Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Bernard Arbuthnot

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 no consensus to delete. Several people seem to want to merge the useful content, so they might go about doing. W.marsh 13:01, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] John Bernard Arbuthnot

This man is totally un-notable so much so that even the article informs us "Arbuthnot Road is not named after him.". FGS delete it fast. Incidentally, both references are written by the primary author. Giano 15:31, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• He seems to be in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, had an entry in The Scottish Nation as late as 130 or so years after his death, and Project Gutenberg has his "History of John Bull". In mathematics, he seems to have been one of the earliest translators of works by Huygens on what is now known as probability theory. Unless there are reasons to doubt these references (I suppose I could toddle down to the British Library and check them out if Giano can give me reason to doubt them) this article is not a deletion candidate. --Tony Sidaway 15:46, 14 May 2007 (UTC) I think Tony you have linked to [1] and are comentating on the wrong page. Giano 16:02, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep -- The silly statement about the road notwithstanding, this is a good article on a very notable and significant subject. -- MisterHand 15:47, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• The link you are comentng on is not the page I nominated Giano 15:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

  It's the link in the AFD. -- MisterHand 15:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

  I think somehow there was a mislink [2] (anyhow solved now) Giano 16:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• This fellow founded Beachcomber in name, although not in the form in which it became famous. This is important to the Beachcomber article but little else. So I suggest that any useful information from this article be merged to Beachcomber (Pen_name) and this article left as a redirect. --Tony Sidaway 16:12, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• I agree with Tony - at present, the Beachcomber link is the only notable element and anything of note here should be merged there. It may be worth having an article on him in his own right if he actually did anything of note in the Boer Wars, or he did anything interesting to be awarded the MVO. Surely there are lots of other things that are note named after him. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:33, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• I too agree with Tony make, it into a redirect - so long as him being a beachcomber is verified by a references written by an independent source. Giano 18:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect: Over half the article is devoted to the quotidian and non-encyclopedic task of proving the breeding stock of a family. Aside from the pedigree, the material is better as a sentence in the literary achievement that might draw comment. Geogre 18:56, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Becoming a Major does not provide inherent notability. No sources to show the article is more than part of a family genealogy. Edison 20:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect per User:Geogre. If this article were to be kept, the excessive genealogical details ought to be removed. Also there is a concern about sourcing. A look at the reference to thepeerage.com shows that some of the submitted data came from private emails. I can see accepting a little bit of not-fully-attested data to fill in the gaps in an otherwise well-sourced account, but this one seems very skimpy. EdJohnston 20:46, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Merge Beachbomber bit and redirect. The thepeerage.com ref - He was author of the 'Beachcomber' column in the Daily Express - is misleading to the point of disingenuousness. As Tony Sidaway says, he had nothing to do with Beachcomber in the iconic comic form developed by later authors. Tearlach 21:43, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Deputy editor of London's largest newspaper of the time, and one of the writers of By the Way. Note that By the Way was almost certainly not initiated by him; it was brought over when the old Globe shut down. One of the people who wrote By the Way for the Globe was PG Wodehouse, as I recall. Anyway, this is tiresome. Hornplease 06:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

comment

• Weak keep, according to the material found by Tearlach and Hornplease, and their argument. There are probably sources to do careful bios on almost all of the adult Arbuthnots from printed sources, and if done really well with local newspapers and sources for the particular profession, there would be some element of notability in a great many. But anyone who puts in dozens of entries from a indiscriminate source on anything will not do justice to the material. (For comparison, In terms of intrinsic notability, we accept members of state legislatures, past or present. There are about 10,000 at any given time in the US alone, and most serve only for 2 years. Go back just to 1900 and there would be at least 50,000). DGG 05:36, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Yet more ArbuthNotNotable genealogy spam. You would not want me to start listing all the Morgans! Or, say, the Smiths! DewiMorgan 20:44, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually I would like that - provided they are notable. - Kittybrewster (talk) 17:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

The Smiths were very notable, don't let me hear otherwise. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 01:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed - many of them. We could use more stubs to build upon. - Kittybrewster (talk) 07:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

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.