Talk:Julius Hodge

Nationality/citizenship

@Rikster2: Hodge is clearly a U.S. citizen by place of birth, but I don't see anything in the article about him being a citizen or national (in the legal sense required by WP:INFONAT, i.e. holding the passport) of Antigua and Barbuda. It's possible he does, either through naturalization or citizenship inherited through one or more parents, but a reliable source must be cited for that. This article is in the category "American people of Antigua and Barbuda descent", which only implies Antiguan ethnicity, not necessarily nationality. -- Beland (talk) 02:06, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

In the “personal life” section it specifically states that he has played for the Antigua and Barbuda national team for at least one FIBA event. I updated the reference. Rikster2 (talk) 02:40, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Having a job in a country does not imply that one is a citizen of that country. Hodge could simply be a U.S. citizen playing for the Antigua and Barbuda national team, no? -- Beland (talk) 03:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

He would need to hold a passport or otherwise qualify to play for that country’s national team, which is a valid “nationality.” In fact, it’s the main reason that field is used at all for basketball players. Playing for the country’s national team is not like being an expatriate professional in a foreign country. Rikster2 (talk) 04:01, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by "otherwise qualify"? Is there a reliable source that says FIBA players or Antigua and Barbuda national team players must be citizens of the country they are representing? -- Beland (talk) 04:48, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

If you go through the requirements to play for a country’s national team that legitimately qualifies it for the nationality field. As I said, if it weren’t for FIBA that field wouldn’t even exist in the basketball inforbox, eligibility for FIBA is the primary reason it’s there. Rikster2 (talk) 13:42, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Here - page 5 of the FIBA manual (this is for 3x3 basketball but the rules are the same): “In order to play for the national team of a country, a player must hold the legal nationality of that country and have fulfilled also the conditions of eligibility and national status according to the internal regulations.” That absolutely qualifies inclusion in the nationality field. Rikster2 (talk) 13:52, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey Beland. I'd argue this change is suboptimal. This format is hardly common across the project. It's unclear to me why this is even contentious. FIBA list him as "Nationality ANT/USA" [1]. DaHuzyBru (talk) 10:50, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I reverted it and would ask for some consensus to insert such a clunky section. Frankly this is starting to come across as an editor just getting rankled because people disagree with his edits. Rikster2 (talk) 14:03, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

It would be helpful to address the merits of proposed text; with regard to other editors, we are supposed to assume good faith. The only reason I'm editing this article is because I'm implementing WP:INFONAT.

I don't think this claim is particularly contentious; there just wasn't any citation to document the legal nationality of this person, and WP:BLP has high standards for documentation of such things. I don't follow sports, so I had never heard of the rule that eligibility for national teams was determined by legal nationality. (So thanks for documenting that!)

I'm leaving the nationality field in place for now (rather than replacing it with "citizenship" or "national_team") while it's being discussed on the talk page, but WP:INFONAT says to:

Use a country name (e.g. "Cuba") or legal category linked to an explanatory article (e.g. "British citizen"), not a demonym (e.g. "Cuban").

The reason for that is to make clear that this is a legal belonging to a country, not an ethnicity. "American" and "Antiguan" can be interpreted as either.

The body of the article doesn't make it clear that this person is an Antiguan citizen, or how or when that might have come about. That's why I put the clarifications in the infobox. I'm open to different ways of doing that if you think this format is clunky, but it should either follow WP:INFONAT or we should change WP:INFONAT to something more desirable, and it should be clear why Antigua and Barbuda are listed there. We can probably drop the "inferred from FIBA rules" part and instead simply cite the newly identified source that documents nationality directly. [2] -- Beland (talk) 00:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

How on earth does an athlete compete for a country on an international stage and not "belong to" that country? Especially when a governing body is in place to police that the athlete meets requirements to qualify? I don't think you realize how ridiculous this is starting to sound. WP:INFONAT has frankly become overreach. Which is why I say just cut it out of the basketball biography infobox. WAY more trouble than it is worth. Rikster2 (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Don't ask me! People play for the Boston Red Sox who are from New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, not to mention Puerto Rico and Japan. I don't make the rules, and I mostly don't know what they are, other than what you've explained. -- Beland (talk) 18:24, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

And of course the Red Sox don’t claim to be a team representing a nation, do they? They are a professional franchise where nationality is not a criteria for inclusion on the roster. But you knew that. Rikster2 (talk) 12:14, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Right, so if you don't need to be a citizen of the same region or country to play for a regional team, why would you need to be a citizen of the same country to play for a country team? Why don't Japanese teams play in the World Series? Why are there two baseball teams representing New York City in the country-wide league? The rules seem arbitrary and don't make any particular sense. I've never watched a professional basketball game in my life, and don't know the rules of the game enough to actually play it, so you shouldn't expect me to know anything about it other than what you or a given article explain. -- Beland (talk) 18:11, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

yes, it’s clear you don’t have much knowledge of sports. The Red Sox are not a regional team, they are a franchise in a pan-national professional league. A national team literally represents a nation and there are requirements for qualifying to be on these teams, which Hodge has met and which I have shown. The analogy was terrible, and yet you persist with it. Rikster2 (talk) 19:22, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Sure, not disagreeing about Hodges or anything else. Just making the point that what's obvious to you isn't obvious to everyone, and hoping I'm not going to get yelled at in the future for asking clarifying questions of subject experts.

Given that it's the only international sports competition I know anything about (despite actively avoiding news coverage of it), this raises the question for me of whether Olympic athletes have to be legal nationals of the country they compete for, or if they self-affiliate, or if the rules for that are delegated to the individual sports bodies. Turns out this is clearly documented at Olympic Games#Citizenship, which is very helpful. -- Beland (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)