The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. with no prejudice against recreation as redirect to an appropriate target page. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1980 Lynn Sailors season (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log) • Afd statistics

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A non-notable season article on a minor league team. While these are accepted for major league teams, they are not for the lower level ones. Anything noted here could easily be merged into either 1980 Eastern League season or the Lynn Sailors article. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 02:40, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Baseball-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 13:03, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Wizardman. I notice that this franchise has a season article for every year through 2009. (I guess nobody bothered with 2010?) There are others too; I noticed at least one for the Harrisburg Senators. --Muboshgu (talk) 13:27, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Minor league seasons are not inherently notable, and nothing about this season has established its particular notability. There are also a number of these for other teams -- there are season pages for the Canton-Akron Indians from 1989-96, for instance, that should also be deleted. -Dewelar (talk) 13:41, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Heh...that IS the same franchise, so that has already been noted. Instead I'll throw in 2008 Huntsville Stars season as another example. -Dewelar (talk) 14:36, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Should we roll all of those into this AfD? --Muboshgu (talk) 23:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't see why not. -Dewelar (talk) 02:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • The 2008 Huntsville Stars still have 470 Google News hits two years down the road. That's not notable? I am pretty sure that they have received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Kinston eagle (talk) 17:17, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete As Dewelar notes, the individual season of minor league baseball teams are not inherently notable, and there's certainly nothing notable about this particular team's season, whether it's 1980 or 2010. There are plenty of alternatives for individual pages-- one could mention this in the Eastern League season article for a particular year, or one could place the stuff about each season's won-lost records and notable players in the article about the team. Mandsford 15:50, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Many are saying that this article and ones like it are not notable, but not one person has been specific as to why it is not notable. Which particular notability guideline is not being met? It sounds like you all just "don't like it." Kinston eagle (talk) 03:55, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note that I did not say that such seasons could not be notable, just that they are not inherently so. WP:NSPORTS says the following: "Articles can be created on individual seasons of teams in top professional leagues, as these articles almost always meet the notability requirements." The guidelines say nothing about teams in professional leagues that are not the top, as minor leagues obviously are. Therefore, the article itself must assert its notability, in the same way that articles on minor league players do. None of the articles I have seen do so. -Dewelar (talk) 04:19, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: I agree with Eagle. - Ret.Prof (talk) 14:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment For those of you voting Keep -- are you arguing that minor league team-seasons are inherently notable? Or is there some criteria to determine notability? It has been established by consensus that minor league players are not inherently notable, and I would infer that the default starting point for any discussion of creating a guideline for team-seasons should be that the same is true for them. If you are arguing for inherent notability, then I believe this nomination should be suspended, pending a resolution at WP:NSPORTS, or at the very least at WT:BASEBALL. -Dewelar (talk) 16:12, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  As Dewelar says, it sounds like those voting keep are saying that minor league seasons are inherently notable. This sounds like a very dangerous slope to me; are we going to start creating a bunch of boilerplate articles like this for the thousands of minor league seasons that have happened when the main team articles are stubs and are a better place for any relevant information? Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am not arguing anything concerning minor league team-seasons in general. In my opinion, the afd process is for discussing the notability or non-notability of individual articles. If you wish to discuss the inherent notability of types of articles in general, that discussion should be had on the notability talk page. My only concern in this discussion is the notability of 1980 Lynn Sailors season. Nobody has given any reason why it is not notable. What specific guideline is this article not meeting? A Google news search for the Lynn Sailors in 1980 reveals 118 hits [1]. News articles do not stay online for long periods of time and 30 year old newspaper articles are rarely brought online. The fact that 118 articles are available online for a 30 year old minor league team is pretty impressive to me and goes a long way to establishing the primary guideline for notability: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." This notability guideline far outweighs any guideline found in the sports notability guidelines. Kinston eagle (talk) 17:07, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As a comparison, the 1980 Kinston Eagles have no Google News hits at all: [2] Kinston eagle (talk) 17:11, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, though it seems that the majority of the sources are either about Lynn receiving the minor league franchise, or mentioning the games in passing. The first one is more suitable to the main article, while the second ones are nice but may not be significant sources in terms of validating a one-year article, though it's definitely good for one on the team. The rub isn't that the team is not notable though, I think we can all agree that the Lynn Sailors themselves are notable. What reason is there, however, to split out a bunch of two-sentence articles when they can easily be combined into the main Lynn Sailors article? Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 17:37, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is the same road we went down for minor league players. There was also an aborted discussion on minor league managers for the same purpose. In general, I will submit that every single minor league player, manager, coach, team, and team-season ever could -- and probably does, given enough time to research it -- satisfy WP:GNG. Also, just because something has x number of Google hits, that doesn't make it notable. We have compromised on minor league players, because otherwise we would have a flood of such articles. I believe we need to do the same for team-seasons. There needs to be a higher threshold, because as Wizardman said above, this is a dangerous slope. There are over 2,000 MLB team-season articles. Even creating an article for all minor league team-seasons that meet Kinston eagle's qualifications would mean an eventual number of articles in the tens of thousands. -Dewelar (talk) 20:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I started a discussion at the sports guidelines page here, if anyone is interested. -Dewelar (talk) 20:51, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is not easy to find sources for minor league seasons pre-internet, but if you know where to look, you will find coverage of games from the 1980 Kinston Eagles in The Sporting News' digital archive. Vodello (talk) 02:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I don't think having an article about the 1980 Lynn Sailors or any other minor league team season is worthwhile unless that particular team did something truly outstanding. The 1980 Sailors are already mentioned on the 1980 Seattle Mariners season page and the Lynn Sailors page itself is pretty sparse. Any relevant content can be merged to one of those two sources... but this page is fairly devoid of content. Spanneraol (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Wikipedia is not a directory. The current version of this article consists of two sentences of text and a couple of tables of statistics. The only source cited is a statistics site. WP:GNG calls for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." With respect to minor league players, WP:BASEBALL/N says that statistics sites "are not sufficient by themselves to establish notability." That seems like a reasonable standard for minor league season articles as well. BRMo (talk) 23:00, 23 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge The number of google hits may at first suggest that the season is notable. However, WP:ROUTINE coverage does not count for notability. The only coverage on this season that is borderline non-routine, in the first few pages of google hits, is a few articles talking about team logistics such as moving the stadium and how much money that costs. I think a better solution is to merge this info into the team page. If enough stand alone info, and sources can be produced with time, one can always move it back. I don't think this will happen though as all the coverage appears to be routine. --MATThematical (talk) 07:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete non-notable minor league team season. Secret ^account 21:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The article is notable. Also, recentism seems to be a theme. It just seems like if this was a "2010 Lynn Sailors season" article, it would more widely be accepted as notable. Nick22aku (talk) 00:28, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I take issue with this, at least for my own part. I would support having team-seasons for PCL teams from, say, any year before 1960. Minor league baseball was much more popular, and thus probably had much more coverage, during that era. I might also be persuaded to support individual season pages for the Mexican League. High-level unaffiliated teams would have much higher claim to notability than teams in the affiliated minors, for which the vast majority of coverage is routine, or is in the context of their parent club. -Dewelar (talk) 01:42, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Also, this was the first season in franchise history, (a successful franchise that still exists today) increasing the notability of the article even more. No doubt the article needs expanded. Nick22aku (talk) 00:31, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would be just as ready to delete a similar recent page, such as 2009 Harrisburg Senators season. I expect AfD's will commence on all of these if this one is closed as delete. --Muboshgu (talk) 01:43, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - Not necessary for minor league seasons to have individual articles, can be easily merged. Derild4921☼ 22:50, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge with team or league articles, as appropriate. WP:ROUTINE is what eventually brought me over, with help from Wikipedia is not a directory. Ma^t_chups 01:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.