Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo

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 and some holes in the keep arguments, eg the board is a lobby group with no article not a govt department, and the multiple sources may not actually be non-trivial, since some of them seem to be a directory. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:16, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo

Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Another of the numerous non-notable Arbuthnots. At first reading this person seems notable, but when one analyses the text he is not. The positions he held are not notable. Such phrases as: "He was instrumental in obtaining the chair of Moral Philosophy for his intimate friend, Dr James Beattie" beg the question - so what?. The references are a family history by a member of that family., and two peerages which will list him because he was the father of a baronet. I shall also be nominating his son the equally un-notable George Arbuthnot, 1st of Elderslie. Giano 10:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

• Weak keep Perhaps I'm wrong, but his place on that board sounds impressive enough, if it's an official government-related board. If it's what today we'd call a special-interest group, that's different. Nyttend 15:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Does not satisfy WP:BIO. Edison 20:32, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete being the secretary of the non-notable Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of the Manufactures and Fisheries of Scotland or even the organization Encouragement of the Manufactures and Fisheries of Scotland apparently is also unworthy of note does not satisfy WP:BIO; would the secretary of the Board of Trustees of Harvard University or the secretary of the Board of Directors of IBM be notable? Probably not; why should the secretary (is this they person who is an officer or just a go-fer?) of this obscure organization be notable? Presumably Mr. Arbuthnot has predecessors and successors to his illustrious secretaryship, and they'd all be notable no doubt? Carlossuarez46 21:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete wikipedia is not a genealogical site —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pete.Hurd (talk • contribs) 21:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC).
• Delete per nom. Needs more sourcing if we are to consider him notable. The info here is hardly anything more than genealogical. The board of which he was a trustee does not have its own article. EdJohnston 22:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: Clearly fails WP:PORNBIO, WP:MUSIC and WP:N/HWY, and appears never to have played football in a fully professional league. However, the Oxford DNB includes a paragraph on Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo in its article on the Select Society, "an Edinburgh debating club for gifted and socially prominent members of the city's intellectual élite". That should be an inviting red link for anyone interested in Scottish intellectual history. Pharamond 22:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Your wish is our command. We already have an article, The Select Society, though it has no mention of any Arbuthnots. EdJohnston 00:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Not much of an article... It seems the poster had little info to start with, but there are plenty of sources listed in the DNB article. Anyway, I made the redirect from the name without the article. The content of this article could be merged there, once somebody gets around to expand it (now it would just look ridiculous) or to the Arbuthnot family article, if that is kept. It is funny that the author of the Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo article completely missed the one thing that made the DNB include him somewhere. Pharamond 06:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete unless it can be shown he was a prominent member of the Select Society.Hornplease 06:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Reality appears to be more nuanced than that. Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo has not been deemed important enough by the DNB to be given his own article (the society also included people like Adam Smith), but he is one of the only four members (out of at least 133) to be mentioned in boldface and with a significant amount of biographical detail in the Select Society article in the DNB. So is he notable enough to be given his own article here? Is he perhaps just notable enough to be merged somewhere? Or is he so disastrously non-notable that he needs to be purged to avoid making Wikipedia the laughingstock of the world? Pharamond 07:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete: To Pharamond's questions, let's suppose that the most startling claim in the present article is true -- that he was the "intimate friend" of James Beattie and was the reason for Beattie's appointment. Fine. That, combined with the Select Society, would indicate either great brains or great money and some brains. Well, we have diddly in this article to explain, to justify, or to trace this figure's life as an intellectual. What we have here is more pedigree, more money as qualifications. Therefore, anyone with an encyclopedic desire and knowledge would not be aided by what exists there now. In other words, I do not see anything here to be saved in order to make a future article that fills the gaps between the mystery of the DNB 's (the 1898 one?) mention and actual encyclopedic standards. Geogre 12:19, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep--From the DNB article: "the society was clearly a desirable club to enter, one which had no trouble rejecting peers and gentry in favour of men of talent." The UK DNB does not set the limits of our coverage, just as the Brittanica doesn't set the limits, and I would expect we'd have many more entries than they. I'd agree with George that anyone mentioned in either a full article or in bold as a paragraph is unquestionably notable. For one thing, they're a RS, and they always give references, so all of them will have two--and usually considerably more-- non-trivial references from RSs, which is the general standard. It's unfortunate that Kitty didn't think to use information from there, preferring his family genealogies as sources. Another example why paying attention to COI is important--not only will COI lead to insertion of dubious material, it can lead to ignoring good ones if one trusts one's private knowledge. DGG 02:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone with a subscription to the DNB tell us what the sources were for Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo? Until we know what the sources say, the long-term fate of this article can't be determined. EdJohnston 04:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know where people were finding the article, for my part. I jog down to consult the 2004 DNB fairly regularly, and I hadn't seen in it any of the prestigious societies getting articles, although that had been the sporadic case in the first edition. The fact that such an article wasn't picked up for 2004 doesn't mean that it's not worth knowing, or that it's dubious, but it does mean that I, at least, can't go check. Geogre 02:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nom, and particularly as per Geogre. Nothing of value here. DES ^(talk) 16:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep multiple non-trivial reliable sources, listed in the article. No question that this article meets WP:N. JulesH 17:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Yet more ArbuthNotNotable spam. You would not want me to start listing all the Morgans! Or, say, the Smiths! DewiMorgan 20:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Three sources: one (Memories of the Arbuthnots) is not independent, and the other two are from directory listings. The posts listed do not meet WP:BIO, and the subject's main claim to notability is his position as Secretary of the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of the Manufactures and Fisheries of Scotland. That may have been quite a significant position, but we don't know, because we have neither an article on the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of the Manufactures and Fisheries of Scotland nor any references in this article to confirm its importance. If someone writes an article with proper sources to establish notability, that would be great, but right now all we have is an inadequately-sourced stub on a person of questionable significance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Merge If he is in fact in DNB for his involvement in The Select Society, his information could be put in there. Probably there are other less notable members that could be included to flesh out that page as well. I keep hearing the assertion that Memories of the Arbuthnots isn't independent, but it's never backed up by any evidence. As for DewiMorgan's insistence on delete votes based on the Morgan and Smith families; I say write them up if they've done anything or include them in articles pertaining to institutions they held a prominent role in. As a final note I'll say that Pharamond's statement "and appears never to have played football in a fully professional league" will keep me laughing for a while. Aspenocean 03:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Memories of the Arbuthnots was published by a well-known, mainstream publisher. I find it hard to believe they published a book purely because of its author's vanity. JulesH 20:04, 20 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.