Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1944–1977)

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. Mainly due to lack of reliable sources with in-depth coverage. Delete arguments are much stronger than keep, many of which have been refuted. Tone 09:38, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1944–1977)

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No evidence of notability via WP:GNG or otherwise. Coverage consists solely of minor mentions from genealogy sites. — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:50, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete fails WP:GNG, non-notable life. Mztourist (talk) 07:58, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Obscure member of a supposed royal family which has been defunct since 1919. Nick-D (talk) 11:11, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notability is given by being in the hereditary line of the House of Hohenzollern, heir of Wilhelm II, his son Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia being currently the head of the House.Ekem (talk) 11:39, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:NOTINHERITED. Mztourist (talk) 12:01, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- (edit conflict) Being in the hereditary line of a notable family is not any of the various notability guidelines for biographies. — MarkH₂₁^talk 12:07, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep: the very suggestion it be deleted is utterly ridiculous. Highly important German family still constantly in the press. A Google News search for '"Louis Ferdinand prinz" brings up 151 results! It's critical to know their backstory and who is who. Especially if writing or reporting on them. ClearBreeze (talk) 12:42, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If this particular person receives significant coverage in independent reliable sources, which is the most general notability guideline, then this person is probably notable. If this person was just a member of a notable family and never received her own significant coverage (and doesn’t satisfy another notability guideline), then there shouldn’t be a standalone article about her. Notability also isn’t about usefulness in writing other things nor genealogical background. — MarkH₂₁^talk 12:49, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
NB: ClearBreeze has edited their comment after MarkH21 responded to it. --JBL (talk) 21:07, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Son of the pretender to the German throne, great-grandson of the last Kaiser and father of the current head of the royal house. Clearly notable. Like it or not, senior members of royal families are notable. This has nothing to do with WP:NOTINHERITED and everything to do with common sense. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:25, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please articulate what the connection is supposed to be between the first sentence and the second, or what the justification is supposed to be for the third? For example, maybe you could refer to one of our notability guidelines, and explain how to tell that he passes it? --JBL (talk) 13:49, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Try WP:IAR, invoking WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:BURO! -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Um, okay, but I would say it's commonsensical that a person whose best claim to fame is that one of their ancestors was once in charge of a place that doesn't exist any more is not actually interesting or important at all. And I would also say IAR is a good reason to delete "biographical" articles about people that have 0 content about any significant events or activities they were involved in. I mean, don't let me stop you from voting WP:ILIKEIT, but I don't think you should expect anyone else to find such a vote compelling (including a possible closer of this discussion). --JBL (talk) 15:21, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's up to the closer, isn't it! -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:46, 15 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Unsure. The article is a little more substantive than some of the other nominated pages, but might be in need of more material if it is to be kept. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:300:B610:D022:E46:18:F52D (talk) 01:37, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, I reckon that this person passes GNG, though being the head of a royal household that had not ruled over anything for half a century most certainly does not make someone automatically notable. That article in Der Spiegel and the coverage of his death are significant coverage, and I imagine more is out there considering that this was quite a while ago, and coverage is likely not easily accessible online. Devonian Wombat (talk) 03:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC) Changing my vote to Redirect to Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia. Since the article in Der Spiegel is not about him per below comments, that only leaves the coverage of his death. That alone is not enough to pass GNG, and as such he is not notable. Devonian Wombat (talk) 03:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and look to German Wikipedia article to improve which looks better sourced. - dwc lr (talk) 07:22, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete not enough sourcing to justify having a stand alone article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:28, 16 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
~~Unsure~~ Redirect to Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia These sources ~~[1]~~, [2], [3] indicate some kind of notability. ~~He was included in a magazine poll for who readers thought should be president and won; there was some coverage of that~~. His death in a military accident was reported in newspapers and is still remembered by some. I can't be sure, since I don't speak German, but there seems to be enough coverage in German sources to justify a short article. Edit: never mind the bit about the magazine poll. Upon reading again, that article is clearly referring to his father. Edit again. Changing to redirect. After the Spiegel source turned out to be about the subject's father, the remaining sources in the article are insufficient to establish notability for the subject. This article barely contains any information, and much of what it does have lacks a citation. I've searched for other sources and couldn't find anything significant. His father's article already contains basically all the sourced information this article does; one additional sentence about his death might be justified. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 00:54, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, it refers to his father. Thank you for the correction. Ekem (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Leaning toward delete. 2 of the four references are to a blog on royalty news by someone calling themselves "Monarchist and Legitimist". While the news clippings hosted on the blog might show notability, it would be vastly preferable if the original news articles could be tracked down to verify they're legitimate. The rk-9 source is good I guess, although rather single-eventy. JoelleJay (talk) 03:30, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:CCC and WP:SIGCOV. The long-standing consensus has been to keep the heirs and pretenders to major thrones. This has been hashed out many times at AfD, and I don't see that changing. WP:NBIO allows such articles. In any case, the sources in the article show significant coverage. Unreliable sources can be taken out in ordinary editing. Bearian (talk) 15:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The long-standing consensus has been to keep the heirs and pretenders to major thrones This is completely circular, "the consensus is X because the consensus is X" -- if the consensus were really X, you would be able to point to something (e.g., a notability guideline) that codified it. --JBL (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 07:58, 23 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Royalty are an acknowledged exception to WP:NOTINHERITED. There is usefulness in having a compete set of entries on hereditary peers, even if some peers are less prominent or noteworthy than others, even when the article must of necessity remain something of a stub. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geoffrey Somerset, 6th Baron Raglan. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:12, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Hawkeye7: Geoffrey Somerset is actually a baron (i.e., he is from a country that has noble titles with some legal standing, and he holds one of them). The same is not true of the subject of this article. --JBL (talk) 01:46, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The subject of this article is not and does not claim to be a hereditary peer. — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:21, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Then why are we calling him Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia? And what's the difference? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:18, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Hawkeye7: Hereditary peers are legally recognized nobility in the United Kingdom. The Prince of Prussia was not a legally recognized title in Germany during this person's lifetime, and this person was not legally recognized nobility in any country during his lifetime. Yes, the article shouldn’t be calling him Prince of Prussia. The article shouldn’t even exist by the notability guidelines. — MarkH₂₁^talk 02:37, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hawkeye7, I think you would have to ask this question of a monarchist; I agree with MarkH21 that the title of the article itself is inappropriate. --JBL (talk) 20:48, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I delayed weighing in on this a long time because I figured surely there exist a couple of articles that someone would turn up that cover this guy in enough depth to pass GNG, as suggested by Devonian Wombat. But after more than a week, the extremely poor quality of the other Keep opinions has convinced me that that must be wrong, and that this article should be deleted. Collectively, those six keep votes offer nothing. Yes, he is a member of a family that once included monarchs of a kingdom. But that kingdom didn't exist when he was born, and the nations that replaced it did not preserve their aristocratic orders, so all this banging on about how important the House of Hohenzollern is is completely irrelevant to the notability of this person, as it bears no relationship to any policy, guideline, or other widely shared consensus. The 151 articles mentioned by ClearBreeze (since indef'd, and deservedly so) don't appear to actually exist (note that this guy has the same name as his father, who certainly was notable). The actual sources on the article are complete garbage, and the vast majority of the article itself is monarchist fancruft that violates WP:NOTGENEALOGY. I looked at the German Wikipedia article, and the same appears to be true there; at least, I don't believe that any of the sources on that article simultaneously (1) are reliable and (2) include anything more substantive than passing mention of the subject. (I did this with Google Translate, possibly I have made an error or oversight, in which case I very much welcome polite correction.)
Finally, I want to note that if the article is kept then the only reasonable course of action with respect to WP:NOTGENEALOGY is to strip away the utterly pointless trivia of which non-aristocrat begat which other non-aristocrat, leaving a stub about someone who was the child of someone notable, apparently got married, and then sadly died at a very young age; there is only one paragraph of encyclopedic material in the sources I've seen. --JBL (talk) 00:47, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. No sources to indicate notability. Smeat75 (talk) 11:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, heir of a major royal throne is clearly notable. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 20:26, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Le sigh. --JBL (talk) 20:48, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

He wasn't heir to a major royal throne except in a fantasy world. Smeat75 (talk) 18:24, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia was the heir to the defunct thrones of Prussia and of the German Empire, and he was the father of the current head of the House of Hohenzollern, Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia. -- West Virginian (talk) 21:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: This was originally closed as No Consensus, which was contested at Deletion Review. The result of that discussion was to relist for another week.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- RoySmith (talk) 13:12, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The original close on this discussion raised the question of whether the sources at the de.WP article on this topic might confer notability. In my !vote above, I mentioned that I analyzed them and that they do not, but I did not go into detail. Now that this has been reopened and relisted, here is a more detailed analysis. At present, the de.WP article contains 9 references.
1. is the same as reference 3 in the current en.WP article; it is a photo of a magazine article of unclear origin (hence unclear reliability) hosted on a wordpress blog, presumably a copyright violation. This Louis Ferdinand is not the subject of the magazine article; it mentions him in the penultimate paragraph, and says nothing about him beyond who his immediate family members are.
2. is hosted on the same monarchist blog, which is clearly not a RS. (It is the same blog, though not the same blog post, as reference 2 in the en.WP article.)
3. is cited on de.WP for the claim that he was promoted to lieutenant after his accident, before his death. I do not have access to the full book, but Google Books allows me to search inside and to view snippets, and so I am reasonably confident that this citation is accurate and summarizes the unique sentence about LF in the book. (It is page 56; the name Louis Ferdinand appears on page 65, as well, but I believe that's his father; it also does not say anything substantive.)
4. is an article about the wedding of the son of LF; LF is mentioned in passing (two sentences total) only to confirm the extremely basic details that he was born, married, and died, in order to set context to discuss other people.
5. is the same article as 4.
6. is no longer visible to me on Google Books, but I believe from memory that it is a three-line genealogical entry in a book devoted to such things.
7. is about his son, here is everything it has to say about LF: "Shortly after his first year of life, his father, Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia, died after an accident during a military exercise."
8. is equivalent to 7.
9. is the same as reference 4 in the en.WP article; it is a website of some sort of unofficial organization of military reservists that seems to be named after LF; it does not contain in-depth coverage of LF, is certainly not a RS, and it would be evidence of significance only if there were a secondary source commenting on it.
In total, this amounts to 0 reliable sources with in-depth coverage of the subject our article. --JBL (talk) 14:29, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete there shouldn't be any presumption of notability for members of ex-royal families. For members of actual royal families there is reason to believe coverage will exist, however former royals have far less reason to attract coverage. I don't see anything in the article or the above suggesting that the subject passes WP:N, in particular monarchist blogs aren't usable as sources. I'm happy with a redirect/merge to an article on the family. Hut 8.5 17:42, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There is no consensus that cases like this are notable. It might be different if he was a notable pretender. However he was just the link between two heads of the house of Hohenzollern, even actual heads might not be notable. His death in a car crash might have attracted some press coverage, but we do not have stand-alone articles on Henri Paul or Jeremy Thorpe's first wife Caroline, two people whose deaths in car crashes also attracted some media attention. PatGallacher (talk) 18:25, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Necrothesp and dwc lr - Oleryhlolsson (talk) 22:24, 15 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Oleryhlolsson: To clarify, do you believe the subject of this article would be notable, even if 0 reliable sources exist that cover him in-depth? And if not, can you provide one reliable source that does cover him in-depth? --JBL (talk) 21:10, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect fails WP:GNG. (t · c) buidhe 00:23, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. A now historic heir of the pretender to the German throne, he is notable in a notable royal/exroyal family, in the main line of its head. Stubify if required due to lack of comment, but this lack of comment is due a simple life and early death. Do not merge to father or son, that would be an ugly structure. Merging to his house is possible, but with so many members, with so many lesser members having had longer more commented lives, the best structure is to have spunout stubs of the central individuals. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:31, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would like the closer to take particular note that this comment (1) agrees with the delete !voters about the lack of sources, and (2) suggests merging as an acceptable outcome. --JBL (talk) 21:10, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This is essentially real person fan fiction written in an in-universe style, conflating a real person (who existed but does not seem to have done anything notable) with a fictional character: a "prince" of a long-defunct monarchy that seems to live on only as an exercise in live-action roleplaying. As with other overly detailed fictional material, such as the genealogy of Frodo Baggins, the place for it is a fan wiki, not Wikipedia. Sandstein 07:03, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Er you are aware that our article on Frodo Baggins contains a detailed genealogy? Just checking. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:42, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- - Yes, but we don't have individual articles on any of the hobbits in this genealogy, except Frodo himself and Bilbo Baggins. PatGallacher (talk) 18:10, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per SmokeyJoe, Necrothesp, dwc lr, Oleryhlolsson and important link in the heritage of an imporant German family. --Richiepip (talk) 19:51, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Richiepip: To clarify, do you believe the subject of this article would be notable, even if 0 reliable sources exist that cover him in-depth? And if not, can you provide one reliable source that does cover him in-depth? --JBL (talk) 21:10, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Continuing evaluation of sources: Oleryhlolsson has added LF's (short) NY Times obituary to the en.WP article. First, thanks -- it's obviously a better source than the monarchy blogs and tabloid trash. Second, it highlights the inherent problem with this article, because even his obituary says nothing interesting about him! So the updated count is still 0 RS with in-depth coverage.
Although it is not related to our notion of notability, I also think it is instructive to take a look at the other obituaries published alongside LF's: I count six of them (so seven total), ranging in length from half to twice as long as LF's. Wikipedia has an article about exactly one of these people: George Brown Barbour, whose obit is by far the longest of those that appear (and includes a photo). I would call this a much better indication of what notability is about than the silliness about inherent notability of not-acutally-nobility found in nearly all the keep !votes. --JBL (talk) 23:23, 17 August 2020 (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.