Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alaska Fighting Championship (2nd nomination)


 * 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. Yikes, a 4-relist discussion. Anyways, no discussion of 's proposal seems to be forthcoming, and consensus even before seems to be that the article should be deleted. ansh 666 20:34, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Alaska Fighting Championship
AfDs for this article: 
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New version was deemed to different from the last AfD deleted version for A7 so that speedy was declined but the PROD with the reason - no real references, and a previous version was deleted due to notability concerns that these references do not address - could not be done either so here we are.PRehse (talk) 12:50, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Martial arts-related deletion discussions. PRehse (talk) 12:53, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:32, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:32, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:33, 20 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete No indication of notability and no significant independent coverage. The sources are someone's blog, some fight results, and a bunch of articles saying their future events will be at the Alaska Airlines Center.  In other words, nothing that shows this promotion is notable.  In addition, the article is simply a list of blank fight cards for upcoming events.  This promotion wasn't notable before and I don't see where that has changed. Papaursa (talk) 02:12, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Fails GNG and WP:SPIP, references fail WP:CORPDEPTH and/or WP:ORGIND. -- HighKing ++ 15:09, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment everything bad Papaursa says about the article is accurate; I've removed the blank fight cards from the article. I'm unwilling to say this doesn't meet GNG, but can't find any articles that suggest it does either.  Power~enwiki (talk) 01:52, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep We encourage content building that fundamentally confuses the difference between an encyclopedia and a news site and gives undue weight to whatever low-hanging fruit Google dumps in one's lap. Resultantly, we see a pair of articles created solely to parrot a press conference, all the while ignoring the actual reliable sources out there.  Such a stance has been furthered by others throughout this process.  For instance, multiple reliable sources show that Sarah Johnston Lormier has been the owner or managing partner of the promotion since 2007.  In this article, however, we have an infobox entry which refers to a Twitter handle sourced to a blog (and she isn't the founder, either).  This AFD's nominator then proceeds to "fill in blank references" instead of bothering to scrutinize their reliability.  Then I see a participant in the other AFD make a big deal out of BLP concerns because some fighters scheduled for the card were named (and predictably enough, that article was deleted anyway).  Aside from the hilarity and potential irony of one of those fighters having the surname "Minus", that "problem" is downright innocuous compared to what I describe above.  What a train wreck.  This sort of going through the motions is precisely why I've cut way back on patrolling new pages.

A news archive search mostly of the Anchorage Daily News (search index accessible from adnsearch.com) shows that the promotion's coverage is heavy on its UFC affiliation in general, including emphasis given to the appearance of Chuck Liddell and Dana White at past events, as well as the promotion serving as a career springboard for Andy Enz, Nic Herron-Webb and Lauren Murphy (BTW, the timing of the last attempt at an AFC article coincides with a point in Enz's career ascent and associated coverage, but some of us are at a disadvantage to judge that if we can't view the content). Coverage related to the press conference states that the UFC deal figures into the decision to move to the Alaska Airlines Center. The focal point of that coverage was not that particular point or even AFC, but rather how the Sullivan Arena continues to lose business to their upstart competitor, to the extent of failing to point out that the Sullivan can be rented out as a half house, whether AFC has done so and whether therefore the move represents a step up or step down in terms of how many tickets they can sell.

Considering all that, the ADN has run a small handful of 1,500 to 2,000-word stories substantially about the promotion dating back to its first six months of existence in 2004, which combined give a halfway credible telling. Stories state that AFC has been among the Sullivan's top three tenants for most of its existence, along with the Aces and Seawolves hockey teams (the former of which also pulled out this year), that they've enjoyed attendance figures comparable to those events (with the caveat that the best-attended events were perhaps the 2006 co-promotions with concerts such as Drowning Pool and Naughty by Nature, plus the event where Liddell appeared) and that the popularity of AFC and MMA in general in Alaska has been influential enough to spur minor public outrage on occasion and to call for reinstating Alaska's defunct athletic commission. I'd suspect that coverage from other outlets does exist, even if they're hard to find. The all-inclusive search function found at WikiProject Mixed martial arts/sources doesn't work as intended. Still, the "development" of the article thus far reflects the results of the same Google search I made, leaving me skeptical that any of those MMA sources were consulted. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:36, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Could you post some of the articles you found? That site is a bit difficult to navigate. Mr. Magoo (talk) 05:51, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Try this and this. Contrary to what others in this discussion have attempted to claim, the non-routine hits found at those links alone plainly satisfy WP:RS and WP:V.  I still don't have the time to go through everything, but what I've read appears to also satisfy WP:SIGCOV, though not to a great extent.  The aforementioned sources page at WP:MMA speaks of the importance of non-MMA-specific sources so as not to create the impression of a walled garden.  Unless, however, I'm supposed to believe that such a statement applies only to that page and not to this page or the article under discussion.  This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to reach after reading some of the arguments here, the latest being to categorically excuse away local media coverage as "routine", all the while continuing to demonstrate that zero effort has been made by anyone but myself to actually examine those sources.  Last I checked, WP:V has nothing to do with how much low-hanging fruit a Google search returns, which appears to be the "notability standard" being applied here by everyone else. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  02:03, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  So Why  07:04, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
 * delete I didn't find anything that shows the UFC and AFC are actually affiliated, except for both being MMA promotions. Local coverage of sporting events doesn't seem like enough to show notability and doesn't WP:GNG say there should be multiple sources and that "multiple publications by the same person or organization are considered to be a single source"? User RadioKAOS seems to say that the AFC is notable because some people have attended their events or once competed for them, but that doesn't mean the AFC is notable.Sandals1 (talk) 13:15, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Mixed martial arts - no evidence of sufficient standalone notability but the sparse coverage suggests it would fit right in as a sentence or two in the promotions section of the MMA article. TimTempleton (talk) (cont)  18:50, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Just a comment on the merge suggestion; the target article says, there are hundreds of MMA promotions around the world. If there really are hundreds of them, and this one isn't notable, would adding it there be a case of WP:UNDUE?  -- RoySmith (talk) 21:45, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a valid concern, but I found a way to get around that with guidelines I set for another article I created - Meal kit. There are reportedly 150 meal kit companies, so the list there could likewise get unwieldy, but I put in some editing notes to ask that contributors not add any company to the list unless there is a) a Wikipedia article on that company or b) significant indepth media coverage in at least one reliable notable third party publication.  Companies that already have their own articles are wiki-linked, and companies with coverage but not an article (yet) are just sourced with that coverage. This acts as a stepping stone and creates three tiers of companies, only two of which appear on the list. So correspondingly non-notable MMA organizations would not be added.  Once the list gets too long, it could be spun off as a standalone list. TimTempleton (talk)  (cont)  22:19, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  J <i style="color:#137412;">947</i>(c) (m) 18:42, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete -- a directory-like entry on an entity with not indications of notability or significance. The article consists of trivia such as:
 * In July it was announced via social media that the AFC had signed a deal with the University of Alaska Anchorage campus arena Alaska Airlines Center for the 2017-2018 fight season!
 * The merge / redirect would not be appropriate in this case, so delete. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:28, 9 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep User RadioKaos has demonstrated that the promotion is noteworthy due to the fact that it's been written about in media and that it's attendance is notable enough to put it level with other acts from different media. I don't think this warrants a deletion, if people are upset about the page, then a compromise could be to create a list of North American MMA promotions.Egaoblai (talk) 08:16, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Routine sports coverage in the local paper is insufficient to show notability. Crowd size does not prove notability, or every major college football game would have an article.  No one has shown any significant coverage in any sources, much less the multiple ones required by WP:GNG. Papaursa (talk) 15:45, 15 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete as failing WP:GNG and WP:SPIP per HighKing. And, as Papaursa points out, the size of the event doesn't necessarily impact notability. Ifnord (talk) 18:06, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a little too blatant that just about everyone else here has come to this discussion with their mind already made up. Among the non-routine hits found in the links I provide above, there are multiple stories which refer to their attendance levels as being significant among local events in general.  There is another story, by the Associated Press and not a "local yokel newspaper", which devotes several paragraphs to AFC's role in the athletic commission issue.  This is coverage by reliable sources which demonstrates their impact on the real world, a place which some of you ought to try experiencing sometime.  If you're expecting me to take a severely filtered view of few particular sources at face value, well, I can get that kind of POV from their websites without having to see it mindlessly repeated here.  As has already been demonstrated with prior AFDs of this sort, you're expecting me to believe that if a promotion existed which consistently drew 50 people to the Muldoon Boys & Girls Club gymnasium yet were quite skilled at manipulating the media, that I'm supposed to pretend that they're "notable" if someone comes along and pulls the "right" sources out of their ass. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions  02:29, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

<div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: To discuss bd2412's proposal
 * Delete - lack of significant coverage so fails WP:GNG. PhilKnight (talk) 22:31, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - The article has been up for about a month and the sources provided are so few. It does not look notable either since if it was, it would have more sources at least.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 22:49, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Suppose we were to break out a new article for Mixed martial arts promotions and merge it there? bd2412  T 02:51, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  So Why  18:35, 17 September 2017 (UTC) <div class="xfd_relist" style="border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 25px;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 18:16, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - I changed my vote to delete from merge and redirect and struck my old vote. I revisited this and reviewed the coverage, and based on the limited reliable sources I found, this event does not demonstrate notability, even for inclusion on an article simply listing notable promotions. <b style="color:#7F007F">TimTempleton</b> <sup style="color:#800080">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  19:31, 25 September 2017 (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.