Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nathan Lloyd Smith

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS.

The votes were 4 delete, 3 keep, 1 merge. dbenbenn | talk 22:20, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nathan Lloyd Smith[edit]

A Canadian soldier who died in a friendly fire incident. Sarge Baldy 23:08, Feb 5, 2005 (UTC)

Is there an article on this friendly fire incident that we could redirect this to? RJFJR 00:32, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
Delete, not notable, Wikipedia is not a memorial. Megan1967 02:23, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Marc Leger, Ainsworth Dyer and Richard Green died in the same incident. If we were deleting individual articles and merging into one article about the incident, Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, the Americans who shot them, would have to go there too. Samaritan 23:24, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I agree with Samaritan. All of the above articles should be re-directed to Friendly fire. If not, then my vote is to keep. --YUL89YYZ 16:34, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Merge and redirect. The friendly fire incident was a major news story in Canada at the time, but I'm not sure that the individual victims names' all warrant an article. The story is already covered under the name of the pilot that bombed the Canadians, Harry Schmidt. (Incidentally, William Umbach isn't really notable either, and could also be merged and redirected.) --TenOfAllTrades 00:21, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. I hope the soldiers receive fitting memorials for their sacrifice, but Wikipedia isn't the place for that. All of these articles should be deleted. As for the pilots, they aren't notable either in an encyclopdic sense. I don't think their names have stayed in the public mind. Those articles should be deleted also. The incident is notable, though, and a description of it should be incorporated into the appropriate article about the Iraq war. --BM 16:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This was an incident which received heavy coverage in the Canadian media; its relative lack of coverage in American media was part of the story. I wouldn't object to merging into a single article on the incident which contained information about all four -- but doing that within the pilot's article isn't sufficient, because the pilot can't be categorized as a Canadian-related topic. Short of that happening, however, these need to be kept; the incident was significant enough that it's absolutely essential to have some kind of article(s) on the topic. Bearcat 18:51, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of a single article on the topic; not so much because of classication but because it's the incident itself that's notable, not the individuals involved in it themselves. Sarge Baldy 20:32, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Keep or create article on the incident and redirect. Spinboy 20:46, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete or redirect to an article about the incident; Wikipedia is not a memorial. --Idont Havaname 00:18, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Addendum to previous vote: can anybody give me a legitimate reason why Eugene Armstrong, Jack Hensley, Kim Sun-il, Kenneth Bigley, Shosei Koda, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, Margaret Hassan, Seif Adnan Kanaan, Joseph Menusa, Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr. and Johnny Micheal Spann, just to name a few, are notable specifically for having died in Afghanistan or Iraq, but Canadians who died aren't? (I certainly won't question Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl, both of whose notability is absolutely beyond question, but this is dangerously close to landing in "different rules for Canadians" again.) Bearcat 05:44, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- You could be correct that there is some systemic bias that works against Canadians. If there were, I don't think the way it operates is that some American reads an article and thinks "Oh, it's about a Canadian; Canadians aren't notable; lets nominate on VfD", although it is possible I guess. I think it is more likely that one or both of the following is true: (1) a lot more articles about non-notable Americans slip in without anybody noticing than articles about Canadians, so there are always plenty of examples of articles about Americans that haven't received any VfD attention; or (2) the people who notice these marginal, or below-the-threshold articles are more likely to be Americans, and the names vaguely ring a bell, so they never stop to think whether the people are notable, or whether it is simply that the names are connected to some incident that was in the news and which has stuck in their minds. If they read the article, they remember the incident, and apparently the attitude of many people is that if an incident was notable the people involved in it were notable. Whereas with the Canadian articles there is a greater chance that someone reads the article and thinks "I never heard of this person", and moreover they have no idea that the incident related in the article is very notable in Canada. --BM 02:38, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete this and similar articles. Tragic, but not encyclopedic. Gamaliel 05:47, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.