Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Sports notability

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The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This discussion focused on two main issues: (1) whether to revoke the guideline status of NSPORTS and (2) proposals to improve perceived flaws in NSPORTS. There is a general consensus that the NSPORTS guideline still has broad community support, and whatever problems may exist, the community does not see them as justifying the deprecation of the guideline.

In light of this, the community considered 13 proposals for fixing perceived flaws in NSPORTS. A fundamental problem was that, by the time these proposals were made, most editors had lost interest. For example, the main proposal had over 100 editors weigh-in, but of the 13 other proposals, only two got over 65 participants, and most struggled to get even half the participation of the main proposal. While proposals with 50 participants could achieve consensus, editors tended to be evenly split on most questions.

That said, I saw consensus on two proposals. While numerically close, the weight of arguments shows a rough consensus for proposal 3 which removes participation-based criteria from NSPORTS. Proposal 5 had a substantial amount of support and participation, and there is a consensus to add an inclusion criterion for sports biographies requiring that they have at least one reference to a source which has significant coverage of the subject (which is slightly different from the original proposal 5).

Hopefully these changes improve the perceived problems of NSPORTS, and further improvements may be made by editing the policy page, holding discussions on its talk page, or starting follow-up RfCs. Extended rationales for each proposal are below. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 1 - no consensus
This was the second-most participated-in proposal with over 70 participants. Editors debated whether NSPORTS should state that sports biographies "must" satisfy the GNG if challenged at AFD. While there is a slight majority for the proposal,
WP:SNG section existed, and that current section of the notability policy contradicts the 2017 close. A more technical issue is that the proposal claimed to be implementing the status quo, and the discussion cast doubt on whether such an interpretation is in fact the status quo; "defaulting" to that interpretation would be implementing the proposal through a technicality. For now, the path forward is to leave the wording as-is and have editors and closers consider the proper interpretation on a case-by-case basis. Ideally, a new RfC or other widely-advertised discussion will clarify the relationship between guidelines in the near future. — Wug·a·po·des​ (revised 01:14, 14 March 2022 (UTC))[reply
]
Proposals 3 (consensus) and 4 (no consensus)

These proposals considered NSPORTS criteria which suggest an athlete is notable if they have participated in (only) one professional event. For example, a hockey player who only played one professional game. Proposal 3 would eliminate these criteria, and proposal 4 would increase the threshold. These proposals saw reasonable participation, with about half the number of editors as the main proposal.

There is a rough consensus to eliminate participation-based criteria (except those based on olympic or similar participation). Participants refered to this is one of the main issues of the guideline, and this was also a point repeated in the main discussion. The argument is that a single professional match does not seem to guarantee that sufficient sources will exist to write a well-sourced article. By removing them, editors will need to demonstrate that other SNG criteria or the GNG are met.

Opposition to the elimination of these participation-criteria fall into two camps: no replacement and not strong enough. I gave little weight to the "no replacement"-type arguments as they miss the point of the proposal and are procedural rather than substantive concerns. To be clear on how they miss the point: the replacement is the GNG which applies to all articles; the proposal was to eliminate certain special criteria, so of course no alternative criteria were specified.

Arguments relating to increasing the threshold were covered in proposal 4 which failed to achieve consensus. The argument against this view was that any higher threshold would be arbitrary and not generalizable. There is a meaningful difference between playing 0 professional games and playing 1 professional game in all sports, but other units depend on the sport. For example, 100 games is a career in American football, but less than a season in Major League Baseball. Given the result of 4, arguments that the threshold should be increased rather than eliminated were also given less weight.

Taken together, there is a rough consensus that participation-based criteria are a problem and that the best way forward is to remove them. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 5 - consensus

This was the best-attended proposal and had the most agreement. There is a rough consensus that sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject. This is meaningfully different from the proposal; the original proposal required that the source be present from inception, but editors in opposition pointed out the problems with this. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to meet the GNG. Supporters point out that it has the added benefit of reducing the number of one-sentence biographies based on database entries. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 6 - consensus against

Editors are generally against adding a new layer of bureacracy to enforce proposal 5. A regular PROD or AFD is sufficient. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 8 - partial consensus

This proposal was, in reality, two proposals. The first part was substantially similar to proposal 1. The second part was to replace "presumed to be notable" with "significant coverage is likely to exist". To the extent that the first part of this proposal would create a requirement that a sports biography meet the GNG (i.e., must), there is no consensus. Proposal 1 was better attended and did not find consensus, so proposal 8 is not sufficient to overturn that. With that said, editors are generally in favor of rewriting to make the lead clearer. The second part of the proposal complements that and has a clearer consensus. The purpose of a SNG is to give editors guidance on when significant coverage is likely to exist, and clarifying that requirement in the prose will help avoid misuse at AFD (a major concern brought up in the main discussion). — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals 9 and 11 - no consensus

These proposals put forth specific rewrites of the lead. A lack of sufficient participation makes a consensus hard to justify. In both cases the opposition had a slight numerical edge, but editors were largely split without a consensus. The phrasing of the lead is something that can be worked out through normal policy editing and talk page discussion. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 10 - no consensus

This proposal would require editors to do research and provide summary statistics based on a random sample of articles within 30 days in order to justify particular sections of the guideline or else those section will be removed. This proposal had far less participation than the main proposal, and had serious practical and policy-based issues. While there were a substantial number of editors in support, the opposition was significantly stronger in terms of policy (see

WP:NOTCOMPULSORY) and practical arguments. Editors had issues with using an ultimatum to write policy, and suggested that the proposed work be done in prepartion for an RfC rather than removed arbitrarily. There were also practical practical issues such as the timeframe, methodologies, and thresholds that undermine a consensus path forward. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Proposals 2, 7, 12, and 13

These proposals were not closed by me. 2 and 7 were closed as unsuccessful during the RfC. 12 was moved to a different page. 13 was a proposal to stop having more proposals. — Wug·a·po·des​ 06:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: Abolish the current version of
NSPORTS

Abolish the current version of

WP:CREEP. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:13, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Discussion (NSPORTS)

FYI (massive hidden pinging all participants here, I hope this is okay!),
​​ there is an extremely helpful tool where you can "subscribe" to a thread and receive a bundled notification for each new comment. If you click on the bundled link (modulo this bug, which should be resolved today), it will highlight all new comments in blue and take you to the one closest to the top of the page, and then you just have to scroll through to see the other highlighted comments. You can also expand the bundle to see a preview of each individual comment, which you can click on and it'll take you right there. This allows you to link to specific comments. Another thing it does is give you a "reply" option for each comment, so you don't have to click edit at the top of a section if you just want to leave a second-level comment. This has been a godsend to me for navigating this thread. You can enable it by going to your preferences > Beta features > Discussion tools and checking the box. JoelleJay (talk) 18:32, 27 January 2022 (UTC) EDIT: moved this comment outside of RfC lead. Re-sign to fix hidden pings. JoelleJay (talk) 18:40, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Second hidden ping set.
​​ JoelleJay (talk) 18:33, 27 January 2022 (UTC) EDIT: moved this comment outside of RfC lead. Re-sign to fix hidden pings. JoelleJay (talk) 18:40, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Third hidden ping set. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ JoelleJay (talk) 18:33, 27 January 2022 (UTC) EDIT: moved this comment outside of RfC lead. Re-signed to fix hidden pings. JoelleJay (talk) 18:42, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This entire discussion has gotten too convoluted with overlapping proposals that it is impossible to follow at this point and There is no way anyone could get any sort of consensus out of this mess.. Time to end this discussion as no consensus and move on already. Spanneraol (talk) 15:46, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We need a word for the moment in an RFC when someone voting with the minority claims the discussion is such a mess that we should declare no consensus and move on. Levivich 15:51, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how you can determine who is in the minority as there seems to be about even support on both sides from what I can tell... Spanneraol (talk) 16:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can tell who is in the minority by looking at who wants to end this discussion as no consensus and move on. Levivich 16:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who noticed this. Cbl62's SIGCOV proposal is going to pass at least, and the overall sentiment is certainly that NSPORT is problematic. JoelleJay (talk) 19:04, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean by "move on". What needs to happen now is that one of these is selected (I would suggest no. 3) and brought back somewhere in a specific form. That my idea of "moving on". Nigej (talk) 15:54, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on the main proposal

Oh, and there will be far more 'pointless AFDs' and arguments if the SNG was scrapped, as people will continue to create articles on topics! GiantSnowman 22:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If other SNGs are also problematic, then what is ridiculous is using that as an excuse to keep the most problematic of all of them. Gotta start somewhere. Your other arguments have already been rebutted. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying they are problematic, that's the point. Why are you focussing on NSPORTS? GiantSnowman 22:22, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
One more thing before I log off for the next 18+ hours - abolishing SNGs, in particular NSPORTS, will result in fewer articles about non-"white, male, European" people, not more. For example, under current NFOOTBALL guidelines I can create an article easily about international players from any country in Africa or Asia. With only GNG, due to language/sourcing issues, that would become so much more difficult. GiantSnowman 22:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
By creating tens or hundreds of thousands of effectively unsourced stubs, are we really addressing the issue of disparity in coverage, or are we just hiding the issue? BilledMammal (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As if a database-sourced microstub on an African woman football player that no one ever expands is anything more than an unintentional byproduct of personal mass-creation campaigns. Proudly gesturing at 45 seconds of work--that only happened because someone wanted to complete the rosters of all 2014 National League teams beginning with C, or whatever--as if it's some empowering gift to underserved minorities who would never receive Wikipedia's attention without the help of NSPORT is insulting and harmful. It is not a good thing for Wikipedia's coverage of Africa to be dominated by thoughtless permastubs of modern athletes, particularly when they're drowned out by all the modern white male athlete bios produced at the same time. Maybe eliminating the ability of stats-driven editors to autocreate dozens of entries per hour would encourage them to instead expand existing articles (yeah right), or maybe it would mean profiles of particular athletes would only be created by people who specifically wanted to make them and would put effort into the process. JoelleJay (talk) 00:17, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The point you've failed to address is how can it be that other SNGs are problematic too, when NSPORTS covers pretty much 50% of all biographies of living people. Clearly there can't be any other SNG with anything like 50%. Nigej (talk) 14:04, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notifying all the various sport related projects doesn't seem like the best idea, for various reasons that I am sure will be discussed extensively if such notifications are issued. Best to list it at CENT and leave it at that. BilledMammal (talk) 22:24, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is standard for WP:FOOTBALL, we keep a list of all relevant discussions at
    WP:FOOTYDEL - and how many 'on the ground' editors actually read CENT? I certainly don't. The more people know about this RfC the better. GiantSnowman 22:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Notified:
centralized discussion. BilledMammal (talk) 23:03, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Support. NSPORTS is intended to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and in the process reduce the amount of time we spend determining whether these people or organizations are notable, but it does the opposite, through a bloated guideline that is not effective in determining whether someone or something is likely to meet GNG.
I will note that I agree that some sections are functional, but these are a minority, and the effort to reimplement them will be far less than the effort to remove or correct from the status quo the sections that are not, and so to avoid tens of thousands of editor hours being wasted
WP:TNT needs to applied. BilledMammal (talk) 22:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Comment Are there too many biographies of non-notable sportspeople? Very probably. Is this a fault of the NSPORTS or is it a fault of GNG? That may be more of the issue. In the big US sports, or other major professional sports like (association) football or cricket, the amount of press coverage is so intense that you could probably find GNG-passing mainstream non-routine coverage of pretty much any player, even if they've only played a couple of games in the higher leagues. It's an inevitable function of how mainstream sports news works. Black Kite (talk) 23:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a lot of one, and a bit of the other. NSPORT is largely to blame for permitting creation, and supporting retention, of any athlete bio as long as it has one source showing the subject meets a participation-based sport-specific guideline. The issue isn't so much the contemporary tippy-top pro leagues as it is the hundreds of lower-tier divisions with high turnover and low actual coverage whose players particular projects have decided meet their definition of SIGCOV. Now that more editors are mentioning the GNG>NSPORT relationship in AfDs and closers are openly giving less weight to "keep meets NFOOTY" !votes, some in the sports projects have pivoted to instead declaring almost anything published is "SIGCOV in secondary IRS" in order to keep their articles. If editors can't successfully challenge claims that 3-sentence refactored press releases contribute to GNG, then perhaps there is something that needs to be changed with that guideline as well. JoelleJay (talk) 05:11, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose it's a guideline to assist, not an absolute rule, and clearly states that people shoild pass GNG too. If you want to fix the problem, then deal with the places using it as an absolute rule, not by removing the generally decent guidance. For most of the sporrs, most of the people who attain that standard are notable, so having the guidance for this is useful. NSPORTS doesn't trump GNG, and so doesn't need to be exterminated to make people use GNG, because people should be using GNG anyway. Sledgehammer solution..... Joseph2302 (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you agree that there is enough confusion from editors reading only the bolded second sentence of NSPORT that perhaps the guideline could be made much more explicit about its relationship with GNG? What if we changed it to require two pieces of SIGCOV in secondary IRS from the start like almost every other subject? JoelleJay (talk) 05:16, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose but make fundamental changes Basically in agreeance with what Bagumba and JoelleJay said above. As pointed above the three with fundamental issues are
    WP:NBASEBALL causes issues as well). Instead of blowing up the entire system, it would be better to tighten these problem criteria as needed, as well as fix any issues with NSPORTS as a whole. The criteria is vague and this makes it very easy to litigate into eternity. This is quite reactionary to the deletion review, and while I agree that that DRV has become a shitshow, that doesn't mean we should shoot the hostage. Curbon7 (talk) 00:43, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Comment If kept (and I'm in two (or more) minds on that) I feel the idea of it being a "presumption" of notability badly needs to be fleshed out in a clearer and more procedural manner. Some editors clearly seem to feel that NSPORT and GNG should be "balanced" in such a way that the GNG can safely be ignored. (Notwithstanding that NSPORT explicitly invokes GNG in addition to the sport-participation part.) Or indeed that this a "notability floor", at least for their preferred sport, and that they should keep digging further below it. Conversely, some say: we presumed until we looked a little, now it has to meet GNG, simple as. So what is the intended relationship between the two? Presumption enough to keep it off speedy deletion? For some other time horizon? To shift what constitutes
    WP:SIGCOV to the benefit of such subjects? (We've a dozen trivial mentions and those flesh the article out to a couple of paragraphs, good enough.) Is the presumption open-ended: can't prove a negative (or are very unlikely to be able to), so the participation itself grants an indefinite stay. I don't have a strong view on which of these (or some other at least some slightly more explicit scheme) should prevail, but the clarity itself would be a boon. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:30, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Update conservatively Like other SNGs, it prevents countless AfDs on notable topics from deletionists caught up in
    WP:RECENCY while making plenty of AfD discussions straightforward. Sure, those routinely involved in sports AfDs have a right to be frustrated, but AfDs often come about precisely because their subject's notability is debate-worthy. There are articles for plenty of non-notable sportspeople, and there are certainly improvements to be made to NSPORTS to decrease that number. But like many lesser-known GNG-passing topics, sports stubs often require a local fanatic willing to dig into archives in order to generate quality articles. The inherently hidden and non-collaborative (and generally short-term) nature of draft space make SNGs a necessary tool to incubate pages until those local fanatics (or particularly determined editors) come along. Star Garnet (talk) 01:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
But why should this exemption exist only for athletes? Why do sport stubs get to bypass draft/user/projectspace and wait for a local fanatic to come along in mainspace? JoelleJay (talk) 05:28, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's hardly unique to sports. Entertainers, academics, politicians, locations, and creative works (so, the vast majority of articles) do as well. Star Garnet (talk) 08:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Those are decidedly different sorts of guideline, however. To take the AVPROF one, on the one hand it's an alternative to GNG, rather than an "in addition" presumption, and on the other, it's a lot tighter. So we don't get into this sort of "passes one but doesn't pass the other, so !vote keep/delete according to personal preconception" situation. At least, not in quite the same way. If NSPORT (or any of its component parts) were to spell out "this modifies GNG, and here's how" I think -- OK, anxiously hope! -- we wouldn't see quite such sharply divergent takes on how to apply it. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 09:03, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While true to an extent, I was referring to their shared feature of setting base-level standards where GNG doesn't need to be demonstrated while the article is a stub. Sure, academics and locations have deeper non-GNG protections than the rest, but even AfDs there devolve quickly. "'Name on page for whom no biographical details are available' has been cited a few dozen times, so you can't prove they didn't have a significant impact." But I digress. Star Garnet (talk) 09:39, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Some of the subparts need rewriting, but abolition is simply an invitation to chaos. Cbl62 (talk) 01:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I would be ok with getting rid of all SSGs but if we are going to zero in on sports then just make serious changes to the problem areas instead of eliminating the whole group. Each sport has different criteria, some of which pass muster and others which don’t in my opinion. Also, if admins are accepting “passes SNG but not GNG” as reasoning to keep articles, they aren’t doing their jobs. Fair to ask them to tighten up their oversight on AfDs Rikster2 (talk) 02:41, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – I am in favor of making improvements, and strongly opposed to throwing everything out. Dmoore5556 (talk) 02:58, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose... Getting rid of the guidelines would create a free for all where thousands of minor league and semi-professional players see articles created and equally hundreds of thousands of professional players will be dumped into afd which will lead to all sorts of contentous debates with whatever people show up to those arguments. It is good to have straight forward guidelines so it can easily be pointed out if someone is notable or not. If you have specific arguments with certain of the guidelines then take it up there and debate it.. but this RFC is the wrong approach. Spanneraol (talk) 03:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I never imagined that I would come to the defense of sportball etc. today, but SNGs serve a legitimate purpose. No prejudice to updating and editing through consensus, but I am vehemently against the abolition of this guideline. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 04:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose in the strongest possible terms. Misguided deletionism and the rationale of the trending of the articles is misinformed and also misguided. Removing this would only perpetuate the domination of athletes that are most frequently covered by wide sources. Etzedek24 (I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record) 04:30, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support NSPORTS and its progeny are fundamentally broken. Their practical effect is to make notable subjects which otherwise would not be. We cover far more sportspersons than an encyclopedia should. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 04:56, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Says who? You not liking sports is your personal opinion. We cover "sportspersons" because sports are popular and have large fan bases looking for information on even the most obscure player. Spanneraol (talk) 05:10, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We also have large fan bases for anime and Hindi soap operas who want detailed information on obscure characters etc. We have fandom wikis for those, and hundreds of statistical database sites for athletes that are helpfully linked to in lists of players/seasons/teams. There is no reason this material needs to appear as standalone pages in an encyclopedia. JoelleJay (talk) 05:23, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone can be interested in any arbitrary obscure topic, but that does not mean Wikipedia must have blanket inclusion for separate articles for all concepts or individuals in it. We have requirements for significant sources for a reason and sports should not be exempt from that. We are not a copy-paste of datebases like baseball-reference or whatnot, where such large fan bases are also welcome to find obscure statistics. Reywas92Talk 05:27, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really that far out of step from other SNGs though? For instance,
WP:NPOL presumes that members of US State Legislatures are notable despite some having the same lack of significant coverage/reliance on similar sources (government website election results, generic reports such as "x wins primary" with little in between in terms of SIGCOV, there being over 7,300 of them (there are 1,696 NFL roster spots by comparison), only having to have served in office regardless of time served, and less than 20% of Americans not being able to name their own representatives. Best, GPL93 (talk) 16:00, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Since when is another criteria being also bad a reason to keep a worse one as is? At least NPOL has a plausible public interest reason behind it (hey,
WP:BIAS aside, if 20% of americans can't name them, the more reason to educate the public) which could half justify it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:23, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
If we go by topics that fewer than 20% of Americans know about as a metric for notability, then all footballers (as in soccer) and teams should be kept to 'educate the public'.
b} 16:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Pretty much all SNGs have the same holes you can poke in them, whether you like it or not, and either they all have to go at once or they all have to stay and be worked out individually until new standards are reached via consensus. We're justifying notability standards, not what you consider is most beneficial to people, so unless you want to throw out
WP:NPOL, and all the rest then I don't see why this specific SNG should targeted. GPL93 (talk) 16:42, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
NPROF and NPOL are absolutely essential for completion of the encyclopedia, so this is why even if a person does not necessarily meet GNG, they still get a notability pass. On the other hand, NSPORTS is very explicitly subservient to GNG.
I would disagree that both, as written, are essential to the encyclopedia. I would disagree that state level politicians or editors of academic journals are inherently notable, but I think this is where biases creep in. Rikster2 (talk) 18:44, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Says who? What makes the "X endowed chair of Y university" more essential than someone under NSPORTS? Why should these SNGs not be subservient as well? I'll bet more people at the
University of Texas came name the members of their starting defense than their endowed department chairs. Dak Prescott is viewed on average 3x more than Greg Abbott, reserve Dallas Cowboys linebacker Jabril Cox gets 4x more a day than Texas Senate president Donna Campbell. As many people come here to learn about NSPORTS passes as the people that pass the other guidelines. GPL93 (talk) 18:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
To quote Bearcat from this AfD, if he's served in the legislature at all, then he's notable, because state legislators are one of those fields where it's extremely important, verging on mission critical, for us to be a complete and comprehensive reference for all of them. Also dang I forgot to sign my reply above, that's embarrassing lol. Curbon7 (talk) 02:08, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(Also relevant to @Star Garnet's comment) One of the biggest differences in my opinion is how much easier it is to create thousands of stubs on athletes than it is for any other topic. Power-users concerned with boosting personal creation counts will obviously flock to an SNG that has a) clear-cut inclusion criteria; b) abundant, reliable database/stats sites to template off for rapid creation; c) constant new subjects meeting a criterion; d) entire wikiprojects that will worship them for running through, e.g., all 2020 Olympic sport shooters. Even if 90% of sports editors are focused on creating particular biographies and rarely make stubs, it only takes a couple power-editors to completely skew topic coverage. This is much less of an issue in other SNGs where notability is less "presumed" (like in NMUSIC, where the language used is "may be notable") and where an accomplishment of a group does not confer notability to all members of the group individually (whereas playing a few minutes as part of a team that participates in a non-notable football match is enough to meet NFOOTY). Is it the "fault" of NSPORT that it has such easy methods for validating e.g. a pro appearance, or that all statistics that would appear on a subject's page can essentially be copied over directly from a database, or that each major sport has active wikiprojects participating in AfDs and locally shaping notability criteria? No. But these are substantial differences from other SNGs, and these differences allow much quicker methodical creation of ultimately non-notable stubs than in any other topic besides GEOLAND, as well as far more successful lobbying in deletion discussions and in RfCs on changing criteria. JoelleJay (talk) 19:25, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Then why not propose a ban on this type of editing behavior? Violators can be prohibited from creating articles in the main space and be forced to submit everything through AfC and its not like the pattern of rapid-fire, database regurgitating article creations isn't incredibly obvious. If they are using the crutch of NSPORTS to mass-create, what's to say that they won't move on to doing the same using college directories and and creating stubs on every department chair of every school? Then we'll be right back here arguing whether or not a school in a prominent enough university or that a certain department is not prestigious enough to meet the SNG requirement. GPL93 (talk) 01:23, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
NPROF and NSPORTS guidelines are both about 15 years old. One of them has been (mis)used to machine create articles en masse, to the point that footballers alone make up 40% of our biographies. The other has not. I'm not a huge fan of NPROF, but its issues are very different to those of NSPORTS. --RaiderAspect (talk) 02:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
GPL93 - Well, the biggest creator of these sports sub-stubs got hit with a T-Ban at ANI, but it was major drama and only came after years of complaints. Frankly, I'd rather solve the problem before it begins rather than after 100,000 sports-stubs have been created with the attendant massive clean-up problem. FOARP (talk) 22:29, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As for whether all SNGs should deleted, I am very happy to delete them one-by-one, starting with this one. GNG is a very useful and basic standard and SNGs are only good to the extent that they conform to it. FOARP (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal seems to be catering to editors who want the Wikipedia to shrink rather than grow, to be smaller, lesser, to cast information back into the obscue chaos of the sucky internet. I don't see why we should cater to these editors. Naturally we're going to add material as the project moves foward in time, and you can't really stop that, and shouldn't try.
The first sentence of the First Pillar says "Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias [emphasis added], and I mean sports encylopedias (they don't have to be named "encyclopedia") are certainly those. Why violate this founding core principle, and for what gain? The baseball encyclopedias, for instance, have entries for anyone who had an at bat in the major leagues in 1883 even if even his first name isn't known. If you want to make a change, instead make an RfC to amend the First Pillar with "...except for sports encyclopias". I mean we also have many thousands of articles on extinct fungi and places with population 11 and geographical features that haven't ever been visited and New Hampshire state legislators from 1927 and high schools in Burma and so forth. Seems like carving out an exception for athletes is just snobbery.
As to wasted time, if snobs would work on their own articles instead of constantly attacking these articles, time wouldn't be wasted. See the
WP:GNG is a general guidline that is helpful for considering many article, but not athletes. The rules were made to serve the reader, not our people's personal pecadilos. So leave the articles alone and we're good. Herostratus (talk) 15:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

BEFORERFC Discussion (NSPORT)

What aspects of NSPORT do people what to remove? Some of these are interrelated or may mootify each other. "Removal" can mean deletion or replacement. Feel free to add additional options (preferably w/ a timestamp if others have already !voted).
A. The presumption of notability (as used in AfD arguments)
B. The presumption of notability (as used in article creation--athlete bios need only 1 RS showing they meet a criterion rather than 2+ GNG-meeting sources)
C. Confusing guidance (e.g. the second sentence)
D. The language granting some indefinite amount of time for editors to find SIGCOV
E. Criteria that are not backed with empirical evidence they correctly predict GNG coverage 90+% of the time

1. All of it
2. None of it
JoelleJay (talk) 00:52, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I find three games is very attractive for the NFL (for at least very temporarily significant reasons, as I mentioned before), but to be at all comparably predictive or objectively similar, you'd want that to be a lot higher for soccer, and lower for five-day games of test cricket, and so on. (Which isn't to say there might not be an issue with cricket at present counting too many games and types of games, of course.) And of course, in most sports there's several different types of competition, of varying significance, and combining those into some bulk metric is... tricky. It gets very complex and messy very quickly, which in practice it's going to make it tremendously hard to get agreement to anything beyond the most obvious some/none binary. The SIGCOV requirement I very much agree with. If there's some need to create articles (or draft-articles) that lack this, it needs some sort of monitoring or process beyond the present 'languish indefinitely' concept. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 04:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why do we need a "predictor" of GNG? Why not just look at GNG itself? If it does nothing except "predict" whether GNG will be met, then it shouldn't be given official status. It's just an essay at that point, not an SNG. Mlb96 (talk) 04:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Quite. I'm decidedly skeptical on this too. But I think the rationale is one (or some combo of two things): build it and they'll come, and collateral or 'inherent' notability. Insofar as it's the former, I think what we need is process and management. Facilitation of creation and development in draft, or conversely of provisionally having articles in mainspace but with a view to revisit their presence after a while, or periodically if needed. If it's the latter, I'm far from convinced, but I suspect it's a big factor in people's thinking. "If people from this [category of competition] are mostly notable, it'd be a terrible shame to have just a few gaps: gorra catch 'em all. So good enough, declare them all notable 'on average'." To put it less than charitably, perhaps, but I detect periodic traces of this at least. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:36, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: A Removing presumption of notability would be counter to the top of Wikipedia:Notability (WP:N) emphasis added: A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right... If that is the consensus (no opinion), effectively SNGs become obsolete, and WP:N should reflect that and remove SNGs also.—Bagumba (talk) 04:03, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right...
    And if a subject-specific notability guideline explicitly defers to GNG, then that "or" becomes moot, because meeting NSPORT ultimately = meeting GNG. This wouldn't (and doesn't, as this is how it's already interpreted) affect any other SNG, some of which specifically do bypass GNG (NPROF). JoelleJay (talk) 08:10, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think the intent was for NSPORTS to "defer" to GNG in the strong sense that it was interpreted in
    WP:WIKILAWYERING by both sides.—Bagumba (talk) 08:30, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    A well-attended RfC in 2017 found a clear consensus that NSPORT does not supersede GNG and Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion. This is reflected in the hundreds of AfDs where athletes meeting an NSPORT subguideline but not GNG are deleted for that reason. That some editors are unaware of this consensus or just ignore it indicates it should have resulted in explicit changes in the NSPORT language rather than assuming users would abide by this result. JoelleJay (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It was always intended from the start that the sports notability guidelines did not replace the general notability guideline. From the RfC that established the sports notability guidelines: Echoing many of the participants' concerns though, consensus can not be considered in favor unless the new guideline clarifies that it does not replace WP:GNG but supplements it and that articles that do not meet this guideline may still be included if they satisfy WP:GNG. When you read the discussion (both for the RfC and leading up to it), it's stated several times that the proposed guideline would not enable articles to be created for subjects that did not meet the general notability guideline. This has been affirmed repeatedly in subsequent discussions. isaacl (talk) 22:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endless notable leagues Target the specific sport SNGs that blindly assume that because sport X gets sufficient coverage in one English-speaking country, it must get the same amount of coverage for any country's top league(s). Because there's Google hits (from a site in a language most here aren't fluent in and wouldn't know if it's reliable either) Many other sport criteria are more restrictive and true to the 95-99% "truly notable" rate that SNGs should strive for.—Bagumba (talk) 04:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re: D "granting some indefinite amount of time" is a bit overstated. That was from NSPORTS's FAQ, which was more describing a rough practice, not so much a firm guideline. I'm not sure when it got transcluded on the main page, and not just the talk page.—Bagumba (talk) 04:14, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "A" is an issue. There needs to be a short section in NSPORTS which says that NSPORTS must not be used in AfDs as an argument for keeping/deleting. Clearly it's of interest whether the person passes NSPORTS or not, but this should be stated once (unless there is some disagreement about the fact), preferably by the proposer and then never mentioned again (e.g. "Note: This person passes NFOOTY because they played one game for Rochdale A.F.C. in 1921"). I would suggest some standardized wording that people can cut and paste, to be used when someone breaks this rule, eg reply with "per WP:NSPORTSinAfD, NSPORTS must be not be used in AfDs as an argument for keeping/deleting." So if someone said "KEEP Passes NFOOTY" that reply would be posted immediately after. Clearly someone might say "KEEP Because he did play one game for Rochdale A.F.C. in 1921" instead, but in a sense that's a valid argument, albeit a excessively weak one, and hopefully the closer would take due note. Nigej (talk) 08:27, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't agree that sports should be an exception to SNGs. If the current NSPORTS is unacceptable, fix or remove the portions that are problematic. I could see if the concern is with SNGs in general, in which case academics or politicians, for example, would be held to the same standard.—Bagumba (talk) 08:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I've never really understood this "we must all suffer together" sort of argument. If someone's abusing the system it's them that should be punished. I don't see why those who are doing the right thing should need to do anything. The fact that nearly half of all Wikipedia biographies of living people are sports competitors (ie covered by NSPORTS) shows that the problem is with NSPORTS not with the others. Clearly there can't be other biographical SNGs with nearly half, otherwise there wouldn't be anything left for all the others. Nigej (talk) 09:01, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I was under the impression the vast majority of these were from NFOOTY, but I haven't got the statistics to hand (willing to be told). There are lots of professional footballers, purely by the nature of a length of the sport having been played back to the 1800s and the sheer depths of money and worldwide appeal. It's clearly too broad, as, while being a professional athlete might be notable in certain sports, it simply isn't the case this widespread. The fix is to look at each SNG individually and tighten up the criteria, so that we know certain people are going to be more or less notable. Then, any that are (per the Rochdale example, it's possible someone was notable for playing in that game, being particularly bad/good, or otherwise) notable but don't meet the SNG can be shown via sourcing that they are so. I do agree that we should have less "passes SNG so notable" arguments at AfD. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:25, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The issue mainly relates to living people. Outside sports, 40% of biographies are for living people but for sports its 77%. Less than 20% of biographies for dead people are sports people but its nearly half for those still living. NFOOTY makes up a third of the sports biographies, so it is a high proportion, but American football comes second which seems odds for a sport that's basically only played in two countries. There's other oddities: Australian rules football (basically played in one country) has 14,000 while tennis (a massive worldwide sport) has 8,700. And are there really 10,000 notable racing drivers? Seems crazy to me. (NB all data about a year old) Nigej (talk) 10:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Stats from 2019 - more association football BLPs than all other sports combined. Levivich 14:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Couldn't find "all sports" in that link, only a selection. My numbers were Footy 153,000, All sports 450,000 (from Category:Sports competitors by sport), All BLPs 970,000. Nigej (talk) 16:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    What's the point of these counting numbers? Is there some quota as to how many articles athletes can have? Sports are more popular than academia so of course there would be significantly more athletes represented than mathematicians or whatever. Pointing that out doesn't help advance any argument. Spanneraol (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    There's no quota. However my own view is that knowing a few numbers helps people gauge how loose or tight the criteria are in certain areas. Obviously it's not an exact science, people make their own judgments about the merits of these numbers. In my analysis I compared the number of biographical articles with the number of "vital" ones (per Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5) - people we've heard of or perhaps should have heard of, again nothing precise here, just peoples judgment. For all non-sports combined, there's an average of 90 biographies for every "vital" one (living and dead). Fair enough, we can afford to have lots of articles about people we've never heard of. For soccer there's 1600 articles for every "vital" one. Some might think that indicates that the criteria for inclusion are too loose for soccer, some might not. For soccer to get down to the 90 level from 1600, we'd have to delete about 95% of all soccer biographies (or increase their quota of "vital" articles by the same factor). Anyway it's all food for thought, nothing more. Nigej (talk) 17:16, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    What's the point of these counting numbers? Is there some quota as to how many articles athletes can have? Yes, there is, when it comes to
    WP:BLPs. We are doing active harm whenever we publish a substandard BLP. I quote Tamzin, who wrote:

    But we are now the world's first-choice reference work, and we need to accept the ethical duties that come with that. Which include a duty to the people we write about. Some editors just need to accept that some names are going to be unlinked in their tables or football players and daytime screenwriting Emmy winners.

    Tamzin's entire comment is worth reading (as are her thoughts on her userpage), because she explains the actual harm resulting from poor-quality BLPs, particularly BLPs of marginally-notable people. The rule needs to be that Wikipedia is never the first publication to publish a biography of anyone, and so all Wikipedia biographies must be sourced to other biographies... not strung together from statistics and game reports (which are primary sources), but a tertiary-source biography built upon multiple secondary-source biographies. That's the only way we can be sure we're writing a proper encyclopedia biography and not just a dossier. Levivich 17:58, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    I've never really understood this "we must all suffer together" sort of argument: Similairly, I suspect the problems are with a few select sports, and not all of NSPORTS.—Bagumba (talk) 14:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)'m n[reply]
    That's true to a certain extent. As I noted above, it primarily relates to team sports, but its certainly not just soccer. Nigej (talk) 16:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • A and B are both issues. A - Something being thought to be notable at AfD is bad, when the range is particularly wide. Even if someone makes the argument "Passes SNG so notable", you should be able to challenge them for sourcing. B - This is almost the exact reason for having an SNG in the first place, but if the articles are sourced to meet GNG when they are created, then there is no issue. Perhaps we should be a bit stricter on sourcing, so when an article is created we need to at least give a good account that the subject meets GNG (this does happen at AfC). Expecting at least three sources isn't much that's needed Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:25, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sigh - each sport-specific entry needs to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Treating all sports the same simply won't work. GiantSnowman 18:00, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the better way to approach this problem is with stricter BLP notability rules... for any BLP, any sport, or non-sport. Start there. Modify BLPPROD to allow the prodding of any BLP that doesn't have two GNG sources. Amend N to require consensus that there are two GNG sources at AFD in order for a BLP to not be deleted at AFD. Consider whether to retain the exception for NPROF (which is, AFAIK, the only type of BLP that has a formal GNG exception). This will avoid all the accusations/feelings that one particular sport, or sports altogether, are being "singled out". We have over a million BLPs and yes, this change would result in the deletion of a significant number of them. Levivich 18:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest an unusual RFC statement, and that would be:

"The community has decided that NSPORTS is too inclusive and asks that it be tightened within the next year. Amongst other possible changes, please remove provisions where NSPORTS passes an athlete in essence solely because they participated professionally."

Two notes on this. One is that is it is a general finding and request. Trying to make the large amount of changes needed by a specific community RFC is impossible, but the push needs to come from the community, not just the people active at the SNG, and this is a way to resolve that quandary. The other is that it does not specify "predictor of GNG". This leaves open the possibility that this is a unique field because much in it "coverage" is often created primarily as a form of entertainment and so needs a higher standard to be an equal gauge of notability. A higher coverage-type bar such as at NCorp might be required. As with ncorp, this could also vaguely/informally also calibrate GNG for sports. North8000 (talk) 18:11, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that we need input from the whole community. I'm not sure we'll ever get agreement to delete large number of articles. My own preference would be some sort of "from now on, BLPs cannot be created unless ..." Nigej (talk) 18:44, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would help to differentiate between "getting a biography" and "being mentioned somewhere in Wikipedia." A criteria that said something like:
  • Played for at least two seconds and editors have located at least one article in an independent news source that contains at least 200 consecutive words about the player: separate article
  • Played for at least two seconds and editors are unable to locate any qualifying articles containing at least 200 consecutive words about the player: add paragraph to the Wikipedia article about the team/season/roster, with suitable redirects.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This was essentially what happened in
WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion. Since this didn't result in a specific change to the guideline that AfD participants could point to, it was basically ignored by the usual offenders and here we are. I think for this discussion to have any impact whatsoever it needs to be codified in the guidelines. JoelleJay (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
That RFC close also stated that there was a rough consensus that sources on older athletes are concentrated in print media. Because it is impossible to prove the negative that the sources do not exist to support an article, some intermediate standard is required for determining when an article on these athletes should be deleted due to lack of notability. Seems the entire community has dropped the ball on formulating this "intermediate standard", not the exclusive fault of any specific "usual offenders".—Bagumba (talk) 05:10, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience the large plurality of athlete AfDs the "usual offenders" !vote "Keep meets N[sport]" in are on contemporary American or English football players, not historical figures. JoelleJay (talk) 04:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • To me the real problem is E. I would like to see more confidence that 95% of the athletes covered under a sport-specific criteria would pass GNG. From my perspective, the presumption of notability may not extend through the history of the sport or for all athletes who participate in a particular event. Perhaps this is true with some sports in some eras, is this presumption always true? We saw this in the discussion of NOLYMPICS where the community determined that that presumption was overly inclusive, and it was best to rely on GNG for many Olympic participants. --Enos733 (talk) 06:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that 2017 RFC is superceded by the 2021 RFC at WT:N - see Wikipedia talk:Notability/Archive 72#Request for Comment on the Subject-specific notability guidelines (SNG). --Masem (t) 05:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The 2017 RfC wasn't overruled as a whole, its scope was just reduced to NSPORT and therefore was no longer generalizable to all SNGs. It still applies to NSPORT. JoelleJay (talk) 05:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Plus, SNGs serving as alternatives to GNG does not negate NSPORT's requiring GNG. It just means we look to NSPORT for guidance on notability, see that it requires GNG, and then look back at GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 06:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 1 (NSPORT)

All (edit, re: Theknightwho) athlete biographies subjects must demonstrate GNG when notability is challenged at AfD. This could be added to, e.g., clarify the second sentence. Amendments to/additional guidance on this statement could include:

  1. SIGCOV in multiple secondary, independent reliable sources would have to be produced during the course of an AfD.
  2. Articles could still be created and exist in mainspace with only one RS verifying the subject meets a sport-specific guideline (SSG) criterion, but meeting a criterion would not serve as a valid keep argument in a deletion discussion.
  3. Editors would be discouraged from nominating very new SSG-meeting articles for deletion (barring non-notability issues).
  4. NEW as of 22:10 22 Jan 22, restatement of Bagumba's comment below: Elements of WP:FAILN are prerequisites when nominating a subject that meets an SNG, e.g. (a) an article must have been tagged for notability for over a month, and/or (b) there must be evidence that a related WikiProject was contacted, asking for subject-matter experts to improve.

JoelleJay (talk) 03:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC) Edited: JoelleJay (talk) 22:10, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments
  • Support, with support of 1, and support of 2 iff a stronger change (e.g. GNG sourcing required from the start) does not gain consensus. JoelleJay (talk) 03:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestion I would like to see elements of
    WP:FAILN being prerequisites when nominating a subject that meets an SNG. Say, article been tagged for notability for over a month. Even better, evidence that related WikiProject was contacted, asking for subject-matter experts to improve.—Bagumba (talk) 04:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
This means that keeping an article solely on the basis of NSPORTS is in violation of core policy, and if articles are being kept on that basis - and they are, despite NSPORTS stating that it does not replace GNG - then we need to make it indisputable that articles covered by NSPORTS must meet GNG when challenged, which is what this proposal does. BilledMammal (talk) 12:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a really muddled argument. We require reliable non-primary sources to satisfy
WP:OR. It isn't necessary to satisfy WP:GNG in order to adhere to either of these policies. --Michig (talk) 14:27, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
First, I would agree that
WP:DUEWEIGHT
, as we are relying entirely on a single authors point of view.
Second, NSPORTS is used to support articles that fail
WP:GNG or something very similar. BilledMammal (talk) 15:03, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
So, say a Japanese player from 1960 has a database entry and nothing else, a similar Japanese player from the same time period already has some offline sources. Would we really want to take the other article to AfD and have the article deleted simply because those reading the AfD don't have access to those sources and/or not speak Japanese?
I don't think we gain anything by saying the second bit at all, we should really promote articles being well created in the first place. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:57, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your reasoning, but I think requiring GNG from the outset would a) be a much stronger and more contentious proposal, and b) the outcome would be functionally identical to this proposal (athletes not meeting GNG do not get articles on Wikipedia), with the only difference being some articles are created first before being deleted. JoelleJay (talk) 21:23, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural oppose This is an entirely new and different RfC that would dramatically change NSPORTS. For it to be considered, it should be opened as a new RfC, complying with RfC requirements, including notice to the impacted projects.
Summary: For those who don't see this for what it is, it's yet another attempt to crush NSPORTS -- after the last effort to do so failed -- and to impose a strong anti-sports bias on wikipedia by imposing new restrictions that do not apply to academics, entertainers, politicians, businessmen, or any other group or category. Appallingly bad proposal.
Oppose 1. One week (the duration of an AfD) is simply not a sufficient timeline in the case of pre-Internet topics. A topic should have at least a year after the article is created for editors to search for SIGCOV in libraries, paper archives, etc. Also, it's inappropriate for this requirement to be directed only at sports articles. If such a requirement is to be implemented, it should be across-the-board and not targeted at one group of articles.
Strong oppose 2. A rule stating that passing NSPORTS would have zero effect in AfD discussions would render meaningless the "presumption of notability" created by the SNG. It is really a back-door way to completely gut and neuter NSPORTS -- the very thing that was strongly opposed by the majority in the RfC above. As written, this continues to encourage creation of sub-stubs based solely on database entries. I favor imposing a requirement of including one example of SIGCOV (above and beyond a database) as a better solution.
Oppose 3. Hopelessly vague as to "very new" -- does that mean one week, a month, a year? It's also drafted to be completely toothless -- "discouraged", really?
The real solution: Don't gut NSPORTS. Instead, tighten the standards that are too loose, and impose a requirement to have at least one example of SIGCOV for all new articles (not just sports articles). Cbl62 (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I would oppose notification of wikiprojects, as this would cause
WP:CANVAS
issues specifically related to the partisan nature of the audience. If wide input it needed, it is better to widely advertise it in high traffic, relevant noticeboards.
As for "Oppose 2", shouldn't that be done by the creator of the article, before moving it to mainspace? BilledMammal (talk) 15:04, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So you think it's appropriate to fundamentally change (more accurately, "gut") NSPORTS without providing a neutral notice to NSPORTS and its constituents? Unbelievable. Notices have been given. Cbl62 (talk) 15:20, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:CANVAS in two ways. I would ask that you rescind the notices, and publish neutral ones is nonpartisan forums - or at least hold a discussion here about which forums to notify before unilaterally doing so. BilledMammal (talk) 15:26, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Disagree. This is a proposal which you admit is targeted at NSPORTS ("I believe this will only affect
WP:NSPORT".) Yet, you oppose letting NSPORTS and its constituents know about this proposal -- a proposal that would render meaningless the presumption of notability for NSPORTS and no other guideline. If this change is to be properly considered, NSPORTS should be notified. Changes like this should not be made in the dark, but in the light of day. My notice (which you have now reverted twice) was neutrally worded and invited participants to weigh in one way or the other. Your substitute is meaningless and doesn't even say that the proposal has to do with sports!!!! In what way do you think my notice was not neutral or accurate? Cbl62 (talk) 15:35, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Moving this to your talk page. BilledMammal (talk) 15:38, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing is being done in the dark here. WP:VPP is an open, community noticeboard; not a back room talk page.Tvx1 19:14, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This would not eliminate the purpose of NSPORT, as the proposed change is in line with what is already ultimately required by NSPORT: all athlete notability is directly dependent on and requires meeting GNG. Per the 2017 RfC:

There is clear consensus that no subject-specific notability guideline, including Notability (sports) is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion.

EDIT (collapsing large quote blocks, per discussion at my TP) And per NSPORT itself:
NSPORT instruction regarding GNG
Per the first sentence

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia.

Per the Applicable policies and guidelines section of NSPORT:

In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the General Notability Guideline. The guideline on this page provides bright-line guidance to enable editors to determine quickly if a subject is likely to meet the General Notability Guideline.

Per the Basic criteria section of NSPORT:

A person is presumed to be notable if they have been the subject of multiple published[2] non-trivial[3] secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent,[4] and independent of the subject.[5] The guidelines on this page are intended to reflect the fact that sports figures are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion if they have participated in or achieved success in a major international competition at the highest level.

Per NSPORT FAQ1:

Q1: How is this guideline related to the general notability guideline?
A1: The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline. They are intended only to stop an article from being quickly deleted when there is very strong reason to believe that significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from multiple reliable sources is available, given sufficient time to locate it.[1][2][3][4] Wikipedia's standard for including an article about a given person is not based on whether or not they have attained certain achievements, but on whether or not the person has received appropriate coverage in reliable sources, in accordance with the general notability guideline. Also refer to Wikipedia's basic guidance on the notability of people for additional information on evaluating notability.

FAQ2:

Q2: If a sports figure meets the criteria specified in a sports-specific notability guideline, does this mean they do not have to meet the general notability guideline?
A2: No, the article must still eventually provide sources indicating that the subject meets the general notability guideline. Although the criteria for a given sport should be chosen to be a very reliable predictor of the availability of appropriate secondary coverage from reliable sources, there can be exceptions. For contemporary persons, given a reasonable amount of time to locate appropriate sources, the general notability guideline should be met in order for an article to meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion. (For subjects in the past where it is more difficult to locate sources, it may be necessary to evaluate the subject's likely notability based on other persons of the same time period with similar characteristics.)

and FAQ5

Q5: The second sentence in the guideline says "The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below." Does this mean that the general notability guideline doesn't have to be met?
A5:No; as per Q1 and Q2, eventually sources must be provided showing that the general notability guideline is met. This sentence is just emphasizing that the article must always cite reliable sources to support a claim of meeting Wikipedia's notability standards, whether it is the criteria set by the sports-specific notability guidelines, or the general notability guideline.

The intended purpose of the second sentence would also not be affected whatsoever, as it applies strictly to what refs are required for the creation of articles.

WP:N
can continue to reference those SNGs that do supersede GNG (NPROF, GEOLAND, NCORP) and the ones that don't (if N says a subject can be notable if it meets GNG or an SNG, and the relevant SNG itself defers to GNG, then the "or" is irrelevant).

This is also in line with the consensus noted in administrative close summaries of AfDs where subjects who pass an SNG but have been shown not to pass GNG and "keep" and "delete" !votes are numerically similar: Edvin Dahlqvist, Wei Changsheng, Raphael Noway, Francis English, Rafael Dias, Tony Frias, Lambert Golightly, Atul Raghav, Prateek Sinha, Salman Saeed (The result was delete. Whether or not the subject passes NCRIC becomes moot when notability is challenged. SNGs serve as shortcuts to determine which subjects are likely to pass GNG, but once challenged, sources have to show that GNG actually is met.), John Ford, Shahid Ilyas, Mohammad Laeeq, Obaidullah Sarwar (The result was delete. As pointed out by a number of editors, passing an SNG is irrelevant if an article doesn't pass GNG.), and Qaiser Iqbal.

I will be leaving neutral notifications on the Talk Pages of closers involved in contentious athlete AfDs, including the few who closed contrary to the wording of NSPORT.

The articles that easily pass an NSPORT sport-specific guideline (SSG) should also easily turn up GNG-compatible references and therefore never need to be brought to AfD in the first place if BEFORE is done, with the only possible exceptions being subjects in non-Anglophone countries or from non-internet time periods. This proposal acknowledges time-based amendments could be made for these exceptions, and participants here are encouraged to submit suggestions. The article subjects that barely pass an SSG are also the ones for whom a BEFORE search may not turn up GNG sourcing and would thus be vulnerable to AfD nomination and deletion anyway based on the current wording of NSPORT.

I'm therefore asking

​​​​ oppose !voters to demonstrate how this proposal would materially affect the intended purpose of NSPORT, as written and in practice. JoelleJay (talk) 22:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

A note on the above, I was pinged, but didn't oppose on this particular proposal. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 22:40, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's a big difference between saying "the subjects of sports biographies must meet the GNG" and "all subjects of sports biographies will be deleted at AfD unless evidence that the subject meets the GNG is presented right now". Like it or not, looking for sources before nominating at an AfD usually consists of an English speaker Googling the subject.
WP:BEFORE
says that various Google searches is the minimum expected, and isn't mandatory anyway. If someone says "fails GNG" in an AfD, this usually means that they don't think the article contains references which show the subject meets the GNG, and they couldn't find anything better on Google. For many subjects, e.g. people from non-English speaking countries, people from developing countries or people from pre-internet eras, this may not find the best available sources, which may be offline or in databases which aren't indexed. (Contrary to what's been said above, the proposal does not include any special treatment for these cases.)
Right now we have discretion over these cases. We don't have to delete articles on subjects where GNG-passing source coverage probably exists just because we don't have it to hand right now. ([[WP:NEXIST says this.) On the other hand if we think GNG-passing coverage isn't likely to exist then we can delete the article anyway, especially if the subject only barely or technically passes the SNG. This proposal would remove that discretion and replace it with something with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And yes this would eliminate NSPORT as a viable SNG. For all other SNGs you can cite passing the SNG in a Keep rationale at AfD, and your opinion would at least be taken into consideration. That wouldn't be the case for NSPORT if this passes. Hut 8.5 15:44, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This was explicitly what the 2017 RfC decided, it's really not a new proposal. If an editor can't find sources in a BEFORE search, and members of the relevant notified wikiproject can't either, and the only assurance we have that SIGCOV likely exists is that the subject meets a criterion that the wikiproject thinks would correspond to GNG coverage 95% of the time, then maybe that subject should be draftified into a subpage of the wikiproject where those editors who would be most likely to find sources could collaborate on writing an encyclopedic article rather than a permastub. JoelleJay (talk) 04:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that this is getting so much opposition should be a hint that it's not merely codifying existing accepted practice. If that was the case it wouldn't be controversial. Hut 8.5 19:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is codifying existing practice, but after the sports projects were notified there was a flood of all the editors who always !vote "keep meets N[sport]" (regardless of how often they've been shown that argument is insufficient) in AfDs on athletes in their particular sport and don't !vote elsewhere. I would guess very few of them would care if this targeted only a particular sport-specific subguideline that wasn't "their" sport. There are no comparable wikiprojects to notify the many athlete AfD participants who don't !vote en bloc with a sports project. JoelleJay (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To add to what JoelleJay said, even on AFD's regarding Olympic Athletes you still have editors coming along and voting to keep on the basis that they participated in the Olympics, despite community consensus being to change those guidelines. This proposal isn't controversial in general, it is controversial among the Sports Wikiprojects that were canvassed here. BilledMammal (talk) 00:47, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - This could perhaps go in some of the other sections but for the most part it goes here... The guidelines found in NSPORTS should be all designed in such a way that it is unlikely that the person fails the GNG. I think attempts to rewrite the guidlines in such a way seem to get delayed unnecessarily. Users complain about these things taking too long, or that wikiprojects set their standards too low, but when you have some carefully thought out improvements discussed Wikiproject:Motorsport, seemingly accepted on Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)|Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(sports)/Archive_44#Motorsport but that is still not enough (see the later section with the same name, both are "Motorsport", in the archive). So I think improvements need to be made so as to avoid this being an issue at all, but bureachracy likes to get in the way of real, unopposed (and I would think in many cases uncontroversial) improvement. But assuming that NSPORTS is what it is supposed to be, I think this proposal here is reasonable. Of course satisfying some requirement uncer NSPORTS must be enough to dePROD, for example, and I think for the benefit of finding hard to find sources it should even be grounds for relisting AfD discussions. But ultimately we shouldn't be keeping articles for which the sourcing doesn't exist, or cannot be found in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps an option should also exist (and this could apply to any SNG) where it is noted a subject appears to meet SNG but not GNG for undeletion if someone demonstrates they have sources which could be used to improve the original article? A7V2 (talk) 23:24, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently I'm an idiot and missed Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#RfC on new Motorsports guidelines... A7V2 (talk) 22:45, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose only because I think that applying this only or initially to one SNG is problematic and misplaced in this particular RfC. I would support a proposal extending to all SNGs but that would require a different discussion more widely advertised. ElKevbo (talk) 21:44, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support One of several possible ways to fix the big mess that this overly lenient SNG has created. North8000 (talk) 13:33, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Better than the status quo, but there are tens of thousands of these database entries that need to be cleaned up. AFD does not scale to that task. MER-C 12:38, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support They should meet the GNG, period. The Oppose votes are entirely unconvincing. Politicians and entertainers routinely have significant coverage in reliable sources, hence why they so easily meet GNG when that is required (and why their SNGs often are a reason for deletion, rather than keeping, as just having reliable source coverage isn't good enough to meet notability in many of those cases). If you can't source your articles properly, they don't belong here. SilverserenC 04:43, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per above. Therapyisgood (talk) 16:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What coverage is considered significant?

I've been invited to this discussion via

WP:SNG
, is that "articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found", so adding that a subject/topic must demonstrate GNG when notability is challenged is not changing anything and will not assist clarity at an AFD because there will still remain the question of what sources or coverage is appropriate. The real question for this (as well as all other SNGs) is what sourcing is considered adequate and what coverage is considered significant. Looking though this discussion, I don't get the sense that people are questioning sources, but are questioning significant coverage - ie. is a five minute action less substitution at the end of an already won match which is noted as a fact in sources, but is not covered in detail, significant enough for notability?

I think the real issue with NSport is the question of mentions in sources, particularly database sources. A mention in a database that Smith came on as a substitute indicates the likelihood that a source might have written something significant about Smith's appearance in that game, such as that Smith scored the winning goal, but is perhaps not in itself proof of notability, even if Smith's appearance was mentioned in a leading newspaper. "Smith came on for Jones in the last five minutes" in a newspaper report of a match is evidence that Smith played in the match, but is that mention evidence of notability? "Smith came on for Jones in the last five minutes and galvanised the team into action with his energy and enthusiasm which culminated in Smith scoring the winning goal in the dying seconds. Smith is clearly a promising athlete, and the manager would do well to put him on as a starting player in the next match" would be widely regarded as fairly significant. Perhaps it would be helpful if folks agreed on what would be considered "significant coverage", with a particular focus on the question of is a mention that Smith played in a match significant enough, or should there be some comment on Smith's contribution to the game. SilkTork (talk) 03:00, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I feel this is an important question; considering it, I believe significant coverage should be classified as "coverage that contains significant exposition in the sources own voice" which should exclude trivial coverage that we cannot build an article on such as "Smith was signed by Furness", or "Smith played against Kendal and scored a goal". BilledMammal (talk) 03:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Although perhaps a tighter criteria would be more appropriate; Schazjmd recently commented at a WP:N discussion that coverage of politicians during their campaigns is routine, and it seems logically that this would apply to coverage of cricket players playing cricket, ice hockey players playing ice hockey etc. As such, the alternative that I am starting to believe is appropriate would be "significant coverage outside of their sporting endeavours"; for example, if an article went into depth on Smith's childhood, or Smith's charitable endeavours, then that would count, but coverage of Smith playing well against Furness wouldn't.
I am not convinced that this alternative is superior, but I think it is worth considering, and the fact that it has precedent in NPOL suggests that it might work. BilledMammal (talk) 06:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No. The NPOL restriction only applies to pols' campaign for office and not their service in office. Using the same NPOL setting, your proposal is equivalent to saying there must be "significant coverage outside of their political endeavors". Or amending NACADEMIC to provide that there must "significant coverage outside of their academic endeavors". Notabiity should be determined based on the depth of coverage of an individual in their core area of endeavors and not solely based on whether they pursue some side endeavors relating to charity or visiting sick kids in the hospital or anecdotes about their childhood. Cbl62 (talk) 13:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are some aspects that I believe all agree on. In particular, the following in the context of sports bios do not constitute SIGCOV: (1) mere database entries as are found in Sports Reference LLC web sites; (2) short transactional announcements that a player signed, was released, or placed on the injured list; (3) passing references in game coverage; (4) listings in a box score; (5) death notices submitted by the player's family after their death (as distinguished from obituaries published with independent editorial oversight); and (6) content issued by non-independent sources such as the player himself, the team he plays for, or the league he plays in. Beyond that, the issues to be decided are whether the coverage is sufficiently deep and whether the sources are independent and reliable. As with GNG generally, the debate typically centers on how deep is deep enough (four sentences? three paragraphs? 200 words?) and there is no clear guidance, leaving it to the judgment of all of us to weigh (and argue about) how much is enough. Cbl62 (talk) 03:25, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your specific question, a mere mention that Smith played in a match would fall into the category of a "passing mention" and clearly does not constitute SIGCOV IMO. There needs to be some real depth or substance. Cbl62 (talk) 03:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The other angle to this is of course, how far down the reliable-sources well to go. USA Today is deemed to be an acceptable source generally generally, but are we as impressed by anything they happen to put on their web-based sports coverage? 109.255.211.6 (talk) 03:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Smith came on for Jones in the last five minutes and galvanised the team into action with his energy and enthusiasm which culminated in Smith scoring the winning goal in the dying seconds. Smith is clearly a promising athlete, and the manager would do well to put him on as a starting player in the next match" I would say that does not constitute SIGCOV, as it is not in-depth and, at only 2 sentences, far from significant. I would also argue it does not provide anything encyclopedic that we could add to a biography, other than perhaps "his performance in [game] was described as [...] in [newspaper]", which brings to question how DUE it is. At best it would contribute to BASIC, but I would be hard-pressed to give it even that unless we want articles on me and a large number of other people based off their performance in high school 2A regional tennis matches. JoelleJay (talk) 04:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is a good point, but I'm not sure how we would address it - one solution may be to require non-local coverage to establish notability, as I suspect if such coverage is in non-local media it is both more likely to be
WP:DUE, and it is likely that broader coverage will exist elsewhere. BilledMammal (talk) 04:37, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
That's a guideline that is tailored to the unique circumstances of under-18 athletes. No f-ing way it should be applied more broadly. Fight to the death on that one. No other group of human adults is subject to such a requirement. Cbl62 (talk) 04:48, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Guess I'll just have to rely on scientific citations demonstrating GNG, then! One 9th-year grad student in my lab definitely already meets GNG if 2-3-sentences describing results of his first-author paper as "nice" and "interesting" in unaffiliated researchers' articles is indeed considered significant!
More to the point, if my mediocre high school tennis career excludes me because ~3 sentences talking favorably of my performance fails being "clearly beyond ROUTINE coverage", and ROUTINE is defined elsewhere separately, then it's the amount and depth of coverage rather than my being a high schooler at the time that makes the coverage ROUTINE. Therefore, ~3 sentences talking favorably of any athlete's performance would be considered ROUTINE. And if that's the case, then those local sources would also fail SPORTCRIT...which was kinda the point I was making with my first comment. :) JoelleJay (talk) 05:44, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least two out of three would be a bar to your high school tennis career. Depth of coverage is, of course, required. And even if there is depth,
WP:ROUTINE is a guideline for events not biographies. Cbl62 (talk) 05:55, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
If ROUTINE is to be interpreted exclusively in the context of events, then what purpose does it serve being linked in relation to biographies in NSPORT? The wording is very intentional, so it must convey something, and I think if recognizing coverage as being "routine" is a necessity when evaluating HS athletes it certainly shouldn't be ignored. And I agree that depth of coverage is required -- which I'm arguing would exclude the example given by SilkTork and the vast majority of anything fewer than 5-8 disconnected sentences published in a newspaper. In my (and apparently Levivich's) opinion we shouldn't even be writing biographies on anyone who hasn't had a substantive profile written on them in IRS, but I recognize this stance is well in the minority. JoelleJay (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When I was a new page patroller, I considered at least a short paragraph that was tightly focused on the subject to be significant. From what I could see of others, that was fairly normative. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:44, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose would essentially make SNGs useless, which is essentially just the first proposal.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 00:57, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • As addended, it means articles get at least month's "grace" after being tagged for notability to demonstrate it -- as NSPORT already explicitly says they "should" do. Isn't that a useful distinction from the "outright abolish" original proposal? If not, how long would seem more appropriate? Indefinitely? Presume notability forever, but never actually get there? (BTW, you might wish to place this !vote above the previous section marker for clarity.) 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:20, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support SNGs that allow for one line bios of footballers from the 1800s who plaid a single game are broken --Guerillero Parlez Moi 17:32, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support- SNGs that encourage editors to create hundreds or thousands of single-liner articles based on match scorecards and dressing them up as biographies, are broken. Reyk YO! 21:42, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support All athlete biographies already have to demonstrate GNG when notability is challenged at AfD. Alvaldi (talk) 18:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - sorry if I've missed something but what proposal are you actually all !voting on in this particular section? @Dlthewave, Spy-cicle, Guerillero, and Reyk: GiantSnowman 21:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose This just feels like a way to defang SNGs without explicitly getting rid of them. One-line "keep per SNG" !votes on subjects with no sources beyond a database are poor arguments, but closers can (and probably should) already ignore those. Where SNGs help is when a subject's sourcing is more borderline; the SNGs can be a good guideline as to whether more sources are likely to be available or not, even if it's not clear whether the known sources quite meet GNG or not. This proposal would prevent editors from using that argument even when it makes perfect sense to do so. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:21, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure that pings work for we humble, humbler, humblest IP editors, but @Alvaldi:, @TheCatalyst31:, you should possibly move these comments to make clear to which proposal they apply to -- I assume SP1. I agree that closers should ignore such "!votes", and obviously that people shouldn't make them in first place. But they do, and then are outraged by if they're not counted, and then traipse off to DRV, where rinse and repeat. And they may even be technically correct in doing so: closing instructions expressly say to follow policies, but that doesn't expressly cover "only guidelines". 109.255.211.6 (talk) 04:04, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Pings do still work for you, and at this point there are enough unrelated comments about SP1 below the long diversion about significant coverage that they should either be moved en masse or just kept here IMO. I'll leave mine here for now, but if anyone feels like reuniting all the !votes feel free to move mine with them. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 04:20, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. GNG is the problem, not the solution. No Great Shaker (talk) 22:54, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So having articles which cannot be based on multiple independent, reliable sources is, somehow, not a problem (nevermind the fact that articles which cannot satisfy these basic requirements are very unlikely to have anything of encyclopedic value, or to meet the more fundamental
Wikipedia is not a database. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
As I said above, your proposal is nonsense because you have completely missed the point that it is GNG that causes nearly all notability issues. Read what I said above about 5P, RS and SNG as the common sense approach to notability. All this guff about proper sources and database entries shows that you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and you are ignorant of the one does exist. No Great Shaker (talk) 23:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So which one is posing more problems? The one that seemingly is used to permit the existence of
not their original research through archival documents but actually published in reliable sources previously? Yeah, the problem is the SNGs. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:55, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I know I'm wasting my time responding to your bluster but, even so, I'll summarise something I wrote in another place. If the likes of you would stop and think about why there are recurring problems with sports articles at AFD (i.e., the cause rather than the effect), it might just occur to you that there is a fundamental issue at
WP:HERE, create some articles, enhance some articles and expand some articles. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
ad lapidem dismissals. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:08, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Subproposal 2 (NSPORT)

PROPOSAL FAILED
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Closing statement: This is unlikely to achieve consensus, so closing per

WP:SNOW to focus discussion on the remaining proposals. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:00, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Change NSPORT so that game becomes season in organized sports and nutshell explicitly state articles can not use database, personal, or team pages as basis of creation.

Diffs of suggested changes (from a copy of NSPORT, others are welcome to use my sandbox or move to a more generally available area): nutshell, American Football, Association Football

WP:GNG covers the exceptional, but brief careers.Slywriter (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

  • For American football, what does, "have regularly appeared in at least one game" mean? BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:45, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure what this proposal means. Does it mean that an NFL player would have to play in every game in a 17-game season? That a baseball player would have to play in every game in a 162-game season? In the majority of games in a season? This is quite vague. I would support a proposal doubling all "one game" provisos to "two games" or even "three games". However, and in fairness, I should note that I made such a proposal with respect to NGRIDIRON last year, and it was rejected. A similar proposal was also overwhelmingly rejected with respect with respect to NFOOTBALL. Also, I believe that such detailed proposals to tweak NSPORTS are more appropriately presented at NSPORTS (and not here as a subproposal). Cbl62 (talk) 18:24, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Don't entirely disagree on placement, though not sure a fragmented conversation is to the benefit of wikipedia which is why its here. On the substance the SNG should be a high and obvious bar since the idea is "high likelihood of survival" at AfD if these conditions are met. Season may be excessive but its also a clear barometer that eliminates those who sat on the bench for a few games without meaningful participation.Slywriter (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Every game of a season would be clearly excessive. A majority of games would be exacting, but not wildly unreasonable. Maybe some sort of 'significant proportion' sort of standard? Two or three games of the English County Championship or of the NFL is quite a lot, but two or three out of top-level soccer season, not so much. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • See comment above for more but I'd support any standard above "wore a uniform on the bench" and the closer to likelihood of a lasting and impactful career the better. SNG should be an obvious bar, GNG handles the rest.Slywriter (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The current rules require actual participation in a game. Just sitting on the bench without actual playing does not suffice. A better improvement is to raise the minimum number of games played. See Subproposal 4 below. Cbl62 (talk) 23:44, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That certainly seems to be the case for NGRIDIRON, NCRICKET, etc, I'm not sure if NFOOTY applies a 'kit on the bench' standard. But it must be said that we have a number of present-day bios that don't even meet the "dressed to play on the sideline" threshold. So we have those articles on the alleged grounds they meet GNG. Such is the sport-website excitability about their career prospects. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 00:06, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 3 (NSPORT)

Remove all simple or mere "participation" criteria in NSPORT, outside of ones related to Olympics and equivalent events. This would eliminate several sections on specific sports where this is the only type of criteria give (such as for NGRIDIRON), while merit-based ones, like several in NTRACK, would be left.

The fundamental problem with NSPORT is the idea that participating in 1 or more games means the person is notable, but there's nothing about this criteria that assures more sources will come. On the other hand, holding a record, winning an individual championship, or awarded a well-recognized award, are things that are generally assured that more coverage about the person will come in time. Otherwise, we'd just expect individuals to meet the GNG to have an article. There should also be some type of grandfathering so that if passed, there is not a sudden rush for AFD. --Masem (t) 21:17, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Except when it does... BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
BeanieFan11: ...and those exceptions are rare. For every 100+ players that make a brief appearance at the professional level, there might be 1 that receives significant coverage. And Rudy's story is a special example that might be 1 in a million. The point getting missed is that the criteria is flawed when it's only right a small percentage of the time. We are erring on the side of not leaving someone out instead of erring on the side of not allowing junk in. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Using the one start/appearance is literally a starting point to establishing the basic inclusion criteria for a given individual. The real solution is to take each individual sports' guideline and seek to improve them, if needed, similar to what was done with the Olympics. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 15:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The inclusion criteria are supposed to reflect the level at which articles are likely to meet GNG at least 90% of the time. They have consistently been shown to not meet this. The current Olympics guidelines are an example of writing guidelines without considering what they actually would mean. They were created while ignoring we have dozens if not hundreds of articles on medalists without any sigcov on them. They were also created whle ignoring the fact that in the early Olympics there were some competitions that involved 3 or fewer competitors, so that all who competed won medals. They were also written without considering the question does being part of a team that wins a medal make every team member notable, or should we only consider that to make the team notable. Also the fact that since then it has been a hard fight to actually enforce the new rules, and this editor specifically has tried every trick to stop it, including falsely accusing people of acting as proxies for other people because they had any conversation on the matter at all, I think the Olympics guidelines are not a good example of anything. They were clearly not written with actually being able to pass GNG in mind, and people are still ignoring that any article to be kept needs to still pass GNG. On the whole Olympics is not an example of improving guidelines so that they actually reflect likelihood to pass GNG, since there are still a lot of people who won medals at the Olympics who have never recieved significant coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:57, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This does not address any real issue. If participation in one game in a particular sport at a particular level is not likely to result in significant reliable sources, then the guideline should be changed accordingly. If participation in one game in a particular sport at a particular level is likely to result in significant reliable sources, then the guideline is fine as is. Rlendog (talk) 21:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Some leagues are so elite such that a player that has appeared in one game in that league has is 95% likely to have received sufficient significant coverage from their achievements that earned them entry to the league and from any coverage surrounding their first game itself. If some specific sports have leagues that dont garner that level of coverage, those specific leagues should be removed, or that sport might even need to be delisted. This is no different than an SNG like
    WP:NPOLITICIAN, in which a person earning positions at certain levels of governement is presumed to have received significant coverage already.—Bagumba (talk) 16:03, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Then why start with game participation? If entry is enough, then simply include ALL professional players. The criteria is still flawed from that perspective, and an argument can be made that with the vast numbers that make it into these leagues each year, Wikipedia doesn't need an article on each one. Sure, they may have a quick blip on the radar in localized news coverage at the collegiate level, but if it never goes any further, then that "blip" is not necessarily worthy of encyclopedic coverage in a standalone article. They can instead be mentioned within an article or list covering a broader subject. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If entry is enough, then simply include ALL professional players: No, because not all professional leagues receive the same amount of coverage; that's the mistake that some specific sport SNGs currrently make.—Bagumba (talk) 16:54, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"not all professional leagues receive the same amount of coverage" I think you were arguing that significant coverage exists upon making the roster in some sports, and for those sports, I was asking why start with game participation then? Seems arbitrarily set based on your argument, which actually reinforces my support for this proposal. --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, I was referring to specific leagues of a sport. I don't assume coverage is necessarily universal for all league of a sport, or even between "top-level" leagues in different countries.—Bagumba (talk) 03:40, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • the attempt to claim that participating in one game is the same as being a government official who has power to create laws is just plain ludicrous. I might see this if we granted members of constitutional conventions, that meet only to create a constitution, especially at the sub-national level, default notability. However we do not grant members of such conventions default notability. Nor do we grant winners of primary elections default notability. Default notability is limited to elected members of bodies that have power to create laws. The one game rule is just plain ludicrous.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:00, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support. We are writing an encyclopedia. I am unsure that support "outside of ones related to Olympics and equivalent events" and I certainly don't support "grandfathering". Gog the Mild (talk) 19:02, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial oppose. The exception for olympic athletes needs to be eliminated. Why should we have unreferencable articles about olympic athletes allowed to persist? Makes no sense... --Jayron32 13:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOLYMPICS. --GoneIn60 (talk) 14:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
@
WP:NTRACK.—Bagumba (talk) 03:47, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
@Jayron32: While I agree, I believe it is too late in the discussion for the proposal to be altered to address that - as such, would you be willing to support the proposal as an improvement over the current situation? I would note that I plan to list a proposal removing Olympic participation from all sports once this discussion is over, although given the recent nomination of subproposal #10 I am tempted to do it now. BilledMammal (talk) 03:35, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Additional comment for the closer: It is my opinion that subproposals 3 and 4 are mutually exclusive – either the minimum participation requirement is increased or it is eliminated barring the absolute highest level of competition. I pity the closing admin should both technically succeed and they must choose one or the other. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 01:30, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 4

Modify all provisions of NSPORTS that provide that participation in "one" game/match such that the minimum participation level is increased to "three" games/matches. This raises the threshold for the presumption of notability to kick in. This is an actual and realistic compromise and one that provides a far greater likelihood that NSPORTS is tightly calibrated to GNG. Cbl62 (talk) 23:33, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support as proposer. Cbl62 (talk) 23:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - It would definitely be an improvement, although a very small one, and I support a much higher threshold, like, "inducted to the Hall of Fame" should be the threshold for when an athlete has a biography in a general encyclopedia. Other thresholds, better than what we have now, would be "starter" or "played in a majority of games in a season" or at least "played in a reasonable number of games in a season", but, hey, three games is better than one :-) Levivich 23:40, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose but something has to be changed. Both "one" and "three" are, in my opinion, arbitrary numbers. What we need is tightening the tournaments and leagues, so that participating in them actually aligns with
    Jovanmilic97 (talk) 23:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Well, NFOOTY for example uses all professional leagues. A profilic professional player, at any level is probably notable. The issue is the bit part players. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 00:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
By tripling the threshold, we at least eliminate the itty-bitty bit players. Cbl62 (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A prolific one yes. But a player who just comes in as a substitute for a couple of minutes in injury time and never plays again? I don’t think so. Yet NFOOTY says such a player is notable.Tvx1 03:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually NFOOTY says the entire subs bench became presumptively notable as soon as they were named to it, regarded of whether they were used significantly, tokenly, or not at all. And football generally had rather limited substitution, so mostly they won't be used. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mean to necro this, but NFOOTY does require actual participation in the match, not just being named as a substitute. I have also !voted to delete in a number of AfDs for players who met NFOOTY due to having played a few matches in a
WP:FPL but ended up not having long careers. Contrary to what appears to be the case in NFOOTY, we are more than prepared to delete articles for players who end up being non-notable in the long run. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 22:36, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Comment - I know most about cue sports, so the 128 professional snooker players are usually suggested to be notable, as they have to win, or place highly in specific national or international tournaments to compete. I've always found this to be suitable, as it's unlikely that any of these players wouldn't meet GNG. However, if it was just competing at a professional event, we would have hundreds of articles on invited wildcard amateur players who are decent players, but not going to have much in the way of significant coverage. Award and competitive rationale is fine... But only if the sport is individual. Team based games, which are the ones being talked about here, are much harder to give a decent rationale for. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 00:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal would not impact cuesports which has no "one game/match" proviso. It would simply raise the bar by two notches for those sports that already have a "one/game match" proviso. Cbl62 (talk) 00:22, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree completely about "too many crap leagues" but this is a start. Cbl62 (talk) 00:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, well if you're going to make it three you might as well make it four, just to get rid of all of those nn three-gamers. And then you might as well change it to five ... might as well make it 59, because there might be an nn 58-gamer... Completely arbitrary number, in my opinion. This should be discussed sport by sport, not all at once, for 3 games is a much bigger part of an NFL season (17 games, previously 16 prior to 2021, ten prior to the 1960s, even less before that) than it is for, e.g. NBA, MLB. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree this in crude in that respect. "Majority of a 'season'" (or a quarter, or a "significant proportion" or something on those lines) would be more transferable, albeit sounding even more tortuously arbitrary. Maybe less so if instantiated per-sport on similar ones. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:45, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support No more arbitrary than the existing standard, and will curb some of the worst abuses. --RaiderAspect (talk) 02:22, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Why three? The reason it is set at one is that is an easy simple standard.. any other number is just something arbitrary. Spanneraol (talk) 02:26, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose in addition to being arbitrary, it doesn't reflect the difference in game counts in a given sport (eg baseball players have 100+ potential games w/in a season while gridiron football has only 18). --Masem (t) 02:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Per RaiderAspect. BilledMammal (talk) 05:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as per arguments in above sections. This is a cure in search of a problem. This cuts down on so many minor squabbles and helps new editors with structure. This would hurt so many women in sports articles. It goes on and on as why this is a bad idea. The few that slip through the cracks get brought to a WikiProject's attention and if they don't pass GNG they get eliminated. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:50, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't follow the logic here. Topics not passing GNG get eliminated, but it would hurt "so many women" if slightly more articles more explicitly had to GNG without a participation-based threshold? Why? Indeed, how? And why would a slightly higher participation-based threshold hurt those in particular? What's the pressing need to presume notability of people who've played two pro games ever... of any gender? 109.255.211.6 (talk) 06:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • You need to realize that Wikipedia is not the place to
      right great wrongs.Tvx1 15:21, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
      ]
  • Oppose this is simply an attempt to relitigate Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(sports)#RfC_on_WP:NFOOTY_criteria_being_changed (Football is the most popular sport and is presumably the target of this proposal), which failed for many of the reasons given by Oppose !voters above. Iffy★Chat -- 11:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - why three? Why not 5 or 10 or 20 etc? The point of the current '1' is that going from 0 apps to 1 app is the kind if event that means something and will result in significant coverage to meet GNG. That 'jump' is not the same at 2/3/4/5 etc. GiantSnowman 16:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@GiantSnowman: Why 3? (1) Because it's a reasonable compromise. (2) One and two games are a minimal level of participation. (3) We are serious about building an encyclopedia. (4) If we don't demonstrate as sports editors that we take notability seriously (and that we are able to agree even to a minimal compromise), then we face changes that are a whole lot worse than a three-game threshold. See my "plea for reconsideration" below. Cbl62 (talk) 16:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Plea for reconsideration by oppose and sports voters. @Lee Vilenski: @BeanieFan11: @Spanneraol: @Masem: @Fyunck(click): @Iffy: @GiantSnowman: @Bagumba: I am a sport editor, and I love building Wikipedia's quality coverage of sports. Coming from that perspective, I ask my fellow sport editors to think about what is at stake here. We all know that there is a growing antipathy to sub-stubs on marginally notable and non-notable athletes -- driven in large part by mass creation of sub-stubs sourced only to databases. This antipathy has led to drastic proposals that would gut NSPORTS and undermine the project's core mission. My subproposal 4 represents a small compromise on our part -- it simply eliminates the presumption of notability for one- and two-game players (in baseball, American football, association football, basketball, and every other sport). If a one- or two-game athlete has SIGCOV, they can still have an article under GNG. All this does is remove the presumption for athletes who didn't play more than a couple games. (I realize that every sport is different, but come on, one and two games is minimal participation regardless of the sport, and if there are one- and two-game players who are truly notable, SIGCOV can be found.) If we can't even compromise so far as to agree to a minor tweak to our guidelines to at least eliminate the presumption of notability for one- and two-game players, then perhaps we deserve the more draconian results that will follow. Cbl62 (talk) 16:26, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. Like I've said above, and elsewhere multiple times, feels free to tighten (on a sport-by-sport, WikiProject-led basis) the relevant SNGs so that the number of people presumed notable after playing is reduced. GiantSnowman 16:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your response amounts to leave it to each of us in our own walled garden to decide what's best. That approach has failed to result in meaningful reforms. If we continue to cling to the "walled gardens", the rest of the community is going to act and we aren't going to like what we get. I really don't understand why this minimal compromise is so difficult to swallow. Cbl62 (talk) 16:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Translation: you can do what you want to the other sports, but don't touch football. Levivich 16:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with any "participated" criteria is that while this has a reasonable assumption that significant sourcing exists for that person, these criteria do not encourage editors to actually start articles with significant coverage and thus lead to massive stubs that have no likely chance to be expanded by volunteers (eg mass creation). --Masem (t) 16:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem: It'a start and addresses what I consider to be low-hanging fruit. Why not at least grab the low-haning fruit? Rather than another endless discussion where nothing is accomplished, can't we at least agree that this is a step in the right direction? And if subproposal 5 also passes, it goes even further toward your concern with mass creation. Cbl62 (talk) 16:41, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOT#IINFO is the antithesis of going after low-hanging fruit. We should be working on the basis that most athletes - even professionally - are barely notable (due to being 2nd/3rd string, or minor league, or the like), and we should only create articles on these when there's clear significant coverage. --Masem (t) 16:48, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
My reference to low-hanging fruit was to suggest simply that some progress (eliminating the presumption for one- and two-game players) is better than none. It is offered as a compromise which, of course, you are free to reject (and to continue reaching for a bar that extends to higher-hanging fruit). In American football, the leagues covered are quite narrow (just the NFL for recent years), and coverage of the NFL is massive, such that I doubt you'd find anyone who played three games in the NFL (at least in the last 75 years) who doesn't have considerable SIGCOV. Cbl62 (talk) 17:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
From my reading of magazines like ESPN or typical newspapers stories about professional sports (ignoring box scores and pure recaps), the bulk of players are not covered in significant coverage, particularly that's not routine. (eg a team trading a player may be appropriate news to include on that player's page but doesn't necessarily grant notability or significant coverage). --Masem (t) 17:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My reading is different on the NFL, but that's a discussion for another day. We at a minimum should be able to agree that the presumption of notability shouldn't attach to one- and two-game players. Why isn't some progress better than none? Cbl62 (talk) 17:46, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously what's 'SIGCOV' isn't exactly etched in stone either. We can likely agree on what's a paragraph of coverage, but the quality of the sources can always be quibbled back and forth. I certainly don't think that, for example, players "flexed" to play in post-elimination games in gridiron games without even getting an active-roster contract are remotely of encyclopedic inherent notability, but evidently the sports websites are all over them anyway, so they'll be deemed to pass GNG. I'd certainly like to see them removed from the presumption -- and I want to stress, something that much tighter for a lot of other things, most of which are a much smaller dealer than the NFL, and which play a lot more games, to boot. I think Cbl62 is to be commended and is indeed being far-sighted in looking for an enlightened compromise here. Not necessarily because there's going to be some inevitable anti-sports deletionist backlash if one isn't arrived at, but the because the current situation doesn't serve sport well anyway. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 23:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support I agree with this in principle, but I think the bar is still too low with three matches. If, for instance, a tennis player plays just three professional doubles matches in their entire career after getting wild cards intended to boost the number of host country players and the player loses all of them 6-0 6,0, that doesn't make them notable by just having played these matches. Our articles should be based on
    signficant coverage of the subject, not on just participation. I share the opinion of Masem on this subject.Tvx1 17:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
Tennis does not have a one-match rule, so this proposal doesn't change anything about tennis. It only applies to the sports that already have a one-game proviso and bumps those from one to three. Cbl62 (talk) 17:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It quite patently does. One match in a professional level tournament and you're notable according to WP:TENNIS.Tvx1 21:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware of that. In that case, it would be impacted. For any sport with a one-game/match rule, this would triple it to three. Cbl62 (talk) 21:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tennis would be one of the easier ones to put on a global scale, given that it has meaningful rankings, and organises tournaments on that basis, so it doesn't especially suffer from the 'dubious local "pro" league' difficulty. One could add a ranking side-condition to participation, or maybe most straightforwardly just exclude the wildcards. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 23:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or make it considerably more than playing just one match. Or better, since tennis uses elimination-style tournaments, require them to have won one instead of just playing one match.Tvx1 03:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that there are players who have SIGCOV after one game, but it ain't anywhere near 95% of one-game players who get that type of coverage. It is also true that there are some 10-game players in lower-level leagues who don't have SIGCOV (and can therefore still be AfD'd under this proposal), but the percentage of 10-game players without SIGCOV is a heckuva lot lower than it is for one-game players. An increase in the number is not arbitrary -- it's a recognition of simple logic and reality that the more games an athlete has played, the more likely he/she is to have received SIGCOV. Cbl62 (talk) 17:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But they would pass GNG, so what's your point? Dege31 (talk) 14:35, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You raise a valid point, and it depends on the league. Further work is needed to weed out the leagues where three games is not a good predictor of SIGCOV. Cbl62 (talk) 16:08, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@
Jovanmilic97: At a loss to understand why you and others would oppose this modest increase from one to three games required and remain neutral about the more absolute subproposal 3 above that strikes all one game qualifying rule altogether. Can you explain the logic to me? Cbl62 (talk) 16:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't particularly like any of these proposals.. this whole RFC seems to be driven by the same people who have been attacking sports articles on wikipedia for years. I continue to believe that all athletes in top level sports should be considered notable and don't relish the idea of having to argue massive amounts of people at AFD.. And this whole discussion has gotten so large it is impossible to follow at this point and I don't even know which options i have commented on cause i can't even find my own comments. Spanneraol (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also do not particularly like any of the proposals. I commented only here beacuse this one gathered a lot of responses and I wanted to include my view. It does not mean I am neutral on 3 or others. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 18:18, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose As a blanket change, could potentially support in individual cases. Three NFL games is a significant percentage of the season. Three MLB games is still a very small part of one season. One game for England will generate far more coverage than one game for Maldives. One game in the Premier League will generate far more coverage than one game in League Two. There's a difference between playing in one game in a sport with free, unlimited substitutions like ice hockey or gridiron, where someone could conceivably play for 20 seconds, and a sport like soccer where there are far tighter rules on subs making that highly unlikely. I'm open to reform, but a one-size fits all approach is not the way to go. Smartyllama (talk) 18:17, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that a proposal that sets a three-game limit for NFL, a 10-game limit for MLB, an X-game limit for Premier League, and X-plus-five game limit for tier to soccer is that it sets one group of sports fan against others. I figured that three games was modest regardless of the sport but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Cbl62 (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If people consider their fandoms or lack thereof more important than building an encyclopedia, then that's the real problem, and no guideline is ever going to fix that. Smartyllama (talk) 18:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There seem to be a whole lot of compatibalists in that respect. "Let's build an encyclopedia, where it's axiomatic my fandom is regarded as encyclopedic." 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)'[reply]
@No Great Shaker: In SP#3 you say some tightening of SNG criteria is needed, but if you can't support this very limited tightening, then what tightening can you support? BilledMammal (talk) 23:25, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I said at SP#3, we need to prevent exceptions like the guest player creeping in. I cannot support a participation limit of >1 because that stops everyone with one appearance, not just the exceptions. The fundamental issue is GNG, not SNG. No Great Shaker (talk) 23:45, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support so long as it doesn't replace criteria - I back this, but not if it's going to be in the sense of no longer needing to meet GNG. Obviously the odds of a sports article meeting GNG go way up with recurring games. --Nosebagbear (talk) 09:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for actors we require that they have "multiple" significant roles in notable productions. This is still not making the actual role in the match significant, but it is a close move. We have lots of actor articles that are only sourced to IMDb and no indication of any move to fix that problem, so I do not think those criteria are the gold standard, especially since "notable" seems to be used in an overly broad way, but it is still a better standard than one match. The equivalent for professors would be "was the teacher of record at research university for 1 catalog listed class", although even there that might be stricter than 1 game. I also think we need to pare back from "fully pro" leagues to something that is more in line with the top of the sport.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a reasonable, straightforward adjustment to the rules that I think takes steps in the correct direction. Alyo (chat·edits) 14:28, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose with same rationale I gave for SP #3 above. I do believe there are probably some leagues in some eras where one-game participants actually would meet GNG. Any other over-arching standard does not take into account the numerous differences that exist across sports and across leagues. --Enos733 (talk) 01:03, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    SNGs are ignored if a topic meets GNG. Dege31 (talk) 14:46, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per BrownHairedGirl. Significant coverage, not participation, is what determines notability. Has anyone done a source survey to see if there's an actual threshold where secondary sources start to take notice of a player? It's often argued that if someone played X number of games in the 1920s then offline coverage is likely to exist, but has this ever been validated? –dlthewave ☎ 17:38, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per BrownHairedGirl. Their argument is compelling. StickyWicket (talk) 23:37, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Just another arbitrary cut-off point. If it was changed to three, we'll be back in a year or two to change it to five. And again to round it up to ten, and so on. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 15:23, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - If participation in one game in a particular sport at a particular level is not likely to result in significant reliable sources, then the guideline should be changed accordingly. If participation in one game in a particular sport at a particular level is likely to result in significant reliable sources, then the guideline is fine as is. Rlendog (talk) 21:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, weakly, as a miserable least worst. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak support: This would barely address the problem and I only support it if all other proposals fail. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The “one game participation” is essentially, did the person play in league X. There are absolutely top flight leagues at such a level where anyone who makes it there is likely notable. For example, I have zero doubt that anyone who has played in the
    WP:NFOOTY. I also agree that any “higher bar” is going to be subjective by nature. So just cull the current SSGs. Rikster2 (talk) 13:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support One of several possible ways to fix the big mess that this overly lenient SNG has created. North8000 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as better than the status quo. MER-C 20:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as better than doing nothing. I think the number of games/matches should increase overall, but it should vary based upon the relative frequency of games or matches played in that sport's season. For example, playing in 3
    NFL games out of a 17-game regular season. That would be a question for each sport's WikiProject to tackle, but an increase from 1 game is necessary, and no provision for grandfathering should be made. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 23:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Oppose as arbitrary, and overall inferior to Subproposal 10 in achieving a reasoned approach to the tightening of inclusion criteria. Aspirex (talk) 08:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Why 3? Because it's greater than 1? Than how about 10? We could go on as 1 < 3 < 10 < X < Y... No, the problem is some sport-specific SNGs with their slew of leagues that do have enough coverage for their players. Delist those leagues; don't artifically add games to leagues where one game is legitimately an acceptable standard.—Bagumba (talk) 09:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - It is my experience editing association football biographies (and I've had a similar experience or two with baseball biographies) that a person who makes a single appearance in a professional league (or whatever relevant standard is used) very rarely receives GNG-compliance coverage. The chances that the biography can pass the GNG goes up significantly when the person has a more established career, and while three appearances is only a slightly higher threshold, it is higher and correlates better to GNG-compliance than a one-appearance threshold. I proposed tweaking the NFOOTBALL standard to "one full match" (basically 90 minutes of competition over the course of as many matches as necessary) because the biographies least likely to satisfy GNG appeared to be those for a person who played 10 minutes or less in total during their career. This was shot down (as arbitrary - though it is no less arbitrary than the one-appearance threshold), but I think this is an easier to implement version (no need to track minutes played) that accomplishes the same goal. Jogurney (talk) 16:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The standard should be "show the sources". Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:54, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support - a single game is an immensely low standard for one to presume notability. The idea someone that played a single game in the Peruvian second league (per
    Please ping me! 14:51, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Art Bramhall is an example of why we need this. The article lacks significant coverage. He is said to have played 2 games in his professional career, but only had an at bat in one of them. This might be vaguely like being an actor who had a part that is almost signifcant in one film, and an uncredited part in another, which would mean he would not pass our actor notability, so I am really struggling to see why we think a similar set of circumstances would lead to passing sports notability. The notion that any given game is the equivalant of a notable film is possibly also open to question, since most individual games do not actual merit their own articles. To be fair almost half of our articles on films lack any reliable sources. There are problems all around.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:22, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 5

Implement a requirement that all sports biographies and sports season/team articles must, from inception, include at least one example of actual

WP:SIGCOV from a reliable, independent source. Mere database entries would be insufficient for creation of a new biography article. Cbl62 (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Support. I was planning to propose something similar. This ultimately doesn't seem much different from the first subproposal, though, in that the increase in effort from requiring AfD subjects demonstrate one piece of IRS SIGCOV to two pieces is much smaller than that of zero to one pieces. JoelleJay (talk) 00:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's something to be said for compromise, Joelle. "IRS" is a new term to me in this context (and scary to an American -- IRS) -- I assume you mean "independent reliable source" rather than the tax man. Cbl62 (talk) 00:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, yes I do mean independent RS, I just don't want to have to type all that out (and I can't say "GNG coverage" since that requires multiple). Regarding the compromise, I worry that
a) This would be interpreted as "further" evidence that GNG does not ultimately need to be met for sports biographies. An additional reassertion that GNG still must eventually be met and that it wouldn't preclude challenges for GNG at AfD would make this a lot more palatable to me.
b) The vast majority of editors who descend on AfDs with "keep meets NFOOTY"-type !votes would oppose ANYTHING requiring more than a database ref, and the minority of sports editors who regularly make thoughtful arguments at AfDs (you among them) would not be enough to sway consensus much more than the first proposal. JoelleJay (talk) 00:57, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal doesn't change GNG which ultimately requires "Multiple" reliable sources. But it heightens the burden at the starting gate in a way that serves as a powerful deterrent/barrier to assembly-line mass creation of sub-stubs. Cbl62 (talk) 01:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@King of Hearts: There is another enforcement mechanism. If this proposal passes and we have editors who flout it by continuing to create new articles based solely on database entries, they can and should be warned that they are in violation of NSPORTS. If they willfully persist in violating the guideline even after receiving such a warning, they could be subject to our usual array of escalating sanctions, including possible T-bans limiting their ability to create such articles. Cbl62 (talk) 19:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, noting that I am against e.g. professional footballers who have only appeared in one game having articles, but that is just one guideline and not WP:NSPORT in general. This proposal would not only get rid of those articles, but also Olympic gold medalists, world champions, Grand Slam champions just because what they achieved happened a long time ago. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 05:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, there a lot more sportsdude articles. Far too many, for any plausibly encyclopedic purpose. Perhaps you'd support this proposal with a CSB exception for women? (No, thought not.) Quite how you arrive at the pre-internet part is unclear. Proposal doesn't exclude pre-internet sources on pre-internet topics. Or indeed, post-internet sources on pre-internet ones. And how many Olympic gold medalists, world champions, Grand Slam champions have no significant coverage (whether online or offline) in reliable secondary sources? Passing over that this is an "article creation" criterion, not a deletion one, so the number of existing such articles affected would necessarily be exactly zero. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 05:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That would suggest we should further tighten the restrictions of
WP:NOLYMPICS. If there is no significant coverage of an individual, then there is nothing we can base an article on, and thus we should not have an article. BilledMammal (talk) 07:13, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
So, honest question here: if most of those people have no significant coverage, and we can't verify anything about them other than a few match results and date of birth/death, why should they have a standalone article as opposed to being a redirect to a list entry in the Boxing at the 1932 Summer Olympics article? What benefit does that have to the reader? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:14, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Passing over that this is an "article creation" criterion, not a deletion one, so the number of existing such articles affected would necessarily be exactly zero. It's a deletion criteria. People create articles, then someone else proposes it for deletion, citing this criteria. Normally, that happens with articles that have just been created. But it can happen with old articles that already exist as well. If this criteria passed, there would be nothing to stop someone from nominating a whole bunch of existing articles for deletion. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:01, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • This can't be passed as written, because an article with only one reliable source is either (a) plagiarism of its source (which potentially makes it a disguised copyvio -- see our articles on substantial similarity and derivative work for the legal risks here) or (b) if it's not plagiarised from its only reliable source, then it's not properly sourced at all. I'm appalled to see sysops advocating this because there are bloody good reasons why we have strict rules for biographical articles.—S Marshall T/C 10:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The current reality is that articles are created, and closed as keep at AfD, because they pass the NSPORTS guidelines even though they have no reliable sources (not counting database entries). Do not allow perfect to be the enemy of better - this proposal would make creating such articles harder, not easier. --RaiderAspect (talk) 10:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The proposal says "at least one" source.—Bagumba (talk) 11:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • It needs to say "at least two" sources for the reasons I have given. But if it did say "at least two", then it would be indistinguishable from the GNG, which simplifies to deprecating NSPORTS.—S Marshall T/C 12:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • The plagiarism argument is nonsense, as it is our job to summarize sources, and even if an article is built from one source, there's plenty of ways to summarize it without any legal issue. --Masem (t) 13:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wikipedia is full of verifiable claims whose reliability doesn't come from SIGCOV-quality sources. I agree that articles need multiple sources but they don't need multiple SIGCOV-quality sources to avoid this copyvio danger. If an article is a copyvio, that's a reason for deletion that stands apart from the notability criteria. — Charles Stewart (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:INDEPENDENT. These aren't GNG-qualifying SIGCOV, but they are valid sources. This proposal simply imposes a requirement that, above and beyond those sources, there must be at least one example of SIGCOV as a prerequisite to article creation. This will help put an end to automated or semi-automated mass creation of low-quality lsub-stubs sourced only to a database. Cbl62 (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't ever expect to convince you, or any of the many other sports-focused editors who've rushed to this RfC to oppose it having received prominent notices on the pages they watch. If you accepted what I say here, that would mean AfDs on hundreds of thousands of articles that you and others have spent so much time creating, few of which will ever pass the GNG. In the case of some of the more intensely sports-focused editors, it would mean accepting the wiping away of more than a decade's contributions. I understand why you can't possibly agree with me or ever accept what I'm saying. But I might just possibly convince a waverer who's reading this, so I will make one further reply.
WP:NSPORTS has never enjoyed strong community consensus as a guideline. It was promoted to guideline in 2010 on the basis of a 54%/46% !vote which was full of repeated promises and representations that it would not be allowed to supersede the GNG. And it would not have passed without replacing WP:ATH which was even more inclusive. But of course it did pass, narrowly, and now, a dozen years later, nearly half of Wikipedia's biographical articles are about sportspeople and most sports-focused editors are in flagrant disregard of the GNG-primacy that was inherent in its original promotion.
If your sources are databases and team websites, then your articles should be about the teams and the scores, which is what those sources are about. Only when you have biographical sources that are specifically about a particular person should you be writing a biography for them.—S Marshall T/C 00:59, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the "more intensely sports-focused editors" are with you in opposing this proposal. Which is why I thought I might convince you. Cbl62 (talk) 01:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, while this isn't enough and isn't perfect, it is an improvement. This will likely make it harder to write articles about sports people from the 1920s than about recent ones, but so what? The articles that pass this will be better. —Kusma (talk) 11:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongest possible support - There should always be at least one reference showing that an encyclopaedic article can be written about the topic, regardless of whether it is sports or something else. Nothing should be kept solely based on a database entry. FOARP (talk) 11:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Best compromise we have — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chalst (talk • contribs) 15:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This shouldn't be controversial, it's just enforcement of the 2017 RfC that found that NSPORT doesn't supersede GNG. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 16:17, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Sensible compromise that is an improvement to the current state. Schazjmd (talk) 17:50, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Why should sports articles be subject to tighter restrictions than any other article. Not to mention this hurts pre-internet sports figures, which is what NSPORTS is meant to protect. -DJSasso (talk) 18:41, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Djsasso: NSPORTS isn't supposed to "protect" anything. It's supposed to be a reliable indicator that something is likely to have significant coverage in reliable sources. If pre-internet sportspeople happen to have little coverage from which to write a proper encyclopedia article (as opposed to mere database entries), then it's a "feature, not a bug" type of solution. One could just as well ask the opposite question: why should sports articles be exempt from showing that proper sources exist (something which almost all other kinds of articles are actually required to do)? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It actually is, its main purpose is to prevent over zealous deletion of pre-internet subjects by showing a reliable indicator that something is likely to have significant coverage in reliable sources. No one is saying that sources don't need to be shown, NSPORTS specifically says they do eventually. But we understand it would create a rather horrible bias towards recentism to expect that subjects that can only be sources to news paper archives from 100 years ago will be deleted immediately because they don't have intenet sources when the author first creates the page. We also don't require this level of sourcing on a brand new article on any other subject. -DJSasso (talk) 19:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@
Newspapers.com (or Library of Congress) for the overwhelming majority of NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL players (at least those who played more than a cup of coffee), (c) the wisdom of curbing mass creation of low-quality, one-line, sub-stubs (at creation rates as low as one, two, or even three per minute) that has stoked the anger of many editors (and led to a T-ban in at least one case), and (d) confidence (hopefully not misplaced) that some small degree of flexibility might be expected that the quantum of SIGCOV expected for an athlete from the 1880s-1930s (when coverage was less encompassing than today) is not identical to that which we would expect for an athlete of today (when online coverage is so profound). Cbl62 (talk) 19:47, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I guess I don't see this as a compromise, I see this as exactly what I would call the draconian measure you refer to. Placing a higher standard on athletes than we do on any other subject. -DJSasso (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Meeting GNG is a requirement for every subject who isn't covered by an SNG, and even most of them that are -- including NSPORT. JoelleJay (talk) 01:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that isn't what is being talked about in this specific proposal. What is being proposed is that an article has source that meets GNG immediately from creation, we do not require that on any article in any other subject. -DJSasso (talk) 15:18, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...Except for all non-SNG-meeting subjects that go through AfC? JoelleJay (talk) 21:29, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And a source for the claim that this is its main purpose (or even a minor purpose...) would be appreciated. JoelleJay (talk) 01:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as something that should be required of all articles. Folks interested in creating an article should be thinking "do I have sources in hand that would support an article on this topic?" rather than "does this meet the criteria that will allow me to press the create button without getting hassled?". This is a small step in that direction. Ajpolino (talk) 18:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If this is passed, what will happen to the 10s (100s?) of thousands of sport articles without "significant" sources actively in the article? BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    My intent in proposing this is to create a prospective restriction on the creation of new articles. Accordingly, it would not apply to existing articles. That said, existing articles remain (as before) subject to AfD under the contention that (i) GNG is not satisfied, and (ii) NSPORTS requires "eventual" compliance with GNG. Cbl62 (talk) 20:17, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    See also:
    first law of holes. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    ? Cbl62 (talk) 20:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That is, to begin to solve a problem, first stop continuing to make it worse. At present we have a Red Queen-like scenario where we supposedly plan to "eventually" properly source "presumptively" notable articles, but in the meantime (and it often seems to be a very long meantime) we've created a shedload more just like it. So on the face of it, this idea plugs that breach, while we work out what to do about being neck-deep in water. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:54, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ah ... now I understand. You're a real mixed-metaphor machine. See my recent "toe dip" (this type, not the second linked) in that genre. Cbl62 (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GEOLAND, where articles are created (and kept at AFD) based on listings in statistical databases and gazetteers (essentially geographical databases/dictionaries). Frankly, the massive proliferation of hundreds of thousands of single-sentence stub articles shows why this is an extremely bad idea though. FOARP (talk) 08:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Please ping me! 08:56, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
A._C._Santacruz Agree 100%. Particularly the Iranian village case where it turned out that we had tens of thousands of articles about farms, pumps, grain elevators, shops, individual houses etc. because they were listed as locations on the Iranian census shows why this was a bad idea. The GEONet Names Server and GNIS databases (both unreliable) have also been the source of a lot of clearly-wrong articles. FOARP (talk) 08:58, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Oppose. Makes sport bios have to follow stricter criteria than others. Very difficult to find citable sources for older biographies. Stifle (talk) 11:10, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    How would this be "stricter criteria than others"? If other articles (especially biographies) get challenged as failing GNG, they get deleted without much controversy. If sports article get challenged on the same grounds, misguided editors immediately come to their defense saying "but meets NINSERTSPORTHERE"; and any article which truly doesn't meet GNG then needs a massive AfD and likely gets dragged to DRV. By actually requiring at least one non-database source upfront, this would both reduce the stress on AfDs on other processes (and resulting editor animosity) and would also prevent mass perma-stub creation. Two birds with one stone, really. It's also difficult to find citable sources for all kinds of "older biographies" in general: doesn't mean that they are exempt from having sources, and doesn't mean that those who create those articles get a free pass. If you can't find sources about it, then it
    WP:ITSOLD is actually exactly an example of a bad argument...). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:29, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support A step forward and a reasonable compromise. Alvaldi (talk) 17:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support I think this is a fair proposal, but am concerned that it will lead to immediate, mass AfD's if it passes. As long as the closure includes the same caution against that as the schools RfC a few years ago, I can support this. Smartyllama (talk) 18:26, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose, I am fundamentally opposed to removing stubs, I think generally any page is better than no page.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support This should be applicable to new articles going forward. For existing articles, either a grace period for editors to find SIGCOV or grandfathered based on the unchanged criteria. – robertsky (talk) 01:04, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Conditional support This is a good principle to hold by, but I worry about how this would be enforced and who would get to decide what counts as significant coverage. I recently participated in this AfD, in which the nominator insisted that several feature-length newspaper articles didn't count as SIGCOV despite every other editor in the discussion disagreeing. I would support this if it focused more on the "database entries aren't enough" part, but not if it's worded in a way that will lead to dozens of arguments over whether a supporting reference is long enough or unique enough to be significant - at that point you might as well just go to AfD anyway. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:09, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ugh, for the love of God! Stuff like this clearly isn't "feature-length newspaper articles", it's a routine match report of the kind that seems to often appear in local newspapers (plus, it brings the whole issue of
    WP:NOTSTATS which goes with such non-encyclopedic routine reporting). Hell, it's so routine I can even find this sort of stuff for Canadian college football.... But let's not get distracted with that. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:26, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
And we have Wikipedia coverage there too: Montreal Carabins football, Concordia Stingers football. But it's at the equivalent of NCAA Division III in the United states, most likely not warranting season articles. But back on point, please. You're sidetracking the discussion. Cbl62 (talk) 15:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The consensus at that discussion was that article and the other sources do qualify as significant coverage. It had a solid amount of participation. You confirmed that position by withdrawing the nomination yourself.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Me withdrawing the nomination does not mean that I agree in any way with its outcome (nor that routine match reports should be used in writing an encyclopedia anywhere), more that it's a waste of time arguing about it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, User:RandomCanadian, that's Canadian university football. I don't think a lot of colleges do football these days outside of Quebec, at least in Central Canada - rugby is more common. University football is going to be far more notable than college football. Nfitz (talk) 03:22, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Off-topic tangent
  • Support nr. 5 All athlete biographies already have to demonstrate GNG when notability is challenged at AfD. Alvaldi (talk) 18:45, 27 January 2022 (UTC)*[reply]
  • Oppose SIGCOV can be difficult to discover online for players who played MLB 60 years ago. Gair Allie spent the entire 1954 season with the Pittsburgh Pirates, had over 400 plate appearances (Much more than 3 games that is another proposal here) but coverage about him online other than databases isn't easy to find. I'm sure there are plenty of others like Gair Allie....William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 17:24, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@WilliamJE: FWIW there's plenty of SIGCOV available for guys like Allie.I added some to his page to illustrate the point. Cbl62 (talk) 16:36, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
W{:GNG failure will still be AFD-able, this will at least allow the sanctioning of mass-creation of articles based on a database. FOARP (talk) 12:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And someone repeatedly violating it would eventually be taken to ANI for
WP:IDHT behaviour. BilledMammal (talk) 16:54, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I interpreted this as the "presumption" of GNG sourcing is removed if an article created after this proposal passed doesn't have a SIGCOV source, which would mean !voters would need to demonstrate GNG during an AfD if nominated. I would of course support the same for older articles, but I imagine people would object to that, so instead we could tag the article for notability and if ≥1 piece of SIGCOV isn't added to the article in 6 months then the presumption is removed as well for AfD purposes. @Cbl62 JoelleJay (talk) 20:14, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as stated, but I could see some merit in refining this. For topics that meet certain criteria this should not be necessary (e.g., 1st round draft picks in certain sports, players who played let's say a full season in certain leagues), but I could see using this to make the presumed notability criteria without including at least one significant reliable source tighter than the current SNG. Rlendog (talk) 21:32, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I am mind boggled that it is permissible to create an article without even this, miserable bare minimum, requirement. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -- I think the limitation on database-sourced articles is a net positive, and the concerns presented by the oppose here don't convince me. Alyo (chat·edits) 20:29, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't seen arguments that articles don't need sources. Are there examples of keeps where no one brings forward anything but sports tables - at least for players from this century. Nfitz (talk) 19:06, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but only because the sportfans won't let any other basic standards on sources—the foundation of the encyclopedia—apply to them. Please disregard if we actually get around to making sports topics compliant with GNG. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:45, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I've ever seen that we should
WP:POINT be used to support a vote before. Nfitz (talk) 19:02, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Subproposal 6

Conditional on Subproposal 5 passing, should a prod-variant be created, applicable to the articles covered by Subproposal 5, that would require the addition of one reference containing significant coverage to challenge the notice? BilledMammal (talk) 03:53, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. This provides a clear solution to the question of how we address articles that violate Subproposal 5, without adding to the existing issue that such micro stubs can be created in less than a minute, compared to the few hours we would collectively spend at AFD deleting them. BilledMammal (talk) 03:53, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have serious issues with people going around and placing prod notices on potentially thousands of articles... that causes way more problems as the people who would be interested in fixing these articles can not possibly be expected to address all of them at once. Spanneraol (talk) 04:24, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hence my suggestions, on foot of a number of the variations presented here, that what we maybe need is some sort of queue, process, or time horizon to work our way through the existing pool of such articles in a gradual and orderly manner. As well as a mechanism to try to ensure they're not being created at a greater rate than they're being dealt with... 109.255.211.6 (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 7

PROPOSAL FAILED
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Closing statement: Like with no. 2; this seems like it's snowing, hence same outcome. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:02, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Remove all of NSPORTS and NSPORTS/* except for a reminder to follow

WP:GNG
, and a requirement that articles can not use database, personal, or team pages as part of an assertion of notability.

This would leave NSPORTS simply as a pointer to follow

WP:GNG, with a reminder of the unsuitability of types of source which have previously been widely (mis)used to justify the existence of an article which may not be expandable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

If you think the status quo is chaos, you ain't seen nothing yet ... repeal all the SNGs adopted through year of consensus building and you're gonna see chaos like never before. Cbl62 (talk) 23:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I struggle to imagine it being more chaotic than having hundreds of thousands of permastubs sourced solely to statistical databases, in direct violation of core policy
WP:OR which forbids basing entire articles on primary sources. BilledMammal (talk) 00:19, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I struggle to understand how anti-sports editors get away with having proposal after proposal to eliminate NSPORTS defeated only to then dress it up in a new suit of clothes until eventually the eight or nine overlapping proposals leads to utter chaos. This process is so fundamentally flawed it's an embarrassment. Cbl62 (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 8

  • Rewrite the introduction to clearly state that GNG is the applicable guideline, and articles may not be created or kept unless they meet GNG.
  • Replace all instances of "presumed to be notable" with "significant coverage is likely to exist". –dlthewave ☎ 13:28, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - the proposed text revisions are clearer than what we have now. Levivich 15:55, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - All improvements over what we presently have. FOARP (talk) 17:10, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as proposed (although support in principle) - nominator needs to be far more specific with what they propose the new wording to exactly say, otherwise nobody knows what they are actually !voting for... GiantSnowman 17:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. The subservience to GNG needs to be removed, not reinforced. --Michig (talk) 17:15, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • That can only happen by applying TNT to what we currently have, and writing a new guideline that is not an invitation to create tens of thousands of extremely low quality articles that can only ever be referenced to all-inclusive databases and maybe the occasional passing mention in routine sports coverage. wjematherplease leave a message... 11:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • It really doesn't need this. I'm no great fan of articles being created based on someone making one appearance in a specified competition, but this is really only applicable to a small number of very popular sports. For many sports the guideline sets a ridiculously high bar (or doesn't mention those sports at all). I would much rather we set a higher limit on participation to merit an article and have anyone below this ordinarily limited to an entry in a list article, but we need to set an arbitrary limit to avoid wasting huge amounts of time on AfD discussions, which would be a massive problem if all we have is GNG, because we know there are editors who will target anything that's undersourced without doing a WP:BEFORE before taking it to AfD (and will no doubt then wikilawyer about whether or not coverage found is 'significant' or not). Our aim should be to have a SNG that operates in parallel with GNG, not subservient to it, with hopefully a little common sense being applied. --Michig (talk) 12:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support would greatly help with AfD discussions to have this clearer so editors can't cherry pick from NSPORT to support their statements. Alvaldi (talk) 18:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for clarity's sake. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:13, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The use of NSPORTS fails to comply with core policies like
    WP:OR. To correct this, it needs to be made clear GNG or something very similar needs to be met. BilledMammal (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
BilledMammal, have you even read NSPORTS? It begins by saying in bold: The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below. That immediately states compliance with 5P and RS. However, your second sentence is a step in the right direction. No Great Shaker (talk) 08:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@No Great Shaker: I have, and the section that states NSPORT does not replace GNG, but that is not how editors use NSPORTS. It's far too common for editors to !vote keep in a deletion discussion because a NSPORTS SNG is met, even in the absence of any significant coverage, or even any non-primary coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 08:14, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How some editors might use the guideline is a problem with those editors, not with the guideline. By significant coverage, I presume you mean compliance with
WP:RS because that is sufficient? No Great Shaker (talk) 12:00, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
You appear to be trying to simultaneously argue "it's fine as it is", while -- rather than providing any actual oppose rationale -- complaining repeatedly about GNG. Which is both our baseline notability standard, and explicitly part of of NSPORT. That's exactly the problem with how some editors use this guideline. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 18:41, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
NSPORT in fact begins This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. Which makes your comment above actively deceitful. It is a continuing problem that many sports project editors apparently ignore/cannot comprehend(?!?) non-bolded text in the guideline and refuse to ever acknowledge the context of the bolded sentence (like the fact that both sentences flanking it explicitly state meeting GNG is a requisite for meriting inclusion, with the third sentence reading If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy
WP:IDHT. It's obvious from the participation in this thread, despite the canvasing of partisan !voters, that it's necessary to re(re-re-re-re)affirm the position of NSPORT and clarify its wording so that other editors don't have to paste this text every time the "bUt ThE bOlDeD sEnTeNcE" argument is made. JoelleJay (talk) 21:28, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Support. Once we gain a consensus for this we can flesh out the actual wording. JoelleJay (talk) 00:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. We need to abolish GNG and rewrite the lead at WP:Notability so the onus on article creators is compliance with 5P, provision of RS and meeting SNG standards. That will solve AFD problems at a stroke. I'm pleased to see that Michig has also recognised the real issue. No Great Shaker (talk) 08:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with the caveat that we need to flesh out what the rewrite will be -- essentially of the whole guideline, as the intro needs to make clear what the status of the remainder of it is now to be, and how it'll operate procedurally. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 08:25, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Multiple RFCs (on top of the hundreds of other discussions, including AFDs) have confirmed NSPORT is not a replacement for GNG, and that articles must meet GNG when the presumption of notability is challenged. That needs to be made absolutely clear in the guideline; it also needs incorporating in WP:N for clarity. I'd suggest changing "may" to to "should". wjematherplease leave a message... 11:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, makes sense to me. Per others above the wording can be tweaked. Cavalryman (talk) 11:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Episode 6 of trying to gut NSPORTS after the first five proposals have been defeated -- just dressing it up in a new suit of clothes with no new notice to the impacted sports projects. This process is so fundamentally flawed it's an embarrassment. The presumption of notability is the essence of NSPORTS and without it, there is nothing left. Cbl62 (talk) 21:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    after the first five proposals have been defeated What? At the very least #3 (15 support v 9 oppose, with 1 oppose being basically in favor of the principle, and an additional 3 comments that strongly lean support to give ~19s v 8o), #4 (last time I checked it was 16s v 16o, but 3 opposes were arguing the proposal should be even stricter so with regards to the intent of refactoring NSPORT to be less inclusive it's closer to 19s v 13o), and #5 (41s v 16o) are majority support. #1 was at last count 24s 28o, with 1 oppose literally supporting the actual proposal but not the amendments that were suggested as compromises, and 3 comments clearly leaning support; ~28s v 27o is not a failure yet. JoelleJay (talk) 23:04, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, subproposal #5 is receiving overwhelming support. It doesn't gut NSPORTS. It's my proposal and makes reasonable sense as a compromise if the presumption remains in place. The ones that really gut NSPORTS are headed to defeat (or have already been closed as rejected). And my quarrel is with stacking one proposal on top of another and another without any further notice to the impacted projects. It stinks to high heaven. Cbl62 (talk) 23:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Without urgent clarification of what "the presumption of notability" even means, the essence of NSPORT is that it's entirely dysfunctional and not fit for purpose. Hence the need for some surgical oncology. Your own proposal also heavily qualifies the "presumption", by way of an added "requirement". Unless there's a nod-and-a-wink that the requirement won't actually be "required" at all. Oh dear, shouldn't have have been created, but now it has been, what can you do, clearly we have to keep it. The sidebar on notification we appear to already have a sizeable subsection on, so I won't get into the weeds of that here. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    dressing it up in a new suit of clothes - setting aside the fact that they haven't been defeated, I would consider each of these to be substantially different. For instance, this doesn't change the status of NSPORTS but instead makes the current status clear, with the largest change it makes being altering the wording within each SNG to make it less confusing. BilledMammal (talk) 05:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    with no new notice to the impacted sports projects. You're welcome [3]. The presumption of notability is the essence of NSPORTS and without it, there is nothing left. Presumptions of notability are inherently arbitrary unless they serve as an accurate heuristic for predicting enough coverage in reliable sources with which one can write at least a modest article with. Can you explain why you think NSPORTS's presumption of notability as it stands is a good thing? -Indy beetle (talk) 19:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support after the cricket wars, thus is clearly needed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 08:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment What about sportspeople whose obituaries say nothing of them doing sports? I am tempted to wonder if non-local would be a key. However I am hesitant about any obituary rule. I think there is a problem especially with local papers. It is also at times hard to tell which type on is dealing with. Having spent the last 6 months mainly going back from 1922 births through 1911 births I can say we have way too many articles that read like obituaries. Way too many built on an obituary and nothing else. We also have way too many articles that are still here and we're unsourced as of Jan. 1, 2010. Sports is not the only source of these problems.John Pack Lambert (talk) 08:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

UTC)

  • I don't get this one. When families put obituaries in the newspaper, it's pay by the word, and to do stuff that tells everyone where the funeral is. Sometimes gets into achievements, but infrequently. Even articles in a newspaper about someone's death don't necessarily report things that the person hasn't communicated widely. This is unnecessarily bureaucratic, and is covered by existing guidance.
  • Sounds overly bureaucratic and ignores the pillar that
    Wikipedia has no firm rules Nfitz (talk) 06:29, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
WP:BLUDGEONing the discussion, and not in your benefit either, as we know it only makes your words less effective. But if you are going to bludgeon it, can you not intentionally misrepresent the evidence you use in refuting a point? There's no way that section on bias and didn't realized that it was only about gender. Nfitz (talk) 02:37, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I wrote that section; I know what it was about. It was primarily focused on gender, but also includes a brief discussion of how the guideline prefers the global north over the global south. BilledMammal (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nfitz, you are entirely free to believe whatever you so please to believe. That doesn't mean it's right. "Precedent and discretion" include that
notability requires verifiable evidence (a requirement from which nobody is exempt); and that articles which do not meet GNG routinely get deleted, because NSPORTS itself already says that (see FAQ no. 2). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:04, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Which only demonstrates that WP:N is confusing, contradictory, and badly written, as in other places it clearly states other things. It remains a guidance rather than policy, and firstly notes that exceptions may apply. Which is why we go with what the consensus is on a particular issue. We write guidance to reflect consensus, rather than change consensus to meet guidance. Consensus isn't simply what I freely believe! That being said, we are here (unnecessarily it would appear) to once again confirm/check what consensus is - not to change consensus. Nfitz (talk) 06:38, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:BIO
    is met"? That guideline says "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in

multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." This is basically GNG. –dlthewave ☎ 03:07, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@JoelleJay: NSPORT is not as simplistic as you suggest in "demanding" immediate GNG compliance with multiple SIGCOV. To the contrary, it strikes a balance with the following provisions:
  • The first paragraph states: "The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below."
  • FAQ 2 states: "the article must still eventually provide sources indicating that the subject meets the general notability guideline. .... For contemporary persons, given a reasonable amount of time to locate appropriate sources, the general notability guideline should [not must] be met in order for an article to meet Wikipedia's standards for inclusion. (For subjects in the past where it is more difficult to locate sources, it may be necessary to evaluate the subject's likely notability based on other persons of the same time period with similar characteristics.)
Proposal 5 (which has overwhelming support) would tighten these standards by mandating one piece of SIGCOV for new articles created hereafter. That is a reasonable, incremental tightening of NSPORT that prevents the mass creation of sub-stubs that has drawn considerable ire. There is no good reason or justification for going beyond that by also gutting NSPORT in its entirety by eliminating the presumption of notability. Cbl62 (talk) 07:10, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:FAILN was followed. Otherwise, I have no issue to argue deletion for failure to meet GNG in a reasonably-timed, follow-up AfD.—Bagumba (talk) 07:25, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Note that frequently asked question #4 was just descriptive of what tended to happen at the time the answer was written; it doesn't reflect a consensus guidance of what best practice should be. If general practice changes or has changed, then the answer will have to be updated accordingly. isaacl (talk) 08:11, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, and I think we need to give time to see if there is a new trend or not. For example, Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2022_January_19#James_Cook_(footballer,_born_1885) recently endorsed a close to keep, upholding the view to keep based on NSPORT, even though a few argued that GNG was not met.—Bagumba (talk) 08:31, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And here and example of the exact opposite, a deletion endorsed based on the failure to meet GNG. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:13, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62 Oh sure, I realize there's nuance and considerations built in to NSPORT. What I was contesting was the claim that the "or" statement in WP:N would change anything about how NSPORT relates to GNG (that notability can only be achieved through demonstrating GNG, and NSPORT criteria strictly presume that GNG coverage exists). People seem(ed) to be under the impression that putting all SNGs parallel to GNG would somehow elevate the NSPORT subguidelines to SNG status in isolation of what NSPORT says, and therefore confer notability directly instead of presuming GNG (since very few SSGs actually say the latter explicitly). This is what a majority of the sports project !voters who oppose any changes here seem to assume or at least desire. This incorrect "interpretation" is also reflected in contemporary athlete AfDs where thorough, transparent, language-specific BEFORE searches conclusively demonstrate a lack of SIGCOV, and yet sports project !voters still insist the subject is still notable due to meeting their SSG criteria. I think it's a serious problem that the presumption of notability for subjects who "strongly" pass an SSG criterion is treated as unrebuttable at AfD even for contemporary athletes. There needs to be some mechanism that enforces the "eventually GNG must be demonstrated" part of NSPORT. JoelleJay (talk) 18:50, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure there are those who believe that the presumption is not rebuttable. There are extremists on both sides. The solution is not to eliminate the presumption. The solution is not to cater to the extremists at either end of the spectrum. The solution is in the middle on Wikipedia, as it often is in real life. Cbl62 (talk) 19:11, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62 How do you propose we "not cater to extremists" when sports project editors can just flood an AfD with "keep meets NWHATEVER" regardless of whether there is a demonstrable lack of SIGCOV? If an admin closes it as delete against a strong numerical consensus they get brought to DRV and chastised, whereas if it's closed as keep despite presumption of GNG being rebutted there is little anyone can do. Obviously we're not going to restrict wikiprojects from being alerted to AfDs in their subject, so in effect AfD outcomes will always be strongly influenced by the local notability consensus formed within a project even if it is directly and dramatically at odds with that of the wider community. This is most evident in AfDs where the subject "passes an SSG by a wide margin"; members will !vote keep irrespective of source search thoroughness because they disagree with NSPORT's intent and think notability should be inherent for such subjects. How can the ultimate requirement for GNG ever be enforced if its "presumption" remains unassailable for all but the most borderline SSG passes? JoelleJay (talk) 20:57, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"How do you propose we 'not cater to extremists'?" Seek a middle ground and reject the onslaught of extreme proposals seeking to dismantle NSPORTS and having the effect of making good sports contributors feel under attack. Cbl62 (talk) 23:26, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62, the editors who want NSPORT to confer automatic notability object to any proposal that doesn't loosen inclusion criteria. The same bloc who oppose your proposal show up at every AfD that is remotely contentious and !vote keep, and because of the blanket presumption of notability there is no DRV-proof mechanism to automatically discount these contentless !votes even when the subject is modern and anglophone and demonstrably lacks SIGCOV. The way NSPORT should operate is: we require GNG sourcing be produced for all contemporary anglophone athletes within the course of the AfD (with draftification an option for subjects expected to acquire GNG in the near future); and for pre-internet or non-anglophone athletes either strong evidence that at least one specific unavailable source is extremely likely to have SIGCOV based on examples of comparable athletes, OR empirical verification that a presumption-lending criterion actually is predictive of GNG 90+% of the time and a deadline is imposed for how long the article, if kept, can exist in mainspace without SIGCOV sources being added. And if at any point an unavailable source alleged to have SIGCOV is accessed and shown NOT to have it (and no other specific potential sources have been identified), or a thorough search of language-appropriate media fails to produce GNG-meeting coverage, the presumption is revoked. JoelleJay (talk) 00:57, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I was intentional in my wording of NSPORT itself requires GNG for a subject to merit an article: this is explicitly stated in the first and third sentences of the first paragraph, and repeated elsewhere in the guideline multiple times. This part is black and white, as it references the fact that all NSPORT presumptions of notability are relative to GNG rather than inherent to an SSG criterion. JoelleJay (talk) 19:01, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's only two sentences in the first paragraph of NSPORTS, not three. You are misinterptetting "requires GNG". The first sentence reads: This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. It says that NSPORTS is an indicator that GNG is likely met; it doesn't explicitly state that GNG is required. The second sentence reads (emphasis added): The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below. Either GNG or SNG should be met. Again, no requirement there for GNG.—Bagumba (talk) 17:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence as written doesn't say "no requirement for GNG", and that would be a rather disingenuous way to interpret it. What the sentence does say, once interpreted into practical terms, is the the criteria below are indicators or whether something is likely to meet GNG: if a subject meets them, it is more likely that there will be actual sources (of course, depending on ho well crafted the criteria is); and conversely, if it doesn't meet them, it is less likely that acceptable sources can be found. Meeting NSPORTS is not a criteria for keeping something (as said in the lead, lower, Please note that the failure to meet these criteria does not mean an article must be deleted; conversely, meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept., and in the answer to FAQ no. 2 - meeting NSPORTS does not obviate the need to meet GNG); in the same way that failing it is not a criteria for deleting something (although something that fails GNG will be deleted, if things go according to policy, whether it meets or doesn't meet NSPORTS). And yet there are way too many people, intentionally or through lack of understanding, who treat any subject passing NSPORT as "must be kept", in spite of the guideline saying the exact opposite. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:36, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The second sentence says nothing about a subject meriting an article. I am not going to link/quote FAQ#5 for the billionth time to you. You are well aware what it says about that second sentence and when it is applicable. Regarding the first and third sentences of the paragraphlead, let's call NSPORT subcriteria , GNG , and "merits an article" . This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a
sports person or sports league/organization
(amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. GNG is sufficient to merit an article, . Meeting NSPORT subcriteria means a subject is likely to meet GNG; it does not say meeting the subcriteria is sufficient to merit an article, so we cannot say . While we also can't say from just the first sentence, that relationship is obviously implied here by the fact that GNG is called as an intermediate in the first place. This reading is also strongly reinforced by the third sentence, If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article, which goes even further by saying GNG is necessary for inclusion (a simplification from the fact that NSPORT criteria don't predict meeting NPROF or GEOLAND or any other non-GNG notability guideline): . Again, this is applicable to whether a subject merits inclusion on wikipedia, a question that NSPORT puts downstream of the capacity to create an article and have it stay in mainspace for however long the presumption of GNG remains unchallenged. JoelleJay (talk) 00:16, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
ElKevbo, what would be the appropriate way to go about this in your view? –dlthewave ☎ 23:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A new, standalone RfC that is broadly advertised throughout the project. ElKevbo (talk) 23:14, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"The point of the SNG is to work in parallel with GNG" – Highly debatable. While elements of an SNG can work in parallel, the ultimate goal of both is to reach the same conclusion: that the topic of a standalone article has significant coverage in reliable, secondary sources independent of the subject. The criteria that defines independent can vary in an SNG, which is why some exist. Others exist as a way of quickly gauging GNG compliance. Imagine you're a new editor (or new to a specific subject area) attempting to create a sports article, but you're having trouble finding the sources required by GNG. NSPORT provides a series of questions/criteria, that depending on the answer, will likely tell you if those sources exist without actually having to uncover them. To me, an SNG would still be valuable if applied in that manner (and the criteria is accurate), even if it ultimately defers to GNG in AfDs. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That hypothetical doesn't make sense; it assumes that we would want the article, but if they are not able to find significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject then it will not provide any encyclopedic value, and we would be better off with a redirect and a list entry. BilledMammal (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The hope is that subject matter experts with experience in this realm have provided a list of criteria (NSPORT) that are helpful in determining if said sources exist. Someone new may have trouble locating them (or knowing where to look), but an SME wouldn't for topics that have met NSPORT's criteria. I happen to think there are a lot of problems with NSPORT's criteria, but generally speaking, that's the premise of the guideline as I understand it. --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My point was about the worth of any article that is created without those sources; even if it is possible for a subject matter expert to create an article, that doesn't mean any article is better than a list entry. BilledMammal (talk) 21:14, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well if an SME was creating the article, they'd likely do so with the inclusion of those sources. The SNG is to help guide those that aren't SMEs, in my opinion. As to whether or not a particular topic is better suited as a list entry (or in prose within an article covering a broader subject), again the hope is that the criteria agreed upon at NSPORT would help avoid missteps as much as possible. Obviously, you're not going to get that right every time, no matter how thorough and accurate the criteria. If it were up to me, I'd always require at least one reliable, secondary source upon article creation, whether you were an SME or not. --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is more of a wording tweak than anything and I wouldn't expect this to actually drive any change in behaviour. Aspirex (talk) 09:06, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. SNGs are otiose if GNG must be met anyway. Stifle (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The GNG is a hack, a rule-of-thumb that tries to boil the question of what belongs in an encyclopedia, a reference work for all areas of human activity, to a handful of bullet points. It doesn't define "notability", it's not "objective" (seriously, more than a trivial mention is not a quantitative or exact criterion), and meeting it doesn't guarantee article-worthiness. I don't know why we should lean on it more. XOR'easter (talk) 01:07, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I hate the vagueness of the GNG too and agree more quantitative criteria would be better, but if NSPORT subguidelines weren't required to predict GNG we would have a microstub on every arguably-professional sportsperson who ever existed, every college athlete, and probably every game official. GNG has been the only reason sports projects have tightened their criteria whatsoever; based on the inclusion criteria many of them had initially it seems a large number of their members want Wikipedia to serve as an athlete database, which completely goes against WP:NOT. JoelleJay (talk) 03:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for now. Let's see how subproposal 5 fares in changing the culture around sports AfDs. The difference between subproposal 5 and this one, subproposal 8, lies in the penumbra where either we have Type I error: sources sufficient for encyclopediac coverage do exist, some participants in the AfD have reasonable cause to believe this and argue this, but the sources are not found before the AfD is closed and the closer says non-notable; or Type II error: sources do not reach GNG, but SNGs suggest they might and this is argued in an AfD, and so the closer figures non-notability has not been demonstrated and closes keep or no consensus. With subproposal 5, we should reduce Type II error without much increase in Type I error. — Charles Stewart (talk) 18:57, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support - much clearer wording.
    Please ping me! 14:46, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support, this was already made clear in the 2017 RfC, so the wording should be clarified to reflect that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:46, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, just in case it wasn't already abundantly obvious that I support this.—S Marshall T/C 23:44, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support The core problem is that SNG's haven't been shown to work with sports folk. It has led to massive creation of non-notable biographies, so something else needs to be tried.
  • Support – The concept of "presumed" notability makes no sense to me. Either we can demonstrate notability via sourcing (taking into account the relative paucity of sources for some sports or in past centuries) or the individual should be "presumed" non-notable. — JFG talk 07:33, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CANVASS
issue

A large number of notifications have been issued; one to

WP:NSPORTS
and the rest to a large number of wikiprojects focused on sports covered by NSPORTS.

The message originally had issues in that it was biased towards a certain viewpoint, and there was also an issue with the targeted audience being partisan. The message has now been fixed, but the partisan audience remains - the average view amongst members of the selected wikiprojects appears to differ significantly from the average view among the broader editing community.

At this point, I am not certain what can be done, as it appears a large number of editors have already been directed to this discussion by those messages, but I feel the issue needs to be noted. BilledMammal (talk) 16:48, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In one sense, I see your point that it’s likely to attract editors biased towards one point of view… but the alternative was to just not notify
WP:NSPORTS that it’s up for deletion, which is obviously not fair. Theknightwho (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
WP:APPNOTE covers acceptable notifications, including those to "the talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion", which is clearly the case here. GiantSnowman 16:52, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
APPNOTE also allows editors to place notifications on user talk pages. It's a list of locations that may be appropriate to notify, not a list of locations that are always appropriate to notify. BilledMammal (talk) 16:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I have no objection to notifying
WP:NSPORTS. My issue is with the notification of the various wikiprojects. :BilledMammal (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Why? Many editors will watchlist only their specific WikiProjects, not NSPORTS. GiantSnowman 16:54, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, I would say your desire to keep sports editors in the dark regarding this conversation is a much bigger problem. You want to change the rules to make it easier to delete sports articles, but you don't want the people who work on those articles to know about it. Sure, it would be much easier to get this proposal passed if the people most heavily-impacted by it didn't know about it, but that hardly seems ethical.
LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:52, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Including
WP:ARS? Cbl62 (talk) 16:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
@BilledMammal: Are you OK with this? Cbl62 (talk) 01:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to look into it as I've already spent enough effort dealing with canvassing on this RFC, but if it is as you say it problematic. Of course, it is less problematic than your notifications, as these messages are unbiased, while yours were (and even after the modifications, are) biased. Further, it is less problematic because a few dozen active editors have been notified, compared to the few hundred that you notified.
Although, I am a little surprised you have an issue with this; the same arguments you used to justify your notifications apply to these. BilledMammal (talk) 04:27, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! I thought you were legitimately concerned with the issue of canvassing, but you've now show that this is just partisan gamesmanship on your part. Quite disappointing. Cbl62 (talk) 04:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And, no, the same arguments don't justify both. I notified the "relevant WikiProjects" as expressly authorized by RfC guidelines. Joelle notified a targeted group of individual users/admins, the overwhelming majority of whom have already made their views clear that GNG should trump NSPORTS. Not even remotely comparable. I had hoped that some sense of legitimate principle would lead you to a different conclusion. Cbl62 (talk) 04:40, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain how you came to the conclusion that I am not "legitimately concerned", as I would dispute that?
And Joelle notified "concerned editors", stating that they were selected on that basis that they will be closing AFD's based on any change here, as expressly authorized (under your interpretation - I would dispute it) by
WP:CANVAS guidelines (again, RFC is an information page, not a guideline page.) The same arguments (again, I disagree with these arguments) that you used to justify notifying the wikiprojects justify Joelle notifying the "concerned editors", even if the group is partisan. BilledMammal (talk) 05:07, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
10 or 12 out of 28 is not an "overwhelming majority"! JoelleJay (talk) 05:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In fairness, every argument for why the WikiProject notifications were OK also apply to these individual notifications. First argument: explicitly authorized by
WP:CANVASS but I also see why everyone is concerned on both sides. Levivich 01:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't think it's the same, since discussion closers are not participants in the discussion, and shouldn't be assumed to be interested editors for the topic in question. That being said, there's no indication that the editors were selected for their views on the topic. isaacl (talk) 01:49, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh come on
WP:CANVASSING. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:03, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
@BeanieFan11 @Levivich @Cbl62 These editors were all selected from athlete AfD closes that had >10kb discussion and had a non-trivial closing statement describing consensus, and/or were from closes that I disagreed with (see, for example, the heated discussions I've had with Swarm and Ymblanter about two of their closes). The third criterion I added after finding the vast majority of closes meeting the first two criteria had delete outcomes; even so, the list of "closers of closes I disagreed with" overlapped non-trivially with those that aligned with my opinion (there are only so many admins closing athlete AfDs!), so I expanded it to include even non-controversial AfDs where I agreed with the close but not with the consensus (these were mostly by non-admins). I don't see why it's problematic to alert the community that would actually be implementing any changes in AfD procedure. JoelleJay (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's problematic because the vast majority of the closes you referenced were "delete" determinations on the grounds that GNG trumps NSPORTS. This is a classic case of canvassing by targeting specific users who you know agree with your preferred outcome. Cbl62 (talk) 04:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I notified the 8 closers whose closes I referenced in my comment, and 20 who were not. Of those, I included 8/10 closers of closes I had bookmarked in my "frowny face sports closes" folder (2/10 were already represented in the first 8 closers). I then searched the archives for noncontroversial closes of AfDs where the consensus was to keep but which had a minority of "GNG still needs to be met" delete !votes that were not acknowledged by the closer; from those I added 4 further editors. I also added the 2 closers of the first RfC. Still not seeing how this is any worse, or even equivalent, to notifying wikiprojects that broadcast to orders of magnitude more editors that you "know agree with your preferred outcome". JoelleJay (talk) 04:45, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There may be more editors notified through those projects that have already !voted here than there were total editors I notified, and we all know the vast majority of the wikiproject editors would !vote pro-SNG anti-GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 05:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62, not yet sure I'm going to weigh on on this as I've not finished reading. Just noting that my ping was in relation to User_talk:JoelleJay#Amanda_Dennis, which may not have been apparent as it wasn't on my talk. Star Mississippi 21:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that WikiProjects and noticeboards are widely accepted as being neutral, non-canvass locations to leave notices of RFCs. If leaving a notice at a sports WikiProject runs too much danger of swinging the RFC one way or another, perhaps that is an indication that a large section of the community supports that particular RFC view. I view user talk notifications as problematic and probably not a neutral place to leave notifications for this RFC. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:52, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would say a large section of the sports editing community supports a particular RfC view and is incentivized to participate in it, but that this does not reflect the view of the community as a whole as evidenced by the consensus cited in AfD closes and DRVs and the prior RfC and the language of NSPORT itself. User talk pages are accepted for notifications of relevant discussions. I specifically chose editors who had assessed consensus at AfDs rather than !voting in them, and made sure there were essentially equal numbers where the outcome was keep or NC as there were delete (which wouldn't even necessarily reflect their own opinion!). JoelleJay (talk) 05:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can you provide links to the closes that led you to choose the roughly 30 specific users whose talk pages you targeted? Cbl62 (talk) 05:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Closes that were in my ":( sports closes" bookmarks folder (where I did not feel the closing statement was consistent with wider consensus) OR were found by looking through >10kb discussions resulting in keep or NC in the archives:
Swarm, Ymblanter, SpinningSpark, Eddie891, Onel5969, Bungle, SilkTork, Star Mississippi, Vanamonde, Barkeep49, Ritchie333
"Generally neutral" sports closes found in archives (assessed as mostly neutral despite favorable outcome due to clear numerical consensus rather than the closer's evaluation of the arguments): PMC, Seraphimblade, Aseleste, Doczilla
From ":) sports closes" folder: RL00919, Scottywong, David Gerard
And the two closers of the 2017 RfC. JoelleJay (talk) 06:18, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and the close by Cabayi was in ":)" but should also be considered neutral. JoelleJay (talk) 06:26, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoelleJay: Based on your reply, which I accept in good faith, I refactored my comment above. As noted elsewhere, I apologize for not assuming good faith on your part. That said, I do still question the rationale for notifying these 30 or so hand-selected editors. Cbl62 (talk) 17:02, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Best we put aside the canvass discussion. I've had my edits reverted at NHL, WHA & AFL season & related articles, these last few days & had complaints about deleting 'white-space' on election & referendum articles. Energy level is low, frustration level is high. GoodDay (talk) 03:44, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This canvassing "issue" is a waste of space. Of course the impacted projects need to be notified. How many people keep NSPORTS on their watchlists? I have the FOOTY project on my watchlist and even then I don't always go there when something comes up. Can someone please close this? No Great Shaker (talk) 08:18, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If the wikiprojects that consider themselves to be impacted can be considered nonpartisan on the proposal, then they can be notified - but if they are partisan, then to notify them would be a violation of
WP:CANVASS, and generally problematic because we want the decision to reflect the consensus of the community, rather than the consensus of those wikiprojects. BilledMammal (talk) 08:25, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
That is like saying you didn't know you were at a party. Please read
WP:APPNOTE where you will see that it is perfectly in order (and doing the decent thing) to inform WikiProjects of an RfC which might impact them. When you go on about partisan/nonpartisan, you are behaving in an extremely partisan manner yourself: don't tell them about the RfC – they're partisan and they'll object. How do you know if they are partisan or not? In reality, some members of a project may oppose the proposal but others will support it. No Great Shaker (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Further
WP:CANVASS
issues

These discussions were posted to nine sports WikiProjects, seven of which have already been notified of the discussion; Cricket, Athletics, Olympics, Basketball Association, Basketball, American football, Ice Hockey, Baseball,Football, College football, and National Football League. The primary issue continues to be notifying a partisan audience, made indefensible by being the second time all but two of these audiences have been notified, but the replies to some of these notifications should also be read. BilledMammal (talk) 01:17, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it's time to make "WikiProject:Encyclopedic biographical content only" or "WikiProject:Where's the SIGCOV?" and notify members every time a discussion like this comes up or whenever we need delete !votes at a contentious AfD (obviously all active biography AfDs would already be transcluded in a subpage of the wikiproject; the additional notification would be to rally the troops to a particular nomination a member is involved in). JoelleJay (talk) 04:47, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Enough is enough. It is not canvassing to notify relevant wikiprojects of proposed policy changes that would directly impact articles that fall under the purview of those projects. I realize that AGF went out the window a long time ago, but that is the fault of those editors who assumed that it would be problematic if sports editors participated in this thread.
LEPRICAVARK (talk) 22:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Most of these wikiprojects are partisan audiences, making it a
WP:VOTESTACK. BilledMammal (talk) 23:05, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Who determined that they were partisan? Or do we just have to take your word for that? As for the second wave of notifications, it should be pointed out that these notifications are in reference to proposals that were added since the first wave of notifications were sent. They were not, in fact, secondary notifications for the same proposal.
LEPRICAVARK (talk) 03:16, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
My word, and the word of most other editors. I can also prove it, by showing that !voters at the recent
WP:Olympics, than if they were not - which is the definition of a partisan audience. And those notifications are general notifications, as can be seen both in the text used, and in the fact that rather than being made in reply to the existing section they were placed in a new section. BilledMammal (talk) 03:51, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I disagree that only editors with a specific view on the predictive value of the Olympic-related notability criteria can be judged as non-partisan. Absent an actual survey of sources (which unfortunately isn't done enough due to the amount of time required), good-faith editors can reasonably disagree. Editors who are active in creating appropriate articles that pass the general notability guideline are the ones who are best positioned to evaluate subject-specific notability guidelines. isaacl (talk) 22:54, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whether an editor is partisan isn't due to the position they eventually take, but due to any predetermined points of view they hold. An editor with a predetermined point of view is partisan; an editor without is not. The same applies to groups; if the group has a predetermined point of view, determined either through the nature of the group or through a clear pattern in behaviour then they are partisan, and this is the case with most sports Wikiprojects. BilledMammal (talk) 23:02, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
All editors in a WikiProject don't think the same way, and you can't tell if one given editor is partisan just by the opinion they held. Two editors can genuinely be non-partisan and reasonably hold different views. isaacl (talk) 02:13, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying they can't; all I am saying is that individuals and groups can be partisan, and that sports Wikiprojects are typically partisan on the question of
WP:NSPORTS. For you to consider a Wikiproject partisan, what evidence would you need to see? BilledMammal (talk) 02:21, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I disagreed with your assertion that you could show that a WikiProject is partisan by how its participants chose to evaluate a proposal to modify the notability guidelines. There are WikiProject participants who have concerns about the applicable guidelines, but disagree with specific proposals, and often for different reasons. English Wikipedia's consensus-based decision-making traditions make it quite difficult to reach an agreement on specific proposals, even when there is broad agreement on a problem.
For the most part, I don't think it's helpful to try to categorize WikiProject editors as partisan with respect to notability guidelines, as it's often not possible to know what internal motivations they have. I think there are editors who prefer achievement-based standards for determining if a subject should have an article, and even though, as far as I can tell, the overall Wikipedia consensus isn't in agreement, it's not in principle an unreasonable position to have, just a different one. (I fully understand the practical issue of wanting to identify subjects for which a reasonable biography can be written; I once suggested using a standard where there was enough detail in suitable sources to cover key aspects of a person's life.) isaacl (talk) 05:52, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the most part, it is not, but since the decision was made to notify them it has become very relevant due to
WP:CANVASS and how it may distort the apparent consensus. However, if there is no evidence that could convince you that a Wikiproject is partisan, then I believe we will need to agree to disagree on this. BilledMammal (talk) 05:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I didn't say there was no evidence; I just said it's difficult to determine, and I don't believe it is helpful to go down that route. Concerns about canvassing doesn't require showing that all or even most of a WikiProject participants are partisan. It's sufficient to show concerns about individual participants. But I don't think that's helpful in the big picture, either. For guidelines in a particular area to work, co-operation from the editors active in that area is needed. Framing the discussion in a confrontational manner between sides isn't conducive to reaching agreement. isaacl (talk) 06:44, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The sports project members who regularly participate in notability/AfD discussions have overall demonstrated a definite bias against tightening criteria, even if not all of them do. I would guess for just about any wider discussion on restricting biographical notability, both a significant percentage of oppose !voters will belong to a sports wikiproject, and a majority of sports wikiproject members who participate will !vote oppose. Sports project members know this, that's why we don't see people on the "delete" side of SSG-meeting athlete AfDs notify these projects nearly as much as those on the "keep" side. JoelleJay (talk) 06:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, articles that are tagged with WikiProject banners will show up in the WikiProject article alerts when proposed for deletion. So everyone interested can find out about the deletion discussions, no matter who initiated them for whatever reason. isaacl (talk) 06:48, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this is true, but some editors will additionally post a link to AfDs they're involved in on the wikiproject talk pages. When this happens there's almost always a flood of keep !votes, e.g. here, which garnered 6 more keep !votes, most from project members/discussion watchers, within 2 hours of being posted to OLY by the first !voter, resulting in a snow close. JoelleJay (talk) 08:10, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Actual, real-life canvasing

"what is non-neutral about providing the context"? Your purported "bolded context" is plainly partisan and provides an inaccurate and skewed picture of sports biographies allegedly run amok with no fealty to notability standards. It is language specifically tailored to appeal to a particular point of view that NSPORTS is out of control. This is not a neutral notification! Cbl62 (talk) 07:40, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Complete nonsense. My NFOOTY post did not have plainly partisan and non-neutral introductory text of the type you led your notifications with. Cbl62 (talk) 07:33, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe those Wikiprojects are partisan, and while the first paragraph should be improved, it was considerably more neutral than your recent posts, and the initial notification you sent. I believe that JoelleJay has addressed your spamming concerns. BilledMammal (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More nonsense. My initial notification, as you well know, was promptly revised when you raised a concern -- following precisely with your suggested modifications. Joelle's notifications are written in a plainly partisan and non-neutral fashion and need to be refactored. Cbl62 (talk) 07:33, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For JoelleJay, I would recommend removing the bolded text. For your most recent comment, I would recommend replacing your summary of the individual proposals with the one used by Joelle. However, overall Joelle's are more neutral, are targeted at a non-partisan audience, and have been up for only a few hours, while yours are targeted at a partisan audience who are being notified for the second time, and have been up for almost a week. BilledMammal (talk) 07:41, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The bolded text plainly needs to be removed. As for your other comments, they are addressed in the section above. Cbl62 (talk) 07:51, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe they are addressed above; they relate to the summary of each of the proposals you provided, which needs to be replaced with the direct quote that Joelle uses to be neutral. BilledMammal (talk) 08:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree. Cbl62 (talk) 08:08, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have taken some time to prepare a notice that I think is completely neutral. It also includes the "main proposal" and subproposals 9 and 10 previously omitted. I have posted it for now only at the tennis project page. See here. I suggest this more complete and neutrally-worded language be used to replace the existing notices at the sports projects and at the projects where JoelleJay posted her notices. Cbl62 (talk) 09:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • That would be appropriate, though I would reword the first line to "Your input on several pending proposals to alter NSPORTS/NTENNIS would be welcomed. These proposals are as follows:"
However, a new section should not be created for Wikiprojects that have already been notified. Notifying partisan Wikiprojects is canvassing, but notifying them a second time, as you just did at
WP:TENNIS, is indefensible. BilledMammal (talk) 09:12, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I am fine with your tweaking of the intro. I am talking about replacing/updating the notices. And the bit about a second notice is nonsense. The initial notice was limited to the main proposal. The second notice covered the myriad subproposals that surfaced after the main proposal met with overwhelming opposition. Cbl62 (talk) 09:16, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I added your intro to the notice. I also struck reference to the "main proposal" to address your concern about duplicate notifications. The "main proposal" was the only one previously posted at the Tennis project. Cbl62 (talk) 09:20, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be less inappropriate, it should have been made as a reply to the initial notification. It still has issues with notifying a partisan wikiproject, and issues with bringing that notice back to the attention of a partisan wikiproject, but it is less inappropriate. BilledMammal (talk) 10:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you see it as "less inappropriate", we've made progress. Cbl62 (talk) 10:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, it is still a violation of
WP:CANVASS and unacceptable; it is the difference between notifying 10 partisan editors, and notifying 9 partisan editors. BilledMammal (talk) 10:39, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
We're going in circles on that point. The rules on RfCs expressly authorize publicizing to the impacted projects. Failing to do so would be fundamentally contrary to any reasonable notion of consensus -- a purported "consensus" formed without notice to the impacted projects is no consensus at all. Cbl62 (talk) 10:48, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A consensus formed by the broader community is a consensus, and to consider it otherwise is a clear violation of
WP:RFC
, which is an information page.
There is also no benefit of notifying them. Enough were already aware, and would become aware through channels notifying the broader community, that the partisan perspective of those Wikiprojects was available for the broader community to consider and factor into their !votes. All that notifying them does is bring in more !votes, and given that these votes are partisan, that negatively impacts our ability to determine the consensus of the broader community. BilledMammal (talk) 10:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Except... those who take part in relevant Wikiprojects are part of the broader community. Blueboar (talk) 13:11, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As are every partisan group, regardless of whether they are structured as a Wikiproject - the issue isn't with editors from partisan groups participating, it is with the partisan group being canvassed, as
WP:VOTESTACKING prevents the discussion from reflecting the broader community. BilledMammal (talk) 13:19, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The problem is that NOT notifying them can be seen as WP:VOTESTACKING as well. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you explain how? BilledMammal (talk) 16:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No objections from me... I think it makes sense. Blueboar (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't seem to me like a particularly relevant project. And in my experience, participants at at new page patrol have been particularly tough on sports articles. Cbl62 (talk) 16:11, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62: You believe they would be partisan on this? BilledMammal (talk) 00:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cb162: New Page Patrollers implement the Notability rules all the time, so are likely to have informed views on any proposed changes to those rules. PamD 19:16, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like an effort to target a specific group of editors who are known to be tougher than most on applying notability standards. Cbl62 (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would note that no effort has been made, as they have not been notified - and given your concerns that they could have a
predetermined point of view I will not do so. BilledMammal (talk) 19:51, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
And sports project editors are...what? Neutral when applying notability standards? JoelleJay (talk) 23:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem with your notice ... except that a single cup of tea may be insufficient to prepare the readers. Cbl62 (talk) 19:21, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

General comments

For those who continue to be persuaded by the persistent myth that NSPORTS is a hotbed of rampant inclusionism, I have prepared a list of 2021 accomplishments relating to NSPORTS, which I think completely busts the myth. See Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#2021 in review. Rather than blowing up NSPORTS, we should continue the progress of 2021 and continue to strive to bring NSPORTS even more closely into line with GNG. Cbl62 (talk) 03:33, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • NSPORTS can be used either way, for inclusion or excluision, but I do not think that's the proper way to think about it. I consider we made a mistake when we gradually deprecated the SNGs. Putting everything in the GNG is an unworkable reduction of the complex importance of subjects in the different areas of human affairs. We then find ways to evade the worst absurdities by adjusting what being substantial coverage, or, for individuals, used strained interpretations of BLP1E. Using notability based only of media coverage adopts the standards of the PR industry. Notability should mean importance or significance, and be based on the standards of the field being discussed.
I think the question should first be, whether NSPORTS is an alternative to the GNG where passing either is sufficient, or a limitation on the GNG, where passing both are required, or, my preferred choice, the only standard with the GNG being irrelevant in the field. The one position I would rule out is the proposal that it is irrelevant and that the GNG is the only standard with the SNG existing merely as a guide to it--and that's where things seem to be going. (I would say just the same in every area where a rational SNG could be developed). The secondary problem for sports, as for other areas, is deciding on the place to draw the line in each specific topic. Some of the opposition to the SNGs is to avoid those detailed arguments, but then he issue just moves to the individual articles.
Much opposition seems to come from the unspoken preference for a standard so meaningless by itself that one can construct an argument on the basis of it to include or exclude whatever one might wish to. . It's the GNG that permits unlimited inclusionism, as much as it permits very narrow inclusionary standards; it all depends upon the meaning of those enigmatic key terms, significant coverage reliable sources" and independent of the subject". The GNG if applied to NSPORTS, considering the great amount of current and historic news media now available, could lead to a great overemphasis of all local , amateur, college ,and schools sports).
As it obvious that the general direction of changes in notability criteria on WP is completely the reverse of what I think rational, I try not to get involved in more detailed general discussions. I find them frustrating, as they ask the wrong questions and therefore inevitably give unhelpful answers. I try to be practical and work within the current mode, of finding whatever argument will work for individual articles I consider important to the encyclopedia (or unworthy of it). DGG ( talk ) 08:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the question should first be, whether NSPORTS is an alternative to the GNG where passing either is sufficient...: I agree. The answer is fundamental to this debate. Wikipedia:Notability, the umbrella guideline for GNG, clearly states at the top: A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right... Getting consensus on whether that remains true or not will make it clearer how to proceed.—Bagumba (talk) 04:34, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A 2017 consensus already resolved that question, though it didn't stop editors using "passes SNG" as an argument against deletion (I believe there are later discussions that specified a few exceptions to that - I believe NCORP, NBOOK, and NPROF, but certainly not NSPORT) BilledMammal (talk) 04:49, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That seems oversimplistic. The close included: There is rough consensus that sources on older athletes are concentrated in print media. Because it is impossible to prove the negative that the sources do not exist to support an article, some intermediate standard is required for determining when an article on these athletes should be deleted due to lack of notability. Doesn't appear to be any progress on that front.—Bagumba (talk) 04:54, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And I posit the RfC didn't solve the issue, when the top of
WP:N still reads unconditionally that an article is presumed notable if it meets either GNG or an SNG.—Bagumba (talk) 05:01, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
The notability guidance reads that way as a general statement. However, a consensus of editors approved the sports notability guidelines on the basis that it does not override the general notability guideline. No subject-specific guideline is required to take advantage of the flexibility offered by the general statement, if consensus prefers it that way. isaacl (talk) 05:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't question if it was the founders' intention. However, it's not reflected at the top of
WP:N, and is one source of disagreement at AfDs.—Bagumba (talk) 05:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
It's been affirmed over and over again, both before 2017 and after. I agree the line in the notability guidance gets raised in deletion discussions, but that doesn't change the outcome of all those discussions on the sports notability guideline. isaacl (talk) 05:52, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...but that doesn't change the outcome of all those discussions on the sports notability guideline: I disagree. Wikipedia:Notability (sports)#Q4 says to allow "adequate time" to find sources. However, deleting a non-contemporary subject citing GNG on the first AfD (not a renom) is not what I believe "those discussions" at NSPORTS had in mind.—Bagumba (talk) 06:40, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussions regarding the relationship with the general notability guideline have always talked about being reasonably convinced that appropriate sources cannot be located. If this happens in the first deletion discussion, so much the better in terms of efficiency. It's up to the participants in each deletion discussion to make the case for the existence or lack of existence of these sources. isaacl (talk) 09:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's up to the participants in each deletion discussion to make the case... Unless there's a precedent now for closers to ignore SNG headcounts.—Bagumba (talk) 11:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, these are discussions, so more than just pure head counts are taken into account... But for any subject in any area, it's up to the participants to make the case for why there should or shouldn't be an article on the subject. In terms of efficiency, I think it's a good thing if we can get more of the participating heads to focus on searching for appropriate sources, versus arguing about whether the predictors of appropriate sources are good enough. isaacl (talk) 16:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's not at all inconsistent with what WP:N says, I really don't understand how you're making this argument. There are two logical ways of interpreting that wording:
a) GNG or an SNG when the SNG in question is NPROF or GEOLAND and therefore parallel to GNG, in which case for NSPORT the "or an SNG" can be ignored
b) GNG or an SNG, and if GNG is required to meet the SNG in question (NSPORT), satisfying one will necessarily satisfy the other
And one that is logically impossible.
c) GNG or an SNG, but SNG==GNG is forbidden, so if the SNG in question (NSPORT) requires GNG...we just ignore those multiple instances of the NSPORT guideline and skip to the sport-specific subguidelines where GNG isn't explicitly invoked? JoelleJay (talk) 03:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Neither a, b nor c are how the top of WP:N currently reads. "logical ways of interpreting" are subjective. The wording should be tightened if the intent is not as it explictly reads.—Bagumba (talk) 06:53, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...So what is this other logical way of interpreting that sentence, then? Would you be ok with it if NSPORT didn't explicitly defer to GNG but instead just laid out criteria virtually identical to GNG (like, for example, what it does in SPORTCRIT)? Or do you believe all SNGs should have only criteria that operate outside of the spirit of GNG, and any wording suggesting SIGCOV in multiple independent secondary RS should be ignored? JoelleJay (talk) 08:49, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't really settled on a reimagined NSPORT. I've only been interpretting the guidelines as written along with original intent as expained in FAQs.—Bagumba (talk) 10:27, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ok...and what is your interpretation of the guidelines as written and the intent, and how those interact with that sentence in N? JoelleJay (talk) 17:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Too many choices & too complexed for me. Let me know what the final decision is, when it's presented. GoodDay (talk) 16:57, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

^^This. As there is now half-a-dozen counter proposals, new conditions, and voting choices, shows how unworkable and vague the original proposal was. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 09:00, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The nature of English Wikipedia's consensus-based decision-making traditions frequently leads to lots of people offering their proposals. If the community wants to have a more orderly progression, it will have to decide to change these traditions. isaacl (talk) 09:27, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@RandomCanadian: Isn't the OP you wrote for this RFC supposed to be neutral and brief? I find it neither. What can you do about the RFC tag and the "RfC" in the section title? George Ho (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It obviously bears little relevance at this point (and therefore, seems a waste of time to bother changing it) as discussion has moved on to other proposals. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:06, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Myth"?

Fram (talk) 09:17, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

I have seen this many times as well, votes that are simply "Keep - has played X matches in Y league per NINSERTSPORTHERE", normally accompanied by the suggestion that
WP:BEFORE couldn't have been done, as though this were conclusive of anything. No criticism at all of articles that are eventually kept with added cites, but when the entire drive of what is being done is "no, that single reference to sports-reference.com is sufficient to keep and no further work is needed from anyone" there is an obvious problem. FOARP (talk) 11:30, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I wonder if sports would be better served with a separate AfD queue with different timeframes and guidance, particularly pre-whatever the cutoff is for hard to verify.Slywriter (talk) 01:55, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think some people are expecting a remarkable amount of slack for "hard" here. Is it less convenient to check old newspaper articles, or to -- <gasp!> -- crack open a book, as compared to the contemporary bombardment of web-based sources? Sure! Was there a something to akin to the destruction of the library of Alexandria that makes finding sources impossible? Not that I'm aware of. Unless we're going to price in allowance for supposed "still looking!" for sources forever. Or out-and-out say that it's the past's fault for not having the same wall-to-wall coverage of fourth-tier bench-warmers and one-snap gridiron wonders, and we should just have such articles regardless of sources evincing their actual notability even existing. Now, if the consideration is "this is from The Olden Times of the 1970s (or whenever), let's stick it in a queue while people make a good-faith attempt to properly source it, and revisit in two or six months", or the like, that'd make perfect sense to me, and seem like we were making an attempt to tackle this issue. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 04:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Whole heartedly agree that "looking at newspapers and books is hard" should never be taken as an excuse for not doing so when creating an article. Similar "coverage doesn't exist because history" is not a reason to throw away the requirement to provide instances of it. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, if you want to add an article to it you should have enough content to write an encyclopaedia article already to hand. FOARP (talk) 11:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Cannot agree more that unless stuff is actually placed on a time table for people to look for sources, it's just kicking the can down the road. Theoretically, you could write an article on almost anything and then whine that, even though you don't know for sure (because you didn't even try to check), sources "probably" exist in the print realm so it shouldn't be deleted. Heck, you could go back and make that argument at every AfD ever! The SNGs have become crutches of laziness. -Indy beetle (talk) 19:21, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just to overwork that metaphor (as apparently I'm getting a rep for), "kicking the can down the road" understates matters. That implies that we have just one can at a time, and have to periodically pay some sort of minimal attention to it. If only! The present situation is more shoving the can straight into a ditch, without ever having to give it a moment's consideration ever again, and then tipping five more cans just like it out, to do the same with then. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've always found it bizarre that AfD doesn't require that articles actually be improved; the mere existence of sources (or even the presumption thereof) is sufficient. Compare this to the AfC process that new editors have to go through, which routinely rejects incomplete or poorly written articles even if the topic is obviously notable. Moving articles to draft space, even as an AfD outcome, would at least put a time frame on improvement. –dlthewave ☎ 13:21, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You're right. There are some very strange things about Wikipedia works, but that's perhaps the oddest. Why anyone would go through the AfC process is a mystery to me. Nigej (talk) 13:53, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I understand why the AfD process has that rule (to prevent misuse of the system), but it has always amused me (in sort of a tragic way) that AfC is so much more demanding than AfD, and any notable subject, even if the article is a dumpster fire or a permastub, can be kept at AfD and the ignored for the rest of time. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Omission/commission bias, perhaps? 109.255.211.6 (talk) 04:23, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell, there is still substantial support for stub articles. As long as these are considered a valid initial step for an article, it's hard to mandate that articles must be improved as part of being kept after a deletion discussion. isaacl (talk) 05:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the word "step" is to have meaning, it's hard not to mandate that. The question is, how long is that particular piece of string? I think after multiple months or even years, it's not unreasonable to start wondering, "is this a 'stub' in any meaningful sense, or is it just a permamicroarticle on a topic that's not actually notable enough to have one?" 109.255.211.6 (talk) 05:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The key issue is that since Wikipedia editors are volunteers, no one can be mandated to work on an article, and there is a significant number of editors who want Wikipedia to be very lenient on the amount of time it allows for an article to be expanded. (I've already stated my own personal views on stub articles.) isaacl (talk) 23:29, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How about those people who object to having lots of microstubs about sportspeople whose careers satisfy these guidelines just ignore them, move on, and do something useful with their time here, like building an encyclopedia for example? --Michig (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Difficult to build an encyclopaedia whilst others are busy trying to turn it into a host for trivia/inaccurate information. Cleaning up is building an encyclopaedia. FOARP (talk) 15:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why not allow microstubs on every subject meeting a "notability criterion" any fan wikiproject crafts, based on that wikiproject's conception of "SIGCOV" and "significance"? At what point do we lose the distinction between encyclopedic value and WP:NOT? And many of these microstubs do not meet the relevant guideline (NSPORT), anyway, since it requires GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 04:26, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No reasonable definition of the word "editor" excludes removing text from the work they're editing.—S Marshall T/C 09:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oof, if it did I would be an anti-editor...I think my net contribution in mainspace is negative several megabytes. Hopefully most people would recognize the value of removing unsourced slurs against BLPs, citations to blogs and blogspot-hosted pictures that people on a forum say show the subject wearing particular insignia (as evidence some royal received some stupid honor), 25kb lists of trivia, poorly-sourced detailed info on minor private grandchildren of a subject... JoelleJay (talk) 18:13, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the above replies to my comment. Firstly, all articles need to satisfy
WP:V, so any argument that the existing guidelines allow trivia and inaccurate information is without foundation. Secondly, I didn't suggest that editing does not include removing information - I've deleted plenty of articles. The comments regarding removing unsources slurs against BLPs, citations to blogs, etc. are specious - they have nothing to do with the discussion of these guidelines or my comment. Do better. --Michig (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • This is just incredible. Some of us want to apply the GNG to sportspeople and others don't, so in sections 5 and 6 we're "compromising" on a proposal that the GNG will no longer apply to sportspeople, but instead we'll implement a new rule with sourcing requirements far below the GNG, as long as there isn't any effective way to enforce it.—S Marshall T/C 09:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't believe 5 is quite that bad; it doesn't establish notability at one source, it just requires one source before the article can be created - which is a step up from the hundreds of thousands of stubs with no significant coverage that we currently have. BilledMammal (talk) 09:58, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • But... with sports articles the only hurdle is getting past NPP. Once the article's past NPP it can't be removed, because editors are allowed to notify their Wikiproject's talk page when it gets to AfD, which in practice means we're not permitted to apply the normal notability rules to anything about sport. I think 5 is frankly catastrophic.—S Marshall T/C 13:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Considering that Lugnuts got 8000 articles past NPP between his autopatrolled being removed and being topic banned from stub creations, I'm not sure NPP is a hurdle - though you are making me question my position. BilledMammal (talk) 13:58, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          We'll see how it plays out at AfDs, but in practice I haven't really seen too much brigading from wikiprojects, certainly not enough to change clear deletes except rarely. It's usually just the same 2-6 editors at each NFOOTY AfD, another 2-4 for cricket, 2-4 in MMA, 2-4 in motorsports, and 2-3 for GRIDIRON. Not all of them !vote at every AfD, and not all of them !vote with boilerplate "Keep meets [sport]"; in fact, a fair number usually provide reasonable arguments and even !vote delete (e.g. @Cbl62 for GRIDIRON, Papaursa for MMA, BBDS iff the subject is a male footballer). The main problem !votes (where the !voters refuse to change behavior and/or acknowledge GNG>NSPORT) are from NFOOTY and, at least for a stretch last year where there were a bunch of noms, NCRIC. I don't think #5 will change the number of project editors flooding AfDs, but as I brought up in that thread I do worry this will give editors another reason to dispute AfDs on new articles ("subject already has one piece of SIGCOV and meets NFOOTY, asking for GNG is unnecessary") and won't change the way older articles are handled unless 1x SIGCOV is also required for them when brought to AfD. JoelleJay (talk) 17:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          It does conjure up the mental picture of what might happen when triviamonosourced microstubs are created anyway. They go to AfD, are given a "provisional stay" by something resembling one SIGCOV source being found, and getting fleshed out very slightly. Then after six months or two years languishing like that, they get AfD'd again for still not meeting GNG. Subject-area editors are outraged by this revictimisation, deletionists are exhausted by the sheer amount of process needed relative to potentially very little editing. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 07:02, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Subproposal 5 establishes a minimum threshold for new article creation. It does not change in any way the GNG requirement of SIGCOV in multiple reliable sources applicable at AfD. Subproposal 5 should serve as a strong deterrent to mass creation of microstubs. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Max Zumstein offers an example of the mass creation that subproposal 5 would deter on a prospective basis. I just found a like grouping for the 1928 Austrian field hockey team that finished last out of nine teams participating in the event. There are 15 articles that were part of a batch creation of identical, cookie-cutter, one-line sub-stubs, all created in rapid succession (a minute or sometimes less per article) and with two exceptions lacking even basic differentiating facts like dates of birth or death. While we disagree on a lot, we can agree this type of mass microstub creation doesn't serve the encyclopedia's interests. I've never done a mass AfD before. If anyone else cares to do so, here they are:
  1. August Wildam
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:30
  2. Arthur Winter (field hockey)
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:31
  3. Alfred Revi
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:34
  4. Emil Haladik
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:36
  5. Fritz Steiner (field hockey)
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:36
  6. Erwin Nossig
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:37
  7. Fritz Herzl
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:38
  8. Fritz Lichtschein
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:39
  9. Hubert Lichtneckert
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:40
  10. Hans Rosenfeld
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:41
  11. Hans Wald
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:42
  12. Kurt Lehrfeld
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:44
  13. Karl Ördögh
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:55
  14. Josef Berger (field hockey)
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:55
  15. Willi Machu
    created 2019-09-09 at 18:57
Cbl62 (talk) 18:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If "microstub" is your primary concern, then "merge to 1928 Austrian Olympic field hockey team" would be the obvious fix. Still trivially sourced and still basically trivial content, of course. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 03:31, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've just redirected each of these to Field hockey at the 1928 Summer Olympics – Men's team squads#Austria, as that is the logical place for it to go... Now, everybody should be happy, and those who think sources exist can go looking for them without the time pressure of an AfD. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:10, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I was pinged and asked to comment. Not sure why because it looks like there's so many others commenting that I'm unsure what value I might could bring that hasn't already been covered extensively. Still, here's my few points I'd like to bring:
  1. WP:NSPORTS
    needs cleaned up. In an attempt to be the "super criteria" for all sports, it instead has done the opposite.
  2. Eliminating
    WP:NSPORTS
    without a suitable replacement model will cause even more harm that could possibly lead to a terribly uncivil environment.
  3. WP:GNG
    , we won't agree on a subset of GNG on sports topics either.
  4. Agreement isn't necessary--Consensus is the goal, and that's a different beast alltogether. Editors are free to disagree.
  5. Editors are also free to be enthusiastic about any topic of their choice.
  6. Enthusiasm for a topic does not equal notability.
  7. Editors are free to speak against consensus as long as they do it in a civil nature.
  8. When you set up a system that allows anyone in the world to create an article and provide guidelines that are ambiguous at best, don't get upset at editors who go out and do exactly what we want them to do.
  9. Figure out what's best for Wikipedia and do it.

Good luck! Tell me what you all decide.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:15, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Obituaries

Perhaps a suitable requirement for presuming notability for deceased sportspeople would be whether they have an independent obituary - note that this would be in addition to, not as an alternative to, the current requirements? I've found that those without such an obituary - who were not deemed notable by their contemporaries - tend to fail GNG, while those with them tend to have coverage beyond the obituary. Further, finding such coverage isn't particularly onerous, if you know the year of the sportspersons death. Thoughts, before I make this proposal #7? BilledMammal (talk) 03:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Off the top of my head, this seems unduly specific. I like the idea of more specific and detailed guidance as to what is SIGCOV, and having an independent obituary in a reliable source of sufficient prominence is certainly an example, and maybe one we should weight heavily. But making it a binary pass/fail seems overkill. But I'm open to being persuaded either way. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 03:59, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would note that this is just for the presumption of notability; if they have one, and they meet the other aspects of
WP:NSPORT
, then they are presumed notable, though of course that presumption can be wrong and can be challenged at AFD. If they don't have one, then they are not presumed notable.
I'm not sure if that addresses your points? BilledMammal (talk) 04:02, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My lack of clarity is what's to happen if there's no suitable obituary, but there is one initial item of SIGCOV. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 04:28, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Then there is no presumption of notability and are instead required to meet GNG, as I find that a single obituary is typically a better indicator of notability than a single example of SIGCOV. BilledMammal (talk) 05:20, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • No good reason or logic for a special obit rule that applies only to athletes. SIGCOV is SIGCOV, whether it arrives post-mortem or during life. Cbl62 (talk) 05:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Presumed to be notable" is the highest standard of notability that we have; it's used throughout
    WP:N to describe topics that meet GNG. An independent obit would useful for "presumed to have SIGCOV", which is the intended meaning of the other NSPORTS criteria, and would be useful as a suggestion for finding notable topics but not as a standalone justification for an article. –dlthewave ☎ 13:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
This, right there, is the root of the problem. Our standard should be the “demonstration of notability” (via sources)… not the “presumption of notability” (ie an assumption which is often wrong). Blueboar (talk) 17:28, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Extend RFC?

The RFC tag is currently a week away from expiring, but new proposals have continued to be added to it, and discussion is still going strong on post proposals. Should the tag be renewed, or do editors believe that there is no issue with allowing it to expire on the 19th and listing it at

WP:RFCL? BilledMammal (talk) 13:06, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

I suggest closing the "easy" ones so that attention can be focused on the remaining subproposals. The easy ones are:
  • "Main proposal" (i.e., abolition) - open since Jan 19 with 61 opposes and 30 supports.
  • Subproposal 5 - open since Jan 22 with 46 supports and 19 opposes.
Cbl62 (talk) 15:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think lumping every disparate proposal together has lost its effectiveness. I'd suggest more deliberate proposals, each as its own RfC.—Bagumba (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It has become rather unwieldy. I couldn't even figure out where to put my vote on the newest proposal regarding Olympic participation. Cbl62 (talk) 15:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also see #Subproposal 13 below about more subproposals.—Bagumba (talk) 09:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-events

Irrespective of all that wall of text above that I haven't read, my issue in sports article is mostly around notability of subevents, e.g. in tennis, such as "XXX Open – Mixed doubles". In most cases, these articles don't even have leads, and don't bother to mention what sport they are about. Can't these be sections in the main event article? When are they independently notable? Dicklyon (talk) 03:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not really in the scope of the RfC, so ironically -- if far from uncommonly -- you're adding to the "wall of text" without advancing the topic as such. Granted it's a related issue, and similar consideration -- "is this too short to be separate if there's an obvious parent?", "is it sufficiently sourced?" will also apply. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 14:01, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's also a
WP:NOTDATABASE issue (and I'm afraid that this would throw up yet more dust from whoever it is that is actually doing that). A separate discussion should be opened if it really feels necessary. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:25, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Further sub-proposals

Subproposal 9

Rewrite the lead of

WP:NSPORTS
to avoid any wikilawyering. Propose changing:

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below. [paragraph break] If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Failing to meet the criteria in this guideline means that notability will need to be established in other ways (for example, the general notability guideline, or other, topic-specific, notability guidelines).

to

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Failing to meet the criteria in this guideline means that notability will need to be established in other ways (for example, the general notability guideline, or other, topic-specific, notability guidelines).

i.e. cut the confusing sentence in the middle which is at odds with the rest of the guideline and which leaves itself open to lots of wiki-lawyering... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:05, 9 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm not sure why you keep linking to a BLUDGEONEd comment from a relatively new editor that appears to be both false, and didn't have consensus even in that discussion. Repeating the same thing again and again, in discordance with consensus, doesn't make policy (or even a guideline!). Nfitz (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally don't create articles without the sources for them to begin with, so I can't see the problem from my perspective. Also, 'systemic bias' doesn't matter, as a strict adherence to GNG would automatically give the 'correct' proportion of coverage to number of articles and content. I'm afraid anything else is simply
    Avilich (talk) 04:27, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Who said anything about creating new measures? I support getting rid of NSPORTS altogether. Again, what matters is that information from reliable sources be presented with due weight. The only way you can realistically address perceived bias is by finding sources for topics that are thought to be neglected. If there's a notability guideline that is causing topics to receive undue coverage when compared to the available sourcing, then the solution is to simply get rid of it. There's nothing that can be done, on the other hand, if the reliable sourcing itself is perceived to be biased.
    Avilich (talk) 20:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
@
Avilich (talk) 15:55, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
The sentence at issue is focused on the need for reliable sources to show a basis for notability under GNG or NSPORTS. It doesn't change the overarching principle that NSPORTS is intended to predict whether GNG is met. Cbl62 (talk) 16:14, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikilawyers would disagree. Anyway, reliable sources are already required by policy and by WP:N itself. There's no point to stating it again in NSPORTS, especially if such statement will be used to game the system in the manner already described.
Avilich (talk) 19:01, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Oppose. The proposed new version indicates that meeting the existing specific notability criteria is sufficient without meeting GNG, which gets us nowhere. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 15:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support rewriting to the truth. Say "if the subject does meet the criteria below, it is still in many cases highly likely that the subject does not meet GNG and should be deleted, because many of these criteria were written insanely broadly to facility the start of articles on people we know lack any significant coverage, by editors who never bother even looking for it, and the criteria were written as a comprmise with people who want to turn Wikipedia into a sport database and totally ditch it being in any meaningful way an encyclopedia, and so the criteria were not created with any attempt to show that passing these criteria is actually likely to mean the subject has recieved significant coverage from multiple reliable secondary sources that are intelectually indepdent from eachother. The sports SNGs as written at present in many cases clearly do not predict passing GNG, so we should not have language that falsely says that they do.16:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpacklambert (talk • contribs) 16:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose the removed sentence says that if you want to claim that the subject meets NSPORTS then you have to provide a citation to a reliable source to support that assertion. This is important and should be stated prominently. It also isn't said anywhere else on the page. Hut 8.5 18:48, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Could we strike the last sentence and add a statement to the effect of "any claim of meeting a sport-specific criterion must be supported by a reliable source"? And IFF none of the other proposals pass, we should also add something like "While meeting a sport-specific criterion presumes GNG coverage exists for the subject, eventually this presumption must be validated by GNG sources in the article". JoelleJay (talk) 00:04, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I would support somehow fomalizing the need to "eventually" meeting GNG. That's always been in spirit of the FAQs. How to explicitly word this to satisfy enough people?—Bagumba (talk) 04:24, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's already formalized in the FAQ. Cbl62 (talk) 06:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if some would accept a separate page that is transcluded and collapsed by default as being formally part of the guideline.—Bagumba (talk) 11:19, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 10

Non-neutral prologue. The myriad proposals above all miss the real problem with NSPORTS. That is, some of the sub-provisions are not remotely calibrated to GNG. Out of a sense of "fairness" or "political correctness", NSPORTS has allowed the qualifying leagues to be expanded to leagues that simply don't gain the same level of coverage as the major leagues. For example, NFOOTY allows articles on hundreds of thousands of players in any of literally hundreds of different leagues, including the Algerian Ligue 2 (second tier within Algeria), Azerbaijan Premier League, Cypriot First Division, Kazakhstan Premier League, Myanmar National League, Peruvian Segunda División (second tier within Peru), and Uruguayan Segunda División (second tier in a country with 3 million people). See the complete list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Fully professional leagues.
Neutrally-written proposal. Require each project that has inclusion criteria based on participation in a league (e.g., football, cricket, American football, baseball basketball, hockey, Australian rules football, etc.) within the next 30 days to justify the inclusion of each league. Such justification must include actual "random" (truly random) sampling showing that 90%-plus of the players in each league receive sufficient SIGCOV to pass GNG. At the end of 30 days, any league as to which the data has not been provided must be stricken from NSPORTS. Cbl62 (talk) 20:46, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If a particular project with a lot of leagues to review (e.g., FOOTY) has a problem with the 30-day time limit, this could be extended to 60 days. Cbl62 (talk) 21:01, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: Reading what I wrote above makes it seem like an attack on FOOTY, which is not intended. It has the widest (by far) list of qualifying leagues, but there are questionable leagues in other sports as well. Cricket also has a long least of qualifying leagues found here. Baseball has the Cuban League, the Union Association, and the Japanese Baseball League. Basketball has Lega Basket, Israeli Basketball Premier League and several others. So ... this is not just a footy problem. Cbl62 (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as long as this retains the strict requirement that all subjects must meet GNG and should at least eventually demonstrate this. I also think these wikiprojects should advertise their justifications to, and get feedback from, the wider community before being "accepted", as some projects' perception of what constitutes "SIGCOV" may be at odds with that of Wikipedia as a whole. JoelleJay (talk) 00:03, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The justifications must be real, based on actual, valid random sampling, and subject to scrutiny by the larger community. I suspect that, with most of the football and cricket leagues, the results will be non-controversial in showing that the presumption is not warranted. Cbl62 (talk) 01:18, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It would also be imperative to group subjects by era as well as league, since obviously coverage varies considerably over time. JoelleJay (talk) 04:30, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but with a longer time limit; not sure that 30 or even 60 days will be enough time for each project to complete the task and I don't think the task is so urgent given that the existing guidelines have generally been in place for years. Rlendog (talk) 00:46, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think is a reasonable time limit? If there is no limit to light the fire, I fear that this will simply be ignored. Cbl62 (talk) 01:18, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I've seen this rule used as an informal standard for adding new SNGs already, and I believe it also came up during the discussion about the notability of Olympians - we had been assuming that significant coverage existed for them, and once we actually looked into it they weren't 90% notable, especially for games held before the internet era. If leagues actually do meet the 90% threshold, dealing with players from the early years and other edge cases is less of a burden, and if not we can take them out of NSPORTS. (Not to mention that if a league was barely covered for over 10% of its existence, it won't pass the threshold no matter how notable it is now, which might help cut down on substubs about athletes from over 100 years ago that are poorly documented.) TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 03:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I do not get a sense that anyone went through and showed the agreed on limit to the Olympics SNG, that medalists would get sigcov, was actually demonstrably true. I have seen medalists come up for deletion, people argue to default keep, and no one show any sigcov at all. One big problem may be that individual medalists and team medalists (especially on rugby, hockey or soccer teams, if it is a 2 person fencing team or 2 person tennis team the dynamics are a little different) have different levels of coverage. Then there are cases like the 1908 Rugby competition where they were 2 teams, so the loosers got the silver medal. This is not the only competition in the Olympics that had fewer than 4 competitors (if you count teams as 1 competitor).John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:10, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - OK, and how is each WikiProject supposed to actually do this - one person decide, have a bunch of RFCs at each WP? And then even if an decision is reached, who is going to decide whether the answer given is good enough? GiantSnowman 10:40, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Each project would have the burden of justifying the inclusion of each league. It would be wise IMO to obtain consensus at NSPORTS as to the methodology for random sampling. Once the sample group is selected, a search for SIGCOV should follow. If SIGCOV can't be found on 90% of the sample group for a particular league, then that league should be dropped. If project members believe that a league satisfies the 90% threshold, a presentation should be prepared and submitted for approval at NSPORTS Talk. It's not so different than the burden we impose on those who propose new sub-parts to NSPORTS. It admittedly will be a lot of work, but it's overdue. Cbl62 (talk) 11:21, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Anyone can already, without needing prior permission from a subproposal, start an RfC and present their random sample of > 10% of players not being notable, and gain consensus from the community to delete that league from NSPORTS. This provides a course of action for questionable leagues, while sparing work on leagues that nobody is formally questioning. This seems more efficient.—Bagumba (talk) 13:13, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but given the sheer number of these things and the work involved, I'm not sure 30 days is enough. Maybe 90 days? Or even 180? Remember,
    there is no deadline on Wikipedia - if it takes us a bit longer to get it right, it's better than being quick and wrong. Smartyllama (talk) 13:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Support Especially in the case of football it is clear there is no good reason to include so many leagues. The mass proliferation of alledgedly notability giving football leagues is probably the #1 reason why we have 1989 as the year we have the most births in, even though there are many areas of endevor where people almost never are notable before age 35 or even 40 (academics comes to mind, politicians at least the vast majority do not pass the notability threshold until that age, there are others as well), so one would expect that if we had anything near balance the largest birth year category would be no later than 1975. It is also the lead cause of sports people being 50% of BLPs.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/George Lawton (canoeist) shows a continued tendancy of some editors to argue for keeping in the face of no identfied significant coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I really think this will only work well if it is paired with an end to the ludicrous one game rule. I also wonder if in some sports we might need a sliding scale. For example, maybe in MLB if someone played in 2 (or 3) games they are almost certain to have reliable source coverage, but maybe the Cuban Basketball league it would be 5 games before we can have a greater than 90% likelihood that a player will have significant coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Would this include reevaluating if every participant in the Tour de France is actually default notable. We have many articles on people born in the 1910s who participated in the Tour de France for whom that is the only thing we are told in the article they did in their life. To date I have not nominated any of these micro-stubs for deletion, because I know what happens when you nominate against a sports SNG, even with no sigcov. Also, because with the recent change of the Olympic SNG, I have enough to do with nominating people who do not meet that.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:04, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think that at least a start, so getting to the point of at least developing a potential sample, needs to be done within the next 30 days for each league, or we should drop the lead until the sampling is begun. I can see maybe granting 90 days for the approval of this proposal to complete for each league, but not any more than that. Clearly when 50% of our BLPs are on sportspeople we have a clear imbalance. Yes sports gets lots of coverage, but there are lots of notable politicians, losts of notable academics, lots of notable entertainers/actors/acresses/musicians, lots of notable artists, lots of notable writers, lots of notable businesspeople, lots of notable activists, some of whom are alive today and are notable but have not done much of note for decades, and there are several other categories I have not mentioned, so the notion that half of all living notable people are sportspeople does not hold up under scrutiny.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:15, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, this proposal seems intriguing, but I'm not quite sure how the "random sample" would be done. Would it be, say, me looking at PFA's list of AFL players and picking every 27th name, or? BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:22, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - the time limit is far too short to allow a large enough random sample size to be taken with such a large number of leagues - bearing in mind that a properly random sample would need to be taken in each league and that each needs to be large enough for the outcomes to be statistically significant - so you're looking at a percentage of participants rather than a set number. Cricket already went through this process, without very much of the random sampling element, and getting it anywhere close to right took bloody ages. I would support the principle that there needs to be some reasonable expectation that sources can be found, but the reality is that: a) there is no way that 30 days is anywhere long enough; b) the time and effort involved will be huge; c) that time and effort would almost certainly be better spent improving articles. As an addition, if I were to look at first-class cricketers in the UK, for example, I know that there are excellent online sources of biographies for 3 of the 18 sides. Are we going to get into a position where we have biographies - based on clear GNG passes - for three sides because a) the sources exists and b) someone can be bothered to add them? That seems, well, a bit odd. Please ping me if there is anything specific you would like me to respond to here. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:37, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well if we cannot find adequate sourcing for those involved in the other 15 sides, than we should not have articles on them. Are sides anything like leagues? Are you telling me that currently we consider playing a match in any of 18 leagues that play in England a sign of default notability. Does anyone else think this is crazy? Such a position makes sense for the very top fully-professional leagues, generally 1 and maybe 2, at most, per country, but 18? For example with gridiron football it makes sense to consider anyone who played in maybe 3 games in the NFL to be default notable, but I do not think that such a supposition applies to those who played in any less coveraged league. We have also at times been plagued by lots of articles on people who bounced from NFL team practice squad to NFL team practice squad and never actually played even for a little bit of time in one game.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:44, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment. Johnpacklambert there are not 18 professional cricket leagues in England. There is just the one (or three if you include the 50-over and Twenty20 stuff). It's comments like this which I know frustrates Cricket Project members because they are based on ignorance of a subject. And you're not alone, I've seen plenty with a flimsy knowledge on cricket making incorrect statements. StickyWicket (talk) 14:32, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • As long as the practice squad players meet GNG, we should have an article on them. And most current PS players are GNG passes. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • No they are not, at least by any reasonable understanding of what GNG is. We need to apply some limits, for example with political candidates it is possible to find coverage in the papers that says quite a bit about almost every candidate for public office, but we have decided we will not be a platform for free advertising, and so will not create such articles for every such person. In the same way we should not be a sports databsase, and so if someone is not actually playing in regular season public games, we should demand coverage that is non-local and very clearly indepth about the person, not just name dropping in a report on a scrimage game put out to fill up space in a newspaper.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:53, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Johnpacklambert: I didn't say sources didn't exist - they almost certainly do. They simply don't exist online in an easy to find place for every player. Almost every county will have book sources of one sort or another. I've got book sources for one minor-county side, for instance. The problem with book sources is that you've actually got to have someone with access to the book. For example, there exists a book dealing with early Otago cricketers - it was written by someone who died in WWI and is incredibly rare. But it exists and would be an obviously RS to show GNG level sourcing for those chaps; there are just very few people with access to it and, as far as I can tell, no one has ever used it as a reference on Wikipedia as a result. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:46, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am not convinced that a book like that is actually going to be providing sourcing on all the people at a level that actually meets GNG. If you wanted to be able to persuade us otherwise it would be very helpful if you named the actual book, instead of expecting us to take your work that this one book actually constitutes a reliable source, and is providing significant coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:50, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Also, GNG requires multiple sources, so one source on its own is not going to be enough to pass GNG.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • History of Otago Representative Cricket, 1863–1906: With a chapter on the pre-rep period, 1848–1863 JWH Bannerman (we know him as Hugh Bannerman - an obviously reliable source given his career as a journalist). It's available here for £200 and here for £195 is anyone wants to buy it. His other book, on Southland cricketers (Early Cricket in Southland: From 1860 and right up to 1908), is also available at the second source - for £750. As I said, they're quite rare. Wrt other sources, if you've used Papers Past you'll know quite how excellent coverage is of New Zealand newspapers - a myriad of papers cover the Otago area and are digitised. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Absolutely: we need to put up or shut up. Thirty days is plenty of time to prove our assumptions (especially if projects divvy up the work), and any projects that lack the will to do so -- or else are downright obstructionist -- well, then, tough luck.

    Beyond that, for all you sports projects regulars, consider this: do you get that the vast and disproportionate number of sports bios pisses a lot of people off? This is not the first time that there's been an attempt to trim NSPORTS back, and unless we police our own beat, the tidal waves are going to keep coming. And all this proposal does is force us to do the work we should have done in the first place as a prerequisite to writing the guidelines. Ravenswing 18:00, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    • @Ravenswing: Seriously, the experience of doing this in cricket tells me that 30 days is nowhere near enough. There simply aren't enough people with access to the right sort of sources. Not even close. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:46, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • Then I suppose -- if you're telling me that it's going to take months to source (say) twenty or thirty random bio articles per league, the work that should have been done already -- the result is that the leagues that the many active cricket editors can't be bothered to source would run afoul of the proposal until they do. If the "right sort" of sources necessary to provide significant coverage to a league's players isn't available, could you explain to me upon what basis the cricket project determined that those leagues satisfied the GNG in the first place? Ravenswing 21:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • Oh, I was assuming you'd want, say, a 5% random sample. Or at least a 1%. That's far more than 20 or 30 - where you'd only need 4 one game wonders to turn up to drop below the 90% - and there's far too high a chance of that in my view. So, for example, Kent County Cricket Club have had about 680 men play for them since 1840-odd. That's one of the 18 first-class counties in England and Wales - although one of the oldest ones. If we take out the ones who didn't play in the County Championship we're probably looking at in excess of 475-500. So, multiply that by, say, 12 to take account of the other teams - and at a conservative estimate you're looking at 5,000 plus players to evaluate. 1% of that is 50, not 20 or 30, but, tbh, a) that's really conservative and b) 1% is a poor sample size. Do the same for the List A competitions and then the T20s and, well, just in the UK it's a massive, massive job. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:58, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm confident that a lot of editors do understand that many editors become angry when people create articles that others don't like. What we don't understand is 1) why you don't like it and 2) why you take it so personally, like some editor went over to your house and kicked your dog. No, the editor just created an article on Wikipedia. We give people the authority to create articles: try not to take it personally when someone actually goes and does it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:28, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm confident that I don't answer "When are you going to stop beating your wife?" loaded questions. What is a problem for the project are sub-stubs created in blatant (and often willful) defiance of any notion of proper sourcing or significant coverage by editors riding hobby horses or chasing Game High Score. Try not to take it personally when other editors actually go and object to it. Ravenswing 21:59, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I support the idea of having a review of these, but it needs to be a collaborative process. I don't see any need for the confrontational approach of ultimatums and deadlines, or for specifying that only one type of evidence is acceptable. Nor do I think it's fair to presume that the outcome of the process will be the removal of these leagues - some of them are definitely acceptable. Hut 8.5 18:45, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. For those who resist this common sense proposal, there's a small part of me that hopes Subproposal 3 passes. This would completely eradicate NFOOTY and NCRICKEt. Is that preferable to doing the hard work to determine which leagues actually justify a presumption of notability? Cbl62 (talk) 22:30, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The elephant in the room is to propose nuking a few specific, suspect sports that seem the most egregious, and not the entirety of NSPORTS. The hope still is that they will clean their own house.—Bagumba (talk) 00:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • In theory I support the idea of trimming back the list of guidelines.. some of the leagues definitely should be re-evaluated..the footy ones mentioned above and i've always thought ice hockey was too lenient with its minor leagues and college categories.. I don't know however about the deadline... especially since this involves getting all the projects involved and some of them have more active memberships than others. I think it makes more sense to do it on the NSPORTS page and go sport by sport rather than some kind of free for all... and who is gonna be deciding if the projects proved their cases or not? Spanneraol (talk) 22:54, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect a lot of leagues will not even come close. For leagues where a project is able to compile data showing that the presumption is warranted, the evidence can be compiled and voted on at NSPORTS Talk. I suspect there will be many leagues where the evidence will not be found to support the presumption; in those cases, the project need not do anything, as any leagues not specifically endorsed would be dropped. Cbl62 (talk) 23:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment (ec). If the notability tests are to be applied league-by-league, the selection criteria cannot be "random", since that would definitely bias results toward the coverage depth found in more recent years (I don't think 1920s NFL teams had 55 players on their rosters...). This should instead by grouped by decade(s) or "eras" or with some other temporal partitioning. If we go that route, there are some time periods and leagues for which GNG tests should be an easy task. Like contemporary leagues in countries using the Latin alphabet. Maybe those could have the 30 or 60 day time limit, and the harder leagues/times could have some set amount longer. JoelleJay (talk) 23:35, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, there would need to be consensus that it is a representative random sample.—Bagumba (talk) 00:18, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (Formal !vote based on my earlier comment) Anyone can already, without needing prior permission from a subproposal, start an RfC and present their representative random sample of > 10% of players not being notable, and gain consensus from the community to delete that league from NSPORTS. This provides a course of action for questionable leagues, while sparing work on leagues that nobody is formally questioning. This path is applicable to all fields, including politicians, academics, or any similar SNG. No race to an artificial deadline. Propose only when ready.—Bagumba (talk) 00:18, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That is not how it works. Usually, it requires dozens of deletions via AFD to show that GNG is not being met. This proves a very difficult hurdle due to WikiProjects turning up en-masse with bare "meets SNG" keep !votes that commonly result in non-deletion outcomes because closers remain reluctant to enforce N/GNG requirements in the face of such numbers. wjematherplease leave a message... 03:34, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand the frustration. It would be unfortuntate if the few rogue SNGs of specific sports can't be cleanup up without collateral damage to the other non-problematic sports.—Bagumba (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Qualified support. It has long been established that additions to NSPORT must demonstrate that the threshold is met. It is now anomalous that the longest standing parts of the guideline have never been subjected to such scrutiny. This proposal addresses that. However, the time limit is far too short; there is no rush, and 6 months seems like a more reasonable target. Also, WikiProjects may be invested but they do not own these guidelines; the burden is on all/any interested parties to do the work. wjematherplease leave a message... 03:21, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I think it makes more sense to do a giant study of all sports first, then RFC for the adjustment or removal of specific sports based on the results of the giant study. This gives !voters evidence to evaluate, and this shifts the burden to those attempting to increase the strictness of NSPORTS. As NSPORTS is the codification of years of consensus, it makes sense for the burden to be on those seeking change. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:37, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • support One of several possible ways to help fix the big mess that this overly lenient SNG has created. But this one is a little messy. North8000 (talk) 13:45, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with the requirement that any analysis must be presented for community approval via RfC.
A somewhat related issue is that NSPORTS references project-space pages such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports/Notability, Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse racing/Notability, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket/Notability and Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Fully professional leagues which are maintained in-house by project members, with no wider community discussion of any changes. The talk pages of the Cricket and Football supplements in particular are full of detailed discussions about whether or not a particular team is "professional" with no consideration of whether their players meet GNG. It seems like these should either be unlinked or moved to subpages of NSPORTS. –dlthewave ☎ 13:58, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would support decertifying such lists. They lack sufficient controls and are problematic. Cbl62 (talk) 15:36, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded.—Bagumba (talk) 09:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 11

Rewrite the introductory paragraph to put this guideline on a similar footing to other SNGs, removing the dependence on the GNG, and making it clear that standalone articles should not be created for articles that can only be sourced to statistics databases.

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to merit an article in Wikipedia. The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets either the
general notability guideline
or the sport specific criteria set forth below. Standalone articles should only be created where sufficient sources can be identified to create an article that goes beyond the contents of statistics databases and websites; Where the only sources available simply provide only basic personal details and details of participation, the subject should be covered in a list article or mentioned in a parent article rather than having a standalone article.
Please note that the failure to meet these criteria does not mean an article must be deleted; conversely, meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept. These are merely rules of thumb which some editors choose to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to keep an article that is on articles for deletion, along with relevant policies and guidelines such as Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

--Michig (talk) 10:05, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And the proposed wording says that the 'microstubs' should be redirected to/mentioned in other articles, so improves what you complain of... GiantSnowman 10:42, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced that the actual wording will result in a suitable response, and would also note that there is also an issue with permanent stubs. Considering some examples might help. Under this proposal, what do you believe will happen to the articles on Marcel Rewenig, James Cook, Aage Leidersdorff, and Raymond Argentin? BilledMammal (talk) 11:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal addresses the issue of 'tens of thousands of permanent microstubs' while also avoiding deleting content on sporting champions, olympic medallists, etc. I think you are confusing 'notability' with 'the GNG' - they are not the same thing. No other encyclopedia has ever based their inclusion criteria solely on something akin to the GNG. --Michig (talk) 10:47, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not every sporting champion and Olympic medallist is notable. BilledMammal (talk) 11:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's true -- they use much, much, much, much stricter standards than GNG for what is included. JoelleJay (talk) 23:57, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And far more sensible standards - such as expert consideration of which topics belong in an encyclopedia, rather than how many 'significant' articles a random person can find in a Google search. --Michig (talk) 11:12, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes...which is why, for example, Brittanica online has 100,000 biographies of footballers. Wait, no, it's just 67. JoelleJay (talk) 20:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Britannica Online has limits that Wikipedia doesn't have. There are clearly not only 67 notable footballers in the world, so it's rather a daft comparison. --Michig (talk) 12:05, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Lol then why did you bring up "other encyclopedias" at all?? You can't claim they have far more sensible standards - such as expert consideration of which topics belong in an encyclopedia and then turn around and basically say some undefined "limits" compared to WP are the only reason their exclusion criteria are several orders of magnitude higher than WP's. Who's to say their experts didn't stop at 67 because they determined that was the number of notable footballers? JoelleJay (talk) 19:51, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Also, even if they're limited by "paper" or "number of writers", the proportion of biographies dedicated to a particular discipline still reflects expert determination of encyclopedic merit. Encyclopedia.com, which draws from hundreds of encyclopedias, including ones that are strictly biographies of modern people in a single region, only has 400 biographies of athletes. It has 240 on American artists, 300 on architects, 382 on American authors. JoelleJay (talk) 20:23, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Does anyone really advocate making Wikipedia with its 5 million articles and 2 billion visits per month more like "Encyclopedia.com" with its grand total of 200,000 entries? Does anyone actually still use Encyclopedia.com? Encyclopedia.com got off to a good start in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I didn't even realize it was still in existence. Cbl62 (talk) 23:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
IDK, I'm not the one who brought up criteria for selection in other encyclopedias. I'm just disputing the implication an SNG remotely approximates the standards for inclusion in traditional encyclopedias or is at all superior to GNG in this regard. JoelleJay (talk) 03:11, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My point was that no other encyclopedia would use something like GNG, they would set objective criteria for inclusion based on significance - whether or not those criteria would look like what we currently have in NSPORT isn't really the issue. That was clear I think, but you seem determined to not understand any argument that doesn't equate to 'GNG is everything'. --Michig (talk) 12:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And none of those other encyclopedias are crowdsourced. Does anyone have a suggestion on how Wikipedia would assign one editor-in-chief or select an editorial committee?—Bagumba (talk) 13:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If there was enough common sense around, it would get people with knowledge and expertise in an area (e.g. members of a related WikiProject) to agree some sensible and pragmatic inclusion criteria (i.e. SNGs). Which is exactly what it did until the GNG-supremacists came along and tried to reduce everything down to one clumsy guideline. --Michig (talk) 13:33, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WikiProject "experts" like the ones responsible for PORNBIO? Or the sports fans who want to see standalones on every single member of some regional football league regardless of whether a single independent entity has ever taken notice of them? Do you genuinely believe any broad encyclopedia should have 50% of its biographies be on sports figures, with a large percentage of those being perma-microstubs? Come on. JoelleJay (talk) 19:25, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You do love a specious argument, don't you? --Michig (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument is that wikiproject members have the knowledge and expertise to craft pragmatic SNG inclusion criteria, and that this approximates the specialist panels hired for traditional encyclopedias; I am arguing a wikiproject comprising anonymous fans of a topic does not have an equivalent academic background or editorial restraints and therefore is not comparable to such a panel. The porn wikiproject created its own insular award-based criteria that failed to predict coverage in RS and more importantly routinely failed BLP. If SSGs weren't supposed to be calibrated to predict GNG, there would be no impetus for sports wikiprojects to tighten their criteria and we would have tens of thousands more athlete microstubs. Topical wikiprojects do not have the breadth of focus or self-policing capacity to develop concepts of notability in isolation, but that is exactly what removing GNG would do -- the rest of the wiki community would have almost zero sway in these discussions because there would be no way to evaluate how well the notability of a subject meeting an SSG criterion aligns with the notability standards of the rest of the encyclopedia. JoelleJay (talk) 01:25, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we assume that the PORNBIO experience were not representative, the very body of people Michig claims are "knowledgeable and expert" in this area have already perpetrated the very mess we're currently trying to clean up. Where someone playing one down in garbage time of a garbage NFL game is 'presumed inherently notably'. Likewise someone even once warming a subs bench in an English tier-four soccer match. Now this proposal seeks to change that presumption to an explicit entailment. It's doubling down on an existing blunder. Fix the 'participation threshold' thing first, O people burnishing your knowledge and expertise. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 10:55, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:N is the proper place for that debate.—Bagumba (talk) 12:18, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Quite the opposite. --Michig (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support conditional on it being tempered by (a) subproposal 5 requiring at least one instance of SIGCOV for new articles, and (b) cleaning up NSPORTS so that it's a better indicator of GNG coverage. Cbl62 (talk) 15:37, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to merit an article in Wikipedia. is clumsily written and completely at odds with how NSPORT is used in practice (it is an indicator of meeting GNG, not a direct inclusion criteria). The left-as-is second sentence is going to be open to the same wikilawyering as before. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Half-joking: You are quite fond of the phrases "wikilawyering" and "special pleading". It seems that when you cite and interpret guidelines, it's legitimate discourse. When others do the same but disagree with you, it's "wikilawyering" and "special pleading". Cbl62 (talk) 16:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Reminds me of an old college drinking game where we would take a shot every time someone said "Bob" in an episode of The Bob Newhart Show, resulting in much drunkenness by the end of a 30-minute episode. Applying the principle here, I propose a shot every time you say either "wikilawyering" or "special pleading". Cheers. Cbl62 (talk) 16:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62: This isn't an invention of my imagination. I've literally had people argue that because of the "or" in the second sentence, the subject does not need to meet GNG. So yes, call me a hypocrite, albeit next time make sure you're correct. As for the proposed text, it changes the tail end of the first sentence from evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. to evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to merit an article in Wikipedia., completely removing any reference to GNG. That is likely to lead to people saying that GNG doesn't need to be met, so I stand by my point. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:45, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When did I call you a hypocrite? Far from it, you are quite consistent in your advocacy against sports articles. I was simply teasing about overuse of the two phrases. Cbl62 (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You accused me of double standards. As for "advocacy against sports articles", no it's not, it's "advocacy against articles which are cookie-cutter copies of each other and no pertinent information to be conveyed to the reader beyond what would be found in a database". That sports articles happen to be a disproportionately large amount of this might be indicative of other issues... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
At least I led with "Half-joking". Cbl62 (talk) 17:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, these proposals are all about changing the way NSPORT is used in practice - that's the point. --Michig (talk) 16:09, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose on grounds of GNG supremacy. Levivich 17:43, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose without applying TNT to most of the rest of NSPORT, since the existing criteria contained within the guideline are not compatible with this proposal. wjematherplease leave a message... 20:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose – This idea that SNGs exist as an alternative to GNG is flawed. In essence, an SNG is a subset of GNG, with both agreeing that the article topic must have significant coverage in reliable, secondary sources. The last time this was discussed (WT:Notability/Archive 71#Arbitrary break), most agreed that SNGs are secondary in nature to the GNG. Where they can diverge is on the bullet point "Independent of the subject", of which an SNG may define "independence" in more detail and perhaps even in a different manner. An SNG may also end up being more restrictive than GNG. The attempt here to claim they are completely separate is misleading. The purpose of an SNG is to make it easier to gauge a topic's compliance with GNG using examples that have more meaning within a given subject area. --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:26, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
SNGs existed before the GNG; Their purpose is not gauge a topic's compliance with GNG. WP:N has always stated that notability is about satisfying either the GNG or an SNG. This proposal simply gives us an SNG that fits with what WP:N says rather than having a completely pointless SNG that states that GNG has to be satisfied. --Michig (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
GNG defines a broad pathway to Notability, while SNGs tend to define a narrower pathway, but both ultimately share the same overarching principles. Their relationship is intertwined and often results in the view that SNGs operate within the same GNG framework. I call one a subset of the other, because either SNGs state explicitly that they defer to the GNG (like NSPORT), or they end up being more restrictive (like NORG). Guess it depends on your perspective. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
And just to add... Perhaps we need to wait for closure in the other subproposals to determine how to best rephrase the lead. Doing that now seems to be putting the cart before the horse. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:36, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The essence of the GNG dates back to late 2006. Back then, it was called the "primary criterion" of the notability guideline, which required that "a subject must have been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself". I'm not aware of SNGs earlier than that, but naturally I'd be delighted to be enlightened on the topic. NPROF is of a fairly similar vintage, but slightly later -- but before GNG was actually called GNG, if one wants to make such of that detail. But NSPORT is itself significantly later. And has problematic features unique to itself. So there's no 'grandfather clause' legitimately available here. And certainly no good precedent for yet-further drifting it towards 'inherent' rather than actually verifiable notability. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 12:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support –
    WP:N is the overall policy guideline, while GNG and SNGs are subcomponents of that policy guideline meaning that neither is "superior" to the other. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 23:36, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    Do you not believe it is possible for an SNG itself to mandate GNG coverage for its subjects? JoelleJay (talk) 23:42, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @
    WP:JUNK it. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 00:58, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    @Jkudlick NSPORT does explicitly require GNG to be met, though. And many other SNGs work as predictors of GNG as well; do we have to junk NBIO too because NBASIC is essentially a restatement of GNG, and meeting one of the "additional criteria" (including NSPORT) listed in it is not sufficient for a standalone article? Not to mention its description of NSPORT specifically situates it as predictive of GNG: and so is likely to have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.
    I believe the opposite since a database or other routine coverage (such as a standard match report) doesn't meet SIGCOV. But if you believe all SNGs are in parallel to GNG, no articles meeting an SNG criterion would require SIGCOV... JoelleJay (talk) 02:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @JoelleJay: If NSPORTS explicitly requires GNG, then why are we even here? Everything I read on the page says should not must. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 12:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I meant to also add, as I have said before, that I am not necessarily an inclusion it, and that I am not advocating any SNG as a replacement for GNG; what I am saying is that if we are going to hold an article to meeting GNG from the very beginning then we shouldn't bother having an SNG. No SNG means no confusion about whether an article should be kept. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 12:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jkudlick Regarding the relationship of NSPORT to GNG and precedent, see my comment upthread. In particular, the FAQs at the top of the guideline page are informative. Regarding the reason why NSPORT exists, here is how I've tried to explain it before.
    We're here because some editors refuse to accept the wider community's consensus that GNG is the overarching criterion for sports bio inclusion (in fact, this is what this subproposal is attempting to overturn). It's also become clear that the permissibility of creating database-sourced athlete bios under the presumption of GNG, based on sport-specific criteria developed by sports wikiprojects with little or no outside evaluation, has enabled both uninhibited proliferation of microstubs and their retention at AfDs without SIGCOV ever being produced. The editors who do not acknowledge what the rest of the community has decided re: NSPORT v. GNG are the same ones who !vote keep at every AfD for any subject meeting their sport-specific criteria, even when GNG sourcing is demonstrably nonexistent. But because there is that second sentence in NSPORT (which applies to article creation) as well as the wiggle room offered by the "eventually" in FAQ #5, there isn't a strict, policy-backed reason to wholly discount their !votes when closing. So while admin closers frequently give these !votes very little weight and most highly-contested AfDs result in deletion, they are still reluctant to close against a clear numerical consensus to keep since that's basically an invitation to DRV. Likewise, there is little incentive for other editors to challenge the presumption of GNG for any non-Anglophone or non-modern non-borderline N[sport]-meeting subject if they can't prove beyond a doubt that coverage doesn't exist in an offline local archived newspaper article somewhere.
    Most of these subproposals therefore seek to create some mechanism to actually enforce what the majority of editors have agreed and repeatedly reaffirmed is the appropriate relationship between NSPORT and GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 20:29, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This would do nothing to ensure articles on sportspeople are actually encyclopedic. A stub sourced to a database and a three-sentence blurb documenting the subject transferred to AEK Larnaca or whatever is no better than one sourced to just a database. JoelleJay (talk) 23:54, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If that was all we had, the subject could be covered in a list/parent article. --Michig (talk) 12:01, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is not at all clear from the text of the subproposal (what does basic personal details and details of participation even mean?), and by removing dependence on GNG you are endorsing a notability threshold that exists somewhere between "database listing" and "what sports editors think is SIGCOV", which frequently is transactional coverage. JoelleJay (talk) 20:43, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure the wording could be improved to specify a level of content required to have a standalone article. My intention was to avoid having articles containing only basic personal details and career stats. --Michig (talk) 17:46, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Neither side is going to be satisfied until it is clearly identified what advantages an SNG provides over GNG. If the answer is none, SNG essentially become useless. On the otherhand, SNGs needs to provide some recourse for permastubs.—Bagumba (talk) 12:21, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The requirement to include sourcing beyond basic information is an improvement but we already know that editors will cherry-pick "The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets either the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria" while ignoring "Standalone articles should only be created where sufficient sources can be identified to create an article that goes beyond the contents of statistics databases and websites", just as similar language in
    WP:SPORTCRIT
    is widely ignored. Best to make it crystal-clear that SIGCOV is the standard.
I would note that NSPORTS' participation-based criteria are much less stringent than other SNGs which are more like guides to demonstrating SIGCOV for a particular topic. –dlthewave ☎ 17:08, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we would certainly require several sources to have an article that goes beyond basic personal information and career stats, but a dozen or so briefer examples of coverage can sometimes provide more useful information than one or two articles that cover the subject 'in depth'. --Michig (talk) 17:46, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes sure, there's a "mony a mickle maks a muckle" logic to that. I've seen truly heroic efforts to But the existing standard is that "multiple sources are generally expected" and that they provide "significant coverage". You're proposing to rather drastically weaken that to "sufficient" non-DB-grade sources. So it's not even maintaining the same basic floor for "useful information", and does next-to-nothing to establish actual notability, beyond the -- clearly drastically flawed -- 'minimal participation' bars many of the individual NSPORT guidelines set. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 11:52, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
How on God's green earth does subproposal 11 give "carte blanche to create even more athlete microstubs"???? It expressly says the opposite: "Standalone articles should only be created where sufficient sources can be identified to create an article that goes beyond the contents of statistics databases and websites; Where the only sources available simply provide only basic personal details and details of participation, the subject should be covered in a list article or mentioned in a parent article rather than having a standalone article." And, if combined with sub 5 (receiving overwhelming approval currently), users would also need to include at least one instance of real SIGCOV upon article creation. These two proposals combine for real and substantial reform. Cbl62 (talk) 03:23, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Because there is zero definition beyond "more than a stats database" to clarify the depth of coverage from any one source or even combination of sources. Removing GNG is indisputably intended to lower the ultimate notability requirements for standalone inclusion, and the language of the proposal does not require these "non-trivial" sources be in the article from the get-go. It simply replaces the eventual need to demonstrate GNG with an eventual need to demonstrate...some undefined, explicitly lesser degree of coverage. It completely removes the GNG calibration of all NSPORT subguideline criteria, which means projects could arbitrarily loosen their criteria with no guideline-based way for the wider community to push back. The proposal also says nothing about whether sources have to be independent or secondary. And I evaluate each proposal's merits in isolation, so it doesn't matter if #5 is likely to pass. JoelleJay (talk) 04:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how the proposed language is any more vague than the GNG itself is. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention (how precise, and not at all tautological); There is no fixed number of sources required (gee, thanks). And I'm pretty sure that Multiple publications from the same author or organization are usually regarded as a single source is ignored in practice. I can't recall the last AfD that turned on it (and would we really say that multiple articles by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker count only as a single source, for example?). In short, I don't get why people love the GNG so much. It's just a thing to point to when there's nothing else. Trying to fit all the questions about what articles should exist into the framework of GNG/SNG relations is pseudo-legalistic wrangling that makes the inside baseball of Wikipedia even more incomprehensible. XOR'easter (talk) 06:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "notability" is not as objective as some would have us believe.—Bagumba (talk) 11:43, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@XOR'easter It's not necessarily that the language is less clear, but that it explicitly requires less depth than even the shallowest claims of "SIGCOV" produced by sports editors (like two-sentence transfer blurbs) and does not say anything about whether non-independent and primary sources are discounted for notability purposes. The current NSPORT guidelines permit SSG-meeting microstubs to exist in mainspace until challenged, and the only way to challenge a subject's notability is to request the (requisite) GNG SIGCOV be produced. Hundreds of NFOOTY-meeting stubs have been deleted due to keep !voters not being able to answer that request, and this in turn has forced projects to tighten their criteria. This proposal would overturn the unofficial but widely-recognized minimum standards of athlete SIGCOV developed over years of AfD precedent -- mainly, that transactional and hype coverage are not significant, nor are strict interviews -- and, by virtue of not requiring SIGCOV, implicitly allow these sub-SIGCOV sources to count toward notability. GNG is vague and overly-inclusive, but in practice is a much stronger barrier to athlete microstub retention than the sport-specific guidelines. JoelleJay (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that two-sentence transfer blurbs would fall under the Where the only sources available simply provide only basic personal details and details of participation language. And my guess is that the nature and extent of hype interviews varies from sport to sport, so it may be better to spell out more specific criteria in the individual sections. XOR'easter (talk) 19:43, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that NSPORT both tightens and (to an extent) loosens GNG. NSPORT tightens GNG by making it harder for non-professional athletes to get an article (so a college or prep athlete does not get an article with a smattering of [local] coverage, even if it they are good enough for a profile). I believe that the SNG makes it a bit (to an extent) easier for a professional athlete to keep an article - as we expect there is coverage and we expect editors to find coverage of anyone who plays in particular leagues. I think this is a good balance - at AFD, if a subject passes NSPORT, more latitude should be given to the sources found, if a subject would not pass NSPORT, a heavier burden to find sources (especially beyond routine coverage) is expected. --Enos733 (talk) 19:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Enos733 ?? NSPORT has zero effect on GNG, it does not make it harder for non-pro athletes to get an article. If they meet GNG, they can be created and kept regardless of meeting NSPORT. And the sports subguidelines are definitionally, not to mention empirically, looser than GNG, as evidenced by the fact they're supposed to be calibrated to predict GNG and yet there are hundreds of AfDs on SSG-meeting athletes that resulted in delete in just the last few months. The vast majority of these SSGs have never actually even validated their criteria predict GNG -- as should be clear from the resistance to doing so in proposal 10! JoelleJay (talk) 00:31, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@XOR'easter If such sources would be excluded by the proposed language, then what examples of non-SIGCOV (in the eyes of sports editors) material would be accepted? Articles with just an athlete's "details of participation" are claimed to be SIGCOV all the time by sports editors. Again, the intent of this proposal is to reduce the ultimate minimum coverage requirement for sports subjects. That is ALL it would do. Having coverage beyond a database or "basic personal details" is already required ("eventually") by NSPORT, through its deferment to GNG and the language in SPORTCRIT. This proposal removes both of those limitations and replaces them with an "eventual" requirement for a non-SIGCOV, non-database source. Sports project editors already refuse to acknowledge the first and third sentences of NSPORT when creating articles and when defending them at AfD; expecting anything different from this proposal is ridiculous.
Look, if you don't agree that 50% of biographies being on athletes is a problem, or that an encyclopedia shouldn't have tens of thousands of permanent biography microstubs, then that's where our disagreement actually lies and debating this proposal is pointless. But if you have any opposition to those things at all, please take what has been said by oppose !voters above about how this would affect proliferation of articles on, e.g., footballers whose sole claim to notability is one appearance in the 97th minute of a match in a third-tier league. JoelleJay (talk) 00:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree about the problem, and I've done my best to think through and over the arguments for how this would make it worse. I'm just not convinced. If editors are refusing to acknowledge wording in the current guideline, then they will surely ignore any replacement just as easily, and all this is nothing more than bikeshedding. XOR'easter (talk) 05:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The flaws in the current wording make it easy to ignore, or indeed just to differ in good faith as to what it does (or should) mean. We'll presume these topics to be notable... until what or when? Next week? Ad infinitum? Until people have done a few google searches? Until a notary public certifies that no reliable source ever existed offering significant coverage, even taking in account the theoretical possibility of an archive somewhere having burnt down? It's underdefined at present, if not simply un-. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 11:19, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience at hundreds of athlete AfDs and sport-specific guideline tightening discussions, there is very vocal resistance to producing GNG coverage from keep !voters precisely because it doesn't exist for a large proportion of SSG-meeting deletion nominees. Many of NSPORT's SSGs just do not correlate with coverage beyond the routine and non-significant, and that's even with theoretical calibration to GNG. As I said before, if we removed that GNG limitation, the rest of the community would have zero guideline-backed justification against expanding an SSG criterion to include more leagues/teams/tournaments/etc. With this proposal, all current and future SSGs would be entirely governed by fans of the sport, with inclusion criteria being determined by what level of participation they consider important within that sport, rather than by what is encyclopedic or what is deemed notable even by other sports projects. And we know this results in over-inclusion and rapid microstub expansion because that's what happened before GNG was implemented and projects were forced to calibrate their criteria to it. Every Arena football player and List A cricketer and fourth-tier semi-pro American footballer was once deemed just as deserving of an article as an NBA all-star.
The current wording is often ignored by AfD keep !voters, yes, but it still gives AfD closers the ability to disregard such !votes. It makes subsequent AfDs on the same subject that much easier to delete if no SIGCOV had been added in the interim. And it mandates an athlete biography have at least the capacity to resemble an encyclopedic biography, containing more than just sports stats and summaries of transactional announcements. This proposal strips all that away by allowing material that in aggregate doesn't even meet BASIC to confer notability. JoelleJay (talk) 20:58, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That ability itself rests on very insecure grounds. When it happens, the 'only a guideline, keep, count all the "!"votes!' crowd are often unhappy about it, and could indeed argue that the have a 'law in the letter' case in doing so. If Wikipedia had well-founded rules that allowed one to make such a determination, which of course it does not. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 14:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 12

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)#Proposal to clarify Olympic participation as an indicator of notability to minimize the clutter here and to allow it to run its course there. Cbl62 (talk) 22:16, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Subproposal 13

No more fucking subproposals. Let this thing run its course. Cbl62 (talk) 15:55, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

PASSED

Closing statement: This is clearly

snowing. In any case, fornication with subproposals is now forbidden. Oh wait, that's not what was meant... I see. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:03, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

Amendment: Strike fucking subproposal 13 as well. Cbl62 (talk) 17:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Levivich 17:45, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stop throwing more shit against the wall without at least first explaining how your bright idea addresses most of the major opinions—both pro and con—that's already been regurgitated ad nauseam.—Bagumba (talk) 17:17, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Levivich 17:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    FTR, though I support not having any more subproposals, I do not agree that what's already here should be discarded. I think a closer will be able to figure out what does/doesn't have consensus on this page, and that process should be allowed to play out, per nom. Just let this thing run its course. Levivich 20:27, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Levivich: I didn't mean to suggest that the subpropsals already pending should be ignored. If a clear consensus for any of these is found, that consensus should be enforced. However, the proliferation has created a mess, and there are many who are saying that they can't even figure out how/where to comment (or don't have the time/patience to wade through all 13 proposals). Given these issues, changes to the guidelines should be made only if there is clear consensus. I would support moving subproposal 12 to the NSPORTS talk page, as it's rather granular and is the type of discussion that's normally dealt with there -- and moving it could help reduce the growing sense of trainwreck. Cbl62 (talk) 21:48, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No objection from me, if you want to do that. BilledMammal (talk) 22:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks BilledMammal. I went ahead and moved it. Your proposal is legit and meritorious, but moving it helps keep the discussion here focused on the bigger issues. Cbl62 (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cbl62: Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you were suggesting that anything should be ignored. Thanks to you and BM for moving 12. Levivich 23:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

General Thoughts

I am quite discouraged by how few editors have done anything to nominate clearly perma stub articles on clearly non-notable peoipy non-notable participants in the Olympics for deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Try not to take it personally that other editors are not as enthusiastic about that as you. We disagree 99% of the time, but I always value your input ('cept for that one time...)--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:07, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's what this whole debate is about. The SNG sets the bar too low and defines them as wp:notable. North8000 (talk) 19:47, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect. People keep raising obscure Olympic participants as a reason to toss out NSPORTS. The fact of the matter is that NOLYMPICS was substantially rewritten last year to eliminate the presumption of notability for all but medalists. Far from being a reason to eliminate NSPORTS, it demonstrates the correct method of reform -- i.e., if a particular part of NSPORTS is too broad, fix it --- but don't throw out the whole darn thing. Cbl62 (talk) 04:01, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The system is stacked against anyone who tries. A stub takes a minute to create but countless hours of effort to delete. It's a mad system that will quickly discourage anyone. Nigej (talk) 19:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Please don't be surprised when anyone does edit. That's not the problem ... that's the point.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:35, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's true, but we have a set of policies/guidelines/etc. that determine whether those edits are suitable. Nigej (talk) 14:41, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It seems a
WP:SUPERVOTER or two is trying to make it easier. Stepping back from the letter of the law, it's another indication of how polarizing this is becoming, all because a few select sports continue to maintain the staus quo on their massive list of dubious notable professional leagues.—Bagumba (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
This rather rests on whether "closing in lines with our policies and guidelines" amounts to the sort of editorial misconduct you're here framing it as. If it does, that page itself prescribes a series of resolution steps. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 19:00, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that the policies and guidelines are unclear. When they are contradictory or editors disagree and the closer sides with the minority vote, it does come across as a
talk) 19:04, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
Personally I think the main lack of clarity here is whether if the "!"voters are brazenly ignoring the guidelines (in particular, as distinct from policy), and the closer takes that into account, they're acting within policy. (Other than in the IAR sense, of course, in which every action on Wikipedia is simultaneously within policy, and outside of policy.) That it's unclear the "keep per NSPORT, GNG be damned" votes are guideline-flouting is frankly a lot harder to credibly argue. But if you feel there's closer misconduct here, as I say there are prescribes steps to take. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 16:36, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS is clear that the closer is given discretion to enforce policies, not guidelines.—Bagumba (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
What's especially clear is that that essay is... an essay, and itself neither a policy nor a guideline. So not your strongest plank in that argument, counsel-at-wiki. If you feel it's a winning one, then as I say you should presumably take up the resolution processes available in each case, rather than complaining about it as an alleged abstract phenomenon. Dunno why we trouble to have 'em, otherwise. Then again I'm equally not sure why we bother with guidelines if we can blithely vote[sic] to ignore those, for no even stated reason. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia is a widely used source, and we have a responsibility to ensure the information is as accurate as possible. Our current policies have allowed actual hoaxes to stand for over 15 years. Some things need to be changed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:04, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't believe that we are talking about "hoaxes" here--the issue in this discussion is what does or does not meet notability standards. It's a far different case for something to be "not true" or a "hoax" than for something to "be true but just not important enough to meet notability standards": please remain on the topic, this discussion is huge enough as it is. --Paul McDonald (talk) 17:51, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • You can handwave against hoaxes, but they are a relevant issue. Hoaxes can last so long because we have such non-existent requirements for article quality that it is very hard to tease out hoaxes from reality.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:34, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • The two are related at least to the extent of resting on minimal sourcing. If you can stitch together a permastub on an 'inherently notable' topic from a trivial source or two, that's a favourable environment for hoaxes, as well as for sportscruft. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 16:44, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is going to be exceedingly difficult to take any substantive changes from this discussion (and the splintered ones). Not that anyone is asking my advice, but I think the best path is to identify the sports that drive the microstub issues and get those guidelines scaled back significantly. Cutting

WP:NSPORTS outright was ever much of a possibility unless WP went away from SSGs totally. Rikster2 (talk) 16:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

TLDR

I consider myself relatively detail oriented, but I long ago gave up on trying to keep up with all the various points here. There's the original proposal and its subsequent 13 subproposals, many running in parallel. I can't believe this is a real "discussion", even by RfC standards, and not just a series of isolated polls , where people are even more unlikely to go back and read or update earlier points. It's almost impossible to find past points when the TOC header's are just "Subproposal X" with no other desctiption.

While there might be a few proposals that appear to have gained support, I'd recommend reaffirming with a new, limited RfC with the exact (re-)wording proposal to the guideline.—Bagumba (talk) 05:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree with Bagumba, this has taken on multiple "lives and directions" and it's just too burdensome to attempt to comprehend the details. There's too much here.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, I've voted on some of the proposals but not all 13 of them, as it's way too many to look at. That doesn't mean people necessarily agree with any consensuses on a proposal, just that it's too much effort to expect people to read 13 different proposals, especially when some are massively nuanced and changing minor implications of text. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:26, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given the confusion/gridlock generated by the multiple proposals, I'd agree that a proposal that barely passes with only a narrow majority should not be viewed as having achieved a solid consensus sufficient to change the existing guideline. However, there are a couple proposals that received mass participation and have a clear consensus from 2/3 of the participants. In particular, the Main Proposal to abolish NSPORTS received mass participation from nearly 100 editors and was overwhelmingly rejected. Also, subproposal 5 (requiring at least one example of SIGCOV to support new article creation going forward) received mass participation and is overwhelmingly supported. Cbl62 (talk) 15:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But on the other hand, I feel that the consensus in favour of NSPORTS has always been lukewarm and marginal. It was established as a guideline in this discussion: Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 4 § RfC: Promote Notability (sports) to a guideline. My position is that NSPORTS clearly doesn't enjoy wholehearted support as written, so we shouldn't require a supermajority to change it. I'm afraid I see this section as an attempt to influence or constrain the closer, and I rather disapprove of that.—S Marshall T/C 00:32, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid I see this section as an attempt to influence or constrain the closer, and I rather disapprove of that: Your comments are open to scrutiny too, right?—Bagumba (talk) 01:31, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously yes. I welcome community scrutiny of anything I do or say on Wikipedia.—S Marshall T/C 01:37, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
So, you "rather disapprove" of comments attempting to influence the closer, but you then go on to try to do just that. I have to assume you disapprove of your own efforts. Cbl62 (talk) 01:44, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer AGF, though we're probably long past that on this topic, but I'm open to scrutiny on whether my RfC organization concerns have merit or are gaming the system.—Bagumba (talk) 01:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes: it's true that now that others have started this section which I think is meant to influence or constrain the closer, I've both tried to balance the influence and also deplored the attempt. That doesn't mean I don't think you're in good faith. I do: I assume that you genuinely think this proliferation of microstub BLPs monosourced to trivia sites is somehow a good idea, and that you genuinely feel this section will somehow help an impartial closer to reach the conclusion you genuinely think should be drawn. Thus you are in good faith, but misguided and in my view overinvested in the debate.—S Marshall T/C 02:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTAVOTE would appear to apply to this; a proposal with a majority against it can still pass, and a proposal with a majority for it can still fail. Further, I believe this discussion has been sufficiently well-attended and comprehensive it should not be rejected on that basis, though I would encourage the closer to consider the issue of canvassing. BilledMammal (talk) 04:05, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

As an outsider who doesn't really care either way, I do not envy the person who has to close this and judge if any of these proposals and subproposals pass or not. The way this was done is such an unmitigated mess. 12 subproposals was way too much. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 01:22, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

yes, almost like the RFC was started as an ill-thought out POINTy rushed endeavour... GiantSnowman 08:30, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Boy, I am LATE to this party, but just read through it all. This is dizzying. And it seems like all this discussion really led to no changes? SPF121188 (tell me!) (contribs) 10:49, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For now,
Please ping me! 10:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

I think that there is a pretty widespread agreement that something needs to be changed. IMO even the unmanageable size and number of proposals is an indicator of this. I think that the next step need to be to see if some of them pass. That would determine the next step after that.North8000 (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's rare for me to agree with GiantSnowman, but on this occasion I do. It's "almost like the RFC was started as an ill-thought out POINTy rushed endeavour.." Given the fact there's such a gulf between the two camps it was always going to be a near-impossible task to come to a consensus. Also it seems to me that some proposals have not been in the nature of finding a consensus. The reality is that a consensus shouldn't go one way or the other, it should be in middle and in all likelihood be something that no one really likes. I'd like to take a step back. I'd like to suggest two proposals. 1. Do we accept that the notability criteria for sports competitors is out of line with the rest of Wikipedia biographies? Given that nearly half of biographies of living people are sports competitors it seems clear to me, but perhaps others have other views. 2. Do we accept that this is a bad thing? This is the much more open question. Does it really matter? Until that is agreed I don't think we can move on. It's clear that many of those on the "loose" end of the scale think it doesn't matter, those on the "tight" end generally do. Why does it matter than everyone who's played in one professional football match qualifies but if you've written one book professionally, or performed once professionally as a musician or actor, or had one scientific paper published, you're not notable? Who cares? Nigej (talk) 21:12, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

    • How certain is the statement "Given that nearly half of biographies of living people are sports competitors" ?? And if so, how much weight should that have? Examples: Abraham Lincoln was a wrestler, Gerald Ford played football at Michigan, George S. Patton competed in the Olympics... they would all turn up in a search on "sports" - and remember, sports is a major part of life in many locations. I agree, I don't see that as a bad thing. But even if it were a "bad thing" -- the average printed newspaper has about 25% to 33% dedicated to the "sports section". That's where we are.--Paul McDonald (talk) 22:23, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is a major difference between an encyclopedia and a newspaper. Almost all newspaper coverage is routine and of no lasting importance; we have explicitly chosen not to include such content on Wikipedia. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 22:58, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
yes of course there are differences between newspapers and encyclopedia. That's not the point at all. The point is that the coverage in newspapers shows a proportion of about 25%-33% of sports coverage. It stands to reason--or at least stands to be argued--that 25%-30% of notable matters are sports related because notability is based on coverage in third party articles like newspapers. We don't get to decide what is and is not notable, the world decides what is and is not notable and we respond to it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 23:26, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
1. Wikipedia is
WP:NOTNEWS
. It is not intended to reflect the type of coverage provided by news articles, many of which are routine and do not have significant encyclopedic information on any particular subject.
2. Why is the proportion of material covering general sports in a newspaper relevant, but the proportion covering that topic in academic papers or in other encyclopedias is somehow just an artifact of wikipedia being NOTPAPER? Contemporaneous news articles are discouraged as WP:PRIMARY sources for non-sports subjects, so coverage of routine events like transfers or match reports really shouldn't even count towards notability at all, let alone constitute almost the entirety of athlete bio content beyond database info. JoelleJay (talk) 21:30, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty clear I think. see User:Nigej/sandbox which, although a year out of date, shows that we had 450,000 "sports competitors" and 520,000 "writers, journalists, artists, musicians, composers, entertainers, directors, producers, screenwriters, philosophers, historians, social scientists, religious figures, politicians, leaders, military personnel, revolutionaries, activists, scientists, inventors, mathematicians, businesspeople, explorers, criminals, etc. etc." combined. The numbers in both sports and non-sports is actually quite small. Nigej (talk) 08:46, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Today's numbers: "sports competitors" living 485,000, grand total living "1,030,000". That's 47%, which is "nearly half" in my books. Soccer now 169,000 (was 153,000). Nigej (talk) 09:15, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I repeat what I have said many times before and what would be a far more productive use of everybody's time and effort - tweak and tighten NSPORTS, moving the 'automatic' playing requirements more in-line with GNG (so adding/removing leagues and competitions based on media coverage, and not any other 'professional' or other factor), and making it clear that NSPORTS is a presumption of notability, not ironclad. GiantSnowman 09:41, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree again, except that I wouldn't use the word "tweak" when I'm more thinking along the lines of taking a sythe to it. As usual, that's where the disagreement is going to be. Nigej (talk) 09:52, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I used 'tweak' because it will invariably vary from sport to sport. GiantSnowman 09:55, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. Let's have sensible arguments about which parts of the guideline are actually causing problems now (with proper evidence), then adjust them where necessary to deal with any issues. --Michig (talk) 11:01, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We have hundreds of thousands of micro stubs, which only demonstrate notability through NSPORTS. There is plenty of evidence. BilledMammal (talk) 11:12, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Just a crazy thought - if people spent half as much time and effort on actually improving 'micro stubs' rather than whining about them/trying to delete them, we would have a far better encyclopaedia for a variety of reasons! 11:16, 22 February 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by GiantSnowman (talk • contribs)
Less crazy thought - if people spent half as much time and effort creating articles on actually notable people rather than creating sports micro stubs, we would have a far better encyclopaedia for a variety of reasons! BilledMammal (talk) 11:18, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Absolute rubbish, and such a ludicrously lazy and facetious argument that demonstrates an unacceptable lack of AGF that AFD nominators are following BEFORE. Evidence from AFD indicates that a significant proportion of these SNG-scraping stubs cannot be expanded because no significant coverage can be found (even eventually); hence they are getting deleted at AFD. Additionally, if AFD could cope with nominations at the same rate they get created at, there would be hundreds of new listings daily. wjematherplease leave a message... 11:29, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or they should be. There is one at AFD right now that is leaning "keep" because editors are arguing that we cannot know there is not significant coverage until 2045, when historic Danish sources will be available online, and until we can check those the presumption of notability still exists. BilledMammal (talk) 11:33, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yet you still refuse (or are unable) to specify which parts of the guideline are leading to articles being created on non-notable topics. --Michig (talk) 11:37, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This part:
WP:NSPORT. We've discussed the individual issues many times, and I'm not interested in doing so again here. BilledMammal (talk) 11:40, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
"ludicrously lazy" response. GiantSnowman 11:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Countless examples of specifics have been given in the discussions above; some even have their own sub-proposals, e.g. simple participation (i.e. appeared on a field once so can be referenced to an all-inclusive database) criteria. But you know this already. wjematherplease leave a message... 11:59, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah - and I also know that those kind of articles rarely survive AFD. So what's your point? GiantSnowman 12:02, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or why this is an issue that only affects sports, as if any other topic isn't also full of poorly referenced/likely non-notable bios created on the basis of SNGs... GiantSnowman 11:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't only affect NSPORT but we are not discussing other SNGs here. wjematherplease leave a message... 11:56, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? GiantSnowman 11:58, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please ping me! 17:31, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

This is a different topic, because it deals with calibration of GNG itself (such as NCorp does).....even for GNG, it's no accident that the term "Notability" was chosen for "has coverage". In addition to just having places for article material, there is also a presumption that suitable sources providing information on the topic is also a measure of recognition to help determine suitability for a stand alone article in Wikipedia. But in sports, the coverage itself is a form of entertainment and thus less of such an indicator. North8000 (talk) 20:55, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • North8000, I sketched out what a possible solution on those lines might look like, in my response to SP#11. If the NSPORT achievement/participation criteria were themselves sufficiently high to be highly predictable of notability, then we could dispense with GNG-type requirements entirely. Or else we specialise GNG to the domain: this type of coverage in this type of source is qualifying, these others aren't. Or some combination of the two. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 17:23, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Statistics

Now that the main discussion has started to end, I decided to run the statistics of this entire RfC (not counting Subproposal 12, which was moved to a different venue, because I honestly couldn't be bothered to manually add that in):

  • This discussion started on January 19 and ended on (*insert date here*), and lasted 1 month and (*insert*) days.
  • This page is 768 kilobytes.
  • Counting everything above the "General thoughts" section, there are approximately 111,117 words (n.b. this counts signatures and the timestamps; I can't be bothered to manually remove those); this translates to 247 pages in standard format (Times New Roman, font 12, single spaced).
  • According to the site I copy-pasted this into, this discussion would take on average 6 hours 44 minutes to read, and 10 hours 17 minutes to speak.
  • The most active day of the week was Saturday, followed by Monday and Wednesday.
  • The most used words were GNG (648 instances), articles (488 instances), notability (439 instances), and sports (423 instances).
  • The users whose names show up the most are: 1st place, gold medalist(s) Cbl62 (139), 2nd place, silver medalist(s) JoelleJay (132), 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) BilledMammal (116). (n.b. this doesn't necessarily mean these were the most participatory users, they could've just gotten name-dropped a lot; e.g. "per Cbl")

This was a slugfest of a discussion, thank god it's almost over. Curbon7 (talk) 11:16, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Question

Sorry if this question isn't really germane to this whole thing, but is there data out there that gives Wikipedia traffic report percentages for certain topics ala sports, politics, musicians, etc? Even before this, I've heard people complain in the past that Wikipedia has way too much coverage on sports, but if readers are percentage-wise reading sports articles en masse (not necessarily the one or two sentence stubs), then c'est la vie. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 01:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Of the 1000 most viewed biographies in January, 41 are under the scope of
WP:FOOTBALL - 10.1%. I suspect the disparity becomes greater when we consider outside of the top 1000, but I don't know where to find that information. BilledMammal (talk) 02:41, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
That seems to show readership has a keen interest in such biographies.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:50, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We know that people are looking at the big names in the news, these 41 football biographies, etc. The issue at hand is whether they're looking at the other 203,683? Nigej (talk) 15:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Errr ... that number indicates that there is a far greater percentage creating footy sub-stubs than there are reading footy bios. When you consider that Lugnuts alone wrote a measurable percentage of them ... Ravenswing 16:37, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If a topic has enough coverage to write a neutral, whole article, there generally can be an article.
WP:NOTPAPER applies, as we are not constrained by physical space like the print encyclopedias of yesteryear. Our volunteer staff is not limited by budget, and we don't obsess over profits, where page inclusion would be influenced by a given page's traffic.—Bagumba (talk) 15:19, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]

To those upset with sports coverage on Wikipedia

You have a right IMO to be upset with the proliferation of microstubs consisting of one or two lines of narrative text sourced only to a sporting database. We have taken measures to address that, including (i) dramatically raising the bar for presumed notability for Olympic athletes, (ii) topic-banning a particularly prolific editor (80,000 or so microstubs) from creating further microstubs. We also now have a clear consensus in this RfC for (iii) subproposal 5 requiring new articles to have at least one example of SIGCOV (i.e., no more microstubs sourced only to a database).

With those items accomplished, I urge you to take a step back and consider the impact of what to many sporting editors feels like an ongoing barrage of attacks in the form of one proposal after another to gut NSPORTS. Several good sporting editors have expressed concern, one of our best this morning posting that the trend leads them to want to spend less and less time here on Wikipedia. Some on the extreme may say, "Terrific, we want you to spend less time on here on Wikipedia." But I think the vast majority, while rightfully peeved about the proliferation of microstubs, value and respect the work of their fellow editors (in all substantive areas) and want to encourage rather than discourage further participation. Food for thought. Cbl62 (talk) 15:57, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

What I think people want to discourage is not so much people creating articles about sports figures than people being lazy when doing so. Looking for good sources, picking out the most important information, formatting according to standards, ... can take a fair amount of time. Copying from a database (and we have empirical examples here) is a no-effort 2 or 3 minute job, and when people get called out on it, instead of genuinely heeding the advice, we get contrived apologies and any attempt to delete such blatantly sub-standard entries is met with a bullet storm of undignified protest. If, like everywhere else on the encyclopedia, sports editors (I'm not saying this applies to all, but clearly, whether it is a majority, a plurality, or a minority, they're very vocal about it) held themselves to the same standards as others, we would not have anything remotely resembling this current problem. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:29, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with much of what you say. I disagree, however, with singling out sports and suggesting that "everywhere else on the encyclopedia" doesn't have similar problems. We see tons of ill-sourced microstubs on local legislators (Pete Jorgensen), tiny or non-existent geolocations, films (Goat Getter), music (F One (album)), and many other areas. Sports articles shouldn't be exempt from SIGCOV requirements, and neither should local legislators, academics, geolocations, etc. Cbl62 (talk)
Sports is only being singled out because of the scale of the issue here. If it was on a modest scale this whole discussion would not be taking place. How many parts of Wikipedia can there be that contribute half of all biographies of living people (facetious question)? Nigej (talk) 18:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I will note that only a minimal amount of effort was needed to find multiple sources about Representative and former University of Wyoming Trustee Pete Jorgensen. What I believe is needed is more work to expand articles. --Enos733 (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's also being "singled out" as there's not a flying wedge of 'obscure politician' or 'average professor' editors who'll die in a ditch at AfD discussions to in effect say "keep, passes my own private interpretation of a SNG that ignores the GNG requirement explicitly baked into it". Those others either still require the GNG -- and editors in those areas apparently largely accept this -- or there's an actual alternative standard of comparable rigour that's likewise functioning. Certainly it's not unique in the mere fact of such articles existing at all. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:17, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the above. What some of us are after is a change of attitude. Rather than creating articles to get a "complete set" of cricketers who've played at least one game for Otago (or whatever), we want to see better articles for the truly notable players who've played for that team. That's what Wikipedia can give the world. The stats websites (like CricketArchive) can provide the other stuff (which we can direct readers to) and indeed do it much better than we ever will. Nigej (talk) 16:44, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the stats websites are accurate, what is the harm in having short articles based on them? That's my big question here. If you don't like short articles why not just ignore them rather than spend lots of time and energy trying to get them deleted?
talk) 17:47, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
There's no harm in short articles. In many ways I'm quite keen on them. However, if they just mirror stats sites there's no "added value". We're very poor at mirroring since we don't have an automated system for doing it. A short article still needs to have significant additional information (over and above that in the stats sites) for there to be any purpose in the exercise. Nigej (talk) 18:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
While they are sufficiently accurate for the modern era, the farther back you go the more inaccurate the databases become, either through incomplete information or by gaps being filled in via (educated, sometimes very educated) guesswork or outright revisionism, and there has been no verification (e.g. by cross-checking with independent reliable sources) before duplicating the data here. wjematherplease leave a message... 20:35, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Because Wikipedia is not a database. JoelleJay (talk) 21:10, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's worth mentioning that an awful lot of benefit has come from creating large numbers of articles. I did that quite a bit with college football coaches (and don't do it anymore). The Wikipedia main page featured William Wurtenburg on December 24, 2015. This was an article I originally created on June 16, 2008. There are many, many more quality articles that got their start as stubs--9 that I am aware of featured on the front page as "Did you know" items. Some get deleted and probably should, others get improved. That's how collaboration works.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:35, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly true that that process works sometimes and "some get deleted and probably should, others get improved", but many more do not and get more and more out of date. While you can show me 9 featured articles I can show you over 200,000 stub-class articles in the Soccer project alone. As I noted above, no one's saying everything is perfect elsewhere or ever will be, it's the sheer scale of the issue here that's the problem. Nigej (talk) 19:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it a "problem" ? What's the real harm? Oh, there's work to be done... cleanup, discussions, research... and the end result is that Wikipedia is better. It's work. There's a lot of work. Is the problem that it's "too much work" ?--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed that's one of the first questions that needs to be answered, see comment I made above: "Does it really matter?" (21 Feb). To a certain extent it is effort related. Why spend vast amounts of effort simply replicating statistical information held elsewhere. It can be done but it's fundamentally a waste of effort and as I noted before, we're extremely poor at it. People moan about how unreliable other sites are, but in really Wikipedia is by far the worst for reliability in the stats area, much of it is hopelessly out-of-date. No one in their right mind would rely on any statistical information we give. Let's stick to what we're good at, writing good articles about people and give up this idea that we can cover everyone in the world, we can't and we're useless at it. Nigej (talk) 20:17, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The argument that these articles are a problem because they are stubs is simply false. One of the problems that they will always be stubs because no sources exist beyond the database they were scraped from. The biggest harm comes from the fact that the databases are riddled with inaccuracies and guesswork, and there has been no verification (e.g. by cross-checking with independent reliable sources) before duplicating the information here. wjematherplease leave a message... 20:35, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Some are much better than others, but something like https://www.olympedia.org/ seems to be just just a bunch of amateur sleuths doing a bit of not very reliable family history. Nigej (talk) 20:45, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is not accurate. As I am involved with the Olympedia project, I should probably not comment further or involve myself in any further related matters, but the database is owned by the IOC and listed by the Olympic Studies Centre [4] as an external reference resource. Bill Mallon is a widely-published and frequently consulted expert on the field of Olympic history. The website is widely used within the sports data circles and Olympic historians as a reliable reference source and is pretty much where all the online historical statistical data from the Olympics originates from. Connormah (talk) 21:19, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but it must be used for research with a great deal of caution, and with the knowledge that respected Olympic historians are not in agreement about many things. This is especially true when it comes to early Olympics, for which the information presented is very much the result of deduction, assumption and a certain amount of guesswork (e.g. some, but not all, conflicting contemporary reports are noted – more are detailed in Mallon's books). Work on the early Olympics is also extremely revisionist, with Mallon being one of the chief architects of defining what events are now officially considered Olympic that were certainly not regarded as such at the time, or even until relatively recently. The IOC are not the first, and far from the only, sporting organisation to embrace such rewriting of their history. wjematherplease leave a message... 23:21, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or indeed just the "nanostubs" sources from databases. Other classes of trivially sourced permastubs are apparently fine!
WP:NOT. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 00:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't believe that is an appropriate way to phrase it. The article was written by A Texas Historian, and the fact that you wrote a three sentence stub based on databases is almost certainly unrelated; the first edit they made was to move the article from "Bill Wurtenburg" to "William Wurtenburg". BilledMammal (talk) 20:01, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is why we can't have nice things.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:23, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My reading of Subproposal 5 is that it would apply to all articles - it would be ridiculously bureaucratic to have one rule for articles created before 2022, and one rule for articles from 2022. BilledMammal (talk) 19:56, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose this depends on whether one deems "from inception" as meaning "at and only at", or "throughout their life, including at". It certainly if we restrict it to the late-breaking Founder's Intent in this way, it pares the cheese still thinner. While I continue to commend Cbl62's near-unique role as Centrist Sports Editor here, the dogged instance that "microstubs sourced only to a database" is the entire extent of the problem fails to convince. Much less that we should have a "solution" that's in practice never enforceable (see the sad fate of SP#6), and that it doesn't apply even in principle to articles with a proven track record as DB-sourced-only permananostubs. Really doesn't seem the time to be taking a step back: just the reverse. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:38, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd still like to hear back from @Cbl62 if my earlier proposed application of #5 aligns with his intent: I interpreted this as the "presumption" of GNG sourcing is removed if an article created after this proposal passed doesn't have a SIGCOV source, which would mean !voters would need to demonstrate GNG during an AfD if nominated. I would of course support the same for older articles, but I imagine people would object to that, so instead we could tag the article for notability and if ≥1 piece of SIGCOV isn't added to the article in 6 months then the presumption is removed as well for AfD purposes. JoelleJay (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I thought this was cleared up already. Subproposal 5 was intended to stem the mass creation of yet more microstubs sourced only to databases. It does that by requiring that anyone wishing to create a new article must include at least one example of SIGCOV prior to publishing the article into main space. Editors who violate the rule will be subject to sanctions, including, in the case of habitual offenders, the type of ban imposed on Lugnuts. As for Joelle's clarification, I think it's quite fair. Articles created after this proposal passes should not be able to survive at AfD without presenting actual SIGCOV. Hope that helps. Cbl62 (talk) 21:46, 24 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that this is removing the presumption of notability that NSPORTS gives, in that they now will have to pass GNG with SIGCOV immediately or they will be automatically deleted (i.e. they no longer are presumed to have coverage, they must present it right off the bat or else its deleted and the creator gets eventually banned). That, in my opinion, will make it much, much harder to create articles on historical/foreign topics, for which it is harder to find sources for. I'd much rather create articles than endlessly debate them at AFD. BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:11, 24 February 2022 (UTC) I also feel that this may drive away newer editors, as they may not be very good at creating pages, so they do a short one, knowing that it meets NSPORT, and then see it gets automatically deleted because "well it didn't have SIGCOV from creation." It may drive me away as well.[reply]
For GNG, "multiple sources are generally expected", so SP#5's standard is explicitly different from that. And nothing in it precludes "doing a short one", just as long as they have a non-trivial source to base it on, or indeed that one can be subsequently found. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:06, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's not how it is written; "from inception" does not say or imply that it only applies to articles created after the proposal passes - and if it starts to be interpreted that way at AFD then we will be back here with another discussion, regardless of the desire to step back. BilledMammal (talk) 04:52, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
...it would be ridiculously bureaucratic to have...: 13 parallel subproposals and expect that people are abreast of all developments. But sure, railroad it through if vote counts suit one's personal agenda.—Bagumba (talk) 05:15, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, one side is trying to "railroad" it through and the other is trying to "stonewall" any substantive changes. Take your pick. Nigej (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know

... that ridiculous has been used 15 times on this page.—Bagumba (talk) 05:17, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Can we nominate this discussion for
DYK, and this can be the hook for it ;) ?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Joseph2302 (talk • contribs) 10:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
that's...ludicrous. GiantSnowman 11:03, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd nominate Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 February 16#A. Lawrey and this can be the hook for it:
that Wikipedians spent days arguing whether to keep an article called A. Lawrey when the man's real name was actually Arthur Lawry.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nigej (talk • contribs) 12:01, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pending QPQ.—Bagumba (talk) 13:25, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
wait, seriously? 晚安 (トークページ) 02:54, 5 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Closes?

Proposal #12 was on a different topic and #13 was procedural, so the oldest proposal on the topic was #11, February 11th. Probably should go a full 30 days to not have questions which would be March 13th. If multiple ones pass, mayber the closer can reconcile them or if not, that would be the next task. North8000 (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck to whoever wants to close this mess... BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:38, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
BeanieFan11, mess would actually undersell this whole discussion. It's a bona fide clusterfu**. SPF121188 (tell me!) (contribs) 20:22, 25 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's perfectly closable; longer and more contentious discussions have been closed. For an example of a proposal that began with a high-participation chaotic non-consensus and then coalesced around real change to a policy, see this RfC followed by this one. I think the only real difficulty will be finding someone qualified to close it who hasn't already publicly taken a position on the notability of sportspeople.—S Marshall T/C 09:00, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's certainly that aspect; or not so much this person existing, as wanting to be found. "Who shall bell the cat?" Especially with non-specific grumbling within about "supervoting". There's also the whole Arrow's Theorem angle with the multiple SPs. If more than one of them is 'deemed passable', but they're contradictory, or even simply unclear how they might best be combined, what then? I tried to do some sort of 'preference voting' at first, but when gave up, and it certainly didn't catch on otherwise. Sure, congressional reconciliation is a model, but not necessarily the most encouraging one. Given that it's acrimonious trench warfare undertaken by well-renumerated pros... On the timeline, I'd personally not be opposed to 'rolling closes', but it might not be worthwhile if it's going to add to the complexity, rather than reducing it. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 18:44, 26 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the only one that is contradictory is #11, but it doesn't appear like it will pass; the rest can be implemented as written, with the result the same regardless of order. The only difficulty will be, as S Marshall says, finding editors willing to close one or more of these, but they will eventually turn up. BilledMammal (talk) 02:52, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Double standards

I was amused to see this AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry E. Luther. Doubtless this man's article will get deleted because "he just sounds like your average scientist who discovered a few hundred species." whereas some on here would fight tooth-and-nail to keep an article on a man who played one game for Rochdale FC in 1921. Nigej (talk) 20:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I will likely be placing a keep vote there as there are several independent memorials written in academic journals (one example here) and it is possible (probable) that Luther might pass
WP:NSCHOLAR, especially with his work, "An Alphabetical Listing of Bromeliad Binominals." I post this here because it did not take more than a few minutes to find independent sources on this "average scientist," and it did not take much time to find sources about Jamie Fitzgerald. I do believe that, for the most part, there are sources available on the subjects that meet the SNGs, even if it might take a couple minutes to search and add that information into the main article. --Enos733 (talk) 22:50, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply
]
To paraphrase Sid James, "if you think a few hundred species is average, you've been spoilt! <nyah-ha-ha!>" Apparently there's some very strange dichotomy going on here where if you've not won Noble prizes -- plural! -- and are a household name, then you're 'average'. Curious. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 01:43, 1 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

s

  • And yet we also allow 13th century MPs that we know nothing about to have articles... The issue isn't just with sports, so people should stop pretending it is. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:45, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    And the 14th century too ;) E.g.,
    Roger Chaunce, William Porter, William Vyvyan. Cbl62 (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    Two wrongs don't make a right. If there are articles about other topics which routinely fail GNG, then that is a reason to change those other guidelines too, not to keep the status quo. Nobody is pretending that the issue is "just with sports", although I'd be hard-pressed to find any argument that sports are not the majority of the problem (given the very large proportion of biographies about sportspersons...). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:04, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed, it's a very similar issue, related to the idea of trying to make a "complete set", rather than treating the individual cases on their merits. Nigej (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, if we're being honest, there are some "sets" that are worthy of being "complete". Members of British Parliament is one such set. There are also some sports sets that are similarly worthy. The problem with NSPORTS is that it's bloated with too many leagues that don't justify being complete sets -- which was the inspiration for subproposal 10. We will see what happens with that. Cbl62 (talk) 15:50, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    What sports leagues would you say deserve to be "complete sets"? BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I hate to admit it here, but a few years ago I did complete the "set" of the Ryder Cup golfers. I'd say the least notable was Stewart Burns, a Scottish golfer who played in 1929 (and who's death details are still missing). Nigej (talk) 16:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That was better-looking than I expected. If someone can write an article like that on the "least notable" player, then I'd agree that should be a "complete set." BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:15, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a big question that would require input from a broader audience. My knowledge base is mostly with American sports, and in that context, it would likely include NBA, American League, National League (at last post-1900), NFL (perhaps with a 1930 start date), NHL (perhaps with a 1930 start date). I don't pretend to know which association football leagues warrant such treatment (or what date cutoffs would make sense) but it's got to be a tiny fraction of the leagues that are currently included in NFOOTY. Cbl62 (talk)
    I actually this this is the right question for this entire discussion of NSPORT. Which sets are worthy of being complete? To answer this involves a certain about of real world judgment of what is considered important and a certain amount of "should we expect everyone in the set to have independent coverage." But I think this is generally what the SNG is supposed to do, suggest people/events meeting a defined criteria have a certain real world importance and are likely to have some substantive coverage (with the recognition that there are differences in the community about what does have "real world importance"). --Enos733 (talk) 18:45, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally I'd go along with that too. One big issue is that a number of editors believe that if "their" league is not on the list, that means those players are not notable and are going to be deleted. If NBASKET simply says "Played 1 game in the NBA" there are going to be a host of complaints from non-US basketball fans. Somehow we need to get the situation over that players from these leagues can be notable too, and won't be deleted, they simply need to create articles with some decent content and they'll nearly always be kept. Nigej (talk) 19:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem is that NSPORTS has succumbed, I suspect, to a sense of political correctness. If the US's NBA gets a presumption of notability, then so, too, should leagues in Israel, Greece, Australia, Spain, Croatia, etc. This tendency is even more rampant in FOOTY where second-tier leagues in Algeria and Uruguay are included. And you're right, players in those other leagues can still be notable, there's just not a strong enough basis for a presumption, and it needs to be shown. Cbl62 (talk) 19:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course "the devil is in the detail". No one's going to argue that there shouldn't be a complete set of England soccer internationals. Personally I'd be happy to include the old "first division" in that "complete set" concept. However we currently also cover the 2nd, 3rd and 4th divisions in NFOOTY and removing these (or not) are going to be major issues. And that's just English soccer. Nigej (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Removing the 2nd, 3rd and 4th divisions in NFOOTY (unfortunately, also the 1st) may already be a fait accompli, as subproposal 3 currently has a slight majority in favor and would have the effect of repealing NFOOTY. Cbl62 (talk) 19:52, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking that we didn't have enough of a wall of text on this issue (and the other related NSPORTS discussions) and that what we really were missing was a snarky sarcastic point that is to the side of the actual issues. Rikster2 (talk) 15:17, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Largely true, although the fundamental issue IS the disparity in standards between sports and non-sports. Feel free to delete the whole section. Nigej (talk) 15:21, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)/Sports_notability&oldid=1096552044"