Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States Presidential pets

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 speedy keep per WP:SK#1 (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:38, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of United States Presidential pets[edit]

00:48, 24 January 2009 (UTC) User:Ragib placed a {Notability} tag on this article, and provided an explanation on its talk page for his/her believed absence of notability. That included:

Except for a few of the pets, none of the others are notable. Even those which are famous (say Checkers), they are only "notable" in reference to the biographies of their owners. There are probably some squirrels living around WhiteHouse, will they be notable as well? Also, there are thousands of people working as WH staff, will that automatically make them notable? Or a first daughters kindergarten teacher? --Ragib (talk) 22:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me clarify that I have nominated this article, even though I support keeping it. The Nobility tag by itself does not seem well suited to attracting discussion of the actual notability of the article. Attracting more editors here on AfD allows a diversity of opinions to emerge. LotLE×talk 00:56, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep. The nominator doesn't feel it lacks notability, and the editor raising the issue wasn't calling for deletion, so I think this is WP:SK#1. At any rate, this is a fairly blatantly notable topic. Presidential pets have always been the subject of much media coverage (since at least Teddy Roosevelt) and though some attack this as "frivolous" or "fluff" that's actually a fairly ignorant critique. The First Family are cultural trendsetters in the United States--this applies from the first ladies' dresses in the world of fashion to the first families' pets in the world of, well, pets. It is encyclopedic. It is the subject of not just numerous but nearly innumerable independent and reliable sources. It is part of American history. It is part of American culture. It is fundamentally encyclopedic. If not Speedy Keep then Strong Keep. There is no real question. --JayHenry (talk) 00:52, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. My opinion is that this list is indeed notable. It's a bit of a frivolous thing to get the amount of media coverage that it has, but presidential pets have been a perennial favorite of "human interest" article writers for 100 years. Not all of the pets have their own articles, but a fair number do; the others also got at least a notable amount of press coverage, and seeing a comparison of the various pets is worth putting in one place. It's not an earth-shaking topic, but then, neither are most articles on WP. This one seems a bit more worthwhile than, e.g. "List of all the fictional characters on Some TV Series" (which we have lots of). LotLE×talk 00:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Notable. Otherwise we wouldn't have articles for most of these pets. siℓℓy rabbit (talk) 01:30, 24 January 2009 (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.