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

The result was keep. → Call me Hahc21 05:19, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948[edit]

Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I don't know if anyone has ever nominated a featured article for deletion, but this is quite simply not notable. The player is notable, and so is the tour/series, but not the player's role in the series. This is clear from the article itself: "Although the 1948 tour of England was an unprecedented triumph for the Australians, Ring's leg spin was not prominent in the success" and "Ring had limited opportunities with the bat". StAnselm (talk) 02:07, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep As there were sufficient sources to develop this to FA status, the topic is clearly notable so there aren't grounds for deletion here. Vast amounts of material has been written on the famous 1948 "Invincibles" team, providing a solid foundation for specialised articles on this topic. Nick-D (talk) 02:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, the presence of sources does not imply notability. Yes, the team is clearly notable - but none the material seems to focus Doug Ring. The fact that this (somehow) passed FA is not a reason to keep it in itself. StAnselm (talk) 02:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please see also WP:LOTSOFSOURCES. StAnselm (talk) 02:55, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the sources consulted provided sufficient detail to get this article to FA status, that doesn't seem at all relevant: quite the opposite in fact. Nick-D (talk) 09:12, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, can you actually name a source that provides significant coverage? Or are you merely trusting the FA reviewers? StAnselm (talk) 09:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Nick-D (talk) 02:14, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Nick-D. Nev1 (talk) 02:19, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:49, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Cricket-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:49, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, largely per Nick-D. The nominator seems to have misinterpreted the WP:GNG, which says "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list.". Ring's performance in the series has received this significant coverage in indepdenent and reliable sources, so he is notable per Wikipedia's standards. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 04:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]

No, that is precisely what I am taking issue with. Where is the significant coverage of Ring's performance? Can you name a source? StAnselm (talk) 04:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's the ones in the article, for starters. Have you looked at them all? I find it hard to believe that the article would have made it through FAC if all the references are bogus. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:35, 21 March 2014 (UTC).[reply]

Yes, the references are bogus. And no, I don't know how it passed FA. The reference comes closest is Ring's obituary, which has a few paragraphs about how Ring would refer to himself as "the ground staff", how he misfielded a ball in the Fifth Test, and how he had fond memories of singing happy birthday to Bradman. That cannot possibly be regarded as significant coverage. StAnselm (talk) 10:07, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I note that Jack Pollard's From Bradman to Border (which might be expected to have something, but which I have not read), is listed in the References, but is not footnoted in the article. I have not been able to consult The A–Z of Australian cricketers. However, that is only footnoted twice - once to talk about another player, and once to simply provide statistics. The bulk of the footnotes are, of course, scorecards. These are reliable sources, but do not provide significant coverage. StAnselm (talk) 10:13, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep as this has not a snowballs chance. The nominator has clearly missed that, to at least the standard required a the featured article review, the subject is noted in reliable sources. If it is noted then it is notable. To claim otherwise is stretching the use of language beyond breaking point - Peripitus (Talk) 09:11, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not what notability means at all. Notability means significant coverage. StAnselm (talk) 09:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment There's a ton of these articles in this category. And don't waste your time telling me about WP:OTHERSTUFF. I think they're all FAs too. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:49, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• delete There is no need to create articles that have specific intersections of a player and a given year. This is just over excessive coverage of a topic, out of line with a general encyclopedia.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Note the 2009 group nomination for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sam Loxton with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. Bencherlite^Talk 23:50, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I can see arguments on both sides of this, but i think this was well thrashed out at the dicussion to which Bencherlite refers, and I don't think anything is gained for the encyclopedia by deleting this article and the raft of related ones. Really, what do we achieve by removing this material from the public space? It will just mean that, if someone out there has a great interest in Doug Ring, they will find it harder to learn about his career. Will that person ever be me? No thanks. Do I want to rule it for others? No thanks. hamiltonstone (talk) 00:32, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hang on - nobody talked about deleting the raft of related articles. Bradman, Harvey, Lindwall, Miller et al clearly had important roles in the 1948 tours; Doug Ring clearly did not. In fact, Ring was only mentioned once during that discussion referred to, and that was in User:PeeJay2K3's comment "I strongly doubt that Saggers, Ring et al. are actually that prominent". If someone wants to learn about Doug Ring, the correct place to go is the Doug Ring article. StAnselm (talk) 00:43, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: It strikes me that a valid analogy could be made with actors appearing in films. Donald Bradman with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 would be like Brad Pitt in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Are there lots of sources discussing Pitt's performance? Yes. It is Pitt's most important work? Probably not. But Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 is in a different order together. That would be more like Jennifer Morrison in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. And even then, I'm sure we would find more reliable sources discussing Jennifer Morrison's role than we have discussing Ring's role. StAnselm (talk) 00:59, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - per Nick-D. Certainly seems to have been enough coverage to support the writing of the article to suggest that it was notable, not to mention that it is part of a series of articles about players of the highly notable 1948 side. Really don't see why anyone would bother trying to delete a good article that is sourced anyway... surely there are better things to do with ones time? Anotherclown (talk) 10:58, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But it's not sourced - that's the problem. Most of the footnotes are scorecards, and none of them seem to provide any significant coverage of the subject. Hence, it fails WP:GNG, and I'm not aware of any notability guideline under which it can be kept. StAnselm (talk) 11:20, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - This article goes into way too much detail for an encyclopaedia, albeit immaculately researched and written. I can possibly see articles like this existing for other members of the team who played a significantly more prominent role (and even then it's sketchy), but Ring was barely involved in the Test series. – PeeJay 11:30, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Please also see this previous AfD, which was closed as keep. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:09, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • ... for those of you who missed the link that I provided yesterday to the same 2009 AfD, that is... Bencherlite^Talk 12:19, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete (or perhaps merge the "role" section somewhere, and redirect to wherever that is). I've always seen this series of articles as being a failure to condense the subject into an encyclopedia article (or articles). Books focusing on a notable subject would generally be expected to cover the subject in detail, and just because information can be cited to books doesn't mean that it should be included in an encyclopedia article. An essential part of writing an encyclopedia article is selecting the portions of the information available that are important to understanding the topic. This article consists primarily of information such as the score or outcome at different points in different matches. Those are minute details that are not at all essential to understanding the main notable subject of the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. Except for the "role" section, this article is all material that encyclopedia editors should have selected to not include in Wikipedia. While I'm not sure if there is a policy or guideline that specifically addresses what I'm getting at, I think WP:IINFO comes closest, in that it states that articles should not primarily be a summary of what happened, but instead should focus on why those events are considered important. I do, however, think that the "role" section of this article is better content that could perhaps be salvaged by merging it to another article (perhaps by combining it with similar content from other articles on other members of the team). A summary of how each member of the team affected the overall outcome of the test matches seems more like appropriate content for an encyclopedic set of articles on the topic than the rest of what is included in these articles. Calathan (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and troutsmack the ever-increasingly problematic FA-groupies who are promoting articles that should not be promoted time and time and time again while the encyclopedia languishes. jps (talk) 23:10, 18 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral, lean merge. I find it difficult to really consider this article in isolation from the cohort it accompanies, as the arguments mostly seem to be based on whether this is too much detail for an encyclopedia, and this would seem to go to the point of whether these kinds of articles are appropriate as a whole. I tend to think that we are risking falling down the rabbit-hole into subpages and subpages until we have full books' worth of material on individual topics, which I think is a manifest failure of the purpose of an encyclopedia. At the same time, I know that if an FA along these lines was AfDed in one of the areas I edit, I probably wouldn't think twice before !voting to keep. I guess my ultimate conclusion is that a single article about the team's performance as a whole is probably within the boundaries, but that individual articles on every team member's performance in a single series is probably a bit much. Frickeg (talk) 12:24, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, per WP:NOTPAPER. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I commented on some of the FACs in this "series", and supported their promotion to FA. This was not one on which I had a say. To be honest, I was never a huge fan of this series of "1948" articles, although I admire the work that their creator did. It seemed, and seems, a little bit too much, and that is coming from someone who writes about little but cricket. However, I cannot see a huge problem with this article's existence. The main argument seems to be about the notability of Ring in the 1948 tour; this is not really a valid argument, based on the sources. In the print sources (and I admit to having read most of them, I'm afraid!) quoted, there is significant coverage of Ring's role. None of these focus exclusively on Ring, but cover all the players in the team extensively. Admittedly, there would not be a huge amount on Ring but I believe there would be enough to justify an article. The books used are very in-depth and as this was a huge tour in the history of cricket, the coverage was exhaustive to the point of tedium. It is possible to find out lots about what Ring did in most of the games in which he played. Whether or not an article is desirable on this, I don't think that we can say that it should not exist based on coverage in the sources. The use of scorecards should not detract from coverage in print. Sarastro1 (talk) 23:42, 21 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment On that topic, it's worth noting that this article was developed before the National Library of Australia's wonderful Trove resource of digitalised newspapers became available. Searching for references to Doug Ring in 1948 returns 101 newspaper stories [1]. Articles with some useful coverage for this article include [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. Nick-D (talk) 00:39, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But "significant" means "more than routine coverage". The first item, for example, merely reports on his selection in the squad. If we went on that, there would be an article on every cricketer on every tour - e.g. Trent Copeland with the Australian cricket team in Sri Lanka in 2011. StAnselm (talk) 01:36, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Seems sufficient to me. I've developed FAs on specialised military history topics which are unlikely to be much interest to a general readership and have only received a few pages of coverage in reliable sources. I imagine that cricket nerds would find this article as interesting as I find those articles to be, and the level of notability doesn't seem dissimilar. I note that this book which was also published after the article's FAC calls Doug Ring an "ideal selection" for the tour and seems to provide a reasonable degree of coverage of his part in the tour if the snippets available from searching Google Books are anything to go by. The extremely famous 1948 "Invincibles" team can't really be compared to the 2011 Sri Lanka touring team IMO given the large number of books, documentaries, etc which have been produced on the 1948 tour. Nick-D (talk) 08:37, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep – Wikipedia is not a "general encyclopedia", as suggested by others here. It "It combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." – Juliancolton | ^Talk 14:58, 22 March 2014 (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.