Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lilias Massey


 * 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. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:22, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Lilias Massey

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No evidence that the subject has received significant coverage in reliable sources. Being related to a famous person does not make her inherently notable. Hirolovesswords (talk) 13:18, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTINHERITED is specifically written as excluding situations where the fact of being related to somebody else inherently defines a notable public position, such as a national First Lady: the person may have been given the role solely by virtue of being related to somebody else, but the role itself most certainly is still a notable one which would be expected to get a person into an encyclopedia. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Jane Pierce, for just two examples out of many, are not non-notable just because it's possible to dismiss them as having inherited notability via marriage — the spouses of national monarchs and presidents and prime ministers and viceroys are a thing that we are expected to cover, because those people do hold a public role which is notable in its own right. Admittedly referencing improvement is needed here — this was written almost ten years ago, at a time when no significant number of Wikipedians had access to any significant news archive databases beyond a simple Google search — but now that so many more of us do have access to deep news retrieval databases it is fully verifiable that those improved references do exist, and the role she held is one which would be expected to get someone into an encyclopedia regardless of any NOTINHERITED quibbles about how she got that role. And if your quibble is going to be that Lilias Massey held her role by virtue of being the daughter-in-law of a widowed GG rather than by being his wife, then it's important to note that we do maintain articles about several women who served as, mainly female relatives of US Presidents who took on the role of First Lady because the president was a bachelor or widower — and several of those aren't actually any better sourced than this one is. The fact of holding the role is what gets the person into Wikipedia, not the private nature of their personal relationship to the president or the governor-general. Keep. Bearcat (talk) 17:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Dat GuyTalkContribs 18:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Dat GuyTalkContribs 18:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 03:09, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. She isn't the wife of the prime minister; she's the daughter-in-law of a former governor general. All I see about her other than passing mentions is one Ottawa Citizen article. Some of the other viceregal consorts of Canada should also just redirect there. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:20, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The viceregal consort ranks higher than the spouse of the prime minister — so there's no basis for claiming that it's a less notable role. The GG's spouse or spouse equivalent does hold a public role as the analogue to a First Lady or Gentleman — the PM's spouse would be the Second Lady or Gentleman, not the first — and is thus a topic of encyclopedic interest for the exact same reasons as any other national First Spouse. And per, a person who held that role or title is not excluded from notability just because the leader was unmarried or widowed and thus had another female family member step in to take on those duties; if they held the title and performed the duties of the role, then they're still notable regardless of whether they were the leader's wife, daughter, mother, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law or hairdresser. It's the role that confers the notability, not the type of relationship they had with the leader. Bearcat (talk) 19:49, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It may rank higher, but it's not higher profile. In all my decades in the Great White North, not once (until now) have I ever heard or read about it, so it (and she) fails WP:GNG, IMO. Margaret Trudeau on the other hand ... Clarityfiend (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
 * You may not have heard of the title — I'm not even remotely convinced that's the best or most recognizable WP:COMMONNAME for our article about it to be located at — but I don't believe for one second that you've gone through life totally unaware that "the wife or husband of the Governor General" is a real thing that people get famous and notable and prominent for being. Jean-Daniel Lafond? John Ralston Saul? Gerda Hnatyshyn? Pauline Vanier? Norah Michener? These are not obscure people by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, they're no Margaret Trudeau, but what other spouse of a Prime Minister ever attained that level of worldwide iconicity either? You're certainly not going to convince me that any of them was less publicly active or well-known than Sheila Martin, and even she was still publicly active and well-known enough to get over the bar.
 * I can fully believe that you've never heard of the title that the article is located at — I don't think that's the name most Canadians would expect to find it at either, and I'd completely support a move discussion to a more recognizable title. But you can't seriously expect me to believe that you've gone through many decades of life in the Great White North totally unaware of the concept that "Governor General's spouse" was a prominent public role that people were getting famous for holding. Bearcat (talk) 06:29, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sure most Canucks know we have had Governor Generals (Governors General?), and that they usually have spouses, but I doubt if one in a hundred could name any of them. The ones you've listed may or may not be notable on their own (not that I've heard of most of them either; Pauline Vanier seems to vaguely ring a bell for some reason), but that's beside the point. Show me where Lilias Massey satisfies WP:GNG. Clarityfiend (talk) 11:16, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Most Canadians would have to jog their memories by looking at a list to even to name most past GGs, and most past spouses of Prime Ministers not named Margaret, and even some of the actual PMs themselves, too — seriously, how many people do you think could actually pluck Mackenzie Bowell or Jeanne St. Laurent out of their memory banks without seeing their names first? — but that doesn't mean those people aren't notable. And while I admit that I haven't gotten around to directly beefing up the article yet, mainly because there have been a lot of other things to distract me over the past few days, as I've already pointed out the coverage is there: 129 hits in ProQuest's archive of The Globe and Mail, 226 hits on Newspapers.com. They won't all be usable sources, because some of them admittedly are just the social column and will say nothing much more than "Mrs. Lionel Massey wore a taffeta dress to the symphony last night", but there is enough substantive coverage to satisfy WP:GNG if you give me some time to actually sort through it. And it's a key principle of AFD that an article's keepability or deletability hinges on whether the GNG coverage can be shown to exist, not on whether it's already in the article or not — so my failure to have already finished the job of adding 350 more references to the article isn't actually a failure. Bearcat (talk) 18:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * 17 distinct references in the article now. More still possible; there's still the Toronto Star database to run through, but at the moment there's a technical error causing all of those pages to come up blank. And even when I can finally get back into that one, that still just represents databases I have personal access to, and doesn't preclude there still being other references available elsewhere too. Hope that helps. Bearcat (talk) 21:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete per Clarity. 2001:569:70DD:7500:39EA:19D8:DF90:EF4D (talk) 23:25, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * On what grounds is an article with 17 references in it already, and more still possible, about a person who held a notable public role deletable at all? Bearcat (talk) 01:33, 27 January 2016 (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.