Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Faith Knelson

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 no consensus defaulting to Keep and w/o prejudice to a speedy renomination. I came very close to closing this as a delete because frankly I found the arguments there to be more persuasive. However while some of the pro-keep comments were fairly light-weight, a couple posed a sufficiently rational case for keeping that I am not quite ready to pull the delete trigger here. As the discussion has already been relisted twice, I believe it's time to move on. Ad Orientem (talk) 02:36, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Faith Knelson[edit]

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The concern that has been raised is that Knelson does not satisfy WP:NATHLETE.

The editor who raised the concerns (Snow Rise) does not have time to nominate this, so I thought I would. This is a procedural nomination and I do not have an opinion either way. TheSandDoctor ^Talk 16:09, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 16:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 16:13, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 16:13, 21 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I lean towards removal on this one. This article was created by an SPA who seems to have an off-project connection to the subject, with involvement by another. More to the point, it was created without establishing WP:Notability, as far as I can tell. WP:GNG is a no-go because the sources utilized are not WP:RS and the only one of the three which is kinda-sorta on the cusp of being RS doesn't provide actual detailed coverage of the subject (it merely mentions her name in a list of athletes competing at a particular event). We therefore look to WP:NATHLETE; like most of our contemporary subject-specific notability guidelines, there's a fair bit of problematic subjectivity involved in arriving at the criteria that make a person "notable", but even under the generous standards of that guideline, there is no provision which would greenlight notability here--though it is worth the mention that there is no swimming section in that guideline. Some criteria for other sports do allow for presumption of notability if an athlete who has meddled at the Commonwealth Games, others if they competed in a final heat at those games. Ms. Knelson did compete at said games, according to the article, taking fourth place in one event. I'm sure mileage will vary on the analogical reasoning of assuming a similar standard should be applied for swimmers and whether Ms. Knelson would qualify under such an extrapolated standard, but my inclination is that, given the sourcing here, this subject does not yet meet what I would consider minimal standards of notability, and should be removed from the present time. It's an atypical case requiring some discretion in analysis though. Snow ^{let's rap} 00:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (at least for the moment): This is a 16 year old who placed 4th in her first senior international event two months ago, and came home from the 2017 World Junior Swimming Championships with 4 medals and a World Junior Record (admittedly in a relay event). Knelson has been reported on in swimming news websites since she was 14. A News search pulls up 8 pages of results from a range of sources, which could be used to improve the article. I'm a casual swim fan from Australia, and I recognised her name. Sportygeek (talk) 10:32, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mmmm, 8 pages of results for a random name doesn't necessarily mean even one source which A) concerns this Faith Knelson, and B) would qualify as WP:RS, and C) includes sufficient in-depth coverage that goes anywhere to establishing notability. Can you provide even one or two examples from those results that you feel do? It would resolve the issue pretty quickly if you could, but I'm afraid that impressionistic evidence like "I've heard of her" and "her name gets search results" don't cut it for policy purposes here. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:08, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do you consider CBC to satisfy WP:RS? Here's a CBC article on the world junior record set at by the Canadian medley relay team (Jade Hannah, Faith Knelson, Penny Oleksiak and Taylor Ruck) at 2017 FINA World Junior Swimming Championships. Does Swimming World Magazine satisfy WP:RS? If so, see this article. There is in-depth coverage in local press, including this article following Knelson's selection to the Commonwealth Games. There are many articles stating Knelson's 4th place performance at Comm Games, but (outside of local press) most rightly focus more on her teammate Ruck, who won a record-equalling 8 medals. I note that Knelson is currently ranked #16 in the world for the women's 100m breaststroke. She is 16, at the beginning of her senior international career. Do we really want to delete her article now, and reconstruct it in a year or two, assuming she is selected for the 2019 World Aquatics Championships and/or the 2020 Summer Olympics? Sportygeek (talk) 23:00, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your last question first, in soem circumstances that it is precisely the right editorial call, per WP:CRYSTAL. As to the sourcing, I do find the the CBC to be manifestly an RS, but it mentions Knelson only once and incidentally, so no in-depth coverage there. The local coverage meanwhile, while in-depth, probably does not pass muster as RS for the purposes of establishing notability for this subject. What we really need, if we were going to approach this via GNG, is sources that are both RS and contain in-depth coverage of the subject. I still have not seen a single such sources, so I can't !vote keep on that policy.

Which leaves the SNG as the best argument. Because there is no language in NATHLETE which covers swimming, we have to try to do decide if there is a way to extrapolate from the standards for other sports to create a principled rationale for keeping this athlete. I personally am not very comfortable with that: I already have deep concerns about the amount of subjectivity that has been allowed to influence the project's inclusion standards as a consequence of SNGs being formulated by small groups of editors who are often very fixated on the topic in question, rather than allowing a more objective standard to control. Going one step further to create an ad-hoc additional standard in a content discussion and outside the policy page and the WP:PROPOSAL process seems fraught with procedural problems. As a consequence, I feel like the time for this article may not be ripe. But I'm going to wait a little longer before lodging an !vote either way. Maybe I've yet to see the silver bullet source that puts this to rest. Snow ^{let's rap} 02:34, 1 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: satisfies notability as an athlete and sportswoman. Quis separabit? 19:04, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can you be more specific about the language in NATHLETE that you think she qualifies under? Because there is no section for swimming, so that seems like a dubious statement to make outright and without doubt? Are you aligning with my speculative analogical argument from above? Snow ^{let's rap} 04:08, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - though not currently used in the article there is a lot of news coverage of her in indepdendent sources and I believe she does meet the notability requirements. Million_Moments (talk) 20:06, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

M G Tuffen, could you be a little more specific? I did a search myself and found nothing that was both RS and included in-depth coverage. I'm still on the fence here and it would be nice to have a good source or two in order to come down firmly on the side of retaining. Snow ^{let's rap} 04:08, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - does not appear to be notable enough. Additionally, as User:TheSandDoctor mentioned on his talk page, I tagged the page for speedy deletion because the original author seemed to have wanted the page to be deleted, since they blanked the page, but the page was restored by an SPA with a likely conflict of interest. SemiHypercube (talk) 20:19, 22 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Our notability standards for sportspeople do not confer automatic notability just for competing at a junior level championship — but the referencing here consists of two primary sources, one unnecessary repetition of one of the same two primary sources, and a glancing namecheck of her existence in a news article that isn't about her, which is not enough to claim that she passes WP:GNG in lieu of failing WP:NSPORT. And I largely concur with Snow Rise's assessment of the Google search results, as well — apart from one special interest swimming magazine which is going to cover practically any swimmer who achieves anything at all whether that achievement clears our notability standards or not, the media coverage about her (which is not the same thing as "media coverage about other people which happens to mention her name in the process") doesn't go beyond "local girl does stuff" in the local community weeklies of the Cowichan Valley. That's still not enough. Bearcat (talk) 17:36, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Knelson did not just compete in World Juniors, she won two individual medals and was part of a record-breaking relay team. The Commonwealth Games is not a junior championship. It is unfortunate that nobody has yet developed swimming-specific notability criteria under WP:NSPORT. Sportygeek (talk) 23:00, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, So Why 13:13, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – As stated in WP:ATH; “…A person is presumed to be notable if they have been the subject of multiple published[2] non-trivial[3] secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent,[4] and independent of the subject.[5] The guidelines on this page are intended to reflect the fact that sports figures are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion if they have, for example, participated in a major international amateur or professional competition at the highest level. First, as shown, Ms. Knelson has participated in the 2017 FINA World Junior Swimming Championships an international competition with over 100 countries partaking. Second Faith has been covered by Independent – Reliable, Secondary sources such as CBS, Sporting News and Swimming World Magazine as shown here [1]. Thanks for listening. ShoesssS ^Talk 14:23, 29 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete there's lots of claims of coverage, but all that's been presented is routine (and/or local) coverage of junior-level events, which is excluded per WP:YOUNGATH. She may be notable in the future (I wouldn't bet against her participating in the 2020 Olympics), but she doesn't appear to be so today. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:32, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fails WP:NATHLETE. \\\Septrillion:- ~~‭~~10^Eleventeen 20:24, 6 July 2018 (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.