Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Earliest living former members of the Australian Senate


 * 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. Tone 13:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Earliest living former members of the Australian Senate

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The basis of this list appears to be original to Wikipedia, and it appears that no one has made such a list before. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:53, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 00:54, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 00:54, 26 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. This is trivia, with no clear basis for content being included. Nick-D (talk) 01:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Happy Festivities! //  J  947  (c) 01:25, 26 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep or Merge. This article was inspired by articles similar to ones like Earliest serving United States senator, which list the oldest and earliest serving politicians. These articles have stood the test of time with no backlash. Furthermore, with the utmost respect, obviously not enough research was done to establish the sources of information for this page. The basic information comes from Hansard lists of newly sworn in MPs/senators and https://australianpolitics.com/parliament/house/surviving-members, which has many related articles. Using a spreadsheet I determined the living and non-living former politicians and who is/was the most senior. On nearly all the pages of the senators listed, it says somewhere ‘they were the last senator from the reign of (insert PM or parliament)’; this is what first inspired me to create the page; to create a source with a proper place and further information on the most senior former politicians. This exact information is hard for researchers to find; this page provides a clear source for use. As for the list of senators elected over 40 years ago, I can see further grounds for deletion; however, if this article is to be deleted, I politely ask that all data is moved to a page like List of longest-serving members of the Parliament of Australia, as I put several hours of work into the page and believe the information does serve a purpose. SpaceFox99 (talk) 01:29, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. If making the list requires you to set up and code a spreadsheet on your own, because the list hasn't already been compiled by outside sources, then by definition you're doing original research — and the US list should most likely be deleted as well on the same grounds, but per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS the fact that it hasn't already been deleted does not justify this list in and of itself. The reason such information tends to be hard to find is because it has no inherent value in the first place — identifying who was the first holder of any given political role to still be alive today is not a thing people need at all, because "earliest living" confers no special status on former politicians over and above other former politicians. If the information had any value at all, then the list would have already existed somewhere, and could have just been copied wholesale without having to fire up Excel to figure it out yourself — the fact that such outside sources don't exist is because people don't need the information at all. Speaking as a Canadian, we've ended up with a lot of pointless content that had to be deleted, solely because somebody decided that Canada has to comprehensively replicate every "List of X" that the United States has, even if the topic has no actual meaning or relevance or applicability in Canada at all. Bearcat (talk) 14:11, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as per Bearcat and nom.  Onel 5969  TT me 01:06, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 12:54, 27 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete, does not meet WP:LISTN nothing out there that discusses this (even partially) as a group, also WP:NOR - article creator admits to doing their own research to compile this information. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:37, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment to the editors claiming this is "original research" - it is not original research and doesn't violate the Wikipedia policy on that topic. Go and read it. Wikipedia prohibits the synthesis of material to put forward an original argument. This article doesn't do that. This material all has verifiable sources (the parliamentarians' dates of exiting Parliament and their dates of death) and is a list that has been put together of longest lived parliamentarians after leaving Parliament. I agree the article is badly organised and does not have inherent notability as a list, but it's NOT original research. Bookscale (talk) 09:23, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." - none of the sources used explicity state that the people listed are the earliest serving living senators. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:40, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * It's compiling the dates in a table. Dates are a piece of factual information, not a "conclusion". Arguments about it being original research are complete nonsense. Bookscale (talk) 06:43, 30 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete as trivia. At first I thought this was about living former members of the Australian Senate, as per the title, but most of the people listed in the first table are dead. Then I thought maybe this is a list of the Fathers of the House, but that's already covered in List of longest-serving members of the Parliament of Australia.--Pontificalibus 16:52, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi Pontificalibus, would you support the creation of a separate article listing former members of the Australian Senate (i.e. expansion of the second table in this page that only lists former senators up to 40 years ago to list all former senators)? SpaceFox99 (talk) 07:05, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Sure, but wouldn't that duplicate Members of the Australian Senate? --Pontificalibus 07:16, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I think the article should list living former senators; the current articles don’t do that. We could simply transfer the table in this article to a new one and expand to the modern day. SpaceFox99 (talk) 11:47, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOT and WP:SYNTH Wm335td (talk) 20:24, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Note to closing administrator - I'd ask that you take a common approach to both the HoR and the Senate articles since the nomination concerns are common to both of them. Bookscale (talk) 05:03, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete As much as there has been some effort put into this article, I just do not see how it is not essentially arbitrary statistical synthesis. So fails LIST, borders on OR, and OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is just an argument for deleting that too. Aoziwe (talk) 12:40, 2 January 2020 (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.