Scribbles by The Scribbler

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English cricketers (1787–1825)

The "load of WP:politico-technical bullshit" you refer to are Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. These represent the consensus of the Wikipedia community, and arguments at Articles for Deletion are usually expected to refer to them. Arguments that are not based in policy are given no (or at least less) weight by the closing administrator. You might like to read Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, especially the section WP:USELESS which is the essence of your argument. Wikipedia:Civility would also be of some benefit. SpinningSpark 22:19, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: I am fine with the site's policies but many of the guidelines defy common sense, especially where they concern the subjective issue of notability. What I did not like in your entry was your liberal use of WP:THIS, WP:THAT and WP:THEOTHER. Obviously, as a long-term user, you know a lot more about the policies and guidelines than I do and my perception is that you are trying to prove that point to suppress my argument which, perhaps naively, is based on what (a) is useful for the readers and (b) has realistic completion potential. In my view, having been involved in cricket all my life, such a list has little practical value and hasn't a hope in hell of ever being usefully completed.

One of the list's main design issues is that it includes numerous players who played before 1787 and are therefore included in the earlier list (which, by the way, is actually quite good). The best solution for the contents of a list of this type is to add each player into the debutant section of the relevant season review. For example, this fellow Chitty who caused such a fuss. He now resides as a debutant in 1800 English cricket season where the information is relevant and appropriate. Anyone looking for him can find him there via the redirect and, since he only played in 1800, the reader can immediately appreciate the background and circumstances of his brief career by reference to that article as a whole. Much more helpful to the reader than having the guy stuck away in some horrific list where he is just a name among a pile of other names.

I apologise if my knee-jerk response to your entry was less than civil and I have withdrawn the comment from the discussion page. Scribbles by The Scribbler (talk) 06:48, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry for all the abbreviations, I could have been a bit more explanatory to a fairly new user, although the important stuff in the first para of my post did try and explain my position. I hope you now understand from my explanation above why I have referred to the policies and guidelines. It is not to show off, it is to make a convincing argument to the closing admin. I won't respond to your comments specifically about the article, that conversation belongs at the deletion discussion. It won't do any good here.

I think you have a misunderstanding of the concept of notability. It is not notability that is the subjective concept. Rather, it is the concept of useful that is considered subjective here on Wikipedia. Why? because useful depends on who you are and what you are trying to do. One person's useless list of cruft is another person's information goldmine. Notability is considered objective. It is defined as "the topic has significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". This can be objectively put to the test by examining the purported sources.  ::Notability is a requirement for a standalone article, but just because notability is met does not mean we should have an article. However, your only hope of getting a page deleted that does meet notability is to show that it is in breach of one of our content policies. There are several of these, but the most relevant to the case you are making is What Wikipedia is not. However, you arguments above seem now to be that the information could be better presented in another form rather than deleted. The most likely outcome of making that argument at AfD is that you will be told it's not a matter for a deletion debate. We rarely delete pages that have been renamed, merged, or otherwise refactored for reasons I won't go into here.

None of that is to say that I think notability is the best way of deciding Wikipedia content. It's certainly not how a paper encyclopaedia would do it. They would have an editorial board to lay out broad prinicples of inclusion. However, the idea of notability is now so entrenched at Wikipedia that it is hopeless to argue against it. It's certainly useless to fight it in an individual deletion debate. If it was to be done at all, a policy making venue is the place to go, but I guarantee you will be in for a frustrating time if you try it. At the risk of starting to write an essay on your page, let me give you the history of how this came about. In the early days of Wikipedia, there was a major battle between two groups of editors; the inclusionists who wanted to include everything, no matter what, and the deletionists who thought only important (another subjective term) stuff should be in. Notability is the compromise that came out of that, although it's often seen as a victory for the inclusionists. The discussion still rumbles on in odd corners, but like the ceasefire line between the two Koreas it is not likely to be moved any time soon.

Finally, a couple of small points on procedures. It is the convention in discussions that if you want to withdraw a comment (and most especially after it has already been replied to) then you strike it through rather than delete it altogether as you did. The code you need to add to more articles if you want to nominate them in the same AfD is {{subst:afd|List of English cricketers (1787–1825)}}. That's it, enjoy. SpinningSpark 09:35, 21 October 2018 (UTC)