Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Louisiana State University rugby

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 Keep Chrislk02 ^{Chris Kreider} 13:25, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As a consequence of Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2015 May 6, this discussion results in no consensus. Sandstein 08:06, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Louisiana State University rugby[edit]

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Not notable. College Rugby club playing in a regional conference. Lacks coverage in independent reliable sources. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:58, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The article meets the WikiProject rugby union notability guidelines, which are based on and explicitly reference Wikipedia's generally applicable notability guidelines. And it has references ~~(although it could use more).~~ I've added a few more references. The team (and the SCRC conference in which it plays) are routinely covered in several media, such as Rugby Today and This Is American Rugby. Barryjjoyce (talk) 20:59, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Louisiana-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Rugby union-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 00:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Davewild (talk) 07:20, 24 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article meets the WikiProject rugby union notability guidelines. Besides meeting rugby notability guidlines this team is part of the national association governing rugby. The governing body divides the entire sport regionally so all teams are technically regional in nature Under that body. spatms (talk) 22:07, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This article has 12 references including USA Rugby and additional national rugby sources. Annieann1 (talk) 17:45, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Okay, it's time someone throws some cold water on this AfD discussion. So far, we have heard from one of the principal article authors (User:Spatms), and a couple of others who have a shaky understanding of the applicable general and specific notability guidelines. First off, WikiProject Rugby Union does not get to adopt its own random notability guidelines in WikiProject space (see WikiProject rugby union notability guidelines); the notability of sports teams is not governed by the specific notability guidelines of WP:NSPORTS or individual WikiProjects. Instead, the notability of sports teams is governed by WP:NORG and the general notability guidelines per WP:GNG, which are effectively the same standard. To establish the notability of a team, club, business or other organization, NORG and GNG require that the organization have received significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources -- and each of those terms is a Wikipedia term of art which is defined and described in greater depth at GNG.

For starters, the sources must be independent of the subject per GNG, which means that such sources as the LSU student newspaper (The Daily Reveille), the LSU recreation department website ("http://lsuuniversityrec.com"), the team website (lsurugby.com), the conference website ("varsityrugby.com/scrc"), and the national governing body website ("usarugby.org"), are not independent of the subject and do not count for purposes of determining notability.
Second, the sources must be reliable, which generally means that reader-contributed material and blogs cannot be used to establish notability. Non-professional sports blogs such ThisIsAmericanRugby.com, RugbyToday.com and GoffRugbyReport.com should be heavily discounted or disregarded entirely in determining notability.
Third, the coverage must be significant, and it may be excluded if it is routine coverage of the type one would reasonably expect a team to receive the day after a game. For a better understanding of this point, please WP:ROUTINE.
Finally, in order to establish notability there must be significant coverage in multiple sources that otherwise satisfy the GNG criteria, which, for our purposes, means that ten hypothetical articles in The Advocate (Baton Rouge's newspaper) still counts as only one single source.

When we properly apply the criteria of WP:NORG and WP:GNG, we can see that virtually all of the sources presently linked in the existing article are insufficient to establish the notability of the team because they are not independent reliable sources per GNG. Moreover, for editors who are unfamiliar with college rugby clubs in the United States, it is important to understand that this is not a varsity team sponsored by the university and governed by its intercollegiate sports department, and it does not officially represent the university in intercollegiate sports; it is a club team on par with the college's ultimate frisbee club, the water-skiing club, and the sailing club. No one should be misled by the aggressive and self-promotional character of some of the rugby blogs, which would lead someone unfamiliar with American college sports to believe that these rugby clubs are university varsity teams -- because they are not.

In the absence of significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources to establish this rugby club's notability, I must register my vote as "delete" for failure to establish the notability of this club. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:29, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: There is a lot in this lengthy post that is pretty far off base. The attempt to dismiss the rugby media as "blogs" doesn't fit – for example, RugbyToday has been around for years and has a staff of full-time reporters and editors. The reference to WP:ROUTINE – which says sports scores aren't a sufficient basis for an article – is a red herring. Furthermore, the WikiProject rugby union notability guidelines are consistent with (and explicitly reference) Wikipedia's general notability guidelines. Barryjjoyce (talk) 02:10, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barry, I doubt you want to trade knowledge on the meaning of WP:ROUTINE. Hint: it covers a lot more than "sport scores". Here are some of the relevant provisions covering the meaning of "routine coverage":

1. WP:NSPORTS/WP:SPORTSEVENT: "Regular season games in professional and college leagues are not inherently notable." Further, it provides that "a game that is widely considered by independent reliable sources to be notable, outside routine coverage of each game, especially if the game received front page coverage outside of the local areas involved (e.g. Pacers–Pistons brawl, 2009 Republic of Ireland vs France football matches, or the Blood in the Water match)" may be suitable for a stand-alone article.

2. WP:ROUTINE: "Routine events such as sports matches, film premieres, press conferences etc. may be better covered as part of another article, if at all."

3. WP:NOTNEWS: "Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia."

Bottom line: typical post-game coverage of sports matches is routine coverage. Other editors have argued the position you have taken in other AfDs, vehemently, and those articles were deleted. In one provision of the guidelines, "sports scores" is given as an example, not as a limitation on the meaning of "routine." So, no, it's not a red herring at all. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:37, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Response: All three excerpts above apply to sports events, not sports teams. Guidance on whether an individual match is sufficiently notable to merit its own article tells us nothing about whether a sports team is notable. Also, the most recent AfD I am aware of involving a college rugby team, the University of Buffalo AfD, resulted in a consensus to keep the article. Barryjjoyce (talk) 01:03, 30 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barry, for purposes of discussing what constitutes "routine" coverage, they're all illuminating. Routine coverage is routine coverage. Getting two paragraphs of routine post-game coverage in Rugby Today -- or having a bullet-point team profile -- is not significant coverage of the team. You have also completely ducked my other major point regarding independent sources: you cannot claim that coverage by the LSU student newspaper, LSU rugby club website, LSU Recreation Dept website, SCRC conference website, and USA Rugby website are independent sources for purposes of determining notability. Then we eliminate the Goff Rugby Report as a blog, there is not a whole lot of significant coverage in independent sources about the LSU rugby club. By direct analogy, in determining the notability of LSU's intercollegiate varsity teams, we don't determine the notability of LSU's NCAA cross country teams based on articles on the LSU student newspaper website, the LSU athletic department website, the Southeastern Conference website, or the NCAA website because those sources are not independent of the subject, and we would severely discount coverage in sports blogs like Scout.com, etc. Unsurprisingly, there are many, many Division I sports programs that do not have stand-alone articles for every individual team in some "minor" sports; that's not an accident, because even some Division I varsity teams are better covered as part of list/university sports program articles. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:17, 30 April 2015 (UTC

Response: Taking the notability guidelines written for individual matches and applying them to sports teams would yield absurd results. For example, the Memphis Redbirds play over 100 games each year. Most if not all of the 100+ games are not notable and each game doesn't merit its own article, but that doesn't mean that the article covering the team should be deleted.

On your point regarding independent sources, rather than be drawn into an argument on that issue too, I thought it better to work on addressing the issue by improving the article, which I have done. When the AfD began, the article had 6 cites, 3 of which were from LSU rugby or LSU recreation; now the article has 15 cites, none of which are from LSU rugby or LSU recreation. I'll continue to work over the next few days on continuing to find more cites and on replacing existing cites with better cites. Barryjjoyce (talk) 00:45, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barry, I appreciate your efforts to improve the article; that's partly how the AfD process is supposed to work. Please keep in mind, however, that the school newspaper {The Reveille), the rugby conference (SCRC), and the rugby national governing body (USA Rugby) are also not independent of the subject, either. That does not mean these sources need to be deleted and/or replaced, but only that they are not considered in determining the notability of the subject. This is completely consistent with how we treat student newspapers and media, as well as publications of the university, Southeastern Conference, NCAA, and other national sports governing bodies like USA Track, etc., in determining the notability of intercollegiate varsity teams, athletes and coaches. So far, the only truly independent, professional publications included in the article are the two articles from The Times-Picayune website (NOLA.com). I suggest you use the various news search services (e.g., Google News Search, Newspapers.com, Newsarchive.com, Sports Illustrated Vault, TSN.com, NOLA.com, etc.), and the Google Books search service. The LSU rugby club has been around since the 1960s; if truly notable, it should have generated some significant coverage in mainstream news or sports publications, and perhaps some coverage in a book or two about rugby in the United States. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:01, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the positive suggestions on how to improve the article. I've added a few more cites, and will continue to add more over the coming days. Barryjjoyce (talk) 00:14, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barry, if you're mining a productive vein of new sources, I would be happy to slap another "relisting" template on the bottom of this AfD to buy you another week -- would that help? If you're being productive in your research, you should have the time to finish. Let me know. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:36, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Wikiproject notability guidelines cannot override the GNG or the global-consensus agreed SNGs like NSPORTS. There is no GNG coverage that I can find (info about the club from the school itself is not independent) and NSPORTS has a strong distinction between a recognized inter-collegiate sports team and a sporting club. This doesn't mean a club can never be notable, but the notability is not an assumption that can be made from any of the conditions in NSPORT. --MASEM (t) 03:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Question: Which part of WP:NSPORTS supports your assertion about the "strong distinction" regarding the notability of sports teams? Also, perhaps you noticed the part that says: "This guideline does not cover sports teams." Barryjjoyce (talk) 02:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:46, 2 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've continued to improve the article since this discussion began 4 weeks ago. It is up to 26 cites now from a variety of sources. Unlike in previous posts, where the article was improving as the discussion progressed, I think the article improvement project is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Hopefully the article is good enough as-is. I don't plan to work on it much further at this point. I hope we can reach consensus, close this discussion, and keep the article. Barryjjoyce (talk) 00:50, 5 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all your work, Barry. It's obviously a lot closer than it was before you started working on it. I re-listed the debate for another week yesterday, so we should have some breathing space. I'll take a look at your new references in a day or so, and let you know what I think.

Because rugby has an aggressive national organization backing its non-varsity university-level clubs, many American university clubs are not the typical college club team, which is more or less on par with college intramurals. Some of these rugby club teams are going to pass GNG and WP:ORG, but not all of them are. It's going to be a case-by-case analysis, with the individual outcomes depending on the quality of the coverage in independent sources. That's why I've spent more time on this AfD than I otherwise would.

That said, know that I am not the enemy of rugby articles on-wiki. I actually played for the UVa rugby club C team for a semester as a 150-pound freshman hooker. Managed to escape with only one black eye, no broken fingers, and my nose intact. That said, I'm also a believer in applying our notability standards as fairly and consistently as possible, and I note that there have been several other recent AfDs for college rugby club team articles where the analysis of the independent sources was not nearly as tight as here. Hopefully, WikiProject Rugby will take this AfD as a road map and use it as a how-to guide to build future articles for those college rugby club teams that are truly notable based on solid independent sources. For those club teams that come close, but don't quite make it over the GNG/NORG line, you should consider creating list articles for each rugby conference like the SCRC. In a list article, you identify the club, university, coach, cumulative overall, conference and playoff win-loss records, and a little bit of history, and since the conferences are more likely to be notable than the individual teams, it's unlikely anyone will nominate the list for AfD. It also means fewer articles to maintain for you rugby editors. Think about it. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:28, 5 May 2015 (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.