Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clayton Hamilton (baseball)


 * 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.  MBisanz  talk 07:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Clayton Hamilton (baseball)

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

Unbundling from Articles for deletion/Jose Diaz (baseball player). Good faith gnews/gsearch not turning up more than blogs, stat pages, and passing mentions. That leaves WP:ATHLETE. Does several seasons at single-A and 20 games at AA mean he's competed at a "fully professional level"? (The proposed WikiProject Baseball/Notability guidelines says no, but while this did have much consensus, it is just a draft.) Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  16:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Baseball-related deletion discussions.  --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  16:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions.  --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  16:52, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Minor League baseball players are under contract with a 'Professional' team, having to be stored in lower class teams, but still 'professional' players with stats. These type of minor league stub can further knowledge of the player by fans in the seats (with Blackberries etc, thus more webhits) or team scouts. WP:ATHLETE and 'people of notability' doesn't take into account that a 'player' and a 'person' of notability are two different things. A 'person' is vague to define. A 'player' of notability, say a minor league baseball player, does have stats and awards to his name sometimes, and these stubs can add perfectly to what Wikipedia was meant to be in the first place! I have reliable references and always note the stubs accordingly.Gjr rodriguez (talk) 21:23, 3 April 2009 (UTC) Not only are some statistic sites just stats on a webpage, they also carry 'history', 'contact information','stadium information', what can be considered "signifigant coverage" with more research available on player beyond just the stats. The websites I reference are more than just a stat site. The stat sites are referenced for the stat tables, the bio info is from different sources melded and noted accordinglyGjr rodriguez (talk) 21:23, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Delete  Recent additions to the article indicate the subject passes the general notability guidelines. --kelapstick (talk) 15:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC) Trusting nominators good faith search.  There is broad interpretation among Wikipedia editors of what constitutes "fully professional" for baseball players, I interpret as having played in one of the major leagues outlined in the proposed (but not fully adopted) baseball notability guidelines, and that minor league players are not notable unless there has been significant coverage of them in reliable, independent sources (not just statistic pages), in which case they would pass the general notability guidelines and would not have to pass WP:ATHLETE.--kelapstick (talk) 16:56, 3 April 2009 (UTC).
 * Delete per nom, does not meet WP:ATHLETE.  black ngold29  19:37, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per all above. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Change to Keep per added sources. Clearly some are better at finding references than I. Recommend a withdrawal, Fabrictramp. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 16:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fine with me, but we've still got a couple of delete !votes, so not eligible to be closed yet.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  16:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A reliable source should be "significant coverage" in prose, otherwise every A, AA, AAA, college, and high school player in the country could have an article.  black ngold29  21:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Minor League baseball players are under contract with a 'Professional' team, having to be stored in lower class teams, but still 'professional' players with stats. These type of minor league stub can further knowledge of the player by fans in the seats (with Blackberries etc, thus more webhits) or team scouts. WP:ATHLETE and 'people of notability' doesn't take into account that a 'player' and a 'person' of notability are two different things.  A 'person' is vague to define. A 'player' of notability, say a minor league baseball player, does have stats and awards to his name sometimes, and these stubs can add perfectly to what Wikipedia was meant to be in the first place!  I have reliable references and always note the stubs accordingly.Gjr rodriguez (talk) 21:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not only are some statistic sites just stats on a webpage, they also carry 'history', 'contact information','stadium information', what can be considered "signifigant coverage" with more research available on player beyond just the stats. The websites I reference are more than just a stat site.  The stat sites are referenced for the stat tables, the bio info is from different sources melded and noted accordinglyGjr rodriguez (talk) 21:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Being under contract with a pro team does not make one a "fully professional athlete" as per WP:ATHLETE if they're in the minor leagues. I fail to see how it matters that a site has "stadium info" when we're talking about the players, and when it comes to them it lists only stats. If a scout is using Wikipedia to help them with their job, they're in pretty bad shape; and I don't see how that applies to this discussion.  black ngold29  00:30, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * i suspect that when there is full coverage of local newspapers in GNews/GBooks, a project that is has begun, we will find articles in their home towns or where they have played. These teams are major fixtures in many smaller cities. The next recourse of those who want to go by formal sourcing is predictable, they will redefine significant coverage in such a way as to keep out whatever articles they on some intuitive basis want to keep out. There are already cases where we have in effect added "non-local" to the definition of what counts. Wouldn't it be better to go by some fixed standard, easy to determine and hard to dispute once it is settled? My feeling is to compromise at some number of AA or AAA level games or seasons. DGG (talk) 00:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC).
 * I personally would love to have some standard. Unfortunately, consensus has been hard to come by. The last several times it was worked on, almost everyone agreed that a single MLB game works, and almost no one argued for rookie league. But that area in between has always been pretty darned gray. (My suggestion was AAA is fully professional, as that guaranteed salary is better than working at McDonald's full time here in California).-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  15:30, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, the last time we discussed the WikiProject's notability guidelines in depth (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Notability guidelines) I think we did reach a consensus. We couldn't get agreement on any standards based on level of play, awards, or the like. But then we started a discussion of sourcing, and there was agreement that to be considered notable an article needs to have good sources—more than just statistics or a trivial or passing reference in a news article. That consensus was reported back to the Wikiproject (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 7) and the revised guidelines were later posted on the WikiProject page.  They then disappeared with a page redesign. Of course, any "consensus" is only relative to the editors who took part in the discussion and isn't permanent, so it may be time to re-open the discussion. BRMo (talk) 17:04, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we're saying the same thing in different ways. When I said consensus was hard to come by, I was referring to "playing at xx level in the minors equals notability". (Jeez, can't you read my mind? *grin*) IIRC, everyone was in agreement that if there were enough WP:RS to have met WP:BIO for a non-athlete that the player was notable.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  17:31, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The consensus was to not use an x-number-of-games standard for particular levels of minor league play, but rather to qualify minor leagule players either for specific milestone accomplishments (league awards, records, etc.) or under general notability guidelines. And there WAS a consensus - the guideline was listed as such on the project's front page, until it was inexplicably removed during a redesign. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * But I still can't find a link to it. Any chance you can point me to one? WikiProject Baseball/Notability guidelines does not sound like what you (and Kinston eagle in another AfD) have mentioned being the compromise, and that's all I could find. Thanks!-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  21:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I looked around for a while, but I can't find it. We've talked about this a lot - at the page you mentioned, at Wikipedia talk:Notability (athletes), at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)... after a while, they all start to blend together. I guess we can always put it up for discussion again (*sigh*). -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete - Statistics or brief mentions in articles about minor league teams do not constitute "significant coverage in reliable sources," as required by WP:N. BRMo (talk) 03:52, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not taking a keep/delete position here, but if someone wanted to work on the article, there are plenty of good sources on Mr. Hamilton available. Not brief or statistical mentions, but actual articles: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Scout.com (a content partner of FOX Sports), Sports Illustrated, etc. People who don't follow baseball don't really appreciate the enormous volume of media coverage that even low-minors baseball receives. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Good catch on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. I had seen the SI article and discounted it because it was two paragraphs discussing and injury. But I do have a question on the Scout.com article -- it seems to me to be a repost of a MadFriars.com article. Is MadFriars a reliable source? I had assumed it was a Padres fan site, but it also seems to have some affiliation with Fox (Which doesn't necessarily make it a reliable source. Not a slam on Fox, just saying some news organizations have discovered that popular content drives advertising revenue.) Any education on this would be appreciated.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  21:20, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Scout.com is, IMO, reliable. They get credentials from teams to cover events, they conduct interviews and other acts of journalism, they have editorial oversight, etc. The branding for the site says MadFriars because Scout.com likes to create sub-sites for each team they cover, for branding purposes. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Great, I'll add this to my mental list of okay sources. Change me over to the keep category, and kudos to Hit bull, win steak for a job well done.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The SI article includes a (dead) internal link to a full article about Hamilton's injury in the Beaver County Times (a satellite paper owned by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review conglomerate), which includes considerably more detail about the situation. Unfortunately, the BCT puts all their content behind a pay wall after about a week or so, and their archive search sucks, so you'd probably need a paper copy at this point (or microfiche, or something along those lines). The injury was a big scandal at the time, since it resulted in some measure of permanent disability for Hamilton. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. He meets the requirements set at WP:ATHLETE and the verifibility needed for WP:N is there too as shown by User:Hit bull, win steak. It just needs to be implemented into the article. Borgarde (talk) 06:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As pennance, I've added the Post-Gazette ref and searched through madfriars to find a ref for an awardd and an all-star game appearance, which have also been added.-- Fabrictramp |  talk to me  14:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment Recommend withdrawal, as recent additions have helped appease original nomination's reasoning. Cheers,  I 'mperator 21:22, 7 April 2009 (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.