Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Obama first family vacations


 * 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. NativeForeigner Talk/Contribs 03:25, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

List of Obama first family vacations

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Questionable relevance. Nothing but an infodump of various trips that the Obamas took. Seems like an unnecessary list. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Otters want attention) 15:25, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * ( Comment and !vote by blocked IP sockpuppet removed. )


 * Delete- I think the best policy here to apply is WP:NOTNEWS. This is something that, while receiving coverage in the media, sure, just isn't encyclopedic. Its tabloidish stuff that nobody down the line is going care about. Umbralcorax (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Seriously! Where do I start? Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, nor a news service. There is no notability to someone's family holiday, however notable that person may be and the whole thing is an unnecessary content fork which gives undue weight to a very minor aspect of the lives of people who are notable, but not for taking holidays. Each trip is probably worthy of a sentence at most in the articles on Barack and Michelle Obama. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   16:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete - Indiscriminate dump of non-notable information. List cruft.  Obama and the first family are obviously notable but that doesn't make him King Midas, i.e. every single act he performs becomes gold and notable.  Further, there's no indication that these excursions were significant within Obama's life or administration; one might argue for example that Theodore Roosevelt's travels were of significance since they were major news stories and in some ways influential on his life and career such many are still remembered in history books, but the same is not true of these.  Indeed, most of this article's content wouldn't make the cut within the article about Obama himself. - OldManNeptune⚓ (talk) 17:00, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - Given the controversy over the Obamas' vacations it's obviously notable. If not, the New York Times would never have reported on them.  But futhermore, it's obviously notable by Wikipedia standards as well.  If not, someone should hang an AfD tag on the Little White House article. --74.248.43.156 (talk) 17:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment - WP:NOTNEWS. Coverage in the NY Times is not de facto establishment of notability.  If that were countless miniscule items of local interest would qualify for unwarranted articles on Wikipedia.  For that matter, regarding presidents, not every press conference merits an article either, yet a great many of those make national papers. - OldManNeptune⚓ (talk) 20:09, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete - POV trojan horse. Carrite (talk) 18:00, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. The Obama family has been the target of alot of controversy over their vacations so because of so much media attention we should keep it. CJISBEAST (talk) 18:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * What controversy would that be, exactly? I have not heard anything from a source I'd call reliable stating that there was anything controversial about this. Umbralcorax (talk) 19:55, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should read the article before you have it deleted, you could learn something by reading it ... like what is in the very first reference. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean the first paragraph that sounds like a right wing blog entry, not an encyclopedia? Umbralcorax (talk) 15:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Except it doesn't come from a blog, its from The Daily Telegraph. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment.. I read the article. It's not helping to make the case for its notability, including such things as "After a week of vacation at the White House, Obama speaks at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia to promote education." This is considered vacation exactly how? --Crunch (talk) 18:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That claim about some kind of White House "vacation" was simply not present - nowhere to be seen - in the ref that was given to support it. The ref only talked about his address to school kids. I've just deleted the claim from the article. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 11:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:IINFO. A listing of vacations taken by the Obamas is neither encyclopedic nor notable. Gobonobo  T C 19:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete - The bottom line is that we don't need a list of somebody's vacations clogging up Wikipedia, such information is clearly trivial and does not conform to the notability standards we employ here. Any non-trivial criticisms of Obama's Vacations should be added to the pre-existing article; Public image of Barack Obama. - Marcusmax ( speak ) 23:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete Per WP:IINFO. Regent of the Seatopians (talk) 00:15, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:41, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:INFO, WP:LIST, WP:NOTNEWS, and WP:LISTCRUFT. Whose Your Guy (talk) 02:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete the only reason cited for keeping is that "people" (ie right wing birthers) have found the vacations "controversial" - POV Fork.  Active  Banana   (  bananaphone  02:22, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Apparent double–voting via socks. There's strong evidence that the two "keep" !votes that were entered by IPs above were made by the same person, and that they're both socks of a now-blocked editor. Please see this ANI post for details of what looks to me like block evasion and vote stacking, via socking. None of the named accounts here appears to be implicated, btw. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 02:30, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep I don't see it violating any Wikipedia rule, and the President's vacations have been controversial in these days of partisan news programs. The Wikipedia rule is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." This American Life just had a story on FDR and Warm Springs vacations. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:00, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The FDR Warm Spring vacations were a little different because 1) He set up a second residence there, known as the Little White House. 2) He founded a hospital for polio patients there. 3) He died there. It's a lot different than the Obama's spending a week on Martha's Vineyard one summer and a weekend at the Grand Canyon another. Also Wikipedia is not This American Life.--Crunch (talk) 04:31, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. On several grounds: WP:NOTNEWS and WP:LIST for starters. Claims that the Obama vacations have been controversial are not particularly true, any more than any detail of his personal life (or any other presidential vacation) is under the microscope. What's next "List of brands of clothes worn by Michelle Obama" or "List of famous people who have visited Obama White House"? If the vacations are "in the news" it's only because they are on vacation right now, which speaks to WP:RECENT. --Crunch (talk) 04:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Your argument is called reduction to absurdity. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete, nonsense. An attempt to create a controversy where there is none.  Everard Proudfoot (talk) 04:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete - No other such articles exist for any other President, or "first family", or any other person at all. This is plainly a WP:COATRACK for a subtextual political message. SteveStrummer (talk) 07:53, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. The first ref in the article says, of Obama, "Although he appears to take more holidays than his predecessors, they have  usually been very short. His five this year will total just 20 days - he did   not accompany his wife and youngest daughter to Marbella, Spain. As well as Florida,   Maine, and an 11-day stay in Hawaii over Christmas and New Year, he and his   wife spent two days in Asheville, North Carolina in April. " Contrast this to another passage in the same ref which says, "President George W. Bush spent a total of 879 days on   holiday in his eight years in office, according to Mark Knoller of CBS, the   unofficial statistician of the presidency." Will our friends on the "keep" side of the aisle please do the math and, with the result in hand, please reconsider whether their motives are fully representative of "neutral point of view"? With every assumption of good faith, it still just looks like a non-starter to me. Thanks,  –  OhioStandard  (talk) 09:31, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * What exactly is your argument, I can't comment unless I understand what it is. Your just reciting a quote that I added to the article. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sigh. George W. Bush took 110 vacation days per year, on average . This article claims Obama took somewhere around 20 vacation days last year - nevermind that, according to the first ref, some of those were interrupted when various crises arose. The President has taken 20 days so far this year which, projected to a full year, works out to around 30 days per year. Let's average the two years, and agree we're still going to count a planned vacation day that gets interrupted by a crisis as a full vacation day: this means President Obama takes around 25 vacation days per year, on average . You can invoke all the Wikipedia policy pages you like to try to whip up the idea that Obama's vacations are somehow excessive and thus deserve their own article, but I don't honestly see how common sense can allow you to make such an argument. I'd have greater confidence in the "neutral point of view" of contributors to this article if they'd been half as eager to create a corresponding article about Bush, who took more than four times as many vacation days. And, no, I don't think such an article would belong in the encyclopedia, either. Anyway, I'm not going to debate the point with you further: the objective data just makes the whole premise this article is based on way too far-fetched for me to take seriously. –  OhioStandard  (talk) 04:18, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Tracking someone's vacations, no matter who that person is, is hardly an encyclopedic subject. Any controversy concerning the vacations could be mentioned in the main article, which is another thing entirely than listing everywhere he -- and the family -- goes. /Julle (talk) 11:57, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete as Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The tile is contradictious, how can we have a list of something, what happens only once. There is only one "first family vacation". Armbrust  Talk  Contribs  12:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You are parsing the title incorrectly. Try again. It is not "first family-vacation" it is "first-family vacation". Cheers. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:43, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep of course. The objections above are bizarre.  Indiscriminate collection of information?  Let's delete all lists then.  Lack of notability?  Tell that to the media that is devoting so much time to reports on the firsst family's vacations.  Bush did it too?  OK, somebody should make a list for Bush.  --Neil Brown (talk) 17:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment - Can we maybe not resort to "right wing bias" arguments in this discussion? I'm a conservative and I voted delete on neutral grounds, i.e. that just because a notable person does something that briefly makes the news does not make that event notable in its own right.  It does not help a deletion debate to accuse a group, who may actually be participating in the debate in good faith, of some wrongdoing. - OldManNeptune ⚓ 19:12, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete I could really go either way on this one. I would say merge, but I'm not sure where to put it. All I know is that the status quo isn't acceptable. Doc Quintana (talk) 20:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The actual controversy of Obama taking all these vacations can easily be put into Public image of Barack Obama, but the trivial list of where he went is not needed. My thoughts; the topic is notable but the list of vacation spots is not. - Marcusmax ( speak ) 00:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with that. Doc Quintana (talk) 00:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete as severe POV nonsense, and an obvious attempt to portray a political opponent as AWOL, despite the point made above that Bush took four times as many days of vacation per year. While it is somewhat interesting to see how many ways made-up attacks can be directed at Obama, Wikipedia should not amplify the attempts. If this topic is of any verifiable significance, it can be covered in one sentence in another article. Also WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Johnuniq (talk) 07:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep The article addresses a topic covered on the front page of The New York Times this weekend see this link, and has been a regular subject of reportage in major newspapers. The article as it exists provides adequate reliable and verifiable sources to establish notability. Alansohn (talk) 00:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete – Wikipedia is not the news. This also smacks of recentism. –MuZemike 05:39, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete, if any of these vacations are of sufficient "lasting importance"/notability, they would be mentioned in the relevant main articles. Clearly, not every vacation that the Obamas have taken is notable and a list of them is not appropriate. Axem Titanium (talk) 06:25, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * comment Is it WP:SNOWing yet?  Active  Banana   (  bananaphone  16:42, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Keepable - there's no point anybody sticking their heads in the sand, this topic has been extensively covered in the media. Not just the individual instances but the sum total. Some of the objections here are it's inherently POV - well maybe, there's been something of a ding-dong about this and Republicans have been keen to highlight Obama's holidays, so having an article on this is doing them a favor. Having said that, I'm satisfied we could and possibly should produce articles for the Bushes and Bill Clinton too. It smells of recentism otherwise, but sources exist for those other potential articles too. It's OR/synthesis of a topic; the topic as a whole is not notable because only individual holidays get press coverage and they are clearly non-notable single events - I can see the point but there's too much written and argued about the holidaying habits of Obama for this to convince me. The fact the sum total of holidays is being discussed is relevant - these are not just random press snippets for individual holidays being collated. It's trivial. Not sure. Obama's holiday decisions are made after careful consideration including political aspects. Sometimes it shines a light on his political priorities or needs at the time (e.g. the short trip to the Gulf; this article really should include more sourced critical commentary about why that decision was made and the public reaction to it - plenty of sources do exist for this). An analagous situation is the British left-wing politician Blair, who famously holidayed with the controversial conservative Italian premier Berlusconi (the surprisingly warm chemistry between the men was hotly debated in the media) and the fact that he stayed in Egypt is also informative (it says something about Egyptian-Western relations - by contrast, Blair could hardly holiday in Iran, and while that seems obvious or trivial now, an observer from 10 years in the future might find it quite insightful - and it says something about Blair too, who became a Middle East peace envoy and established a foundation for Christian-Islam discourse). A decent article could be put together about Blair's vacation activity. So there's no reason to think that the sheer existence of an Obama article is inherently trivial or political. Is this article currently in a rubbish state? Yes, but it's not spewing out vile levels of bias, nor is it breaching BLP, and it has some sources - to which many more could be added, particularly with a view to critical commentary (not criticism! There are sources about why Obama chose some of these places, and the political effectiveness or impact, and that information should be integrated). Why not give this page a chance, see if it can be brought up to scratch, and whether corresponding articles can be produced for similar politicians? TheGrappler (talk) 02:45, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The articles you suggest (vacations by other politicians) do not exist because they are inherently non-encyclopedic. A lot of material is published by reliable sources, but we do not pick out all the bits that we think are interesting and put them in an article because the topic is not notable. Sure, there is current interest in Obama's vacations because his opponents make up a new attack as often as they can, however Wikipedia should not be used as part of that process. Come back in six months and recreate the article (see the deleting admin for a userfied copy) and include some reliable sources that have an analysis of the mid/long term significance. Right now, there is nothing but an echo chamber. Johnuniq (talk) 08:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * What would it take for them to be encyclopedic? They don't seem to be either inherently includable, or inherently non-includable. It's a question of sources. I am not talking about synthetically combinging tidbits of information into an article - a press-cuttings compilation doesn't deserve an article - but the fact is there has been extensive analysis both for the vacation habits - taken as a whole, not just one event at a time - for GW Bush and Obama, and Blair too. "Because his opponents make up a new attack as often as they can" is actually relevant in all three cases (vacations are often used as a big stick to beat politicians with, this is certainly not an anti-Obama thing), but there have also been defenders in all three cases, and overall analysis too. TheGrappler (talk) 11:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete as recentism without a shelf-life. About as notable as List of Obama basketball games or List of people Gerald Ford hit with a golf ball. These all made it into the news, but that doesn't make them notable encyclopedia articles. First Light (talk) 19:19, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a difference here in that I can't recall seeing holistic commentary on "Obama's basketball games taken as a whole", or "Gerald Ford's golf ball people-hitting incidents taken as a whole". Whereas the Obama vacations issue has been address in third party sources holistically. I disagree to some extent with recentism - there would be sufficient third party sources to create similar articles for quite a lot of leading politicians, dating some time back. TheGrappler (talk) 21:10, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see "significant coverage" of the vacations "as a whole" - only individual coverage and quotes from opposing politicians who say that the president shouldn't be taking all of those vacations. This type of thing happened even more during the Bush era, and probably during every presidency. It's just politics, and isn't notable in and of itself. First Light (talk) 23:38, 26 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Merge the summary paragraph to Public image of Barack Obama. Uncle Dick (talk) 17:07, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Why would an encyclopedia have a list like this? Mention of the controversy surrounding whatever trips he has taken may make for a good section about his presidency, but a trip-by-trip list as its own article? No. HubcapD (talk) 21:55, 27 August 2010 (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.