Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure

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 keep. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 17:03, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by length of tenure[edit]

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Compare with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prime ministers of Canada by time in office and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of presidents of the United States by time in office (2nd nomination). Except this is actually worse than that, since the only source is a UK government website which only gives a basic list of prime ministers. Blatant WP:LISTN fails, and also trivial statscruft which fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:09, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:30, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:30, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:30, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete is just a redundant WP:CONTENTFORK from List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom. Vladimir.copic (talk) 07:47, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 08:10, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The length of tenure of PMs is significant because they don't have fixed term limits like US Presidents. And so it was an issue whether Tony Blair would match Margaret Thatcher's record or whether Boris Johnson would have the shortest tenure. The topic therefore passes WP:LISTN and the worst case would be merger into something like Records of prime ministers of the United Kingdom but as the nominator is on a spree, it's best to hold the line here. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:00, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Andrew (above) has just shown that WP:LISTN is satisfied. Using Ecosia I also found several other sources [1], for example. SSSB (talk) 11:07, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep'per Andrew and SSSB. Whether the Canadian and US lists are or are not encyclopaedic (I'm expressing no opinion here), this topic very clearly is. Thryduulf (talk) 11:46, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This information is already given on List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom. Why do we need a separate page regurgitating it? Getting quite exasperated at these kind of articles - and the keep brigades defending of them. Why should someone go to three different lists to see a pm’s age, tenure and start date when it can be and is covered in one page? Has no one heard of Occam’s razor? Vladimir.copic (talk) 13:13, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That other list does not present the information in an accessible fashion as its list is split into three separate sections and none of them are sortable. The list in question clearly meets a need. It has existed since 2006, has been validated and worked on by hundreds of editors, serving millions of readers. What's exasperating is that a single driveby deletionist can threaten this extensive history in such a cavalier fashion without regard to WP:BEFORE. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:51, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:HARDWORK, WP:ARTICLEAGE, WP:INVOLVE. Why not just edit the List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom page to make it easier to filter etc if that is the issue. Occam's razor one again! It seem untenable for WP to become trillions of bite-sized extremely narrowly focussed articles on the ground of accessibility. Surely we can give readers a little more credit. Vladimir.copic (talk) 06:37, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Occam's razor ("entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity") is little more than an opinion. Have you never heard of Occam's razor#Anti-razors? You have not denied that WP:LISTN is satisfied, and as far as I can tell, a merger into the main list is not practicle (for the reasons listed by Andrew above), meaning that the common, but incorrect paraphrasing of the razor ("the simplest explanation is usually the best one.") would support having both lists. SSSB (talk) 07:23, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect The above arguments are laughable because List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom already gives the lengths of terms, so this is an unnecessary duplicate no matter how notable the topic is. That table should be reworked to be sortable though. Merge to Records of prime ministers of the United Kingdom also works. Reywas92^Talk 13:46, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - It doesn't really matter how notable the idea of the length of the UK Prime Minister's terms have been, since the simple fact remains that this is still a redundant fork of List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom, which already lists the exact information that is on this chart. This list is basically just a version of the main article's list, only with less information and no valid sources or pieces of information that is not already present on that article, making it a pointless WP:SPLIT. A redirect could be OK, but I doubt this article title is a very likely search term. Rorshacma (talk) 15:38, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
With over 150,000 views this year before the deletion nomination, and double that last year, it's very clear that people are looking for this exact information and that the main list is not serving their needs. Why is it not meeting their needs? Probably because the main list is not sorted nor sortable by the length of tenure, nor could it be made sortable without a complete redesign. Given that the main list is featured, consensus for such a redesign would seem unlikely at best (especially as it would mean less optimal presentation of other information contained there).

Ultimately, while a glance at the article titles might suggest this is a redundant fork, when you actually look at the detail of the two lists it's clear that neither is actually redundant to the other. Thryduulf (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Andrew Davidson and Thryduulf -GorgonaJS (talk) 22:28, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's only a fork if the main article has a sortable list that adds up the length of multiple terms. The way the list article is constructed it is very difficult to extract the total length of terms, which as pointed out above is something people regularly seek information on. — Jts1882 | talk 09:02, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. The info can be added as a sortable column on the list.67.173.23.66 (talk) 21:59, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No it can't, or at least not without a major redesign of a featured list and as noted above consensus for that is far from guaranteed. Thryduulf (talk) 22:12, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing preventing the list from being redesigned if the need arises. Even if it can't be made sortable, the info can still be made a column if this page is deleted.67.173.23.66 (talk) 23:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the page, it seems that the list already includes each prime minster's length of tenure, which makes a separate article a bit redundant.67.173.23.66 (talk) 23:07, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The list can be re-arranged if desired, but I strongly suspect that there isn't the desire to altar a featured list to increase the prominence of one relatively small (but still encyclopaedic) aspect simply because a few people dislike having a separate list that is designed to present that information in the most useful way possible. This is especially the case that any such redesign of the main list would, of necessity, decrease the prominence (or maybe even inclusion) of other information. While the tenure length is in the main list, it is not possible to get from it answers to questions like who had the longest or shortest (or 2nd, etc longest/shortest) tenure, or how many (and who) had tenures shorter or longer than a given amount of time. Nor is there any reason that the main list should be doing that - Wikipedia is not paper and we don't have to limit ourselves to one list that has to include multiple compromises to do everything it can possibly do when we can have multiple lists that each do different things well. Thryduulf (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into Records of prime ministers of the United Kingdom and/or List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom. The latter article already lists each of their tenures anyway. Edge3 (talk) 05:19, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- The latter article already lists each of their tenures anyway. it has been explained multiple times already why this is true but irrelevant. The former article would contain a list of the longest and shortest ~3 only and so a merge there would remove the significant majority of information from this article making the encyclopaedia less useful. Thryduulf (talk) 16:07, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Would be not be possible to merge with other articles and presents information in a clear and easy to understand way. Bivaldian (talk) 19:10, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I love seeing how leaders' time in office compares with others over time. Axedel (talk) 00:14, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:INTERESTING is not considered a valid argument.2601:241:300:B610:EC54:56D:1E0F:B3A8 (talk) 00:29, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the reasons given by Andrew and Thryduulf. Since Prime Ministers do not have fixed terms of office, having a list that sets them out by term provides significant information about their relative political significance, in a way that a just a general list does not achieve. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:17, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Andrew and Thryduulf.4meter4 (talk) 20:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Thryduulf. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:04, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Andrew & Thryduulf. WP:LISTN is satisfied, and merger is not feasible. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:47, 20 September 2021 (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.