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. Significant concerns were raised about the mixing of multiple topics under one umbrella, the notability of each of these topics as topics, and the reliability of the existing sources. The previous discussion noted, rightly, that AfD is not for cleanup but the article is eight years old. Further, that discussion did not, as this one did, grapple with the topic's notability and the quality of the sourcing. Mackensen (talk) 05:01, 8 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Genealogical relationships of Presidents of the United States[edit]

Genealogical relationships of Presidents of the United States (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Being a horrible, badly sourced article full of OR is not necessarily a reason to delete. But beyond that, this article doesn't seem to meet our criteria for notability. Although there are plenty of sources discussing the relatives of US presidents, this article is about genealogical relationships between presidents and that doesn't seem to meet our criteria for notability. Dougweller (talk) 18:51, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete The information is actually trivial. Almost anyone can trace his or her relationship to anyone else if you go back far enough. BigJim707 (talk) 19:39, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Plenty of good sources. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 23:46, 30 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: If there are plenty of good sources, then where are they? Practically the only cited information is in the 'Presidents related to royalty' section. This article has had various maintenance templates, some for over a year, with no appreciable improvement in the various cited issues since the templates were placed on the article (notwithstanding possible WP:BLP concerns with all the unsourced assertions about living people).

When this article was up for an AfD in February, it had a page size of 60kB and now it is up to 166kB...where will the article stop? In the past nine months it has accumulated the asserted degrees of relationships of Sixth cousins, Seventh cousins, Eighth cousins, Ninth cousins, Tenth cousins, Eleventh cousins, Twelfth cousins, Thirteenth cousins, Fourteenth cousins, Fifteenth cousins, Sixteenth cousins, Seventeenth cousins, Eighteenth cousins and Nineteenth cousins...and that is just for the 'Indirect relatives' section, with many of those asserted relationships being once-removed, twice-removed, thrice-removed, four times removed, six times removed, seven times removed, nine times removed, ten times removed, plus one asserted relationship of 'half-cousins, thrice-removed' with the most tenuous claimed-relationship perhaps being either "George Washington's third great-grandfather's wife, 7th great-granddaughter's husband" or "fifth cousins in-law four times removed".

And the inline-citation references? I decided to take a look at Ref #1. It's from CBS News, and on the face of it that would seem reliable but then when the cite is verified, the actual news story extensively quotes and relies on Ancestry.Com, which, like Wikipedia, is a user-submitted resource. If this article could be improved according to Wikipedia standards and guidelines, then by all means, it should be retained, but I tend to think that, if (in its present state) it were submitted at Articles for Creation now, it most probably would not be accepted - I think that would be because the notability is simply not proven and the text's claims and assertions are not verified. Shearonink (talk) 01:50, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For another tenuous relationship there's always the asserted and unverified claim of a President's great aunt marrying a first cousin, three times removed of another Colonial politician's wife. Shearonink (talk) 15:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I need to emphasise again the issue of notability - what reliable sources discuss in depth "genealogical relationships between presidents"? Not the relationships of individual presidents to other people, "genealogical relationships between presidents". Dougweller (talk) 02:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If there are multiple, independent, published reliable sources that discuss the subject in-depth, I am unaware of that because the article has no form of cited material for the majority of its content. Shearonink (talk) 15:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: Unmaintainable list of mostly unsourced and unsourceable trivia and original research of no discernable notability and dubious encyclopedic value. My own extensive searches turned up nothing in the way of reliable sources that treat this topic as a coherent whole, and it is extremly unlikely that the bulk of the material can ever be properly verified, as it seems to have been cobbled together from very unreliable self-published sources created by non-experts. Most of the arguments for keeping this article in the last AfD boil down to WP:ITSUSEFUL, WP:ITSINTERESTING and WP:LOTSOFSOURCES. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 02:05, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. Trivial --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 03:04, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The previous AFD resulted in a very strong keep consensus, so the information is obviously useful. - Presidentman talk · contribs Random Picture of the Day (Talkback) 13:31, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment And yet none of the arguments were on policy grounds. Where are the reliable sources discussing genealogical relationships between presidents that show that this is a notable topic? "It's interesting" or "it's useful" are not policy reasons to keep an article. Dougweller (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - this is a perfect example of the dicta that "AfD is not for cleanup" and "please search online before coming to AfD". The article has inconsistent, irregular, or missing citations, but that is no reason for deletion. Every bit of information could, in theory, be sourced well, mostly Legacy.com, Peerage books, Snopes.com, Ancestry.com, periodicals, Presidential biographies, etc. Our core readership -- students -- will certainly want to find this information and the citations therein right here on our Project. Consensus does not change that quickly since the last AFD only eight months ago; even my mother's pregnancy lasted longer than that. The Community decided that it was notable less than a year ago. My standard for CCC is thus: if you would be laughed out of family court for re-litigating a settled child support or child custody issue, then you should not try to argue an AFD so soon. I can only think of one AfD that was re-nominated so soon, and only because Jimbo Wales got involved in that one. Now, I'd love to trim out the NN relationships (19th cousins and the like). Bearian (talk) 19:08, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Bearian, I did not nominate because it's a bad article, I nominated because I don't think it is about a notable subject. The community did not decide it was notable, I've already stated that the arguments in the last AfD weren't policy based. I should have added that the reason given for nominating it in the first place was not an acceptable reason either. I'd appreciate it if you'd deal with the reason I nominated it before suggesting I nominated it for being badly sourced. Dougweller (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

CommentSnopes.com probably gets more wrong than they get right. They are not a good source. --Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 20:19, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ancestry.com is not a reliable source either. Legacy.com would require loads of Original Research to get anything out of it, the same with periodicals, Presidential biographies - in short, the whole argument that the information is out there somewhere is not a response to a lack of notability. Agricolae (talk) 08:03, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I see nothing in the article that gives it notability. As it stands now, there is nothing notable about U.S. Presidents being "Ump"-teenth cousins AND halfway through the article it becomes a coatrack with the inclusion of "Presidents related to royalty". --Kansas Bear (talk) 07:32, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is just a collection of inconsequential genealogical curiosities that have more to do with the quirks of the American population than have any meaning in a scholarly sense. Anyone having significant ancestry from colonial New England has about a 50/50 chance of being related somehow, due to the nature of the population dynamics of the era. Precisely how is just a trivial detail. This is basically the genealogical equivalent of making a Wikipedia article out of a detailed description of somebody's stamp collection. Then as Kansas Bear pointed out, the second half of the article has nothing to do with the topic. Agricolae (talk) 08:03, 2 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - for what it's worth, yes, I think the topic is notable per WP:LIST and WP:GNG, because the material within can be sourced well, and because it does not need OR to do so. Bearian (talk) 18:23, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where is the topic "genealogical relationships between presidents" discussed in reliable sources in any depth? And I submit that this isn't a list article. Dougweller (talk) 05:50, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - From the above discussion, it seems that the objections are mainly directed at the first portion of the article, i. e., the inter-presidential relationships. Therefore, the second portion, i. e., relationship to royalty, may be considered for splitting into a new article, if there is consensus. The charts were removed by one editor due to problem with sourcing. The sources for the charts are given in some detail in the Bibliography#Webpages section of the article. Better sourcing can probably be done with someone with access to the books given in the Bibliography#Books section. Therefore, the charts may be considered for reinstitution with improved sourcing. Members shown in the first chart have separate biographical articles on them in Wikipedia, wherefrom their parentage and progeny was taken. Obviously, the first chart can be properly sourced; but members shown in the first chart are so notable that the chart is in the nature of Paris being the capital of France. But as I was one of the editors of the royalty portion of the article, so I don't want to tamper with the article during deletion consideration process. Hereby I request permission to split the royalty portion, if there is consensus. Hrishikes (talk) 05:45, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No. That will just make two unsupported, OR, non-notable pages. Nothing in the Web pages section is a WP:RS (except perhaps the first, but it is just there for the technical background). No genealogy on the web is reliable unless it is produced by a recognized expert, and there are very few of those. Many of the footnotes are also to unreliable web pages (notes 2-11 & 15-18 are definitely non-WP:RS; 12 is iffy, being a local newspaper puff-piece, I haven't seen 13). Working down the list of books, the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th & 8th trace between medievals (either royalty or barons) and American immigrants. They do not address relationships to presidents. The 9th is a book about American immigration between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution, and a search for the word 'President' reveals no relevant matches. The 10th is a set of tables that show the genealogies of the royal dynasties of Europe, with their coats of arms - no presidents there either. I have not seen Weir's work (the 5th), but given her overall body, I see no reason to expect it would give lines of descents to presidents. The 6th I have also not seen, but again it looks British. Thus 9 out of the ten are not addressing the subject, and require a significant amount of WP:OR to be used - these are source used by people who are researching the question, not written by such people to report their findings. That leaves the Gary Boyd Roberts book. He is a compiler of published studies showing ancestries of famous people, presidents, Lady Di, colonial immigrants, etc. He claims no expertise, but is careful to draw his material only from publications in respected journals, and communications with respected scholars. I don't know which of the suggested lines appear in his book. The compilations are not peer-reviewed, but the author is reasonably well thought of for his judgment and care (i.e. he won't just publish anything, he only wants to include what can be reliably claimed). The question is, does one relationship-collector publishing a book, however carefully compiled, make for notability? One way or the other, this page needs a whole lot of trimming. It would not surprise me at all if a lot of the relationships and descents are entirely unsupported, or even outright incorrect. Agricolae (talk) 07:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 14:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep It seems easy enough to find sources which discuss these relationships, e.g. American Government: "Twenty-six presidents have been related to other presidents; these relationships encompass two father–son combinations...". Warden (talk) 17:11, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - The unsourced material is easily sourced, and I'm not seeing a reasonable argument against the notability of the subject. --Dante Alighieri | Talk 19:16, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• delete I doubt there are good sources for any of this except for a few fairly close relationships, and in any case the whole president-to-president section is unsourced. The descent from royalty section I would have to describe as legendary even though has sources; the other section is manifest trivia. I am not as knowledgeable about the field as Agricolae is, but I see no reason to dissent from his picture of what sources are presented. Mangoe (talk) 20:54, 7 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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.