Can 10,000 Terrible Sports Stubs Be Saved?

[Randy from Boise]

One thing that one hears from time to time is that a large portion of Wikipedia is a morass of stub-level sports biographies, unimproved and unimprovable. I was bumping around Category:San Francisco 49ers players yesterday and I clicked a couple random names that I didn't recognize, just to take a look at the status of JAG (just a guy) players on a team that's not the Colts.

The second one was a guy named Mike Bettiga. Here's his entire WP biography as it sat:

Mike Bettiga (born September 10, 1950) is a former American football wide receiver. He played for the San Francisco 49ers in 1974.[1][2]

References

[1] "Mike Bettiga Stats". Pro-Football-Reference.com. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
[2] "Mike Bettiga, WR". Nfl.com. Retrieved 2020-04-02.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1078521455

That's the whole stub, that plus an info box. Nothingsville. A 15th round draft pick — the guy wouldn't have even been drafted today — with a grand total of 10 games played, and no offensive stats generated. As close to zero career as a guy who made an NFL regular season roster could have.

A completely unremarkable stub about what appeared to be a completely unremarkable athlete...

But I noticed from that Bettiga was born in Scotia, California — a tiny mill town half an hour down the road from where I grew up. Weird, man. Okay, I know gods will when I see it: this would be my challenge, to demonstrate the deletionist myth of unimprovability of sports stubs is a lie.

My conclusion: There's NOTHING stopping a pro athlete's biography from being improved to worthwhile status, given time and a sufficiently motivated editor or editors.

Mike Bettiga (T-H-L)

BTW: It turns out that I probably actually saw this guy play in college, just didn't remember the name. The timeline is right anyway, I saw a few Lumberjacks games during his years.

[Starship Enterprise]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

[ArmasRebane]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Yep. I think cases like the one above might actually be the exception, rather than the rule, but no one screaming for the sports bios to be kept has ever shown much interest in improving them outside of the bare minimum they need to at AfD.

(My favorite thing I've noticed recently is how few times the sources that demonstrate notability at AfD actually ever get added to the article. The point for the diehard inclusionists is that the page exists, not that it gets better.)

[Randy from Boise]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Ah, but CAN is a very important fact. The notion of Special Notability Guidelines rests upon that very fact.

I will acknowledge: NFL and pro-baseball bios probably have a better chance of improvement versus other sports, given sufficient time.

Probably also true with high level European soccer.

But it CAN be done, therefore, keep the sourced stubs.

t

[Randy from Boise]

(My favorite thing I've noticed recently is how few times the sources that demonstrate notability at AfD actually ever get added to the article. The point for the diehard inclusionists is that the page exists, not that it gets better.)

AfD is not the Article Improvement Workshop.

t

[rnu]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Ah, but CAN is a very important fact. The notion of Special Notability Guidelines rests upon that very fact.

I will acknowledge: NFL and pro-baseball bios probably have a better chance of improvement versus other sports, given sufficient time.

Probably also true with high level European soccer.

But it CAN be done, therefore, keep the sourced stubs.

t

Can be improved and has to be improved should mean move to draft. Those who think the article should exist can bring it up to standards and then it can be moved back to main space.

[Ming]

He benefits hugely by living in an area and time with good local newspaper coverage, and playing a sport the papers care about. But of course, you have to do the research, and the newspapers have to be accessible.... One has to think that for the many Olympic competitors this is much harder to come by.

[bagofworms]

He benefits hugely by living in an area and time with good local newspaper coverage, and playing a sport the papers care about. But of course, you have to do the research, and the newspapers have to be accessible.... One has to think that for the many Olympic competitors this is much harder to come by.

Perhaps this bias would be less severe if we eliminated ALL local coverage from notability consideration.

[Ming]

He benefits hugely by living in an area and time with good local newspaper coverage, and playing a sport the papers care about. But of course, you have to do the research, and the newspapers have to be accessible.... One has to think that for the many Olympic competitors this is much harder to come by.

Perhaps this bias would be less severe if we eliminated ALL local coverage from notability consideration.

Well, we already have, supposedly, although a lot of people don't get that the big city dailies are therefore also local coverage for their areas. The issue is, the guy played as a pro, and yeah, you can find widespread coverage of that fact. It's not an unreasonable standard to say that this makes him notable, but that puts the local coverage in play as a source of information rather than notability.

[tarantino]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

[rnu]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

Sports stubs, geography stubs and one line species stubs are a dime a dozen.

[ArmasRebane]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

Sports stubs, geography stubs and one line species stubs are a dime a dozen.

The vast majority of species stubs probably shouldn't exist. How much is actually known about the thousands of named species of random insect versus the genera it belongs to and where the differences between species can be summarized anyhow?

[Ming]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

Sports stubs, geography stubs and one line species stubs are a dime a dozen.

The problems presented are quite different, though. Sports people, at least, tend to actually exist. That's not clear with all the various species, which in any case are subject to renaming at the whims of the taxonomists. The geography stubs are a huge, hot mess of misinterpreted dots on maps or lines in listings; outside of first-world countries there's a good chance the dots are someone's fantasy. The sourcing of these is simply incredible: Ming just looked at a couple random spots in Myanmar, and the main source is a large scale US Army topographic map from 1959, and there's some suspicion that the actual mapping dates back to WW II!

[Randy from Boise]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

So what is the problem with that?

We are providing Siri with juice.

t

[Randy from Boise]

He benefits hugely by living in an area and time with good local newspaper coverage, and playing a sport the papers care about. But of course, you have to do the research, and the newspapers have to be accessible.... One has to think that for the many Olympic competitors this is much harder to come by.

Perhaps this bias would be less severe if we eliminated ALL local coverage from notability consideration.

Big City Pedia????

t

[Ron Lybonly]

When I push random article it seems like half of them are sports stubs. Today after three clicks, I got 1896 South Bend Commercial-Athletic Club football team (T-H-L), which played three games total. The article averages six views a month.

Sports stubs, geography stubs and one line species stubs are a dime a dozen.

The problems presented are quite different, though. Sports people, at least, tend to actually exist. That's not clear with all the various species, which in any case are subject to renaming at the whims of the taxonomists. The geography stubs are a huge, hot mess of misinterpreted dots on maps or lines in listings; outside of first-world countries there's a good chance the dots are someone's fantasy. The sourcing of these is simply incredible: Ming just looked at a couple random spots in Myanmar, and the main source is a large scale US Army topographic map from 1959, and there's some suspicion that the actual mapping dates back to WW II!

It’s frowned upon in deletion discussions because it’s “original research” but sometimes it’s useful to do a reality check using Google Earth and the coordinates from the article.

[FelinaLavandula]

I think we should create 10,000 more terrible stubs, saved or not, and then 10,000 more, and let’s just keep doing that indefinitely since no one is ever going to look at them again anyway, so who cares? Not my problem!

[Starship Enterprise]

I think we should create 10,000 more terrible stubs, saved or not, and then 10,000 more, and let’s just keep doing that indefinitely since no one is ever going to look at them again anyway, so who cares? Not my problem!

And if anyone dares to question them then an army of users will rise up to say that we can't delete thousands of articles at once. We can only create thousands of articles at once

Someone should test this to see how many articles he can create and beat Lugnuts's record before anyone does anything about it

[Randy from Boise]

Can be improved and has to be improved should mean move to draft. Those who think the article should exist can bring it up to standards and then it can be moved back to main space.

I totally disagree. If we can give Siri and AI two true sourced lines, that totally trumps zero.

t

[Randy from Boise]

I think we should create 10,000 more terrible stubs, saved or not, and then 10,000 more, and let’s just keep doing that indefinitely since no one is ever going to look at them again anyway, so who cares? Not my problem!

Just so you can sleep at night — there are way more than 10,000 terrible sports stubs on Wikipedia.

I just made up a headline.

t

[Randy from Boise]

I think we should create 10,000 more terrible stubs, saved or not, and then 10,000 more, and let’s just keep doing that indefinitely since no one is ever going to look at them again anyway, so who cares? Not my problem!

And if anyone dares to question them then an army of users will rise up to say that we can't delete thousands of articles at once. We can only create thousands of articles at once

Someone should test this to see how many articles he can create and beat Lugnuts's record before anyone does anything about it

The stuff should be there if it is sourced, because the topic is notable.

t

[bagofworms]

He benefits hugely by living in an area and time with good local newspaper coverage, and playing a sport the papers care about. But of course, you have to do the research, and the newspapers have to be accessible.... One has to think that for the many Olympic competitors this is much harder to come by.

Perhaps this bias would be less severe if we eliminated ALL local coverage from notability consideration.

Well, we already have, supposedly, although a lot of people don't get that the big city dailies are therefore also local coverage for their areas. The issue is, the guy played as a pro, and yeah, you can find widespread coverage of that fact. It's not an unreasonable standard to say that this makes him notable, but that puts the local coverage in play as a source of information rather than notability.

I mean local-to-the-player coverage. Local news in either sense though is widely accepted as a notability-conferring source for everything except corporations, because most editors do not understand what "routine" coverage is.

[Ming]

The thing is that obviously nobody wants to update all these stubs. And Ming doesn't think it matters why people don't, as though we could somehow fix that lack of will. The question is what the value of these stubs is, because they're likely going to stay that way. And that seems to Ming to largely derive from how they were produced. Some "projects" made the decision not not have stubs: the American lighthouses and the NRHP project put in lists with red links and made full-blown articles, one at a time. In both cases this was helped by the near certainty that anything in the class was going to be notable. The athletes are helped out by a bright-line notability standard that's easy to determine. The geography stubs are a disaster area because the source lists turned out to be much less reliable than everyone assumed at first, and because the standard is really quite vague around the edges, so the problem is that a lot of the articles simply aren't true, which is really quite the issue. The taxonomy articles have the more insidious problem that what is "true" is always varying, but OTOH they've also but in a lot of upper ;eve;s in the hierarchy with red linked lists so there that.

[Randy from Boise]

The thing is that obviously nobody wants to update all these stubs. And Ming doesn't think it matters why people don't, as though we could somehow fix that lack of will. The question is what the value of these stubs is, because they're likely going to stay that way. And that seems to Ming to largely derive from how they were produced. Some "projects" made the decision not not have stubs: the American lighthouses and the NRHP project put in lists with red links and made full-blown articles, one at a time. In both cases this was helped by the near certainty that anything in the class was going to be notable. The athletes are helped out by a bright-line notability standard that's easy to determine. The geography stubs are a disaster area because the source lists turned out to be much less reliable than everyone assumed at first, and because the standard is really quite vague around the edges, so the problem is that a lot of the articles simply aren't true, which is really quite the issue. The taxonomy articles have the more insidious problem that what is "true" is always varying, but OTOH they've also but in a lot of upper ;eve;s in the hierarchy with red linked lists so there that.

It is my belief that stubs for players of the three major American professional sports (football, baseball, basketball) will gradually flesh out and expand. There are actually hobbyists who care about such things. I would imagine that the same might hold true for European first division soccer.

Beyond that, you might be right.

But still, this: even two true sourced lines about a participant are better than zero, because we Wikipedians are ultimately producing the stuff for quick answers for search engines.

I don't have any good solution about taxonomy or geography, other than my belief that two, true, sourced lines beats zero. And screw the notion of WP notability, which is related to the ancient notion that This Thing is a traditional encyclopedia. That it is not, whatever it is.

t

BTW: I actually added the first footnote to a BLP today! Who knew such a thing existed in 2024???

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1189600259

Don McCauley (T-H-L)

A college football hall of famer with an 11 year pro career in a so-called skill position, so it wasn't a question of whether he existed. I'll spend a few hours on it today and see if we can take it up another notch or three — he's a Colt, which is what I'm working on these days.

[Konveyor Belt]

It is my belief that stubs for players of the three major American professional sports (football, baseball, basketball) will gradually flesh out and expand. There are actually hobbyists who care about such things. I would imagine that the same might hold true for European first division soccer.

It can be done. Cbl62 (T-C-L) is one of the best editors in American sports history articles. While of course there's people with tons of accomplishments and fame which he's written big articles about, I found Sheldon Beise (T-H-L) to be a good example of what these stubs could look like if given the proper care.

The problem is simply one of scale. As active as he is, writing these articles and digging through newspaper archives takes a lot of time. Even if there were a hundred like him it would still take years.

[Randy from Boise]

It's a lot of work, admittedly.

After being cashiered by capitalism, it gives me a stupid reason to be excited by my day...

Before

William Anthony Lorick (May 25, 1941 – February 17, 2013) was a professional American football running back in the National Football League (NFL) for six seasons with the Baltimore Colts and New Orleans Saints. He played college football at Arizona State University. He was a teammate of future Hall of Fame player Charley Taylor. He died in 2013 at the age of 71.[1]

References

[1] "Tony Lorick, ASU great and Colts RB, dies at 71". 26 February 2013. [dead link]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1146793805

After

Tony Lorick (T-H-L)

Work still in progress but about done.

Go, Colts!

t

P.S. Here's the thing appealing about sports bio: these people are all extremely well documented in the press.

I see that the deletionist pondscum have totally eliminated the SNG for pro baseball and football players. Big victory for you pencil dicks — just take someone who made the show to AFD as a GNG fail and see what happens...

I really have no use for deletionism, it's a byproduct of an archaic view of what Wikipedia is and should be.

[FOARP]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Yep. I think cases like the one above might actually be the exception, rather than the rule, but no one screaming for the sports bios to be kept has ever shown much interest in improving them outside of the bare minimum they need to at AfD.

(My favorite thing I've noticed recently is how few times the sources that demonstrate notability at AfD actually ever get added to the article. The point for the diehard inclusionists is that the page exists, not that it gets better.)

"Look, I can, by scraping local newspapers for what are largely one-sentence mentions, flesh out a stub" is hardly the flex some folk think it is.

Of course, the same might be done for a local politician or business, but we've more or less decided that just isn't kosher.

[ArmasRebane]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Yep. I think cases like the one above might actually be the exception, rather than the rule, but no one screaming for the sports bios to be kept has ever shown much interest in improving them outside of the bare minimum they need to at AfD.

(My favorite thing I've noticed recently is how few times the sources that demonstrate notability at AfD actually ever get added to the article. The point for the diehard inclusionists is that the page exists, not that it gets better.)

"Look, I can, by scraping local newspapers for what are largely one-sentence mentions, flesh out a stub" is hardly the flex some folk think it is.

Of course, the same might be done for a local politician or business, but we've more or less decided that just isn't kosher.

There's definitely a question of what constitutes local coverage; I'm sympathetic to the point that lots of articles might be predicated on The New York Times or Washington Post coverage in the US on what are essentially New York City or Washington DC local interest stories, and that's fundamentally not so different than a suburban Sun-Gazette. But on the flip side, those are news stories covering major metro areas, so even the local coverage has a greater level of discrimination applied, and there's also more likely to be something else there. As you note, you can string together sentences in local coverage but that doesn't create anything other than a start-class-esque article at best.

[The Garbage Scow]

I gave up on sports bios over 15 years ago when I encountered the sports wikproject people howling on AfDs that all professional athletes were automatically assumed notable and I didn't "do WP:BEFORE".

Is this still the case today?

[ArmasRebane]

I gave up on sports bios over 15 years ago when I encountered the sports wikproject people howling on AfDs that all professional athletes were automatically assumed notable and I didn't "do WP:BEFORE".

Is this still the case today?

There's a new, more stringent SNG for sports figures that got passed. In general notability has been more stringent than 15 years ago, certainly.

Of course if a bunch of BeanieFan-esque people are the only ones who show up to a sports AfD and it gets kept, the guidelines don't really matter.

[Randy from Boise]

Can? yes.

Will? no.

next question please

Yep. I think cases like the one above might actually be the exception, rather than the rule, but no one screaming for the sports bios to be kept has ever shown much interest in improving them outside of the bare minimum they need to at AfD.

(My favorite thing I've noticed recently is how few times the sources that demonstrate notability at AfD actually ever get added to the article. The point for the diehard inclusionists is that the page exists, not that it gets better.)

"Look, I can, by scraping local newspapers for what are largely one-sentence mentions, flesh out a stub" is hardly the flex some folk think it is.

Of course, the same might be done for a local politician or business, but we've more or less decided that just isn't kosher.

Well, speaking as an inclusionist — for most politicians it should be.

But everybody hates politicians, so there you go.

The deletionists used a high bar for politicians as a rationale for a higher bar for schools which was used as a higher bar for pro athletes — which was made possible because deletionists have their little orgasms over the deletion process while inclusionists are too busy working to give a shit.

The tide is out for inclusionism as official policy — although in practice the flood of utter crap coming through the firehose from Asia in particular keeps the deletionists so busy that they don't have time to consolidate their "gains" with schools and pro sports bio.

t

[Pelican]

This "us vs. them" crap can't possibly be healthy. I don't remember you getting this worked up about it in the past, Tim, but maybe I haven't been paying attention.

[Konveyor Belt]

I can't criticize Tim for seeing it as "us vs them" when there's plenty of other people who see it that way too. Since many of those people are involved in the deletion process, that perception becomes reality. I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real, so it isn't tilting at windmills or being reductive to see it that way.

[FOARP]

I can't criticize Tim for seeing it as "us vs them" when there's plenty of other people who see it that way too. Since many of those people are involved in the deletion process, that perception becomes reality. I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real, so it isn't tilting at windmills or being reductive to see it that way.

Speaking as someone who used to get accused of being a crazy inclusionist but is now somehow on team deletionist without really changing my approach that much, I don't buy this.

Mostly the issue is hobbyists. Which is fine. Wikipedia is also a hobby really, and it would be really dumb to expect people to write articles about topics they aren't interested in. But when we're talking about a game of writing as many articles as possible in area X regardless of sourcing, then the issues start happening, and the impact can become large because it's happening across a very large number of articles.

[Randy from Boise]

This "us vs. them" crap can't possibly be healthy. I don't remember you getting this worked up about it in the past, Tim, but maybe I haven't been paying attention.

I just figured out a couple days ago that Team Delete moved from wiping out the Schools SNG to the Pro Sports SNG.

Basically they're gonna turn AfD into something that does not scale because reasons.

I'm pissed.

t





Flex...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1189968677

Jimmy Orr (T-H-L)

[Randy from Boise]

Incidentally, if I were to write up one bad stub a day it would take me over 27 years to finish 10,000 — which would make me 89.

That ain't gonna happen! :-/

I can, at least theoretically, get to the end of the Colts.

t

[rnu]

The main achievement of sports stubs is to steal away traffic from the pages from which the stats - that's what they usually consist of - were copied from.

[Randy from Boise]

The main achievement of sports stubs is to steal away traffic from the pages from which the stats - that's what they usually consist of - were copied from.

A lot of them are pretty worthless as they sit, I will give you that.

The major sports stubs are all improvable.

t



Flex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1176930608
Art DeCarlo (T-H-L)

[Dan of La Mancha]

I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real

The term "deletionist" was invented by inclusionists.

Inclusionists are real – there are plenty of people who think that everything should be included – but nobody (or at least, nobody involved in the on-wiki debate) thinks that everything should be deleted.

I believe the antonym of "inclusionist" should be "encyclopedist," since the real question at issue is whether Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, or whether it should be an online catalogue of everything that exists.

[AndyTheGrump]

I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real

The term "deletionist" was invented by inclusionists.

Inclusionists are real – there are plenty of people who think that everything should be included – but nobody (or at least, nobody involved in the on-wiki debate) thinks that everything should be deleted.

I believe the antonym of "inclusionist" should be "encyclopedist," since the real question at issue is whether Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, or whether it should be an online catalogue of everything that exists.

Catalogues have a clear purpose, and are structured accordingly....

[ArmasRebane]

I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real

The term "deletionist" was invented by inclusionists.

Inclusionists are real – there are plenty of people who think that everything should be included – but nobody (or at least, nobody involved in the on-wiki debate) thinks that everything should be deleted.

I believe the antonym of "inclusionist" should be "encyclopedist," since the real question at issue is whether Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, or whether it should be an online catalogue of everything that exists.

Yeah I agree that to a large part the term "deletionist" is a misframing, even if there are some who have appropriated the moniker for themselves.

It's really a battle between the people who believe in content curation in all aspects, versus the people who latched onto Wales' "sum of all human knowledge" pitch. I think the philosophical problem is that if you query even the diehard inclusionists they don't actually believe absolutely everything that can be verified should be on Wikipedia.

[AndyTheGrump]

I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real

The term "deletionist" was invented by inclusionists.

Inclusionists are real – there are plenty of people who think that everything should be included – but nobody (or at least, nobody involved in the on-wiki debate) thinks that everything should be deleted.

I believe the antonym of "inclusionist" should be "encyclopedist," since the real question at issue is whether Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, or whether it should be an online catalogue of everything that exists.

Yeah I agree that to a large part the term "deletionist" is a misframing, even if there are some who have appropriated the moniker for themselves.

It's really a battle between the people who believe in content curation in all aspects, versus the people who latched onto Wales' "sum of all human knowledge" pitch. I think the philosophical problem is that if you query even the diehard inclusionists they don't actually believe absolutely everything that can be verified should be on Wikipedia.

You clearly don't remember the Article Rescue Squad in its glory days, when 'Google finds it in a search' was considered sufficient evidence for notability.

[FOARP]

I think we have plenty of evidence by now to say that inclusionists and deletionists are real

The term "deletionist" was invented by inclusionists.

Inclusionists are real – there are plenty of people who think that everything should be included – but nobody (or at least, nobody involved in the on-wiki debate) thinks that everything should be deleted.

I believe the antonym of "inclusionist" should be "encyclopedist," since the real question at issue is whether Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, or whether it should be an online catalogue of everything that exists.

Yeah I agree that to a large part the term "deletionist" is a misframing, even if there are some who have appropriated the moniker for themselves.

It's really a battle between the people who believe in content curation in all aspects, versus the people who latched onto Wales' "sum of all human knowledge" pitch. I think the philosophical problem is that if you query even the diehard inclusionists they don't actually believe absolutely everything that can be verified should be on Wikipedia.

I'd frame it - if it needs framing at all which I'm not convinced of - as a discussion between people whose hobby is the encyclopaedia, and people whose hobby is the subject matter that they are writing articles about.

[Kraken]

I can't lie, I read the expanded Mike Bettiga page and I was (literally) bored to tears. I was struck by how utterly banal it was.

I'd say that might be the career trajectory of pretty much any NFL player who effectively washed out after a few appearances on one team. It bordered on cliche at times.

It offends me to my core that someone would think the role of an encyclopedia is to include and retain this kind of information.

But here's the rub. How how get rid of it? There's no policy I'm aware of that can help me overcome your objection if I was to simply revert the entire expansion, taking it back to the stub content.

It is one of those situations where editors are obliged to talk it out with their human words. I would have to take the time to explain that the world doesn't benefit from documenting the school/college careers of NFL players who washed out. It's presumed they were outstanding. It's the NFL.

What would be your counter-argument? I can't think of anything you might offer up that wouldn't be utterly ridiculous. We might quickly come to verbal fisticuffs.

So why bother?

The lack of any efficient or effective way to prevent these kind of stubs being bloated this way, you're almost forcing people to go the deletion route. It's an easy delete if the presumption of automatic notability has indeed gone.

I don't want to do that. I'm deeply sympathetic to the reasons why such stubs are considered worthy. The idea that for certain sets of data, for example NFL players, there's a benefit to being comprehensive. And the presumption that someone one day might unearth something that is worthy of note, and simply adding it to a stub that has already been created and linked, is far easier for a random newbie or inexperienced editor to do, than starting from scratch.

Wikipedia has faced many choices in getting where it is today. One choice was to reward editors who take the the time to engage politely on the talk page and take people with them and develop policies to help make these debates shorter if not entirely uneeded. They chose to go a different way.

I kid you not, one day, an editor really is going have the reaction I did and just gut poor Mike back to his bare bones (far quicker than actually going the deletion route, but gives the same buzz). And if you object, you're not going to be indulged with a nice long polite discussion where views are exchanged and you're taken on a journey.

You're gonna get shafted. They're going to bullshit you, gaslight you, bully you. This is the new Wikipedia. They're short of time, short of editors, and high on testosterone.

[Randy from Boise]

I can't lie, I read the expanded Mike Bettiga page and I was (literally) bored to tears. I was struck by how utterly banal it was.

I'd say that might be the career trajectory of pretty much any NFL player who effectively washed out after a few appearances on one team. It bordered on cliche at times.

It offends me to my core that someone would think the role of an encyclopedia is to include and retain this kind of information.

It offends me to my core that some people continue to think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia."

t





Flexing...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1187495596
Tom Cosgrove (American football) (T-H-L)

[AndyTheGrump]

It offends me to my core that some people continue to think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia."

t

So, when you are going to make a formal proposal that it be renamed 'Wikipedia the free information database' on the front page?

[Randy from Boise]

It offends me to my core that some people continue to think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia."

t

So, when you are going to make a formal proposal that it be renamed 'Wikipedia the free information database' on the front page?

Not quite yet.

I'm just as interested in getting rid of the "anyone can edit" bullshit, frankly.

t

[Vigilant]

Well, that was quick walk back to form.

I can't lie, I read the expanded Mike Bettiga page and I was (literally) bored to tears. I was struck by how utterly banal it was.

I'd say that might be the career trajectory of pretty much any NFL player who effectively washed out after a few appearances on one team. It bordered on cliche at times.

It offends me to my core that someone would think the role of an encyclopedia is to include and retain this kind of information.

But here's the rub. How how get rid of it? There's no policy I'm aware of that can help me overcome your objection if I was to simply revert the entire expansion, taking it back to the stub content.

It is one of those situations where editors are obliged to talk it out with their human words. I would have to take the time to explain that the world doesn't benefit from documenting the school/college careers of NFL players who washed out. It's presumed they were outstanding. It's the NFL.

What would be your counter-argument? I can't think of anything you might offer up that wouldn't be utterly ridiculous. We might quickly come to verbal fisticuffs.

So why bother?

The lack of any efficient or effective way to prevent these kind of stubs being bloated this way, you're almost forcing people to go the deletion route. It's an easy delete if the presumption of automatic notability has indeed gone.

I don't want to do that. I'm deeply sympathetic to the reasons why such stubs are considered worthy. The idea that for certain sets of data, for example NFL players, there's a benefit to being comprehensive. And the presumption that someone one day might unearth something that is worthy of note, and simply adding it to a stub that has already been created and linked, is far easier for a random newbie or inexperienced editor to do, than starting from scratch.

Wikipedia has faced many choices in getting where it is today. One choice was to reward editors who take the the time to engage politely on the talk page and take people with them and develop policies to help make these debates shorter if not entirely uneeded. They chose to go a different way.

I kid you not, one day, an editor really is going have the reaction I did and just gut poor Mike back to his bare bones (far quicker than actually going the deletion route, but gives the same buzz). And if you object, you're not going to be indulged with a nice long polite discussion where views are exchanged and you're taken on a journey.

You're gonna get shafted. They're going to bullshit you, gaslight you, bully you. This is the new Wikipedia. They're short of time, short of editors, and high on testosterone.

[Vigilant]

It offends me to my core that some people continue to think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia."

t

So, when you are going to make a formal proposal that it be renamed 'Wikipedia the free information database' on the front page?

Not quite yet.

I'm just as interested in getting rid of the "anyone can edit" bullshit, frankly.

t

The real slogan should be, "Anyone can donate", since that's the real motivation.

[Randy from Boise]

It offends me to my core that some people continue to think of Wikipedia as an "encyclopedia."

t

So, when you are going to make a formal proposal that it be renamed 'Wikipedia the free information database' on the front page?

Not quite yet.

I'm just as interested in getting rid of the "anyone can edit" bullshit, frankly.

t

The real slogan should be, "Anyone can donate", since that's the real motivation.

And then there's that...

t