Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 20:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Page is completely WP:OR and WP:NOT many things. It appears that someone actually went through and found a bunch of news articles that reference events that happened at the Olympics, made a snippet of a line that summarizes what happened, put that in the article and cited it as the source. While that is useful for some measures of useful, it contains no synthesis of information or any other information that is actually encyclopedic - taking one sentence from a news article and making it into a list of events that are important enough to be "summarized" does not make it encyclopedic. Aaronw (talk) 17:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC) Keep per the very valid argument of User:AndyJones JasonDUIUC (talk) 23:16, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Previous AfD is at Articles for deletion/2008 Summer Olympics highlights (closed as speedy keep for technical reasons). Also see Articles for deletion/2006 Winter Olympics highlights and Articles for deletion/2006 Winter Olympics highlights (2nd nomination) (both closed with no consensus). -- Jao (talk) 17:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry about not nominating it correctly on the second one - I wasn't sure how the templates worked when the name of the page changed, and I guess I munged it up along the way. Aaronw (talk) 19:00, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep unless someone can persuade me there is something wrong with this article. Finding information in reliable sources, summarising it in your own words, and putting it into some kind of order (e.g. chronological) isn't WP:OR. It's how encyclopedias get written. It looks like an impressive article to me. What's the objection? AndyJones (talk) 13:01, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Because there's no *synthesis* to support a particular point. "Archery was dominated by the Chinese in the 2000 summer olympics" - that can be found by citing multiple sources that support this argument.  "Joe won silver in the 200 meter dash - cite.  Fred won gold in the rowing - cite.  Jane beat Jill for the 4th time in a row - cite."  It should be listified, or all the listprose removed and turned into a list of gold medals by day.  This is simply *news highlights*, as can be seen by the wikinews link on each and every day. Aaronw (talk) 17:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per past AfDs. Nirvana888 (talk) 02:18, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Past AFDs were speedy kept because the page was linked from the main page, not for any other reason. Aaronw (talk) 17:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, thought we were done with nominating these... Its a good summary of the events of the games which would be too big to include in the main 2008 Summer Olympics article. How is it OR when nominatior admits its sourced with news articles? If anyone wants to add anything else to the summary its there to be edited (thats kind of the point of Wikipedia isn't it?), no one has said that what is already included is a cut off point. Basement12 (T.C) 05:37, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The point is unless that it is a summary of *every* event, then by definition, it is WP:OR to decide which of them qualify. Aaronw (talk) 17:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Same reason as for 2006 article - I believe this article serves a useful purpose, filling the gap between the main Olympic page, which has little coverage of sporting events and the individual event pages, which documents the competitions in minute detail.  -- Tcncv (talk) 19:40, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Just because it serves a useful purpose does make it encyclopedic. Aaronw (talk) 17:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Just like the other articles, this is a useful article for reasons including those stated by Tcncv. Coastalsteve984 (talk) 09:03, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * While I personally like this article, I would like the nominator to clarify a few things before saying my meaning (that I like it is immaterial, of course). First, what's OR here? The selection? Wouldn't that make any section written in summary style OR? I don't think that holds. As for NOT, that's more important as WP:USEFUL points out that usefulness (which has been claimed by many) is a valid reason for inclusion but that it can never trump WP:NOT. So what, exactly, is this article that Wikipedia is not? If specific sections of the policy were mentioned, it would be easier to make a call as to whether this indeed fails WP:NOT. -- Jao (talk) 09:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Because it's simply a gathering of news articles about what someone though was an "interesting" fact about a certain day and then citing it. e.g

Table tennis

* Singapore qualifies for the final in the women's team event, thus ensuring that the country will win its first Olympic medal, in any event, since 1960.[105]

or:

Cycling

* Anne-Caroline Chausson of France and Māris Štrombergs of Latvia take the inaugural gold medals in BMX, winning the women's and men's events respectively.[277]

and:

Athletics

* Liu Xiang, China's defending Olympic champion in the men's 110 m hurdles, withdraws from the competition due to an injury.[191][192]

and it goes on and on. I'm sure that there are literally thousands of "things" that can be written about any event. "Someone" just ended up picking a "good amount" (6?) of the news releases on every day, took out the lede sentence, put it in this list and moved on. A list of gold medals, ok. But this is merely a "best of" for wikinews/whatever for each day, and as such is not a good candidate for wikipedia. In fact, demonstrates almost the same content. Aaronw (talk) 17:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Thought this looked familiar, yup: Articles for deletion/2008 Summer Olympics highlights. This was nominated once before and was speedily kept. The same result should apply here. --Geologik (talk) 17:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Kept because it was linked to the main page, which is not the case anymore. Aaronw (talk) 17:50, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, spiffy. So what? This list is an excellent source as an overview of major daily events. It also has all the gold medal winners conveniently centralized. It was the first stop every morning when looking for updated Olympics coverage, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that regard. Are some of the highlights arbitrary? Yeah probably, but the value of the article can't be stressed enough to those of us who used it every day. --Geologik (talk) 18:02, 20 October 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.