Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of the youngest elected officials in the United States


 * 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. JForget 01:10, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

List of the youngest elected officials in the United States

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Delete - Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. This is an unbounded list. There are tens of thousands of political offices in the United States and each of them has a "youngest" person elected to it. When the youngest person elected to an office is in his 30s it starts to get a little ridiculous, leading to the strong likelihood that inclusion will be, if it isn't already, completely arbitrary. It may be remarkable or even notable that a teenager is elected to public office and this might serve as the basis for an article about the individual. But there's nothing particularly remarkable about someone in his late 20s or 30s being elected. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 15:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete It's almost a complete copy of a list of "youngest mayors", the motivation apparently being that you're fascinated by the man who was elected Mayor of Tonasket, Washington (population 1,000) at the age of --- (drum roll please) thirty! --- then you'll want to know about the youngest ever person to serve on a city council in the United States. Pain-Cow is correct on this one, and points to a need for boundaries on such lists.  As it is, if you can get the local newspaper to report that you are the (youngest, oldest, most flatulent) person to ever serve in the position of (mayor, constable, dogcatcher) in the history of your (metropolis, village, council of elders) then you would be able to memorialize your achievement here.  Each of us can prove, mathematically, that we had once held the world record for youngest person in history, if only for a split second, but that's not a good idea for a list either.  Mandsford 15:59, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment- Who are you to deny me my 15 microseconds of fame? But seriously, folks, I agree that as previously structured the list is untenable. A restructure and rename to "List of officials elected before age 25" or some such? Carrite (talk) 16:57, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Any age limitation becomes an arbitrary inclusion standard. Why 25 and not 20? Why 25 and not 26? etc. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 17:08, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know, some guy complained that the list was "unbounded" and that "there's nothing particularly remarkable about someone in his late 20s or 30s being elected", and I guess that some of us might have inferred from that something other than opposition under all circumstances. I've never really subscribed to the "all numbers are arbitrary" school of thought, and it tends to take away from strong arguments, such as the one made in the nomination.  Mandsford 17:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I argued arbitrariness in the nomination as well. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 17:37, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete impossible to define inclusion criteria. either its a list of the youngest elected official for each office above dog catcher, which is absurdly long and pointless, or as CowPain states, its an arbitrary cut off. The only rational cutoffs i can see are for under 21 (no drinking), or under 18 (age of consent), but then the question would be: why? this would be a confluence of two unrelated ideas, unless we assert the idea that politicians must be able to smoke, drink, and fornicate to get their job done:)Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:19, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Or more plausibly, under 21 (used to be the voting age in the U.S.) and under 18 (now the voting age in the U.S.). It does help politicians to be eligible to vote for themselves. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * oops, missed that.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:53, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. The article claims that Connor Traut (at age 16) is the "Youngest Elected Official in the State of California's History and is Currently the Youngest Elected Official in America". But the article doesn't say what office he holds, the footnote attached to that sentence goes to a page that doesn't even mention his name, and I can't even find any sources to confirm that he is an elected official at all, even though he was supposedly elected just this year. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I would note that this article does not include certain officeholders who were elected to higher offices at younger ages than some of the oldest people in this article. If the article creator revised the article to do so, the article might be improved. On the other hand, I wonder if there may be some school boards somewhere which allow high schoolers to be elected as student representatives to the board, in which case the article will wind up being dominated by those people. In other words, I'm still not sure this article can be improved sufficiently to warrant keeping. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 22:39, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The answer to Mercurywoodrose's "Why?" is the answer to what Mandsford wrote above, too. Whilst public offices generally don't have rules about how being old or flatulent would disqualify one from offfice, they do have rules about how young one can be.  We even have articles on the subjects of age of candidacy and age of candidacy legislation in the United States.  Unfortunately, they aren't FA quality articles that explain the motivations behind these rules.  But they do show that such rules exist, and that the world takes particular notice of how young one is when one is up for holding public office. That having been said, I think that we need to put 2 and 2 together here and make 4.  Mandsford notices that this is a copy of List of the youngest mayors in the United States.  Metropolitan90 notices the existence of one "Connor Traut", aged 16, with fake sourcing.  Has anyone else other than me noticed that the username of the article's creator is ?  Here's the diff between the other article and the first version of this one.  Anyone care to guess what "CJT3" probably stands for?  Uncle G (talk) 03:32, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete, or better yet, merge with List of the youngest mayors in the United States, or use a category instead. This list will change too quickly to be useful, but a cat would be useful. Bearian (talk) 21:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The mayors list is also up for deletion. A category for the youngest politicians elected to various offices would never survive CFD. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 21:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Correct. It would need citations which means a list and not a category.  So either it stays here or vanishes or is converted to a template.  Vegaswikian (talk) 05:22, 31 July 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.