Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christian Walton


 * 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. ...with presumably no prejudice against speedily undeleting/recreating once the subject actually plays in a pro match slakr  \ talk / 08:31, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Christian Walton

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Non-notable subject - has not played a professional club game to pass WP:NFOOTY and does not appear to otherwise pass WP:GNG Clicriffhard (talk) 22:01, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. Clicriffhard (talk) 22:09, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Clicriffhard (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete - fails both WP:GNG and WP:NFOOTBALL. GiantSnowman 22:18, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete - per nom. He has not played in a fully pro league or received significant coverage, meaning the article fails WP:NSPORT and WP:GNG. Sir Sputnik (talk) 22:54, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete - Fails WP:NFOOTY as has not played senior international football nor played in a fully professional league. No indication that subject has garnered significant reliable coverage for any other achievements to satisfy GNG. Fenix down (talk) 10:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - Christian Walton has been named on the bench in a professional match. He has also played for England internationally at U19 and U20 level. He is also included in the first team squad on Brighton and Hove Albion's official website. 15:14, 9 September 2014 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.209.65 (talk)
 *  Keep Comment - Very strong article, plus there have been many other footballers that have at a similar level to Christian Walton without making a professional league appearance and their wikipedia page has not been deleted. (talk) 15:43, 9 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.70.209.65 (talk)
 * Feel free to identify players who also don't meet WP:GNG and WP:NFOOTBALL and they can potentially be put up for deletion too..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:41, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. As stated above, the subject has not played in senior international football, as per criterion 1 of the footballer-specific notability guideline, nor has he played in a fully professional league, as required under criterion 2. I can't find enough non-trivial media coverage to suggest he passes the general notability guideline. It's a nice short article, and to reassure the creator in the event that the article is deleted, an admin can recreate it at the touch of a button as soon as Mr Walton makes his debut for Brighton or for another team in a fully pro league.
 * I took the liberty of signing, indenting and commentifying the Keep above, as it was made by the same editor as the previous one. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 15:18, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete - He hasn't played in a Fully professional league and he doesn't have any international caps either therefore he fails WP:NFOOTBALL. IJA (talk) 17:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:NFOOTBALL requires a fully professional league. This subject seems to fail. --Jersey92 (talk) 04:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - such articles, which technically don't meet WP:NFOOTY, but we all know are likely to be recreated shortly are a huge waste of everyone's time. If it really must be deleted, then simply move it to draft until they've spent a few minutes on the pitch, instead of the bench. Nfitz (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment - To clarify, this article currently does not meet ANY notability guideline. Recreation can easily be done once WP:CRYSTAL is no longer applicable. Fenix down (talk) 09:48, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Recreation while in theory is simple, seldom actually is. Typically the article is recreated from scratch by another user unaware of the past history. Often no one bothers to restore the previous edit history. At a minimum, the duplicate editing is a waste of everyone's time. At worst, information is lost between one version and another of the article. Here we have a player, who is appearing on the bench every week of a top team in one of the top professional teams in the world, and we have people who are mindlessly following the "rules" and wasting everyone's time trying to delete the article, in complete violation of WP:NORULES and WP:COMMONSENSE. We see this mindless behaviour time and time again. And time and time again the article is recreated when the player finally gets off the bench. This is particularly is the case in the terms of keepers, who are typically not going to be tossed in for 5 minutes near the end of a match.  Keeping the article around for a few weeks does WP:NOHARM. Deletion of the article in the future can easily be done if it becomes apparent that this player will never likely play. Nfitz (talk) 14:18, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be relevant had the player done anything of note. As he hasn't there isn't even much to restore. As has been noted countless times before WP is not a repository for people who might be notable, only those that are. Fenix down (talk) 14:49, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Suggesting fellow editors are mindlessly wasting everyone's time doesn't help, nor does exaggeration. We haven't got a player "who is appearing on the bench every week of a top team in one of the top professional teams in the world". What we have got, is a subject who is the third-choice keeper at an English mid-table second-tier club who only gets a seat on the bench if either of the two very competent keepers ahead of him, David Stockdale and Casper Ankergren, are unavailable, and an article with seven sources of which the only one that does more than list his name is the BHAFC website report of his moving to them from Plymouth 18 months ago. Struway2 (talk) 14:51, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To confirm, Walton appears to have been named among the subs twice so far this season out of eight games...... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I only checked a couple of recent games, and he was on bench for both. If he stops making bench appearances, or gets traded to a non-fully professional team then I wouldn't oppose deletion. Until then I think we can apply WP:NORUSH. Nfitz (talk) 14:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any need for the personal comments, Nfitz. The fact that somebody takes a different approach to you doesn't necessarily indicate that they're being mindless or failing to employ common sense. Firstly, if there is an issue with the process for recreation of articles, then it is that process that should be addressed, not the notability guidelines. Secondly, I actually sympathise with the idea that the notability guidelines for footballers might be a little too restrictive, but clearly it's useful to have a consistently applied cut-off point or there will be no limit to the articles that people can create on the basis of purely subjective judgements of notability. Currently a line is drawn when a player has played in a professional league, whereas you apparently feel that it should be enough for a player to have been selected as a substitute. If you want to push for a change to the guidelines to that effect, then start that discussion in the appropriate place and let me know. I'll happily support you. In the meantime, though, I'll continue to apply the guidelines on the basis that 1) they exist either through a consensus or the lack of an established conflicting consensus, and 2) players like Walton are not an unusual case that people might have failed to consider when they considered the guidelines, so I think it's safe to presume that they were consciously excluded. While I would not have excluded them myself, I don't feel that my personal opinion ought to supersede that of other editors, and I don't think it can be argued that my opinion is simply "common sense" when the broadly accepted guidelines suggest that it isn't. Clicriffhard (talk) 17:11, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Clicriffhard unlike you, I haven't made any personal comments. Any comments I made were not directed at any individual. That doesn't mean that significant time isn't wasted on this issue. We went through this whole thing on several players at the start of the season back in March/April and almost with out exception each and every one of these players has since made a professional start (the exception being a J2 league player who has since been loaned to the J3, after only apearing in a cup game as a J2 player against a J3 team). There is a big systemic fail here. Nfitz (talk) 14:32, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't imagine where you've found personal comments in my previous reply, nor how "mindless" can be anything other than personal whoever it's directed at, but never mind that. My point is that a better way to address a systemic problem is to address the system itself, rather than expecting editors to substitute their opinions for the guidelines arbitrarily. Assuming you read my post, you'll already know that I agree that players like Walton shouldn't be considered "non-notable" as in most cases it's only a relatively short time before that status changes (although it isn't hard to think of exceptions such as Liverpool's Jordan Rossiter), but they currently are considered non-notable and I'm quite happy to respect that. As I say, they aren't unusual cases that the guidelines might not have been intended to address, and I haven't seen any indication that people in general want an exception to be made. If you can demonstrate otherwise, please go ahead and I'll take it into account. Clicriffhard (talk) 15:05, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * You don't see any personal comments in your previous reply? What about "I don't think there's any need for the personal comments, Nfitz.".  How by definition is that NOT a personal comment. My use of "mindless" was speaking of the group as a whole - to assume otherwise is a violation of WP:FAITH. Nfitz (talk) 01:05, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * No, that was not a personal comment but a request for civility. As for "mindless", no assumption is necessary. You explicitly directed it at a class of people of which I'm a member - in your words, "people who are mindlessly following the 'rules' and wasting everyone's time trying to delete the article" - and even if it hadn't been personal with respect to me it would have been to the people it referred to. If you don't like the word "personal", feel free to subsitute "disparaging", "derogatory", "insulting", or any of the other synonyms listed under def. 2.1 here. With respect, I'm not going to spend any more time on this unless you want to discuss the actual issue at hand. Clicriffhard (talk) 01:41, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The bottom line is that you are wasting people's time with nominations such as this. That's not a personal comment, that's an observation. We all know this article will be recreated within months. Yes, if you want to follow black and white rules, then it fails. But this isn't a black and white rule-based community. Nfitz (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * My bottom line is that this is a community based on consensus, but you're entitled to your opinion. All the best. Clicriffhard (talk) 13:57, 18 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. Szzuk (talk) 19:22, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep - I agree with Nfitz, because it is only a matter of time before Christian Walton plays in a proffesional match and removing the article for it to be recreated in a few months or even less seems pointless. HarrisonS4433 (talk) 19:31, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment. I must spend too long on AFD's. If I've seen one of these players survive an AFD it was a long time ago. The guidelines are there for a reason, I don't see any reason to circumvent them. Even if this one survives it'll just go up for AFD again. Allowing players who don't pass guidelines to stay on WP is just a slippery slope to allowing any player who might one day pass to keep a page. Szzuk (talk) 19:35, 19 September 2014 (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.