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 no consensus. Not a strong consensus in either direction at this point in time. Could be re-nominated, for another discussion about it, at some later point in the future. -- Cirt (talk) 03:28, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Laurie Adams[edit]

Laurie Adams (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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I created this in February, with the mistaken belief that meeting WP:ATHLETE guaranteed meeting WP:GNG. With the benefit of twice as much experience as I had then, I now know that is not the case. Having pondered this for several weeks, I have decided to nominate it for deletion, and indeed to argue that it should be deleted. The subject fails WP:BLP, (specifically WP:BLP1E) and the general notability guideline. By extension, he cannot be kept under WP:NSPORTS, which is a junior to those respective policies and guidelines. --WFC-- 16:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For the benefit of those who do not have access to the sources, Reference 1 is purely statistical, and apart from one mention of his name and an "X" to indicate the match Adams played in, does not mention him at all. Reference 2 consists of 55 words on Adams, plus his basic info such as name, date of birth, place of birth and clubs. --WFC-- 17:02, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:15, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:16, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep for consistency. There are quite a few articles of players who have played just a few minutes of professional football, so surely this player is just as notable? J Mo 101 (talk) 18:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • To answer your question, I'd say yes, he is just as notable as most players who have played one game. But the fact of the matter is that he doesn't meet the GNG or BLP1E, and nor do most of the others that you elude to. --WFC-- 18:33, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • So how many appearances does a player have to make to be considered notable - Two? Five? Ten? Where do you draw the line? It's a borderline case, but my thoughts are that satisfying WP:ATH in this case is sufficient given the player made a full appearance rather than a brief cameo as a substitute. J Mo 101 (talk) 19:59, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree that it will probably never be possible to tie down a precise figure, hence why we have a rough guideline (WP:NSPORTS) which can and should be overrided if it is at odds with more established guidelines or policy. My view is that it can be argued that a player with two appearances has two distinct claims to notability. BLP1E explicitly states that "If reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event, and if that person otherwise remains, or is likely to remain, a low-profile individual, we should generally avoid having an article on them." The sources only cover him in the context of a single event, and given that he is 79, it seems extremely likely that he will remain low profile. It goes on to say that "The significance of an event or individual should be indicated by how persistent the coverage is in reliable sources." The match was not a particularly remarkable or significant event, and outside of indiscriminate statistical books and websites, I doubt it's covered anywhere. --WFC-- 20:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep whilst I understand the point being made by the proposer I believe the article should remain as the footballer has played in a notable league. I have added another reference, and though it does not provide detail of his life, surely player articles should be focused on the details of a player's career rather than wider biographical information? As a further point, if a league is regarded as being notable does it not follow that footballers who have played in that league are also notable? Eldumpo (talk) 09:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • While grateful for the extra pair of eyes, the extra ref adds little beyond tertiary confirmation of what Trefor Jones (a secondary source) has given us. In answer to your first question, I'd argue that unless something turns up about Whipton (and for the record even I have played at a higher level than that), his career has been covered exhaustively. In answer to your second question, no. --WFC-- 10:07, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Having a notability bar helps to balance the bias of older players who were around before the internet age. Isn't Adams likely to have newspaper reports etc, and have these been checked for? Out of interest, would you say this footballer would also be a candidate for AfD? Eldumpo (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • I completely reject that generally expecting players to have made two appearances in any way increases systemic bias- one-game careers are more common now, in the age of the League Cup and of substitutes. I haven't checked the newspaper archives (although page 6 of The Official Centenary History of Watford FC would seem to suggest that searching the early 1950s or earlier could prove futile), but I don't see how that would make much of a difference, as he would still only have played one notable game. Given that he didn't score, I'm curious as to what you think we'd find that could alter my deletion rationale. And no, I wouldn't say Ernie Wright is a candidate for AfD. He played over 40 matches for four Football League clubs, and scored goals in the process. That's a case of an article that could do with expansion. This is a case of an article that in all honesty has been expanded about as far as it could ever possibly be, and shouldn't have been created in the first place on the basis of policy that I didn't fully understand at that stage. --WFC-- 11:09, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • But by which Wikipedia guidelines/policies do you come to the conclusion that Wright's 40+ FL appearances are worthy of an article when Adams' one game is not. Why does scoring league goals confer additional notability in your view - isn't that a bias against goalkeepers/defenders? Eldumpo (talk) 11:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • You are increasingly demonstrating a lack of judgement by taking every letter literally, rather than showing an ability to analyse the bigger picture. A player that didn't make a match-changing contribution in a solitary third division south game is not going to garner national attention, and if he was covered at all by the local paper, it would only be in the context of that individual event. On the other hand, it can reasonably be presumed that a player who made 40+ appearances with multiple clubs and who made (at least) five game-affecting contributions has garnered sufficient, sustained coverage to merit an encyclopaedic entry. It's a reasonable assumption that if a player plays one game and fades into obscurity, he probably did not have much of an impact in that one game. If that assumption is proved wrong in individual instances of someone meeting the GNG, our policies already provide scope for that, subject to consensus. --WFC-- 12:01, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to by 'taking every letter literally', I am just trying to answer points you have made, although surely Wikipedia guidelines and policies are the starting point for any AfD discussion. I thought the general consensus was that one appearance conferred notability (and that may still be the case, we could do with some more views here). Whilst AfD's can be regarded as individual cases, the results of them can (and are) clearly taken on board on future AfD's. Should this AfD be successful I am struggling to see what would prevent a number of other 1-game player articles being deleted at AfD, and then why not 3-games, 10-games etc? Surely we're trying to build the encyclopedia, and as long as they're sourced we shouldn't effectively be placing arbitrary limits on what constitutes a notable number of games. Another point is that various stats sources (Michael Joyce, Neil Brown, Rothmans etc) consider playing a single Football League game to be notable, and don't differentiate by number of appearances. Eldumpo (talk) 21:30, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They don't "consider them to be notable", they indiscriminantly list in a statistical table anyone who has ever played a game at that level. Huge difference there. In regards to your main point, nothing at all would stop other 1-game-career articles being deleted at AfD (indeed, the first one that I'm aware of was actually deleted in July). The reason that it will not be able to be extended to two or more games is that I am conceding that the consensus view is that an "event" (a match) is borderline notable, but enforcing the policy which states that people notable for only one event should not normally have an article. It would be impossible to argue the same for someone who is notable for two distinct events. --WFC-- 21:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Fails by a long way WP:GNG in that there is no significant coverage on this player. Codf1977 (talk) 10:51, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Notability is not shown by an appearance, it is shown through significant coverage in reliable sources. WP:ATH or NSPORTS are guidelines as to when that coverage is likely to be present but they do not replace the GNG. In cases where it is doubtful then we should revert to the GNG rather than debate the minutae of the sports guidelines. This person has had a couple of mentions but the coverage is not significant or in depth, so I say delete. Quantpole (talk) 08:42, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep While the bar is actually reasonably low for footballers in some respects, encyclopaedias record notable things. GNG is not the only measure of notability - achieving a feat or level of achievement also becomes noteworthy regardless of so called coverage.--ClubOranje^T 09:01, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Really? What policy or guideline are you referring to there? Quantpole (talk) 09:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ATHLETE--ClubOranje^T 12:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To quote from right at the top of that guideline:

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sportsperson, sports league, or an amateur/professional sports league organization will meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia. The article must provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the criteria. It is not enough to make vague claims about the person's importance—the sourcing in the article itself must document notability.

Would you care to explain how your !vote is in line with that? Quantpole (talk) 18:26, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:NSPORTS#Association_football states criteria to be Players who have appeared, and managers who have managed in a fully-professional league Article contains reliable sources to show that to be the case.--ClubOranje^T 21:45, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So what? That's a general rule as to when it is thought people will meet the GNG. It does not give 'automatic notability' to anyone - that is only done through the GNG. Do you have any comment over what the top of the page at ATH says or are you just going to ignore it? Quantpole (talk) 22:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC) Djsasso, if you're reading, this is precisely why NSPORTS is a waste of space[reply]

Would you rather the original WP:ATHLETE, because I doubt we would get any better than we got....we only barely got this. And athlete allowed in far more people. I would note however, that the soccer standards do seem to be far lower than most other sports, hockey and baseball for example require you to play at the highest level league.... perhaps this is an area to improve. I don't follow soccer to know what the equivalent would be. -DJSasso (talk) 22:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From what I understand in the states professional athletes would typically have played at college which in itself generates a huge amount of coverage, and speculation regarding players and so on. That just isn't the case for football (soccer) in the UK, so I agree with you on that point. My main problem with all these guidelines though is that for players on the borderline, such as this person, the discussion ends up being about whether they meet the arbitrary guideline rather than about the coverage they have received. Quantpole (talk) 22:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that is unfortunate, which is why the goal should be to get that arbitrary guideline slightly higher than the point where pretty much 100% of the people will easily have sources. That way people that are borderline cases shouldn't have an issue finding sources easily within a very short search...anyways this is off topic of this article so I will stop now :) -DJSasso (talk) 23:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. I'm going to make sure that I tone down the language I've used in the recent past. But's hard to see the above as anything other than an WP:ILIKEIT vote; you have explicitly stated that a footballer is immune to the burden of demonstrating general notability that all other biographies are subject to. --WFC-- 12:28, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have not explicitly stated that at all. I have only suggested that achievement can be a qualifying criteria - for all biographies - regardless of what sources are available. Becoming President of an independent country is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia without "in depth" coverage. A reliable source showing the notability is all that is required. Verifiability is the core principle of Wikipedia. If this player made his solitary appearance this year there would be a thousand garbage weblog articles about the lad and many users would be clamouring to say lots of coverage about him, must be notable. This player has achieved exactly the same, but did it in 1952. I don't subscribe to the theory that a few web hits makes a subject notable. Player passes ATHLETE, low as the threshold is, go find the sources. If you want the page deleted so badly, blank it and claim G7 as only significant contributor.--ClubOranje^T 12:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are explicitly stating that a player doesn't have to pass the GNG (and indeed does not have to meet our usual requirement of generally being notable for at least two events) so long as he passes ATHLETE. Interestingly, you are also comparing someone who played one game in a third parrallel national sports league with the leader of a country, which is highly questionable even if we pick a small country like Iceland. Yes, there probably would be a bunch of unreliable webblogs on him if he played today, along with generic sports coverage that doesn't go into any depth. So what? And I can't G7, because regardless of whether I find it redundant, Eldumpo has made a significant contribution. Even if he hadn't, to delete when I know that there is a discussion to be had would be a bad faith move. --WFC-- 13:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)underline text added subsequently --WFC-- 13:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - played in the Football League, and is therefore notable. GiantSnowman 14:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But fails the WP:GNG with lack of any form of coverage. Codf1977 (talk) 14:40, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your point being...? He passes WP:ATHLETE, that is enough for an article. GiantSnowman 13:00, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No it is not - if you read the very first line of WP:ATHLETE it says "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sportsperson, sports league, or an amateur/professional sports league organization will meet the general notability guideline", in this case there is no evidence what so ever that Laurie Adams does pass the WP:GNG despite the help that WP:ATHLETE gives us, in this example it does not work. Codf1977 (talk) 21:52, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. GiantSnowman 14:36, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: The above notification was added on 3 September. 100% of those who have argued keep are active members of WikiProject Football. --WFC-- 15:43, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Which has no bearing whatsoever on the outcome. -DJSasso (talk) 17:14, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • If you say so... --WFC-- 22:26, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I would note that the nominator indicates that the athlete fails BLP1E. Which is not true, athletes are not notable just for the single game they played at the highest level they reached but for their entire career up to that point. BLP1E is more for flashes in the pan, like a victim in a crime etc. It amuses me somewhat that he is arguing against what is perceived as an incorrect use of one policy with the incorrect use of another. -DJSasso (talk) 17:17, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The above comment proves that DJSasso has not even read the article, and has come on here purely to antagonise me as he is desperate to protect his pet project. --WFC-- 21:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've read the article. Comments like this are not helpful. Athletes generally aren't considered to be a BLP1E issue if they only played one game at the top level, because they have also played many games before that at other levels. Its a series of events. BLP1E is about single news events such as someone who was a victim in a crime. Or someone who won a contest to kick a field goal from 50 yards out to win a million dollars and did it successfully. But a professional athlete is not one of those cases, because an athlete will have a trail of notable events before he even plays a single game in a pro league. I am not desperate to protect my pet project because the odds of nsports ever getting stronger than it already is is pretty much nil anyways. What I am doing however, is pointing out an invalid argument which is what people are supposed to do at Afd. -DJSasso (talk) 21:21, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Although acutely aware that the following sentence will land me in hot water, it's relevant, so I'm going to do it. To claim that athletes are not subject to BLP1E is a complete lie. There would be merit to that argument if he had spent much of his career on the cusp of the Football League. But if you have indeed read this article, you will be aware that there is literally no back story to this guy's football career. He served in the army (as every single able bodied man of his age did), played a single game at the third/fourth tier of English football, his registration was retained by the club but they decided never to use him and that there was no value in attempting to sell him, and he then drifted off into complete obscurity. --WFC-- 21:27, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • Right but in order to play in a pro game he would have had to play amateur at some point and been notable enough at it for a pro team to allow him to play. Thus he has more than one event that made him notable, his time as a good amateur, and his game as a pro. I haven't !voted in this afd because I don't generally get involved in afd on sports I don't follow closely. He may very well be delete worthy because there are no sources, I am just pointing out that BLP1E means that someone should be deleted even if there are sources because its only from one event. And that generally isn't the case for an athlete, an athlete is notable for their career, not a single game they played. A career is multiple events. -DJSasso (talk) 21:32, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • That is akin to saying that anyone who has done anything in their field is immune to BLP1E. This event was instigated by a man who committed smaller crimes before the big one. Why is he subject to BLP1E? Probably because we don't see common assault as a stepping stone to notability for a criminal. It's a slightly distasteful example, but the principal does hold. The same might go for a comedian in a medium-sized town's night club, who wins a competition to support a Lee Evans gig at the O2. Masem explained it better here than I ever could ever hope to.
          • On topic: Whipton really are off the scale as far as notability is concerned. I'd equate them to a lower league rugby union team in California. Let's say that Watford were to suffer the sort of implosion that now obscure clubs have suffered in the past, and I go on to play one game for them in League Two because they have ten players, no money and I'm willing to do it for free. Given that all players with appearances at level 1-4 of the English football league system are notable, and all players with appearances solely at level 5 or below are non-notable, would I be notable for my handful of games as a teenager at level 10? No, I would be notable for the Watford game, and the Watford game only. Therefore, BLP1E is relevant and applicable. --WFC-- 18:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per WP:GNG, specifically the section #Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines. It is correct to say that WP:NSPORTS provides "bright-line guidance to enable editors to determine quickly if a subject is likely to meet the General Notability Guideline" (my highlighting), and this subject does pass the Association football criteria of NSPORTS, and did pass WP:ATH at time of creation, for presumed notability. Given that, it's down to GNG. We have to consider "not only whether notability is established by the article, but whether it readily could be". I have no personal knowledge of whether this footballer's career was covered in any detail in the newspapers of the time: perhaps it wasn't. But I do know, because he says so above, that the nominator hasn't looked. That isn't an assumption of bad faith on his part: much as some of us would like to, it isn't generally possible to spend one's life buried in newspaper archives. GNG states that "If it is likely that significant coverage in independent sources can be found for a topic, deletion due to lack of notability is inappropriate unless active effort has been made to find these sources". The nominator suggests it isn't likely that significant coverage can be found. He may well be right, but from experience of just how much newspaper coverage there was of sport and sportspeople in the pre-television era, he may well be wrong. For disclosure, I also am a member of WP:WikiProject Football, though I hope that doesn't preclude me from thinking for myself. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would give your argument more credence if there were loads of well sourced articles on footballers (and cricketers too whilst we are at it), who have played such a limited amount. The problem is that these articles aren't created by doing thorough searches for sources about particular people. They are created by looking through statistics sites or journals, and then stay in that state forever afterwards. Eventualism doesn't seem to be working for these sorts of articles. Periodically these articles pop up at AfD but are kept by appealing to this arbitrary rule which has never been proven (i.e. someone playing a single game meets the GNG). Quantpole (talk) 10:19, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So much to do, so little time... Wikipedia may not have a deadline, but its editors have. If I'm going to expand an article on one of "my" club's footballers, then unless I'm incredibly motivated with time and money to spare, I'm going to choose one that can be done reasonably well from online sources and from books already in my possession, rather than one that requires a several-hundred-mile round trip to the library where the appropriate newspaper archives live, hoping the microfilm viewers aren't all occupied by family historians and the issues I need aren't in use by someone else. If eventualism is a problem, it isn't one specific to athletes; where every bit of running water with a name is notable, it isn't difficult to find stubs like this, this and this which have existed unsourced and unaltered for years.

On your last point, one might argue that if articles are regularly kept by appealing to an arbitrary rule, de facto consensus is that said arbitrary rule does meet the GNG. Not that I am arguing that. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 11:55, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's somewhat mitigated by the fact that in the vast majority of cases, it is editors with a specific interest in football that do so. One might also argue that many editors at WikiProject Football see the beautiful game to be above the GNG, as evidenced by up to three of the keep arguments in this AfD (although for balance it's worth stating that two refuted and one admitted this when questioned). --WFC-- 17:43, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Our notability guidelines are guidelines that give rise to presumptions, not guarantees, of notability. Playing one match of football might technically get him past NSPORT, but any "presumption" caused by that is outweighed by the failure to pass GNG. We need to understand these guidelines are not black letter law. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:09, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Articles should not be brought to AfD until a thorough WP:BEFORE check has been undertaken. Now, due to the length of time that has passed since Adams played in the League, there are no available sources on the internet and only passing mentions in books. But without looking through local newspaper archives or football magazines from the time, we can't say for certain whether or not he was notable, and that's why I have declined to !vote one way or the other in this discussion. For all we know, Adams may have been the subject of newspaper articles purporting him to be the best up-and-coming footballer at the club. He may have made an impression on his debut with either a very good (or very bad!) performance. Until proof is given one way or the other I cannot, in good faith, support the deletion of this article. In the case of the other player you referred to earlier, Gavin Massey, it was shown that other coverage didn't exist - hence the article was deleted. In all honesty, it might well be the same here but until someone shows us different, I think there's a reasonable chance that there are sources out there somewhere. For what it's worth, I don't buy into the BLP1E argument either; that guideline is really to prevent misinformation being written about living people. I think that you really mean WP:BIO1E, which is subtly different as it is more about general notability rather than BLP policy. BigDom More tea, vicar? 13:14, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Potato potato. Sadly that doesn't work quite so well on wiki. While WP:BEFORE is not obligatory, I nonetheless strongly maintain that I've followed it, having checked four of the most recognised published sources on the club (on which Adams is entirely dependant for any claim to notability) as well as the internet. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that a Third Division South player received no substantial coverage in national papers. And if coverage in the likes of The Independent and RTE isn't enough to save an article for deletion, I'm not quite sure why coverage in the Watford Observer or Walsall-based equivalent would. --WFC-- 17:26, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Don't get me wrong, this isn't a keep !vote by any means. I even said above that the sources probably don't exist and I am leaning towards delete, although it is pretty academic at this stage as it will probably get closed as "no consensus" (which, for some reason, is the same as keep). There's not much gained in linking to a previous AfD discussion; Wikipedia is hardly known for consistency is it... Cheers, BigDom More tea, vicar? 19:16, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I guess there's an argument that NSPORTS brings consistency to wikipedia articles. Obviously that's outweighed by the fact that it gives footballers by far the lowest notability threshold on the site (unless you're unfortunate enough to pass the GNG but ply your trade in a country where all football biographies are explicitly banned). Anyway, a keep or delete close would be an endorsement of a certain set of arguments, while a no-consensus close would be a steer that an even wider discussion on this matter (possibly WP:CENT) may be the way forward. I'm not trying to steer the closing admin too much, but it's important that they distinguish between the three. --WFC-- 19:26, 11 September 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.