Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algeria at the 1967 Mediterranean Games

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. There appears to be a rough consensus in favor of keeping these. If some articles are felt to be more questionable I would suggest renominating one or two of the more dicey ones as opposed to mass nominations which in my experience are often rejected by the community. Ad Orientem (talk) 00:18, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Algeria at the 1967 Mediterranean Games

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Country-by-year participations at the Mediterranean Games are not notable. These articles do not contain any text, but just medal tallies and tables giving the lists of medallists and/or details results of the events the delegation participated in. It seems some sport enthusiasts are using Wikipedia as a directory for storing sport results and statistics, a violation of WP:NOTDIR.

It should be noted that the names of all medallists are already covered at the sport-by-year Mediterranean Games articles.

This nomination is aimed at establishing a consensus on the inclusion of articles on country-by-year participations at the Mediterranean Games ‘’in general’’ – that is, in cases where they have not received any special or exceptional coverage. 103.6.159.82 (talk) 08:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm posting this for an IP who pulled it together in Draft space. I agree with the delete rational provided and support Delete all. I've tagged all pages through 1987 with AfD notices. If someone feels it is important they can tag the rest. Many of thesee pages have zero sources, many tagged as such for years. I created a subheading for discussion so no one needs to scroll through the whole list to vote. Legacypac (talk) 06:44, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 06:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 06:59, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion and voting

Redirect all to the main articles as the county-per-year tables are not-notable (but are valid search terms). So for example - Algeria at the 1967 Mediterranean Games would be a redirect to 1967 Mediterranean Games, etc, etc. Prince of Thieves (talk) 14:45, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I removed the heading as it made it look like there's a page called "Discussion and Voting" nominated for deletion in the log. I've also removed 1 article from the nomination as it was already deleted in November. Iffy★Chat -- 09:57, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Not for all. For example Italy at the Mediterranean Games is 14Kb and any of 13 single pages is about 7.5Kb. Then 14 + (7.5 x 13) = 115.5Kb, more that 100Kb than too large. --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:37, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing one page was prod'd successfully is useful. I've restored the heading because it makes it much easier to vote without scrolling thru so much marked up text. ~||~

Keep all - Content is valid, search terms are valid. Essentially, these are all presumable GNG passes. Carrite (talk) 13:01, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is it valid? Most of the pages have no sources at all. Legacypac (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Needs more discussion; I'm also notifying Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Multi-sport events about this discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:28, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all -- First of all, it's impossible to have a sensible discussion about this many articles. Secondly, these are obviously notable. The newspapers of each participating country obviously cover their participation in these games, so there have to be sources in the world. If someone wants to add them to the articles they will, but as per WP:ARTN only their existence need be established for notability to follow necessarily. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 21:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That is not right, WP:ARTN only applies to the content of articles (ie sections), where the notability of the article itself (ie the topic) is established by WP:GNG. Prince of Thieves (talk) 21:45, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is perfectly reasonable to consider per WP:BUNDLE. They are all the same class of article with the same issues. Where is the coverage and why not cover these within the Games Year pages. Legacypac (talk) 21:48, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about, Prince of Thieves? WP:ARTN doesn't only apply to sections of articles. That's silly. ARTN says that the notability of a subject is determined by the sources in the world, not by the sources in the article: " if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability." Obviously the source material exists for every single one of these articles. Hence the subject of each is notable. Hence each should be kept. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 13:31, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just as an example, anyone who says these things can be sourced, prove it by making France at the 2013 Mediterranean Games meet the WP:GNG guidelines. And no complaining, France has many newspapers, and 2013 sources are still all on the web. If this is possible, maybe we can consider the validity of these articles. Prince of Thieves (talk) 21:54, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Testing out this suggestion, I've found multiple sources covering the 2013 French delegation for the Mediterrean Games and its medallists. I'm sure there's more but I'm not familiar with the French internet. [1][2][3][4] SFB 23:51, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:DINC, Prince of Thieves. No one here has to add sources just to convince you of anything. There are sources, which you can see for yourself if you look. The default position at WP is to keep articles. The burden of proof lies on those who would delete or redirect. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 13:33, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not really, I don't see enough coverage on the 2013 French delegation to justify an article beyond France at the Mediterranean Games and 2013 Mediterranean Games. The position is to prove to me and other editors with a similar opinion (Redirect/merge) that a set of articles is justified. It is entirely possible that this is this the case, however it would be very helpful for anyone advocating the merit of these articles to give an idea of the sources they are looking at (maybe they also speak French, non?). Purely to keep the discussion consistent, I chose to focus on what is probably one of the most notable countries, to avoid having to discuss the merits of what constitutes a reliable source in Algeria, or whether we should keep some and not others, because obviously we either keep all or done for consistency, unless someone has a workable alternative. Therefore I am mainly talking about France at the 2013 Mediterranean Games. It should be fairly obvious that I made use of google and other searches before even commenting, and I expect others have too, so again, if you have specific sources that demonstrate the merit of these articles, then identifying them is a good idea. It's very common to vaguely link to a google search as if that shows anything at all, but it doesn't help. Prince of Thieves (talk) 13:48, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- And Italy at the 2013 Mediterranean Games is 84Kb :O :O (I'm not the creator of the article). I think that deletion of articles like this is absurd for wikipedia :) --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:55, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or Merge to "Country at the Mediterranean Games", similar thing was recently done with Nations at the IAAF World Indoor Championships by @Sillyfolkboy:. --Pelmeen10 (talk) 22:21, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I would say that if this outcome is not keep, then there is no reason to oppose a merge to the main pages such at Algeria at the Mediterranean Games, which is a topic whose notability is pretty evident. For the athletics set Pelmeen mentions, I have suggested starting at the "country @ games" level before splitting off if the volume of information requires it. For example, we'll certainly struggle to contain information on all 1500+ of France's medals at this Games on one page, and there will likely be plenty of sourcing to validate some yearly articles on that. Information on small nations like Andorra, on the other hand, would be much better served at a central page in any case. SFB 00:08, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment My general feelings on this article type is I don't see the point of exhaustive results coverage at that venue. People will not be checking France at the 2013 Mediterranean Games to see that bronze medallist Simon Guerin was fifth in his heat, for example, or what the first set score between the 1st round France v. Egypt volleyball game was. I feel the articles would be better if they focused essentially on medalist stats, participation stats, and an addendum of athletes' final finishing positions. On that approach you could actually have one whole sortable table of results per country with columns: Athlete/team, sex, sport, event, result. I think that approach would also help fix the issue of the enormously-sized articles we have for larger events, such as United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics. I think there is an overall content and scope issue that needs addressing here that goes broader than the highlighted articles. SFB 00:08, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Not all of the listed articles have afd notifications. --Pelmeen10 (talk) 16:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all... - the main argument in this AfD is the lack of sources in the existing articles. While this is certainly a problem, Sillyfolkboy has shown pretty clearly that this is in large part just a result of no good-faith attempt to find some. WP:V addresses whether or not something is verifiable, not verified. Outside of BLP issues, non-contentious articles being poorly sourced is not criteria for deletion, it's criteria for improvement. While some of the proposed changes to "minimise" such content so that it would be viable to have on a single article spanning many years may work for countries like Andorra, it would range from unwieldy to downright disastrous as the generalised default as is being proposed here. While I can see a case that the smaller articles might in theory make more sense at a single aggregated location, I believe that this is a case of preference rather than one of notability, and in my mind the advantages of consistency in each delegation's articles being named and formatted similarly far outweighs any advantages that case-by-case merges can give. Sellyme^Talk 17:54, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...and a comment - I urge everyone to remember that step one of the deletion process is very clear that attempting to improve articles should be done before an AfD, and there has clearly been no effort to do that here. That certainly doesn't overrule other Wikipedia guidelines, but keep in mind that some of the content presented here is going to look more bare than it otherwise should simply by virtue of having skipped part of the process. In addition to the sparse citations I mentioned above, I found several articles that were only seemed empty because they were straight-up missing huge portions of their intended content, which is clearly going to reflect poorly on any deletion nomination. This is something that could have easily been fixed, either by the nominator themselves, or by simply going over to WP:MUSE and asking someone who already works on those kinds of articles to improve it. While I'm not fantastic at finding sources (due in no small part to my only speaking English), filling out result information is definitely in my wheelhouse, and I intend to personally improve the holes in these articles pending the result of this nomination. Sellyme^Talk 17:54, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Can I just point out that I don't doubt the current information presented here can be verified, I am just not sure that an individual country at the games in a given year is notable, in my view, France at the Mediterranean Games is notable, and 2013 Mediterranean Games is notable, and both can give overviews and tables of winners. I will point out that the individual articles can give more information, for example France at the 2013 Mediterranean Games includes all the French althletes, but is someone who came 7th in the 50 m backstroke worth mentioning? It is these non-winners that these articles are essentially lists of, since the winners can be listed elsewhere. We must then determine if these non-winners are notable purely for going to and competing in the Mediterranean Games, similar to how anyone who competes in the olympics is notable, if so, then listing the entire delegation is worthwhile, but otherwise I seriously question the merit of these articles. Prince of Thieves (talk) 00:22, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the notability guidelines. It doesn't matter whether or not 6th*-placed finisher in the 50m backstroke Eric Ress is notable, because it's not Eric Ress that's being nominated for deletion. WP:NNC is very clear that it's the article that needs to be notable, not every individual piece of content in the article. So the question that determines notability in this case isn't "is it worth including non-winners", it's "did France's participation at the 2013 Mediterranean Games have significant independent coverage". As has been demonstrated above, the answer to that is yes. Sellyme^Talk 13:32, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No. The more relevant issue is; did the limited parts of France's participation at the 2013 Mediterranean Games which are not already covered at France at the Mediterranean Games and 2013 Mediterranean Games have enough significant independent coverage to justify a third article on the exact same topic. Noting guidelines such as WP:WHENSPLIT. Bearing this in mind, it is then up to us to consider what content there is in this article, which is not simply duplicating information from other articles. Prince of Thieves (talk) 14:43, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that each article was of good quality (which we should - it's our job to fix that if they aren't and not let it impact policy), the size of an article such as France at the Mediterranean Games containing all of the information available at the yearly breakdowns would be an order of magnitude or more greater than the guidelines in WP:WHENSPLIT. Nations such as Andorra may be on the bubble of WHENSPLIT, and I could at least understand the rationale for merger in that case, but I would argue that the WP:SURPRISE would favour having separate articles even then for consistency's sake. For what it's worth, as far as I can tell, the only content on France at the 2013 Mediterranean Games that is present on either of the other two pages you linked is the total medal count and standings, so it's not like these pages are a 99% duplicate with one or two lines of additional information that can't justify a split. Sellyme^Talk 18:24, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The non-notability of these as topics, better covered in articles about each games or about the country in many games is the primary deletion rational. The almost complete lack of sourcing is just icing on the deletion cake. We have pages on Each Games. We have pages on individual countries acoss the games. We don't need the intersection of these two pages to exist as a poorly sourced unimportant topic. Legacypac (talk) 00:29, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -- This deletion discussion is intrinsically flawed since many of the nominated pages don't even have AfD notices at the top of them. How in the world can we expect interested parties to weigh in if the pages aren't tagged right. I move that we suspend the discussion until nom tags pages properly, then relist so that it's up at least a week after all are tagged. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 14:22, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, having some of the affected articles untagged is a serious oversight. And nothing is being hurt by additional time for debate. Prince of Thieves (talk) 14:27, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I said in my comments on the nomination "I've tagged all pages through 1987 with AfD notices. If someone feels it is important they can tag the rest". Legacypac (talk) 14:29, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I forgot about that, I feel that someone having pointed it out as an flaw means it should be viewed as important and done. But the discussion here is still quite limited so relisting is not an issue. Prince of Thieves (talk) 14:35, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You can't just not tag articles and expect other people to do it for you. WP:BUNDLE states explicitly that you have to tag each article. Then WP:AFDLIST says, You must perform all three stages of the process If you're not going to put forth the effort to carry out the nomination process properly the whole thing ought to be cancelled. You should tag the other articles now, and this AfD should not be closed until at least seven days after the last one is tagged. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 14:46, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Done 16:53, 12 March 2018 (UTC) Unless I missed one by accident, they are now all tagged. Prince of Thieves (talk) 16:53, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You missed Tunisia at the 2001 Mediterranean Games. Would fix myself but I'm not 100% sure what the process is on notifying article contributors in mass-nominations like this are. If you're unaware of the script, User:Anomie/linkclassifier will let you see stuff like this visually without having to actually click on any of the links, it's very useful. Sellyme^Talk 18:28, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all I agree with the reasons of others "keep all". --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No one has given a reason to keep except "I like it" as far as I can see. No need to nominate the templates as they will become empty or filled exclusively with redirects and can be speedy deleted or taken to WP:TfD which is the correct venue. Legacypac (talk) 16:32, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For example Italy at the Mediterranean Games is 14Kb and any of 13 single pages is about 7.5Kb. Then 14 + (7.5 x 13) = 115.5Kb, more that 100Kb than too large. And Italy at the 2013 Mediterranean Games is 84Kb :O :O (I'm not the creator of the article). I think that deletion of articles like this is absurd for wikipedia :) --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The tl;dr of the above is that it would be the right size if it only listed medal winners. The question is do we want to list all the competitors, mot of which do not have articles. Prince of Thieves (talk) 17:08, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First off, it's worth pointing out that France alone has won over 1,600 medals – and they're not even on top of the medal tally. I admittedly haven't done the maths, but I'm pretty confident that there's no way you're fitting that many medal winners into a single article without hitting the WP:SPLIT guidelines. Secondly, I'm aware that WP:OTHERSTUFF isn't a valid argument, but it's still worth looking at precedent set by other sports articles here. It's certainly very common for a tournament/event/team article to be considered notable even when almost every single individual participant is not, leaving to a page full of redlinks (or unlinked names). Canadian Masters Curling Championships, 2018 ITF Men's Circuit (January–March), Topklasse (cricket), and even other MSE articles like Mexico at the 2007 Pan American Games are articles on notable topics where the participants themselves are assumed to be non-notable. In many of those examples (I suspect the Pan American Games being the only exception), even "winning" the event wouldn't automatically meet notability guidelines, so for the events to be notable themselves we must be saying that the sum of many non-notable participants can create a notable event. I believe this to be true – a nation's entire delegation at a one of the biggest multi-sport events is certainly more notable in my eyes than the sum of its parts (each individual athlete who is participating). This matches the coverage of such events, too: most news coverage will be looking at their nation's performance each day in the Games as a whole, rather than looking at each individual athlete one-by-one. This even scales to the bigger events: I could find you tens of thousands of articles about Australia at the 2018 Winter Olympics, but barely any about Nathan Johnstone, even though he's a World Championships gold medallist.

Perhaps a better argument would be an analogy to a more direct team sport, though. A nation's delegation at a MSE is a team, after all. Should Dorchester Town F.C. only list the players that are notable, and not include those that would redlink? Or should it be based purely on merit, and only goal-scorers get listed, with other players not being listed even if they are notable? If these would remove too much content, should it get merged into List of teams competing in the Southern League with a small snippet of each team listing only its notable players? This may seem like ridiculous comparison, but setting the precedent of deleting articles because most of the individual content isn't notable brings in to question hundreds of thousands of similar end of the line articles, that are sitting right on the bottom rung of notability with few "sub-articles" to link to, and I think that everyone here would agree that the vast majority of those such articles should be largely left how they are. I suspect that in this case there's a "bias" (for lack of a better word) towards Delete because the quality of the articles is pretty terrible. For example, Spain at the 2009 Mediterranean Games seems like the world's easiest Delete vote at first glance, but they sent 249 athletes to the games (more than any nation did at the 2018 Winter Olympics) and won 84 medals, including 28 golds. If that content was well-presented it probably wouldn't even get nominated. Sellyme^Talk 19:13, 13 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you and @Sillyfolkboy: even if, after all, it was he who unleashed this useless mess with the merge of Greece at the 2018 IAAF World Indoor Championships and similar :D :D --Kasper2006 (talk) 08:33, 15 March 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.