book; it will probably have to be privately printed, so we won't be able to cite it here, but all the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of everyone named will buy a copy. DGG 03:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
A related point, this article is a good example of Hathorn's penchant for irrelevant asides. He sat on many civic boards, including ... the National Alliance of Business, a creation of the administration of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, whom Boyce supported for the White House. What on Earth his support for Nixon has to do with his volunteer work, I don't know. Or Voter registrars often advised new registrants to remain within the Democratic fold or be unable to vote in competitive races except for U.S. president, constitutional amendment elections, or tax referenda. Therefore, the Democratic registration as late as 1960 was often in excess of 98 or 99 percent. Yes, a fine point to be made ... in an article on the politics of Louisiana. (This being a hypertext encyclopedia, and that's what the little blue letters do.) And Goldwater was at first reluctant to take on the challenge but nevertheless declared his candidacy early in 1964, when the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson had been president for only two months and the favorite for a full term of his own. Again, material for Goldwater's article. I suspect this is in here to beef up what would look thin. It certainly isn't about Boyce. Then there's the buried lede: The Louisiana GOP made no headway in statewide campaigns under Boyce's tutelage. Ah. Well if his tenure as state party chairman was so unnotable, why is he here?
Hathorn is skilled at using Wikipedia tools and knows a bit about house style. And it's great that we can have holes filled like Lieutenant Governors and State Senate Majority Leaders. If only we could get these skills turned toward helping the encyclopedia in a way that is acceptable to the community, this would not be as sour a process. --Dhartung | Talk 04:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I have just re--read the article, trying for a fresh view, and it seems fairly clear that he never actually accomplished anything. He was busy, he was much involved, but he neither attained any notability of his own nor was of key importance in notable political events. This make him nonetheless a fine subject for historical purrposes: non-notable people can be useful scaffolds for discussions. But it makes him unsuitable for an encyclopedia--WP or any other. DGG 08:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

DGG wrote: ". . . it seems fairly clear that he never actually accomplished anything. . . . "

Rebuttal.DGG, are you really saying that this individual accomplishing nothing? The article says that he presided over a state party at a difficult time, had trouble finding a Senate candidate, but was in the chairmanship when his party gained its first two U.S. House seats. Perhaps, he deserves no credit for that success, but he was in office when it happened. Should we be saying that such individuals "accomplished nothing." And also, "accomplishing nothing" would not exclude one from consideration. It is a very subjective concept to say that one "accomplished nothing".

Billy Hathorn 00:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

He accomplished nothing that is notable for WP purposes. His intrinsic notability is a matter for history, not for settling here. Actual documented accomplishments are necessary, not vague statements like the above. It is your job to show that he accomplished something discrete and demonstrable. Your personal opinion of his role as a party leader is irrelevant. DGG 07:16, 8 April 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.