Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Obama family

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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. Consensus is that this family is not notable as such; all notable members have articles already. Redirected to Barack Obama to prevent drive-by recreations.  Sandstein  19:25, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Obama family

Obama family (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

The only notable people in this article (Barack Obama and Michelle Obama) already have articles written about them. Notability is not inherited. This article is no different than previous articles such as Family of Barack Obama and Malia Obama which were deleted after extensive discussion. All of the same arguments for deleting those articles are applicable here. Loonymonkey (talk) 17:00, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

That discussion was ended early (due to the unrelated fact that the article was created by a sock) but the consensus was clearly heading towards delete. See also Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Malia_Obama where the final decision was to delete/merge.--Loonymonkey (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak delete. The X family family of articles is typically more of the navigational list variety with an introduction than it is a topic requiring extensive separate sources. As such a rule of thumb similar to disambiguation pages is usefully applied, which is that they should only exist if there are at least three notable items. Once the article exists as such I have no objection to properly sourced inclusion of non-Wikipedia-notable members. This does not meet that standard. On the other hand, Obama does have arguably the most unusual genealogy of any major-party nominee (or presumptive nominee, to be precise), and that has been the topic of reliably sourced commentary, as opposed to his family members per se. --Dhartung | Talk 17:43, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete – All the members listed in the article seem to have pieces on them already. So we do not even have to worry about redirects! Best case scenario is to merge any additional information this article may provide into the appropriate subject’s individual page. ShoesssS Talk 19:35, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. As above. The notable folks in this article have articles of their own. The ones that don't... well, it doesn't really matter, does it? Kind of a pointless collation. - Vianello (talk) 01:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - per nom. Any useful information is in Barack's article (or should be). --Orange Mike | Talk 01:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep This article is NO DIFFERENT political families on wiki such as the Kennedys, the Tafts, or the Bush family. The only reason why this is even considered is because of political reasons. Not only are political families normal on wiki, but Obama has an unusually diverse family compared to any other presidential family in U.S. history. This is different than the other individual articles in that it specifically focuses on the ancestry of notable members in the Obama family. DO NOT DELETE THIS ARTICLE —Preceding unsigned comment added by Therock40756 (talk • contribs) 02:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Along with all the reasons already stated, I should also mention that this article is not like the Kennedy's, the Taft's, the Bush's etc. The reason is because those family's have a collective legacy created by many notable members. This is something lacking in the "Obama family". QuirkyAndSuch (talk) 05:48, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete and redirect to Barack Obama. This article is redundant to other coverage of Barack Obama and his family which appears in other articles. As QuirkyAndSuch indicates, the Obama family is not yet a political family along the lines of the Bushes, Tafts, or Kennedys, because those families have had multiple members serve in high office. The Obama family has had only one member run for or be elected to any political office. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete and Redirect per nom. ukexpat (talk) 15:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep per Therock40756. PoeticXcontribs 17:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 20:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete The Obama family is not currently an established political family. Barack is currently the only politically notable member of his family. Until that changes, this article is totally unencyclopedic. Thingg⊕⊗ 22:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Cleanup and Keep Some of the sources do not actually contain information that can actually validate the article. Also, small bits and pieces from the sources have been taken and exaggerated. For example, "Her father had multiple sclerosis diagnosed when he was in his 20s." turned into "Instead of lulling in his misfortune, he woke up early enough each morning to hobble to work on crutches at the city water filtration plant". This article needs to be cleaned up, written in a neutral tone, and be properly sourced. — ThreeDee912 (talk) 01:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep Obama might be the next US president and this article is referenced and verifiable. It also names Obama family and his less well known sister who is half-Indonesian. Its not unreasonable for Wikipedia to have an article on his family as long as it has no POV statements. Artene50 (talk) 03:49, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete — everything that's notable about the family is already covered in Barack Obama, daughter articles spun out from that article, and articles about other notable family members (many of which are listed in Template:Barack Obama). I don't think that the family qua family is notable in the way that political dynasties like the Kennedy family or Bush family are. We don't even have an article on the Clinton family, which would have a better argument for being regarded as a political dynasty. I believe that the other articles in Category:Political families of the United States are all about families with more than one member in the political sphere. If Malia Obama runs for office in 2040, we can create this article then. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment — an argument might be made for creating Category:Obama family, on the model of Category:Clinton family, as a navigational tool for notable members of the family even though the family qua family is not notable in the way that the Kennedys or the Bushes are. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:03, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete per Josiah Rowe and others above. A notable family requires more than one notable person. Truthanado (talk) 12:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. per Josiah Rowe and Metropolian90. The Obama family only has one major U.S. politician and isn't in the same regard as the Kennedys or Bushes. James Luftan contribs 20:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete per WP:NOTE (people): That person A has a relationship with well-known person B is not a reason for a standalone article on A. Gorgonzola (talk) 19:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong delete per nom. —xanderer (talk) 20:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete per above. —Chris! ct 00:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. Unless/until Senator Obama is elected, they will not be an established American political family. --Idont Havaname (Talk) 02:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Pretty notable family + add details about Obama's distant relation to Dick Cheney showing he is only part of a bloodline and was bred for a single purpose.[1] See his words-just like Bush [2] Sorry for soapboxing --TheFEARgod (Ч) 17:36, 4 June 2008 (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.