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.

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How exactly should nationality be defined for a referee? Obviously in the vast number of cases, a referee would represent a country he has citizenship of, or was born in, but this isn't always the case:

• Example 1: Steve Walsh – born in New Zealand, refereed for New Zealand between 1998 and 2009 and for Australia between 2009 and 2015. Should he be regarded as a New Zealand referee, or as both an Australian and a New Zealand referee?
• Example 2: Rasta Rasivhenge – born in South Africa, refereed for South Africa since 2011, except in 2014, when he refereed for Australia. Should he be regarded as a South African referee, or as both an Australian and a South African referee?
• Example 3: Andrew Brace – born in Wales, but refereed for Ireland. Should he be regarded as an Irish referee or a Welsh referee?

If one refers to a referee as an "<country> referee", what does this mean? It it his actual nationality (i.e. what citizenship he has), or is it "sporting nationality" (i.e. which country he represented as a referee).
By my logic:

• If nationality refers to the country the referee is actually from, then Walsh should be classified as a New Zealand referee, Rasivhenge as a South African referee and Brace as a British referee.
• If nationality refers to the the referee's "sporting nationality", then Walsh should be classified as both an Australian and a New Zealand referee, Rasivhenge as both a South African and an Australian referee and Brace as an Irish referee.

Which interpretation should be used to determine a referee's nationality? Feedback greatly welcomed. TheMightyPeanut (talk) 00:12, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Comment Personally I dislike the nationality games that come with this project. Half of WP:LAME are disputes over nationality. A simple solution is just to ignore it all together and open with something like Fhatuwani 'Rasta' Rasivhenge (born in Johannesburg on 3 January 1986) is a rugby union referee who is a member of the South African Rugby Union (SARU) Premier Panel.. I never really got the need to claim somebody as a nationality, it seems easier to just say where they were born and then where they lived if that is different and a notable part of their bio. It is only ever an issue in the lead as it is usually spelt out in the body better. However, If we are going down the nationality route I would go for country nationality. That in itself is a minefield as people change that quite a bit nowadays. I am pretty sure with actors, musicians and the like we go with their chosen nationality over where they are living and plying their trade. AIRcorn (talk) 05:58, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • By the way, it's also an issue in categories, i.e. should he just belong to the "South African Rugby union referees" category, or also to "Australian Rugby union referees"? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 06:40, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment I would agree with Aircorn that nationality should be downplayed where possible. On the category issue I would suggest Rasivhenge is a "South African Rugby union referee", but also an "ARU referee" & a "SARU referee". Another odd one is JP Doyle, who I believe is correctly assigned as an Irish nationality, RFU referee. On Andrew Brace, given he is a Belgian international should he be considered a Belgian referee??? Skeene88 (talk) 19:06, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • I agree with Skeen88 on the categories. I am happy with the way this is presented in Rasta's page. It may be a bit of a case-by-case basis though as I have no real problem with the presentation at Steve Walsh or Andrew Brace (who are slightly different) either. AIRcorn (talk) 21:52, 15 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • You're assuming Brace is Belgian. Hack (talk) 02:58, 16 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment The main parent category is named "Rugby union referees by nationality". Therefore in my opinion if a referee is placed in the category:"Australian rugby union referees" he should be actually Australian. Spending five minutes in Australia does not make you Australian. I created the parent category:"Rugby union referees by governing body" as there are a number of referees, some of whom are mentioned here, are nationals of one country but are employed by the rugby union of another. If a referee has clearly changed nationality that is different. Also referees are employed by individual unions to act as independent arbitrators. Strictly speaking they are not representing a country. Djln Djln (talk) 13:35, 16 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • If a referee is placed in the category:"Australian rugby union referees", why should he be Australian, and not (as the name suggests) simply an Australian rugby union referee? And of course referees represent countries. Have a look at this link; the "Glasgow Sevens" referees are clearly listed along with the countries they represent. The Pro14 referees list for the season strictly refers to the relevant unions, while World Rugby's Sevens referees list uses a mixture of countries and unions, which seems to indicate the terms are generally interchangeable. All those refer to the referee by the country he represents, not the one he was born in.
    There are also some issues with using someone's actual nationality. Firstly, all English, Welsh and Scottish (and possibly some Irish) referees would all have to be classified as British then, because they are nationals of the United Kingdom. However, since we're referring to referees in a sporting sense, it would make more sense to use countries acknowledged in a sporting sense. Secondly, would it be at all newsworthy if a referee changes nationality? Steve Walsh spent 6 years in Australia, he probably could have applied for citizenship. Did he? Is this even relevant? Yet, he achieved several noteworthy achievements as an Australia, including being in charge of the 2012 Super Rugby Final.
    The categorisation should not be an anthropological study into referees. Is it so outrageous to classify Andrew Brace as a Belgian player, an Irish referee and a Welsh (British) national? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 22:57, 16 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment Outrageous, maybe a bit strong but it certainly matters. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia. It therefore need's to be as accurate and correct as possible. Placing Rasta Rasivhenge and Steve Walsh in Australian nationality categories when they are not Australian is at best misleading or sloppy. At worst it is blatantly untrue and lying. Same goes for Brace. Citing media sources that are equally misleading or sloppy does not justify doing it on Wikipedia. Alternative categories have been created to resolve this issue. Would it be so outragous for you to use them ? Djln Djln (talk) 15:51, 17 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• Comment I agree with Aircorn that nationality in rugby union articles are often handled poorly -- far too often really. Regarding this specific article, Djln makes the perfectly valid point that Rasivhenge is not Australian, and so we have to be careful not to give that impression. I thought this RfC was supposed to resolve the categorisation dispute, but it has not been well constructed in order to do this. Can it be written a little better please if this is to be done? I completely agree with Djln and their comments above though, the category implies nationality when it should in fact be explicitly clear that in fact that referee is/was merely "affiliated" with a national union. It may be easiest to do this by renaming some categories rather than creating others. -- Shudde^talk 17:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Can you please recommend how to construct the RfC better then? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 12:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • @Shudde: I would be grateful if you could recommend how to construct the RfC regarding this issue. Djln Djln (talk) 13:41, 25 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Djln and TheMightyPeanut: At the moment the RfC is far to broad for one article. I did mention that if the dispute involves more than one article the RfC should not be conducted here. As well, I thought you two had discussed this issue here first, but instead you did it on each other's talkpages! Discussion regarding content should, as much as possible, be conducted on the relevant article talk page so that others may participate and so that any resolution can be seen by other editors later on. At the moment these comments are on user talk pages, which doesn't do anyone any good in a year or two. Thirdly, this is a living person (WP:BLP) and so caution should be used, anything contentious should be removed when in doubt, and only re-added once consensus is reached. I completely forgot about this being a BLP, but it's important, and as such the category should be removed while there is a dispute over what it means. I will remove this and I will close this RfC and think of a better constructed one that will apply to this article only. Then we will see what everyone thinks. I'll try and get this done soon. Sorry for the delay in replying! -- Shudde^talk 14:14, 27 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Proposal: "Acme 'Refman' Referee is a Sport referee from City, Country who referred the State Cup between 2003 and 2006, and the Country Tournament between 2008 and 2014." -- Cheers, Alfie. (Say Hi!) 14:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]