Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Military Academy bottom-ranking graduates (1818–1899)

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. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 21:44, 3 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of United States Military Academy bottom-ranking graduates (1818–1899)

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No indication why it's notable who graduated last in the class. Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy, at West Point, New York [1] has a comprehensive listing of graduates of each year, sorted by class rank, and this just collates the bottom person of each list without explanation of why this matters or is encyclopedic. Reywas92^Talk 19:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Military, Education, and United States of America. Reywas92^Talk 19:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 19:21, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep:~~ Unlike the previous West Point list you nominated, this one ~~actually has~~ could have validity. The lowest-ranking graduate (known as the goat, previously the immortal) is an actual thing that seems to generate pretty significant coverage (ex. [2] [3] [4]), mainly because of the association with Pickett and Custer. Curbon7 (talk) 19:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Not an appropriate list per WP:LISTPEOPLE. Most of the people listed here don't have Wikipedia articles of their own, and in many cases there is no reason why they would, as many of them resigned from the Army or died within a few years of graduation, making it unlikely that they would pass WP:BIO. Finishing last in their class at West Point might seem like a notable mark of shame, but on the other hand, somebody always has to be last in any class, and many of these classes had less than 100 graduates. Not to mention that it would have been only a small percentage of American men who were able to pursue any kind of higher education in the 19th century, and the really bad students would have failed or left the Academy before graduation. Pace Curbon7, I suggest it might be better to have an article that discusses the general concept of the West Point goat/immortal rather than listing every one of them. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 20:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Curbon7 (talk) 20:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Yeah, this could be a section in United_States_Military_Academy#Traditions, but even a stand-alone article without the list seems excessive. Reywas92^Talk 21:09, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete just because sources exist for a topic doesn’t mean we need to have list of extremely un-notable nobodies associated with it, per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Dronebogus (talk) 09:10, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Trivia. The fact that most of these people went on to have successful careers in the military and other fields illustrates the lack of value of this list in an encyclopedia. Nick-D (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete generally lists where the vast majority of people lack an article on Wikipedia are discouraged.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:51, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's not true, just the opposite in fact. WP:CSC bullet #2 gives "Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria" as a valid selection criterion. SpinningSpark 10:59, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.