Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leslie A. Lewis

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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. Mr.Z-man 20:22, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Leslie A. Lewis

Leslie A. Lewis (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Single-incident coatrack masquerading as a biography, which violates WP:NPOV and places undue weight on a single piece of a person's life. FCYTravis 20:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: Integrity of this AfD has been compromised. The nominator, an administrator, has protected "his own" version of the article, which deletes most of it, including more than half the references. Certainly this undermines the integrity of the AfD process, as even I myself would vote for deletion with what is now left. Anyone commenting on the article should have a look at the version before he protected it, which is here. Reswobslc 22:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
The protection was temporarily necessary, as an editor removed the "Living persons" category and reinserted a self-published blog which was removed for being a patently unreliable and unacceptable source for an article about a living person. The protection has been reduced to semi. FCYTravis 22:26, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
You mean ME? I don't have a blog, so this "self-published" accusation is nonsense. Now, why semi? Are anonymous users vandalizing this article or something? And are the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News "blogs"? As you have removed these too. Last I checked, these are in-print newspapers. Look, the point of an AfD is to gain the community consensus, which you cannot get by manipulating the AfD itself. I propose this AfD is NULL AND VOID and you start a new AfD, with the most recent un-manipulated version of the article, and then DON'T TOUCH (aka protect) it! Reswobslc 22:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I mean the blog "SammyTaylor.net," which I removed specifically because it's an unacceptable, self-published source which cannot be used. You reinserted it. FCYTravis 22:44, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Cannot be used to support statements about living people, true, but cannot exist as a relevant link in the article, not true. Reswobslc 22:50, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
No, you're wrong. We do not link to blogs in biographies of living persons except for blogs written by the biography's subject. Blogs are specifically cited as links to be avoided, and BLP requires that all external links must be of high quality and reliability. A personal blog does not meet either of those criteria. FCYTravis 22:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
And so this is why the article should be deleted/protected? I don't even see this as relevant to this AfD, even if as, you say, "I'm Wrong". Reswobslc 23:02, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep Um, with all due respect, her widely publicized grassroots-organized ouster is what she is notable for, if being an elected official somehow wasn't enough. Nominator hasn't even looked at the massive amount of supporting media coverage, otherwise he would have known that the contents of the since-removed YouTube video are well documented by reliable sources and he would not have removed it claiming they were somehow unverifiable. If NPOV is still a concern, deletion is not the answer. Incidentally, I can't help but notice that more than half of the nominator's last 50 edits are to undo or delete my contributions... Travis, what did I do to piss you off? Reswobslc 21:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment - The article is exclusively concerned with a single incident in this person's life to the exclusion of every other part of her life, and thus improperly gives undue weight to that incident. It is established policy that Wikipedia does not create "biographies" about people who are temporarily in the news because of a single incident. FCYTravis 22:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete due to BLP concerns in conjunction with borderline notability. Of the three sources cited, one is local news and hence not especially reliable, one is a court document giving verification of a tangential fact, and one is a blog/opinion piece which has no place on wikipedia. Sheffield Steeltalkstalk 22:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
    • This one should not count in light of the fact that nominator has deleted the citations, leaving only three behind, and then protected the page so they could not be re-added! OF COURSE reliable sources are "missing"...Reswobslc 22:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Note to closing admin I'm changing my Weak delete to a Delete after reviewing the sources (including those in the earlier version of the article) and giving further consideration to the BLP issues raised here. In cases of borderline notability - and that's what this is: moderate interest in predominantly local news sources for a short time - BLP concerns should be enough to indicate that deletion is the best course. Sheffield Steeltalkstalk 13:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
  • comment. I peeked at the recent non-protected version and I believe it is indeed a BLP violation, specifically WP:BLP#Criticism. I also know that semi-protection and protection are ways to prevent BLP violations. I suggest that the protection be lifted so the community will not be suspicious that the nominator is abusing admin powers (false or otherwise). Should protection be necessary, an uninvolved admin should do so.--Lenticel (talk) 23:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
    • question Perhaps you can clarify "criticism". The deer video and the ouster is what this lady is most notable for, just like Timothy McVeigh is notable for a bombing. In both cases, the focus is on these negative events and not the person's childhood or upbringing. Focusing on the events is not "undue weight" or "criticism". An example of "undue weight" would be an article dwelling on this judge's, or McVeigh's religious beliefs that are irrelevant to the things that made them notable. Reswobslc 17:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I don't like the principal source--the transcript of the CNN show is what I can best describe as a one-sided lynch mob. I know CNN is supposed to be a RS, but the WP article on Nancy Grace indicates very clearly why nothing said on her show can be used as negative information about anyone. DGG (talk) 03:22, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
    • reply It is unclear which version of the article you're looking at. This is an unusual case where post-AfD the nominator removed content from the article and then protected it. Three sources were deleted by the nominator before the page was protected, and because two of them in Lewis's jurisdictional area, I would personally have considered them more "principal" than Nancy Grace. If you have seen these, and still believe CNN is the principal source, then can you acknowledge it so your position is clear? Reswobslc 15:33, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 19:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong delete per WP:BLP1E. No version of the article contains any information about her life, or any sources for same, except for this one affair. Deor 21:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep The behavior of any editors involved notwithstanding, the article cites reliable sources, and those sources indicate non-trivial coverage. There is likely to be further information availible to fill-out the article in other sources, and thus this is in need of keeping and expanding per WP:HEY, and not deletion issue at this point. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 21:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak delete - I would tend to believe that, while Circuit Court judges (who are Federally appointed) are probably inherently notable, District Court judges (who are generally local elected officials) are not. The question, then, is whether Lewis's bad press and subsequent retention election is enough to confer notability on her. This is a really close call, but I tend to believe that a hostile CNN talk show and some otherwise local furor does not clear the notability bar. Delete as nn. (Note that I do not see WP:BLP violations here: if a person becomes infamous for a single incident, that does not bar Wikipedia from writing an article mostly about that incident - see, e.g., Mark David Chapman) --Hyperbole 23:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, clear WP:COATRACK. Far below WP:BIO standards, and the attention briefly attained by a viral video clip isn't really notability. --Dhartung | Talk 00:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep The fact that a YouTube video single-handedly influenced an election so much as to swing the majority vote is in itself novel enough to make her and this incident notable. Reswobslc 01:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
You've already !voted "keep" once, Reswobslc. That's all you get. Deor 03:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep The CNN bit lets us know it wasn't local interest only. This news aggregator lets us know that the Salt Lake Tribune published an article 8-Nov-2006 (no longer available online) saying in part that she (and another judge not retained the same day) were only the third and fourth judges not retained in the 21 year's Utah has had retention elections for its judges. I believe that she is notable. Decent merge target - an article on all four of the judges that Utah's voters have declined to retain. GRBerry 03:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. The view from England: "US judge gets voted off" is hardly notable, worldwide. I've not heard of WP:COATRACK before, but having read it, this fits perfectly (yes, I know it's only an essay). This might make a para in a putative article Effects of YouTube videos, else write a proper bio of the woman and see if that's notable. Smalljim 19:56, 11 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.