Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valérie Gignac

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. The final tally was 17/8 in favor of deletion. howcheng {chat} 20:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Valérie Gignac

Wikipedia is not a memorial. User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:21, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. There are a lot of Google references, but being the eighth cop to die this year in Canada doesn't seem to merit its own Wikipedia page, unless Constable Gignac did something notable as a police officer.—Stombs 05:31, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per nom and Stombs. DarthVader 08:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or expand. Current content does not support notability for an encyclopedia article. If anyone can support notability with expanded content, please do so. — Eoghanacht ^talk 10:47, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment although Wikipedia is not a memorial, there are actual memorials that are themselves eligible for Wikipedia articles. In Washington, D.C. there is a National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial [1], I presume Canada has (or its Provinces have) something similar. I would suggest developing that article as an alternative to creating articles for individual officers who do not meet the Wikipedia notability standard. — Eoghanacht ^talk 19:38, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia and the insensitivity to the need to acknowledge those that give their lives to service is of great concern. Admittedly, these articles need to be expanded, which is a task that will be done over the coming days. Please respect the notion that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit but not everyone has the time to immediately update. These pages were created out of respect for both living and fallen warriors and the desire to delete them post-haste concerns me You have made this a political issue, which it is clearly not. As you can clearly see by this category here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_law_enforcement_officers , there are others who are working to provide information on both living and deceased police officers. Please do not delete pages before you are aware of the full political implications of such an action. CelebritySecurity 17:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Wikipedia is not a memorial, as Zoe correctly notes, and CelebritySecurity, just because "there are others who are working to provide information on both living and deceased police officers" does not make them any less misguided. As for "the full political implications" of abiding by our well-established precedents on these matters, there aren't any. You might not like the fact that Wikipedia doesn't consider someone's death to automatically make them notable, but if dying in the 9/11 attacks doesn't make one encyclopedically notable, it is not sufficient to be a law enforcement officer killed in the line of duty either. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - FrancisTyers 23:57, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Despite Wikipedia being the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", a group of rogue vandalizing admins is now going to be given the editing power of deciding who is "valid enough" to recieve their own biography? I hope those that feel these entries should be deleted also begin the process of deleting the biographies of all law enforcement officers on this website. Clearly, the open-source foundations of the Wikipedia project are starting to crumble based upon the very clear bias and inconsistent editing/deletion policies that are emerging here. If this page is deleted, the Wikipedia foundation will be making a very public statement that the contributions of law enforcement officers across the English-speaking world are not welcome here. If these pages and these pages alone are deleted, the credibility of this project will be seriously undermined. CelebritySecurity 00:03, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Please keep to your one vote, CelebritySecurity. --Andrew Levine 01:47, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep To those that suggest these articles and infobox be deleted, Should the process of deleting all entries of all law enforcement officers from this website also be undertaken in order to ensure fairness? Also, please note that the infobox has been written with proper code designating whether or not the officer is deceased or not. It is not intended as a memorial, merely something written to acknowledge the contributions of law enforcement officers, much in the same way celebrities and politicians are listed on this same website. (this unsigned comment was made by CelebritySecurity)
  • of all law-enforcement officers? no. of law-enforcement officers who, like Valérie Gignac, fail to be encyclopedically notable? Yes, actually. ... I hasten to add, because the kind of person who tries to vote three times in the same discussion seems like the kind of person who needs this warning, this is not encouragement to go on a vandalistic rampage slapping deletion tags on all articles you can find on English-speaking law enforcement officers, no matter how notable, to avenge what you misperceive as a bias against law-enforcement officers who speak other languages. That would be disrupting Wikipedia to make a POINT. You'll note that neither Houston McCoy nor Ramiro Martinez has their own page, despite the notability of their actions. -- Antaeus Feldspar 02:02, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Please keep to your one vote, CelebritySecurity. --Tokle 01:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep If one person finds someone interesting enough to write an article about (excepting, of course, writing about yourself) then it is likely that there will be others interested in reading about it. --Tokle 01:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, Wikipedia is not a memorial and this article makes no claim to the subject's notability. Andrew Levine 01:48, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. PC Gignac's death is a tragedy, but Wikipedia isn't a memorial, particularly a police memorial. --Calton | Talk 01:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete The personal tragedy recorded has no notable encyclopedic significance MNewnham 02:41, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete but it's not as clear-cut as some make out. See for example Keith Blakelock, a policeman killed in the line of duty who is included, mainly for the notoriety of the associated trials of Winston Silcott and others. This was a cause celebre in the UK for some time. All this highlights again the fac t that WP is not well suited for covering current events (hence Wikinews) - we will not really know for at least a couple of years whether this case is in fact notable, based on future developments. Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 17:36, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
• delete as per nom Pete.Hurd 00:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• keep There are plenty of articles in Wikipedia that are borderline as to been noteworthy. I'm thinking politicians that have no portfolio and have only served a term or two. The article is about a police office that certainly warrants some merit of consideration to stay. It's all good; even those lackluster politicians that only fill an empty chair when parliament sits. IMHO... HJKeats 04:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep her death received widespread media coverage, which establish more notoriety than someelement included in Wikipedia. Death of police officers in theline of duty is much more unusual in Quebec than in the US, an caused a renewed fear among the constabulary. For that she's at least as notable as the officers involved in the Rochfort Bridge massacre, I believe. Circeus 04:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Besides, did anybody bother to make a Google test? She does get over 90,000 hits. Circeus 18:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Even if she's "at least as notable" as the officers involved in the Rochfort Bridge massacre, none of those officers have their own articles, either. If the manner of her death was so notable, why hasn't anyone -- even those arguing that it justifies keeping the article -- added a word about it to the article? -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: Would it be feasible to move the information on Gignac and other law officers killed in the line of duty to a separate page specifically for law officers killed in the line of duty? The Bearded One 04:47, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• Keep: Her death was big news in Canada, and her funeral was on national TV. Also, she was the very first to be killed in the Laval police force. -- Earl Andrew - talk 05:27, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep for substantial national press coverage and importance well beyond family/friends. --Rob 08:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, per Rob and Circeus. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 09:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Not encyclopedic for her own article. Definitely news worthy. --YUL89YYZ 18:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, easily verifiable. - SimonP 18:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. It's unfortunate that Constable Gignac died, but there was nothing about her police career or the manner in which she died that makes her particularily notable. There was a lot of media attention surrounding her death, but there always is for cops. --NormanEinstein 15:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Horrible reference citation, non-notable. -- Natalinasmpf 01:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Non-notable except for the fact she died, in an apparently non-notable incident. It happens. Cops die. Sorry. On the point of "substantial national press coverage", when an American cop dies there's no such coverage. Why should it be different just because Canadian cops apparently die less often? --Golbez 15:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
  • That sounds very amerocentric to me. "Why should it be different just because Canadian cops apparently die less often?" That is exactly the whole difference. Circeus 09:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
    • No, quite the opposite - if we only have Canadian cops, doesn't that make Wikipedia Canad...can.... how do you say Canadaocentric? Anyway, yeah. It makes it seem that they're more important than American ones. --Golbez 08:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, Just Zis Guy.--SarekOfVulcan 19:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M C Puri and Talk:Jean-Jacques_Le_Chenadec. Circeus 09:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete On one side it's the first policewoman to be killed in the Province of Quebec, on the other side wikipedia is not a memorial, and if we'd start listing the "first" for every misc events this would become a mess. QBorg
• Delete per nom--Jiang 10:46, 3 January 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.