Talk:All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club

All England?

Why is it called 'All England' ? Was it exclusively for use by the English ?

It just means it was for all Englanders. Blast 23,02,07 2229 (UTC)

Interesting. Curious, actually, since the club has always been open only to a small subset of Englanders, as Buxton points out in the quote in the article. Epeefleche

It just means it is intended to have a national membership, rather than a local membership, in the same way as the Augusta National Golf Club. The same intent is expressed in different ways in British English and American English. Beorhtric 22:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. Yes, in the US "All-State" and "All-American" and "All-NCAA" and "All-Conference" refer to the best in the indicated category, with all who are in that category being eligible for inclusion. To designate that a club or conference is national in scope, it would be typical for an American to use the adjective "National," "American," or "US," without appending an "All" before it. Epeefleche 01:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Court 2

For the 2009 tournament what is going to happen to the old Court 2. Will it still be in use and renamed court 3 or is it to be demolished? 90.198.231.56 (talk) 14:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Repeated "blanking" of para re: exclusion of Blacks and Jews from the Club; NPOV--what it means

The following paragraph bearing on the exclusion of Blacks and Jews from the Club, which has been in the article for quite a while, has recently been deleted repeatedly by one editor.

The club's "exclusivity" included its not allowing any black tennis player to play there prior to 1951, and no Jewish tennis player being able to claim it as their home until 1952. According to Angela Buxton, the Jewish former British Wimbledon doubles champion, it also has led to her exclusion. Buxton said in 2004, reflecting on the fact that the All England Club, almost 50 years after Buxton's 1956 Wimbledon triumph with Althea Gibson and, had still not invited Buxton to join: "I think the anti-Semitism is still there. The mere fact that I'm not a member is a full sentence that speaks for itself." Buxton told New York Post reporter Marc Berman that she had been on the "waiting list" since she applied in the 1950s. The Chairman of the Club appeared on television, and when asked about it said that he would have to look into it, and couldn't comment without more information. "I wish it still wasn't such an elite sport," Buxton told Berman. "I wish we could bring it down to a common baseline. It's going that way. It's still not there." After Gibson and Buxton won the doubles at Wimbledon, one British national newspaper reported their success under the headline, "Minorities Win". "It was in very small type," said Buxton, "lest anyone should see it".

I request that rather than continuing to delete the paragraph and edit warring, the editor discuss the issue here.

The reason given by the editor has been that the paragraph is not "neutral". I venture that the editor may misunderstand what is called for here by Wikipedia guidelines, which I will discuss below.

The reason that the material is appropriate is, as I have indicated in edit summaries, that it is properly sourced. As to the Wikipedia concept of "neutrality", the paragraph in no way violates it. In fact, its inclusion is quite clearly called for by Wikipedia's NPOV policy.

As Wikipedia states at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, "neutral point of view" is a fundamental Wikimedia principle that means that Wikipedia articles must be written representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.

Directly on point to the issue here, the guidelines states:

"As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. The elimination of article content cannot be justified under this policy on the grounds that it is "POV". Article content should clearly describe, represent, and characterize disputes within topics, but without endorsement of any particular point of view. Articles should provide background on who believes what and why.... Assert facts, including facts about opinions... By "fact" we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." ... When we discuss an opinion, we attribute the opinion to someone and discuss the fact that they have this opinion. For instance, rather than asserting that "The Beatles were the greatest band ever", locate a source such as Rolling Stone magazine and say: "Rolling Stone said that the Beatles were the greatest band ever", and include a reference to the issue in which that statement was made."

(emphasis added)

That is precisely what this paragraph does, and why its deletion because the statement made by Buxton is considered by the editor in question to be "not neutral" is not reason to delete it.

One last point -- the editor has also been deleting the ref tags, so that inline citations are no longer inline. I ask that the editor desist with that activity as well, as inline citation are clearly preferred under Wikipedia guidelines.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This section has been removed several times by several readers over several years, and Epeefleche has waged a solo campaign to include it. This content takes up about a third of the article and it wildly misrepresents the significance of this matter to the average user looking for information about the club. It is not a "significant view", but merely a personal complaint by one little known individual (she only won the mixed doubles, which is not a tenth as notable as winning a singles title), that has been generally ignored. There has simply been no major controversy over this issue, and therefore Buxton's comment is no more notable than any of the hundreds of positive comments about the club from people far more famous than Buxton that I could easily produce. But I wouldn't add such comments to the article because wikipedia is not a debating society where everyone gets a turn on the soapbox, it is an encyclopedia, and its job is to summarise the most important facts - not to list as many facts as possible. There is a fairly common complaint about the All England Club - that it is "elitist' because only privileged people can join - but it never focuses on blacks and Jews. Do a google search, and you will see that there simply is no widespread controversy over this matter, therefore it should not be included. Including it reflects the biases of one editor, not the needs of the general user. No -one is disputing that Buxton said what she said, but she failed to create a major controversy. I would say that this is not because the media is indifferent to accusations of anti-semitism, but because her complaint was so silly that virtually all major media outlets decided to ignore it. This is in contrast with for example the attacks by an American feminist on the policies of Augusta National Golf Club, which did receive widespread and sustained coverage in the major media and are therefore of encyclopedic note. The onus is on you to demonstrate that the Buxton controversy is one of the most notable things about the All England Club. I am satisfied that this is impossible, because is simply is not. You quote the line about the need to "describe, represent, and characterize disputes within topic", but there hasn't been a dispute. Buxton's comments were generally ignored, and this was because they carried no weight, and didn't deserve to be taken seriously. She was peeved that she wasn't invited to join the club, but most other people in her position (one time mixed doubles winners) have never been invited either. The honorary members are mostly multi-time singles champions like Rod Laver and Jimmy Connors. Her suggestion that her exclusion was down to anti-semitism was purely a work of an overactive and disappointed imagination, and most people would realise this, and ignore her. Her unfounded and defamatory comments embarrassed herself, not the club, and most of the media ignored them out of politeness to an old lady who should have known better than to vent her spleen. (I note from looking at old versions of the article that it didn't always say that only singles champions are given honorary memberships, but it has done so for a long time now.)

Because this complaint is trivial, its inclusion in the article is an endorsement of Buxton's point of view - anyone who knows anything about the club will know that only someone who agrees with her would give a moment's thought to including the material, and anyone who doesn't know about the club will come away with a false impression that her statement was a major incident in the club's history. Including this paragraph is incompatible with the neutral point of view policy. As for being properly sourced, that is irrelevant. I could write - and source- five pages about the history of the tennis rackets used at Wimbledon, and add them to the article, but I wouldn't do so because it wouldn't be sufficiently relevant to the subject of the article to merit inclusion. The proper place for that content - sourced or not - would be at tennis racket. The same applies to your paragraph. It doesn't belong here because while it has some connection to the subject of the article it is just one of thousands of minor related topics that could be included by shouldn't be, because a good encyclopedia article must display discrimination and avoid excessive length and meanderings into side issues. This article should summarise the key things about the All England Club that the reader needs to know, not just present random facts that individual editors want to tell them. Your concerns are with anti-semitism and black white race issues, both are much more important subjects than the All England Club, but the place to write about them is at anti-semitism and at racism, not here. An encyclopedia article should be a balanced overview, and your paragraph destroys any sense of balance here. This issue has been going on for years now, please just be reasonable, and let it go. Piccadilly (talk) 00:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)