Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Living presidents 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. – bradv 🍁  23:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Living presidents of the United States

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This is nothing but non-encyclopedic statistical trivia; and also very likely WP:OR for the most of it. See also Articles for deletion/Living presidents of India. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Adding VP page. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. The presidents who are still with us can be readily found in List of presidents of the United States by age. The rest is trivia. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:03, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, for the reason given just above. Yes, there are probably plenty of people who want to know who are the living ex-presidents but it's extremely easy to find out without needing a page like this.  Athel cb (talk) 06:56, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per last afd, Articles for deletion/Living Presidents of the United States. Especially the reason given by user:Edison. Christian75 (talk) 09:26, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per last afd, Articles for deletion/Living Presidents of the United States. Especially the reason given by --Marbe166 (talk) 09:34, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The vast majority of keep arguments in that previous AfD are of the very dubious (WP:ITSIMPORTANT, WP:BIGNUMBER of page views, ...) kind. The sources given by Eddie also don't all seem relevant. Checking at random, the first one is just a trivial mention ("Would the republic have benefited if Lincoln had been compelled by some mechanism of state to listen to listen to the advice of the five living ex-presidents - [names them]"); the third one only has one actual, trivial, mention ("As the only living ex-president, ...",), the sixth one only namechecks former presidents without discussing the topic ("President Barack Obama and former presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and their spouses"...). That WP:CITEBOMB wouldn't be enough to meet notability guidelines, since none of the sources show "significant: coverage.
 * Disregarding the supposed LISTN issue, the arguments of the previous discussion also don't adequately address why this needs a separate page full of silly statistical tables when this is trivia information which you don't need to be particularly bright to deduce from a simple look at List of presidents of the United States. I'm also not convinced that this article really has a topic that is notable to the broader world. At best, it's just the typical example of WP:BIAS, covering a topic of interest only to a limited Western audience. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:38, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep for the reasons set forth in the prior afd, Articles for deletion/Living Presidents of the United States, particularly those given by User:Edison. It is a useful article on an important topic that is of interest to many readers, and, as Edison succinctly put it, it "performs an encyclopedic function by presenting the reliably sourced information in a useful form."  The only information in the article that could be gleaned from the Wikipedia article that lists U.S. presidents is who the current living presidents are, but that is a small part of the information provided by the article.  And all of this is just as true for the article listing living vice presidents of the United States. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 14:16, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Have you somehow failed to parse my comment? "It's useful", "it's an important topic", ... are not reasons to have an article on something; nor are they reasons to have a separate article for something that could just as well be covered (with less of the annoying WP:NOTSTATS) at the existing one. Nor does it address how this is not really encyclopedic information but rather a prime example of WP:BIAS - compare with Articles for deletion/List of presidents of India by longevity. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:36, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Is it WP:BIAS to acknowledge that presidents of the United States play a more important role in the world, and attract more interest, than do prime ministers of Luxembourg? Reality isn't a form of bias.  In fact, trying to enforce some strange form of "equity" in which presidents of the United States are not given any more prominence than are presidents of Nauru could be categorized as (anti-American) bias.  There are hundreds of articles on English nobles and relatively few on Bulgarian nobility, but it is not because of pro-English (or anti-Bulgarian) bias, but because English nobles have had more influence in world events than have Bulgarian nobles, and that leads to there being more public and academic interest in English nobles than in Bulgarian nobles; I don't know what it would be called to slough off articles on English nobles to ensure that they aren't given any more prominence than to Bulgarian nobles, but the right term certainly would not be "NPOV."
 * You state that the information in this article--and, presumably, in every other article involving the U.S. presidency that does not have a corresponding article for the Malawi or Paraguayan presidencies--"could just as well be covered ... at the existing one" (by which I believe you mean the general article on the U.S. presidency or maybe the one listing U.S. presidents). This fails to consider that it would make the "existing" article on the U.S. presidency even longer than it currently is, and that it is one of the main reasons that there are so many separate articles on different aspects of the U.S. presidency.  (This is also the reason why the Discography section of the article on Saga lists the band's entire discography, whereas the Discography section of the article on Rush includes a link to a separate article on the band's discography; not all rock bands merit having a separate article on discography, and having the full discography in the article on Rush would make the article unwieldy.)  Now, personally, what I care about is that the information be available in a convenient format, and if the consensus is that the article's information should be moved to a hidden section of the "List of presidents of the United States" article (with "Living presidents of the United States" redirecting there), then I don't think that it would result in a loss of information currently available to readers.  However, before going down the road of consolidating all articles on the presidency into one or two articles, one must consider the effect that having a ridiculously large article on the presidency would have on the accessibility of the information.  That is something that requires far more analysis than can be provided in this AfD.  AuH2ORepublican (talk) 21:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete both as listcruft and synthesis of trivia. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 23:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 23:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 23:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete this is just redundant listcruff Aircorn (talk) 01:15, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Before I weigh in on this particular AfD, could you please clarify why you'd like to revisit this question, given the strong "keep" consensus at the previous AfD? I'm aware of WP:CCC, but is there anything different today that wasn't considered in 2017?
 * Furthermore, it's worth noting that there have been multiple AfDs addressing similar issues (but arriving at different outcomes):
 * Articles for deletion/List of living Prime Ministers of Sweden (delete)
 * Articles for deletion/Living Prime Ministers of New Zealand (no consensus)
 * Articles for deletion/Living Prime Ministers of Australia (delete)
 * Articles for deletion/Living Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom (no consensus)
 * Edge3 (talk) 02:19, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Because, as already shown, that keep consensus is based on bogus arguments. As for the WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, the simple solution is to go ahead and nominate the rest, since they all pretty much appear to fail the very basic requirements of WP:NOR... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:40, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I wasn't raising an WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument because the four AfDs I cited above resulted in opposite conclusions. (Two "delete" and two "no consensus".) I've just edited my previous comment to include those outcomes next to the wikilinks for their respective AfDs. Edge3 (talk) 04:06, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTDIR #6 ("Non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations"). I agree with nom that the consensus at the prior AfD should be overturned. Edge3 (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: I am very confused by the idea that "Barack Obama is currently alive" could be considered a statement of original research, or synthesis. Surely, this is an objective fact, which we can be reasonably certain in saying is true or false. Our article on him does not couch itself by saying "believed to be alive"; what is being talked about here? jp×g 06:21, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, he could have been kidnapped by the Vampire Spiders of Aldebaran III and had his DNA extracted (fatally) to create a clone under their nefarious control. No crazier than some of the looney tunes conspiracy theories out there. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Something being "obvious" does not mean it's acceptable for us to have a whole article based on such original synthesis (the "Timeline" table is clearly such a case); nor does it mean that we should have a whole article which only provides statistical trivia, when this is mundane information which could be briefly mentioned in the actual list of US presidents. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Firstly, the list of currently living presidents is unencyclopedic per WP:NOTTEMPORARY: a directory that grows and shrinks over time is better suited for an almanac than an encyclopedia. Secondly, the timeline of living presidents at any given time is WP:NONNOTABLE, as reliable sources don't discuss this. Historians may occasionally note that previous presidents were living at the time of some crisis, but I've seen no evidence that reliable sources have attempted to produce comprehensive timelines like the ones on these pages. Regarding WP:OTHERSTUFF, I support deleting almost everything in Category:Lists of living people for similar reasons. pburka (talk) 16:54, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment That would probably require a separate request.2601:241:300:B610:ED19:73A5:40E:5FA8 (talk) 01:13, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Five pillars says we are an almanac. With your definition of WP:NOTTEMPORARY we could not have many lists i.e. e.g. List of countries and dependencies by area. WP:NOTTEMPORARY is a shortcut to "Notability is not temporary", not that information is not temporary. Christian75 (talk) 14:48, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment "a directory that grows and shrinks over time is better suited for an almanac than an encyclopedia": But that's not what the article does; it presents the living presidents of the United States *for each historical period*, not merely list the ones who are currently alive. Plus, as noted above, the five pillars provide that it is an almanac in addition to an encyclopedia.  AuH2ORepublican (talk) 21:09, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment My preference for this page (and similar pages) is a site wide RFC. It would be strange for some of these lists to be kept for some countries but not for others. --Enos733 (talk) 05:45, 1 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. There is currently a New Zealand prime minister deletion request for four articles, and I suggested there two days ago that, "Rather than this batch nomination by country, it would be better have batch nominations by type of list". This would help to avoid country bias, which is one type of systemic bias. Nurg (talk) 08:48, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Seems too far out in terms of encyclopedicality. Nurg (talk) 09:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, Merge, or Rename. This page presents information that isn't really accessible like this in other places on Wikipedia, and I don't think that its existence as a topic hurts the site. That said, I do agree that, as it currently exists, it doesn't really add much more than a list of trivia. I would love to see this article either fleshed out with more information and historical context to make it a proper article, or at least to have the contents somehow included elsewhere, maybe as part of a larger article on former presidents and the Post-Presidency in general? Peribirb (talk) 06:30, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
 * How is this not "readily accessible in other places on Wikipedia"? The only thing this has is WP:OR deductions, a useless WP:NOTSTATS table, and a trivial cross-categorisation. It's also useless as a redirect. There's nothing encyclopedic here that isn't already covered in the whole list of US presidents. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:48, 4 September 2021 (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.