Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Municipal poets laureate in Alberta

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 no consensus. There is no clear consensus, after over a month. Restructuring can still be discussed outside of AfD. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 16:14, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Municipal poets laureate in Alberta

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(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Messy and poorly-sourced lists of people on a distinction that is not an "inherently" notable role in its own right. Being poet laureate of a city or town does not automatically guarantee inclusion in Wikipedia in and of itself -- I'll grant that some of the people here are notable for other reasons (e.g. Griffin Prize or Governor General's Literary Award nominations), but they aren't notable for this reason per se, and many more of the people listed here just have no meaningful notability claims at all.
And the sourcing for the lists comprises a mixture of one-off local-interest "poet laureate announced" coverage from the local newspapers of the cities that appointed them and primary sources (such as the self-published websites of the city governments that made the appointments) that aren't support for notability. All of which just makes these lists less than useful, if the sourcing and even the notability of the people themselves is so wobbly and inconsistent. And for added bonus, the creator of these also comprehensively copy-pasted all of the exact same information directly into poet laureate itself, where it potentially constitutes WP:UNDUE weight since it makes the Canada section a lot longer than almost any other section in the entire article.
So there would be nothing wrong with listing a city's or town's official poets laureate in each city's article (or a spinoff article about that specific city's poet laureate position, so long as it could be sourced properly), but there's no need for provincewide omnibus lists on this basis. Bearcat (talk) 11:53, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Lists of people, Poetry, and Canada. Bearcat (talk) 11:53, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I added and researched information about Canadian poets laureate to [[poet laureate]] because the United States actually had the most coverage on that article which isn’t fair to other countries. The article is still very North American centric. I was trying to make the coverage equal. I am not Canadian. Poetry is such a niche genre of art that it does not receive the amount of media coverage that musicians or actors do, but these people are still active and notable in their genre of art or they wouldn’t have received such a title in the first place. At the very least there should be a list of them on Wikipedia even if individuals alone may not make the news enough. Do what you want with the individual articles. I can format them differently with bullet lists if you think it looks messy, but I won’t make that effort if it’s going to be deleted anyways. Kiddo27 (talk) 14:00, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also adding these folks to individual city articles also runs the risk of having them removed, since the great majority of poets laureate do not have articles on Wikipedia, and some cities and provinces have only had one lifetime appointee. I’ve created articles in the past for individual laureates only for someone to say the city they represented wasn’t big enough as a reason to remove the article. See: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Juanita Martin which is why I opted for a list this time. Kiddo27 (talk) 17:34, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:29, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom, WP:NLIST. MB 18:25, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗plicit 11:31, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and clean; see Municipal poets laureate in Ontario#Mississauga for an example of a cleanup.

Yes, the individual poets are often not individually notable, but collectively their position is. Simply remove the red links.

Bearcat, the suggestion to put this information in the article of a city itself strikes me as disingenuous. Edmonton's section on its city council is maybe 200 words at most, this would create undue weight on the poet laureate, and immediately be scrapped there. -- Zanimum (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The only reason the content about Edmonton City Council in Edmonton itself is short is because Edmonton City Council has its own separate spinoff article to contain the bulk of the information about it, meaning that it isn't necessary to reduplicate all of the same information in the city's main article because there's already a separate article to cover it in depth. So one sentence listing poets laureate would hardly be undue weight just because the city council is spun off to a standalone article instead of having paragraphs and paragraphs of extended text in the city's article. Bearcat (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -there's some non-GNG references in the articles. But that's not an obstacle to the articles existing. There's easily 3 very good sources, and no explanation of why having omnibus articles for each province is problematic; though there's no prejudice to merging all to Municipal poets laureate in Canada. Three good sources are one, two, and three. Nfitz (talk) 21:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The primary purpose of a Wikipedia list is to help people find Wikipedia articles — so a "list of X" should generally only ever exist if X is itself inherently notable enough that a landslide majority of the names in the list also have (or could have) their own separate biographical articles for the list to link to. A list should not exist if it's just going to be a nest of permanently redlinked or unlinked names. And since "municipal poet laureate of a city" is not an "inherent" notability criterion that would get a poet a Wikipedia article in and of itself if they didn't also have other stronger notability claims alongside it, that means the majority of the people named in these lists simply aren't ever going to have articles at all.

And even if "municipal poet laureate of a city" were grounds for a Wikipedia article in and of itself, what possible reason would there be why omnibus lists by province were necessary instead of standalone "Municipal poet laureate of [Specific City]" articles? Why would "by province" be the most useful level at which to organize content about a municipal role? Bearcat (talk) 17:52, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, an interesting point. But doesn't that mean we should also get rid of List of mayors in Canada and every other article in Lists of mayors by country? Nfitz (talk) 01:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Comr Melody Idoghor (talk) 16:11, 12 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.