Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arsenal F.C. supporters (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   keep. Though a proposed merge would likely gain a direct consensus. (non-admin closure) John F. Lewis (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Arsenal F.C. supporters
AfDs for this article: 
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Sitting in a chair, drinking beer, and shouting is noteworthy? Please! This is supposed to be an encyclopedia. This is not even worthy of an almanac. Tabloid stuff mainly. Suggest using some other form of media, such as .com. Articles should be about Arsenal, it's business model, publicity, etc. Anything BUT who sits in the stands and watches the telly (there are hundreds of thousands, I suppose). Fails objective criteria of noteworthiness. Student7 (talk) 17:47, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge Football fans are a cultural group, and indeed with the decline of trade unions, political parties and organised religions it could be argued that football represents the last mass 'group identity' culture in the UK. The traditions of a particular group of football fans therefore represent, in principle at least, a suitable subject for an encyclopedia article provided that there is sufficient encyclopedic, verifiable (etc. etc.) information available to justify having a separate article as opposed to a 'fans' section in the main club article. The 'notable fans' section really strikes me as no different from a 'notable alumni' section on a school or university article. The article is well-sourced (though a minority of those sources probably fail WP:NPOV and WP:V) and worth having. Cynical (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment The vast majority of the sources -- as in, all but perhaps 5-6 of them -- are used to support various celebrities being Arsenal fans. The rest are a collection of individual Arsenal fan statistics and other fairly trivial, one-off items, as far as I can tell. None of them represent anything like a unified study or coverage of Arsenal fans or Arsenal fandom. At best, they cover an anecdote or two. I don't disagree with your opening assertion, but I'd need to see much better sourcing covering Arsenal fans as a group in order to think this passes WP:GNG. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡ  bomb  18:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Reckon you're right on that one - the actual non-trivia content of the article could probably be adequate covered in a 'fans' section' of the Arsenal F.C. page, so I've changed my suggestion accordingly (though left the text intact). I do think though that the nomination comes awfully close to WP:CIVIL and doesn't represent anything like a principle that we should use to judge other such articles. Cynical (talk) 22:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And, to that point, I agree that this is a merge situation, not an outright deletion situation, so I'm updating my vote as well. Good point. Cheers, ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡ  bomb  02:58, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete Merge  There is obviously going to be a ton of reliable coverage out there that quotes Arsenal fans, perhaps presents a few statistics about Arsenal fans in context of something larger, etc. There is also going to be a ton of coverage about Arsenal. In order for this to be a notable topic, there has to be significant coverage of Arsenal fans as a topic covered independent of the football club. I don't see this at all in the current article. I also went back to the previous AfD, and saw that someone mentioned 3 sources which they claim do exactly this:


 * -- this devotes approximately 50% of one paragraph to Arsenal fans' annual celebration of Saint Totteringham's Day (I have no idea what this is :) in an article covering several topics. I don't think this passes muster.


 * -- this is an article about police searching fans of various clubs for "homophobic materials," and is not an article about Arsenal fans.


 * -- This is an article about the Queen being an Arsenal fan and is, again, not an article about Arsenal fans.


 * With all this in mind, I vote to merge this to Arsenal F.C., unless anyone can find reliable sources covering the topic of Arsenal fans or Arsenal fandom (in which case I'll happily change my vote). Changing my vote to Keep based on sources found by Phil Bridger, which are precisely the kind of thing I was looking for. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡ  bomb  19:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Per WP:GNG. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge into Arsenal F.C.. There isn't enough material to justify a standalone article. Celebrity supporters, at least in its current form of a crufty list, should be removed. If a celebrity truly supports Arsenal, include it in their bio article. If it is to be maintained, at least add some context (e.g. supported the club since childhood, is a season-ticket holder, has invested in the club). There is currently no attempt to distinguish regular match-goers (i.e. real supporters) from random celebs who went to one match once or get free hospitality or just name-drop the club to sound cool. St Totteringham's Day is utterly trivial and should also be removed. Also, if it was first published in 2002, why has it been backdated before that? The other sections are worthy, but once you lose the two sections just mentioned, the remainder can be condensed into a section within Arsenal F.C.. --Jameboy (talk) 18:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge per Jameboy. - Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 22:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Couldn't see anything in the article about sitting in a chair, drinking beer and shouting so let's consider the article this could be not the one it might be or is. Of course Arsenal's fans are notable. There are numerous magazines, internet sites and references to them and their fans are worldwide. This article is however fragmented. The notable fans have been expanded by entries of those who merely 'like' the team. It needs triming back to those who are true fans, such as Nick Hornby and Alan Davies. It could also do with being better referenced and structured. Deletion is not what it needs. Correction and expansion is whats needed by this article and not throwing away based on some view of what football fans are. In addition, why merge? If it is poorly constructed and referenced won't merging just add those poor features to the Arsenal F.C. article?--Egghead06 (talk) 12:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The existing references support a few bits of interesting trivia about Arsenal fans, as well as the existence of several famous ones. The merge argument is that while these references don't support a full article -- that is, they don't pass WP:GNG as significant coverage of the subject "directly in detail" -- they certainly support inclusion of these pieces of trivia in the Arsenal F.C. article. For example, I Googled "Arsenal fanbase history" and things of that nature when I tried to find some sourcing, and the best I could find were some fan blogs (in a sea of articles that mentioned Arsenal fans being disappointed in a game, a player, etc.). ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡ  bomb  14:15, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. Just a few minutes' searching finds plenty of academic sources such as Fanatics!: Power, Identity, and Fandom in Football edited by Adam Brown (Taylor & Francis, 1998, ISBN 9780415181044), which has a five-page study of Arsenal supporters starting on page 54,, in which Arsenal supporters are one of the two main groups discussed, and , which discusses Arsenal supporters as stakeholders in the club. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 20:48, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. — Frankie (talk) 20:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge per Jameboy, not enough to justify a seperate article but certainly worth a mention there. GiantSnowman 22:01, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete I am against a Merging as that will just bring back the listcraft in the main Arsenal article which makes it too big. As a topic that has been discussed in the past in this football project there was a fair sized vote against such listing of celebrity football fans. Once you strip that from this article, what you have left is.. a bit of a repetition of what is already on the Arsenal page. There is the Supporters section which is covered very well. And some of the sources used seem to question it's own sources The Mail On Sunday is questioning it's source, which they are quoting they got from The Sun Then adding it's own evalutation, there is no stating of facts there. marketingweek are getting some information from The Sun also, questioning that in it's own article then stating Facebook only has 8 Million Arsenal fans, so how can there be a 100 million. So if the citations are questioning their sources... I question the whole article! Govvy (talk) 22:45, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: I would like ask Student7, he says that it fails objective criteria of noteworthiness. I would ask that since WP:N says that articles must be "worthy of notice", would he count being the first to do something as worthy of notice? The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 17:03, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Reply I said delete, under Five pillars It tells us not to have directory. This is a directory of supporters, and for an article which says the Queen and Osama bin Laden are Arsenal fans, I question this directory and all sources!. It's bordering on Soapbox. Govvy (talk) 12:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not the question I asked. But if the list of supporters were removed, would you still want it deleted? The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 12:52, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Reply - Comment There are maybe one or two little bits, which could be on the main Arsenal page, but really the main Arsenal page has a much better written section regarding the supporters. This not a very thought-out article and Student7 wrote, Tabloid stuff mainly and I agree with that, I try to go by what was written in the Five pillars, and there are plenty of cases for removal of an article such as this. You can have all the citation/references in the world. But that doesn't help an article if it lacks construction, this to what I see, starts off by repeating information on the Arsenal page, then lists a directory of supporters. Strip it all out and all you have left is St. Totteringham's Day! Govvy (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - Like Govvy, I am against merging as that would make the other article too big, but then I'm thinking that this is a notable WP:SPINOFF. The "deleters" have a point regarding the list of random people who support the same team, but if we remove that list we still got a notable topic with lot of potential for a decent article. Mentoz86 (talk) 02:42, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep (without prejudice against a later merge based on editorial presentation concerns.). Phil Bridger's sources appear to reach WP:GNG, I don't see a case for deletion or forced merge.  --j⚛e deckertalk 19:14, 19 December 2012 (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.