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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Varvara Semennikova

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Unscintillating (talk | contribs) at 03:11, 27 November 2016 (Varvara Semennikova: re). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Varvara Semennikova (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Aside from more specific considerations such as WP:1E (her alleged notability stems from maybe being very old but maybe not, thus the one event I refer to here is "getting really old" not "an individual birthday") and WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, this individual does not seem to meet the general guidelines of WP:N. There is no Wikipedia policy that grants automatic notability to people of an extreme age (numerous AfDs on the "oldest" individuals have been kept or deleted based on their individual merits), which makes WP:N the relevant policy. Specifically, I do not see any evidence of non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent third-party sources. She seems to have had brief bursts of attention and a handful of clone or near-clone obituaries after her death, meaning that she lacks the sustained coverage that would distinguish her from thousands of other individuals claiming (falsely or otherwise) to be very old. There's nothing here of encyclopedic merit that could not be covered by the longevity claims article. Canadian Paul 14:24, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete Two of the three sources are dead, but appear to be simply routine obits mentioning this doubtful longevity claim (which is in keeping with the common "people in Region R live a long time" trope). EEng 09:59, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Utterly non-routine obituaries that back a strong claim of notability, as the world's oldest person. That the claim is unverified and potentially false is no more a reason to delete this article than to delete the articles for Black helicopter, grey alien or Bigfoot; nor do sources have to be readily linkable to be reliable and verifiable. Alansohn (talk) 03:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 03:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 22:52, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as a snowball's chance in hell given we've clearly stated not all such subjects are inherited notability, and especially not in a case where "it may have been". SwisterTwister talk 07:57, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep  The claim is verified by one source (the National Archive of Yakutia) that this was the oldest person alive in August 2008.  If someone needs a notability guideline, Anybio#1 and Anybio#2 appear to apply.  The important thing is that this is not Wikipedia's opinion, but the opinion of sources we consider to be reliable, such as it is.  To some extent, deleting the information would be suppressing information we believe to be reliable.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:26, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment  All of the sources in the article are online.  One of them is a reprint of one of the others.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:26, 27 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]