Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Achievements of the GAA


 * 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 merge to Gaelic_Athletic_Association. Dreadstar †  01:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Achievements of the GAA

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This well-referenced article is nonetheless an irredeemably POV essay which could be equally well titled "In praise of the Gaelic Athletic Association". It would be a great article for a GAA publication, and would probably be great for a magazine, but the title prevents it from taking a balanced view of the subject -- they very title prevents the inclusion of a section on "Failures of the GAA", which would be necessary for balance. We already have a History of the Gaelic Athletic Association article, and this is just a POV alternative to it. The quality of the prose here should not blind anyone to the inherent structural bias of this article. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:46, 3 April 2008 (UTC) Something about these lines .This is different to the History of the GAA article, The Gaelic Athletic Association is getting to big and will need to be spun off soon just as this article was Gnevin (talk) 07:50, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ireland-related deletion discussions.  . -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete obvious POV fork. And it has been here since 2006?!DGG (talk) 06:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * PS A "failures of the GAA article" could be deeply scathing, denouncing the organisation for having politicised sport, having promoted division in Ireland by through its ban on "foreign sports", and for being sectarian in structure (though not in formal aim) through its mirroring of Catholic parishes for its organisational structure -- see Gaelic Athletic Association. I am not advocating that view myself, but it is a view strongly held in some quarters, and Google search for "GAA sectarianism" throws up plenty of reference material. I hope we don't go down the oath of having separate "pro" and "anti" articles on different topics, but the logic of this article is that there should a counterbalancing attack article, which would be equally undesirable. A wikipedia article should present a balanced perspective on an issue, and that's precisely what this unsalvageable article does not try to do. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Suggest rename to
 * Cultural effects of the GAA
 * Cultural impact of the GAA
 * Effects of the GAA on Irish society
 * Effects of the GAA on Irish society
 * PS Gaelic Athletic Association should be merged into the article when it's movedGnevin (talk) 07:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Rename and balance Rotovia (talk) 11:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge with GAA or History of the GAA, then POV problems can be fixed with no loss of information. Perhaps the three articles could all be merged? It seems unnecessary to have so many articles spawned off this topic. ImperviusXR (talk) 12:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * CommentThis topic is huge and having a History of the GAA and a Cultural effects of the GAA(or the like) can very easily be justifiedGnevin (talk) 18:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete: fails WP:NOR, WP:SYN and WP:NOT. That the article may be getting "too big" is an aesthetic consideration that doesn't require POV forks where trimming of speculative sections might be tried first.    Ravenswing  15:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The Primary article was criticise as too big to be a good article, (now i'll admit the fork was a poor choice and pro's and con's should of moved together), now your suggesting that the size of the article is purely aesthetic , nonsense, also i fail to see how it fails WP:NOR , WP:SYN and don't know what part of WP:NOT you are referring too or is this a case of WP:BASHing ?Gnevin (talk) 18:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Reply: If you need it spelled out, sure. WP:NOT = Wikipedia is not an essay.  This adulatory piece is stuffed with peacock phrases that are either unverified, unverifiable and/or POV-riddled:


 * "'The ancient game of hurling was saved from extinction.'"
 * "'The association achieved its original objective of having at least one club in every parish. Thanks to the success of this policy, clubs are evenly distributed throughout the country in both urban and rural areas, and the organisation's reach is therefore considerable. This huge presence means that the GAA has become a major player in the sporting and cultural life of Ireland.'"
 * "'This has helped to entrench a sense of local identity. For example, the county identities that have been fostered by over a century of local rivalries in the provincial championships are so prominent in society that many people feel emotionally attached to their county.'"
 * "'In the GAA's structures (parish (club), county, province and national) it created a conduit for national and communal loyalty, an achievement given that the various elements owed their origins to a variety of sources: Catholicism (the parishes), British law (the counties), and Irish history (the provinces and the nation). Its achievement in popularising counties was particularly marked.'"


 * And so on. Those passages also constitute original research and a WP:SYN violation, in so far as even if they are true, they take unsourced suppositions and draw a conclusion from them.  Beyond that, they press the premise too far; for instance, the supporting source for a claim that the "people" won't stand for meddling with county boundaries is an article quoting two angry players, just the two.  As the nominator correctly cites, this is an essay, a magazine article or an op-ed piece; it is not an encyclopedia article.    Ravenswing  19:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You are just WP:Bashing here. WP:NPOV is at most this fails and could/will be edited by myself in to be not beGnevin (talk) 19:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You asked for explanations. You received them.  No one will compel you to agree with the reasoning, but it really is possible to advocate deletion of this article on policy grounds alone, without a shred of malevolence or axe-grinding involved.  WP:AGF and WP:OWN apply, after all.    Ravenswing  19:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have AGF, WP:Bash doesnt imply the nomination was done in bad faith.This is really a case or throwing the baby out with the bathwater just because the title is incorrect. 2 edits by someone who readily admits they arent the greatest with prose the a article is already a lot better, IMHO Gnevin (talk) 19:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no baby; this is all bathwater. I see nothing worth keeping. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete This article appears to be spun out of an old version Gaelic Athletic Association and hasn't changed greatly in the interim, so I think it can be safely deleted. It would be better to start a new, better-sourced article with both the good and bad aspects of the GAA from scratch. Bláthnaid  19:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Baby-bath water again, so what it hasn't been edits greatly, their is good content here .And once Gaelic Athletic Association is merged into it the POV issue would be solved Gnevin (talk) 19:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * A POV violation doesn't necessarily equal "unbalanced," nor do peacock terms become any less so if you give equal time to equally-poorly sourced suggestions that the GAA are leeches on the body of Irish sport. Don't, for instance, write about how the GAA saved hurling from extinction, because we don't actually know whether that is true or not.  Write a sourced citation along the lines of "There were only X hurling matches recorded in the ten years before the GAA's involvement; by contrast, there were 10x scheduled hurling matches in the five years thereafter."    Ravenswing  20:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you know what the GAA are or understand the history of hurling? Thats like asking me to source the number of baseball game in 1837 Gnevin (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * will this do you?


 * Keep But re-name and copy edit. I spun this article out from Gaelic Athletic Association in the interests of pushing that article towards GA status - it was getting too long on its own and needed each section tightened up with a specific article fleshing out each section.  IIRC that was agreed either on the discussion page of the main article or in the Project Gaelic Games discussion.  This article probably has been neglected.  I think the title is the only major problem with it, anything perceived as POV can either be NPOVd or sourced. I agree with previous comments that deleting the whole article because of a small number of fixable problems is throwing the baby out with the bath water.  --Eamonnca1 (talk) 22:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Reply. Sorry, but it's not just "a small number of fixable problems". On the contrary, the entire article is a hagiography of the GAA, with numerous unsourced, speculative or unprovable assertions. Anything further on the history of the GAA would be much better if it didn't start by using any of this text. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, merge with Gaelic Athletic Association and rename as per my above comment Gnevin (talk) 22:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep as per User:Gnevin above. (rename and merge with Gaelic Athletic Association). Article title may be pov at the minute, but can't see what the problem will be if a balanced article including the criticisms is written. Derry Boi (talk) 16:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Reply I too have no probs with a balanced article, but that's no reason to keep this piece in any form. The problem is that this article takes the wrong starting point, and all the other problems flow from that. An article on the Effects of the GAA on Irish society (as suggested above) should not just be this hagiography with some references added, hyperbole removed and criticisms tacked on; it should start by defining some questions, and by discussing all points of view evenly. A highly partisan document such as this should not be used as the basis of an NPOV assessment of the GAA. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:12, 6 April 2008 (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.