Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FC05 Bilsthorpe


 * 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   redirect to Central Midlands Football League. I'm going a little bit WP:IAR here, and if anyone wants to take the close to DRV, please feel free to do so without consulting me again. Whilst consensus is to delete these, I do not see any reason why the teams themselves are not reasonable redirects to the league they play in. Furthermore, redirecting them would enable the articles to be easily resurrected should any of the teams be promoted. Black Kite (talk) 10:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

FC05 Bilsthorpe

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  Stats )

Just looking through the new teams being added for the new season that have reached level 10 for the first time and have found many new club articles being made in the Central Midlands League at level 11. The articles have been contributed by, and some of the new articles should definitely be kept (Athersley Recreation, Cleethorpes Town, Basford United) as they have, or will soon, play at level 10, or played in the FA Cup. However, I cannot find any evidence of notability for the rest, which is a shame as Rillington is obviously an able wikipedian but is a new user who may not be aware of WP:NFOOTY, which is a rule of thumb for WP:GNG as it applies to Football. This aside, I nominate the following teams as, so far as I can tell, they have not played in a level higher than they are currently, nor have they competed in the FA Cup or the FA Vase.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  19:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)



Thoresby and Welbeck have both been subject to a previous Afd here.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions.  Del ♉ sion 23   (talk)  19:32, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  19:38, 22 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete all as all fail WP:GNG for football clubs. However possibly Redirect Nottingham united to their honoury life president's pageSeasider91 (talk) 22:32, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Redirect all to Central Midlands Football League as feasible search terms. GiantSnowman 08:58, 23 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment It's difficult to know what to say in all honesty and I waited a while before producing a reply rather than writing in haste.

I had a previous article deleted on the grounds that it was too low in the footballing pyramid. I did think about withdrawing my efforts at that time but decided to take it on the chin on the grounds of being new to this and having not previously been aware of the football notability rule due to the team in question playing in a local(ish) league and for some reason it has been decided that clubs at this level are not worthy of articles which to me goes against the grain of a project whose goal is to produce an online encyclopedia which is as comprehensive as possible. The CML is not a local league as it covers a significant area of both the North Midlands and Yorkshire.

To explain why I decided to write the CML articles in the first place despite them being at level 11. First I had not previously been aware of the level 10 rule. However, I had seen that a number of CML teams had articles written about them, albeit in a few cases just a couple of sentences with no external references. None of these articles seemed to pose a problem so I nievely assumed that users would welcome someone taking the time and effort to, as far as possible, complete the set assuming that enough material could be sourced to produce articles which were deemed to be acceptable. Clearly I am wrong in this assumption despite me ensuring that all the articles had external references which could be checked should people see this as necessary. Therefore, I cannot prevent these articles being deleted should it be decided that I have intentionally broken the notability rules even though others have not been punished in the same way.

That aside, we are talking about many hours of time, effort and research over the last month to produce articles of a good standard and I suddenly log in and find that all of this work may well count for nothing as people want these articles deleted. Nobody is forced to write these articles and it is hardly an insentive for anyone to do this when they are 'rewarded' with their articles being deleted en masse. I have noted that the user proposing my articles being deleted described me as "obviously an able wikipedian" but I think most people would be upset to see that it seemingly is the desire for this amount of time and effort to count for nothing due to the proposal of the deletion of the overwhealming amount of time and effort I have put into the website over the past month. Therefore, I have concluded that if these articles are deleted then it would be inappropriate for me to continue contributing to wikipedia, not least because anyone looking at my contributions page will just see a list of deleted articles and I would feel very embarassed knowing that this failure could be viewed by anyone using wikipedia to read about non league football. I would therefore want the removal of everything else I have contributed so that wherever possible all traces of my efforts is removed from wikipedia to remove the embarassment of people being able to see that almost all of my efforts have been deleted. As it is my talk page is dominated by deletion propsals and that is bad enough but for almost every article that I have written to be deleted would be all the more humiliating and upsetting which is why I would want everything that I have ever done deleted should it be decided to remove all these articles. Hopefully my efforts will not be scrapped and I shall follow this discussion with interest.(Rillington (talk) 09:18, 23 June 2012 (UTC))
 * Your other contributions can't be deleted just because you want them to be, but your account can be effectively deleted and no-one will be able to see that you were the one that created/edited articles. See Courtesy vanishing. Number   5  7  20:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment Thanks for that, and that is what I shall do if these articles are deleted, which, regardless of what I might say, looks likely to be the case.(Rillington (talk) 22:28, 23 June 2012 (UTC))
 * Comment Please do not take this deletion request personally. I think you have a lot to contribute to the Football WikiProject, particularly the English non-league section. This is the time of year that oportunities arise for new English non-league football club articles to be created, as new teams get promoted to level 10. I have taken advantage of this myself in creating West Didsbury & Chorlton A.F.C. and Eltham Palace F.C.. You have created a couple of articles for teams that have just entered the NCEFL, and they will be kept. However, Wikipedia is not all about creating new pages. Part of what goes into creating a useful encyclopedia is deciding what makes a subject notable. The current consensus regarding English football clubs is that they have to have played at level 10 or played in the FA Cup or FA Vase. This wasn't something that was decided overnight. It took a long time to establish (and is still brought up in arguments over where to draw the line, both that it's too lenient, and that it's too strict). This is where consensus is right now, but consensus can change, but it has to be argued well. So far as I can see you're arguing that these articles should be kept because the clubs have their own websites, the clubs are on the FCHD, and they took a while to make. This doesn't make them pass WP:GNG. But I digress, you obviously know how to edit, and edit well. Once you know the criteria for inclusion there are many articles that have not been created that you can take up. Find teams that have played at a high enough level or played in the FA Cup and yet have no article. If these are sparing, I can point you in the direction of over 200 english football club articles that are currently only stubs and are in desperate need of improvement. There's always work to be done here, but if you're only after article creation credit and praise, you may be in the wrong place. If you're gonna throw your toys out of the pram over consensus not being in your favour, you're in the wrong place. But if you want to contribute constructively to the football content of this encyclopedia (as we all do, despite disagreements happening) then welcome to WikiProject Football, I'll be happy to help you if you need any advice on whether an article is likely to withstand AfD and if anywhere on the project needs your assistance. Thanks, and again, apologies for how harsh Wiki can seem at times.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  00:48, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Many thanks for the reply. Harsh is one word to describe it and I'm sure that most people would react in a similar manner if 80%+ of everything they had done was to be deleted. I don't take it personally as an individual but I do see it as a rejection of what were good intentions and a rejection of my efforts to make wikipedia better especially given that you are proposing deleting the overwhealming majority of all the articles I have written rather than the a single article as was the case before which I did accept after further thought which is why, again after further thought, I continued with my CML project.

It is worth stating that I did not enter into this looking for any credit and praise. It wouldn't have bothered me if nobody had ever contacted me or thanked me for my efforts. My motives were probably similar to the vast majority - to try to make this project more thorough and comprehensive and I saw a way to do this through finishing a job already started re the CML both through creating new articles and expanding on those already there given that the CML is a regional league rather than a local/single county league as some level 11/step 7 leagues are. After all, surely a regional league covering almost the same area as the league it feeds into (although yes I do appreciate that the league was recently split into North and South divisions) should be considered notable and even moreso given that the reorganisation saw the entire league now playing at the same level whereas for many other leagues, and also previously the CML, only the top division plays at step 7. Also, it would have given non league football a bigger presence here and as one non league fan to another, surely anything which can raise the profile of non league must be a good thing.

I note you have summed up some of my arguements for retention, and it is worth underlining that all of those articles contain references to at least two independent sources and that alone should be a major indication as to whether an article covers the requirements for inclusion as well as underlining whether the subject matter is notable. It also proves that the articles are properly written and researched and not just added for the sake of it. I often see articles being flagged up as having no independent sources and that is not the case with anything I had produced. as most would agree that articles merely consisting of a basic single sentence along the lines of the name of the club and the league that club currently plays in is not satisfactory. Again this is not the case with anything I had written and is also not the case when clicking on the articles from the page you refer to. It's also worth stating that to anyone looking in that it would seem odd that some teams in this league have articles whereas other teams do not which could lead some to suggest that some clubs are more notable and worthy than others and that is an unfair judgement to make on teams which play at a decent level of English football.

I can see why you would suggest that I am throwing all the toys out of the pram over this but anyone looking at what I have done through looking at my profile will see it being dominated by articles I had written being deleted - just a slight contrast, for example, to your talk page. That will stay there for as long as my account 'exists' and I don't want that embarrassment or reputation as someone whose articles keep getting deleted which is why I probably will throw all the toys from the pram and request the Courtesy Vanishing after these articles have been deleted because once I have 'gone', this will no longer reflect badly on me as a individual and I'd just put this down to experience and move on and hope that maybe in the future people won't be quite so tight and harsh and argueably even mean to a new user whose only intention was to try to make wikipedia that bit more comprehensive.

Finally, I had intended to do similar for rugby league's National Conference League but I don't want to experience the same humiliation with that effort as here with the CML clubs, nor do I want to spend lots of time creating and expanding articles only to have everything deleted. Who would? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rillington (talk • contribs) 11:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I've assumed good faith for all of the pages you've made. It's why your talk page wasn't given vandalism warnings. The deletion tags on your talk page are only notifications, not permanent stamps of embarrassment. It's your talk page so you're completely at liberty to remove them all and blank the page notice once you've read them. Some people blank their talk page every now and again, others archive everything. I understand what you mean about being annoyed that the work is being deleted. But it's all down to a misinterpretation of consensus and WP:NFOOTY (which is entirely understandable as you're new here). We've all made similar mistakes though. I spent ages uploading pictures of GBC carts to WikiMedia, and it turns out they breach copyright, I misunderstood the rules. Now I come out of it more the wiser and concentrate my efforts in areas where I know the pages/files won't be deleted. It's a learning curve.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  11:36, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Again many thanks for your reply and I appreciate you showing me the wikipedia good faith.

I do understand that this is a learning curve - everything is - and it took me a few goes to actually get used to how the software works as I didn't want to submit an article which was not correctly formatted. However, we're still talking the overwhealming majority of my time and effort being completely deleted, articles which as far as I can tell, have no faults, are properly sourced, researched and referenced and do not breach anything such copyright. Also there are/were other CML articles which stood for a long time and have not been deleted. It's hardly encouraging to someone who is relatively new to have almost all of their efforts deleted and it doesn't give me any encouragement to want to continue in case yet another huge swathe of my contributions fall foul of another petty rule as this would always be in the back of my mind.

I have noted your point about editing the talk page.(Rillington (talk) 16:04, 24 June 2012 (UTC)) I've just come across the page about the WikiProject English Non-League task force and I noticed that the Central Midlands League is one of the three level 11/step 7 leagues which is mentioned in the Categories section and presumably one of the leagues which is part of this project. Therefore, if this is the case, it would seem odd to delete all of my CML articles when it seems as though I may well have, unbeknown to me at the time, been contributing to the wiki non league project.(Rillington (talk) 19:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC))
 * Delete all as they fail to meet the generally agreed criteria of FA Cup/FA Vase participation or having played at step 6 or above. Number   5  7  20:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
 * As you can see here even the lowest leagues in the English Football League system are in the scope of the task force. It extends to all non-league football related articles on Wikipedia. There is a category for Central Midlands League teams because quite a few of them pass the notability guidelines for football. Simply put, they have either played at a higher level and fallen down to the CML, or they have played in a national football competition like the FA Cup or FA Vase (i.e. they've done something something notable). Now you know this rule, so long as you can show a team has done one of those things, you can create an article about them and it won't be deleted. I hope you'll join the task force and help improve the articles within its scope, and indeed create new articles now that you know where the line is. It's been drawn there to avoid ambiguity. Cheers  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  23:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm fighting a loosing battle aren't I and my CML articles are heading for oblivion. I make it 10 out of 15 articles deleted within a month of creating my account, and I doubt many people will have had that happen to them.(Rillington (talk) 06:12, 26 June 2012 (UTC))


 * Comment Can none of this be merged to Central Midlands Football League? Having a brief description of the current teams would seem encyclopedic. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete all. WP:FOOTYN is only an essay, not policy, and many clubs which meet those criteria still fail the general notability guideline requirement of having significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. These do not even meet WP:FOOTYN.--Charles (talk) 17:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge all to Central Midlands Football League. Agreed, these clubs fail our notability guidelines, but that just means that they should have a separate article. There's no call for removing encyclopedic information that comfortably be placed at the parent article, leaving the club names as redirects. There isn't an excessive level of detail, and the information appears to be verifiable; this seems like a no-brainer to me. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  14:40, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete all Articles do not meet GNG. The only references are generally their own websites, and whilst some use FCHD as a source, this site is primarily a database listing and does not confer notability. Eldumpo (talk) 07:27, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment I have a lot of sympathy with the hard work the new user has put in, and feel we should make it clearer as to what the notability situation is for clubs. As such I have made a post at Footy querying whether a List of Level 11 clubs should be created. Have a look at that and post any comments there. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 07:47, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge all to Central Midlands Football League - individually the clubs do not meet the notability criteria, but retaining the information in the main article, with the club articles redirecting there, seems a valid result here.  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 23:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Just so the two people proposing a merge know (the two who aren't regular football article contributors). No football league articles have detailed info on individual teams. This is because often, a team plays in the league only temporarily. Large amounts of info would have to be moved around each year as teams transfer, get relegated/promoted. The teams in the league don't stay in the same league forever. Plus the article is supposed to be about the league itself, not about the teams within the league. Even Premier League and La Liga don't have sections giving details about the individual teams. They simply list the teams. Merging these teams to the league would set a new precedent that may need to be discussed on WikiProject Football if it happens.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  23:58, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Thanks for educating a clueless Yank. DocTree (talk) 00:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment I have kept an eye on this discussion even though I have made no comment for the past week or so and I'd like to thank you for the suggestion Doctree. Obviously I do not agree with having my nine articles deleted but based on that suggestion, and despite everything to still try to be helpful, I've copied and pasted the templates of these CML articles and put them in my Sandbox should these teams be considered 'notable' at any time in the future. I'm still considering the Courtesy Vanishing option after the nine articles have been deleted so I'd suggest that these templates are backed up in some form sooner rather than later because once they're gone, they're gone.
 * Delete all and Userfy content, if author agrees. Will post suggestion to Rillington's talk page.  DocTree (talk) 00:33, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I hope at people see that from this action alone that I was a genuine editor whose intentions were always good but to have the overwhealming majority of my time and effort - altogether 10 out of 15 articles - deleted was just too harsh, severe and deflating for me to want to continue which is why, apart from contributions to this discussion, I've made zero contributions since I first read of the intention to delete my nine CML articles. It is worth reinforcing the point that I very much doubt that anyone else would have had almost all of their efforts deleted and certainly not so many articles deleted in one go and I think the majority of those who have had this happen to them would have reacted in a similar manner. Clearly, and sadly to me, my efforts have counted for just about nothing so when the nine CML articles are finally deleted I shall be gone.{Rillington (talk) 15:47, 5 July 2012 (UTC)}
 * Comment I've tried as best I can to persuade you from quitting Wiki, but you seem to be intent on quitting anyway. There are notability guidelines that are followed on Wiki. It takes hardly any time to check them and learn what makes a notable article. All you've done since they were nominated is play the pity-card. I've offered to help you in regards to making articles that won't get deleted but you don't seem interested (how about A.F.C. Hinksey, Wellington Amateurs F.C., Blackwood F.C., Lichfield City F.C., Littleton F.C., and all the red links here and here). People have articles deleted all the time. Get over it. Apologies for losing patience, but I've never seen so much moaning on an AfD.  Del ♉ sion 23  (talk)  17:04, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I think that's really unfair as I think I have grounds to feel upset. I accept that people have articles deleted but we're talking about multiple articles representing almost everything I've done and as I said earlier, I think most people in my position would feel the same.

Leaving emotion aside, please allow me to make one more appeal to save my nine articles. It is worth stating that whilst I accept that it was decided probably a long time ago that all step 7/level 11 leagues, including the CML, are not 'notable,' the CML is different the other step 7 leagues due to the massive geographical area that it covers. All the other step 7 leagues are single county leagues (although a couple are made up of teams from two counties) and they are basically the top tier of local football in England so I can see why the line was drawn at this point. However, the CML has teams competing in it from six different counties - its primary catchment area of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire plus teams from East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the parts of West Yorkshire which border onto South Yorkshire. This gives the CML almost the same geographical footprint as the NCEL, the next step up from the CML, thereby almost by default making the CML division 2 of the NCEL. This is hardly a non notable area in terms of area covered and due to the CML being a regional league rather than a local league I'd suggest that this league is more 'notable' than almost all of the other step 7 leagues, thereby justifying individual articles for all the teams that play in this particular league and not just those teams which have been relegated or played in a national Cup either recently or many decades earlier.{Rillington (talk) 19:47, 5 July 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.