Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anne Denman


 * 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. Daniel (talk) 23:30, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Anne Denman

 * – ( View AfD View log )

I do not think I have ever seen so much written and yet so little said about the subject of an article. A cursory search on Google Books indicates to me that Anne Denman is not remembered as anything but a great-grandmother of an English queen. Yet, WP:NOTGENEALOGY policy states that Wikipedia is not a genealogy directory. Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Surtsicna (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete being an ancestor to royalty is not in and of itself a sign of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:40, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep; on grounds that "Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic", and in this case, the article is a well-written and referenced account of something related to the family history of the British royal family, which probably qualifies as a notable topic. I admit she's a bit of a backwater in British royal genealogy (and I personally couldn't care less who's married to whom in royal families) but this sort of stuff seems to be of interest to a lot of people. I.e. this isn't routine genealogy. Also, sadly, it was difficult for a woman in the 16th and 17th C to do anything much notable apart from be married. Elemimele (talk) 16:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Elemimele, please see WP:INVALIDBIO. Simply being related to someone, even if it is the British royal family, is not grounds for inclusion. (For what it is worth, her royal descendants consisted of only one generation, which ended in 1714.) Lots of people care about Britney Spears too but it does not mean we should have an article about Britney's grandmother. Anne Denman simply does not get significant coverage in reliable sources (WP:SIGCOV). Surtsicna (talk) 17:03, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That's precisely my point. Firstly, the coverage that Anne Denman gets is proportional to her place in history: people write about figures less and less as they fade into the past, and she lived 500 years ago. The sources referenced in the article aren't bad; there's no suspicion that they're biased; they're just the only places anyone is likely to write about a person who died so long ago. Those sources do suggest she would have been significant in her day, and if someone was once notable, they remain notable. Secondly, I think you're being a bit narrowly-legalistic about the rule that being related is not adequate grounds for being notable. The family tree of the Kings and Queens of the UK is a subject in which encyclopaedia readers take a legitimate interest (this isn't just a piece of nationalism; the same would be true of any of the major ruling families in world history). It's logically impossible to give information about a family tree without ending up writing about who is related to whom (that's what a family tree is). So the information about her family connections is valid encyclopaedia material somewhere. I'd agree it doesn't have to be in an article personally about her: if you can find a general page on kings and queens of the time, into which the information can be merged in such a way that little is lost, and where the information sits naturally, by all means merge. But straight deletion would weaken the encyclopaedia. Elemimele (talk) 19:42, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of pages are continuously written about people who actually are notable regardless of whether they lived 500 or 1000 or 2000 years ago. The sources cited in the article are nothing but genealogical publications, which merely confirm her existence. Nobody has written about, say, the influence she had on Stuart monarchs. (Likely because she did not have any.) She is just an extremely obscure relation about whom historians have nothing to say. The appropriate place to mention her would be the articles about her children who actually are notable. Surtsicna (talk) 20:38, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep. Being great-grandmother to two English monarchs would seem to make her notable. These aren't just run-of-the-mill people and that's close enough for notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:28, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That argument blatantly contravenes WP:INVALIDBIO guideline, which says: "That person A has a relationship with well-known person B, such as being a spouse or child, is not a reason for a standalone article on A." For Denman to be notable there has to be significant coverage of her, not of her great-granddaughters. There is no significant coverage of Denman, so she is not notable. In fact, since published biographies of Anne and Mary II do not mention this woman, she is not even notable enough to be mentioned in the articles about them, let alone have a standalone article, per WP:NOTGENEALOGY policy. Surtsicna (talk) 12:56, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem with taking things like this as gospel is that anyone who lives in the internet era will undoubtedly appear to be more notable than anyone who did not. We need to be careful about assuming people from history are not notable just because we can't find so much about them. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:47, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not up to Wikipedia editors' to research historical people. It is the job of historians. If historians do not write about them, encyclopedias should not either. Surtsicna (talk) 16:09, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 21:41, 8 July 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Still no consensus.
 * Delete - The above arguments for keeping seem to fly in direct contrast to our guidelines, namely WP:INVALIDBIO, and an argument in speculation about who should've been notable. Notability is chiefly demonstrated by significant coverage in reliable sources. "Those sources do suggest she would have been significant in her day, and if someone was once notable, they remain notable" is a comment which misses the mark. Construed significance/importance != significant coverage in reliable sources. -Indy beetle (talk) 05:55, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Eternal Shadow   Talk  16:46, 15 July 2021 (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.