Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Living First Ladies of 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. The "keep" opinions are unconvincing, since they do not address the policy-based WP:CFORK deletion rationale, but boil down to WP:WAX. It is, however, accepted that all articles are evaluated on their own merits and not because similar articles have also been deleted or kept. The "keep" opinions must therefore be given less weight.  Sandstein  12:18, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Living First Ladies of the United States

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Entirely unsourced, just a whole load of WP:TRIVIA you can make this really long but the title suggests only the First Ladies that are presently living, and we have List of First Ladies of the United States for that. -  C HAMPION  (talk) (contributions) (logs) 05:43, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. The corresponding list for Presidents exists, under the corresponding name. You could argue that this article should be merged with List of First Ladies of the United States, but then you would have to do the same for the Presidents, for conformity. --Marbe166 (talk) 09:48, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The positions of president and first lady of the US don't have conformity, so there is no need for our coverage of them to aim for conformity. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 11:20, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. -  C HAMPION  (talk) (contributions) (logs) 05:43, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. -  C HAMPION  (talk) (contributions) (logs) 05:43, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 06:05, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete Content not consistent with title, trivia, WP:OR, unsourced. MB 16:18, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What is wrong with trivia? It is one of the strengths of Wikipedia to be able to include interesting trivia in an easy-to-read manner. The sources for the birthdates can be derived from the individual articles of the persons in question, and calulating who were alive at a given point in time cannot be classified as research. --Marbe166 (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It might not classified as research in the traditional sense, but it seems fairly close to WP:OR's definition of original research on Wikipedia being "material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist". – Matthew  - (talk) 12:05, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If we assume that the birth dates are adequately sourced in the respective individual articles, that argument fails. It is just calculations, which noone can question (if they are correct, of course). --Marbe166 (talk) 21:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep: Since an article for Living Presidents of the United States presently exists, I do not think this article should be deleted. However, it's certainly in need of citations. On a side note, both articles have slightly confusing titles that may need to be changed to coincide with the articles' content, or vice versa. – Matthew  - (talk) 17:38, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Why should we treat an article about US first ladies the same as we do an article about presidents? The positions are far from comparable, one being the most powerful person in the world and the other being a ceremonial role. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 18:24, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I mean, the First Ladies are married to the Presidents. That's a bit of a connection. – Matthew  - (talk) 19:31, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course that's a connection, but such a connection doesn't mean that we should cover first ladies to the same depth that we cover presidents. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:07, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * First Ladies can still be considered important, however. Even according to the article for "First Lady of the United States", those holding the position are involved in "political campaigns, management of the White House, championship of social causes, and representation of the president at official and ceremonial occasion", and that they "frequently remain a focus of attention long after their husbands’ terms of office have ended". – Matthew  - (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The depth discrepancy is taken into account by the fact that the corresponding page for the Presidents also has a list for the Vice-Presidents, wheras this one doesn't have one for Second Ladies. --Marbe166 (talk) 15:03, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. Nobody has offered any evidence that any reliable secondary sources list first ladies in this way, and I can find no such evidence. Whether such a list should exist for presidents or vice-presidents is beside the point, and can be discussed separately because the position of first lady (I wish we could call it something like "first partner" or "first spouse" to avoid the inherent sexism in this term) has nothing like the importance of that of president or vice-president. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a really good point. I searched ("living first ladies", and found almost nothing, and very, very little even on "former first ladies" .   Former Presidents  , on the other hand, is a topic with  scads of coverage.    The two are not comparable at all. And the term "living first ladies" hardly exists aside from this page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:44, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * ...which is an argument for keeping the article, as the First Ladies are not insignificant people from a historical point of view. --Marbe166 (talk) 21:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I am trying to understand your perspective. The problem I hm having is that our standard for determining what is notable and encyclopedic is that multiple RS use the term/concept. Current living first ladies have a section on the page List of First Ladies of the United States.  What this page does is to present a table of first ladies, with a column that keeps a running tally of how many were alive at the time each new one was inaugurated. Followed by a section headed Statistics with entries on such things as the fact that in 1886 11 first ladies were alive simultaneously. But there are no sources.  I think that sources showing that factoids like that have been discussed might make editors see this differently, given that a parallel article exists on Presidents.   Although the trend at Wikipedia has been (see:Barron Trump) to treat the First Family as being of less public interest than they used to be.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:13, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (If you want to ping me, spell my user name correctly) Again, the birth and death dates of the first ladies are in their respective articles, and that is where all facts in this article are derived from. Making statements based on time calculations (Example: "The longest period between deaths of First Ladies was 16 years and 359 days, between the deaths of Eleanor Roosevelt on November 7, 1962 and Mamie Eisenhower on November 1, 1979.") are not disputable and therefore do not need explicit sources saying the exact same thing. These are the kind of facts that are interesting and might not be easy to derive from the table, let alone from the individual articles. That is one of the strengths of Wikipedia, you can stumble over facts that are interesting but that you might not have made the effort of finding out in a more "traditional" research way. --Marbe166 (talk) 09:33, 23 November 2016 (UTC)


 * delete as a sort of fancruft; unencyclopedia trivia. WP:WHOCARES?E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:13, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Weak keep: Per MatthewHoobin, the parallel Presidents article is equally unsourced, pretty much mirrors this one.  Now, maybe a joint deletion of both on grounds of excess trivia, maybe that's an argument, but to toss one and not the other with the reasons presented smacks of systemic bias.   Montanabw (talk) 04:43, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To differentiate our coverage of presidents from that of partners of presidents is not systemic bias, but a reflection of the real world. Yes, it is a Bad Thing that all US presidents elected to date have been men, and their partners have all been women, but we can't fix the world's problems by pretending that there's any equivalence between the two positions. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 18:12, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Just as 86.17.222.157 says. Note that  President lists ≠ First Spouse lists.  We have many, many Lists under Category:Lists relating to the United States presidency, because the position is extremely significant.  We don't even have a Category:Lists Relating to First Ladies of the United States, because the positions are far from being equal in significance.  This has nothing to do with systemic bias.  (It has everything to do with cultural attitudes towards gender; but that's a topic for a different discussion).E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:19, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete No one has produced any evidence that this is a subject that has received coverage to justify the article existing. In the case of Living former presidents of the US there is more than ample evidence to justify that article. Such does not exist here.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:41, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mr. Guye (talk) 02:43, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. We already have List of First Ladies of the United States which has a list of the current living First Ladies. This page is just trivial overload. Ajf773 (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. First ladies of the US are among the most prominent categories of women in history, which justifies having this kind of information in an article. Again, it could be merged with the List of First Ladies of the United States, but the information should stay. --Marbe166 (talk) 09:33, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * First ladies are only among the most prominent categories of women in history if you judge the importance of a woman only by who she is married to rather than by what she does herself. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 13:17, 24 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete a strange unwieldy concept for a list. Don't see the importance of knowing what first lady/ladies were alive per each presidential term, nor do the sources support such a thing. Hesitate to label it trivia since trivia is actually, er, interesting. ValarianB (talk) 13:52, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "what first lady/ladies were alive per each presidential term" is not what the article lists, it lists which first ladies were alive at any given moment in time. What is not interesting to you might be interesting to someone else. --Marbe166 (talk) 15:45, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well that's even sillier, as which First Ladies are living at any given moment in time is of no historical importance whatsoever; it doesn't matter if it is interesting to you. Being able to say "who are the First Ladies still living right now", that's noteworthy. Listing which ones were alive in 1835 or 1921 is trivia, unless you ca produce sources to the contrary. ValarianB (talk) 18:27, 23 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Merge selectively (indifferent to redirect, since it's an unlikely search) to List of First Ladies of the United States. It seems we have a list of first ladies and then a lists of trivia about first ladies of the united states. Some of it seems like it could be included in the main list, for example as additional columns in the main table and/or even a timeline, but I don't know why this is separate. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 15:33, 27 November 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.