Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ohio presidents

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 is that this topic is inherently a novel synthesis. — TKD::Talk 17:54, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ohio presidents

Ohio presidents (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Maybe this article can be saved. There are versions in the history that are better than the current one (if anyone reverts to a different one, please make sure to add the AfD notice). The problem is that, though this is a good topic for a history essay, it's not an encyclopedia topic unless what the various people discussed here have in common is clear and incontrovertible. I think it can't be; I've looked for sources (perhaps not as hard as you will, so feel free to prove me wrong on this), and all I can find are Ohio pride-type websites and opinionated pieces about corruption in the Ohio Republican party. This could be a subsection in Ohio, since no one would deny that the sheer fact of Ohio's 8 presidents is of interest, and if the corruption charges could be sourced one could imagine an article History of the Ohio Republican party in the nineteenth century, or some such, that would detail them, but as it is, this is original research and either not NPOV or, essentially, trivia. I'm interested to hear other opinions. Chick Bowen 02:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Delete OR and trivia, as stated in the nom. The article basically says "there were seven US presidents from Ohio- now here's what happened to have occurred while they happened to have been in office." The only actual information is completely unrelated to the actual point of the article. -- Kicking222 02:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Looking at the past revisions original research seems to be a problem. As far as current factual information goes, all we have is 8 presidents from Ohio. The article in the past attempted to assert the historical notability of "the Ohio presidents", as though they were a subject of significant interest in American history. Now, I've never heard of these "Ohio presidents" as a group before, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is because they are not an actual subject of study. Either way, going with the old revisions is clearly accepting original research, but to remove the original research, all we are left with is the names of 8 presidents connected by the fact that they are from Ohio. Neither are grounds for an article. Calgary 04:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Question Any desire to merge viable content into say List of United States Presidents by place of primary affiliation? FrozenPurpleCube 05:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Really, WP:SYNTH is in play here. Writing articles about "Presidents from Ohio" cannot really be done without the synthesis because you're tying up people who are not directly related Corpx 05:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Tell that to the New York Times [1] or the Washington Post[2]. There is probably more, given that there is a ton of study of state influence on national elections, which well, leads to things like candidates being selected because they were from Ohio. [3] is one example, though more are about Virginia than Ohio, Ohio does crop up there. Whether or not the current contents of this article reflect any of that, I'm not sure. FrozenPurpleCube 05:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

After reading the free preview given by the NYT and Washington Post articles, I see no synthesis in there and nor do I see any reason to suspect much synthesis in the articles themselves Corpx 06:09, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Guess I'm reading it a bit differently than you. However, I think the adoption of the slogan "Mother of Presidents" (split with Virginia), is enough to show some potential there. May not be best in this article though. FrozenPurpleCube 14:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep, because of availability of such reliable references as Buckeye Presidents: Ohioans in the White House (Paperback) that can and should be cited in such an article. Best, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 05:29, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• You can look at the index here, and all it does is talk about each of the presidents separately, and not synthesize a relationship. Corpx 05:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Indeed, it's not just the content that's OR, it's the topic. Of course there are any number of sources about those guys, but we need sources that point to a relationship. Chick Bowen 22:02, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. All this is is synthesis of disparate topics. It's worthwhile to mention in Ohio, say, that it's the birthplace of N Presidents, but it's not enough of a connection to discuss them all in the same article. --Dhartung | Talk 21:49, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Actually, some of us would deny that the sheer fact of Ohio's 8 presidents is of interest. It's one of the less interesting bits of presidential trivia, like all the presidents who were born in Virginia, or all the presidents whose first names began with "J". I do like the attempt to add a cool sounding comment about "the apogee of graft and corruption in U.S. public life" to an otherwise indiscriminate list of topics. Besides, there are Ohio Governors, but no Ohio Presidents. Mandsford 00:51, 22 August 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.