Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reign of Elizabeth II

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. The consensus is that this fails CFORK Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:05, 26 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reign of Elizabeth II

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Recently created article unnecessarily duplicating an existing topic: Elizabeth II, an FA.DeCausa (talk) 21:34, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I accepted the draft on the basis that as an article it had a better than 50% chance of surviving an immediate deletion process. The nominator's deletion rationale is interesting. I will remain neutral in the discussion and observe with interest 🇺🇦 Fiddle^Timtrent Faddle^Talk to me 🇺🇦 21:39, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - It's basically a duplicate of Elizabeth II's page. GoodDay (talk) 21:55, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My intent was that the reign section could be summarised. Catholic nerd (talk) 23:04, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2022 September 18. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 21:58, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and Redirect to Elizabeth II. Anything useful not already there can be added. Not enough new here to justify a separate article. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:21, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, make a proper split from Elizabeth II per WP:Summary style. We have a tradition of splitting parts from long articles, such as Political positions of Hillary Clinton or, by contrast, Political career of Vladimir Putin. :-) Lokys dar Vienas (talk) 22:42, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and summarise the original page: In agreement with above I feel that due to how long the article is it would be better to have a separate article on her now finished reign and slim down the details on her page, which I was in the process of doing earlier, but was told I had to put a redirect there. We already have a redirect for Personality and image of Elizabeth II. I think like this we should slim down the reign section suitably and leave a redirect at the top. The same arguments could be applied there. Catholic nerd (talk) 23:46, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The period of her reign is the bulk of the Elizabeth II article. For WP:SUMMARYSTYLE to work those 70 years should be pretty much cut and pasted into the new article that you've created, leaving a very brief summary behind with the article being left with just her first 25 years. But what benefit is there in doing that? Most readers, as Wehwalt points out below, would come to her bio article to read the most important part of her bio. Additionally the Elizabeth II article is a Featured Article and indeed is on today's main Page. (indeed, the reason why an editor told you not to cut chunks out of the Elizabeth II article - "slim down" - was because it was just about to go on the Main Page). Clearly as an FA, with all the scrutiny that comes with that, there's no issues with it being "too long" or "needing summary style" being applied to it. (one of the FA criteria is "stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style." That's what this article is assessed as. Why cut up an FA? DeCausa (talk) 08:05, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete While "Presidency of ... " and similar articles serve a purpose, that purpose is to allow a greater focus on the events of that period of time. For example, Presidency of Richard Nixon allows a greater focus of the five years of Nixon's life he was president than the biographical article on Nixon allows space for. However, in this case, Elizabeth II was queen for most of her adult life. The section on her up to age 26 is relatively short by comparison with the rest of the article. In my view, "Reign of Elizabeth II" would not allow for greater focus and would serve no useful purpose. People tend to consult the biographical article in preference to the other, so taking detail away from that article isn't such a good idea (if they don't find information in her biographical article, are they really going to go elsewhere?) The potential for conflict and inconsistencies between the two articles is also there.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:47, 18 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed but additionally the reason why "Presidency of..." works to cover the events of the period is that a President is a major political actor/instigator of those events. They are part of the reason for those events. By definition, that was not the case for Elizabeth II as a constitutional monarch in a democracy. This is illustrated in how the lead has been expanded since nomination with these edits. Very little is directly related to Elizabeth II - they are events that happen to have ocurred during the time period. Compare that to the lead, for example, of Presidency of Richard Nixon, which is about Nixon's "rule" itself. Nixon was an instigator/major actor of the events during his presidency. If this article were to be kept, either Elizabeth II article would have to be gutted to transfer the bulk of its content to this article to avoid duplication (per Wehwalt's comments on the proportion of her life being taken up by her reign) and/or this article would have to be padded out with historical events that happened to occur during her reign but frankly is unconnected to her. What's the point of doing either? DeCausa (talk) 07:47, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Royalty and nobility and United Kingdom. Shellwood (talk) 08:24, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Wehwalt. The hypothetical inverse article covering her life not-as-queen would be vestigial. Why split this information out instead of keeping it together? Axem Titanium (talk) 18:13, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Because the reign also covers events that happened during her reign, rather like we have a page for the Victorian period. Catholic nerd (talk) 19:07, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So how does it benefit the reader to have much of the information about her farmed out to an article few will read? Richard Nixon gets 22 times the page views Presidency of Richard Nixon gets. Wehwalt (talk) 19:27, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe this might be revived when there is more of a historical gap and there can be details on historical analysis of her reign. I can see your point. Catholic nerd (talk) 22:13, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be characterising the article as being about a "historical period" rather than about the person. There's no evidence that it is treated as a general historical period in historiography in the way that "Victorian" is. There's a "post-war Britain" and we have articles already covering that. But at some point the post-war period ends: some treat it as the 1960s and some the 1970s etc. Then there are other periods. But I'm not aware of a historiographical 1952-2022 period - other than it happens to be the Queen's reign there's nothing coherently holding it together - and if there were to be, it's too early (WP:CRYSTAL) to tell. DeCausa (talk) 07:24, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As per Wehwalt. Summarising the Reign section on Elizabeth II would just be, IMO, hiding away the entire section into an article that will be seen by fewer readers. Since, as it stands right now, most of it is exactly the same as the reign section on the main article, keeping it would essentially mean removing information from the main article just to give this one a reason to exist. GoodCrossing (talk) 20:04, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Although there are currently few differences between the Elizabeth II page and the Reign page, I think this page has potential. Elizabeth was the head of state of many countries, of which many gained independence from the British Empire under her reign. Part of her reign includes her relationship with these countries, and there is not room on the current page to explore these aspects without making the text so long that readers give up. Beebotbaba (talk) 00:41, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- This sounds like a Draftify position to me. As it stands, over 90% of this article is directly copied from the Liz 2 article. I would want to see prose and sources that support an article about that stuff before passing it through the AFC process. It's also possible that an article with this information would be more specialized than the omnibus "Reign of Liz 2" article that this one is. Axem Titanium (talk) 01:49, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  New to the Wikipedia editing thing and didn't know the exact terminology. Draftify is definitely closer to what I was going for. Beebotbaba (talk) 03:55, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete since it's essentially a copy of the main page. And, there's also the issue of Elizabeth's role as a constitutional monarch. As another user pointed out, many events happened during her reign which were not direct results of her actions. That is not the case for a president or prime minister that has executive powers. I don't see a well-defined boundary with regards to this matter when reading the lede. Additionally, the main article is not terribly long. Why move info away from the main page to a secondary page, which, as another user pointed out, will be less clicked on? Quality wise it's not a good addition to a featured article based on its current state. Keivan.f^Talk 04:35, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Draftify The article has some good arguments to exist and could use further development to assuage the legitimate arguments against the page being separate from the main bio. The E2 article is long, and will probably only get longer as more is added after her death with retrospectives and more details about the past few years as new secondary sources come out. I also agree with the argument about "Presidency of" vs. "Reign of", substantively there is much less that can be attributed to EIIR directly. As a previous user mentioned, there may be a benefit to having more specific content about the various realms. However, this shouldn't be a "Second Elizabethan Age" article that generally covers UK politics & history; the length of the reign is much too long to fully consider much relation between the seven decades historiographically except in the monarchy itself Ha2772a (talk) 03:22, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, forgot to mention that perhaps part of this specific article proposal should be an additional draft of what the Elizabeth II reign section would look like if this page is approved Ha2772a (talk) 03:24, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Draftify and Expand. A lot of events that are not mentioned at the Queen's bio can be added here. Peter Ormond 💬 05:11, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Draftify A good article on an important subject, but does need some work. Moondragon21 (talk) 08:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think I agree that Draftify is the best option. Should the article on the main Elizabeth II page be summarised then? I was working on a summary of it. Catholic nerd (talk) 22:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't advise it. It's a FA and you won't get consensus to do that to it.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:02, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The content on the Queen's article is already "summarised". You just need to greatly expand this article to include all the major events that have little or no mention at the Queen's article. Peter Ormond 💬 15:28, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thank you for the clairification. Catholic nerd (talk) 22:30, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

”to include all the major events that have little or no mention at the Queen's article”. If it’s not already in the Queen’s article then chances are the event is unconnected to the Queen. What’s the scope of this article to be then? All the major events that happened to occur between 1952 and 1922, in the UK, in the Commonwealth realms, in the World? The fundamental flaw with this article is that for a constitutional monarch without power, relevant aspects of her reign and her bio are one in the same thing. Otherwise it’s just a general history of the period and (a) we have other articles that do that (b) historians haven’t and probably won’t write histories of the “New Elizabethan Age”, aside from the likes of Robert Lacey. It’s not a real and coherent historiographic period. DeCausa (talk) 06:52, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as fundamentally misconceived in scope, or draftify on the understanding that there will be a Big Think about said scope with a view to a more meaningful refactoring. At present, this would be not just 3/4s of the parent article, but by far the most notable portion even pro rata. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 22:53, 22 September 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.