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. The relevant guidelines & policy cited here are WP:MLB/N, WP:GNG & WP:V. As discussed by a number of editor in this discussion, subject-specific guidelines only provide a presumption of notability, it does not replace the need for the article subject to actually meet the standard of GNG. Keep arguments have failed to address this. A deletion here does not preclude the creation of short, stub-length bio as a section within an article on for example on all players from the era where like-wise little information is known. KTC (talk) 00:43, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Page name was redirected to List of Major League Baseball players with unidentified given names on February 23, 2014. Kraxler (talk) 16:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Smith (baseball) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Too obscure for a page, a lack of details makes this feel incomplete. If we dont even know his first name he is probably NN. Beerest 2 talk 01:41, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Passes WP:BASEBALL/N. Played in the Union Association, which is a major league. The fact that his first name is unknown at this point does not make him any less notable that the thousands of other major league players. Penale52 (talk) 19:25, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Baseball-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dont try for a snow keep, its ridiculous to say that, especially since there is just as much "delete" as there is "keep". Beerest 2 talk 19:04, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Nobody would read BASE/N and see that such players are presumed to be notable since BASE/N is not a valid policy and will most likely be changed to reflect the results of this discussion. Obviously, none of these one named players meet GNG and most never will. The idea that 99.9% of the articles on wikipedia are required to meet GNG but these should be exempt because the subjects played Major League Baseball is what makes no sense. Kinston eagle (talk) 19:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment Again, it makes no sense to have a Wikipedia page for 99.9% of major league players and none for the other 0.1%. Your argument is little more than silly AfD lawyering. Also, it's highly unlikely that a longstanding part of BASE/N will be changed because of an AfD in which five or 10 people participate. That would be even dumber than deleting these pages you want deleted. (Also, to the other guy above, I said "Snow Keep" to emphasize how silly I believe this AfD to be.) - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • It won't be changed because it was never meant to catch 100% of cases. It was only intended to apply almost all players. It explains this at the top of NSPORTS. Meeting it may mean you are still deleted and not meeting it may mean you still get an article. It's just a guide to help you quickly decide as a rule of thumb. -DJSasso (talk) 20:09, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That leaves eight (out of 11) Delete votes from people who never participate in baseball-related AfD discussions, including a flurry of late Delete votes. Seems odd. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, Wikipedia gives greater weight to community consensus over WikiProject consensus.—Bagumba (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Understood and acknowledged above, if not directly. The question at hand is whether people are being recruited to this AfD. If not, from where are they coming? Seems awfully strange that a bunch of people with no prior interest in baseball all showed up in this AfD, when other pending baseball AfDs have no more than two responses. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 19:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Where they are coming from is the notice that was placed on the baseball wikiproject. What you are seeing is baseball editors that were notified about the discussion now showing up and weighing in. All completely normal and legitimate. -DJSasso (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Those notices go out on every baseball-related AfD, but most of them struggle to get a half-dozen replies. And as I mentioned earlier, I've never seen most of these names in a baseball AfD before. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, hang on. Up until this AfD, you've made all of a dozen Wikipedia edits in the last half a year. If we're going to ask such questions, were you recruited to this AfD? (Heck, according to your contribution list, you've only participated in a dozen AfDs ever before this week. I expect many of us have never seen your name in an AfD before, myself included.) Ravenswing 21:22, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm familiar with both of your names and most of the other people in this discussion as well...People can have differing opinions without it being some kind of nefarious thing.Spanneraol (talk) 00:21, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Until NSPORTS is reworded from "presumed to be notable" to "guaranteed to be notable", nothing is automatic.—Bagumba (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You don't seem to understand what "presumed notable" means. Per BASE/N, sources aren't even a requirement for people who are presumed notable. Sources are to establish notability for those who aren't presumed to be notable. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 19:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Presumed notable means that we presume they are notable because for some cases sources might be hard to find. ie in old news papers instead of online. However, when questioned those sources do need to be found. RIght from the BASE/N "meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept". I think you have a serious misunderstanding of how any of the SNGs work. -DJSasso (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and failing any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be deleted. This whole thing is silly lawyering by people who apparently have nothing better to do. ("Woo-hoo! Wikipedia no longer has a page for every major league baseball player, because we successfully argued a loophole!") - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect. Wikipedia doesn't require sources at all for people who are presumed notable, as this guy is due to having played at least one game in a major baseball league. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 19:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually you are wrong, right at the top of WP:NSPORTS it says "meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept". It can still be deleted if no sources can be found. All articles are required to be referenceable. -DJSasso (talk) 19:49, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
WP:N, which is the core notability guideline of wikipedia and therefore supersedes the baseball guidelines, requires all subjects to exhibit significant coverage in reliable sources. Furthermore, the baseball guidelines themselves only give a "presumption" of notability to Major League Baseball Players, which is different from automatically conferring notability on such a player. A presumption is a starting point for an argument, not an end point, so really the baseball guideline does not contradict the general guideline at all. Indrian (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All of the above players are referenced in dozens of baseball-related books, databases, etc. They're just not referenced to the satisfaction of you and some others. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ahem. You mean that they're not referenced to the satisfaction of the GNG. The GNG requires that qualifying sources discuss the subject in "significant detail" and sets forth the requirements for the same. I understand that being an inexperienced editor you might not have come across the GNG before, and recommend you give it a looksee; the NSPORTS criteria are explicitly subordinate to the GNG. Ravenswing 21:18, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, his stats are referenced in those places. There is no biographical information referenced anywhere save for his last name, hence the complete failure of this article to satisfy the notability guideline. Indrian (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A list makes more sense than deleting them outright, but why redirect all of these names to a list when we could just keep the pages? This whole thing is the height of Wikipedia silliness. Wikipedia isn't running out of room, but you wouldn't know it the way some of the people above are talking. It's downright idiotic to have pages for 15,000 or 20,000 major league players and no page for the last 20 or 30 players whose biographical information is scarce. - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 20:34, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Reply Who has said that "no one could possible [sic] be voting Delete here except through chicanery"? No one. I pointed out that the sudden wave of Delete votes, almost entirely from people with no history in the baseball AfDs and/or WikiProject Baseball, seems suspicious. (And suspicious, it is. After a full week of this AfD, it was 6-5 in favor of keeping. Then, in the past 24 hours, 9 Delete voters suddenly came out of the woodwork.) - Bbny-wiki-editor (talk) 22:00, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And as I pointed out to you earlier, this deletion discussion was just posted to WikiProject:Baseball today. Hence why people are coming and commenting on it now. It was also posted to the talk page of WP:BASEBALL/N which also probably contributed to more people noticing it. Again very common for there to be more people coming towards the end of an Afd. --DJSasso (talk) 22:17, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would generally agree with your reasoning, except the prospects of finding sources with significant coverage in prose seems unlikely in this case if not even statistics sites can identify basic information such as his first name.—Bagumba (talk) 23:41, 2 January 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.