Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Carey (boxer)

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 delete. Randykitty (talk) 15:49, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Carey (boxer)[edit]

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

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Article's one and only source claims he competed at the 2008 Olympics. However, that same article contradicts itself - with "Arthur’s coach is David Carey, the founder of the Alaska Boxing Academy... ...Carey was a member of the U.S. Olympic team that competed in the 2008 Games". So someone else called "Carey" in 2008. Sports Reference has no-one listed as competing with that name in 2008. The Olympics website has no-one of either name. And the only Google Result for "Michael Carey" and Olympics brings back this article, and the one (unreliable) source. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:34, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Question Why do you think this public radio station is an unreliable source? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 13:42, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well for one, it contradicts itself in the same article. The Olympics and SR sites are reliable sources when it comes to Olympians. Also, there are no other Google hits for someone competing in 2008 which also makes the single source in the article seem less than correct. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Further digging shows that he's not listed in the boxing section of the 2008 Olympics article on WP, which has everything sourced from the International Boxing Association, and Sports Ref has no-one of that name ever competing too. It seems inconceivable that the Olympics website, the International Boxing Association and Sports Ref are all incorrect. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And for the record, I don't think the source is unreliable, just that in this case they have not cross-checked the facts. Some local gym owner goes on a radio show, says he is going/has been to the Olympics. Who's to check that? They probably have hundreds of people interviewed each year. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The source article doesn't specify, but it's quite likely that the piece was produced for Alaska News Nightly, a radio newscast syndicated to over two dozen stations which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. It airs for a half hour each weekday. So, they produce approximately 260 newscasts per year, with an average of 8 to 12 stories per program, some with multiple interviewees and some with none at all. Those numbers make it rather obvious that they interview far more people per year than what you appear to be implying. More importantly, contrast that piece with the story of Stubbs the cat. In 2012, a variety of national media outlets reported that the cat was celebrating his 15th anniversary as mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska. In various discussions on the matter, my fellow Wikipedians were too busy shouting me down to have noted two important details: first, Talkeetna is not an incorporated community and therefore has no legal authority to declare such a position; and second, there are absolutely no sources in existence whatsoever from those previous 15 years. The latter is key, because it should be obvious that a claim of a cat being mayor for 15 years implies that it was notable long before 2012. In other words, the national media fell for a publicity stunt without performing any fact checking because news editors decided a) it made for a cute human interest story, and b) if they didn't run with the story while their competitors did, it would make them look foolish to their audience, facts be damned. When I attempted to discuss whether WE were being factual to OUR readers, a fellow editor cherry-picked an NPR source to show that NPR didn't take it at face value. That editor failed to note that the source in question was actually a retraction of the original story the day before, in which they did play it off as legit. As Talkeetna's only full-time media outlet is KTNA, an NPR affiliate, I have no doubt that they were inundated with locals commenting "What is this shit?" or words to that effect. The point of all this? My fellow Wikipedians said "How dare you?" when I questioned the veracity of something reported by NPR, while in this discussion, I get the impression that it's perfectly acceptable to question the veracity of something reported by a state-level equivalent of NPR. Is that a stance in keeping with NPOV? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:55, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Boxing-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 13:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Veracity of the claim is suspect.PRehse (talk) 15:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete fails verification. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – I'm already seeing a blind-leading-the-blind trainwreck brewing here. It only took a few clicks to realize that Josh Edge is a credible journalist working for a credible media outlet, so the main problem would be with the details in the source and what the article's creator did in repeating it here. The subject is referred to as "Michael Carey" in the caption of the third photo and "David Carey" in the article itself. Michael Carey is a senior statesman of the journalistic corps in Anchorage, a former longtime editor at the Anchorage Daily News and more recently a respected political commentator. The ABA website should make it obvious that we're talking about David Carey here. As for the veracity of his claim, could it be possible that he was named to a Olympic team but didn't actually compete? That has happened at least a few times in history. As sports journalism is still alive and well, is defaulting to the same old cherry-picked web sources or a Google search doing this justice? In other words, has anyone consulted a news archive search? The source does make mention of newspaper clippings. As Edge acknowledges in the source, Nino Delgado was an adult and not a minor like many other of Carey's trainees. As such, should we assume good enough faith that Delgado mentioned these newspaper clippings to Edge without being prompted to by Carey? But wait, there's more! The reasoning behind creating this article is the same as what I've seen before: someone's perception of the importance of the Olympics leads them to create an article that's ostensibly a biography, but is really a directory entry related to the Olympics itself. I normally see this sort of thing with historical Olympic competitors. In this case, this is a BLP subject. Is using a BLP subject as a venue to create an article that's really about the Olympics acceptable BLP behavior? Is the level of sourcing acceptable for a BLP as opposed to an article that's about the Olympics? This sort of attitude and behavior is far more widespread in BLPs than just this one article. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 23:55, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The only claim to notability is being a competitor at the 2008 Olympic Games. The problem is that I can find no source that supports that claim and many that refute it[1][2][3]. Even the IOC list of athletes named Carey doesn't show a U.S. boxer[4]. There was a David Carey who lost his first fight at the 2008 U.S. trials by a score of 20-7[5], but being at the trials is not grounds for notability. There is no evidence of him meeting any WP notability criteria. Papaursa (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"The only claim to notability is being a competitor at the 2008 Olympic Games." To me, that sounds like your view is that notability is a black-and-white matter of titles, not accomplishments which lead to significant coverage in reliable sources. NewsBank has some hits which make it borderline going by the latter criteria (about DAVID Carey, as I hope I made it clear that the article creator didn't pay much attention to the source in running with a mistake made in the photo caption). Then again, those are in Alaskan media sources. That brings us back to my point above about the cat, in that it appears we're content to obediently parrot patent falsehoods if they're reported by the national media while applying a different standard to more localized media outlets. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:07, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What does a cat have to do with this AfD? Your continually bringing it up in an irrelevant discussion seems awfully WP:POINTy. Smartyllama (talk) 13:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as hoax. NPR article appears to be erroneous and not even about this guy anyway. We shouldn't be parroting sloppy reporting, even if it's from a normally reliable source. Smartyllama (talk) 16:09, 10 December 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.