Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive/John McKay


 * 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. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

John McKay
What we have here is a page for a notable person, that's actually well-formatted (thanks to UDScott for that), but has no real content to speak of. The sole quote is "I think it's a good idea", which is hardly unique to this person (who hasn't said something like that at some point?). Putting it in the context of being asked about "his team's execution in a loss" doesn't make it any more meaningful; the only way I can get myself to make any sense of the quote is that he was suggesting that the team be killed for the loss, but to properly make sense of it, we would need to know the exact wording of the question he was answering, not just the "summarized" version that appears in the source. —LrdChaos (talk) 13:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Vote closed. Result: keep (one vote to keep, four votes to keep). —LrdChaos (talk) 15:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete. —LrdChaos (talk) 13:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. - PhilipR 13:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC) . "[T]he only way I can get myself to make any sense of the quote is that he was suggesting that the team be killed for the loss," -- That of course was exactly the point of the pun.   The "proper" formatting, by removing the pun from its context, probably did make the quote seem entirely pointless.    "I think it's a good idea" is entirely mundane, but in response to a question about the "execution" of the team it's often cited by the US sports media as one of McKay's clever witticisms.   Context is everything. If you follow the link I provided, you'll see that McKay produced a lot of amusing quotes about American football in his career.   I just didn't want to plagiarize half that article, or I would have added more - PhilipR 13:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep and tag for expansion. The quote is not exceptional but could perhaps be better formatted, but it seems to be a quoted remark, the individual concerned is notable, we can get verified quotes etc. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 23:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. Concur with Fys about possibly reformatting the quote to make the pun clearer, although it's not immediately obvious to me how best to do this. Reliable sources exist for it (like ), although all the ones I've found so far are tertiary sources that maddeningly only paraphrase the instigating question — the original text could help us reformat the quote. But otherwise this seems a legitimate stub. It might help to add another quote or two to avoid putting the burden on a single awkward quote. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:09, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Oddly enough, the first thing this quote put me in mind of was a very similarly worded quote ("I think it would be a good idea!") on the Mohandas Gandhi page. That quote also needed context (it was in response to someone asking him what he thought of Western Civilization) and the context was duly provided.  - InvisibleSun 19:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. It seems that I'm outnumbered on this issue (and at this point, I'm not convinced there's sufficient cause to change my vote), but it might behoove us to develop some sort of guideline for this to be incorporated into Templates/People, so that we're not giving the punch line before the setup. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)


 * 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.