Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reginald Logan Rait

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 speedy keep. The nom hasn't even bothered with searching for sources as these have all been nominated within seconds of each other. No objections to speedy renomination by anyone except the nom. (non-admin closure) –Davey2010^Talk 01:35, 19 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reginald Logan Rait

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Failed parliamentary candidate. Uhooep (talk) 03:23, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: He was notable for being the youngest candidate to stand at the 1923 UK General Election. Graemp (talk) 08:40, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 13:34, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 13:34, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep No reason to delete. Andrew D. (talk) 21:19, 13 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Wikipedia does not confer a notability freebie for being the youngest, oldest, fattest, thinnest, etc., person to do an otherwise non-notable thing — with the extremely rare exception that would require a far greater volume of sourceability than has been shown here (such as the media firestorm that ate Christine O'Donnell in 2010), an unelected candidate for office is normally eligible for a Wikipedia article only if they were already notable enough for a Wikipedia article for some other reason independent of their candidacy. But no claim of preexisting notability has been made here, and the sourcing is almost entirely to primary sources with the few reliable ones not even approaching the outermost suburbs of the volume necessary to grant him the O'Donnell treatment for the candidacy itself. If he'd been the youngest person ever to run for the British Parliament in the entire history of Britain, then there might be a case for inclusion on that basis — though even then, it would still be dependent on the quality of sourcing and would not be an automatic inclusion freebie — but merely being the youngest non-winning candidate in one particular year doesn't cut it in the slightest. Bearcat (talk) 17:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It is not the job of Wikipedia to confer notability on anyone but to recognise when that notability had been conferred by those that had a greater appreciation of the subject matter. How notable was it in 1923 for someone aged 21 to stand for the UK parliament? Given the amount of national press coverage his candidacy received at the time, it was very notable, far in excess of the average candidate. Britain's premier weekly magazine The Illustrated London News was among those who covered his candidacy and part of their coverage is used in the article, reliably sourced with in-line citation. The portrait of him in the article comes from this coverage. I could have chosen any number of sources of the time but settled on this one and saw no need to duplicate reliable sources. There is nothing wrong with using reliable primary sources to supplement an article, which I have done here. People are entitled to their opinion as to what constitutes notability but your opinion seems based on America in 2010 rather than from the perspective of Britain in the 1923. I think we should assess Rait on the latter not the former. Candidates are not inherently non-notable just because they did not get elected, we need to assess them on their individual merits. One of the ways we do that is to assess if they received national press coverage. Those are the relevant points we should take from WP:POLOUTCOMES. Graemp (talk) 07:08, 16 March 2016 (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.