Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1978–79 London Spartan League


 * 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 delete. – bradv  🍁  15:42, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

1978–79 London Spartan League

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Article does not pass WP:BASIC WP:GNG, I fail to see how these can ever pass GNG. The level of football was so low, there maybe one or two routine citations around. But there is nothing in-depth to support articles of this nature. Govvy (talk) 12:09, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Also felt that 1985–86 South Midlands League failed GNG, and still does fail GNG was kept on a whim, individual season pages for these lower leagues are not notable. Govvy (talk) 12:12, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Would the league have received newspaper coverage that year? That's the real question here. SportingFlyer  T · C  13:10, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 18:40, 7 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, no evidence of notability. GiantSnowman 18:44, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Largely on a procedural basis. Two of the three AfDs started by the nominator for leagues at the same level were kept following discussions in March (1, 2). As pointed out last time (and not just by me), a better approach would be to have a centralised discussion on whether league season articles at this level are wanted or not. AfDing individual seasons is a seriously unhelpful approach that creates inconsistency on what we have and do not have articles on (as there are hundreds of articles on league seasons at this level), and I would ask the nominator to stop doing this. Also, I don't have access to newspaper archives for this era, but modern coverage of leagues at this level does pass GNG so I would be surprised if it didn't 40-50 years ago. Number   5  7  09:53, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd support this. SportingFlyer  T · C  10:38, 8 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep The article needs improving, but I can easily find weekly results (for both divisions!) in national publications such as The Observer for 1978/1979 and fixture lists in The Guardian, along with dozens of hits from a half-dozen papers in the British Newspaper Archive from August 1977 to June 1978 (mostly articles than results). I expect searching for the 32 individual teams, would yield some decent articles as well. I can see that it's unlikely that any of the individual teams are worthy of seasons articles, but there's more than enough information out there decades later to write seasons articles for the entire league structure. And how can we have no problems with articles like 2019–20 Spartan South Midlands Football League and not with this? Or are only 21st century league seasons notable at this level? Nfitz (talk) 00:28, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Question How are results in-depth? I can find results for multiple different football online, from under-16s locally to my playing days as a non-league amateur. You haven't provided an sources to your conclusion for keeping. A football result or a group of them is not grounds to keep an article or contribute towards GNG. You really would have to have something far more. Govvy (talk) 10:50, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not even sure as to whether the more recent seasons at this level are notable enough to pass GNG. There needs to be a wider discussion, though. Either they all go or they all stay. It wouldn't make sense to delete some but then let others be kept. Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 16:13, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The results alone don't quite establish notability, even if they are in a national (if not international, easy enough to find The Observer on a good newsstand here on the other side of the ocean, to this day on a Sunday afternoon ... well, to a day in March 2020, which is the last time I went in a newsagent). I don't currently have access to the British Newspaper Archive so I can't provide, and can only see snippets, that anyone can see in a search. This shouldn't be a surprise - we can find the occasional good article about a team's season for teams currently playing at that level, and seasons articles for those leagues are ubiquitous. Nfitz (talk) 16:28, 11 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I did a quick search on a couple of the teams in the league for recent results and many of their games do get covered, it's not an every game has a journo type situation but a journo might cover one of the local teams on a given weekend and list results for the remainder. I'd assume Step 9 would be okay for a tables article based on that. SportingFlyer  T · C  20:57, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Nosebagbear (talk) 15:47, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete fails WP:GNG and I am not impressed by the WP:MUSTBESOURCES arguments. Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 18:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone here has looked yet. SportingFlyer  T · C  18:53, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete per nom. Paul Vaurie (talk) 16:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 16:14, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom fails GNG. INeedToFlyForever (talk) 14:53, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment Still frustrated nobody's going to the newspapers to actually check to see if this passes GNG or not. Any examples of actual articles? SportingFlyer  T · C  16:07, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree. The best place for such references is the British Newspaper Archive - and my preliminary search looked positive, but I don't have access. Perhaps someone with access can look? I'll try and dig in other sources. Nfitz (talk) 00:22, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Just did a BNA search myself and there certainly looks to be coverage, if not of the league, of teams in the league. A newspapers.com search, which only has a few English newspapers, brought up mostly lists of results in agate, but also small blurbs of team news. It looks like the league's coverage was mostly fixture lists and results in larger papers and tabloids, and was covered significantly by papers in Harrow and Buckinghamshire. But I also can't tell because I also don't have BNA access, but it's clear from just the results there's a decent chance there is in depth reporting of the league. SportingFlyer  T · C  14:09, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Relisting once more to allow for examination in BNA or Newspapers.com archives. Perhaps someone who has access through WP:TWL or the shared resources portal could assist?

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Go  Phightins  !  20:51, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree Sporting Flyer - I took a deep dive in several databases, but nothing seems to have the same newspaper coverage as the BNA, other than newspaper archive in Find My Past (which as far as I can see is just a copy of BNA) - but perhaps there's someone around who has access to that. I don't think that either are available through WP:TWL, User:Go Phightins! - just Newspapers.com, which I can access through TWL - but that seems to have little in-depth British coverage from that time period, other than 1 or 2 of the big national papers - it's great for 1940s USA soccer - less so for 1970s UK soccer. Nfitz (talk) 04:54, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The limited access I have all I see are results, which is what I saw last time I checked, I still don't see how you can in-depth season pages. I can see a page on the league passing GNG, but not season pages. Govvy (talk) 10:50, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What sort of coverage do you think is required for a season page? SportingFlyer  T · C  16:05, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * More than just results, actual match reports, it could have been covered quite well, but I don't know that, from what I've seen is why I have nominated. I don't really see the depth needed for these articles. You could also argue that a lot of these season articles at this lower level is just a load of WP:NOSTATS articles that should be deleted! :/ Govvy (talk) 16:48, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There's clearly newspaper coverage for at least two teams in the league including Bracknell Town, though the year search doesn't line up precisely with the season. I still think the WP:NOTSTATS argument needs to be made centrally before being taken to AfD. I agree the pure stats dump from nonleaguematters isn't excellent, but we've also kept really dumb US College team seasons sourced only to a reference website before since those seasons were and/or may have been covered in local papers. Considering the consensus for these has been on the side of keeping in the past such as Articles for deletion/1984–85 South Midlands League and Articles for deletion/1985–86 South Midlands League, I'd prefer if there was a broader consensus before these start getting deleted piecemeal. SportingFlyer  T · C  21:11, 2 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep per N57. I don't see what Govvy is trying to achieve by sporadically nominating individual season articles when previous AfDs of this kind have consistently resulted in keeping the articles. There is a need for a centralised discussion on these, rather than what seems to be waiting for a delete consensus on one AfD and then applying that to all other articles of the kind, so this is a procedural keep as much as anything else. Microwave Anarchist (talk) 16:05, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. Fails WP:SIGCOV. We can’t evaluate sources that are not produced, and lack of evidence is simply that, lack of evidence. It’s on the onus of the keep voters to provide evidence of significant coverage, and speculations on existing sources is not convincing.4meter4 (talk) 03:36, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We don't delete articles just because we can't access the sources we've identified. SportingFlyer  T · C  10:08, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That’s ridiculous. You are claiming sources hypothetically exist but you don’t know they exist or you would produce them here. How can we argue for or against evidence we can’t see. This is a logical fallacy. You must produce them, or in AFD terms they aren’t real.4meter4 (talk) 13:11, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * We know sources exist from at least a few papers from a search from the British newspaper archive. We just can't access those articles directly. SportingFlyer  T · C  13:40, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Given that anyone can see the long list of articles, without seeing the contents, in the BNA - calling them "hypothetical" is surely disingenuous! It's not their existence that are hypothetical, it's the full contents, other than a handful of words in a preview, that is the issue. It's clear from what you can see, that these are written articles, rather than just league tables. Nfitz (talk) 00:02, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. Subject doesn't pass WP:GNG and WP:SPORTSEVENT (in reply to the above discussion about inaccessible texts, I think that's it's more likely than not that they are based on not more than routine coverage of each game; I disagree that there's a general onus on the keep !voters to produce evidence of significant coverage, but there as onus on the side that claims a concrete example of coverage is significant, to back that assertion up with something, so that it isn't completely speculative). I disagree with the procedural critique outlined by . When there is a lack of a specific procedure, the more general procedure that is in effect needs to be used, it's a robust, transparent, and inclusive way of doing things. And if the results are a little unsatisfactory for the time being, that just means that we know why a new tool of process needs to be made, but discussions can't be based on this speculative future tool, in anticipation. Individual AfDs are more than fine. Edit: those who !vote delete based on their perceived need for a centralized discussion simply need to start that centralized discussion. — Alalch Emis (talk) 10:39, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * 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.