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RfC on draftifying a subset of mass-created Cricketer microstubs[edit]
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In reading over the discussion, there was Consensus that these should be addressed. However, there is No Consensus that mass-draftification (mass-moving-out-of-article-space) is the correct solution for all of these. But rather that these should be addressed on a case-by-case basis (some individually, some as a part of a sub-grouping). Too many various concerns to list. Listification was also proposed. As the primary focus of this nomination was the question of moving the pages en-masse, there is no prejudice against listification (or any other typical editorial process), at editorial discretion, following the typical process (whether that be pre-discussing, WP:BRD, etc.), on a case-by-case basis, to address these. - jc37 04:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC) - Edit: Just to clarify, the result of the discussion is that - "There is No Consensus that mass-draftification (mass-moving-out-of-article-space) is the correct solution for all of these." There were many concerns, and several proposed solutions other than mass-draftifying, but none of those had consensus either. What did have overall consensus, was that "something" should be done (but no consensus on what was proposed). And so, there is "no prejudice" against further discussion, or handling these on a case-by-case basis (at normal editorial disccretion, following the typical process(es), etc). Perhaps restating the close in this way is (hopefully) clearer. |
Should the following 1,182 biographical microstubs, which were mass-created by Lugnuts and cover cricketers, be moved out of article space? 06:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
List of microstubs
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Details (mass draftification of cricket articles)[edit]
Selection criteria: Generated using a Quarry query, these 1,200 articles are a subset of the articles that meet the following criteria:
- Articles are created by Lugnuts
- Articles are on cricketers
- Articles are smaller than 2,500 bytes[a]
- Referenced only to CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo[b]
- No significant contributions from editors other than Lugnuts[c]
If this proposal is successful: All articles on the list will be draftified, subject to the provisions below:
- Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months)
- Any editor may userfy any draft (which will prevent autodeletion)
- Any WikiProject may move a draft to their WikiProject space (which will also prevent autodeletion)
- Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG[d]
- Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia[e]
Background (mass draftification of cricket articles)[edit]
In the 2022 Deletion ArbCom case, ArbCom found (Finding #6) that User:Lugnuts had created over 93,000 articles, "the most articles of any editor ... Most of these were stubs, and relatively few have been expanded to longer articles", which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom.
Arbcom also mandated an RfC on mass deletion. A mass creation RfC took place but the mass deletion RfC did not, and the RFC mandate was rescinded, leaving the question of how to handle mass-created microstubs such as these unresolved. In March a proposal was made to draftify approximately 1000 articles on Olympians as a possible resolution to this. The proposal was successful and this proposal continues that process.
Survey (mass draftification of cricket articles)[edit]
- Support The alternative to continuing to address such mass creations through this process is bringing hundreds or thousands of articles through AfD each month[f] and that alternative is not practical. These are articles that took minutes, sometimes seconds, to create; each AfD consumes hours of community time and it would be a waste to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation. Further, editors who support keeping these articles object on the grounds that the workload is too high; that it is impossible to search for sources with the diligence required in the time available and as a consequence articles on notable topics are deleted.This proposal resolves both of those issues; editors will have time to search for sources and considerable amounts of our most limited resource, editor time, will be saved.We also cannot leave the articles as are; we have a responsibility to curate the encyclopedia, to remove articles that do not belong on it due to failing to meet our notability criteria or due to violating our policies on what Wikipedia is not. Failing to meet this responsibility is harmful to the project; it reinforces the perception among the public that Wikipedia is mostly empty around the edges and that anything is notable, and it reinforces the perception among editors that creating large numbers of microstubs that do not inform the reader is as good or better than creating smaller numbers of informative articles.These are articles that all violate the fifth basic sports notability criteria, on topics that usually lack notability, that no one edits, that almost no one looks at, and that are so bereft of information that they are of no benefit to the reader. Removing the group will improve the quality of the encyclopedia, and by doing it in this manner we provide the best hope of the articles on notable topics being identified, improved, and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per proposer. My feeling is that this is a good way to deal with the low-quality and WP:SPORTCRIT-failing microstubs with enough leeway for any editor who wants to keep any of the articles to do the needed research to expand the article. starship.paint (exalt) 06:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. The Olympics draftification has not resulted in any objective improvement to the encyclopaedia and this is just more of the same. Thryduulf (talk) 07:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Having a massive number of microstubs is detrimental to cleanup efforts and maintenance. If anything, this proposal is quite generous for articles that never should have been created in the first place. A good compromise overall, and it gives several options for anyone that might take an interest in one or more of these articles. I also support carrying this out for all other articles that meet the listed criteria. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 07:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, except for "If this proposal is successful" point no. 3: wikiprojects have no business holding onto drafts; it's just not normal, and it encourages the extremely bad habit of wikiprojects behaving like walled gardens and flexing in a WP:GANG + WP:OWN manner toward content they claim is within their scope. Draftspacing and userifying are entirely sufficient options. Aside from that, I wholeheartedly agree with draftifying (one way or another) these miserable micro-stubs, most of which have no hope of ever becoming proper encyclopedia articles. We have far too many half-assed pseudo-articles on minor figures in sport, acting, and other pop-culture subjects. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Their deletion would disencourage masscreation of microstubs based on databases. It would save a lot of time for the potentual participants in AfDs. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 07:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Found this 3 rationales cited by Cbl62 further down in support of draftication pretty much convincing and would like to reproduce them here again.
- (1) Mass creation. The articles at issue were the product of Lugnuts' well-documented mass process in which thousands of articles were created, often at the rate of approximately a minute per article.
- (2) Lack of substance. The articles are microstubs that contain very limited narrative text, simply reciting that the person was a cricket player who appeared in X number of games for X team. If the articles are ultimately deleted, nothing of real substance is lost. If SIGCOV is later uncovered and brought forth, and given the fact that only a minute or so was devoted to the original effort, the articles can be re-created without any meaningful loss of prior effort.
- (3) Violation of SPORTBASIC. The articles violate prong 5 of WP:SPORTBASIC which provides: "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." The articles here are sourced only to database sources and do not include SIGCOV.
- For transparency I must admit there was a fourth one, but that one I do not support the same way.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 10:54, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
- Paradise Chronicle - WP:NORUSH. The rush to mass create these articles and the rush to mass delete them seem like two sides of the same coin. Getting it right is more important than speed.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- “Two sides of the same coin” implies comparable effect - but that is not the case. One is essentially vandalism, the other is just respiring the situation as it would have been had the vandalism not taken place. FOARP (talk)| FOARP (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @FOARP - The idea is the same - it would take too long to do the research for each individual article and we need to do this NOW so we can move onto the next article despite WP:NORUSH. Lugnuts followed the rules when he created the articles. The rules have since changed. Those same rules may change again tomorrow.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- “Two sides of the same coin” implies comparable effect - but that is not the case. One is essentially vandalism, the other is just respiring the situation as it would have been had the vandalism not taken place. FOARP (talk)| FOARP (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Found this 3 rationales cited by Cbl62 further down in support of draftication pretty much convincing and would like to reproduce them here again.
- Comment - I think we need more granular detail on the people concerned. Personally I think someone who played more than 20 First Class matches in any country recognised by the ICC is notable. Someone who played 10 is possibly debatable, someone who played less than 5 probably isn't. For me there are extreme edge cases (for example some who appears to only have played one match in 1890) which can be redirected to a list. There are a bigger group where the sourcing is bad but could likely be improved (in my example maybe someone who played regularly for a first class team) and an intermediate group which could/should be draftified until such time as more information is found. Of course this requires buy-in from WikiProjects being prepared to engage in improvement; failing that I agree that we might as well just draft with a high likelihood that nobody will work on them and they'll be deleted. JMWt (talk) 08:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- In terms of granular detail, BilledMammal was kind enough to sort out a query for me that included the team categories. I've got a version of this at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox6 - it includes was more than just the 1,200 listed here. It doesn't get into the number of appearances because that wouldn't be categorised so it's not possible to pull that off. But it may be of some use.
- From cutting that list down, I think the 1,200 here are probably split up as:
- Indian - 283 (24%)
- Australian - 262 (22%)
- South African - 137 (11%)
- Sri Lankan - 122 (10%)
- New Zealand - 94 (8%)
- Pakistani - 83 (7%)
- English* - 70 (6%)
- Others - about 13% - Bangledishi, Afghan, Zimbabwean, West Indian and a few others.
- I would think most of the Australians, New Zealanders and English* will be on the redirect list eventually. Means we lose a lot of south Asian and African articles (list are less well developed in these cases). Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Caveat there are some issues regarding the redirect list that I need to get to, but if those are resolved then with the caveat that articles to be draftified should be tagged for a period of 7 days before that occurs I might be able to get to a position where I could think about being more supportive of this. There are simply too many articles here for anyone to check through, but individual editors may have them on watchlists and might be able to step in and deal with them in such a period (there are a number of cricket editors with an interest in and sources dealing with specific teams). A number of articles have already been removed from the initial lists produced, but there are simply too many here to check through. This is complicated somewhat by the inclusion of articles in this list where there are already prose sources in the article rather than simple database entries. This is a complicated issue, but essentially the CricInfo articles will sometimes contain prose, occasionally prose that originated from The Cricketer or Wisden - both clearly excellent reliable sources. CricketArchive occasionally also does this. It's difficult to know for sure how many, partly because there's just so many articles here. Again, tagging for a short period would allow editors with an interest in individual articles to check and ensure there there's no people included who already meet the source that could plausibly... condition. This would include people like Brett Matthews (cricketer) (where there's already a prose source which contributes in the article - this is the only one of the 250 or so articles I've checked which are still on the list to be on it in error in my view), Brett van Deinsen, Brendan Creevey, Brad Oldroyd for example. These are snapshots, but each has something that makes me feel that WP:NEXIST means that if we were to dig more that we'd easily find more on them. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Brett Matthews shouldn't be on the list, per the note attached to selection criteria #4 due to the presence of this reference. The reason it is on the list is because that reference is linked in an extremely unusual way; I've manually removed him from the list and am currently working to determine whether the problem applies to any other members of the list. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for that. Things like this are part of the reason I'd rather tag for a period so that things can be checked. I suspect there may be a handful of others. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Fixed. Six articles were on the list incorrectly and have now been removed. If I can work out how to have the template display a different message in main space than it does in draft space I don't mind leaving the articles in main space for a week after adding the template before moving them to draft space. BilledMammal (talk) 10:16, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for that. Things like this are part of the reason I'd rather tag for a period so that things can be checked. I suspect there may be a handful of others. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Brett Matthews shouldn't be on the list, per the note attached to selection criteria #4 due to the presence of this reference. The reason it is on the list is because that reference is linked in an extremely unusual way; I've manually removed him from the list and am currently working to determine whether the problem applies to any other members of the list. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Extraordinary situations require extraordinary solutions. This 1,200 is only a mere subset of Lugnuts' work, and certainly among the least developed. Put them in draft space where they can either be incubated or ultimately removed. -Indy beetle (talk) 08:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, per Indy beetle.—S Marshall T/C 09:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose any thinking that begins with an artificial sense of urgency, or claims that We also cannot leave the articles as are (we absolutely can; you just don't want us to), so we must do something right now. Don't just stand there, do something! (Except for genuinely trying to expand and source any of the articles yourself. People might discover that it was possible, and we can't have that, because it would interfere with our deletion goals.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- A very good point this, thanks for bringing it up. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Since posting this, I asked a website for a random number (3 out of 10), went 30% of the way down the hidden list above, and found Anwell Newman. I don't know anything about cricket, and I've never heard of this person, but in a little more than an hour, I'd turned the article into a decent start that cites half a dozen recent news sources and learned something about the apartheid era in cricket and discovered that veterans leagues are a thing, even though we don't have an article about Veterans cricket.
- I've obviously got no way to know whether this is just randomly the only one in the entire list that could be expanded, but I doubt it, because it was a randomly selected article that I know absolutely nothing about. This confirms my feeling that the "problem" here is Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions#Nobody's working on it (or impatience with improvement) rather than an actual problem with the article (which was 100% accurate, BTW). IMO m:Immediatism is a more honorable philosophy when you're willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work, rather than hiding accurate information from readers because nobody else WP:VOLUNTEERed to do the work on your schedule. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
People might discover that it was possible, and we can't have that, because it would interfere with our deletion goals.
That is a bizarre statement. Of course it is possible; if it wasn't we would be proposing deletion, rather than draftification. The issue is distinguishing between the minority that it is possible to expand from the majority that aren't, and handling said majority in a way that doesn't consume a disproportionate amount of the communities time. BilledMammal (talk) 13:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- A very good point this, thanks for bringing it up. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Keep or Delete Draftifying this many articles is like stuffing your mess inside a closet —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- No it isn't, it is making order in the main space and leaving what possibly still needs grow in draft space. The articles will likely only get expanded them if they are threatened in some way either by drafitifcation or deletion. They didn't get expanded until now, yet they (I believe mostly) exist since years. And if they get nominated one by one, the vast majority gets deleted or redirected in my experience.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:30, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- I doubt they will get touched at all in draftspace. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 13:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
- No it isn't, it is making order in the main space and leaving what possibly still needs grow in draft space. The articles will likely only get expanded them if they are threatened in some way either by drafitifcation or deletion. They didn't get expanded until now, yet they (I believe mostly) exist since years. And if they get nominated one by one, the vast majority gets deleted or redirected in my experience.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:30, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, reluctantly - I just tried to rescue seven articles at random using relatively basic internet searches and went 0-for-7. I'm sure we're going to overlook at least one actually notable cricketer, but those articles can be re-created. SportingFlyer T·C 12:29, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer, I'm 1-for-1, with a randomly selected article. Would you like to post the names of the seven you looked at? Maybe someone else would like to have a go at them (or to make sure that they're looking at different ones). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: I searched for Aaqib Khan, Akoijam Tenyson Singh, Alfred Browne (cricketer), Alexander Robinson (cricketer, born 1924), Alexander Slight, Alfred Carlton, and Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), and I just now searched for Dennis Thorbourne. I would send them all to AfD if this is opposed. SportingFlyer T·C 17:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I should also note my WP:BEFORE was cursory enough - two searches per person - but the only hits I could find were for database sources, or for other people with the same name, with the exception of Alfred Browne who is related to another, more famous cricketer. SportingFlyer T·C 17:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I had no luck with regular web searches, as the top hits were all duplicative databases. I had better luck with news-specific searches. For your first, I see a description of him as a 17-year-old right-arm medium-pacer and another called him a young right-arm seamer (I don't know what that means, but I assume it means something. I also don't know what it means if someone pulled medium-pacer Aaqib Khan to deep fine-leg – the jargon here is deep). He was included in a list of youngest players,[1] and I'm pretty sure that this gives his recent salary, or at least something like it. He's Muslim.[2]
- But it turned out that what we really needed was the Hindi-language newspapers. The transliteration of his name is आकिब खान, and with that, you can ask your favorite search engine to look for non-English sources. For example, in the third-biggest daily newspaper in the largest country in the world, there are three sources that handle SIGCOV issues pretty nicely: https://www.livehindustan.com/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-khan-of-saharanpur-selected-in-under-19-india-team-2870012.html looks like a couple hundred words about his childhood and becoming a professional cricketer. https://www.livehindustan.com/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-of-saharanpur-is-ready-to-play-against-afghanistan-2871651.html is even longer and gives his parents names and professions and says he's the first from his town to be chosen for the Under-19's team. https://www-livehindustan-com.translate.goog/uttar-pradesh/saharanpur/story-aaqib-khan-selected-for-practice-bowler-in-mumbai-indians-3935545.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp announces him being selected as (what machine translation calls) a "practice bowler" with (what I'm guessing is) a professional team.
- Machine translation isn't great for Hindi, but I don't think we need a perfect translation to discover that these three news articles alone count as that ideal for the GNG, "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing - I've been in way too many AfD discussions where someone searches up the romanized version of someone's name and says "there's no coverage on this person". Then, when you search their name in their native language, a lot more results start popping up. It's a major problem on this website and I do hope something is done about it in the future. It'd be like searching Tom Brady in Bhojpuri and claiming he's not notable because no results pop-up.KatoKungLee (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Off topic, but I think it is worth considering adding a transliteration tool to Template:Find sources AFD, at least for articles with Category:AfD debates (Biographical). The issue is that editors don't think to search for their native name, particularily when it isn't included in the article; including such a tool in that template might provide the subtle hint necessary to boost the rate of searches for that name. If you open a discussion about that somewhere, please ping me; I would be interested in participating. BilledMammal (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @KatoKungLee, it would probably help if the articles consistently provided the local/original spelling for people's names. Most of us can copy/paste into a search engine, but fewer can figure out the relevant languages and make the transliteration. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd support that, @BilledMammal, but it could be extended to a lot more than BLPs. A very common issue I encounter is with foods/dishes. I've seen foods that were considered national or regional dishes not show up in romanized searches and have had to resort to using google translate to convert the English rendering back into the native language, which is also iffy. It's particularly a concern for places like India, where most regional dishes will have renderings in at least two languages. Valereee (talk) 13:32, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Off topic, but I think it is worth considering adding a transliteration tool to Template:Find sources AFD, at least for articles with Category:AfD debates (Biographical). The issue is that editors don't think to search for their native name, particularily when it isn't included in the article; including such a tool in that template might provide the subtle hint necessary to boost the rate of searches for that name. If you open a discussion about that somewhere, please ping me; I would be interested in participating. BilledMammal (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The first and third articles are routine transactional news that mostly contain reports of what people affiliated with him said/thought, not independent commentary. The second piece seems to be an expansion on the first piece, despite being published before. It's also under the stricter provisions of YOUNGATH and so unlikely to count towards notability at all. JoelleJay (talk) 23:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing - I've been in way too many AfD discussions where someone searches up the romanized version of someone's name and says "there's no coverage on this person". Then, when you search their name in their native language, a lot more results start popping up. It's a major problem on this website and I do hope something is done about it in the future. It'd be like searching Tom Brady in Bhojpuri and claiming he's not notable because no results pop-up.KatoKungLee (talk) 15:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer, I'm 1-for-1, with a randomly selected article. Would you like to post the names of the seven you looked at? Maybe someone else would like to have a go at them (or to make sure that they're looking at different ones). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support largely per my comment at the last RfC. If someone spends a few moments doing something mildly disruptive we should not be afraid to undue it – even if it's a page creation, even if they did it 1200 times. If someone finds a cache of sources and wants to create a well-sourced article on any of these cricketers, the existing articles would be of no help whatsoever. Ajpolino (talk) 12:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just expanded one, and that was not my experience. I specifically found three bits of information to be useful: the team he played for, his birth date (because Cricket World Cup is "50-over" tournament, and I spent a long time trying to figure out whether the "Over-50's Cricket World Cup" was the same thing or if it referred to the age of the players), and the year that he started playing first-class matches (so I could make sure that an article about his second career was the same person). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Removed Anwell Newman, thank you for expanding it. That information is easily available in database sources; us mirroring said sources doesn't make it easier to write articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Generally, when someone says that they found ______ easier than the alternatives, you should probably believe them. I personally found that it was easier for me to expand the article when that information was right there in front of me than if I had to do the extra work of looking it up on a different website.
- More generally, if you genuinely believe that you know more about my personal experience than I do, then the world needs you to consider a different hobby. Mindreading comes to mind; you might be the first person in history to actually be able to do it. Otherwise, please don't tell me that I don't know what was easier for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I picked three arbitrarily: David Mailer, Craig Marais (cricketer), and Chengkam Sangma. I personally did not find the existing articles helpful as they restate what's available at ESPNCricInfo, which is also the first Google hit when I search them. I used Google and TWL's Gale and EBSCO subscriptions with a handful of keywords (team name, approximate dates, etc.) and couldn't find any real coverage. I did find Mailer's obit which doesn't give much more to go off of. Just snippets of routine match coverage for the others (both of whom are still alive, best I can tell). Now I don't have the deepest confidence in my ability to dig up source material on cricketers, but my poking around plus the criteria for the article selection make me think these articles are mirrors of database content on topics that don't meet GNG. As for dealing with them en masse, my thoughts align with GreenC's below. Ajpolino (talk) 16:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at your first in TWL's NewspaperArchive.com, I find 159 records for David Mailer from 1874–1937 in Australia. I'm having trouble reading the fine print, but it's possible that there is something useful in there. The obit, which looks written by the newspaper rather than a paid advertisement, would support a sentence about a post-cricket career of grazier, and to say that he was married but had no offspring. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Removed Anwell Newman, thank you for expanding it. That information is easily available in database sources; us mirroring said sources doesn't make it easier to write articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just expanded one, and that was not my experience. I specifically found three bits of information to be useful: the team he played for, his birth date (because Cricket World Cup is "50-over" tournament, and I spent a long time trying to figure out whether the "Over-50's Cricket World Cup" was the same thing or if it referred to the age of the players), and the year that he started playing first-class matches (so I could make sure that an article about his second career was the same person). WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per my general support for reducing the number of short stubs unlikely to ever be significantly expanded. - Donald Albury 12:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - "Lugnuts didn't take his time creating these, so why should we" is an entirely valid feeling. I found Lugnuts frustrating, too, and nobody is going to be forced to improve these articles or spend any time on them. It does not, however, create any urgency to [not just ignore but] delete them. None of these articles have been evaluated for notability. None of these articles have been evaluated for quality. It's use of draftspace to circumvent the deletion process (see WP:DRAFTIFY), and based entirely on metadata rather than anything to do with article subjects. I would support mass deletion of any stubs created after consensus formed that it's not ok to mass create articles based on databases. No need for draftification there. For articles created before that, though, it just seems vindictive. The articles aren't policy violations; there's no emergency that demands they be dealt with. If you're still feeling resentment towards Lugnuts, perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that he can no longer create articles at all, and then find something totally different to work on. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Problem is, there are still getting created numerous articles on autopatrolled only sourced to dependent databases. There needs to be some solution for that, and draftifying such articles seems an acceptable one for me.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:36, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - For several reasons:
- 1) The Olympian draftifcation had multiple articles on there that were drafted erroneously like Addin Tyldesley and we already have spotted articles that don't belong there with this one. How many errors are going to be in this list? Nobody knows or cares. Why does getting articles drafted supercede drafting articles correctly? WP:NORUSH. Mass-creating and mass-drafting articles seems to be two sides of the same coin.
- 2) Deleting large batches of articles is obviously not encyclopedia building behavior. These articles do no harm to anyone by being here and many of them may be able to be expanded and improved. Drafting them makes them less likely to be improved.
- 3) WP:BIAS and WP:SBEXT plays a role here. We do not have access to the informational resources of various countries in the Middle East and Oceania, which limits research. Even if we did, being able to read other languages is yet another hurdle. We also know the English speaking media has generally little interest in non-political topics from these places.
- 4) Lugnuts does not WP:OWN any articles, yet he keeps being mentioned. He has nothing to do with this and should not be mentioned. Articles with limited information or sources is a collective failure.
- 5) The wikipedia notability rules were followed at the time of the creation of these articles. The notability rules were then changed and likely will be changed again in the future due to situations like this. It is asking a lot of articles to not only follow current rules, but follow future rules that do not currently exist and/or may only temporarily exist.KatoKungLee (talk) 13:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support For the same reason I supported the olympian draftification. To the contrary of the poster above, an article failing current notability rules is an excellent reason to delete it. Old articles are not exempted from the current notability rules. (t · c) buidhe 14:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
an article failing current notability rules
- Do these? This is a list based on article creator + size + current sourcing, not notability. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- @Rhododendrites: I think most of these fail WP:GNG, and all of them fail WP:GNG "on their face." They did not fail the guideline at the time because it was not tailored to GNG. The alternative is going through and searching for sources for every single one of these to see if they can be expanded, which is frustrating, given how little effort was put into their creation. SportingFlyer T·C 17:39, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Alternative, First put them all in a maintenance category, if not already in one, so they can easily be found and identified. Merge and redirect wherever reasonably practicable. Most can probably find a home in a list or other article where they should have been in the first place. Apart from saving information, this might show people that it is better to put the information into an existing article if it is so sparse, and split it out when there is enough to be worth the trouble. Any that are unsuitable for a merge and redirect should probably be deleted. Any that are still not merged or improved can be relisted after a year or so. Maybe someone can write a script for doing this quickly. If anyone wants to make a real article from any of them they can do it any time. Hiding them in draft space without an action plan is unlikely to save anything in the long run. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I would say this is feasible but the absolute lack of progress on almost every maintenance project means that the burden falls on a very very small subset of editors, who frankly have dwindling patience to clean up other people's messes. Sennecaster (Chat) Sennecaster (Chat) 15:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Pbsouthwood: See this discussion that I just opened at BOTN; note that it doesn't just cover articles that this process would apply to as I didn't see the need to limit the application of maintenance tags in that way - in other words, just because an article is on that list doesn't mean it would ever be proposed to be draftified under this process. BilledMammal (talk) 17:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support but I think the idea Peter Southwood presents may be a good step 1: tag all those proposed into a maintenance cat, and then re-notify the appropriate projects that these will be draftified in, say, 6 months unless there is significant improvement on them, and then follow the steps above. This should allow those that are easily proven notable to be taken out of the cat, or catch errors, so that there is far less bemoaning when the draftication happens. --Masem (t) 14:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think this is a better idea. Maybe give it a year and put up a notification on each categorised page. SportingFlyer T·C 17:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. This is such a terrible, terrible, really bad idea. To start, I want to let anyone thinking of voting here know that if this passes, BilledMammal will continue with several others every few months, until we've backdoor-deleted tens-to-hundreds of thousands of historical athletes and wasted enormous quantities of editor time. Is that really what makes the encyclopedia better? Now, for my reasons to oppose: many of my previous points at the Olympian discussion also apply here:
- Mass draftification is not the right approach for potentially non-notable articles. For one, it actually violates policy; WP:DRAFTIFY specifically states "Older articles should not be draftified. As a rule of thumb, articles older than 90 days should not be draftified without prior consensus at AfD." These articles are much older than 90 days, and this is not AfD. And it also states that it is not intended as a backdoor to deletion: this is effectively what this proposal is. Additionally, there are many more appropriate and more beneficial to the encyclopedia ways that these could be dealt with—for example, BilledMammal (the proposer) made the template Template:No significant coverage (sports) for the sole reason that articles would not have to be mass deleted (–BilledMammal: "I've created Template:No significant coverage (sports) to give editors an alternative to immediately [removing from mainspace] articles lacking significant coverage.") You could nominate the articles for deletion at AfD, PROD them, redirect them, or, my favorite, expand them.
- Many of these are notable and can be expanded. I admit that, unlike the Olympian discussion, I know nothing of cricket and am not great and finding sources for such articles, but I've seen users like Blue Squared Thing doing expansion after expansion after expansion to these articles before and after the discussion started. That clearly shows these are often notable and have the potential to be expanded.
- There is no wrong in keeping these. Unlike the deletionists seem to argue, the encyclopedia is not harmed in any way by the inclusion of stub articles. It is harmed, however, in my opinion by discussions like these which waste enormous quantities of editor time and result in the mass backdoor-deletion (specifically against policy) of enormous amounts of potentially notable articles. Explain in what way is Wikipedia made better by getting rid of notable articles (even if those articles are stubs)—would you rather have short articles on people you're interested in, or nothing at all?
- I could argue more but I am too tired to. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:56, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
For one, it actually violates policy; WP:DRAFTIFY specifically states...
WP:DRAFTIFY is an essay, not policy. Further, the section you are referring to, WP:DRAFTIFY#During new page review, isn't discussing draftification generally, but draftification during new page review. BilledMammal (talk) 15:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- The section is irrelevant—it still states that. But if you want a policy, see here:
Incubation must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion".
BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- It isn't being used as a backdoor to deletion; above, KatoKungLee gave an example of a Olympian from the previous RfC who has been improved and returned to mainspace, and you improved and restored Gyula Iványi - I see I made a few small edits to that one as well.
- It is being used to incubate the articles, so that those that are improvable can be improved and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
It isn't being used as a backdoor to deletion; above, KatoKungLee gave an example of a Olympian from the previous RfC who has been improved and returned to mainspace, and you improved and restored Gyula Iványi - I see I made a few small edits to that one as well.
– You're avoiding the 1,000 others that have not been improved... not to mention when I improved Gyula you and S Marshall tried really hard to delete it BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:49, 8 July 2023 (UTC)You're avoiding the 1,000 others that have not been improved...
We have five years to improve those articles. Of course, many can't be and in time will be deleted, but that is the purpose of this proposal; it is to give us time to sift through these microstubs that were dumped on the encyclopedia and improve the ones that are suitable and delete the ones that aren't without overloading processes like AfD. The fact that some have already been improved and restored to mainspace is proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.not to mention when I improved Gyula you and S Marshall tried really hard to delete it
At an AfD where after you and I collaborated to find a reliable source I !voted keep, a position that S Marshall concurred with BilledMammal (talk) 16:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)The fact that some have already been improved and restored to mainspace is proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.
Er... no. The fact that 2/1000 (0.2%) of the articles (of which, a much, much larger proportion are notable) were saved is not. at. all.proof that this isn't a backdoor to deletion.
At an AfD where after you and I collaborated to find a reliable source I !voted keep, a position that S Marshall concurred with
– Of course, after you initially voted delete and over an hour and a half of arguing about whether the sources were good enough switched to "keep" BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The section is irrelevant—it still states that. But if you want a policy, see here:
- Bringing articles to AfD is incredibly time-consuming. Multiple editors have to weigh in and do their due diligence in searching for sources to argue for or against notability (or whatever grounds the article is nominated for). Then there are debates which can just be so energy-draining. And hundreds of articles are sent to AfD a week. If notability were to be challenged on every single one here, that would take time and energy away from other deletion discussions. Doing it in bulk like this, while takes a month and a hundred-plus editors, takes far less time and editors' hours overall. SWinxy (talk) 01:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Where did I say AfD is the only option? BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - Best route to go. GoodDay (talk) 15:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per WhatAmIDoing. Spy-cicle💥 Talk? 15:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support It is clear that microstubs with insiginificant database sources are unacceptable. If you think some of these are notable and can be expanded, then no one's stopping you. But the interpretation that playing a single game of sport means you are automatically notable here and exempt from sourcing requirements is wrong and outdated. Bulk draftification is absolutely an appropriate response to recognizing that these articles are simply not ready for mainspace, and I believe the impossiblity of sorting though Lugnuts's mass-creation individually justifies an extension of the rule of thumb regarding article age. Reywas92Talk 15:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose I thank BilledMammal for the courtesy ping. I don't like the idea of hiding the intent to mass delete these articles. Delaying a mass deletion by 5 years is still a mass deletion, I think we're be better off with a more honest proposal to massively delete them on a more immediate time scale. I also am concerned that these files affected would be disproportionately be of Indian, South African, and Sri Lankan athletes where Wikipedia already has an Anglo-American skew, and this proposal would have the disparate impact of making that issue worse. I also don't like that this proposal seems to be a punitive one aimed at Lugnuts. I admit that I personally don't like that Lugnuts took no care in creating or maintaining the articles that they created. I also definitely sympathize with those who do the work of curating Wikipedia and the kind of mess that we've inherited from Lugnuts's negligence. Abzeronow (talk) 15:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
Oppose I am opposing this for the reasons I opposed the Olympic one, although this one is even easier to expand the articles on because some are actually around recently enough to have digital coverage! QuicoleJR (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- Support - As I commented in the original WP:LUGSTUBS RFC:
It's clear that some kind of cleanup is required, and increasing AfD workload by something like half for literal years simply cannot be the only solution. The proposed extremely extended draftification seems like a suitably conservative approach (to the point that I'm not sure five years is truly required), giving editors plenty of time rescue any articles that warrant rescuing while ensuring that (most of) those which do not warrant retaining are eventually (even if after an extensive wait) removed.
-Ljleppan (talk) 16:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Oppose as an obvious backdoor to deletion. And quite frankly, anyone who doesn't think that mass draftification won't hit their editing area of choice sooner or later is naive. --Rschen7754 16:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- If my area of editing had a mess like this, I would be ashamed of it and first in line to get it cleaned out. This philosophy of "everything related to my area of editing should automatically warrant its own article without regard for high quality sources" just creates a mess that other users then have to clean up, and I'm glad to see that it's getting shot down more and more frequently. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Rschen7754. Obvious backdoor to deletion. Where does it end? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 16:30, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - Thanks for the notification; my stance has not changed. I oppose the mass deletion of articles whether it is explicit or via a backdoor, and whether it is done immediately or boiling frog-style. The latter is more insidious, though; per David Eppstein's comment from the original proposal: (I oppose this)
not so much because I care about these Olympian sub-stubs, but because I do care about WP:CREEP and about not expanding the already-problematic process of using draftification as a way of getting rid of articles for which there is no immediate prospect of active improvement and resubmission. Regardless of whether the gotten-rid-of-articles are deleted from draftspace or just left there to molder forever, they have been eliminated out-of-process as Wikipedia content, debasing both our proper deletion processes and our proper use of draftspace to foster drafts.
I also oppose -- as strongly as it is possible to oppose something -- the continued personal insults toward Lugnuts that seem to crop up in every single one of these things. WP:CIVIL is a policy. Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Oppose: Other editors have addressed several cogent policy concerns, and @WhatamIdoing has demonstrated that at least one of the cricketers listed meets WP:GNG or WP:ATHLETE. My concern is more procedural. Rather than having deletion discussions every few months to deal with Lugnut's work, time might be better spent organizing with the relevant WikiProjects to systematically review articles for notability and only then nominating verified non-notable articles for mass deletion (or PRODing individual articles as articles are evaluated). There's no reason to give other editors five years to fix things; the community should start that work now. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- These have already been around for years, clearly no one really cares to systematically review them and it seems disingenuous to think someone will actually get through tens of thousands of these. If people do in fact care to sift through all of them, they can from draftspace as well. Reywas92Talk 19:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- 'Oppose per Rschen7754 and also... they aren't great, but it isn't really a crisis, is it? Let them simmer in the big pot of mainspace a while, the flavour will probably improve; no need to kick them back onto the cutting board (draftspace). Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Edward-Woodrow I don't have an opinion on this proposal, but I've found that the attitude of
Let them simmer in the big pot of mainspace a while
tends to end up with poor quality articles not being improved at all. They tend to be improved when there's a time limit. This is why people who participate at AfD discussions tend to be sensitive about AfD being used as a method of improving articles articles instead of exploring whether or not articles need to be deleted. (Summoned by bot) I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 18:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- @I dream of horses: The thing is when someone proposes so. many. articles. to be draftifed, and after that, so. many. more. articles, to the point that there's tens of thousands of articles in draftspace that will soon be deleted, there's gonna be a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11 Unfortunately, mass-direct-deletion will cause more controversy, to such a degree that it's not going to happen. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor.
Exactly. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @I dream of horses: The thing is when someone proposes so. many. articles. to be draftifed, and after that, so. many. more. articles, to the point that there's tens of thousands of articles in draftspace that will soon be deleted, there's gonna be a whole lot of improvable articles being removed through the backdoor. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Most of these have already been simmering for many years...there's a reason they haven't been expanded already and a reason it only took mass-creation to write them, these simply are not notable people needing articles. Reywas92Talk 19:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Edward-Woodrow I don't have an opinion on this proposal, but I've found that the attitude of
- Support the solution to mass-X is mass-Y. Nothing wrong with this method it's a measured response to a previous action. Slippery slope fear mongering presented by Rschen7754 is a logical fallacy aka appeal to fear ("mass draftification won't hit their editing area of choice sooner or later is naive"). -- GreenC 17:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- For the record, BilledMammal has not left the option of expanding this to other articles off the table, albeit admitting:
If we ever go down that path we'll need a tool more powerful than Quarry to build the list.
. While this is a hypothetical, they have stated as a concrete idea:While I don't plan to include creations by multiple editors in the same group, consideration has been given to creating groups of mass created cricketers made by other editors, such as BlackJack.
You can read the full discussion here, although it's understandable you weren't aware of it since it wasn't made public in this RfC. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- He does seem to want to go after others, see his comment there:
However, I do want to use this group to stretch the boundaries of what the process can be used for; in it I want to do at least some of the following: Change the article selection criteria, to avoid the specific values of the first group becoming a standard part of the process; Nominate articles created by editors other than Lugnuts, to avoid the process becoming a "Lugnuts cleanup process"; Nominate articles on topics outside the sports topic area - or at least the Olympics topic area - to avoid the process becoming a "sports cleanup process"; [and] Nominate a larger number of articles, to avoid the process being limited to ~1000 article batches
BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Yes; I have considered other groups of mass created articles, such as those created by BlackJack. I would agree that there isn't a slippery slope here though, as it will only ever apply to groups of mass created articles that don't include any significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- He does seem to want to go after others, see his comment there:
- You go look at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification - where one proposal said Nominate articles on topics outside the sports topic area - or at least the Olympics topic area - to avoid the process becoming a "sports cleanup process". Please tell me how it is supposed to only apply to sports. --Rschen7754 20:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- For the record, BilledMammal has not left the option of expanding this to other articles off the table, albeit admitting:
- Support We've long since discussed this repeatedly at this point and it relates back to many other discussions the community has already had, including making NSPORT explicitly clear that all sports related biographies must meet the GNG when challenged. The alternative to draftification here is outright deleting all of these articles, which I would also support, because the vast, vast majority of them are non-notable athletes who should have never had pages made on them in the first place. And any who are notable can very easily be recreated, considering the existing micro-stubs pinned only to database entries are tantamount to not having an article at all in the first place with how useless they are. Any sports Wikiproject editors above should probably focus on actually having good properly referenced articles on athletes in the first place, rather than complaining after the fact. The former should have been your requirement from the get-go and y'all should have challenged Lugnuts on their mass creation right when it started. Then we wouldn't have a mess to clean up at all. SilverserenC 17:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
And any who are notable can very easily be recreated ... Any sports Wikiproject editors above should probably focus on actually having good properly referenced articles on athletes in the first place
– Silver seren, do you know how difficult it is to write a properly referenced decent-sized article on a historical athlete? To find the sources, read them all, rephrase them and write them in the article - to add the references, do all the formatting, etc.? It often takes me hours to do that and in some cases (e.g. Draft:C. O. Brocato, my current project) days. You think us "sports Wikiproject editors" can "very easily" do that to tens of thousands of articles, with the consequence mass deletion if we do not? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)- Not what I said at all. I said the Wikiproject should have prevented the mass creation done in the first place (and should be actively preventing any such creation going on right now without proper referencing). Draftification is a very minor consequence, compared to deletion, of this mass creation of improperly made articles that should have been dealt with years ago. SilverserenC 18:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Draftification results in deletion, so it is exactly the same consequence as deletion. The proposal here is not materially different from saying "I'm going to delete this unless you do a lot of work on my timeline". The timeline might sound generous to some editors – the proposal is ultimately to require the clean up of an average of two articles about cricketers every day for the next five years (plus one article about early Olympiads, plus who knows how many others will be proposed in the coming weeks), but it is still a proposal to delete them if people don't do the work on his timeline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Is it better to send cricketer after cricketer to AfD individually, though? SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer - Mass drafting articles is no different than mass creating articles. In both cases, the person behind it didn't feel like putting in the time (despite WP:NORUSH existing) to research the article due to time concerns.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, but most of these wouldn't survive an AfD, and the alternative - if this fails - is to AfD them one by one. SportingFlyer T·C 18:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We don't know that most of these wouldn't survive an AfD. We have editors asserting their preferences with no proof.
- So far, I've looked into three of the players proposed for deletion-via-draft, and I've found newspaper articles (articles entirely and specifically focused on each individual, not just a sentence in an article that's really about a game they played in or a list of team members) for all three of them. For two out of the three, a bit more than an hour's work (each) showed that the subjects are clearly notable, and for the third, 10 minutes' work showed that it was at least possible that he's notable.
- Where's your evidence that what's true for these three would not also be true for the next three, or for the next 300? WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:08, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, but most of these wouldn't survive an AfD, and the alternative - if this fails - is to AfD them one by one. SportingFlyer T·C 18:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer - Mass drafting articles is no different than mass creating articles. In both cases, the person behind it didn't feel like putting in the time (despite WP:NORUSH existing) to research the article due to time concerns.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:19, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Is it better to send cricketer after cricketer to AfD individually, though? SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Draftification results in deletion, so it is exactly the same consequence as deletion. The proposal here is not materially different from saying "I'm going to delete this unless you do a lot of work on my timeline". The timeline might sound generous to some editors – the proposal is ultimately to require the clean up of an average of two articles about cricketers every day for the next five years (plus one article about early Olympiads, plus who knows how many others will be proposed in the coming weeks), but it is still a proposal to delete them if people don't do the work on his timeline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Not what I said at all. I said the Wikiproject should have prevented the mass creation done in the first place (and should be actively preventing any such creation going on right now without proper referencing). Draftification is a very minor consequence, compared to deletion, of this mass creation of improperly made articles that should have been dealt with years ago. SilverserenC 18:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Such sloppy articles written by a condemnable fan don't deserve space on this wiki. Either an editor performs research and writes about notable subjects or they can leave this website. I, for one, enjoy seeing the political winds turn as we become more exclusionist. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- And here's those violations of WP:CIVIL I mentioned above. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose, all I have to say has been summed up pretty well by BeanieFan11:
if this passes, BilledMammal will continue with several others every few months, until we've backdoor-deleted tens-to-hundreds of thousands of historical athletes and wasted enormous quantities of editor time.
LilianaUwU (talk / contributions) 18:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Support per Silver seren and others, but 5 years is way too long for them to sit in Draft space before deletion. I would prefer 1 year. Nosferattus (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Not convinced by the oppose arguments. There's no slippery slope that'll come for your WikiProject next. These were mass-creations straight from databases. When a user (DG) had systemic reliability issues in GAs, the presumption was to delete-by-default and rescue on a case-by-case basis. This one is about a user with systemic issues re: notability, and the logical response is the same as for DG. If this were a WikiProject I'm a member of and have to deal with the maintenance burden of, I'd have opposed these mass-creations from the start, and I'd now be screaming on rooftops for them to be draftified. What exactly are we here to do, except build good, minimum-medium-length articles on notable topics? Microstubs aren't fine to keep around indefinitely, they're an anomaly to be eventually eliminated; they don't provide encyclopedic coverage and go against the first pillar and WP:NOT. Non-notable articles must eventually be deleted, so to keep them around is to require editors to eventually go through each and decide whether to merge, redirect, or delete. We're talking many thousands of articles, and this unequivocally creates a huge maintenance burden, for articles that no one is reading. When someone created them with only minutes of effort, and even claiming that he inserted false statements into the microstube, that's disruption, and the best response is to mass-draftify. Not just these, but every single Lugnuts microstub sourced exclusively to databases. That's what we should have decided back when Lugnuts was banned, and it's really too bad we're now seeing "RfC fatigue" on this issue. By the way, are we supposed to completely disregard WP:SPORTBASIC #5, which was added after strong agreement at a well-attended RfC? The real "back door" is stealth-overriding that RfC outcome, not back-door deletionism. These articles must cite a non-database SIGCOV source inline; "the sources exist" is irrelevant. DFlhb (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose We thankfully have very guidelines guidelines for Cricket player notability. It states that "cricketers who have played at the highest domestic level, or in the lower levels of international cricket,[a] may have sufficient coverage about them to justify an article". I examined a random subset of these articles, and they are clearly articles that by and large fall within this gray area of potentially notable depending on source material. Just because the stub uses 1-2 sources today doesn't mean they don't exist, we have to take each article on its own and edit it. Given that there is no deadline, mass draft-fying these is basically backdoor deletion, which is against deletion policy. Steven Walling • talk 19:31, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Scroll up a bit on that page, which says "In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the general notability guideline." as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as Sports Reference's college football and basketball databases." and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to merit a stand-alone article." These pages do not meet this standard and should be out of mainspace if they aren't shown to do so with significant coverage. "May have sufficient coverage" does not mean "must have an article". Reywas92Talk 19:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- The fundamental problem with this proposal is that it's trying to impose a WP:DEADLINE on improving them. Other people must meet my deadline because I don't like the current state of these articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Any editor can challenge the notability of articles and sent them to AfD without improving them, whenever he wishes. If a rule prohibiting "deadlines" existed, it would be impossible to delete non-notable articles altogether. Avilich (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- This isn't AFD though, it's a proposal to generate a backdoor to deletion which is explicitly against our deletion policy.
BilledMammal is doing this because they know that mass AFDs would never pass, but they can pretend each draft will get considered before being eventually deleted.(struck per my comment elsewhere) The policy is against draftifying older articles because everyone knows it means putting them in a graveyard no one will ever see. Steven Walling • talk 01:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)BilledMammal is doing this because they know that mass AFDs would never pass, but they can pretend each draft will get considered before being eventually deleted.
That's an WP:AGF violation. Please strike it.The policy is against draftifying older articles because everyone knows it means putting them in a graveyard no one will ever see.
Policy is against draftifying older articles without consensus. This is an extremely prominent discussion; the notion that we are quietly slipping them into a graveyard without anyone seeing is bizarre. Further, if there is a consensus for this I will be providing lists of articles to the relevant Wikiprojects. BilledMammal (talk) 10:31, 18 July 2023 (UTC)- @Steven Walling, I have to agree, you should strike that. Valereee (talk) 10:35, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not striking anything. "This guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of obvious evidence to the contrary".
- The last RFC close clearly noted that there were many members of the community that objected to using a Village Pump survey to circumvent normal deletion processes and policy. Ignoring this objection and presuming that the first RFC close creates a precedent as if it were an approved policy or guideline is an obvious pattern of behavior, and BilledMammal has numerous user pages (like User:BilledMammal/Sander.v.Ginkel Olympian stubs) that show an intent to keep trying to use this polling tactic to remove stubs from mainspace as a form of backdoor deletion for which there is no support in policy. Steven Walling • talk 22:09, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, please indicate what constitutes obvious evidence. What you've described is opinion. Valereee (talk) 22:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Here's the problem: is doing this because they know that mass AFDs would never pass, but they can pretend each draft will get considered before being eventually deleted is assuming bad faith. You are discussing motivations rather than edits. That's a problem. Valereee (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- BilledMammal has a long history of nominating sports bios at AFD. Here is just a sample. One time they nominated dozens of footballers in one day, which resulted in an ANI thread where at the end of it they explicitly declared they were going to go around trying to stop people from creating large numbers of stubs. This notion was discussed and roundly rejected at an ArbCom-mandated RFC. So next they proposed WP:LUGSTUBS and all the potential next polls they want to run. I'm sure they think they're trying to improve the encyclopedia, but don't tell me it's not obvious they don't want these stubs deleted, because they've done so directly in the past. Steven Walling • talk 00:44, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- Dozens of editors have a "long history of nominating sports bios at AfD". This is because there have been tens of thousands of sports bios that do not meet GNG. BilledMammal has also redirected a very large number of sportsperson articles that objectively fail SPORTSCRIT, rather than trying to get them deleted. And a non-trivial number of the articles he successfully AfD'd were only taken there after his redirects were reverted without the page being improved. So no it is not "obvious" he or anyone else supporting this proposal wants the stubs deleted as opposed to simply moved out of mainspace until they comply with guideline requirements. JoelleJay (talk) 01:12, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, In the link you provided Billed Mammal says, To prevent the problem of mass created articles from expanding I have also been looking at editors currently engaged in mass creations and asking them to determine if there is a community consensus for the actions. In some cases, this may be forthcoming; in others it might not.
- Today, one of these editors was kind enough to do so, and has opened a discussion at the bots noticeboard. Interested editors may contribute to this test case there. Note that this discussion should focus solely on content, not conduct; the editor is clearly acting in good faith and has done nothing wrong, even if there isn't a consensus for this mass creation. There, BilledMammal seems to simply object to mass creations that don't have consensus; nothing there that provides evidence of nefarious motivations. The ANI you're linking to found that All WP:MASSCREATEd articles (except those not required to meet GNG) must be cited to at least one source which would plausibly contribute to GNG: that is, which constitutes significant coverage in an independent reliable secondary source. Again there is nothing that provides evidence of Billed Mammal's motivations. I feel a little uncomfortable having to explain to an admin the difference between discussing edits and discussing bad-faith motivations, especially when that admin keeps doubling down. You got it right when you said I'm sure they think they're trying to improve the encyclopedia, but you got it wrong when you said is doing this because they know that mass AFDs would never pass, but they can pretend each draft will get considered before being eventually deleted, and if you can't tell the difference, there's a problem. Valereee (talk) 09:58, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- So @Steven Walling, this is a no? Valereee (talk) 22:30, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- Valereee: I'm not going to argue in circles with you about this. It's painfully obvious from BilledMammal's actions that they're on a mission to remove mass numbers of stubs from Wikipedia in any way they can. If you can't see that something is a duck when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I can't help you. Steven Walling • talk 05:02, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- So @Steven Walling, this is a no? Valereee (talk) 22:30, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- BilledMammal has a long history of nominating sports bios at AFD. Here is just a sample. One time they nominated dozens of footballers in one day, which resulted in an ANI thread where at the end of it they explicitly declared they were going to go around trying to stop people from creating large numbers of stubs. This notion was discussed and roundly rejected at an ArbCom-mandated RFC. So next they proposed WP:LUGSTUBS and all the potential next polls they want to run. I'm sure they think they're trying to improve the encyclopedia, but don't tell me it's not obvious they don't want these stubs deleted, because they've done so directly in the past. Steven Walling • talk 00:44, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- Here's the problem: is doing this because they know that mass AFDs would never pass, but they can pretend each draft will get considered before being eventually deleted is assuming bad faith. You are discussing motivations rather than edits. That's a problem. Valereee (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, please indicate what constitutes obvious evidence. What you've described is opinion. Valereee (talk) 22:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, I have to agree, you should strike that. Valereee (talk) 10:35, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Any editor can challenge the notability of articles and sent them to AfD without improving them, whenever he wishes. If a rule prohibiting "deadlines" existed, it would be impossible to delete non-notable articles altogether. Avilich (talk) 21:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- The fundamental problem with this proposal is that it's trying to impose a WP:DEADLINE on improving them. Other people must meet my deadline because I don't like the current state of these articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Scroll up a bit on that page, which says "In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the general notability guideline." as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as Sports Reference's college football and basketball databases." and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to merit a stand-alone article." These pages do not meet this standard and should be out of mainspace if they aren't shown to do so with significant coverage. "May have sufficient coverage" does not mean "must have an article". Reywas92Talk 19:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support For at least 10 years the instructions at WP:NSPORT have been that "The topic-specific notability guidelines described on this page do not replace the general notability guideline" and "the article must still eventually provide sources indicating that the subject meets the general notability guideline". The bulk of the articles nominated here were clearly created in violation of that. There is no evidence that this is a "backdoor to deletion", since this RfC is being broadcasted through the front door in a community forum, and the whole argument just sounds like obstructionism and stonewalling. Avilich (talk) 20:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - the established, consensus position when top-level cricketer articles which can't be improved come to AfD is that redirection to a suitable list is the preferred alternative. Sometimes lists don't exist so we delete (or some mug goes and creates the list). Sometimes people have created articles on cricketers that have not played at the top-level and we delete those. There are something like 573 articles listed below that BilledMammal is prepared to redirect to straight away - these were the easy ones to identify. They provided me with a list of 625 other articles (which, annoyingly, is two short of 1,200). I've been through those. I think something like 306 have suitable redirect targets. That would leave 319 to send to draft (list at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox7 - where there will be some notes about this eventually because the geography is interesting). Honestly, that seems about right. **If** we're redirecting the 573+306, then I'm not that unhappy about drafting the others. To be honest, I could probably identify 15 or so that should be flat out deletes. I'm sure we'll have ended up missing some we'd want to keep - but people can work those up anyway if they want to. I think the first thing to do is to confirm that we're looking at redirecting almost 75% of these. If that's OK, then I could probably get on board with this despite my general reservations Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:04, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - this is going to sound really lame but I'll end up supporting whatever @Blue Square Thing decides. I don't think I've ever made a statement like this at an RfC or RfA. I know Blue Square Thing's been looking at this issue for weeks now and they've done a lot of detailed analysis. He/she is a prolific cricket editor but also supportive of purging unsuitable articles. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 01:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Some additional explanation. The initial planning for this was done at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification. This caused some concern among some other editors and discussion ensued at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket#Heads up. Since then, Blue Square Thing has been involved in looking at this from the cricket content aspect.
- I believe mass-deletion, properly done, is a good way to fix the problem of insufficiently referenced stubs.
- Each BLP represents a serious obligation by all of us to the person who's the subject of the article to keep their article correct and prevent it being subverted for libelous attacks. We have over 6 million articles to watch now. With BLPs, if in doubt as to notability and the availability of good refs, I believe we should err on the side of deleting or draftifying marginal articles.
- -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 03:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yikes! I just saw the comment below about Lugnuts admitting that he introduced deliberate errors [3] to BLPs. If in doubt about a group of these BLPs, we definitely need to get them out of article space. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 11:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Fwiw I've yet to come across an article about a sports person where I consider Lugnuts has introduced deliberate errors. There are errors, of coure - we all do that. But nothing that I can even begin to imagine is in any way deliberate. And I've looked at, well, a "few" of their article creations over the years... The outgoing message you linked to was clearly a "fuck you all" response by someone who clearly felt hard done by at that point. It's a shame, because it will presumably prejudice any appeal they might want to make, but it's not the first time someone's responded like that and it won't be the last. I should say, btw, that I appreciate the sentiment above. Thanks. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yikes! I just saw the comment below about Lugnuts admitting that he introduced deliberate errors [3] to BLPs. If in doubt about a group of these BLPs, we definitely need to get them out of article space. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 11:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
I think the first thing to do is to confirm that we're looking at redirecting almost 75% of these.
Yes; as long as no reasonable objections are raised to the redirect targets then that is what we are looking at doing as a WP:BOLD action permitted by If this proposal is successful #5. The only question is whether you would prefer the articles to be moved to draft space and a new redirect created in their place, or a redirect created over the existing article? I am satisfied with either option. BilledMammal (talk) 07:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- I think we have to redirect the article as it stands now. There are a number that have been developed from stubs that Lugnuts created (Alfred Hollings for example) and if we add a new redirect and have a draft then I don't see how people would find the draft? It also preserves the page history, sources, images where they exist (like the one mentioned below) etc... I appreciate that there may be people who would like to see articles like these just removed, but a really substantial subset of them have potential for development - unfortunately it's difficult to be certain which ones do without digging quite hard.
- The targets can be changed if they need to be - there are ones I added to the list at my sandbox where I was choosing one of a number of possible redirects quickly, but that's easy to change at any point Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:12, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Personally, I see benefits of both approaches. Creating the redirect over the existing article makes it easier to find the underlying content, prevents it from even being deleted, and makes it easier to restore if improved. Meanwhile, having a new redirect, and thus allowing the article to be put in draft space, makes it easier for editors to work on the draft.
- I would say that for the second option I would create a R from draftified template, that would include a link to the draftified article and thus make it easier for interested editors to find the draft.
- Overall, I don't have a preference; I want whatever option works best for the editors invested in the topic area, and if there is anything I can during the process of redirecting/draftifying that can make it easier for those editors I am happy to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 15:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing: Considering the lack of objections to a WP:BOLD redirect in line with If this proposal is successful #5, and the success of automatically creating lists of players based on these current articles, we are definately looking at redirecting 75%+ of these; I suspect we will in fact redirect almost all of them.
- My plan, if this proposal is successful, is to immediately tag them all with an appropriate version of Template:Special draft; I will then create the redirect targets where they don't already exist and produce a list of proposed targets. I'll run that list by you and the rest of WikiProject Cricket, and then when any issues with it have been resolved implement it.
- This last step will probably take a month, so there should be plenty of time for editors to notice the template on the articles and remove it if in error, in line with our previous discussion at WikiProject Cricket. BilledMammal (talk) 08:12, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - this is going to sound really lame but I'll end up supporting whatever @Blue Square Thing decides. I don't think I've ever made a statement like this at an RfC or RfA. I know Blue Square Thing's been looking at this issue for weeks now and they've done a lot of detailed analysis. He/she is a prolific cricket editor but also supportive of purging unsuitable articles. A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 01:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support I've had concerns about these articles for awhile. The very early entries will have been hand written by umpires at a time when spelling was option, later collated into stat books, and so onto an online database. Where there are no other sources to prove existence, there's nothing to say any particular article isn't just someone elses details written down wrong or fudged during the multiple format shifts. I've been few several, both after this RFC started and when I originally became aware of the issue, and haven't been able to find any additional sources. The solution to all this is to create properly sourced articles, something only longterm editors seem to be able to get away with ignoring. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per WP:LUGSTUBS. Lugnuts at the very least was excessively careless when creating articles and, if his parting message is to be believed, purposefully put errors into his articles (yes I know many think he wasn’t serious about this).The response to mass-creation of failing articles has to also be something of mass-effect, otherwise the problem is unsolvable. Clicking on five at random I found five short, single-reference articles about 19th-century/early 20th century cricketers with limited numbers of appearances. If articles do not match this profile, then bring them back to main space. FOARP (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose First, I see above a great point -
Mass-creating and mass-drafting articles seems to be two sides of the same coin
. Second, I see above the repetition of a not-great point, that the creation of these articles took little effort so why put effort into expanding them... if that's anyone's actual view, I don't know what they think Wikipedia is. Why it's being repeated as an argument is greatly confusing. Third, most importantly, there are users like myself who are interested in expanding such articles, but the Olympian mass draftification was so recent that there's no attention span left as well for these. The speedy mass-draftification of many more articles was a major concern introduced in the Olympian discussion, and I'm sad to see that it has proved true. WP:NORUSH. Kingsif (talk) 21:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC) - Support per above. Therapyisgood (talk) 21:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Noting that I chose one random person on the list - Clement Bengough - and despite knowing barely anything on where to look for sources on cricketers, was able to quickly locate a full-page article on him from a major newspaper — 38 years after his death. BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- With all due respect, I'm not quite sure that article shows what you're hoping for it to show, i.e. that these articles can be easily sourced - you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area. His cricket career is but a sentence in that story and doesn't even mention the games he is supposedly notable for. SportingFlyer T·C 22:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
"you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area"
- LOL. I don't want to be mean to Beaniefan but when I saw his description I was expecting a full bio from the NYT. Instead it's a "Here's this weird old English dude that used to live here" local interest story from a small town newspaper. And this really was the issue with a lot of the LUGSTUBS: even when they were notable, they weren't notable for the thing Lugnuts wrote the article about. It's like the time I checked a cricketers's article and they turned out to have been an RAF Air Marshal. In this case, cricket barely features and the story is entirely about what an outcast this person was - it's a nice piece but I'd hesitate to say it shows anything towards notability. FOARP (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- With all due respect, I'm not quite sure that article shows what you're hoping for it to show, i.e. that these articles can be easily sourced - you've managed to pick one person at random who received a full-length story on him in an American paper not because he was a cricketer, but because he was a local interest story for being a foreigner and "social outcast" who moved to the area. His cricket career is but a sentence in that story and doesn't even mention the games he is supposedly notable for. SportingFlyer T·C 22:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Whatamidoing. Ideally these articles should probably be merged into lists, but as it stands there's nothing too wrong with the status quo. J947 † edits 23:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. I made a lot of arguments at the prior RfC that are applicable here, so I won't repeat them. JoelleJay (talk) 23:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
- Strongly Oppose Mass draftification of this many articles without scrutiny is reckless and irresponsible. This also bypasses and usurps the existing AfD process. A quality check by users needs to be implemented before even suggesting these articles be purged. As I've stated twice before already, this is Wikipedia equivalent to the Beeching Axe. This action would also set a bad precedent for future actions toward other projects and articles on Wikipedia. This could be seen as the website purging articles to fulfill a political or social agenda by parties outside the website. Use the AfD process, not mass purge. Otherwise, content that meets notability guidelines in a mass purge could be easily removed and deleted, much like how crucial rail lines were destroyed during the Beeching Axe, creating logistical and public transportation-related nightmares for the United Kingdom which still plague the country today. The same scrutiny which was used to remove railway lines during the Beeching Axe is being demonstrated in this proposal. I refuse to support "The Great Purge" or a repeat of the Beeching Axe.— MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 00:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- What a strange concept to compare elimination of physical infrastructure that people rode in their daily lives to the removal of single-line descriptions of sportspeople with brief careers only appearing in databases..... Reywas92Talk 04:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That still doesn't change the fact the mentality of this proposal mirrors the reckless behavior done during Beeching Axe. I also don't appreciate the attempt to undermine my point with a passive aggressive sarcasm, as that is very unprofessional. And it's also the precedent this sets, as well as the fact AfD is being entirely bypassed and usurped. If I remember correctly, there are hundreds of articles tied into this. Do you know for a fact if all of them are not notable? Have you evaluated every single one? Can you say for certain wiping out over 300 articles at a time without scrutinizing every single one of them first through the AfD process isn't potentially reckless? — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:MatthewAnderson707, how familiar are you with the background of this proposal? Were you at WP:LUGSTUBS? It feels like you're just finding out about all this today. Folly Mox (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Again, it's the dangerous precedent this could set for other projects and articles beyond the ones related to WP:LUGSTUBS. Purging hundreds of articles at a time without properly checking the content? Can you not see how that could get out of hand should this be allowed? At the very least, use a more careful approach and ensure if EVERY article being deleted isn't notable.— MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:26, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The entire point of an RfC is to gather input from people who were previously uninvolved in the discussion. Literally the first sentence of WP:RFC.
Requests for comment (RfC) is a process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines or article content.
(bolding mine) Gnomingstuff (talk) 14:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What was reckless was creating one stub per minute without assessing if they were notable BEFORE they were created and then expecting thousands of man-hours to be spent debating them individually at AFD, what a joke. I find it sad that people can put zero effort into making pages but them expect others to scrutinize if scraping them from databases was appropriate (hint: it was determined long ago at WP:MASSCREATE and elsewhere that it's not). Reywas92Talk 14:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- And I find it sad people support a reckless mass deletion of hundreds of articles without any proper checks or balances first, to ensure they're not all mass created stubs. So we should just take one person's word for it and done without questioning it? What's to stop an individual using this proposed process from going too far with this and getting articles they don't like, abusing this power? Suppose one article happens to meet guidelines ends up in the list of articles to be mass drafted? This also doesn't excuse the fact this is a blatant back door usurpation of AfD. This may seem like a good idea at first and may work out to the benefit of an actual problem, but there is every way this could snowball out of control later and cause massive damage and abuse of power, going from bypassing a bureaucracy to get something done to deleting something "because I said so". Better to try and kill this before it starts than deal with cleaning up a recklessly created mess later. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 04:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- First, this isn't coming through the backdoor. It's coming through the front door, with a herald announcing that it is doing so. In theory, it could have been proposed at AfD, at it is appropriate to propose draftification at that venue, but I think, and I hope you would agree, that it is better for these proposals to be done in a more visible location.
- Second, you don't need to take my word for it. You are welcome to check the query that produced the list. Further, if an article that does happen to meet the criteria above ends up in the list of articles to be mass drafted then it can be restored by any editor to mainspace. Given that the process is highly scrutinized and operates only by consensus it cannot be abused in the way you fear. BilledMammal (talk) 05:11, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- The checks and balances are the five extra years the articles are protected from deletion plus the greater attention and prioritization they will receive from wikiprojects. JoelleJay (talk) 00:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- And I find it sad people support a reckless mass deletion of hundreds of articles without any proper checks or balances first, to ensure they're not all mass created stubs. So we should just take one person's word for it and done without questioning it? What's to stop an individual using this proposed process from going too far with this and getting articles they don't like, abusing this power? Suppose one article happens to meet guidelines ends up in the list of articles to be mass drafted? This also doesn't excuse the fact this is a blatant back door usurpation of AfD. This may seem like a good idea at first and may work out to the benefit of an actual problem, but there is every way this could snowball out of control later and cause massive damage and abuse of power, going from bypassing a bureaucracy to get something done to deleting something "because I said so". Better to try and kill this before it starts than deal with cleaning up a recklessly created mess later. — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 04:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:MatthewAnderson707, how familiar are you with the background of this proposal? Were you at WP:LUGSTUBS? It feels like you're just finding out about all this today. Folly Mox (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That still doesn't change the fact the mentality of this proposal mirrors the reckless behavior done during Beeching Axe. I also don't appreciate the attempt to undermine my point with a passive aggressive sarcasm, as that is very unprofessional. And it's also the precedent this sets, as well as the fact AfD is being entirely bypassed and usurped. If I remember correctly, there are hundreds of articles tied into this. Do you know for a fact if all of them are not notable? Have you evaluated every single one? Can you say for certain wiping out over 300 articles at a time without scrutinizing every single one of them first through the AfD process isn't potentially reckless? — MatthewAnderson707 (talk|sandbox) 08:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- What a strange concept to compare elimination of physical infrastructure that people rode in their daily lives to the removal of single-line descriptions of sportspeople with brief careers only appearing in databases..... Reywas92Talk 04:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. I am generally opposed to mass actions of this type. Despite my reservations, and as with the prior Olympics RfC, I support this proposal given its narrow focus. My support is based on the following:
- (1) Mass creation. The articles at issue were the product of Lugnuts' well-documented mass process in which thousands of articles were created, often at the rate of approximately a minute per article.
- (2) Lack of substance. The articles are microstubs that contain very limited narrative text, simply reciting that the person was a cricket player who appeared in X number of games for X team. If the articles are ultimately deleted, nothing of real substance is lost. If SIGCOV is later uncovered and brought forth, and given the fact that only a minute or so was devoted to the original effort, the articles can be re-created without any meaningful loss of prior effort.
- (3) Violation of SPORTBASIC. The articles violate prong 5 of WP:SPORTBASIC which provides: "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." The articles here are sourced only to database sources and do not include SIGCOV.
- (4) Cleanup of "deliberate errors". A departure from normal processes is also warranted by the unique case involving Lugnuts' admission in August 2022 (here) that he added "countless deliberate errors on pages that have very few pages views." Draftification of these microstubs allows us to undertake screening for such errors before any such articles are returned to main space.
- In sum, I support draftification in this narrow situation. However, this RfC should not be precedent to evade regular order in less egregious circumstances. In such circumstances, normal AfD or redirect procedures should be followed. Cbl62 (talk) 00:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think the claim of
countless deliberate errors
is just plain trolling. It is just too much hard work to be plausible. Has anyone detected any of these countless errors? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:41, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think the claim of
- Support per previous RFC on Olympic athletes mass draftification. The fundamental question is if these articles would survive AFD if hypothetically debated in full, and based on the criteria described, they would all be closed "delete" without some compelling discovery of new sources. Even editors who would !vote "keep" in such AFDs can hopefully agree that a hypothetical article with such patchy sources would have a rough time at AFD. Since this is draftification not deletion, if it turns out that there was something valid to use as the basis of a future article, it'll still be there. But given that it's been some years since these were created with no substantial edits from others (per the criteria to build the list), it seems highly likely that most of these articles simply don't pass the notability bar. SnowFire (talk) 04:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- They wouldn't all be closed delete. If they were individual AfD we'd probably be looking at something like 20-30% keep based on expansion; 50-60% redirect and 20% delete. That's the way that these sorts of articles have gone at AfD over the last couple of years in general. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:11, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing: SportingFlyer says they sampled 7 articles and tried to see if they could be improved with more sources, and went 0/7. I'm not much of a cricket expert so my opinion might not matter, but I just tried 2 of those articles with simple Google searches, and also turned up nothing useful. I think 20-30% "keep by expansion" is a very optimistic estimate, and I'm not torn up about the difference between redirect and draftification/deletion. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd be interested in knowing what kind of searches @SportingFlyer: performed; a plain google search won't do the trick. Also, @SnowFire: I would trust Blue Square Thing as he seems to be the cricket expert here. Also, FWIW, I went 1/1 and so did WhatamIdoing. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11: Do you mean Clement Bengough for the article you investigated? Because I would absolutely still !vote delete on that article, even if the new mention you found was integrated, and I don't think my !vote would be unusual. I say this as someone who has voted reasonably inclusionist-y on things like D-list actors, so I'm absolutely a gettable keep vote if non-trivial coverage can be found. SnowFire (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You really don't think full-page feature stories from major newspapers improve his case for notability? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Full-page feature stories are never bad, but in his case it's a local story about someone who used to live there, completely unrelated to the reason why we claim he's notable (being a cricketer). I'd !vote delete at AfD if that were the only additional source presented since it's a human interest feature story unrelated to cricket. As far as my searches go, I use a couple major search engines with a focus on news and try a couple different search terms, which works well for modern players and horribly for older players, and also check the database sites to see if they have any additional news links. I feel like modern Indian players will be the easiest to save, at least using English language sourcing. SportingFlyer T·C 18:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You really don't think full-page feature stories from major newspapers improve his case for notability? BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11: Do you mean Clement Bengough for the article you investigated? Because I would absolutely still !vote delete on that article, even if the new mention you found was integrated, and I don't think my !vote would be unusual. I say this as someone who has voted reasonably inclusionist-y on things like D-list actors, so I'm absolutely a gettable keep vote if non-trivial coverage can be found. SnowFire (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SnowFire: possibly, but 36% of the list are Australian, English or New Zealand cricketers and those are the easiest to expand - for example, Alfred Carlton - one of the ones SF looked at (and the only one who falls into any of those nationalities I think) - I could find sources for using Trove (he played for North Melbourne for example and there's a decent amount on him). It might not be a clear-cut keep and perhaps I should have stuck at 20%, which is where I started! If you factor in that a random percentage will have some kind of additional prose or linked article at either CricInfo or CricketArchive (for example, Edwin Mills (cricketer) who's not on this list but will be on the next one, has a detailed prose profile behind CricketArchive's paywall) then it won't be far off 20% at worst - and I'm largely writing off the majority of South Asian cricketers in this as they rarely get kept due to the transliteration problems, but if we could do the sort of thing that WhatamIdoing managed above then 20% starts to look low Blue Square Thing (talk) 17:25, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd be interested in knowing what kind of searches @SportingFlyer: performed; a plain google search won't do the trick. Also, @SnowFire: I would trust Blue Square Thing as he seems to be the cricket expert here. Also, FWIW, I went 1/1 and so did WhatamIdoing. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing: SportingFlyer says they sampled 7 articles and tried to see if they could be improved with more sources, and went 0/7. I'm not much of a cricket expert so my opinion might not matter, but I just tried 2 of those articles with simple Google searches, and also turned up nothing useful. I think 20-30% "keep by expansion" is a very optimistic estimate, and I'm not torn up about the difference between redirect and draftification/deletion. SnowFire (talk) 16:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- They wouldn't all be closed delete. If they were individual AfD we'd probably be looking at something like 20-30% keep based on expansion; 50-60% redirect and 20% delete. That's the way that these sorts of articles have gone at AfD over the last couple of years in general. Blue Square Thing (talk) 06:11, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, and I would suggest the same for all athletes. I've personally had to convert a lot of filler-articles into redirects for Olympic athletes who didn't win medals. It seems like every other random article is one of them. I would suggest that this also applies to cricketeers. Wikipedia isn't a database or other indiscriminate collection of athletes, or anything. Just because someone competed in 2010 Ice Hockey event in the Olympics doesn't make such person independently notable nor alone fulfill the GNG. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 18:57, 26 July 2023 (
- Oppose. Nothing ways out the lose in this situation. There is no win doing this so it isnt suppost to even be an option and per BeanieFan11 who made realy good arguments. Themanwithnowifi (talk) 17:12, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
Arbitrary break 1: Survey (mass draftification of cricket articles)[edit]
- Oppose The policy WP:ATD-I says "moving articles to draft space should generally be done only for newly created articles . . . or as the result of a deletion discussion. Older articles should not be draftified without an AfD consensus, with 90 days a rule of thumb". A desire to avoid performing a search for sources does not justify violating the policy WP:ATD-I. If I have to spend many, many, many hours searching for sources with Google (and I do have to do that these days), then there is no good reason why the rest of you should be allowed to avoid doing that. The proposer freely admits that he has not looked at any of these articles, but ran an automated query instead. Automated queries are worse than useless. The proposer's claim that these articles are only referenced to CricketArchive or ESPNcricinfo is false, as some already have other references. For example, Angus Marshall is already referenced to "Marshall Retires", The Telegraph, Brisbane, 1934. The automated query presumably failed to detect this because the reference is not a footnote. James500 (talk) 06:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I share this concern, and which is why I requested for the Quarry query below (Link to query). @BilledMammal or whoever constructed the query needs to go back to the drawing board to better catch ALL references, not references that strictly follow a specific format. Soni (talk) 06:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Looking at the Angus Marshall example it appears that the article includes a picture which in turn includes a refernece. I doubt even many humans would think to check whether the picture has a reference that the article doesn't; I wouldn't. As for a machine, because the reference isn't even on enwiki but is instead on commons, it is all but impossible to check. I think that such a bizarre outlier is acceptable, and given that the article doesn't include the reference within the criteria set out above. BilledMammal (talk) 07:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- A reference is a reference, no matter how it is formatted. Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site. And Angus Marshall is not an outlier or bizarre. There are similar problems with, in particular, Adam Maher (cricketer), Alan Davidson (cricketer, born 1897), Alan McInnes, Alan Reid (cricketer), Albert Bowden, Albert Brown (Australian cricketer), Albert Lansdown, Albert McGinn, Albert Scanes, Alex Ridley, Alexander Barras, Alexander Fisher (cricketer), Alfred Sullivan, Amit Banerjee, Andrew Lamb (cricketer), Andrew Pringle (cricketer), Aquib Nabi, Archibald Dean, Arthur Allsopp, Arthur Evans (cricketer), Arthur Kenny, Arthur McBeath, Arthur Muhl, Arthur Pellew, Arthur Wells (Australian cricketer), Athenkosi Dyili, Barney McCoy, Barry Rhodes, Bernard Mlambo, Berry Webb, Bill Beath, Bill Tallon, Brad Doody, Brad Oldroyd, Brad Stacey, Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), Bruce Such, Cecil Bryce, Cecil Gray (cricketer), Cecil Hanify, Cecil McKew, Charles Alsop, Charles Griffith (Australian cricketer), Charles Morgan (Victoria cricketer), Charles Patrick, Charles Ross (Australian cricketer), Christopher Dwyer (cricketer), Clarence McCoombe, Clement McFarlane, Colin Stibe, Dale Turner (cricketer), Dane Hutchinson, Daniel Noonan (cricketer), Darren Dempsey, David Mailer, Dean Bartlett and Des Hansen. On the face of it, all of these items should be removed from the list. You could easily have examined all of the articles, and the links in them, manually, and you have done so. James500 (talk) 12:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site.
If it is then it shouldn't be; WP:CIRCULAR tells us that if we want to reuse a reference from elsewhere, whether that elsewhere is intrawiki or interwiki, we are required to confirm that the reference supports the content and then use it directly. Do you have examples of where this is done outside of Lugnut's mass creation sprees?- Even when looking at a sampling of the references on commons I am not really seeing SIGCOV; I'm primarily seeing things like game recaps that involve mentions of the player. Of course, if you can find two examples of WP:SIGCOV you are welcome to add them on enwiki and I will be very happy to remove the article from the list.
- I am seeing some articles on your list with single references in the article, but for the most part those were added recently such as at Darren Dempsey. I think I can be forgiven for not having a crystal ball. With that said I am also seeing some articles, like Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), that should have been excluded based on them not meeting the criteria set out above at the time the query was run. I have corrected the error that resulted in them being included and will update the list when the query returns. BilledMammal (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've updated the list. Note that this means the number is now less than 1200; I don't want to force editors like Blue Square Thing who have done a lot of work with this list to have to redo that work with articles replacing those removed. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- You have not removed the Wikipedia articles that have newspaper coverage in Trove. Would you like me to add footnote references to the Wikipedia articles in question, so that your automated query will actually work?
- For the avoidance of doubt, I am seeing significant coverage (or at least things that are capable of contributing to significant coverage). The following are a few examples already in the articles I listed above: Marshall Retires is significant coverage of Angus Marshall. "Stibe Looks Likely Sheild Batsman" is significant coverage of Colin Stibe. "C H Ross" is significant coverage of Charles Ross (Australian cricketer). "Bryce's Patience as a Batsman Rewarded" is significant coverage of Cecil Bryce. Where a person has one newspaper profile like that, there is likely to be more coverage. Accordingly, a WP:BEFORE search is actually necessary, which is why the policy requires an AfD. So, for example, when I run a search for Angus Marshall in Trove, I find a lot of newspaper articles that are entirely about Angus Marshall. And I find a massive amount of other coverage of Angus Marshall. (For the avoidance of doubt, Marshall played both soccer (including as an intermational for Australia) and cricket, so the soccer articles are about him: [4] [5]). The conclusion that I reach is that Angus Marshall, an example that I originally chose at random, satisfies GNG, he should be removed from the list, and his article should be rewritten to reflect the fact that his soccer career was important (and possibly more important than his cricket career). James500 (talk) 19:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BilledMammal Can you please move the list to a separate page and then transclude it back here? Not only is parsing the rest of this page extremely difficult, I cannot doublecheck removed entries or similar without going through Village Pump history instead of reading page history + any talk page comments/diffs. Right now everything feels a bit haphazard Soni (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BilledMammal or whoever else is maintaining the list: Please remove Alan McInnes, Albert McGinn, Albert Scanes, Archibald Dean, Barney McCoy, Berry Webb, Bill Beath, Bill Tallon, Cecil Bryce, Charles Morgan (Victoria cricketer), Charles Ross (Australian cricketer), Colin Stibe, David Mailer, Angus Marshall and Des Hansen from the list. Each of them now has reference footnotes to full periodical articles (and I could add a lot more), and they clearly do not satisfy the criteria of this proposal. James500 (talk) 02:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've updated the list. Note that this means the number is now less than 1200; I don't want to force editors like Blue Square Thing who have done a lot of work with this list to have to redo that work with articles replacing those removed. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- A reference is a reference, no matter how it is formatted. Linking to a file on the commons is a widely used form of reference on this site. And Angus Marshall is not an outlier or bizarre. There are similar problems with, in particular, Adam Maher (cricketer), Alan Davidson (cricketer, born 1897), Alan McInnes, Alan Reid (cricketer), Albert Bowden, Albert Brown (Australian cricketer), Albert Lansdown, Albert McGinn, Albert Scanes, Alex Ridley, Alexander Barras, Alexander Fisher (cricketer), Alfred Sullivan, Amit Banerjee, Andrew Lamb (cricketer), Andrew Pringle (cricketer), Aquib Nabi, Archibald Dean, Arthur Allsopp, Arthur Evans (cricketer), Arthur Kenny, Arthur McBeath, Arthur Muhl, Arthur Pellew, Arthur Wells (Australian cricketer), Athenkosi Dyili, Barney McCoy, Barry Rhodes, Bernard Mlambo, Berry Webb, Bill Beath, Bill Tallon, Brad Doody, Brad Oldroyd, Brad Stacey, Brian Murphy (Jamaican cricketer), Bruce Such, Cecil Bryce, Cecil Gray (cricketer), Cecil Hanify, Cecil McKew, Charles Alsop, Charles Griffith (Australian cricketer), Charles Morgan (Victoria cricketer), Charles Patrick, Charles Ross (Australian cricketer), Christopher Dwyer (cricketer), Clarence McCoombe, Clement McFarlane, Colin Stibe, Dale Turner (cricketer), Dane Hutchinson, Daniel Noonan (cricketer), Darren Dempsey, David Mailer, Dean Bartlett and Des Hansen. On the face of it, all of these items should be removed from the list. You could easily have examined all of the articles, and the links in them, manually, and you have done so. James500 (talk) 12:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose as setting a bad precedent (per BeanieFan11 above). Frankly, the "strategy" discussion at User talk:BilledMammal/Mass Creation Draftification is quite alarming to read. It does not express a sincere intent to improve the encyclopedia and is more focussed on achieving a pre-determined course of action, rather than consensus building.
Whatamidoing's analysis above shows that these articles are quite likely to be notable. – SD0001 (talk) 06:56, 9 July 2023 (UTC) - Support, but only if pageviews are used as a criterion. I have found that stubs that get more than three pageviews a day are usually on notable subjects, and ten or more a day nearly always are. The nominator said nobody is reading these stubs, so that should be checked beforehand. Abductive (reasoning) 07:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- If we could figure out a way to list these by page views, that might be an interesting notability heuristic. SportingFlyer T·C 07:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive and SportingFlyer: I previously only did spot checks of this group but I have now done a comprehensive check; see User:BilledMammal/Cricketer page views. Three (0.25%) recieve more than ten page views a day on average; Aaqib Khan, Ali Haider (cricketer), and Aquib Nabi; I expect they will be easy to find references for. 79 (6.5%) recieve more than three page views a day on average. BilledMammal (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- My point exactly. The small fraction with pageviews like that should be allowed to remain in Mainspace. Some are probably because a non-cricketeer shares the name, but out of an abundance of caution..... Abductive (reasoning) 08:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I've been trying to find sources for Aaqib Khan that would demonstrate notability but I am struggling to do so; even when searching for his name in Hindi I few results and they appear to either be primary or fail to contain significant coverage of him. I'll keep looking; I would prefer not to start excluding articles on the basis of criteria not included above, but if I can find coverage for any of those three I will be happy to pull them on that basis.
- With that said, I would support my proposal with your pageview criterion as a second choice to the base proposal. BilledMammal (talk) 08:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I just updated Aquib Nabi's article with a couple additional non-database sources, and there is more there. I already did a search for Aaqib Khan, it looks like he shares most of his name with an actor, there was a game recap but not much else came up for me. Haider Ali (not the listed Ali Haider) is a current notable cricketer. Balwinder Sandhu shares a name with a more famous cricketer. Going down the list, Nabi needs to be removed, Chintan Gaja needs to be removed as there's a photo and Cricinfo game recap on him specifically, Chetan Bist can be easily sourced, Abhinav Sharma is difficult to search for but there's at least a couple results. SportingFlyer T·C 08:52, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- My point exactly. The small fraction with pageviews like that should be allowed to remain in Mainspace. Some are probably because a non-cricketeer shares the name, but out of an abundance of caution..... Abductive (reasoning) 08:33, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive - Pageview counts don't matter. See WP:NOBODYREADSIT.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:26, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- My experience with tens of thousands of articles is that pageviews do matter. For example, one can look at redirect views, and discover redirects that can/should be made into articles. In the case of Importance-assessing for Wikiprojects, if an article gets greater than 30 pageviews a day, and certainly more than 100 pageviews a day, it is always deserving of being Importance-assessed as Mid according to the rules of the Wikiproject, any Wikiproject. Less than 1/day means the topic might fail WP:V or the title is misspelled. It's astounding how much pageviews can be used in decision-making. Abductive (reasoning) 19:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive and SportingFlyer: I previously only did spot checks of this group but I have now done a comprehensive check; see User:BilledMammal/Cricketer page views. Three (0.25%) recieve more than ten page views a day on average; Aaqib Khan, Ali Haider (cricketer), and Aquib Nabi; I expect they will be easy to find references for. 79 (6.5%) recieve more than three page views a day on average. BilledMammal (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- If we could figure out a way to list these by page views, that might be an interesting notability heuristic. SportingFlyer T·C 07:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. These need to go to AFD individually. My reasons 1) we're going to be deleting notable cricketers. 2) We're not a printed newspaper and these articles can sit there without causing any overheads. 3) Lugnuts created these articles within policy at the time. It is spurious to say we need to discourage more mass creation of this kind because policy changed and it couldn't happen like this again. 4) There's no rush. Desertarun (talk) 09:51, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is untrue: per WP:MASSCREATE, approval has always been required for large-scale page creation, and WP:NSPORT has always said "In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline" as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as the College Football Data Warehouse." Lugnuts just blatantly ignored these. I believe it's poor faith to expect countless pages created in seconds by one person have to be debated for a week each by many, consuming many times more manhours. For the same reason no one wants to have thousands of individualized discussions, no one wanted to research these to create them properly individually either. Reywas92Talk 14:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The articles were not required to meet the general notability guideline at the time; it said before WP:NSPORTS2022 that "The articles should provide reliable sources showing it meets the general notability guideline or the sport-specific criteria below." BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Prior to 2022 cricketers were presumed notable if they'd played 1 first class game. All of those added by Lugnuts had done this - so you're retrofitting notability. Desertarun (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We're cherry-picking. NSPORT said in 2021, "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia." Articles which passed SNGs were still deleted for clearly failing GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 18:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. Let me tell you exactly what Nsports used to say about cricket - and I quote policy "A cricket figure is presumed notable if they; 1) Have appeared as a player or umpire in at least one cricket match that is judged by a substantial source to have been played at the highest international or domestic level". One first class match was sufficient to presume notability. There is no wriggle room or ifs and buts. Desertarun (talk) 19:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Don't nope me. I quoted very first line from WP:NSPORT from a random date in late 2021 - before all of this happened. Here is the link. First, as a sport guideline, NCRIC had to follow NSPORT, and second,
A cricket figure is presumed notable
. Presumed is a rebuttable presumption - if an article didn't pass the GNG, it should have been deleted, and often was (each AfD is different, obviously.) SportingFlyer T·C 21:01, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- Nope. Ncric did follow Nsport, if you can't see that - this is your problem. Desertarun (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- I can see that. I've just shown you NSPORT clearly said that GNG had to be met. The sport-specific SNGs were supposed to be aligned to the GNG. Cricket wasn't. SportingFlyer T·C 21:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- NSPORT has always required its subjects meet GNG, and as NCRIC is a subset of NSPORT it was not exempt from this requirement. Plenty of AfDs resulted in deletion/redirection of NCRIC-passing cricketers prior to NSPORT2022: [6][7]
The result was redirect to Federally Administered Tribal Areas cricket team. The "keep" !votes argue that this person meets NCRIC. However, that is only a guideline designed to be a shortcut to identify persons that are likely notable according to GNG. Once notability is challenged, however, NCRIC is not enough and it has to be established whether or not the subject meets GNG.
[8]The result was delete. There is by now a relatively broad community consensus that participation in certain sporting events establishes a presumption of notability per the sport-specific notability guidelines, but that this is not enough to establish actual notability if, as here, no sources beyond participation records can be found at AfD.
[9]
[10]The result was delete. Consideration of this discussion was almost perfectly balanced in terms of numerical consideration. Moving to consideration of policy, two major disputes occur: the traditional NSPORTS/NCRIC vs GNG one, and the belief that there must be sources in other languages and it should be kept on those grounds.
Meeting an NSPORTS criterion does not remove the need to pass GNG when challenged, as multiple editors pointed out. Those arguing that NCRIC was met did not generally also argue that GNG was met.The result was delete. As pointed out by a number of editors, passing an SNG is irrelevant if an article doesn't pass GNG.
[11]The result was delete. While there is some consensus that he satisfies the SNG those suggesting that the SNG was met have not provided any sources exist and there is a consensus that he does not pass the GNG.
[12]The result was delete. Inclusion requires that WP:GNG is met, which requires WP:SIGCOV (significant coverage) from multiple, reliable sources. This means coverage that is more than trivial and mentions more than stats. Whether it is cricket, football, underwater basket weaving, whatever, it doesn't matter. That is the core of what is required to pass the first test for inclusion for any article, regardless of what any other guidelines on notability says, simply because they all derive their authority FROM WP:GNG. Through this lens, weighing the !vote not on their numbers as much as on the strength of their policy based rationale, I see a consensus to delete.
[13]The result was delete. Subject-specific notability guidelines (SNG) do not override the general notability guideline (GNG). SNGs are simply shortcuts that say, "a topic will probably have enough sources to fulfill GNG if it satisfies the SNG criteria".
[14]The result was delete. This is a fairly standard NCRIC vs GNG dispute. As NSPORTS specifically requires GNG to also be met, and there isn't a clear IAR exemption case made here, and there is a very clear consensus that GNG is not met, deletion is the appropriate outcome.
[15]- Note that these were closures by 9 different admins. JoelleJay (talk) 23:49, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. Ncric did follow Nsport, if you can't see that - this is your problem. Desertarun (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- At the time, the "presumed" notability functioned as de facto automatic notability (with the exception of one-game soccer players and those without known first names) - also, you're missing the part where it says in bold that to be notable, "The article should provide reliable sources showing that the subject meets the general notability guideline or the sport specific criteria set forth below." BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- First - the bold part is about making sure sourcing exists in the article to demonstrate either a GNG pass or a SNG pass. And "presumed" was de facto notability, apart when GNG wasn't met - for instance the arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abel Valdez (I did a lot of sleuthing to find an old AfD where it was clear GNG trumped SNG, even though this was no consensus.) It did mean a lot of players which passed the SNG weren't brought to AfD, but the entire reason we're here discussing this now is because that ice got thinner and thinner over time and finally broke. SportingFlyer T·C 21:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- As I said, it acted as de facto automatic notability except for soccer players with low amounts of appearances, plus those who we didn't have names for (e.g. the baseball player Smith) - until Pete Vainowski in December 2021 (after these cricket articles were created), which resulted in the destruction of NSPORT (the NSPORTS2022 discussion was due to that), meeting NSPORT functioned basically as automatic notability. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's true, but Reywas92 is still correct: the phrase
In addition, standalone articles must meet the General Notability Guideline.
has specifically been a part of WP:NSPORT since 2010, and was incorporated via linking to WP:BIO before that. So they've always been required to meet GNG, but whether we enforced it properly is a different question. SportingFlyer T·C 22:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)- But then it also said "Subjects that do not meet the sport-specific criteria outlined in this guideline may still be notable if they meet the General Notability Guideline or another subject specific notability guideline," which implies that satisfying the sports criteria was sufficient to have an article; the whole thing was contradictory, but the practice at the time was that it was alright to have stubs and that they were notable if they met the sports criteria (playing top-level cricket games). I don't see why we're arguing about this though, since the criteria have changed, so I'm done discussing this point. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's not what that sentence implied - just that the SNGs were not exclusionary - but it doesn't matter. SportingFlyer T·C 10:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- But then it also said "Subjects that do not meet the sport-specific criteria outlined in this guideline may still be notable if they meet the General Notability Guideline or another subject specific notability guideline," which implies that satisfying the sports criteria was sufficient to have an article; the whole thing was contradictory, but the practice at the time was that it was alright to have stubs and that they were notable if they met the sports criteria (playing top-level cricket games). I don't see why we're arguing about this though, since the criteria have changed, so I'm done discussing this point. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's true, but Reywas92 is still correct: the phrase
- As I said, it acted as de facto automatic notability except for soccer players with low amounts of appearances, plus those who we didn't have names for (e.g. the baseball player Smith) - until Pete Vainowski in December 2021 (after these cricket articles were created), which resulted in the destruction of NSPORT (the NSPORTS2022 discussion was due to that), meeting NSPORT functioned basically as automatic notability. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- First - the bold part is about making sure sourcing exists in the article to demonstrate either a GNG pass or a SNG pass. And "presumed" was de facto notability, apart when GNG wasn't met - for instance the arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abel Valdez (I did a lot of sleuthing to find an old AfD where it was clear GNG trumped SNG, even though this was no consensus.) It did mean a lot of players which passed the SNG weren't brought to AfD, but the entire reason we're here discussing this now is because that ice got thinner and thinner over time and finally broke. SportingFlyer T·C 21:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Don't nope me. I quoted very first line from WP:NSPORT from a random date in late 2021 - before all of this happened. Here is the link. First, as a sport guideline, NCRIC had to follow NSPORT, and second,
- Nope. Let me tell you exactly what Nsports used to say about cricket - and I quote policy "A cricket figure is presumed notable if they; 1) Have appeared as a player or umpire in at least one cricket match that is judged by a substantial source to have been played at the highest international or domestic level". One first class match was sufficient to presume notability. There is no wriggle room or ifs and buts. Desertarun (talk) 19:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- We're cherry-picking. NSPORT said in 2021, "This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a sports person or sports league/organization (amateur or professional) is likely to meet the general notability guideline, and thus merit an article in Wikipedia." Articles which passed SNGs were still deleted for clearly failing GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 18:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is untrue: per WP:MASSCREATE, approval has always been required for large-scale page creation, and WP:NSPORT has always said "In addition, standalone articles are required to meet the General Notability Guideline" as well as "Trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may be used to support content in an article, but it is not sufficient to establish notability. This includes listings in database sources with low, wide-sweeping generic standards of inclusion, such as the College Football Data Warehouse." Lugnuts just blatantly ignored these. I believe it's poor faith to expect countless pages created in seconds by one person have to be debated for a week each by many, consuming many times more manhours. For the same reason no one wants to have thousands of individualized discussions, no one wanted to research these to create them properly individually either. Reywas92Talk 14:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. As noted by many above this comment, this draftication (actually deletion) does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. Let's build an encyclopedia instead. If there is a concern that these articles are introducing content that fails verification, we should act. Ktin (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per BilledMammal. I checked ten of these at random and was unable to find significant coverage for any of them. Checking these ten articles took me about an hour; editors should not be required to spend this amount of time establishing the non-notability of these mass-created stubs. My first choice would be outright deletion, but I support draftification as a compromise. The information contained in these articles is readily available online, and none of them took more than a few minutes to create, so any one of them can be easily re-created if better sources are found. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 15:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:Sojourner in the earth, as a courtesy to avoid possible duplication of work, might you be able to list here the ten articles you spot-checked? Or mention on their respective Talk pages that you were unable to locate sources? Folly Mox (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- The articles were Al Bashid Muhammed, Bikash Chowdhury (cricketer), Bakhtarullah Atal, Athi Mafazwe, Ashby Mutumbami, Arthur Dean (cricketer), Anuj Raj, Andrew Durham, Alok Chandra Sahoo, Alfred Black (cricketer). The most promising of these was Alfred Black, who according to this source took part in the Eureka Rebellion, but even with this lead I didn't find anything but passing mentions. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'd like to add to my comment, in answer to those who are citing WP:NORUSH, that kicking the can down the road is not a sensible solution. As DFlhb said above:
Non-notable articles must eventually be deleted, so to keep them around is to require editors to eventually go through each and decide whether to merge, redirect, or delete.
The purpose of this proposal is to save thousands of hours of editor time. The urgency of the problem is not a relevant consideration; the only question is whether one thinks that the possibility of saving some of these articles is worth the massive expenditure of time that it will take to evaluate each one individually. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:55, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:Sojourner in the earth, as a courtesy to avoid possible duplication of work, might you be able to list here the ten articles you spot-checked? Or mention on their respective Talk pages that you were unable to locate sources? Folly Mox (talk) 22:08, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
- Neutral Comment I have fewer strong opinions on cricket notability than I do on Olympic notability, nor do I know the Cricket Notability requirements as well. I am generally in agreement with @WhatamIdoing and @Abzeronow's concerns, particularly that this will disproportionately affect Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan cricketers, but am aware that this is an area where I can't really help in expanding stubs so would feel bad giving a full oppose, given @BilledMammal's logic is reasonable. 20:35, 9 July 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Redfiona99 (talk • contribs)
- Oppose, largely per Thryduulf and Whatamidoing. In addition, given that the underlying authority for deletion here appears to be the GNG, I would also note that doing mass-anything under a guideline, which is intended to have common-sense exceptions, is somewhat contradictory. (It does not appear to me that these articles fail WP:V#Notability, since the objection is not that they have no reliable sources, but that the source is a database.) Beyond that, I am troubled by the false urgency and the unsubstantiated claims that these articles are somehow hurting the encyclopedia by existing. From where I sit these stubs seem obviously to provide a net benefit to the interested reader, even if they are never expanded. Moreover, content attracts contributors, so mass deleting these articles (which is the only realistic outcome of mass draftification) is only going to aggravate the shortage of contributors who have the knowledge and interest to improve our coverage in the area. In sum, this seems to me to be unambiguously harmful to the project: mass removal of encyclopedic content can only diminish Wikipedia. -- Visviva (talk) 03:50, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per Rhododendrites, BeanieFan11, and Rschen7754. There's no rush, and it does seem like this plan violates several policies. GretLomborg (talk) 05:25, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Could you explain what policies those are, GretLomborg? Because the existence of these articles as they currently are are already a violation of WP:NSPORT and would otherwise result in them immediately all going to AfD for deletion. This draftification alternative, which was already approved of in a previous RfC, is a way to ensure any notable subjects do get articles kept rather than just mass deleting/redirecting them. SilverserenC 05:31, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose as they are less likely to be improved as drafts than as articles. I they are trash, just delete as it may be better to have nothing, and let someone write from scratch if they wish to. I can easily see many of these getting a G13 demise if they are converted to drafts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:13, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Graeme Bartlett: I'm a little confused. A major argument of other opposers is that draftification is a backdoor to deletion and this is bad. If you're okay with deletion, and if these articles are all truly beyond salvaging (which I believe to be largely true), then draftification will eventually accomplish this after 5 years passes. This seems like it should maybe be a "Support but should go even further" vote, but maybe I'm misinterpreting you. SnowFire (talk) 03:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Well I will change this to strong oppose to make this clearer. A 5 year in draft space with other drafts having only 6 months is a bad idea. If all drafts have a 5 year delay before G13 it would not be so bad. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:30, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Graeme Bartlett: I'm a little confused. A major argument of other opposers is that draftification is a backdoor to deletion and this is bad. If you're okay with deletion, and if these articles are all truly beyond salvaging (which I believe to be largely true), then draftification will eventually accomplish this after 5 years passes. This seems like it should maybe be a "Support but should go even further" vote, but maybe I'm misinterpreting you. SnowFire (talk) 03:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose Individual AfD discussions appears to be the accepted way to delete articles.Harper J. Cole (talk) 09:15, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Disruptive mass-creation of database-entries masquerading as stub articles can only be effectively remediated by mass action - individual discussions at AFD is not practical with volumes this high. Mass-deletion would be entirely appropriate; however, this proposal is a reasonable compromise that allows interested parties a substantial window to expand these database entries into actual articles (although the percentage where that will be possible is very low) and return to main space. wjematherplease leave a message... 10:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support but only with the standard 6-month term, no special 5 year system which is setting up more exceptons for the sake of exceptions. Stifle (talk) 10:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. I have concerns regarding checks and balances with this proposal. Where does it stop? This could easily snowball to become a backdoor deletion 'policy', lacking community input and consensus. A much more constructive option would be to create a taskforce which methodically goes through each one and expands them; then a decision can be reached, as there will be articles there which can be signficiantly expanded upon. StickyWicket aka AA (talk) 12:38, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What exactly do you think this is? It's community input and seeking consensus. Please don't make baseless slippery slope arguments. This is so unrealistic to actually think that anyone will be going through so many thousands of articles (a task they can also do in draftspace). Seems you're concerned about your pages like Jack Sterland, who played a mere two games and similarly lacks significant coverage. Reywas92Talk 13:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's cute you stalk my contributions. I wonder if you have a problem with Francis Lacey, or Milo Talbot, or Erroll Tremlett, or perhaps John Manners? I'm actually more concerned about notable individuals being deleted, who might not appear to be notable. If we can take the time to go through this entire process, then yes, we can find the time to go through each on a case-by-case basis. StickyWicket aka AA (talk) 13:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- What exactly do you think this is? It's community input and seeking consensus. Please don't make baseless slippery slope arguments. This is so unrealistic to actually think that anyone will be going through so many thousands of articles (a task they can also do in draftspace). Seems you're concerned about your pages like Jack Sterland, who played a mere two games and similarly lacks significant coverage. Reywas92Talk 13:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per well reasoned rationale from DFlhb (that everyone should read). Aza24 (talk) 13:24, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support, rather reluctantly, as the best of two bad choices. It seems likely that the great majority of these would be deleted at AfD, and there is definitely harm to the encyclopedia in choosing an option that leads to massive extra work. Editors' labour is a finite resource and that has to be taken into account. And there's no prejudice against recreating any given one of these for which notability can be shown. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Adding a note to say that listification is also fine with me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:07, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. Mass-created articles with minimal amounts of information don't benefit the encyclopedia, and overwhelm our ability to handle them through normal deletion processes. The list of articles to be impacted has been tightly curated, and while any list of this scale is going to be inherently imperfect, it bears remembering that WP:NODEADLINE applies to creation just as much as to deletion: if a subject is notable, I trust that the community at large will eventually identify it and give it a proper article. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:26, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose I don't think merely not being notable is a sufficiently serious concern to bypass the usual deletion processes like this, and there don't seem to be any policy-based objections to these articles. Hut 8.5 17:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Suggestion - start taking these 10 at a time to AfD now. Don't cherry-pick. Just take 10 in a sequential row. See what happens. It may shed greater light on the pros and cons of mass-deletion here. It'll also demonstrate how unwieldy (or wieldy?) the alternative of AfDs is. Plus, if this RfC fails, you've at least got a small head-start on cleanup. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- P.S., I'm not talking about doing many batches of 10 right now -- just 1 or 2 as an experiment to better inform this discussion. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- I might suggest taking the next ten to AfD (although ten is a lot if there's scope for improvement - perhaps with the caveat that if we think they genuinely can be improved that we put a hold on it?) - i.e. the ones that would be next on the list. I've not looked at them but will dig the links out in a minute and add them here with my initial thoughts. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Blue Square Thing, thank you for the many dozens of hours of careful thought, analysis and cricket expertise you've put into this initiative. I have a lot of confidence in this project based on your work.
- -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 14:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- I support this kind of experiment with a small set of articles (and I left a comment to that effect below). Just a note to say that the "next ten" approach is much less informative than a "random ten" approach, as first name is a confounder here. Suriname0 (talk) 15:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Although the random 10 nature means you might easily get 10 one-appearance Sri Lankans, say (which I might also easily have gotten with the next 10 fwiw). If someone wants to generate 25 random numbers between 1 and about 5,000 I'll create a list of articles that people can look at. I'd rather have a few more than 10. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:29, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- 1323, 2344, 4592, 1206, 1387, 1569, 438, 3650, 1452, 2775, 3930, 4888, 313, 2216, 3558, 2524, 1539, 4457, 4776, 1250, 2941, 925, 1904, 666, 2160, according to my phone app that uses brownian motion in its gyroscopes to generate true random numbers. Folly Mox (talk) 16:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not wed to the particulars of my suggestion above. 25 at random, 10 in-a-row, whatever. Mostly, I'm interested in a good experiment to partially prove or disprove many of the assertions made here. Also, something not cherry-picked to produce a certain result. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 16:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Understand that, but it might be interesting to try anyway. If anyone can think of a better way I have a spreadsheet with 4,102 names in it... Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:57, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Although the random 10 nature means you might easily get 10 one-appearance Sri Lankans, say (which I might also easily have gotten with the next 10 fwiw). If someone wants to generate 25 random numbers between 1 and about 5,000 I'll create a list of articles that people can look at. I'd rather have a few more than 10. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:29, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- I might suggest taking the next ten to AfD (although ten is a lot if there's scope for improvement - perhaps with the caveat that if we think they genuinely can be improved that we put a hold on it?) - i.e. the ones that would be next on the list. I've not looked at them but will dig the links out in a minute and add them here with my initial thoughts. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- P.S., I'm not talking about doing many batches of 10 right now -- just 1 or 2 as an experiment to better inform this discussion. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 18:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Next ten
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The next ten would be:
So, we'd be 2 probable delete based on lists not existing and up to 8 redirect - with my gut feeling between 1 and 3 kept based on expansion, but we might not get any in this set of ten. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:56, 11 July 2023 (UTC) |
Sample list of 21
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Based on the list of who I believe are the remaining 4,102 cricketers after the 1,200 above are removed (so 4 of the numbers are out of range - I'm happy to add four more if numbers are generated. I can't promise it's a perfect source list, but it's about right and is based on the mammoth list at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox6 and filtering out everything apart from national identification from the cats. This list of 21 is also at User:Blue Square Thing/sandbox8. I've not looked at it yet. Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:57, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
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- Oppose I might support a more targeted attempt at mass draftification - the issues with Lugnuts' work are well-documented by now, and I don't think much of the "played two matches in 1905" sorts of stubs - but a lot of these articles are on contemporary players on top-level teams in major South Asian countries. Given how popular cricket is in India, for example, I have a hard time believing that the likes of Chintan Gaja and Agniv Pan didn't generate plenty of coverage playing for state teams. (I know very little about both cricket and the Indian sports media landscape, so I'm the wrong person to investigate, but Gaja at least seems to have plenty of coverage just from a cursory search.) I'm persuaded by the concerns that incubation on this scale is a backdoor route to deletion, and I think removing this many articles on likely notable subjects from South Asia would reinforce Wikipedia's systemic bias. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:30, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Strong support A good gentle middle of the road solution for this mess. So anyone who wants an article to stay can adopt it. I also don't like the "backdoor" (to deletion) pejorative characterization of the motive or process. This type of thing doesn't work at AFD. AFD (where it takes 100 times as much volunteer time to delete a microstub as it did to create it) would make this unsolvable. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Clarifying, my post was answering the "draftification" question. Like others, I was misled by the section title and did not directly answer the actual RFC question which was to move (in some way) out of article space. Although the answer can be deduced from my response, per the first close, that might be missed. I'll now answer it directly. Support moving out of article space Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 19:45, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per James500's concerns. I agree with the premise and the need to clean up these articles in a bundled manner. I think the current implementation needs more work, as there's both a lack of sufficient clarity on the overall lists (and which of it got manually rechecked after), as well as James' point about skipping articles with references. Soni (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support mostly per ActivelyDisinterested. This measure is unfortunately necessary given how overburdened AfD is. — SamX [talk · contribs] 00:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Addendum: I disagree with those who argue that this is a
backdoor to deletion
. Yes, unilaterally moving the articles to draftspace one by one would be a backdoor to deletion, and one that I would not support. I agree with Folly Mox—a widely advertised and well-attended RfC is absolutely not a "backdoor" process. This is essentially a mass AfD that's being conducted at an unorthodox venue, with draftification as the desired result rather than imminent deletion. If this were a traditional AfD, I would !vote draftify or redirect. It's been established that Lugnuts failed to exercise due care when verifying that the databases he used to create the stubs were reliable sources. Their sheer volume prevents them from being examined individually, so their continued presence in mainspace is an ongoing threat to Wikipedia's reliability and credibility. To prevent citogenesis and other misfortunes, the articles should be moved to draftspace until they can be thoroughly checked for accuracy and notability. — SamX [talk · contribs] 21:50, 21 July 2023 (UTC) - Second addendum: I also disagree with the opposers who argue that the stubs should be kept in order to be expanded into full-fledged articles. The stubs (at least in the state Lugnuts left them in) read as follows:
[Name] is a [Nationality] [former] cricketer. [He/she/they] played in [event].
None of that information useful for an expansion, and it can all be found by having a quick look at the databases Lugnuts used. BLP is also a serious concern—many of the articles are about living people, and if the databases contain inaccuracies we may have a ticking time bomb on our hands. — SamX [talk · contribs] 05:26, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
- Addendum: I disagree with those who argue that this is a
- Support, like the Olympians they may be notable, but they currently fail to demonstrate this, and to see these being kept because of their presumed, but unproven notability, must be frustrating for new editors when their own submissions are required to be of a much higher quality. The argument that this is backdoor deletion does not work for me. The rapid speed with which editors are finding sources in an effort to oppose this proposal demonstrates that five years in draftspace gives plenty of time for improving these articles, especially with the support of a wikiproject dedicated to the subject area. If this proposal fails will editors continue from the current interest in improving the A-D articles or will the E-Z articles be forgotten about. EdwardUK (talk) 12:56, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose per cogent points by Whatamidoing and BeanieFan11; and above all, as being contrary to policy WP:ATD-I. Draftfication is not to be used as a backdoor to deletion, and, as I expected, the previous exception granted by the Olympians RfC (and all the accompanying drama) has lead to a slippery slope of draftifying more generally useful and harmless articles. There is no deadline. If you want to prevent a similar case of mass-creation in the future, go draft a new appropriate policy, but as it stands, mass
deletiondraftification of articles just because who their author was flies in the face of pretty much all existing policies. No such user (talk) 13:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)- I'm not even sure I'm in favour of this proposal, but it's somewhat astonishing to me how many opposers are characterising a CENT-listed Village Pump discussion as a "back door" to anything. The only places more visible are ANI and the Main Page. Sorry to single out your comment, User:No such user, and the reason I've chosen to express my somewhat astonishment here in a reply to you is that you've also characterised the sole reason for draftification as authorship. If any other user had flooded the encyclopaedia with such quantities of barely sourced, possibly notable microstubs, we'd be having the same conversation (and judging from the RFCBEFORE, we will be, with regards to similar articles by users BlackJack and Carlossuarez46). Folly Mox (talk) 13:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- The "backdoorness" isn't about it being done in secret, but about circumventing our deletion policy. It's use of draftspace to effectively delete a lot of articles that haven't actually been evaluated for notability, and which themselves do not violate any policies. If this went through proper process for deletion, we'd first ask "do they qualify for CSD?" (perhaps, if any were created after consensus was clear that articles shouldn't be mass created based just on databases, but not for all of these). Then we'd ask "would deletion be controversial" (apparently the answer is yes, so PROD is out). Then we'd go to AfD, where (assuming AfD weren't flooded to the point of being unable to function) they would be evaluated for notability, etc. Nothing in the deletion process says an article qualifies for deletion if it was created by Lugnuts + below a certain size + uses only databases as sources. Would a lot of these be deleted if they went through AfD? Probably, but not all, and at least then we wouldn't be signalling [again] that it's ok to delete things just for being stubs (which, based on comments throughout here, is a broader goal of several supporters). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not even sure I'm in favour of this proposal, but it's somewhat astonishing to me how many opposers are characterising a CENT-listed Village Pump discussion as a "back door" to anything. The only places more visible are ANI and the Main Page. Sorry to single out your comment, User:No such user, and the reason I've chosen to express my somewhat astonishment here in a reply to you is that you've also characterised the sole reason for draftification as authorship. If any other user had flooded the encyclopaedia with such quantities of barely sourced, possibly notable microstubs, we'd be having the same conversation (and judging from the RFCBEFORE, we will be, with regards to similar articles by users BlackJack and Carlossuarez46). Folly Mox (talk) 13:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per North8000. --Tserton (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support This seems like an extremely fair compromise on at least one part of an issue that generates a lot more controversy than seems warranted. CarringtonMist (talk) 14:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose - this is a notability issue and we have a process for that: tag with {{notability}} to add to the queue, PROD/AFD for more serious cases, or, you know, fix it. Presumably these are BLPs and WP:BLPREMOVE could apply, but what is the contentious information we're compelled to remove? That these individuals play[ed] cricket? I fail to see how that could be considered contentious to a degree warranting mass deletion. There are currently nearly 60,000 articles tagged for notability review, why do these 1,200 warrant special treatment? The answer is that they don't. This proposal fails WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP and WP:BEFORE. Also, if any of these stubs are demonstrably non-notable, moving them to draft would prevent their deletion per WP:NDRAFT, which could just make the problem the proposal is trying to address worse in the long run, especially with the 5-year carveout from G13 deletion. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- I wonder if BilledMammal can run a query to tell us how many are possible BLPs? Out of interest. The whole set includes a great many dead New Zealanders and (probably) Australians for example Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:32, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Should be possible, I'll give it a go when I have time. BilledMammal (talk) 00:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- I wonder if BilledMammal can run a query to tell us how many are possible BLPs? Out of interest. The whole set includes a great many dead New Zealanders and (probably) Australians for example Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:32, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose. According to our deletion policy, draftification
must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion"
. This is an explicit backdoor to deletion that is being proposed, and I do not find the benefits sufficient to ignore our deletion policy here. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 00:35, 12 July 2023 (UTC)- Can you explain why you see it as a backdoor to deletion? That certainly isn't the intention; while deletion will be the result for many of these, some can and will be restored to mainspace, as evidenced by that having already happened for some of the articles on Olympians. BilledMammal (talk) 00:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
as evidenced by that having already happened for some of the articles on Olympians
– that's not evidence at all! Since then, only 2/1000 (0.2%) of the articles (of which, many, many more are notable) have been restored; if anything, that's clear evidence its a backdoor to deletion. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:59, 12 July 2023 (UTC)- 912 were draftified, and so far 7 have been restored; ~0.75%. However, the draftification was only done a month and a half ago, so we are only 2.5% of the way through the period that editors have to restore these articles.
- To me, that is evidence that this is working as intended; editors are given time to discover and improve the ones that are notable, and the ones that are not notable will eventually be deleted without the need to waste disproportionate amounts of the communities time. In other words, it's not a backdoor deletion process. BilledMammal (talk) 01:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- And of those seven that were restored, five had been previously improved and never should have been draftified in the first place. That leaves us with Ivanyi and Godfree, so 2/912 - 0.2% - I was correct. And while you say that
the draftification was only done a month and a half ago, so we are only 2.5% of the way through the period that editors have to restore these articles
, do you not realize that you are at the same time trying to dump tens of thousands more there? We do not have the editor time to go through all of those; many are notable, and thus it will act as a backdoor to deletion as many will never be gotten to in time. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)- The correct figure of improved articles appears to be five (the extra two were turned into redirects to different people with similar names); Alexander Duncan (athlete), Alfred Keene, Douglas Godfree, Gyula Iványi, Julius Jørgensen. Jørgensen was improved during the draftification process, but I think it is reasonable to count him giving that the improvement reason was
Seeing that this was suggested for draftification, expanded with additional refs.
- Of course, if we include all the articles improved during the extended draftification process and as a consequence of the process then the percentage will be even higher and your argument even weaker.
- If you don't think we have the editor time to go through these then what do you propose we do? Take them all through AfD, at a rate of 500 or a 1000 a month, and consume even more editor time? The fact is that this is the way most likely to result in their improvement and restoration; less will be deleted than taking them through AfD and applying the time pressures of that process, and less community time will be wasted as we will be saved from needing to spend hours discussing those that are not notable. This is why it is not a backdoor to deletion, because aside from going through the frontdoor with a herald announcing that it is doing so it is going to result in far less deletions than taking these articles through AfD would result in. BilledMammal (talk) 01:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't care if its 0.2% or 0.7%, in what absurd world do you live in where 99%+ of articles being deleted through the backdoor is classified as not being backdoor deleted due to "about five of the one thousand being improved"? That is a ludicrous suggestion!
If you don't think we have the editor time to go through these then what do you propose we do? Take them all through AfD, at a rate of 500 or a 1000 a month, and consume even more editor time?
Doing nothing at all would also be a perfectly acceptable solution, as would tagging them for Template:Notability or Template:No significant coverage (sports), the latter of which you created for the sole purpose of not having to mass remove articles; additionally taking some to AfD, redirecting some (I don't think all that many would be contested, really), PRODDING them, etc. etc. (and my favorite, actually improve the encyclopedia and expand them) would all be much better solutions and would help the encyclopedia better than getting rid of articles with decent chances of notability by the masses. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:03, 12 July 2023 (UTC)I don't care if its 0.2% or 0.7%, in what absurd world do you live in where 99%+ of articles being deleted through the backdoor is classified as not being backdoor deleted due to "about five of the one thousand being improved"?
As I said before, we are only 2.5% of the way through the time that has been provided to improve the articles - and if you feel longer is needed you are free to move them to your user space, which is further evidence that this is not backdoor deletion.Doing nothing at all would also be a perfectly acceptable solution
I disagree, because they are WP:NOT violations, and because of the reasons I presented in my !vote. I don't think we are going to agree here, so I'm going to step back from the conversation; I think I have adequately proven that whatever this process is, it is not intended to be nor does it function as a backdoor to deletion. BilledMammal (talk) 02:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't care if its 0.2% or 0.7%, in what absurd world do you live in where 99%+ of articles being deleted through the backdoor is classified as not being backdoor deleted due to "about five of the one thousand being improved"? That is a ludicrous suggestion!
- The correct figure of improved articles appears to be five (the extra two were turned into redirects to different people with similar names); Alexander Duncan (athlete), Alfred Keene, Douglas Godfree, Gyula Iványi, Julius Jørgensen. Jørgensen was improved during the draftification process, but I think it is reasonable to count him giving that the improvement reason was
- And of those seven that were restored, five had been previously improved and never should have been draftified in the first place. That leaves us with Ivanyi and Godfree, so 2/912 - 0.2% - I was correct. And while you say that
- And yet the first RfC found sufficient consensus for draftification... How many editors would change their !votes if the draftification time limit was infinite? I doubt many supporters would care (because the intent isn't to get these deleted, it's to get them out of mainspace), but I also doubt it would change the minds of many (any?) opposers. JoelleJay (talk) 00:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- If there wasn't a totally arbitrary deadline for deletion, then I'd switch to support moving them to drafts. Like I said in my comment, it's ambiguous if all of these are actually notable per WP:NSPORTS. If this isn't going to produce a backdoor mass deletion in violation of policy, then it's fine to take a batch questionable stubs and move them to drafts. People do that boldly all the time. Steven Walling • talk 00:28, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, all of them objectively fail NSPORTS as they do not meet SPORTCRIT #5. We had very strong consensus that a SIGCOV IRS source must be cited in all athlete bios to remain in mainspace. JoelleJay (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Where is the consensus that the sources cited by these articles don't constitute reliable significant coverage? Steven Walling • talk 05:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think it is quite obvious that such database sources don't constitute significant coverage. However, if you need a consensus for this position, see WP:SPORTSCRIT #5 which requires sports biographies to include
at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources
emphasis mine. BilledMammal (talk) 06:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)- Ok if you believe these are all 100% non-notable according to sports guidelines, then why aren't you filing deletion requests or just boldly mass merging to the existing lists of cricket players?
- This draft proposal isn't worth anyone's time if the articles are known with certainty to not be notable. They should just be deleted. The only conclusion I can draw is that you actually don't know for certain that they lack notability, and therefore the entire proposal to mass draft-ify, merge, or delete them is not valid. These articles need to evaluated and dealt with individually without an arbitrary deadline, like normal on Wikipedia. Steven Walling • talk 20:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- I think it is quite obvious that such database sources don't constitute significant coverage. However, if you need a consensus for this position, see WP:SPORTSCRIT #5 which requires sports biographies to include
- Where is the consensus that the sources cited by these articles don't constitute reliable significant coverage? Steven Walling • talk 05:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Steven Walling, all of them objectively fail NSPORTS as they do not meet SPORTCRIT #5. We had very strong consensus that a SIGCOV IRS source must be cited in all athlete bios to remain in mainspace. JoelleJay (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- If there wasn't a totally arbitrary deadline for deletion, then I'd switch to support moving them to drafts. Like I said in my comment, it's ambiguous if all of these are actually notable per WP:NSPORTS. If this isn't going to produce a backdoor mass deletion in violation of policy, then it's fine to take a batch questionable stubs and move them to drafts. People do that boldly all the time. Steven Walling • talk 00:28, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- Can you explain why you see it as a backdoor to deletion? That certainly isn't the intention; while deletion will be the result for many of these, some can and will be restored to mainspace, as evidenced by that having already happened for some of the articles on Olympians. BilledMammal (talk) 00:44, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Though this discussion should not need to be held, as this was decided already at the gargantuan Olympics. That decision should be a Green Light to just draftify and get it done. Zaathras (talk) 00:51, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- The Olympics discussion (just barely) reached a decision to draftify only that group of Olympians, not thousands to tens and hundreds of thousands more of other articles... BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Strongest possible oppose, many of the articles are notable and should be looked at on a case by case basis, even if it takes forever.--Ortizesp (talk) 03:15, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- ... and you should have up to forever, if you wish it, to look at those articles on a case by case basis, from draft space. Ravenswing 18:23, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. They get deleted beyond a point :)
Which is a major issue, and why some people have called it "backdoor deletion". Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
- Nope. They get deleted beyond a point :)
- ... and you should have up to forever, if you wish it, to look at those articles on a case by case basis, from draft space. Ravenswing 18:23, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support - per my vote at WP:LUGSTUBS. These articles represent a highly unusual pattern of disruptive editing (the former editor carelessly created hundreds of mini-stubs sourced only to a single database daily), and a highly unusual process is necessary to address the well-established need to remove these from mainspace. If anything, our AfD processes are more overloaded in recent weeks with post-WP:NSPORTS2022 notability failures than they were when LUGSTUBS began. We simply cannot use the conventional processes over the next tens of years to clean up Lugnuts' mess. 03:46, 12 July 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jogurney (talk • contribs) 03:46, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support in strongest possible terms per my previous comments; I genuinely believe that the fact that we need to hold even this RFC is already far too much of a barrier to removal (that is to say, I think that someone ought to have been able to draftify them without discussion) - a sweeping, multi-article action that was taken with no discussion, and which has no significant interveining edits or discussions building an implicit consensus for it, should always be reversable without discussion. Lugnuts took a WP:BOLD action, people objected, now it gets reversed until / unless an affirmative consensus is found for it. We shouldn't need to demonstrate a consensus to draftify them - now that there's an objection, anyone who wants to keep them in article space must demonstrate an affirmative consensus to place them there. To do otherwise encourages WP:FAIT actions and further WP:BOLD mass-edits without consensus, as well as encouraging people to simply ignore objections knowing that article creation is so difficult to reverse. People who believe that there is something salveagable here can always examine and restore individual articles, preferably after getting consensus for doing so if they want to restore large numbers (now that doing so is clearly controversial, per the usual principles of WP:BOLD), but per WP:BURDEN, the burden for doing so rests on them - the people above who argue that the responsibility to demonstrate that each individual article is ought to be draftified are turning BURDEN on its head. If you want to retain or create something, you must step up and produce the sourcing necessary to support it; you can't demand that other people somehow prove that they're allowed to undo a plainly WP:BOLD action. --Aquillion (talk) 08:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Most of these are properly sourced, and there is a backlog of articles with no sources at all; there are more in the 2007 categories than in this list, and the date in the template is usually when the template was added sometimes several years after an article was created. Quality has been mentioned, and that one or two sentences in a list would be acceptable, but an increase to three or four with an infobox, more than would be included in a list, could never be acceptable quality and would require either an increase to five or more or reduction to one or two in a list, but I disagree, as quality is unrelated to article length. This looks more like a WP:BATTLE against Lugnuts, or against cricket, and not an attempt to improve Wikipedia. Not opposing, as random AFDs leaving gaps in the coverage would be worse. Obviously there should be two (or more) Wikipedias. To make it easier to maintain all would be edited at the same site; there could be one that only displays articles that are longer than stubs. Peter James (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support Once draftified, editors can work on those drafts and move them out of draft-space when ready. Also, I would suggest that the draftified articles be auto-deleted after a year instead of the proposed 5 years (5 years is too long). Some1 (talk) 23:07, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Userfy to the userspace of User:Lugnuts, with the same intention, except do not complicate the WP:G13 rule or the processes of draftspace. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:19, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose Meh. Stubs are not a problem, if you come across one that you find, after proper WP:BEFORE searches, that needs to be dealt with, do so. These kind of mass reactions to harmless stubs are pointless. We don't have to do anything, except the normal process of expanding, editing, merging, deleting, etc. stuff when we come across it. --Jayron32 12:02, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support: If, in all these months after Lugnuts was shut down, the cricket project had felt moved to do the work to source these articles, we would have less of a problem. (If Lugnuts himself had ever felt moved to do the work to source his tens of thousands of sub-stubs, he never would've been sanctioned or banned in the first place.) If the cricket project had been less focused for many years in general obstructionism with respect to sub-stubs and the need for tighter notability guidelines, we not only would have had less of a problem, but the movement to deprecate participation standards sports-wide may never have gotten up a head of steam. I am mortally tired of the time of dozens and hundreds of editors sucked into the deletion and sourcing whirlpool while others piously maintain that there's no real problem here. By all means, let's move to draftify these articles, and let the people who claim that They're! All! Notable! do the sourcing work to prove their claims. The same way we've been doing on the other end: one article at a time.
And by the bye? This IS the compromise option. This gives people who want to do the work -- as should have been done in the first place -- to source the articles. My preferred option would be to simply take every cricket bio Lugnuts ever created with a current byte size of less than 2,500, mass delete them all, and leave it to those editors who profess to care to do the work to recreate them, one article at a time. I recognize that would never gain consensus, but enough's enough. Ravenswing 14:10, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment This is a very technical discussion and proposal, yet, to me, it seems like a case of the Law of triviality. Can anyone say what the benefits would be if all these articles were draftified, or if they were not draftified? Notability was mentioned, as well as What Wikipedia is not. This is actually a discussion about heuristics. In that case, it raises a bigger question, and everything here is moot, aside from serving a case example. Namely, it applies to all articles of the nature outlined in the OP, and it's not limited to just Lugnuts. I assume we have tens of thousands of such articles, maybe in the 100k-200k range. Looking at it through that lens, I don't really know what to say. For whom are we incubating these aticles? The majority of them receive few views anyway, and I assume that enthusiasts don't mind the sparsity as much. This does lead us back to WP:NOT, but then, draftspace is not an indefinite repository, and 5 years is really stretching the limits. Why not just give all the articles 5 more years, and then decide whether mass-deletion is appropriate? This is really a way of 'cleaning up' a blocked user's mistakes. That is an understandable motive. However, it also feels like doing something for the sake of doing something. Dege31 (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
Can anyone say what the benefits would be if all these articles were draftified?
Here's one benefit: every article in mainspace carries a maintenance burden that eats away at editor time. There are ~40,000 active editors attempting to curate an encyclopedia that contains over 6,600,000 articles; it's in our best interest to minimize the time we spend working on articles that are going to end up being deleted.Take a look at the history of some of these articles. Some of them have had more edits than others, but all the ones I've checked so far have had at least one or two edits from people other than Lugnuts; mostly small things like changing categories or adding short descriptions. For instance, look at Anmol Malhotra. Its categories have been altered twice; its references have been renamed; it has been vandalized by IPs twice; another two IPs have made good-faith but incorrect edits which were reverted; a minor bit of information has been added to the infobox; a wikilink has been removed; and some empty spaces have been added and removed. Each of these edits might have only taken a few seconds; but add to that another few seconds per edit wasted by anyone who has that article on their watchlist, and then multiply that by 94,000 (the number of articles created by Lugnuts), and now you have a major timesink on your hands.The amount of time we spend editing and maintaining these articles pales in comparison to the time we could potentially spend discussing them, if we had to AfD them one-by-one, so if we believe that non-notable articles should be removed from Wikipedia, it makes sense to do so en masse where possible – but if anyone says (as you seem to be saying) that non-notable articles should just be left in mainspace, the maintenance burden I described above is one reason why I can't agree with that. There are other reasons (e.g. little-watched articles are more likely to contain errors, which have the potential to proliferate across the internet; the existence of non-notable articles encourages the creation of more), but the timesink factor is one that's easy to overlook. Putting these articles out of the way would just save us a heck of a lot of wasted time, and consequently give us more time to work on the encyclopedia proper. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 21:13, 15 July 2023 (UTC)- I don't necessarily disagree, since I was not primarily arguing for or against the proposal. My opinion is that this argument is broad, and the selection is arbitrary, since it applies to many more articles than the ones listed. Therefore, I cannot view it in isolation, and I do not think that makes sense. Dege31 (talk) 10:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. 5 years is long enough for anyone to fix the issue and bring them to mainspace if the subject is notable enough. Taking all of these to AFD would be tiresome and burdensome. It feels like a tiny little "backdoor to deletion" but our AFD process can't handle this volume of discussions. Draftyfying for a long time is a good middle ground. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 17:22, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
5 years is long enough for anyone to fix the issue and bring them to mainspace if the subject is notable enough
– for what will be tens of thousands of articles on old athletes, for which sources have always been more difficult to find? I don't think so. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:25, 15 July 2023 (UTC)- Then they shouldn't have been created in the first place, if that was done with no intention to source them, should they have? And we shouldn't keep them around indefinitely, if those editors who would otherwise want to save them have no intention to work to maintain them, should we? Ravenswing 03:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- @BeanieFan11: It's my understanding that provision #2 of the proposal would allow you to move every one of these articles to your own userspace, if that's what you want to do. Then you could work on them for as long as you like without any threat of deletion hanging over you. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:05, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Still, there's absolutely no way I can write tens of thousands of articles (its taken me years to do 800 and article creation has been my main contribution) - even if I moved them to my userspace, it may not be deletion, but it in a way functions as that since they will almost assuredly never be mainspace articles again. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- If no one cares enough/has time enough to do the work (and surely this proposal neither rises or falls on your personal ability to pick up the slack), then they shouldn't be mainspace articles. Ravenswing 22:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Would it be better if I were to say that the Wikipedia community as a whole does not have the time to go through the quantity of the articles in the timespan of the proposal, which would thus make many draftified articles that would survive at AfD be deleted through the backdoor, which is explicitly against Wikipedia's deletion policy as the articles do not meet WP:DRAFTIFY's required standard of "obviously unready for mainspace"? BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- They are obviously unready for mainspace. They fail SPORTSCRIT #5, so they should not be in mainspace. JoelleJay (talk) 23:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- SPORTCRIT does not say that "all articles failing this must immediately be removed from mainspace"; and also, BilledMammal created Template:No significant coverage (sports) for the sole purpose of not having to mass remove SPORTCRIT-failing articles from mainspace. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:14, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- SPORTCRIT says
Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources.
We also don't say all articles sourced only to a primary source must immediately be removed; that doesn't mean such articles are PAG-compliant and "ready for mainspace", and the existence of the primary sources template does not prevent draftification. JoelleJay (talk) 00:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- SPORTCRIT says
- SPORTCRIT does not say that "all articles failing this must immediately be removed from mainspace"; and also, BilledMammal created Template:No significant coverage (sports) for the sole purpose of not having to mass remove SPORTCRIT-failing articles from mainspace. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:14, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- They are obviously unready for mainspace. They fail SPORTSCRIT #5, so they should not be in mainspace. JoelleJay (talk) 23:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Would it be better if I were to say that the Wikipedia community as a whole does not have the time to go through the quantity of the articles in the timespan of the proposal, which would thus make many draftified articles that would survive at AfD be deleted through the backdoor, which is explicitly against Wikipedia's deletion policy as the articles do not meet WP:DRAFTIFY's required standard of "obviously unready for mainspace"? BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- If no one cares enough/has time enough to do the work (and surely this proposal neither rises or falls on your personal ability to pick up the slack), then they shouldn't be mainspace articles. Ravenswing 22:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Still, there's absolutely no way I can write tens of thousands of articles (its taken me years to do 800 and article creation has been my main contribution) - even if I moved them to my userspace, it may not be deletion, but it in a way functions as that since they will almost assuredly never be mainspace articles again. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Listify all as first choice. I didn't have a strong opinion about this until today, after I spent several hours fixing miscited page numbers on hundreds of moth substubs, often where the incorrectly cited source was the only one, and in some cases where the article was so short my addition of a citation template now accounts for more than 30% of the byte size. Now I have feelings about maintenance burdens someone mentioned above.
- Listifying articles retains the entire content, and can be performed with rapid cut-paste manoevres.
- Listifying leaves redirects for easy expansion when interested editors find additional sourced information.
- Listifying lowers maintenance burden, since many smol related changes can be made on a single page instead of thirty or two hundred.
- If a player can be placed into multiple lists, Labeled section transclusion can be used to keep the data in one place for consistency and ease of maintenance.
- Although some of these subjects pass WP:N, by certain objective measures these are amongst Wikipedia's worst articles, and they degrade the average quality of the encyclopaedia (whether "average quality" is a valuable metric is an open question).
- Articles like these make WP:N look like a mockery to newcomers. It's tough to explain with just a handwave to WP:OSE that someone's favourite youtuber with thirty million subscribers doesn't qualify for an article because traditional media have not reported on them, but a dead athlete whose professional career spanned all of a half dozen matches is worth holding on to a single sentence standalone article about.
- People come to the Teahouse with some frequency asking specifically how to exclude sportsperson biographies from Special:RandomPage, because such articles are so numerous it degrades that page's functionality for the user.
- All this stems from the choice to make the Article the fundamental unit of Wikipedia. There's no fixing that, but User:Iridescent's excellent Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway is the ideal example of what we can do about borderline notable content. Contextualise it, have a smol sourced blurb for everything contextually relevant, with a link to a standalone article if and only if the topic warrants it. This applies in general too: cricketers, moths, and substubs in my own content area of concentration, early China. Some dude was monarch of a polity of a few thousand at some point for an unknown period of time, and all we know about him is his name, predecessor, and successor, but now we have to have an article just for him specifically? All the information present in these articles is more useful in context anyway, as well as easing navigation and reducing cruft.
- Userfy to User:Lugnuts/* as second choice. Clears up all the problems of leaving the articles in mainspace, and avoids the G13 ticking time bomb. As a bonus, treat parsimoniously. Treat active players with greater leniency. Maybe leave their articles in place while the dead and retired are moved. Active players are more likely to be searched and more likely to attract interested contributors, and as a bonus a greater proportion of them are from outside the Anglosphere, so it would help a little with our systemic bias problem. Folly Mox (talk) 05:20, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- Oppose for at least the Australian cricketers. Having sampled some Australians from the list and researching on Trove, an Australian newspaper database, I've been able to expand and source perhaps half the sample, notably David Mailer, David Taylor (Australian cricketer), Daniel Cullen (New South Wales cricketer). (Note I'm not saying every article I could expand is certainly notable, but they would definitely merit a proper AfD discussion if they were up for deletion). I didn't do a particularly thorough job on each and I don't even have any pre-existing experience in researching cricketers – I'm sure someone who knew the quirks of the subject area and spent more time looking would do even better. I'm satisfied that if this proposal passed, it would put an unacceptably large number of notable articles at risk of unjustified deletion. – Teratix ₵ 06:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- If they're truly notable, they can easily be recreated. SportingFlyer T·C 22:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer: I've seen this point made repeatedly by those who support this but in reality, no, that's not going to happen; the notable ones will not be "easily recreated." Since NSPORT has been destroyed, people just don't really make many articles on historical athletes (for example, I've been pretty much the main creator of decent biographical articles in American football for a while now). Do you know the difficulty it takes to create articles nowadays on historical athletes, especially the older ones? To dig through tons of newspaper archives, then determine which are useful, then rephrase the text and add it to the article, include the references, the formatting, etc. etc. and hope it passes NPP (though autopatrollers don't have to go through that last step)? In reality, what's going to happen if this passes are a very low number of the actually notable articles here are going to be improved (like the 0.2% of the Olympians) and BilledMammal is then going to propose to get rid of 40,000 more, which will make it even more difficult to go through as we do not have the editor time to work on that many articles with deletion the consequence if we don't! BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:BeanieFan11, I certainly appreciate your passion for the sportsbio space and all the work you've done in it. I don't even want to draftify these articles (I just opined listify above, and disagree there should be any deadline for improvement if the articles are removed from mainspace), but it seems to me the process you're describing – research, rewriting source material, adding references, and properly formatting – are just the basic steps of article creation. If I didn't know better from your participation here and in the preceding Olympians RFC, I could interpret your statement above as an argument against these articles existing at all, due to the clear lack of diligence and care in their creation. Folly Mox (talk) 23:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- What I am trying to say is this: we've got these articles here currently – many are notable, and they do not meet WP:DRAFTIFY's standard of "obviously unready for mainspace," and on top of that creation of historical athletes has gotten ten times harder than it was in the past. Draftifiying these would result in very few actually being improved/returned, and would only make the deletion of huge quantites of notable articles (not to mention BilledMammal wants to propose getting rid of tens of thousands after this; there is no possible way to get through that many before they're deleted). That does not improve the encyclopedia at all. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:23, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Folly Mox - The issue isn't notability, it's that there's few editors here, limited cricket knowledge and extra hurdles like non-romantic language barriers and overly eager AfD debaters that dissuade people like myself from even beginning to look into these people.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- But we have no way of knowing which of these are actually notable or not notable, because no one has bothered to check. That's both why we are here and why NSPORT became deprecated in the first place! Listifying would be fine because it would give potential creators a place to start. SportingFlyer T·C 08:48, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- I don't care that we don't know which are notable, the fact that we would be deleting large amounts of notable ones is what makes this unacceptable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- I sympathise with the cricket editors here, and I'm in agreement with the opposition in that I don't want the information in these articles removed from the encyclopaedia. I just think the way we're managing the information (thousands of individual tiny articles) is far from ideal. Maybe the farthest from ideal? Folly Mox (talk) 19:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- But we have no way of knowing which of these are actually notable or not notable, because no one has bothered to check. That's both why we are here and why NSPORT became deprecated in the first place! Listifying would be fine because it would give potential creators a place to start. SportingFlyer T·C 08:48, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- User:BeanieFan11, I certainly appreciate your passion for the sportsbio space and all the work you've done in it. I don't even want to draftify these articles (I just opined listify above, and disagree there should be any deadline for improvement if the articles are removed from mainspace), but it seems to me the process you're describing – research, rewriting source material, adding references, and properly formatting – are just the basic steps of article creation. If I didn't know better from your participation here and in the preceding Olympians RFC, I could interpret your statement above as an argument against these articles existing at all, due to the clear lack of diligence and care in their creation. Folly Mox (talk) 23:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- The fact remains that this proposal will probably mean deleting many articles on notable topics. That shouldn't be acceptable to us. – Teratix ₵ 00:05, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- @SportingFlyer: I've seen this point made repeatedly by those who support this but in reality, no, that's not going to happen; the notable ones will not be "easily recreated." Since NSPORT has been destroyed, people just don't really make many articles on historical athletes (for example, I've been pretty much the main creator of decent biographical articles in American football for a while now). Do you know the difficulty it takes to create articles nowadays on historical athletes, especially the older ones? To dig through tons of newspaper archives, then determine which are useful, then rephrase the text and add it to the article, include the references, the formatting, etc. etc. and hope it passes NPP (though autopatrollers don't have to go through that last step)? In reality, what's going to happen if this passes are a very low number of the actually notable articles here are going to be improved (like the 0.2% of the Olympians) and BilledMammal is then going to propose to get rid of 40,000 more, which will make it even more difficult to go through as we do not have the editor time to work on that many articles with deletion the consequence if we don't! BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- If they're truly notable, they can easily be recreated. SportingFlyer T·C 22:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- Suuport on the same grounds as my support in the original LUGSTUBS, and per ActivelyDisinterested and Aquillion here. XAM2175 (T) 10:00, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support. I have been considering this since my comment below, questioning the much more diverse range of articles here than in the previous RfC. I lean now towards support. All the articles share the same issues that defined the query, being procedurally (and uncaringly, if they have similar effort to the Olympic stubs) generated from databases. The inclusion of WP:BLPs initially concerned me, as they would be much more likely to have so-far unadded coverage (especially South Asian cricketers, whose coverage may not be in English), but conversely, BLPs are where we should be most cautious about these sorts of slapdash efforts. I find the reference to WP:DEADLINE in oppose votes curious. This proposal is being considered now, not in the future. There is no deadline to have some stats in the mainspace, especially not for BLPs. CMD (talk) 07:32, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- There's also no deadline for removing these articles out of mainspace - and right now we have these articles. That is what the opposers are arguing. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Comment - Counting very roughly I make it 47 support 35 oppose at this point, with maybe 2 listify/userfy. That's very roughly that same 60:40 split as at the original LUGSTUBS discussion. FOARP (talk) 09:23, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- WP:DETCON says "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy." The number of !votes is irrelevant. James500 (talk) 02:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- The number is not decisive, but nor is it irrelevant. If I'm saying anything at all here, it's that if the final numerical split of the votes is similar, and the arguments are similar, the outcome should also be similar. FOARP (talk) 13:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- The policy says that the number of !votes is irrelevant. One of the reasons that the consensus policy does not take into account the number of !votes is because such an approach would encourage sockpuppetry and other forms of vote stacking.
- The arguments are not similar. These articles have far more coverage than the Olympians. James500 (talk) 23:02, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- The number is not decisive, but nor is it irrelevant. If I'm saying anything at all here, it's that if the final numerical split of the votes is similar, and the arguments are similar, the outcome should also be similar. FOARP (talk) 13:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- WP:DETCON says "Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy." The number of !votes is irrelevant. James500 (talk) 02:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- Weak support as long as all the criteria in the nomination are correct, and if any have been expanded since the start of the RFC, then they are excluded from this move. Most of these articles are likely non-notable based on the criteria for their selection, and those that are can always be expanded and then moved back to article space. Joseph2302 (talk) 10:02, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per pervious RfC. This is basically the same situation just on a different subset so all previous rational applies here. I would have preferred a much shorter time period than the 5 years, but the proposal is still better than the current situation. --Gonnym (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support per the previous RfC and Donald Albury and SMC. Ealdgyth (talk) 17:32, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Support some of those stubs are in my watchlist and all I'm going to do is expand them until they surpass 2,500 bytes (I know they're notable). Any notable figure that gets their article deleted will eventually get their article recreated in theory precisely because they're notable. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 19:42, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- But why would notable articles need to be moved to draftspace and/or deleted for them exist as non-stubs? Why not go through the much more simple process of expanding them in mainspace? And to
Any notable figure that gets their article deleted will eventually get their article recreated in theory precisely because they're notable
– that's not necessarily the case. Creating notable articles on historical athletes has gotten many times harder since NSPORT was destroyed and there's already enormous quantities of notable athletes that have never been created in 20 years of wikipedia (so using logic, if the articles get much harder to be created and already huge amounts of notable ones that have never been written, how would getting rid of tens of thousands of the notable ones we already have make it likely they'll all be recreated in a better state?) BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:56, 17 July 2023 (UTC)- In my opinion some of Wikipedia's most problematic articles are those that are right below the threshold of notability. It might take years until someone realises there's not actually that much to say on a given person. I've been on Wikipedia for years and it is still hard for me to judge whether some people are notable or not, and I believe it will always be like that because of the quite abstract nature of the policy.
- Lugnuts has created tons of short articles based on data repositories. Some are definitively not notable. Whether on draftspace or on mainspace, it will take us years to go through all of them. I believe in that case that it is better to keep bad content out of the mainspace and to progressively recover good articles than to keep trash for years here. This is a really exceptional treatment for a really exceptional (once-in-a-Wikipedia so far) case. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 20:34, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- @Super Dromaeosaurus - I think there's maybe only two others whose article-production in the long-term deserves this analysis. I'm not going to put them on blast by naming them here but if you're familiar with Iranian village stubs and bot-created Indian sub-continent geostubs you'll know who I'm talking about. FOARP (talk) 13:48, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- Also, on a side note, @Super Dromaeosaurus:, you can expect the deletionists to give you hell whenever they can for all the draftified articles you move back to mainspace after expanding (as evidence, when I spent about an hour expanding the draftified Gyula Iványi from the prior discussion, I then had to waste several more hours arguing in several places with multiple users about why he was worth moving to mainspace and only after that did they finally agree he deserved an article - expanding it alone they don't view as sufficient and only block-worthy "gaming the system"; you also have to find SIGCOV which they agree is SIGCOV (very rare) and that they agree is a reliable source and that they agree covers said athlete in the correct context (I've had articles I did significant work on deleted because although they had sufficient SIGCOV, that SIGCOV didn't cover them in the right way) - and usually you need to have multiple pieces of it). BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- Deletionist–inclusionist conflicts are going to happen no matter what solution we apply and also outside of this group of articles until the end of Wikipedia. I don't think the same will happen to every single other article.
- For the record: I would define myself as an inclusionist. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 20:34, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
- But why would notable articles need to be moved to draftspace and/or deleted for them exist as non-stubs? Why not go through the much more simple process of expanding them in mainspace? And to
- Support. It's theft. Summarizing two or more sources is not stealing, that's creating a new work, but simply copying from another website and pasting the contents onto this website is just plain stealing. Scraping another website and copying thousands, or tens of thousands, of its pages and pasting them onto Wikipedia, that's just theft on a large scale. It's highly immoral. It doesn't matter if what's being stolen are "just" statistics; these websites are doing all the work (and investing the money) to gather these statistics, and then Wikipedia comes along and just copies them by the thousands? Not cool. In addition, when I Google "Aadil Rashid" [16] (to take one example), Wikipedia comes up first and ESPNcricinfo comes up second. So not only are we stealing their content, but we're stealing their traffic as well. Is this what we want? When people want to look up a cricketer, we want them to come to Wikipedia instead of some other website, even if all the information we have was simply copied from the other website? No way. This sort of content theft contradicts the ethos of what Wikipedia should be; it's hypocritical of Wikipedia to permit it (nevermind celebrating it), and we should delete all of these articles for no other reason than to deter anyone else from engaging in this sort of immoral mass-copying-and-pasting.
Nobody has actually read these "articles." Aadil Rashid received less than 0.5 page views per day this year. I do not believe Lugnuts read all the 90,000+ articles he created. The difference between these mass-copied-and-pasted articles and a regular article is that when an editor creates articles one at a time, they actually read the articles they create, so at least one human being has actually read the article before we publish it. Not so with these mass creations, we don't know if even one human being has ever read it. It's irresponsible of Wikipedia to publish something that nobody has read first (nevermind verified). At least some of these articles are WP:BLPs. Publishing unread BLPs is not just irresponsible, it's reckless.
While I prefer WP:CSDing these immoral and irresponsible if not reckless mass-stolen articles (or at least the BLPs), not everyone is on board with deleting them all at once. There are too many to take them to AFD, even in batches (neither spending years going through this, nor flooding the AFD queue, are reasonable options). This proposal is a good compromise that takes them out of mainspace while still allowing 5 years for interested editors to improve them and bring them back to mainspace as articles or redirects, whichever is better for the particular article, just like the last RFC about Olympians. Levivich (talk) 03:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- - Levivich - Pageview counts don't matter WP:NOBODYREADSIT.KatoKungLee (talk) 14:25, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
It's theft.
– Are you kiddin' me? That's one of the most nonsensical suggestions I've seen in this entire discussion! If this is stealing, than all of Wikipedia is! Actually, summarizing sources is much more "stealing" than going from a stats website, and creating a one-sentence stub article based on the fact that Beanie Fan played two XI cricket matches for Gloucestershire in 1997 - you claim we're taking their "hard work and money" but there's much more in those databases that Lugnuts wouldn't mention (for example, stats – and ESPNcricinfo (if I remember correctly) also has prose for some of the athletes; if Lugnuts was actually word-for-word copying that, than I would agree they should be deleted; but he wasn't.) You claim that we're also stealing their views; I'd claim the opposite. First, you can click on them as the second result on google or you could read our Wikipedia article, which is very short and contains a link to that website; the fact that its very short would likely incline its readers to click on the link, thus giving them more views actually. And you say that, but right after say that "nobody reads these articles in the first place" (a side note: if no one reads these, how are we stealing other websites' views?) – you point to a link that shows a cricketer getting 0.5 views a day and say that we shouldn't have articles no one reads, but right there that's evidence that over 100 people reading it per year! BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)- @Levivich@BeanieFan11 - Since IP is my profession, I have given this some thought over the years. Morally I can't disagree that simply going through a database and reproducing the numbers from it as Lugnuts clearly did is cheesy in the extreme. Legally, well, mere facts are not copyright protected. Barring the existence of "trap listings" (e.g., fake listings put into the database just to catch copiers) it is hard to see where the legal case could be. Where it gets murkier is things like database rights where any liability would rest on things that I have little insight into (e.g., to what extent did Lugnuts reproduce the structure of the Cricinfo database and to what extent is that protected?). I don't see any clear case for IP infringement but I don't know everything.
- On the readership point, 100 hits a year almost certainly represents zero actual humans reading the article, as articles will get crawled by bots (e.g., search-engine indexers) about that many times in a year. FOARP (talk) 13:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- The page view statistics count human and non-human views separately. For example Agniv Pan last month received views from 94 users,[17] 64 spiders,[18] and 5 "automated" (i.e. non-spiders non-humans) [19]. While the determination of "user" isn't exactly equal to "human" it is close and typically fewer than 5-10 "user" hits a year can be attributed to non-humans. Thryduulf (talk) 08:04, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Arbitrary break 2: Survey (mass draftification of cricket articles)[edit]
- Strong Oppose I was leaning support upon initial reading of the discussion. Doubtless, many of these are poor articles that do deserve to be deleted. However, many are not; they are simply articles that have not been improved to the level we expect at Wikipedia. Those would not pass deletion at AfD, and should not pass here. I would encourage a much more thorough list, that looks into vernacular sources, though I acknowledge that it will need much more effort than what has been expended here already. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 04:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is similar to the spirit of WP:PRESERVE, but what good is PRESERVE for zero-effort, mass-created articles? There's no work to preserve. Another assumption underlying PRESERVE is that articles are more likely to reach X state (e.g. B-class) by a given date, if they exist, than if they need to be remade from scratch. That assumption holds true for articles that are merely bad. Not for barren articles that contain nothing but database info. DFlhb (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- For the record, my research suggests it isn't even true for stubs in general, although it is more true for stubs like those than micro-stubs like these. BilledMammal (talk) 12:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- By keeping the useful ones in mainspace, we encourage people to add to them. How many casual visitors go and edit drafts vs how many edit mainspace? I support the removal of articles where there is truly no notability, but a mass draftification essentially puts the burden of improvement on a very small number of editors, thus being de-facto deletion. I would support a second list if it came with checks regarding vernacular sources. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 15:07, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- How many casual visitors are we expecting to come across these articles in mainspace and add multiple sources of IRS SIGCOV to produce a PAG-compliant article? No one besides Lugnuts has substantially edited any of these stubs ever over the last 10 years. And I suspect the vast majority of cricket Lugstubs that have been expanded satisfactorily by others have been expanded by the most active members of the cricket wikiproject, all of whom should be aware of this proposal and thus aware that they can visit the list and work on drafts should they wish to. Their being in draftspace won't impede these editors if they happened to come across SIGCOV of some player and want to add it; they'll know to check the list if the name is a redlink. JoelleJay (talk) 01:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- The argument that someone who isnt an extremely dedicated Wiki editor wo
- How many casual visitors are we expecting to come across these articles in mainspace and add multiple sources of IRS SIGCOV to produce a PAG-compliant article? No one besides Lugnuts has substantially edited any of these stubs ever over the last 10 years. And I suspect the vast majority of cricket Lugstubs that have been expanded satisfactorily by others have been expanded by the most active members of the cricket wikiproject, all of whom should be aware of this proposal and thus aware that they can visit the list and work on drafts should they wish to. Their being in draftspace won't impede these editors if they happened to come across SIGCOV of some player and want to add it; they'll know to check the list if the name is a redlink. JoelleJay (talk) 01:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
- This is similar to the spirit of WP:PRESERVE, but what good is PRESERVE for zero-effort, mass-created articles? There's no work to preserve. Another assumption underlying PRESERVE is that articles are more likely to reach X state (e.g. B-class) by a given date, if they exist, than if they need to be remade from scratch. That assumption holds true for articles that are merely bad. Not for barren articles that contain nothing but database info. DFlhb (talk) 12:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)