- Former Presidents of Cambridge University Liberal Club and Chairs of Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
Requesting review per comments on my talk page. Some editors have asserted that the topic might actually meet WP:LISTPEOPLE. I am not so sure what the correct interpretation is of that guidance. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:14, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse the original AfD as its nom. I have read through the discussion on your talk page, and whilst I understand where the users are coming from, the argument that they are making is (in my view) not founded in policy. The societies seem to be notable; the specific position of Presidents of the societies is quite clearly and patently not. Some people having gone on to be notable after being a President of one of the societies does not make the role itself notable, per WP:INHERITED. Nothing against it being mentioned on the pages of those who are notable, but an indiscriminate list of notable and non-notable figures is certainly not on - and I don't believe there should be a standalone list at all. Perhaps a category for those who are truly notable, Category:Former presidents of xyz? Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Deletion process has been properly followed. Stifle (talk) 10:49, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. Although I do think WP:INHERITED is important to consider, I still believe these lists have encyclopedic value. Often articles may refer to the President in term X without clarifying which president it was. In order to piece events mentioned elsewhere together, it is crucial to know who was president when. Especially because some Presidents may indeed have extensive primary sources on them - such as Channel 4's Young Bright and on the Right, which mentions many presidents by reference to their terms - without themselves passing notability.HackContrib (talk) 12:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC) — HackContrib (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
- I haven't made many edits before, so my recommendation shouldn't be taken too exactly. I do believe that this content is worth having on the platform, and both has more references, and more sources, than those involved in the original deletion review may have been aware. HackContrib (talk) 17:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctantly endorse. I pretty much agree with User:HackContrib on the merits of such lists, but the AfD was just following the usual interpretation of WP:INHERIT that is problematic because it does not actually match the words used on the guidelines page. The policy or its interpretation needs to be fixed before we can overturn these AfDs. In the meantime, Wikidata is capable of representing the content of these lists. — Charles Stewart (talk) 14:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC) --- Checnged !vote, see below — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:15, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]- Endorse, but WP:IAR restore. The AfD was unanimous and well-attended (by modern standards) so clearly there was nothing wrong with the close per-se. But, looking at the deleted lists, they seem (yeah, I know) WP:USEFUL to me as navigation aids. Many of the entries are for people we have articles about, so I think they meet the spirit of WP:LISTPEOPLE. LISTPEOPLE says to only include a person if they are notable. I think that's a good requirement for large, potentially open-ended lists, such as List of people from the Bronx. But, for a list where there's 1) a finite number of poeple who might qualify, and 2) a specific ordering where the position is uniquely held by one person at a time, for example, List of presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) or (ugh) List of It's Showtime (kickboxing) champions, I think it's reasonable to include all the office holders, whether we have articles about each specific one or not. I would certainly get better titles for these pages. Former Presidents of Cambridge University Liberal Club and Chairs of Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats is absurd. Maybe call it Presidents of Cambridge University Liberal Club and have Chairs of Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats redirect to that? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:06, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- PS, I'm fine with a relist. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:46, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Relist and ping all of the participants, since it's been over a month since the AfD was closed at this point. Deletion procedure was properly followed and I think relisting would be the best option to allow a counter-argument to be made as opposed to an IAR restore - at least six people agreed this fails WP:LISTPEOPLE, and I don't think we can overturn that clear of a consensus because a seed of doubt have been planted. (If the argument had been made and rejected at the AfD, I'd be a clear endorse.) SportingFlyer T·C 14:20, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. I reckon that given the importance of Oxbridge in British politics, and the sheer number of prominent of British politicians who have had their start in these societies, that these lists meet the criteria of notable offices and should be kept, either as seperate pages, or for the lists to be added to the main pages of these societies. While it is true that many of the more recent individuals are not notable enough for an individual wikipedia page, that is to be expected given that they will have been recent university graduates. In the last several general elections in the UK there have been multiple people on each of these lists who have been elected MPs, and these lists are a valuable resource for the background of these newly elected MPs, and will likely continue to be so for the forseeable future. I am not familiar with the arcana of wikipedia's rule, but it does seem that this is a list of officeholders in a society of some historic and present importance, and is useful to people looking at British politics, and thus improves the site.Daniel.villar7 (talk) 8 June 2020 17:41 (GMT)
- Which one of the five deletion review criteria do you think this falls under? I can't see any "significant new information" that's come to light here, it's clear that the consensus was interpreted correctly, and as far as I can tell, there were no substantial procedural errors. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:41, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- As I said I’m not familiar with the specific rules and regulations here, but I would note that in the original deletion there was no voice in opposition to deletion. As such the arguments that I and others have presented against deletion have not been dealt with. As I said, I think that the list itself is worth having on Wikipedia, either as a stand alone page or as a list in the main article of the respective societies, as a historical source for those interested in the careers of quite a few British politicians. Daniel.villar7 (talk) 8 June 2020 20:27 (GMT) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.251.248.140 (talk)
- Endorse. This was a proper WP:CLOSE and snow delete. If there is some new reason that someone finds to show that there is a new WP:LOCALCONSENSUS or the subject is notable - someone can recreate the article. It is not salted so I assume the injured party can get a copy in their sandbox? Lightburst (talk) 23:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Since there seem to be a higher than usual number of people not experienced with WP deletion policy !voting here, let me outline what the options are here. Nothing in the deleted article is lost: it can, for a period of up to six months without activity, be put into draftspace and worked into something less likely to fail an AfD. As User:Daniel.villar7 notes, achieving the presidency of an Oxbridge political party club in itself means the office holder will have weight if they continure to be active in their party. That said, I guess that convincing AfD regulars of this case will not be easy, and editors who take up this task should steel themselves against a 2nd failure. As an alternative, draftifying, converting the list into something machine readable and importing to Wikidata is a way around: there the criterion is that each datum is reliably sourced; notability will not be an issue. — Charles Stewart (talk) 08:17, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Deletion review is not a place to relitigate the notability of a list. The close was proper and the page(s) were not salted. If someone wants to recreate the article, they are able. --Enos733 (talk) 03:36, 9 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Just a quick question then, since I am unfamiliar with the rules. Does your comment mean that it would theoretically be permissible for someone to recreate a deleted article without going through a formal process? I assumed that that sort of thing just was not on. Daniel.villar7 (talk) 10 June 2020 12:03 (GMT)
- @Daniel.villar7:, yes, the general rule is that if the issues that led to a page being deleted are no longer true, anybody can write a new article about the same subject/title. This often means a page was deleted for WP:TOOSOON and there is now sufficient coverage of the topic to pass WP:N. Sometimes it means a page was deleted for WP:COPYVIO problems, and a clean rewrite fixes that. Sometimes pages get deleted because they fail WP:NPOV or WP:ATTACK, or they're just plain terribly written. In theory, the fix to those should be to trim it back to a stub, but sometimes people decide it makes more sense to delete it entirely, often with a note in the AfD closing statement encouraging somebody to try again from scratch, i.e. WP:TNT. Wikipedia:Recreation of previously deleted pages doesn't have any official weight (since it's a failed proposal), but reading over it, I really don't see anything that doesn't make sense, so I'd suggest you read that and use it as a guide. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:32, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- PS, on the other hand, see WP:G4. Just grabbing a copy of the old article from a mirror and plopping it back down without fixing the problems isn't going to get you very far. It's a two-edged sword. Yes, you can recreate the article, but at the same time you're obligated to fix the problems. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:35, 10 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @RoySmith:, so for instance in this case, would it be acceptable to recreate the information, if not the specific pages, by placing the list of presidents in the main pages for these societies? Because it seems like the issue is that the list isn't considered notable enough for a stand alone page by some editors, rather than the information being wholly not notable. Daniel.villar7 (talk) 11 June 2020 23:18 (GMT)
- Unfortunately, I don't have a clear and authoritative answer to give you. What I wrote above was somewhat in the abstract. In this specific concrete instance. it's not so clear. The key thing is to resolve the problem(s) found at the AfD. In this case, one of the assertions made in the AfD was that this fails WP:V. One of our fundamental rules is that everything has to be verifiable by reference to a reliable source. I only see one reference in the deleted article, and that's to https://keynessociety.wordpress.com/who-ran-the-society/presidents-and-chairs/, which doesn't look reliable to me. It's somebody's blog. It even starts off with, "All known office-holders are listed – if you can fill in the gaps, please contact the society." That's not going to fly, and it's not going to make any difference if it's a stand-alone list or embedded in another article. So, I would start by researching good sources. Once you've got good sources, my recommendation is to write a new draft (either in draft space, or in your own sandbox), an ping the people who participated in the AfD to see if they agree that with these new sources, your draft looks usable. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:46, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- If the question is verifiability, as HackContrib has said, there are the society papers of most of these in their respective university libraries which have term cards which list presidents; would that be n acceptable source, given that they are physical sources in a library that have not been digitised. For the more recent presidents of these societies there are digitised termcards which list presidents as well.Daniel.villar7 (talk) 12 June 2020 17:01 (GMT)
- Endorse and relist - Although the AfD was adequately attended and correctly closed, this has been a lengthy and substantive DRV and the issue of notability is not straightforward. It would be best for the matter to be discussed properly at AfD with a broader set of participants. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:15, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Where you can have a category, you can have a list; that's longstanding consensus at WP:CLN. Clearly, you could have a category. This is very arguably a case where DRV can intervene to correct the error by way of a straight overturn. A fresh AfD for process' sake seems utterly needless.—S Marshall T/C 10:10, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @S Marshall: That same page notes "At the same time, there may be circumstances where consensus determines that one or more methods of presenting information is inappropriate for Wikipedia". At the moment, that is the consensus here - as reached at the AfD. I strongly oppose it being overturned straight away by a deletion review. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:15, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Fair enough. Personally I find this case rather reminiscent of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 March 24, where we did directly overturn a deletion of an Oxbridge-related category because the XfD was just plain wrong, but DRV's fundamental role is to see that the process is correctly followed, so if you want the process to be followed, I can hardly argue!—S Marshall T/C 10:56, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Worth noting that, in that discussion,
these were the highest possible honours for Cambridge undergraduates in mathematics - whereas what we're talking about here is just a society president! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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