Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United States Presidential trivia

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 Keep Eluchil404 11:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] United States Presidential trivia

United States Presidential trivia (discussion|history|protect|delete|undelete|logs|links)

The page is solely a collection of trivia. See WP:TRIVIA. ¿Exir?¡Kamalabadi! 09:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Weak delete. It's interesting, but it's trivia. I'm wondering why there's a "citation needed" tag on the "All presidents have been white males" entry. They all look white and male to me... --Charlene 10:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment There were unsubstantiated rumors of some African ancestry on the part Warren G. Harding.Edison 15:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - the very definition of an indiscriminate collection of information. --humblefool® 10:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The collection of info is not indiscriminate because it all relates to and compares U.S. Presidents. Some insights can be found by having info about various presidents all in one place which would not be possible if the info were scattered to the individual articles. The birthdates, longevity, etc are really not trivial at all. Edison 15:29, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I hate trivia sections but it's most useful, encyclopedic info in there, it's not much trivial in the article, if kept it should be renamed. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 15:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - useful information in here, and it's too long to be a trivia section in President of the United States. Newyorkbrad 16:47, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Good information. No reason to delete as far as I can see. --- RockMFR 18:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Humblefool. TJ Spyke 21:01, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Keep. It's historic, encyclopedaic content. Spinach Dip 21:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There really don't need to be trivia articles. Wikipedia policy heavily discourages the use of trivia even within articles, let alone articles consisting entirely of trivia. Trivia is useful, according to policy, only within new articles where it provides information that should later be put into prose in the main body of the article with the end goal that the trivia section will be removed entirely once the article is well-developed. Furthermore, are we going to have trivia pages for on Indian Presidents? Phillipino presidents? Etc. I've a BA in Political Science and am working on a MA in a political field so I strongly encourage keeping articles that are political, but this crosses the line. We can merge the important tidbits into their appropriate articles, whether the article on the US presidency in general or the individual president's articles themselves, but this is just a random, and arbitrary, collection of information. --The Way 00:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep This information is reasonably useful in that it would be included in the main article of the given president it is related to, and this is merely a presentation of what would be spread across some 40 articles into one succint page. FrozenPurpleCube 02:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Bits of trivia related to multiple presidents should be merged into the article on the US Presidency in general, otherwise information regarding one particular president should be on that President's article. Information deemed to be 'trivial' doesn't need to be arbitrarily chosen from these articles and given their own article because someone seems to find these particular bits of information 'more interesting' or the like. --The Way 02:57, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Combining that article and this one might enlarge the article too much, as it is currently at 31 Kilobytes. I assume that was why this one was spun off. And ultimately, all information on Wikipedia is arbitrarily chosen by what Editors want. What's important or not is not clearly defined, but rather developed through a rough general consensus. Me, I don't see anything in this article I wouldn't have in the base article on the given president. This is a mere collation of that, in a different direction. FrozenPurpleCube 03:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I simply believe that this article is superfluous and some of it isn't necessarily encyclopedic. And given Wikipedia's policy regarding trivia, I don't believe an article dedicated solely to trivia should exist (there is, in fact, a Wikiproject whose express goal is to remove trivia) --The Way 04:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

While I suppose this article is redundant to the existing articles which should cover the information, but it presents them in a condensed format that is more readily accesible to the average user. So I can't agree it is entirely superfluous. And Wikipedia doesn't have a policy on trivia, it's at most a guideline, and at worst, a bad idea. Personally, I'd prefer a renaming of this article, but I'm at a loss for a better word. While there are some cases where trivial is so very minimal it's not important, there are times when it is not. And given that such luminaries as Isaac Asimov have published collected books of Trivia(and I saw several of the facts in this article in them), I'm not inclined to dismiss the idea of presenting various minor facts as important to Wikipedia, or unencyclopedic, because the information itself is still valid. I suppose I could support creating a WikiTrivia spin-off if it ever came up, but until that happens, I can't endorse deletion of otherwise valuable material. FrozenPurpleCube 05:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

• Keep It's accurate, has it's varifiable sources, isn't to long an article. GoodDay 20:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Although there are good arguments for both sides, I'd prefer to see this article kept, as it combines information that would otherwise have to be found in lots of other articles. I'd like to see some more sources for the various statements, but that will probably be added in the future. Bjelleklang - talk 22:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep - Not encyclopedic, most of this belongs on the lists it references, or in the Presidential articles itself, but it's verifable.

Comment If it's not encyclopedic and most of it belongs "on the lists it references, or in the Presidential articles itself" then it should be deleted. How can you vote for a 'weak keep' when your argument supports deletion? Verifiability is not, in and of itself, enough to garner a keep. --The Way 02:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• Keep for reasons already stated. -- Scott e^iπ 02:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per the above commenters, this is an exceptional trivia list. Yamaguchi先生 22:57, 14 November 2006
• Keep fundamentally some information does belong in an encyclopedia. don't throw out the baby with the bath water. 129.98.212.167 03:42, 15 November 2006 (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.