Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of professional sportspeople convicted of crimes (2nd nomination)

List of professional sportspeople convicted of crimes

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While this list is well sourced, it violates the neutral point of view policy, and cannot be remedied by editing. When taken in isolation, each entry presents only the information that the individual is a criminal, rather than the balanced view that policy demands. I am also finding it difficult to see an encyclopedic purpose in this article.

This has twice been nominated for deletion in the past, with neither occasion finding a consensus, however I feel that the changing attitudes to BLP issues of late suggest that another debate is appropriate. Kevin (talk) 08:36, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, as long as it remains fully sourced. Of course this list only presents the information that these people are criminals, you click on their name to get their full biographies. I know about WP:OTHERSTUFF, but does a list of best rookies give a balanced view of their careers? Does the (featured) list of F1 fatal accidents give a balanced view that they were generally very good drivers? Of course not, as that is not what qualified them to the list. As professional sportspeople are considered (like it or not) rolemodels and get paid accordingly, then information like this are notable to the general public, and lists like this become very useful in determining the truth - and not perpetuating myths.The-Pope (talk) 09:26, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - very similar to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of disbarred lawyers, this list is unencyclopedic, lends undue weight to one aspect of a person's life; it's basically impossible to maintain a neutral POV. Also, given the nature of the subject, the references would need to be impeccable and everything would need to be extensively referenced - Alison ^❤ 10:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, per Mr Pope, sportspeople will always have criminal records, also Wikipedia is not censorship. Donnie Park (talk) 10:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as long as it has citations for every item in the list, which it does. Could use some help with properly formatting the citations, but that's not relevant to AFD. -Drdisque (talk) 15:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep well sourced and well defined. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:27, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete - I agree with Kevin and Alison, this is not neutral enough, and would require impeccable referencing for this article to not violate policy. It's not censoring to make sure that our articles follow the BLP policy; it's another list that isn't necessary to be included in the encyclopedia. Coffee // have a cup // ark // 16:51, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A helter-skelter list that throws in everything from perjury to tax evasion to murder. Beyond being professional athletes, these people and their offenses have very little in common. Warrah (talk) 17:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete What makes this list notable? Why not a list of all sports players who own 3 or more houses? or perhaps all sports players who drive a Cadillac. Googlemeister (talk) 19:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Afd debates are not helped by such obvious fallacies. Since when were these characteristics ever considered comparable? If you just don't think its usefull, say so. MickMacNee (talk) 19:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment We should be deleting information because it can't be maintained (and this not because of some inherent vagueness in the information - people are either convicted or not, this is either referenced or not, but because people might miss vandalism, or don't have time to verify articles). I don't actually care if it is deleted or kept (beyond being more than pissed at always wasting time creating relevant and usefull categories that get deleted in 5 seconds, see next comment), but for the love of God, if it is kept, then we should resurrect the accompanying Category:Sportspeople convicted of a crime, which is uncoinicidentally at deletion review here). As for NPOV, like it or not, being convicted of a crime is a defining quality of a sportsperson, and the comparison and recollection of each case is always of public and media interest (100 and more views a day, even though its currently an orphan.). At the end of the day, if you cannot even find out how many footballers have been jailed for assault, then Wikipedia should not call itself a collection of the entire sum of human knowledge, it will never be anything more than supplemental to better sources. MickMacNee (talk) 19:57, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep- Needs properly sourced and monitored for any potential BLP violations, but there's nothing with this article that regular attention can't handle.Umbralcorax (talk) 21:14, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - The guidelines at WP:SALAT state that some lists may be unsuitable for inclusion, and goes on to mention the policy WP:NOT. In that policy in the section WP:NOTDIR criterion 6, it states that "Non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations, such as "People from ethnic/cultural/religious group X employed by organization Y" or "Restaurants specializing in food type X in city Y". Cross-categories like these are not considered sufficient basis to create an article, unless the intersection of those categories is in some way a culturally significant phenomenon." This concept is further extended to categories, particularly with the guideline WP:OVERCAT in the subsection Trivial Intersection. As sportspeople gaining a criminal conviction does not represent a phenomenon of cultural significance and represents an intersection of two datasets that would otherwise be unrelated, the only logical choice is to delete. Many thanks, Gazimoff 21:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unrelated datasets? Not culturally significant? Read any sports column after a major sportsperson is convicted of a crime, such as the recent Marlon King case. They almost always compare and contrast prior cases. Christ, in his trial his family was even reported to have screamed 'institutional racism' at the judge, because Steven Gerrard was let off. Other commentary of course mentions the case of Joey Barton. This is hardly a trivial intersection, we are not talking 'sportspeople who wear red shoes' here. You are taking OVERCAT to extremes, and while this might be your personal opinion, and you are most certainly not reflecting reliable sources or the real world. MickMacNee (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, as I mentioned the key policy is WP:NOTDIR criterion 6, as I quoted above. To give an example, I could see a list of lawyers, judges or law enforcement individuals with a criminal conviction being valid as they are the intersection of two related datasets, namely those who adminnister the law and those who break it. I could also see a list of sportspeople banned from atheletics for drug taking or cheating to be valid, as sporting competition and cheating to achieve those results are two linked datasets. The problem starts when two unrelated datasets are linked together, such as the one nominated for deletion. The same could be applied of musicians, academics or other groups of notable individuals - creating similar articles for these would be against WP:NOTDIR criterion 6, as the two datasets are unrelated. That's not an extreme point of view, that's a logical interpretation of policy. Many thanks, Gazimoff 18:17, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said, your interpetation of what is an unrelated dataset doesn't match the coverage by sources or interest in the real world. Disputing my point based on what you happen to think is unrelated is frankly quite irrelevant, you can hardly provide proof they aren't related if I asked you to show it, could you? Yet nobody would have any problem proving that this List is not the collation of unrelated data. Simply type 'footballers in prison' into Google [1] - the top two results show sources supporting the relation, from 2005 [2] and 2007 [3]. So if you think you are somehow upholding a core policy by eliminating this list as indiscriminate, you aren't, you are merely forcing people to use better information sources than Wikipedia. MickMacNee (talk) 20:25, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be confusing what may link an individual between two items, and linking the two datasets together The information you're stating is perfectly valid for an individual's biography and I would never suggest that it should be removed from there. What I am stating is that it's quite clear from WP:NOTDIR that this list is against policy as it's from two logically distinct datasets. The three articles are about a subset of sportspeople (all about footballers) which the media of some nations attach to a predisposition for criminality, and that can be recognised as culturally significant for Britain. But not all sportspeople are footballers, and this is why your selection of which datasets to link is quite important - if you wrote a list of footballers with criminal convictions and prefaced it with the information you've linked to, you'd probably be able to make it featured at some point. Hope this makes sense, Gazimoff 21:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot quite believe you are now arguing simultaneously that the whole list should be deleted, yet it could be split up into sports, and that one of them could even make it to FA. It's like nobody even wrote WP:PRESERVE with some of the logic behind some of these delete votes. MickMacNee (talk) 22:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? It's perfectly logical. It is regrettable that this isn't clear, despite the careful examples I've made. Then again, it may be that exposure to and manipulation of large quantities of data sets, together with a firm grounding in discrete mathematics, can give a different perspective on this. From a logical point of view, it's quite clear that this is a breach of policy. Many thanks, Gazimoff 23:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per arguments above. Jevansen (talk) 01:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Would you mind sharing with us which arguments those are, based on established editing guidelines and policies? Many thanks, Gazimoff 01:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- This is a well-referenced and useful article. As it should be, the article is limited to actual convictions not mere charges. And the details of the crimes are neutrally presented.Cbl62 (talk) 03:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well-referenced, useful and neutral are none of them by themselves brightline keep criteria (read my reply to Jim Miller below for example) and basically equates to a WP:HARMLESS argument. Could you provide a stronger rationale? Zunaid 21:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:OVERCAT. This is an obscure intersection of two unrelated criteria (being a sportsperson and being convicted of a crime). The one criteria completely does not relate to the other. The crimes listed here are not committed by these people in their capacity as sportspeople, nor is the crime more central to the person than the rest of their sporting career (at least, not on balance of the people listed here). A glance at the article clearly shows that a wide and disparate collection of individuals are being unnaturally "lumped together" into this list, which is a typical red flag that the categorisation is artificial and entirely inappropriate. As supporting arguments I would add that this list will ALWAYS be hopelessly incomplete (there are literally thousands of sporting codes around the world, and hundreds of crimes, both major and minor committed by the professionals taking part, again, in their PERSONAL capacity), and that no appropriate inclusion criteria are given, or can ever be given (e.g there is no definition of "serious" crime, a LOT of the people listed here are for drink driving, which is not even a criminal offense in all countries, never mind a "serious" one). Zunaid 12:44, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Your central point of it being obscure is just not true in the real world, or in sources. Comparisons are constantly being made about, what is often, a career ending event. Problems with inclusion criteria, which can be fixed, is never a decent argument to bin entire List articles. I am frankly not happy that readers won't be allowed to see which footballers have been convicted of assault/affray, because you think its unfair that it currently also lists dunk driving. I would be more than happy to discuss whether there is a case to remove retired people, or trivial crimes, or whether the crime should be sports related, but frankly, none of that is a reason for deletion. MickMacNee (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I hear what you're saying but for the record I disagree with you completely. You'll need to convince me that the people in this list have had their "careers ended", and besides which that is not one of the defining criteria of the list itself. If we are going to list people whose careers have been ended by a conviction then that is a completely different list entirely. Also, I only brought up the inclusion criteria as a "supporting" argument (i.e. additional to the main thrust that I was getting at), my central argument still stands. If we restrict the list to crimes that were sports-related (e.g. doping, match fixing, Nancy Kerriganning the opposition), then once again, that is a completely different list, which IMHO has a MUCH more relevant intersection. So in any case this list still comes out looking like an arbitrary intersection. Basically your argument comes down to saying that THIS list is in fact arbitrary, and that you ACTUALLY support 2 different lists which are more relevant. Zunaid 21:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would not be a 'completely different' list. You are arguing to delete this article, when in actual fact, your argument is an argument to edit it. It is utterly unnacceptable to ask people to keep jumping through hoops to keep recreating slightly different lists from scratch because the version you happen to find it in at Afd is unnacceptable. The basic premise would be the same, some form of list of convicted sportspeople. MickMacNee (talk) 22:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I don't buy the NPOV argument in this case. And as it is a widely covered topic, OVERCAT doesn't apply. Hobit (talk) 14:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - How is this encyclopedic? Zunaid makes a particularly strong argument. These types of lists are not appropriate. Lara 17:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep impeccably referenced list, and I wouldn't see a NPOV problem even if "List of convicted criminals who played professional sports" was the name. I also do not agree with the OVERCAT argument. Being a convicted criminal is, whether we like the idea or not, a defining characteristic of many notable people. A recorded and sourced conviction does not violate WP:NPOV. Further, eliminating lists like this is contrary to WP:UNDUE by whitewashing relevant, factual, and sourced information from WP. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 18:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, no info whatsoever is being whitewashed. Everything is still there in the articles on the relevant people. Your arguments based on "impeccably referenced" and WP:UNDUE are in fact baseless. The list is not "impeccably referenced" at all, in fact most entries only have ONE reference per person. How can one reference be evidence of NPOV? As for your WP:UNDUE argument, it seems to me that HAVING this list in the first place skews the UNDUE weight in completely the opposite direction. Deleting it would in fact ACHIEVE balance, not upset it. Zunaid 21:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV is utterly irrelevant. Eric Cantona won millions of awards (all similarly given weight by being denoted in various standalone lists), and is a screen actor. Yet his conviction for assualt will alway be in the top 5 of any defining characteristic recalled for him. Lesser talents like Joey Barton and Marlon King will never even get beyond their status as footballers fallen from grace as their defining characteristic. MickMacNee (talk) 22:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]