Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/All-time Prva HNL table


 * 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. Black Kite (t) (c) 23:36, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

All-time Prva HNL table

 * – ( View AfD View log )

I PRODed this article with the rationale "Non-notable per precedent at Articles for deletion/All-time English Football League 1st Division Table." The PROD was contested and replaced with a merge tag. I still think the article should be deleted as it is non-notable (no significant coverage in independent reliable sources) and a violation of WP:NOTSTATS. Another reason that it should not be merged is that it is sourced entirely to "Clas Glenning's website" (which looks like a fan source to me) and the only notable thing in the article, how many league titles each team has won, is already in Prva HNL. Jenks24 (talk) 21:43, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions.  —Jenks24 (talk) 21:48, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Croatia-related deletion discussions.  —Jenks24 (talk) 21:48, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. GiantSnowman 00:22, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, this kind of table serves no purpose and violates a number of our guidelines (NOTSTATS, OR, LISTCRUFT). Not even worth merging IMO. GiantSnowman 00:24, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, BusterD (talk) 23:42, 23 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete Pointless statistic overload - these stats don't really even mean anything. Fails guidelines as per GiantSnowman. Bretonbanquet (talk) 01:07, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. As long as there are similar articles about the German, Spanish or English versions I see no reason why this should get deleted apart from WP:BIAS which WP:FOOTY famously suffers from.
 * RSSSF has the table up to the 2007-08 season here and another one listing final placings here (RSSSF is deemed a reliable source per this discussion dating from March 2009). Moreover, the table contains simple mathematical calculations which can easily be reproduced so it falls into the scope of WP:NOTOR.
 * Also, WP:NOTSTATS cited by the nominator says that forbids "excessive listings of statistics", defined as "long and sprawling lists of statistics" which "may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles - in addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader". I don't think this table reduces the readability of anything and I think the explanatory text is sufficient (although it sure could be expanded further).
 * In addition, the WP:LISTCRUFT essay does not apply here either. That essay is about discouraging lists whose items are not standalone topics and both Prva HNL and each of the clubs are exactly that (standalone encyclopaedic topics, as defined by FOOTY's own guidelines). It also describes legitimate lists by saying that "The list should originate as a section within that article, and should not be broken out into a separate article until it becomes so long as to be disproportionate to the rest of the article." - and this is exactly what had happened with this list which started off as a section in Prva HNL. And anyway, even if LISTCRUFT applied, it would automatically apply to ALL articles in Category:All-time football league tables - and you yourself had agreed to keep the Spanish league version in its deletion discussion because "some kind of use of this table by the wider media". No LISTCRUFT or NOTSTATS arguments there, huh?
 * In conclusion, the nomination reeks of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:BIAS (Jenks24 you don't get to decide what is the "only notable thing here"). Unless something other than misinterpretations of policies and guidelines can be provided I see no reason to delete this. Cheers.  Timbouctou ( talk ) 14:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You might want to drop the confrontational attitude – they don't help the points you're trying to make. Anyway, I'll address your points in the order you made them: This not a case of bias. You will notice from the histories of the three articles you mention that I have PRODed each of them in the last week or so. Thanks for finding the RSSSF reference. As you can see in the nom, I was not concerned that it was OR, but that is was referenced to an unreliable source and I agree RSSSF is reliable, so that concern is allayed. However, the RSSSF reference is not "significant coverage", so I fail to see how the table is notable.  I guess we will have to agree to disagree about the "excessive listings of statistics" – I still feel it is excessive while you don't.  Regarding LISTCRUFT, I have never cited that essay in any of these all-time tables discussions. It is an interesting essay, but I agree it's not really relevant to this discussion.  I am glad that you brought up Category:All-time football league tables – it is impossible to see at the moment, but I have recently had about 25 or 30 articles that were in that category deleted (either via PROD or AfD), because I believe the arguments I outlined in the nom applied to all of them (I'll list them here if you like). The few that remain only do so because significant coverage in independent reliable sources has been provided, proving that they pass GNG. Regarding the specific AfD that you cite, Articles for deletion/All-time La Liga table, you will note that I nominated that article and NOTSTATS was one of the main reasons. In that discussion, I agreed that a merge would be acceptable because significant coverage was shown.  Regarding "Jenks24 you don't get to decide what is the 'only notable thing here'&thinsp;", no, I am not the arbiter of notability, which is why we have AfDs – so we as a community can discuss our interpretations and find a consensus. By saying that how many league titles each team has won is the only notable thing in this table, what I meant was that the number of league titles in the Prva HNL is the only part of this table that I could find significant coverage for. I am always happy to see notable articles be kept and if you can provide significant coverage for this table, then I will be happy to agree to a merge as I did in the La Liga discussion and the Allsvenskan discussion. Jenks24 (talk) 16:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * When I was talking about bias I was referring to all the half-hearted Delete votes this AfD is obviously going to get, illustrated perfectly by GiantSnowman's input. Yes, I know you woke up one day and decided that a few dozen tables need to be removed and you nominated al of them. I also know that most of them did get deleted because nobody simply fives a fuck about tables of leagues they do not follow, which is altogether a pattern often seen in anything football-related around here - of course the Premier league or La Liga tables will NOT get deleted because voting editors from WP:FOOTY are biased, evidenced by the ongoing AfD of the Argentine Primera. This pattern is very familiar at WP:FOOTY - somebody invents a non-problem, than zealous editors in love with their third-level English club simply delete stuff from articles about clubs and leagues they regard as irrelevant, but when the time comes to apply the same criteria to their beloved leagues the "consensus" shifts and all of a sudden the stuff the same things that had been wholesale deleted a week ago is now allowed for English or Spanish clubs/players/leagues. So yeah, it IS a blatant case of WP:BIAS, evidenced by the attitude displayed in your sentence that "the only notable thing here" is whatever you (or 5 Englishmen) think it is. You say it's the job of the "community" to decide what is notable. Then why did you say that in the first place if you know better?
 * Regarding the GNG argument - I don't see it as being applicable here. What exactly do you need to prove GNG for any table? Do daily newspapers publish lists of Man United appearances? It is a fucking statistics table, and exactly the sort of thing people expect to find in an encyclopedia. There are literally hundreds of tables on Wikipedia, many of them featured lists, which have never been published in that form by any single media outlet. No, the newspapers in Croatia do not have a habit of publishing this table in this form but they do often talk about how many seasons a certain club spent in top level, how many times they finished as runners-up or how many top level games they played. And yes, it IS a simple mathematical operation of adding numbers, numbers needed can be found in individual season articles, which all exist on Wikipedia and which are all referenced from reliable sources, so this is not OR. And Kosm1fent below should read point 3 of WP:NOTSTATS before citing it in deletion discussions. Sorry, but this still reeks of WP:IDONTLIKEIT.  Timbouctou ( talk ) 13:59, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Look, I don't really follow soccer, I'm not English and I'm not a member of WP:FOOTY. I'm not really sure how to respond to all the accusations of bias and so on because, to be frank, a lot of didn't make much sense. It seems blatantly obvious to me that leagues like the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga are going to have more coverage because they are simply bigger leagues. Again, they are not being deleted because significant coverage has been shown – the same can't be said for this table, though I would be happy for you to prove me wrong instead getting worked up about bias. As to GNG, yes, I do find it relevant here, just like I find it relevant at every AfD. "Do daily newspapers publish lists of Man United appearances?" Not that I'm aware of, but many books do, hence the lists meets GNG. Regarding OR, I think it could technically be considered WP:SYNTH (a section of OR), but whether it's SYNTH or not doesn't really matter if it can't even be shown that the table passes GNG. Jenks24 (talk) 03:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I said it once but it seems I need to say it again - the WP:GNG argument is inapplicable to tables like these. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of tables, many of which are FLs, which have never been published in the exact form as they appear on Wikipedia. Lists of heads of state, many lists of films, lists of buildings, lists of awards won by someone or something, lists of goaltenders who have scored a goal in an NHL game and many many more. This table shows historic results of sports clubs (entities which are notable themselves) in a top level national competition (which is also notable itself). Each season tables have been published in copious sources and I fail to see how simply adding or substracting numbers for a cumulative table is somehow beyond our editing capabilities in the interest of this project. Regards.  Timbouctou ( talk ) 17:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I disagree that GNG is irrelevant. I didn't want to say it before when you kept mentioning other articles, but you seem to be persisting with this path, so: WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Regarding List of goaltenders who have scored a goal in an NHL game, most of the sources for that article are offline, so I can't tell if the table was published in a similar format to the one found in the article or not. But that too is irrelevant – the reason that article is notable is because you can find copious references discussing who was the first, second, third, etc. goalkeeper to score in the NHL. Can you provide any references, in English or Croatian, that discuss this table (or sections of this table)? A few sources along the lines of "and with that win, moves to first (or third or 11th) on the all-time Prva HNL table" would be enough to show GNG, in my opinion. I have honestly looked for sources and been unable to find any, but you are obviously more knowledgable about this league, so if you could find some that would be great. Jenks24 (talk) 21:07, 29 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Pretty much like the Articles for deletion/All-time La Liga table, both fail WP:NOTSTATS, but the La Liga one was saved from deletion because it had significant media coverage in third-party media sources, so it passed WP:GNG. This table, however, does not. Even though RSSSF is considered a reliable source, the fact that the table goes until the 2007-08 season, and, in order to update the table, you need to make quite a lot of calculations that cannot be easily reproduced (unlike what Timbouctou says), makes it WP:OR and thus fails WP:GNG. Kosm1fent Won't you talk to me? 07:26, 27 August 2011 (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.