Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Presidents by IQ

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. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:13, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of United States Presidents by IQ

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The subject of the article is highly speculative for the most part, and also only supported by one source. There's a lack of significant coverage of this subject, and little need for these estimates to be housed on the wiki. Ducknish (talk) 23:57, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~Keep~~: I only began working on this article and I think that with caveats explaining where this information came from and with some prose sentences in this article it would be nice enough to keep. Also, I did put info from other sources and studies into this article. Futurist110 (talk) 00:05, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of the sources, the fact remains that the contents of the article are almost entirely speculation on the part of the reference's authors. We have no way of knowing for certain what the I.Q. was of almost all the presidents listed. And with that, the fact that the sources are contradicting seems to show that these numbers can not be reasonably verified as factual. The article has no way to exist without being heavily reliant on guesswork, which is why I support its deletion. Ducknish (talk) 00:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can we at least compromise and move the contents of this article somewhere else? It would be a huge shame to lose all of this work after I spent so much time and effort into creating this article and table. Futurist110 (talk) 00:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the numbers that could be verified could be moved to their subject's article, if they are not already there? Ducknish (talk) 00:44, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it would be easier to simply rename this article "Simonton's 2006 Presidential IQ study" or something like that? Futurist110 (talk) 00:46, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if the article were to be reoriented towards the study itself instead of a general list, that might be fine, assuming that the study was the subject of reasonable coverage. Ducknish (talk) 00:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Another idea would be to merge this article's contents into this other article -- U.S. Presidential IQ hoax. Futurist110 (talk) 00:49, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at that article you linked, it seems to already cover this one's subject matter to a degree. So perhaps some could be moved to the IQ Estimation section. Ducknish (talk) 00:53, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. Yeah, I have now moved the results of this study to this other article, and made this article a redirect page. I hope that this is a good compromise and outcome for you. Futurist110 (talk) 01:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:39, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:39, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This is not according to wikipedia guidelines. Look at WP:V and WP:CRYSTAL. You can't just estbalish IQ after the fact. It's totally the same as having a chart presenting the presidentíal body fat percentages obatined from old presidential tales. Forngrav (talk) 17:08, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep, possibly in a different form (e.g. an article IQs of United States Presidents which explains the different studies), possibly merged with U.S. Presidential IQ hoax. The topic of presidential IQ appears notable based on the studies done into it. However, presenting as a list hides the debatable and speculative nature of the IQ estimates. --Colapeninsula (talk) 17:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Summary of a single study, and one based upon an extremely sketchy premise — that intelligence can be garnered and compared across the sands of time. Fails the necessity of multiple published sourcing. Carrite (talk) 01:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

.......and one that is comically wrong to boot, as anybody who saw Ronald Reagan in action can attest. Carrite (talk) 02:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect/Merge - I am changing my vote to redirect/merge since I think that this article can be merged with the U.S. Presidential IQ hoax article. Futurist110 (talk) 08:13, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as excessive cross-categorization per WP:NOTDIR: we don't have List of United States Presidents by height, weight or hair colour, for the same reason. There's only one source, and any source on this is speculative at best. It's not a subject that's widely discussed. Dricherby (talk) 10:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as insufficiently verified, and dubious on its face. It also seems to me that it violates BLP policy to list these IQ scores, five of which apply to living people, as if they had some basis in fact. --MelanieN (talk) 00:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and Melanie, or as a second choice, redirect to U.S. Presidential IQ hoax. I read the underlying study, and I didn't see anything that suggested that Dean Simonton's method of estimating presidential IQs had ever been validated (i.e. by estimating the IQs of other people based on their biographies and then having them take IQ tests, to determine the correlation between biographically estimated IQs and tested IQs). --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:48, 17 March 2013 (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.