Wikipedia talk:Style guidelines for biographies of California public officials

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Is this really the style guideline?[edit]

I have been engaged in discussion with the primary/only author of this style guideline, and I am of the opinion that what he recommends here is NOT the usual style of biographical articles, for California public officials or anyone else. This article says to list in the first sentence after the name "only the year of birth and death". However, the actual Wikipedia Manual of Style gives birthmonth-day-year and deathmonth-day-year in parentheses after the name as its first and prime example. (It says "At the start of articles on people, their dates of birth and death are provided," and the example given is "Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist ...") The Manual of Style then goes on to say that year-pairs (this guideliine's proposed style) "can be sufficient for the lede in some cases." In other words, you are allowed to list just the years of birth and death "in some cases," but the preferred style is full dates. --MelanieN (talk) 03:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notability is not automatic for presidents of city councils or boards of supervisors[edit]

I disagree with the following sentence: "Specifically, if a person is listed in a reliable source as having been president of a city council or board of supervisors, that person is deemed Notable enough for a separate article." This is at variance with WP:POLITICIAN. Being president of a city council or a county board of supervisors does NOT make a person automatically notable; they must have received significant coverage by independent reliable sources. Such coverage will almost always be available for presidents in LARGE cities or counties, but California has 58 counties and thousands of cities and towns; the presidents of their boards of supervisors or city/town councils are NOT automatically notable. --MelanieN (talk) 03:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No objection to its deletion. The objective was to avoid a sea of red links (the Red Sea?) like that at Members_of_the_San_Francisco_Board_of_Supervisors#11-member_at-large_.281934.E2.80.931977.29 and elsewhere on the same page. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 16:45, 9 March 2012 (UTC) For future reference, here is the diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Style_guidelines_for_biographies_of_California_public_officials&diff=481025225&oldid=480909292 GeorgeLouis (talk) 16:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Possibly a case of overgeneralizing from one example. What may be true for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (which also functions as the San Francisco City Council) is not necessarily true for the board of supervisors of (say) Siskiyou County, or the city council of (say) Blythe. --MelanieN (talk) 17:01, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]