Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tolkien family


 * 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 WP:SNOW keep. There is clear agreement that some improvement of the existing article is needed, but there is no realistic prospect that this discussion will result in a consensus for deletion. BD2412 T 02:17, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Tolkien family

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According to WP:BIOFAMILY, Being related to a notable person in itself confers no degree of notability upon that person. Articles about notable people that mention their family members in passing do not, in themselves, show that a family member is notable. Apart from the individuals who have their own articles, this article provides no evidence that the family is notable. Many of the sources are JRR Tolkien biographies or encyclopedias which mention his family in passing. With the lesser known members of the family, a lot of the information is original research or completely uncited, particularly in the case of Arthur. Much of the information given here is trivial. Jack Upland (talk) 03:01, 18 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep and fix it. This can easily be converted into a list of notable members with their own article. And I would also consider Royd and Ruth Tolkien to be notable on a list level since both of them have enough secondary sources to attest notability. Also, as I read it, WP:BIOFAMILY refers to standalone articles of non-notable relatives, and not to this type of comprehensive list. De728631 (talk) 03:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep and fix also. While some on the list are important only for their connection with J.R.R. Tolkien, others are important enough in their own right that they have their own articles, such as Christopher, Simon and Tim Tolkien. The article can be pruned of the unnotables easily enough. BPK (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Whatever you decide to do with this, note that both of these comments are wrong about the non-notable members of lists. The list topic itself is the consideration for the title existing on Wikipedia, and members of the list need not themselves have articles. Lists are not necessarily improved by purging red links or unlinked. Better to remove the brackets and err on the side of keeping if you don't know. Anarchangel (talk) 04:08, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: I think the question raised WP:BIOFAMILY is: does that fact that some members of the family are notable make the "Tolkien family" notable? Are there any sources that discuss the "family" itself? What is the point of this article? Why are we duplicating material from the articles of various members?--Jack Upland (talk) 04:39, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the general question is, at which point a larger family becomes notable. In the past, apparently there hasn't been much discussion about this subject, but I have found two positions in the archives of WT:BIO. One of them is that unless there are sources that cover the family as a group, a main article on the family should not necessarily exist (archive). The other, more versatile, argument was this: "A family can be notable in a different way from an individual. As ODNB has recognised, one cannot show how influential a family is in an article focussed on only one of its members. This influence can continue over several generations, for instance, through a family-controlled company or through the members who follow one profession, e.g. physicians. A family can also have a sudden burst of extremely capable siblings and cousins." The Tolkien family I think meets boths of these criteria: Christopher T. took over the responsibility for his father's literary legacy and continued to publish JRRT's manuscripts and books. And there is clearly more than one notable family member involved in this group, so it would only be prudent to have a separate article on the entire group, i.e. the Tolkien family. De728631 (talk) 05:53, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Multiple published authors here and key influences on Tolkien himself. A useful one-stop article. Deagol2 (talk) 09:38, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep People just need to quit deleting so many good entries. It's annoying. Durindaljb (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Several notable members in the family and the article is of great interest to anyone reading about Tolkien, and yes, agree with Deagol2 "People just need to quit deleting so many good entries". --Honymand (talk) 18:49, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 11:26, 19 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep - per and 's rational above.  -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 21:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per all above. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:20, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - this is a useful list article, and is effectively a spin-off from the main J. R. R. Tolkien article. I just arrived at the article from Christopher Tolkien (who died last week), where I clicked on Baillie Klass to find out more about his wife, and got taken to a useful and informative paragraph about her. The article could maybe be pruned a bit, but even if deleted it will need to be redirected (probably to J.R. R. Tolkien) to provide attribution for merges such as this which I did back in 2008 (though that is not a good example as it is now an article again!). Carcharoth (talk) 14:56, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep but trim. Currently, six of the Tolkiens listed in the article have their own articles.  That should be enough to pass WP:BIOFAMILY.  There's a need for some trimming, but the article should be kept. Hog Farm (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2020 (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.