Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (2nd nomination)

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Doug Ring. Consensus is that parts but not necessarily all of this article should be merged. Sandstein 08:54, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948[edit]

AfDs for this article:

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Though this article may be FA, there is significant concern that it fails to meet notability guidelines, particularly WP:PAGEDECIDE. Doug Ring is notable, the 1948 Australian cricket team is notable, but there is not enough significant coverage to justify a specific article on Doug Ring's performance as part of the 1948 team. The article quite literally says, and I quote, "Ring was not prominent in the team's success." Much of this article is either statistics, or a repeat of what is already included in the article Doug Ring. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:52, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The user in question has an entire featured topic to their name. I fail to see how deletion of one article somehow affects their legacy. If you are wondering where this came from, take a look at Talk:Doug Ring and Wikipedia:Featured article review/Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948/archive1. The decision to nominate a featured article for deletion was not made lightly. Significant concerns have been raised about its notability. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:09, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And I fail to see why the user matters at all. The article isn't worthy of inclusion, and that it was written by a much missed user does not matter even slightly in assessing its notability. 5225C (talk • contributions) 02:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I sort of suggested this come to AfD as a way of reaching a wider audience than a merge discussion would. I hadn't realised that it had been nominated in 2014 and read that discussion with interest. I am swayed by Sarastro1's comments there (Sarastro1 is rarely around these days). There are clearly sources which exist and Sarastro1 was of the belief, having read them, that there was about enough coverage to justify the article from the POV of whether sources provide enough detail. That's a persuasive argument.
There are other arguments that can be made, and I'm unsure of the best approach to take here, other than that a merge would clearly need to be very, very selective and probably also very limited in scope.
If I'd have realised the 2014 discussion had taken place I'm not sure that I'd have suggested an AfD now fwiw, but there you go. Sorry about that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 23:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I concur that it isn't a cut and dry situation, even as the nominator I am not 100% certain the article should be deleted. From reading the previous discussion, what struck me is the argument that an encyclopedia should not just be an indiscriminate collection of information. Particularly, I was struck by Calthan's comments in the discussion, some of which I will quote here:
"I've always seen this series of articles as being a failure to condense the subject into an encyclopedia article (or articles). Books focusing on a notable subject would generally be expected to cover the subject in detail, and just because information can be cited to books doesn't mean that it should be included in an encyclopedia article. An essential part of writing an encyclopedia article is selecting the portions of the information available that are important to understanding the topic. This article consists primarily of information such as the score or outcome at different points in different matches. Those are minute details that are not at all essential to understanding the main notable subject of the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. Except for the "role" section, this article is all material that encyclopedia editors should have selected to not include in Wikipedia."
There are valid points that were raised by the keep voters, but it is also true that standards on Wikipedia have changed since 2014, and this article deserves reassessment of its notability, or lack thereof. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It does seem a bit much to have articles on each player in a single test series, however important that series may appear to be (though, I note that there is no mention of the series in Test cricket). And then there is Ring's record in the series (1 test, 9 runs, 1 wicket) which can pretty much be summed up as "didn't do much, did he?" (though he seems to have done a lot better against the county teams). Much though I'd like to say "keep" out of respect for YM who is much missed on wikipedia, merge is probably the right choice. --RegentsPark (comment) 00:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I was the nominator last time this article was up for deletion, and although the consensus was in favor of keeping it, in the intervening years there has been no further demonstration of notability and consensus can change. StAnselm (talk) 00:09, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge with Doug Ring. (JayPlaysStuff | talk to me | What I've been up to) 01:14, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge § Role to Doug Ring, delete. I was initially very convinced that this article should simply be deleted, but following conversation at the FAR I can appreciate that it's a bit more complex than that. The bulk of this article is, as mentioned above, unencyclopedic statistics. The statistics are only really placed in context in the Role section, and even then some of that content appears to be original research. I do not believe that notability is established in the article, I don't see a claim to significance or to importance, and to the contrary the article downplays its own significance. It's debatable as to whether all the almanacs/etc. can be used to establish notability, and maybe for other players they could, but when the lead introduces the subject as unimportant then I don't get why there's an independent article on it.
I do not believe that the previous AfDs (both for this article and the group nomination) were good discussions. A lot of comments were essentially "it's an FA" and a few were a bit kooky in their definitions of notability and Wikipedia's purpose. WP:ILIKEIT isn't a reason to keep it. To me, this article seems to be a bit of quirk of Wikipedia, a kind of remnant of when the site was a lot less bureaucratic and standards for inclusion were much laxer. If an article of this kind were created today I don't think it'd make a week, let alone pass as an FA. Our standards have changed and in my view its wrong to grandfather in articles which can't be brought up to the current standard. The FAR isn't gaining much traction and it looks as though the article will remain pretty much as it is.
If we're going to accept a collection of stats (and admittedly a pretty big collection) as combining to prove notability, it begs the question of how far we can stretch inclusion guidelines. I don't think this article meets them, and although we might not be a paper encyclopaedia there needs to be a reasonable limit to how far down a rabbit hole we can go. In this case, I think the limit is probably a step up from this, and we should have stopped with Australian cricket team in England in 1948 and Doug Ring. 5225C (talk • contributions) 02:00, 31 October 2021 (UTC), amended 08:10, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Merge and delete" is not a possible AfD outcome, as it loses the attribution for the merged content. —Kusma (talk) 13:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As others have pointed out below, if you keep the redirect you keep the history. For the avoidance of doubt, I will re-word my !vote. 5225C (talk • contributions) 08:10, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. As the one who originally raised issues with the article here, I was concerned by issues with OR and inappropriate synthesis/editorializing. As it currently stands, the article heavily relies on game summaries and statistics. In my opinion, this signals a lack of notability; game summaries and statistics are common to most professional sporting events and therefore fail to indicate lasting significance. Moreover, when considering the additional sources used in this article, the topic's notability seems to be inferred from the fact that the team as a whole is notable, but notability is not inherited. To put it another way, I am concerned that allowing the article to remain as-is would send the message that articles about an athlete's performance in a single year, season, or comparable time span are inherently notable, which is not a precedent I think we should set. As a comparison, the 1972 Miami Dolphins were a historically successful team like Ring's 1948 team, but that should not imply that articles for Bob Griese with the Miami Dolphins in 1972, Earl Morrall with the Miami Dolphins in 1972, Larry Csonka with the Miami Dolphins in 1972, etc., are notable topics for inclusion on Wikipedia. RunningTiger123 (talk) 03:19, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Selective merge to Doug Ring This is a contentious subject given that the article is a FA, however it's my view that as wikipedia has moved on there probably isn't a need for this kind of article given the subject's limited participation on the tour. Articles such as this for Don Bradman, Sid Barnes or many other on the tour are perfectly acceptable, but because Doug Ring played such a limited role on the tour in terms of test cricket a merge would be best here. In the FAR it was found that Wisden only had limited coverage on the subject and so GNG was likely to be an issue, but merging is a suitable WP:ATD. However as Blue Square Thing brought up in the FAR on the subject, a lot of the detail in this subject is already included at Doug Ring and if lots were to be merged then the Doug Ring article would become excessive and over detailed. Therefore a selective merge is required, likely to be done by someone from the Cricket WikiProject or with a close interest in the subject. Rugbyfan22 (talk) 10:07, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge with the biography (or keep, I can't comment on the notability much as the topic is very alien to me); do not delete the redirect per m:Keep history and to have a good way to keep the paper trail of the FA nomination etc. Can't see any advantage of hiding the history from non-admins. —Kusma (talk) 10:16, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd certainly agree that deleting would be an issue and that the history is better preserved. Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:23, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge and evaluate the others on their notability. Keeping them around could set a precedent for similar articles about other athletes, which could result in hundreds of extra headaches. SounderBruce 10:40, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge. I recall raising my eyebrows when I saw this at TFA. There's far from enough coverage to justify a standalone article here; a combination of prose content that could be covered elsewhere, and statistics that Wikipedia is not a database for. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:02, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Selective merge to Doug Ring. Do not delete; as a FA this seems like a case where there could be benefit to retaining page history, and given the status and history of this article my guess is that's there's outside links here that would be broken if deleted. With that said, I don't see any notability in this subject. A notable athlete on a notable team, but too much detail for an instance where there isn't significant coverage or a significant role by this player. The others may be salvageable, though. Hog Farm Talk 21:49, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge Per Hog Farm: retaining page history. Femke (talk) 21:57, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge selectively. Ring's role in the tour is relatively minor. Coverage of his participation is trivial and mostly appears to be routine match reporting. While he was relatively successful in tour matches outside of the Test series, this is not covered in detail by reliable sources. He is mentioned in passing in Wisden and while he is championed by Bill O'Reilly as a potential Test player, though this appears to be more about O'Reilly criticising Bradman than about Ring. Hack (talk) 14:14, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I have started working on this, and access to sources is better than the old days because of increased digitisation Grubby Richard (talk) 18:56, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge (selectively) into Ring's bio and the tour article where the content is not undue in those articles. Although both tour and player are notable, the cross-section is not. There is insufficient material to sustain an independent article without venturing into original synthesis based on statistics, and his role in the tour has not been covered extensively in reliable third-party sources. Nonetheless, the page history should be preserved in case it's useful in the future. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:05, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Doug_Ring_with_the_Australian_cricket_team_in_England_in_1948_(2nd_nomination)&oldid=1053978901"