Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Bassett (clergyman)

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 Keep as per positive consensus and no calls for deletion outside of the nominator. The single call for article merger can be continued via the article's Talk Page. A non-admin closure. And Adoil Descended (talk) 00:16, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Richard Bassett (clergyman)

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Found in a random search, I'm not convinced that he is notable. Hesitating to nominate this as it is my first AfD and it was created by a very good editor, but I don't see how any of the roles he's listed as having had make him notable. Some of the text has also been lifted straight from a source as well. Lukeno94 (talk) 10:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Methodism for lack of a better target at this point. I cannot find anything about this fellow other than what the article now says, and that is pretty much a paraphrase of the Welsh National Biography page. On the other hand the bare fact of his Anglican-Methodist connection is mentioned in many places, suggesting his importance as an exemplar. I'm leaving a note at the Methodism work group to see if they can find him a better home. Mangoe (talk) 13:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Gosh, this takes me back... something I wrote 4.5 years ago. I can't do much to add to the article at the moment since my work internet is randomly blocking possible extra sources on the grounds of "pornography", which I suspect is unlikely to be the case (unless Bassett lived a much more interesting life than hitherto suspected). There's a 1860 biography of him too. He's included in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography which started life as a paper-based work in the 1950s, and at the back of my mind I have a feeling that there's a Wikipedia principle that we should have articles on people and topics covered by other encyclopaedic works such as that. (I must have a look for that principle too...) Incidentally, I'm not sure that it's fair to say that some of the text has been "lifted straight from a source" - there are only a few ways in which a few basic biographical details for a clergyman (birth, education, ordination, parishes, death) and a bit about his role can be worded, and another encyclopaedia's biographical description of him is therefore going to cover the same ground in much the same way. But I'm probably not the best person to judge whether I've been guilty of copyvio. Bencherlite ^Talk 14:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's a Welsh priest, isn't it? A very dead one, too. He should be in the bleddy history books, now!
And he is, if one looks. Historian Roger Lee Brown covered him in fairly detailed fashion, including such things as his salary when he died, in Brown 1993, p. 77–78. That's one history article with a birth to death biography. The Dictionary of Welsh Biography, as cited in the article, is another. According to this WWW page, which has a third birth-to-death biography, there's an "excellent Victorian book on his life" in Cardiff library. So that's at least three birth-to-death biographies available as sources for an encyclopaedia article on Basset The Vicar, and possibly a fourth.
There are, furthermore, several minor sources for details here and there. His death was reported contemporaneously in The Gentleman's magazine. Various books confirm or add little details, like details of livings in Orrin 1988, p. 141. There's lovely, see! ☺
- Brown, Roger Lee (1993). "Parsons in perplexity. Methodist Clergy in and around the Vale of Glamorgan, c. 1740-1811". Morgannwg. 37. Glamorgan History Society: 56–82.
- Orrin, Geoffrey R. (1988). Medieval churches of the Vale of Glamorgan. D. Brown. ISBN 9780905928807.
Uncle G (talk) 15:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- My "concern" here is that most of the material is, not to put too fine a point on it, uninteresting. As best I understand it, this is the sort of material that one can find out about any Anglican clergy of the period, but it doesn't tell us anything that can pull him out of the pack. This is not material that requires more than a one line mention as a late example of an Anglican-Methodist clergy connection. Mangoe (talk) 15:26, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Asteroids, railway stations, species of beetle, people who star in Disney movies, Laplace transforms, Classical Greek playwrights, U.S. state politicians, German pop groups, and the commune of Bourg-la-Reine are all uninteresting to someone. We don't work that way. Go and see Jimbo's No et al.. We're writing a reference encyclopaedia, not one of those "world's ten biggest/fastest XYZ" books, and notability is not a function of your or my subjective interest. It's a function of the existences, depths, and provenances of sources already documenting the subject.
    Including people who are a fully documented part of the enduring historical record has been part of our Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies since pretty much the first revision of that page. It's fair to say that secondary source history books and articles documenting birth, education, career, and death, as all three of the aforecited do, qualifies as being fully documented. This subject is not a mere footnote. That you or I might be bored silly reading about the life and works of a 19th century Welsh vicar is neither here nor there. Wikipedia is here (in such cases) for the readers who aren't us, are interested in such things, and want to know about them. It is not deletion policy to stop serving those readers because some editors don't share their interests.
    Uncle G (talk) 16:04, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Don't get me started on asteroids, and as for the others, there are standards which ensure that not every example of the genus gets its specific article. I am in fact someone who could potentially have interest in any random Anglican clergyman; but I'm finding it hard to maintain interest in the minutae of this clergyman, precisely because they remain minutae which don't appear to play into his one real interesting detail. "Subjective interest" works the other way, as well: the fact that genealogy buffs and the like seize upon this data doesn't make it notable; everything is interesting to somebody.

I would add that there doesn't seem to be much written here about the historical context in which this fellow's claim to notability might be established. The fact that I couldn't find any less general article than Methodism itself to refer to him indicates that a better direction to take is to write a separate article on the history of early Methodism that mentions him in passing. For a variety of reasons, I'm not at the moment anyway the person to write that article. But surely someone could do it, perhaps even you. Mangoe (talk) 16:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As far as I'm concerned (and others if precedent is to be believed), having an entry in a national dictionary of biography generally makes an individual notable enough for an article on Wikipedia, since their standards of notability are generally higher than ours (i.e. they generally exclude the many thousands of minor musicians, starlets and sportspeople that we include just because they have had a minor hit, featured in a cult TV series or played in a single professional game). His connections with the Methodist church make him unusual enough, which is presumably why the Dictionary of Welsh Biography has an article on him. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:19, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 16:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wales-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 16:24, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Uncle G seems to have found sufficient evidence that he would have passed GNG in his lifetime and around the time of his death and later. Whether we would think he should have been notable is irrelevant for WP because once notable, always notable. In any case, the development of Welsh Methodism, and its relationship with the the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, is a significant historical topic in its own right. Whether many people are interested in it does not matter either because if you are, you might well want to read about it in WP. --AJHingston (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Article has references that demonstrate notability. St Anselm (talk) 19:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: A relatively well-referenced article (references discussed above), showing his notability. This individual was notable in his time and is still notable for being "the last Anglican clergyman in Wales to be associated with the Methodists." -- Hazhk ^{Talk to me} 20:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - if someone improves this article with the sources found I'm more than willing to close this AfD early. I won't do so until someone does, however (I think that seems fair). Lukeno94 (talk) 21:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Notable enough for his time, and surely of enough interest for some readers. First Light (talk) 06:07, 20 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- If Dictionary of Welsh Biography considers him worth having an article on (as it does), WP should regard him as notable. The content of this article and DWB are similar in scope. It would be necessary for some one to locate a copy of E. Morgan, Home Light, or, Brief memoirs and letters of the Rev. R. Bassett, Vicar of Colwinstone, and E. Bassett, Esq., Glamorganshire, 1860, which it cites in order to expand the article. The DWB article describes him as a Methodist clergyman. His death marks the last link between the Methodists and their Anglican roots; that is notable. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2012 (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.