Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Simon Dodsworth

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, no independent sources that discuss the subject or his notability. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Simon Dodsworth

Simon Dodsworth (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Local farmer with weak claims of notability. Sources are all primary, and while they're a nice piece of genealogy, they don't show notability. (Gsearch comes up empty, but that's not surprising for a 16th century person.) Contested prod. Fabrictramp (talk) 22:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. While the subject seems to be well-documented for a person of his era, the article does not establish any particular claim to notability. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete - I suppose the main claim to notability was participation in the battle, but barring other information, that's not sufficient to establish notability. -- Whpq (talk) 02:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete I have also failed in GBooks, and in ODNB. subject to correction from the ed., I think the primary sources given represent the whole of the information available, and the subject has been discussed in no secondary sources at all. Reprinted parish registers are like census rolls--they do not show the notability of everyone in the parish.
  (I have notified the creator of the article about this AfD, which seems to have been accidentally forgotten) . DGG (talk) 07:40, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: What, exactly, is the massive objection to primary sources here? The references given are excellent and beyond reproach. They are published or available to those who wish to look at them. This is nit-picking at its best. And lets face it, if he were an absolute nobody how did he make it into anything? There are no lists of those who fought at the Battle of Pinkie and it is always a bonus to find someone, especially on the English side, however modest their part in the battle. Given that in 1900 only 15% of the population owned their own home or land in Great Britain he is a good example of one of the non-aristocracy, non-landed gentry. In addition the story demonstrates how even yeoman were still liable to be called up for military service. You know, we have countless articles on Wikipedia that are entirely without merit, and more to the point, far more without one single reference of any description. What a pity you folks have descended on this inoffensive and mildly interesting article of someone whose sons and grandsons were also of some note. Regards, David Lauder (talk) 10:25, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Reply The issue is notability. WP:BIO says that "notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." Has this person been the subject of published secondary source material? If so, we'd love it if you could add references.

As to "we have countless articles on Wikipedia that are entirely without merit", you might want to take a second to read Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, specifically WP:OTHERSTUFF.--Fabrictramp (talk) 14:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -- -- pb30<talk> 18:48, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: I have, rather reluctantly, come to the conclusion that the default position of any !vote should be a vote to 'Keep' on the grounds that 'Delete' votes can be taken as a form of warfare against other editors and generally cause more problems than they solve. Having said that, this sort of article does have its own quiet notability: yes, it's rather uninteresting to the casual reader, but to an academic interested in the fields touched upon it would be a godsend. We should tolerate and encourage quirky and minority articles. Law in Star Trek, by the way, is my nomination for the most futile article on Wikipedia: the Dodsworth article actually has some academic validity. --Major Bonkers (talk) 13:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete; unremarkable 16th century farmer whose only claim to fame is that his name happened to have survived in some records. If he were a contemporary figure this would have been an A7 speedy for lack of assertion of notability; merely because someone lived long ago does not mean that there needs to be a Wikipedia article about them depite their complete lack of notability. --MCB (talk) 07:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: "If he were a contemporary figure": yes, but notability standards vary not only by discipline but by time period. Were Wikipedia overwhelmed with painstaking sixteenth-century biographical articles I suppose it would be one thing. But take a look at category:16th century births, or category:1510s births, and note how small the coverage is. A hundred and eight people born in the 1510s--maybe half of them from England. When the available historical sources are as scarce as they are for the 16th century, anybody with this multiplicity of carefully sifted mentions attains defacto notability--in fact, one of the notable things about Dodsworth to a historian is that he isn't notable. He isn't Thomas Gresham, he's just a man in a certain walk of life who fought in a battle. Keep and nurture this sort of work.--Wageless (talk) 17:23, 3 February 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.