Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/East Carolina Pirates future football schedules (2nd nomination)

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 East Carolina Pirates football. J04n(talk page) 11:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

East Carolina Pirates future football schedules[edit]

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Future football schedules. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of sports trivia. Material is not being kept up, since the "future season" of 2012 has already occurred. The logic of WP:FUTURE applies as well. GrapedApe (talk)

Delete not because of the reasons above, but because it is woefully out of date and not kept up. This does not mean that "future" schedules could not be a good article, as it is obviously a WP:DISCRIMINATE list and not an "indiscriminate" one. Fix the article, get it up-to-date, and I'll change my position.--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:47, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Paul, the current quality of an article should not be a deciding factor in an AFD. In an AFD we should ask ourselves whether the article should exist even if it was well-developed, well-formatted, and well-cited. This confusion has contributed to the lack of consensus on these articles in the past. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:19, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yes and no. Sometimes an article is so bad that Wikipedia would be better without it, even if it is a notable subject. If an enthusiastic editor wants to jump in and take over, that's fine. I'd be okay with Userfy. This one is so out of date that it leaves a bad impression and for that I maintain my position. No prejudice against recreation thought.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:28, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge future seasons into East Carolina Pirates football. This is useful information, but not as a stand-alone article. Most other football programs that include future opponents have it near the bottom of the team page. see The Citadel Bulldogs football, Clemson Tigers football, South Carolina Gamecocks football, or North Carolina Tar Heels football, for some regional examples. Billcasey905 (talk) 01:53, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into main ECU football article. Not worthy of a stand-alone list. Jrcla2 (talk) 02:15, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Originating editor with heavy interest in ECU abandoned Wikipedia a year back; no use in keeping for a mid-major program. Nate • (chatter) 02:35, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per nom. IronKnuckle (talk) 02:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This AFD ought to be expanded to a group nomination to include BYU Cougars future football schedules, Colorado Buffaloes football future schedule and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football future schedule. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:37, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Disagree This should not be a group nomination because each of those articles has differences that make them unique from this one. BYU's page, for example, is very well kept up, as is Notre Dame's. Unless they are being deleted for exactly the same reasons, this should not be a group deletion. Also, BYU and Notre Dame's schedules are unusual in that they do not have preset, conference schedules because they play as independents. Whereas other schools have only four or so games to schedule per season, BYU and Notre Dame have an entire 12-to-13-game slate to fill. As such, the receive far more attention from the press. Scheduling decisions at BYU and Notre Dame, unlike those at East Carolina, are regularly followed by national news organizations, as evidenced by the sources used in their articles. If you look closely there, you will see citations to ESPN, CBS, NBC, USA Today, and the Associated Press. You will not find these kinds of sources for East Carolina. Wrad (talk) 06:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - I would also remind you, GrapedApe, that last time you tried to do a group nom, it backfired, and nothing got deleted, because Notre Dame and BYU have more sources and citations than Colorado and East Carolina. The group nom complicated the debate too much, and it was impossible to reach a decision. Perhaps if you limit your targets, you will succeed this time. Just a suggestion. Wrad (talk) 06:56, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - Wrad, the fundamental issue at question here is: do future schedules for NCAA Division I FBS football teams deserve their own article? Granted BYU, Colorado, and Notre Dame garner more coverage at a national level than East Carolina, but WikiProject College football generally considers all programs at the same level of play to be of the same tier of notability with respect to article structure and inclusion, i.e. they should have an analogous set of articles detailing them. The issue of article upkeep and the particulars of the citations are secondary details, perhaps of no real relevance at all to the central question posed here. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:09, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      - Jweiss11, you're making stuff up, here. Wikipedia believes in nothing of the sort. What it does believe in is respecting the sources, and the sources respect the future schedules of BYU and Notre Dame more so than Colorado and East Carolina. It seems unfairly discriminatory to me to suggest forcing these two independent football programs to conform to some undetermined norm when they are obviously and demonstrably outside of the norm in the way in which their schedules are created, compiled, and reported on. If you want to try a group nom again, go ahead, but I guarantee you it will fail, just like last time. Wrad (talk) 07:14, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Wrad, I'm not "making things up here" any more than any policy or position is "made up". There are plenty of reliable sources for the future schedules of Colorado and East Carolina. If we are going to have future schedule articles for Notre Dame and BYU, then I'd like to see them for all 124 DI FBS programs. So, the group nomination failing wouldn't be such a bad thing. That lack of parallelism is what I find most problematic. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Two things: 1) Show me the policy that says that all college football articles of all kinds, everywhere on the site, have to be the same for all 124 schools, despite the fact that many of the schools' programs have significant differences that are reflected in reliable sources nationwide. At this point I'm incredulous, but seeing that policy would certainly help me believe you aren't making it up. 2) It seems unfairly discriminatory to me to suggest forcing these two independent football programs to conform to some undetermined norm when they are obviously and demonstrably outside of the norm in the way in which their schedules are created, compiled, and reported on. I find it incredibly ironic that you are being discriminatory in the name of fighting discrimination. Wrad (talk) 07:30, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Wrad, what I'm talking about is implied by the importance scale at Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Assessment along with many other de facto conventions at WikiProject College football. I'm not fighting for or against discrimination. I'm in favor of parallelism. Reliable sources are only one part of how we frame an article on Wikipedia. We have to use some sort of convention beyond the sheer existence of reliable sources to decide where one article ends and where another begins. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:41, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        I'm sure it is (or at least hope it is!) not just an implied or de facto convention, but a policy at the Wikiproject to respect reliable sources. It certainly is on the rest of Wikipedia! Secondly, parallelism is discrimination when it forces things to be parallel which demonstrably are not so. It seems to me that merging future seasons onto the main BYU and Notre Dame articles would be unwieldy, since so much information would have to be transferred, whereas for other schools it would be a very simple matter. Wrad (talk) 07:46, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        It ought to be pretty obvious from that importance schedule, or by digging around and looking at structures like navboxes that have been set up for the topic of college football, that WikiProject College football has established conventions to par out programs that play at the same level. This, among others things, helps combat the historically rampant problem of fanboy-ism on the topic. BYU and Notre Dame may indeed garner more significant coverage of their future schedules. Accordingly the appropriate sections, all supported by those reliable sources, of the main program articles ought to be a bit more extensive than for say the East Carolinas of college FBS football.Jweiss11 (talk) 07:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'd just like to point out that WP:NOT does not say anywhere that "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of sports trivia." Here, however, is what WP:NOT actually says: "Avoid predicted sports team line-ups, which are inherently unverifiable and speculative. A schedule of future events may be appropriate if it can be verified. As an exception, even highly speculative articles about events that may or may not occur far in the future might be appropriate, where coverage in reliable sources is sufficient. For example, Ultimate fate of the universe is an acceptable topic." In other words, if it has the sources to back it up, it has the right to exist. Nothing new there. Wrad (talk) 07:02, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to East Carolina Pirates football. For what it's worth, I'd also support analogous merges for BYU, Colorado, and Notre Dame. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:12, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to East Carolina Pirates football, but leave BYU and Notre Dame alone for reasons I have expressed above. Wrad (talk) 07:21, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No group nomination I'm against group nomination as well. They can each have their own AFD, it's not unwieldy at all.--Paul McDonald (talk) 12:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Not an encyclopedic topic. Agreed with the above that a merge would not be altogether inappropriate — a freestanding article, not so much. Carrite (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of American football-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Why not put information in 2013 East Carolina Pirates football team, 2014 East Carolina Pirates football team, etc. where the final schedule will ultimately be anyways? We are creating too much work for ourselves creating holding articles such as this one or moving it to a temporary place like East Carolina Pirates football.—Bagumba (talk) 06:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Bagumba, WP:CFB policy is not create season articles more than one year into the future. Jweiss11 (talk) 13:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - As there is verifiable information available and the season is 99% certain to be played, an exception seems warranted as opposed to moving information around from article to article year-to-year.—Bagumba (talk) 18:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge. I've been thinking about this "future schedules" issue since this AfD was started a week ago, contemplating the best way to approach this. My conclusion: the content of this list/article should be included in a "Future non-conference opponents" section of the parent East Carolina Pirates football article, as is the case for the overwhelming majority of other Division I FBS team articles. I note that this article is one of only four or five remaining CFB "future schedules" lists; in virtually all other instances, similar material has already been merged/incorporated directly into the parent article regarding the particular CFB team. I also share the WP:CRYSTAL concerns expressed by others above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:59, 19 February 2013 (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.