The result was Delete. While the keep advocates pointed out that things like Kennedy family, Kapoor family, etc have a history as a family, the key point is that those articles have a prose body which summarises the activities and evolutions of the family through history, while this article is not, as pointed out by the nominator. Of course, a prodified version created in future with the relevant details of the family's evolution, will provide something useful that a category alone, eg one for a fmaily or dynasty, would not. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We have a long tradition of not doing genealogical articles. This article is simply a list of articles created by one Arbuthnot about his ancestors. Many of the articles included are of dubious notability anyway. Further we already have Category:Arbuthnot family linking them all.--Docg 19:59, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Even if many of the current articles on Arbuthnots are going to be deleted, at least a couple of dozen seem likely to remain, as will the articles on the Arbuthnot viscountcy and the Arbuthnot baronetcies and the two notable businesses that have been run by Arbuthnots. A better idea than deleting all of these pages would be to merge the most basic info on most of those sort-of-semi-notable Arbuthnots and all those who are mainly genealogical links into this article, add one of those nice "family tree" templates (see Template:Familytree, exemplified in the Roosevelt family article) and make it an overview linking the actually notable members and branches to one another. That is information not easily available now. (I also think it would be reasonable to merge Viscount of Arbuthnott and Arbuthnot Baronets with this article, if space allows that.)
The category is far less useful for this, and should probably be deleted, as should many other family categories. The basis for these categories is still genealogical, but while an article can take chronology and relationships into account in the presentation, may include sourcing and mention when exact genealogical connections are conjectures, none of this is possible with a category. Pharamond 05:09, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
*Delete or Merge There is already a Clan Arbuthnott article dealing with this family, so either merge this with that or delete.--padraig3uk 23:16, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for the Clan Arbuthnott, I am much more skeptical: I am no expert on Scottish history, but as far as I know a lot of this clan stuff is a product of 19th century Scottish national romanticism and the American market for Old Country nostalgia. This is a lowland family and the article points out that the tartan was registered in 1962. This seems not even to be a Victorian construct but much more recent. That there is at least one significant Arbuthnot family is verifiable and clear from the peerage. It seems from User:Kittybrewster's website (this page), that the viscountcy and the two baronetcies belong to the same family (I am assuming that there is good evidence for these connections). If that is the case, I'm convinced a good article could be written based on some of the genealogical secondary sources, such as James Balfour Paul's The Scots Peerage, that I saw cited somewhere (in another strange case of omission, it is not even cited in the Viscount of Arbuthnott page, but it was in one of the pages on a minor Arbuthnot). But is this clan real? Would people like Robert Arbuthnot, 1st Viscount of Arbuthnott (died 1655) or John Arbuthnot, 6th Viscount of Arbuthnott (died 1791) have regarded themselves as clan chiefs, or would they have been regarded as such by their contemporaries? Pharamond 14:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]