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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joshua Beckford

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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. JohnCD (talk) 22:00, 24 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Joshua Beckford (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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I'm not sure what our notability criteria for child prodigies are, but completing an online university course and receiving some local media coverage afterwards doesn't seem to be enough in my eyes. bender235 (talk) 18:16, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • delete mostly because the article is such an awful parrot repetition of some awful journalism in these sloppiest of sources. He did not "attend" Oxford, for any useful definition of attendance. He's an extremely smart kid and no doubt he will amount to much in due course. But the current article is doing no-one any favours. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:34, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete He completed a university course, not even got a degree, just completed one class, 5 years ago and there was press about it. He may well become a major and significant contributor to the development of human knowledge, but that has not happened yet, so we should delete the article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:33, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Crucially, he didn't "complete a university course", as the phrase would be interpreted by an average, reasonable reader. "Completed a university course" would be read by a UK reader as implying that "completed" implied a three year course of study and that "university course" led to a BA. UK universities, and Oxford, run their courses on such a basis. US-like notions of much shorter and modular courses are rare. Instead he only completed (with great success) an unusual short course, specifically for gifted children, run by Oxford University. The sources used here are sloppy, mostly because they're not making such a distinction clear. Andy Dingley (talk) 07:08, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, I don't care whether you delete the article or not, I'm not gonna fight its deletion, watching this kid on Youtube I just thought he was worth a Wikipedia article. Suffice to say that all the politics highlighted by everyone here were not in my mind when I created that article. The only thing I was thinking about were the 5 pillars of Wikipedia and that Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia opened for everyone to contribute. Bobbyshabangu talk 10:07, 19 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bobbyshabangu: it sure is, but Wikipedia has (and must have) notability criteria, otherwise it will become unmanageable. --bender235 (talk) 13:49, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 02:51, 23 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 02:51, 23 September 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.