Talk:List of the youngest state legislators in the United States

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Purpose of page edit

Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

I don't understand the purpose of this page. Is it for the youngest legislator in the history of the state, or the youngest in any state at any given time? Why does New Hampshire have 4 House members, when they cannot all fit that criteria? I don't understand how it's even organized. There's potential here but in its current state it's basically useless. -LtNOWIS (talk) 00:49, 31 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

I agree. I propose to limit the article to those who were first elected under the age of 26, and to limit it further to notable individuals (those with a Wikipedia article). Benicio2020 (talk) 18:27, 24 January 2021 (UTC)Reply

As there have not been any objections to my proposal in 4 weeks, I'm going to go ahead and do it. Benicio2020 (talk) 16:10, 21 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

It's easy to proclaim that you achieved consensus when building that consensus was limited to two editors in an obscure corner of the encyclopedia. Not very credible when interested editors have to stumble upon this by chance well after the fact. I have WT:STLEG on my watchlist and found no discussion there, just to give one example of many where notice could have been made.

Anyway, I strongly object to "...and to limit it further to notable individuals (those with a Wikipedia article)". The weight given in this list heavily mirrors our coverage of state legislators in general, namely articles on (then-)current legislators within the past dozen or so years which are more often directory entries about the office than encyclopedia entries about the person. We've long held that state legislators are inherently notable regardless of the existence of an article. Such a stance has no credibility when a million different people try to create exceptions, and this is yet another example of such. Invoking WP:WTAF without actually invoking WP:WTAF isn't cool, especially since it's only an essay and contradicts WP:POLITICIAN (a guideline) in the matter. I started my own list of the oldest and youngest members of the Alaska Legislature in 2013 when I realized that reliable sources where publishing factually incorrect information. According to that list, I'm counting eleven members of the Alaska House of Representatives who took office between the ages of 22 and 25. Four of those eleven lack articles, mainly because they served in the 1960s and 1970s. We're supposed to pretend they don't exist or aren't worthy of mention simply due to the absence of an article? Think about contextual relevancy and realize there's no credibility in such a stance.

Legacy media is dying off, so I don't know if this receives coverage anymore, but it was common during my lifetime for people elected mayor at a very young age to receive greater than local news coverage, often national coverage. The editors working on the youngest mayors list chose to ignore that and make it a list of people with Wikipedia articles who happened to serve as mayor somewhere at a young age. That violation of WP:INDISCRIMINATE was cited as a rationale for that list's recent deletion. Be careful you're not headed down the same path here. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 00:32, 6 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Legislators without Wikipedia articles should absolutely be included. In terms of an upper limit, I believe 26 years of age may be reasonable. Expanding it to 30 would allow for people like Lesil McGuire, Sara Rasmussen, Neil Whaley and Shane Barnett to make the cut, however the "current" limit seems fine as is. The only real problem comes with AZ, CO, UT, DE, KY and MO, that have age requirements of 25 and 24 years. Cilidus (talk) 20:44, 24 March 2022 (UTC)Reply