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 no consensus to delete. bd2412 T 02:55, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Charlotte Hughes (supercentenarian) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Another non-notable oldster. Though the article claims she received public recognition, the lack of sources gives the lie to the idea that, apart from her one meeting with Margaret Thatcher, it was anything other than routine coverage. Once stripped of the irrelevant and grossly over-detailed filler material about meeting up with Maggie for tea, plus the fluff about being the oldest person in an arbitrarily defined geographical area a country (modified 20:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC) in the interest of clarity, accuracy, and deescalation) we're left with WP:NOPAGE; maybe a minibio on List of British supercentenarians, but certainly not a full article. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:44, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• merge and/or Redirect to one of the various lists of oldest people or to Marske-by-the-Sea (where she lived and is mentioned). As the oldest verified person from a major country her name is definitely a plausible search term so outright deletion is unhelpful. Thryduulf (talk) 01:42, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and redirect This article fails WP:GNG, WP:BIO1E, WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:NOPAGE. There is no policy that the "oldest x" is notable and this article is packed with longevity fancruft like what year of Queen Victoria's reign she was born in, how many monarchs and prime ministers she lived under, had tea with a famous person, and got to stay in a nice hotel on someone else's dime. Her name, life dates, and nationality are best handled on the four lists they already reside on. This WP:PERMASTUB is not needed. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete what Newshunter12 said. Spot on. Legacypac (talk) 08:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to a mini-bio on List of British supercentenarians. The Brits do love their elders. — JFG ^talk 00:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong keep. This nomination seemed to be based on a justifiable exasperation with the GRG's habit of spewing cruft, rather than on a proper examination of the topic. Neither the nominator nor any of the other editors commenting give any indication of having done any WP:BEFORE research at all.

Additionally, I taker issue with the nominator's assertion that Hughes was the oldest person in an arbitrarily defined geographical area. She was in fact the longest-lived person ever in the United Kingdom, which is major OECD nation rather than an arbitrarily defined geographical area.

The article probably meets WP:GNG as it currently stands, since there appears to be at least two substantive articles on her: BBC and Guardian.

However, it was a trivial exercise to find more sources in The Times archive and in Newsbank:

• Paul Wilkinson. "UK's oldest person dies at 115." Times [London, England] 18 Mar. 1993: (~200 words)
• "Widow, 110, flies on." Times [London, England] 5 Aug. 1987: 2. (~60 words)
• "110-year-old Charlotte Hughes loves the Big Apple" Newswire August 5, 1987 | UPI NewsTrack bAuthor: DON MULLEN | Section: News 368 Words
  • "A Supersonic Birthday" Newspaper August 5, 1987 | San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Page: 3 | Section: NEWS 51 Words
  • "110-year-old English woman visits New York" NewswireAugust 5, 1987 | UPI NewsTrack Section: News 429 Words
• "Loyal customer" - Charlotte Hughes Newspaper September 14, 1991 | Times, The (London, England) Section: Home news 35 Words "Charlotte Hughes, aged 114, believed to be Britain's oldest person, had 100 years' of custom with Barclays Bank in Middlesbrough marked by a message from Sir John Quinton, its chairman, and a gift of a Victorian sovereign"
• "115 TODAY..THANKS TO BACON, EGGS AND BRANDY" NewspaperAugust 1, 1992 | Daily Mirror, The / The Sunday Mirror (London, England) Author: STEPHEN WHITE | Page: 7 | Section: NEWS 254 Words

There may be more; I gave up checking the hits once I had the list above. But with all that lot, she more that meets GNG. Hughes had clearly been receiving bouts of significant coverage for at least 7 years before her death.

A decade ago, there was a steady stream of GRG-dervied articles on clearly non-notable people. Sadly, it now seems that the pendulum has swung the other way, and that some deletionists are chucking articles into AFD without doing the required preparation. @The Blade of the Northern Lights, would you please be kind enough to withdraw this nomination? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:32, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All countries are arbitrarily defined geographical areas, I'm hardly the biggest Yuval Harari fan but he's absolutely right on that. I'd be OK with a minibio, but how does the material add up to a full article? She lived a long time, and died. It doesn't take a standalone article to express as much. Plus, merging her to the list of British supercentenarians is more informative; there's plenty enough space to give her a minibio, and then readers will be much more readily able to find out more about other old British people (and learning about old British people, presumably, was why they'd search for her in the first place, because she's not notable in any other way). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:40, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. The boundaries of countries are usually defined by geographical features and/or by the outcomes of wars. Mountains, oceans and huge piles of dead human bodies are hardly arbitrary.

The use of country boundaries to denote a category is not arbitrary; it is adopting the most commonly-used existing set of geographical divisions of human populations. That is why we have for example, the United Nations rather than the United Arbitrarily Defined Geographical Areas, why sportspeople go to the Olympic Games as representatives of nations rather than of arbitrarily defined geographical areas, and why human travel is regulated by passports issued by nations rather than by arbitrarily defined geographical areas. (Try crossing any international border with a passport issued in the name of an arbitrarily defined geographical area, and see how that goes).

A standalone article can easily link to a list, so there is no advantage to merging it to the list unless it is absurdly short and/or fails notability tests. In the case of Hughes, the sources I found above are sufficient to double the size of the existing article, taking it beyond stub length. We don't, for example, routinely merge notable sportspeople or writers or politicians or scientists to a list, and I see no reason to merge notable supercentenarians. Sure, merge the non-notable; but this one is notable.

When I approached this AFD, I expected that my !vote would be to merge. However, the availability of sources persuaded me otherwise. I am disappointed to see that having made an AFD nom without doing the required WP:BEFORE, you seem to be pursuing your predetermined option even tho the facts have changed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:33, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: I appreciate your search for more coverage, and I do not put Ms. Hughes notability into question. She is, however, exclusively notable for reaching an advanced age, as the sources you found amply demonstrate: each of those reports talks about her age as the defining reason for covering her. There is consequently very little chance to expand the article, because we are not supposed to mention minor anecdotes such as flying to New York for your birthday or being a loyal customer of Barclays Bank… The suggestion to merge her article into a mini-bio on the list of British centenarians matches guidance in WP:PAGEDECIDE, part of our notability guidelines, whereby coverage of the subject within the broader context of the target page is more informative to readers. — JFG ^talk 07:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@JFG: I think that is a mis-application of WP:PAGEDECIDE. That guidance is to ensure that for example, we have one cohesive article on a small town rather than a series of stubs on each of its streets. It does not mention using list articles as merge targets, and does not recommend creating omnibus set-of-people articles for notable people.

I also disagree with your application of the minor anecdotes rule. Flying somewhere for a birthday would indeed be trivial in most cases, but in the case of Hughes it is a) directly related to the reason for her notability, and b) received extensive coverage in multiple major quality newspapers. Again, being a loyal bank customer is trivia; but being a customer of the same branch for 100 years is exceptional, and possibly globally unique.

I am sad to see that the reaction against GRG-spam is producing such a disproportionate response. It seems to have moved far beyond the well-justified cleanup of non-notables to an outright hostility to the topic, which breaches WP:NPOV and several other core policies. This hostility is several driving editors to disregard substantive coverage in multiple major news sources. It seems to me that if you want to some rule which imposes uniquely onerous criteria on longevity-related articles, then you need to run an RFC to seek consensus for it, rather than stretching existing guidelines with an interpretation which is not in the text of the guideline and is not applied to other topics.

I have to say that I am shocked by the level of what seems to be uncritical groupthink in this discussion. Four editors responded without challenging the glaring lack of WP:BEFORE, which is an alarming omission. And now we have several editors effectively arguing that no amount of coverage in reliable sources can justify a standalone article.

A similar process of contra-policy groupthink is evident in multiple discussions at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 7, where multiple editors followed each other to promote actions for which they had no policy-based justification. It is notable that no less than three of the first five contributors to this discussion (@The Blade of the Northern Lights,Legacypac, and Newshunter12) were amongst the team of editors who followed each other around that CFD page to repeatedly insist on perverse and unjustified outcomes. The whole thing seems to derive from WT:WikiProject Longevity#AfDs_of_individual_biographies, which is based on the premise advanced in this edit[1]] by @JFG that subjects lacking independent notability beyond their age should be merged. There is no policy basis for that assertion, and it is very disappointing to see the extent of tag-teaming in the wake of it. WP:BIO1E refers to people notable solely through coverage of a single event, and it is a patently ridiculous stretch to use that policy as grounds for merging an article about someone who received sustained substantive coverage for a least seven years, across multiple events, solely because they all relate on one attribute. (Many, possibly most, short biographical articles elate to one attribute. For example, we have hundreds of thousands of short articles on minor sportspeople who only ever played for one team, or minor politicians who only ever represented one party in one elected office, and there is zero practice of merging them into one blob article of "Foo Party member of the Ruritanian Parliament" or "Players on the Foo sports team".)

We also have @The Blade of the Northern Lights's bizarre and sustained assertion above that a country is a arbitrarily defined geographical area, again without any policy basis. I note that nationality is one the defining attributes mentioned in the lede of nearly every biographical article per MOS:OPENPARABIO, and that categorisation by nationality is specifically recommended in WP:Categorization_of_people#By_nationality_and_occupation. TBOTNL's position is not just making up policy to suit a purpose; it is flagrantly contradicting long-established policy and guidelines.

I value the cleanup of GRG cruft, but I am alarmed by what I see here. It seems to me to be something close to a POV-pushing cabal whose conduct is starting to mirror some of the policy-averse POV-pushing of the GRG/WOP cabal which caused such drama a decade ago. The GRG/WOP crowd's tendentiousness went through multiple ANI/AFD dramas before eventually ending up at Arbcom with lots of sanctions. Please do not follow them down the same path. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:31, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Many, possibly most, short biographical articles elate to one attribute – Personally I'm for as much elating as possible, other things being equal. EEng 13:50, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for finding a joke in my typo, @EEng. We all need more things to smile at, and — as you say — as much elating as possible.

And now that you are here, it would be good to see an experienced editor like yourself commenting on the substance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:40, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You meant to say "experienced and respected", no doubt. EEng 03:18, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My category nominations are an altogether separate issue, you can chalk that up to me not being all that familiar with that area of Wikipedia. Besides, that's basically a one-off situation, and once those come to whatever resolution there aren't a ton more sitting around. As to this page, it should be clear I agree with JFG, but I don't want to bludgeon this discussion so I'll bow out. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 13:47, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @The Blade of the Northern Lights. I had hoped that you would reconsider your stance against actual policy and guidelines, but it seems not. So we'll leave it to the closer to weigh the policy-based arguments per WP:CLOSEAFD. My reading of WP:Non-admin closure is that this AFD should be closed by an admin. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:06, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment User:BrownHairedGirl has turned into a crusader against Wikiproject WP:LONGEVITY. This is an area subject to DS. Invoking Non-Admin closure pretty much says the other voters (in this case experienced editors) are full of it and shoild be ignored. Using a bunch of "auto notable" athlete pages, that many people don't think should be allowed either, as justification for keeping pages on people who only got a little press for not dying as quickly as others is a WP:WAX. Anyone that lives to 100 or so is going to have done a bunch of things a long time and lived through a bunch of history. Like Sarah Knauss said on being told she was the world's oldest person - "So what". Legacypac (talk) 19:15, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Legacypac, no I am not a crusader against Wikiproject WP:LONGEVITY. I could become one if you persist, but so far I have objected vociferously to some of the actions by members of that project in the last few days, viz:

1. The massive disruption caused at WP:CFD by a slew of near-identical nominations by Legacypac and TBOTNL, which raised the same issue and should have made as a single group nomination
2. The blatant tag-teaming by members of that project in those ~dozen CFD discussions, in which they parroted a line that had been agreed somewhere else without regard to its disruptive consequences
3. The tag-teaming at this AFD, in which WP:LONGEVITY members piled in to ignore the lack of WP:BEFORE
4. The repeated instances on this page of WP:LONGEVITY members blatantly misrepresenting policy or inventing policy

Now we have Legacypac continuing the same shoddy game.

• Legacypac refers to a bunch of "auto notable" athlete pages, that many people don't think should be allowed either. "Many people don't think" is not how policy is formed on en.wp; we decide by WP:CONSENSUS, rather than by one of two editors taking it upon themsleves to act in the name of what they believe to be some silent majority. If you think that policy is wrong, then open a WP:RFC to change it, but don't simply dismiss it on the grounds that you reckon some other people support your view.
• We have existing policies on notability. They do not give automatic notability to long-lived people (as the GRG crew wanted), but nor do they exclude notability being formed on the basis of longevity (as the WP:LONGEVITY believe). If you want to make it part of the notability guidelines, then open a WP:RFC

If, as Legacypac claims, the WP:LONGEVITY members are experienced editors, they should know better than to conduct themselves like this. I can recall no encounters with WP:LONGEVITY until yesterday, but I have been appalled by what I have seen in the last 24 hours.

And finally ... yes, if the WP:LONGEVITY members here persist in their misrepresentations of policy and their fabrications of poliy, then the closer of this discussion is obliged to ignore them. That is long-standing XFD policy, and if the closer fails to discount the nonsense being peddled here, then the closure will be rapidly taken to DRV. I urge WP:LONGEVITY members to clean up their act instead of shooting the messenger. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:44, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Even Admins are subject to policies against casting aspirations and making personal attacks. Nominating categories for deletion that contain one or three pages is not disruption it is cleanup. Exercise caution. Legacypac (talk) 19:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As stated before, the article and category issues are altogether unrelated. The category issue was the result of categories being a Rube Goldberg machine with which I am unfamiliar, and which I seem to have inadvertently helped create a mess; it was unintentional, and discussion of the issue there belongs there. This is about whether an article should be kept or deleted. As I seem to stand accused of murdering people today, or something, accusations of fabrications are fairly mild... but I, anyway, am not arguing no one can be notable for living a long time. I should also say I have great respect for BrownHairedGirl's work all over Wikipedia, so I neither take nor intend any of this to be personal; no reason to get stressed over Wikipedia matters. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) @Legacypac: I stand by what I have written above, and make no apology or retraction. if you believe that my comments on conduct are unacceptable, feel free to bring them to wider attention at WP:ANI. But before doing so, you may want to actually read WP:NPA, and esp WP:NPA#What_is_considered_to_be_a_personal_attack? .... and also beware of WP:BOOMERANG. Personally, I'd prefer not to have all the drama of an ANI trip, but if you do want a spotlight shone on WP:LONGEVITY's activities as documented here, then go right ahead.

@The Blade of the Northern Lights, I do understand that the making of the multiple nominations arose out of lack of experience with CFD. That's a good faith mistake, but it became problematic because of the subsequent tag-teaming in which several editors expressed a desire to depopulate other categories which they believe shouldn't exist, but where nobody has sought a consensus to delete them.

Anyway, I am glad to see that you not arguing no one can be notable for living a long time. If so, then in view of the GNG-meeting significant coverage of this topic, I presume that you will withdraw your proposal to merge or delete this article. It would also be nice to see you strike the stuff about nationality being an arbitrarily defined geographical area. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:31, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I was being a bit overly philosophical, which I have a lifelong penchant for. On this article we seem to primarily disagree on whether it should stand alone or be part of a list, and indeed the coverage she did receive was due to her longevity; in either instance, whatever happens her longevity would be the reason for a mention anywhere on Wikipedia. I backed away from the category discussions because I saw something went off the rails and didn't want to make it worse, I'll try to do some reading and figure out a solution for that. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:49, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, her notability does seem to derive from longevity. I have not seen any genuine policy-based reason to support the assertion that means her bio should be merged to a list. It's clear that some editors would like policy to require a merge, but that is a different matter. We work with policy as it is, not how we'd like it to be.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:03, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I have not participated in this AfD, but I have commented on several AfDs of supercentenarians that the rate at which they are listed for AfD (16 on one day, on one occasion!) precludes serious consideration of whether they are notable or not. (See especially Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sadayoshi Tanabe (2nd nomination), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miriam Schmierer, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Sisnett, (also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carl Berner (supercentenarian) (2nd nomination), as well as Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Longevity#Notability_criteria?) The assumption seems to be that because they reached extreme old age, they cannot be notable; and even if they are, they do not deserve an article. I think a more accurate name for the project would be WikiProject AntiLongevity. RebeccaGreen (talk) 00:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have made a concerted effort not to flood AfD; I thought that day was too much, and (perhaps ironically) it was partially the result of lack of coordination (a couple of those were me, but you'll see that then, as with all other days, I only nominate 2-4 on any day). I hope what I've said above clarifies my own position, at least. And as long as you're here, I sincerely appreciate your work on Edna Parker and Jack Lockett; I haven't acknowledged your work as I should have. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:33, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your acknowledgement, I appreciate it. I must admit that I find it hard to understand what the notability criteria or guidelines for supercentenarians are. You stated at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Longevity#Notability_criteria? that it is "detailed coverage of the person's life from multiple reliable sources". It seems that you regard Edna Parker as meeting that requirement, but Bernice Madigan has just closed as a Redirect (not on consensus, but by an admin deciding the result) when she arguably has a similar amount of detailed coverage as Edna Parker. I had just done some work on the Bernice Madigan article (I am not questioning the redirection because of that - I do realise that the subjects of some articles, even after improvement, do not meet notability guidelines), but where is the possibility of discussing what constitutes detailed coverage, and what does not make the grade? I have just noticed that some of the content I just added to Bernice Madigan, with references to sources already in the article, had recently (prior to my work) been removed by one of the supercentenarian deleters as "unsourced". It was not specifically referenced, but if they had bothered to look at the sources, they would have been able to add the inline citation themselves. I do not find most Longevity project members to be sincere in an attempt to determine notability criteria - that action on the Bernice Madigan article is a good example of unnecessarily cutting the article to nothing, so bolstering arguments that there is nothing to keep. Probably I should say this on the project talk page, but it is so clearly a deletion project that I do not feel at all welcome there. I will vote Delete on supercentenarians where there is no WP:SIGCOV, but it seems to me that serious, rational discussion is not welcomed in cases where there is evidence of WP:SIGCOV, if that SIGCOV comes because of their extreme old age. (Btw, I have contacted the closing admin on Bernice Madigan.) RebeccaGreen (talk) 09:20, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, this makes me so angry. The admin who closed Bernice Madigan has responded, "Subprojects don't write policy. Not all votes are equal and its not a democracy or straight up vote. The delete side had better arguments. Listifying barely or non-notable subjects into one notable or significant list is an established practise, which is why I closed it that way. . What biographical data has been lost that couldn't be included in a list." Why bother at all, then? You may as well just delete them all, and I'll stop wasting my time researching and revising. RebeccaGreen (talk) 11:26, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I'll have to agree with Thryduulf, considering the fact the she is the oldest ever of the UK (and also considering the amount of interest she can attract) simply deleting her article is not a wise decision at all. Also I add, I don't agree with the "witchhunt" that Legacypac is doing, I say "witchhunt" because this user definitely feels like it is persecuting anyone who goes against his "Wikiproject Longevity", it is simply the vibe the user gives (I might be incorrect, if then forgive me, but that comment calling BrownHairedGirl a crusader against the "Wikiproject Longevity" was totally uncalled for, such accusatory and without merit comments just bring down the discussion that really matters. Garlicolive (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2018 (UTC) — Garlicolive (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

  This was just settling down, we don't need more bomb-throwing. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'll agree that we don't need any bomb-throwing, but the one who started the accusations was Legacypac, to what needed to be an impersonal discussion, so I was just responding to that which completely go against the reasonable discussion (I emphasize that the way he attack anyone who went against him as crusaders only hurts his/her own image). Garlicolive (User talk:Garlicolive) 23:34, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per WP:Bio. Living to be the oldest person of any nation is "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded." I would oppose any merge per WP:Pagelength and a lack of protection against a minibio being nuked in future against consensus at AfD. schetm (talk) 05:49, 9 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per spirited and compelling advocacy on behalf of the centenarian articles by BrownHairedGirl with additional input here from RebeccaGreen, Garlicolive and schetm. The subject of this entry, in particular, taking into account the media coverage cited by BrownHairedGirl, is indisputably notable.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 08:46, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
  1. The articles provided by BrownHairedGirl (talk · contribs) in the BBC, The Guardian, The Times, United Press International, San Francisco Chronicle, the Daily Mirror over a period of seven years before Charlotte Hughes' death.
  2. Maier, Heiner; Gampe, Jutta; Jeune, Bernard; Robine, Jeane-Marie; Vaupel, James W., eds. (2010). Supercentenarians. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH. pp. 293–294. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-11520-2_16. ISBN 978-3-642-11520-2. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

     The book notes:

     3.1 Charlotte Hughes: "A stiff brandy, bacon and eggs"
     
     The next person to exceed the 115-year limit was most probably Charlotte Marion Hughes from England. She was interviewed in the press and appeared on television, but was never interviewed by researchers on aging. However, the now deceased Peter Laslett, a historian from Cambridge University, did have the opportunity to go through the documentation pertaining to her case (biographical notes by Laslett). Her birth registration has been found.

     Charlotte Hughes was born on August 1, 1877, and died on March 17, 1993. She grew up in Middlesborough in Yorkshire, where her father ran a music shop. Until the age of 63 she worked as a teacher in a religious school. While employed there she was not permitted to marry, so she married for the first time only after her retirement. Her husband, Noel Hughes, was a retired army captain and was younger than she. They lived together for 40 years until he died at the age of 88, when Mrs. Hughes herself was 103.

     At the age of 107, Mrs. Hughes received a visit from the Queen. At her 108th birthday, she took the express train to London for the first time in her life and had tea with Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street, having declared on the radio the previous day that she supported the Labour Party. "I told her I was Labour when she cuddled up to me in Downing Street. I said 'Don't cuddle me I'm Labour.' She said: 'Never mind, come and let us have a cup of tea.'" Two years later, aged 110, Mrs. Hughes flew on a Concorde over the Atlantic, traveling in her wheelchair. She was received by the mayor of New York and appeared on television. At the age of 111 she took part in a BBC program on longevity, and by her 112th birthday she had become the oldest person in England. She still lived at home, staying most of the time in her wheelchair, receiving daily home help and regular visits from the district nurse. At the age of 113, she was moved to St. David's Nursing home in Redcar, Cleveland, due to her increasing frailty and poor eyesight. She died at the nursing home from bronchopneumonia, having reached the age of 115 years and 228 days.

     According to newspaper accounts, Charlotte Hughes retained her mental faculties to the last, although she complained of not being able to remember her grammar properly. Relatives described her as extremely domineering, outspoken, and sharp; but also as friendly and witty. Asked what she considered to be the secret of her long life, she replied: "A healthy lifestyle, a stiff brandy, and bacon and eggs." On another occasion she answered: "A good honest life" and adherence to the 10 Commandments.

  There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Charlotte Hughes to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

  Cunard (talk) 08:28, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Charlotte Hughes died in 1993. That she received substantial coverage in reliable sources in the seven years prior to her death and that she received substantial coverage in a book published 17 years after her death in 2010 strongly establishes she passes Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline.

  Cunard (talk) 08:28, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect/merge to an appropriate list. I never worry about notability in these cases, but rather focus on WP:PAGEDECIDE -- what's worth saying about the person and where to say it. Here's what the article tells us about her:

Hughes grew up in Middlesbrough in Yorkshire, where her father ran a music shop. She worked as an elementary school teacher from age 13 and married Noel Hughes, a retired army captain, after retiring at 63; Noel died in 1979. She remained in robust health into extreme old age. For her 110th birthday she flew on Concorde for a visit to New York City, one of only two known supercentenarian air passengers. Hughes lived in her own home in Marske-by-the-Sea until 1991, when she moved to a nursing home in Redcar. In her final years she used a wheelchair, but remained mentally sharp.

(A quick glance at outside sources doesn't reveal anything more worth adding.) Everything else (didn't want Thatcher to hug her, Thatcher said "let's have a cup of tea", broke Woman X's longevity record, Koch was Mayor of NY, ...) is cruft.I firmly think the best way to present such respectable but simple lives is as part of a list of other similar lives, so they can be read together, instead of forcing the reader to click from one somewhat-puffed-up permastub to another. I've been saying this for years. EEng 03:18, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• @EEng: that's an odd summary. It omits a bunch of pertinent things known from the current sources, including:

1. the names of her parents (where available, those are a customary part of any en.wp biography)
2. that she was the longest-lived person ever documented in the United Kingdom (the core her notability. Why omit that?)
3. That the terms of her employment forbade her from marrying (such a ban has been illegal in the UK since the 1970s, so it's a significant issue)
4. that despite not marrying until her retirement, she still had a well-above-average 40 years of marriage (a notable consequence of longevity)
5. That her parents lived into their 90s, but her siblings died 50 years younger than her (a fact relevant to considerations of family patterns of longevity)
6. that she was invited to meet both the UK Prime Minster and the Mayor of New York (who yes, are both named, because in her lifetime each office was held by over a dozen people)
7. that she was a Labour Party supporter

EEng's rewrite seems to go far beyond mere removal of fluff, even unto removing both the reason for her notability and material which should be included in any biog if available. I don't know why EEng does this, but it seems sadly consistent with the repeated approach of other WP:LONGEVITY editors to minimise the content of biogs in this field.

From the book source provided above by Cunard (Maier et al, 2010), we could and should add

1. That she was visited by her head of state
2. the description of her character
3. Her own comments on the reason for her longevity, which is not cruft: it's her view of the attribute which made her notable

And that's before going through the 7 further sources I listed above.

EEng's description of this as a somewhat-puffed-up permastub is at best only part true. Sure the current article includes waffle like Born in Hartlepool in the 40th year of Queen Victoria's reign, she lived under the rule of five more monarchs and 24 British Prime Ministers." However, it is not a stub; at 1921 characters (337 words) "readable prose size" it is 28% longer than the 1,500 character minimum for the no-stubs WP:DYK#Eligibility_criteria .

With the waffle trimmed but the new material added, it would still exceed the DYK stub threshold.

So I am left pondering the same question that I asked myself when I saw a tag-team of WP:LONGEVITY editors vociferously demanding the removal of all extant longevity categories in a succession of discussions at WP:CFD Dec 7: why are members of this project so determined to bend or break rules and customary practice to minimise coverage of articles i=within their scope? Why this determination to both eliminate articles which in any other topic area would be kept, and also to cease categorising them by their WP:CATDEFINING attribute? In nearly 13 years editing en.wp, I have never seen the likes of that project's overwhelming hostility to their topic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:11, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per cogent arguments above by BrownHairedGirl in particular. The apparent bias by some editors against the existence of these articles and their appropriate categorisation is mystifying. Oculi (talk) 23:41, 14 December 2018 (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.