Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Presidents by longevity 2nd nom


 * 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. Sr13 07:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

List of United States Presidents by longevity

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Pointless and unmanageable listcruft. Whsitchy 15:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC) Also nominated for the reasons above:


 * Delete all per nom (WP:LISTCRUFT).  hmwith  talk   16:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all - to head off complaints about how soon after the last AFD this was, there is no policy or guideline that mandates a set timeframe between no consensus AFDs. The lists are IMHO pointless trivia and should be excised. Otto4711 16:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nominator's comment Found all the "Longevity" pages, added as such. --Whsitchy 16:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all per April's discusion. This is useful almanac information information that does come up for discussion in other media.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:28, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep at least some of them. Useful almanac-style info. JJL 17:29, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all - trivia is interesting for many people, articles (especially connected with the U.S.) are sometimes useful EPWA airport 17:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nominator's comment Please look at WP:NOT number 9. Thank you. --Whsitchy 17:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment WP:NOT number 9 is about articles, this is a LIST! --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 18:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I thought that page was for wikipedia in general.--Whsitchy 18:53, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Add on comment from WP:NOT, number 9: "Statistics. Long and sprawling lists of statistics" --Whsitchy 18:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is the guide for lists: List guideline the other references the use of lists within articles. This is the guide for standalone lists. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 00:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all What makes it unmanageable? subtracting the death year from the birth year, or adding a new president every four or eight years? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 18:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment The fact that it's by DAY, not year. We also have existing lists for this. --Whsitchy 18:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom as listcruft. Dust bunny 18:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all per nom. This is trivial almanac-style information.  WP is an encyclopedia, not an almanac. --Butseriouslyfolks 18:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment WP:LISTCRUFT is a personal essay, not Wikipedia policy. And Wikipedia is a "reference source", it has always contained lists and tables, its also a gazeteer, that contains maps and other geographical information not found in my Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedias also contains lots of table and charts as sidebars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs)
 * Keep all unmanageable? Fooey. These folks don't change all that much. Also, this is important almanac type information. Carlossuarez46 22:22, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment We need to formulate a policy for this before we make a decision. Too many times List of world leaders who are not United States Presidents by xxx articles get deleted, but people will scream and holler if an article on US presidents is even touched. It reeks of WP:BIAS. (Edited) -- Charlene 22:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Comment I agree with the WP:BIAS. Look at this AfD, notice the amount of keep here to the amount of keep there, yet it's for exact same method of sorting the people. --Whsitchy 22:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all The format applied in the list of German chancellors make it eminently manageable.  This could be applied to the other pages --Rye1967 23:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all - useful, handy, probably encyclopedic, not that hard to maintain, especially if someone designs a bot to update the living Presidents' lifespans. One reservation, though, is that this could spin out of control. "List of Finnish Agriculture Ministers by longevity"? "List of Namibian Technology Ministers by longevity"? There should be some limiting parameters. Biruitorul 23:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment concur that there's a need for a policy here. JJL 00:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep These lists are in accordance with wikipedia's policy on compilations. It's useful, almanac style information. It is in keeping with WP:LISTS. It is neither indiscriminate, nor of interest only to a very restricted number of people. Deletion of these lists would be an abuse of the listcruft poliy.--Dr who1975 01:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC).
 * Comment Why do I bother, this is major bias. Considering withdrawal per heavy bias.  I invite people to read WP:NOT again though. --Whsitchy 01:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Your comments about Bias philisophically abuses the fact that some articles get more attention than others. Might I remind you that wikipedia is not a democracy. It doesn't matter wether a bunch of people vote or not. It sounds to me like the discussion at Articles for deletion/List of Noble Prize in Peace winners by longevity should also result in a keep for the same reasons. These arguments should be weighed on their own merits.--Dr who1975 01:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment may I remind you that wikipedia is not a collection of statistics. --Whsitchy 01:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm not so sure that these lists are statustics, they don;t involve numerical representations about large groups of people (I think they're more like, y'know... lists) but sicne you brought the word into play. I think you'll find there are plenty of pages involving statistics on wikipedia... for instance United States Census, 2000.--Dr who1975 01:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment That's apples and oranges there. A census is much more important than how many days a president has lived. Whsitchy 01:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree that the census is much more important(that does not make these lists unimportant). I was just trying to make a point about statistics (which I'm not sure the lists for discussion count as anyway).--Dr who1975 02:05, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't believe we need articles on any of these. Yes, they are interesting trivia, but they are not encyclopedic. I am more favourable towards those articles on heads-of-state (and the secretaries-general of the UN). However, List of First Ladies of the United States by longevity and List of oldest Surviving members of the House of Representatives and probably also List of United States Vice Presidents by longevity should be deleted regardless. Flyguy649talkcontribs 01:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all, except weak keep for Senators This is pure trivia. The longevity of a person in power is but a biological fact, and is not entirely relevant to what they did, or how they did their jobs, except when the holder has died in office, but these are exceptions which are usually dealt with in the individual subject article. There is no reason I can see except to fulfill the anal obsession of certain editors to sort everything by every imaginable criterion. The only clear exception I see is the case of monarchs, whose reign is invariably linked to their longevity. The dates of birth and death of each president, chancellor, prime minister is already included in the individual subject article for anyone who is interested to look it up there. I support the retention of the long-lived senators because seats tend to be stable in many cases, and it appears to be a lot more common for these politicians to expire at the same time as their terms. wiki is not a directory of every characteristic of people in power. Watch out, well be seeing articles on the longevity of the world's richest people next! Ohconfucius 03:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Many cultures like to keep track of who their elder statesman is for a given period of time. That is what these lists track.--Dr who1975 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep All These are useful, encyclopedic articles that provide information not available elsewhere in Wikipedia. The nomination describes the article as "unmanageable", which seems to fly in the face of the fact that updates are needed only every few years to most of these. Besides any AfD nomination that uses the term "cruft" in any of its forms is worthy of being retained by virtue of the use of the term and the fact that the nominator could not be bothered to even mention a Wikipedia that the article violates. If you don't like lists, just don't read the articles. Alansohn 03:46, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all I don't see why all this information cannot be included on the central list of each, e.g. US Presidents List, the tables allow for users to sort by column, so if you wanted to know length, you could just click that, seems pointless to have multiple pages. Dylan fan 04:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * But it is not one of the columns. The box at the bottom of List of Presidents of the United States refers to this page for the info, and lists all the other sorts. Agreed, we could expand the table for the other categories, and we can consider this page again once we have done that.  DGG 05:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * But this page has that taken care of DGG, and no, I did not edit it. --Whsitchy 19:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep the WP NOT page actually reads that WP is not mainly an almanac, but that it contains some content that is. I agree we need a policy. DGG 04:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all, interesting. Neutralitytalk 06:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep for the articles on heads of states/prime ministers Delete the rest. This is useful information and should be retained by wikipedia.  However can see the point about these lists being expanded to all sorts of posts/offices so agree we need a policy to limit them to the leaders of states and possibly the UN and EU.  However if the information is included in sortable tables on the main lists then would support the deletion of these lists as they would then be duplicate information but only if in sortable tables. Davewild 18:26, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * this page Here you go Dave Whsitchy 20:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That does not include the currently living former presidents which is why either a seperate article or the main List of United States Presidents are the only places where everything currently on this page could be included which is why I stick to keeping at this time. Davewild 20:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep I also don't think these fall clearly under any deletion policy. I feel it serves wikipedia better to have them than to not have them.  Citi Cat  02:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong keep, and maybe merge. Extremely sexy 18:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep This is more than a simple list, but an encyclopedic article. I think its a good thing to hold onto.  &mdash; Gaff  ταλκ 22:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep This Google search turns up all kinds of reliable sources indicating notability of topics like these, including BBC News, Infoplease, ABC News, CBS News. Many reliable sources keep track of these things, there is no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't. DHowell 03:13, 2 June 2007 (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.