Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D. Kodikara


 * 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. The concerns that there is not enough sourcing to support an article remain unrebutted. The "keep" opinions are basically appeals to WP:CRIN. This is an invalid argument because that page is not a policy or guideline, but a WikiProject page, and therefore does not represent community consensus.  Sandstein  19:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

D. Kodikara

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Article relies solely on statistical profiles in CricketArchive and Cricinfo which can be classified as routine coverage and therefore fails GNG. Dee 03  14:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Cricket-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sri Lanka-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:58, 9 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment - at what point will these nominations stop? Why are we being held hostage as a project by those who despise basic, easy to follow, guidelines? This is becoming a frustration. How have people who have intentionally absented themselves from conversations over notability criteria and first-class cricket suddenly become experts about the same? This is becoming demoralizing for me and for the WP:CRIC project, which is being gradually, and upsettingly, destroyed. Bobo. 18:29, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep - passes WP:CRIN. Bobo. 18:29, 9 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete - I can find nothing to show any form of wider notability for this person beyond their one appearance in a cricket match. The sources provided are database entires rather than substantive sources and tell us that a match that he played in took place, his surname and first initial. We don't have a forename or date of birth and in those circumstances I don't believe that there is any reasonable chance we'll be in a position to verify anything about the person beyond what we currently have at any point in the foreseeable future. If we can't add substantive sources then there's a clear failure of the GNG and several RfC (such as this one and back into the dark mists of time and the establishment of SNG with this one) have made it clear that sports notability criteria only provide a presumption of notability if there is a hope that the GNG will ever be met. If we had more details, say a forename, date of birth etc... and the player could be shown to have played in other cricket matches (i.e. of a non-first-class, List A etc... status) then I might be persuaded that there is a reasonable probability that those sources might exist.
 * In this case I have a more specific concern beyond these. The chap appears to have batted at number 11 in the batting order for his team but not to have bowled, was not the wicket-keeper and did not take a catch. I must admit that from the scorecard I get the distinct impression from that that he was an emergency fill in making up the numbers rather than someone who might have ever stood a chance to be a regular player for the club. This makes me more firmly of the opinion that we will struggle to ever show notability through the sorts of sources that we need. I would, of course, have no prejudice against the re-establishment of the article if those sources can be shown to exist. Blue Square Thing (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thankfully this can not be proven by the sources available and this point can be dismissed as personal opinion in the wake of basic statistical fact. I might as well just claim that I believe he was wearing a purple hat and wellington boots. Bobo. 22:42, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Also you do realise this "more specific concern" is pretty much the definition of WP:SYNTH, right? - The Bushranger One ping only 06:32, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think I'm really combining anything from multiple sources am I? I am reaching a conclusion which, as Bobo quite rightly says, I can't confirm. - although I suspect it probably is the case. It's not really that relevant to my argument however and if either of you would like me to strike it I will do. Blue Square Thing (talk) 07:55, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Citation needed. Precisely. Please do strike your argument. Bobo. 12:43, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Done as requested. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:06, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No you haven't. Try harder. Bobo. 14:21, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't understand - I've done exactly as I said I would. Haven't I? Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:05, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No, the first half of your statement still exists. Bobo. 16:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I was clearly writing about the "more specific concern" as raised by The Bushranger. Anything beyond that is simply you trying to be too clever I imagine :-) Blue Square Thing (talk) 16:10, 11 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Passes WP:CRIN as a cricketer who has appeared in first-class cricket. This confers a presumption of notability on him. Further sources may be difficult for this WP to find as they are likely not to be in English, but there is no reason to suppose that they do not exist. Johnlp (talk) 12:25, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep. Established to have passed WP:CRIN and thus notable. And a trout to the nominator for blatantly disregarding how the notability standards for sportspeople work. - The Bushranger One ping only 06:32, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Please see this RfC which was closed as: There is clear consensus that no subject-specific notability guideline, including Notability (sports) is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion. Looks like the trout did a WP:BOOMERANG there.  Dee  03  07:42, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Please stop trying to influence people based on your own opinion, Dee. The fact that we have proven that GNG can be proven to be contradictory nonsense based on other guidelines is enough to render both guidelines completely and utterly meaningless. Bobo. 12:41, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * It is not my opinion. What I quoted above in green is the result of an RfC, which was open for several weeks and had dozens of participants, from a few months ago. Please stop WP:BLUDGEONing and claiming GNG is "nonsense" in every single discussion. This is getting silly. Dee  03  14:15, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes it is your opinion. And yes, GNG is nonsense by the fact that is directly contradicted elsewhere. If you are unwilling to work to brightline criteria simply for the sake of pushing your own regime, you are the problem, not the solution. Bobo. 14:20, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * It is the result of an RfC. Can you click on the link and read the discussion and stop wasting everybody's time? I'm done with this conversation. Dee  03  14:22, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for not addressing my point. Bye. Bobo. 14:23, 11 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete per Blue Square Thing. Another virtually empty article based on bare statistics, with sourcing so poor that the person's name cannot be even be determined. The only sources are statistics aggregators CricInfo and CricketArchive, which have been shown not to be independent of each other in the sense that one copies content extensively from the other (or in both directions), and which have been proven to have non-negligible rates of error. These are not good enough for the biography of a presumably living person. I'd support a merger of these raw stats to a suitable list article, but I'm not sure if there is one. Reyk  YO!  15:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I mean this entirely seriously and not as an attack. If you're not sure there is a list article, there are two things you can do. Check, and if there isn't one, create one. If you are willing to create a list article containing every single first-class player for a given team on completely NPOV guidelines, do so. The whole problem with the list articles which we have recently seen is that they were slapdash and based entirely on people's POV decisions as to whether the article was deleted or not.
 * If you create a list article based on the one or two items which you have decided, against fundamental project guidelines, that the article should be deleted, then, as per recent AfD debates, these lists are likely to be deleted. If you are willing to create a list article with every individual who played for the side, then this is the only way these will be seen as being useful. Bobo. 16:02, 11 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment. Could you please explain, User:Reyk, where you get the evidence that CricInfo and CricketArchive are not independent of each other and copy from each other, and where they have been "proven" to have "non-negligible rates of error"? I ask because I am a serial, long-term user of both of these sites and do not recognise your description of them.Johnlp (talk) 18:58, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, for instance here we discovered that both sources referred to Barinder Sran with the wrong spelling of "Brainder". That's enough to show that one has copied from the other, and that neither has been careful about spellchecking. At other AfDs, for instance this one, we've found out that these statistical aggregators can't always distinguish one player representing multiple clubs from several different, similarly named, people playing for one club each. Reyk  YO!  12:26, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Copying is only one possible explanation for Brainder Sran, and is actually not very likely given that these two websites are direct commercial competitors; a more likely one is that both websites take their information directly from the match scorers' scorebooks, the primary source, which may not be error-free. I know that that is how CricketArchive works and I would be surprised if it was not the case with CricInfo as well, as that has significantly greater resources. The Perera example is not an error: a player of that name played for Old Cambrians in a first-class match, and it is not clear whether this is the same Perera as played for other teams in other matches; both sites wisely refuse to conflate, and therefore have independently created a separate entry for the Old Cambrians' Perera. What else would you have them do? I'm not saying that these sites have no errors (or omissions) and have indeed reported a few to them myself over the years, which they have then amended. But, unlike you, it would seem, I have used these highly trusted sites virtually every day for about 12 years for WP articles and for other projects, and have found very few gaps or errors. You wrote about "proven" "non-negligible rates of error": perhaps you would care to give us some other examples from your own use of the sites. Johnlp (talk) 14:48, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - Like the others. I do not understand what all the fuss is all about. It is already understood you can not supercede the general notability guideline like it does not exist. Surely, a source of raw statistics does not satisfy the indepth coverage we need nor is it appropriate to depend on for a BLP. If there was anything, and I mean anything, that demonstrates this person was covered adequately and I somehow missed it, I would probably !vote keep.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 17:32, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete a one source article on someone who nothing is really known about is not worth having. It is high time that the overly permissive inclusion criteria for cricket players be revised. If someone needs two significant roles in notable productions to be a notable actor, how in the world can someone be notable for any role, no matter how insignificant, in just one first class cricket match.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:37, 14 November 2017 (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.