Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fred Robinson (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. Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Fred Robinson (baseball)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Fails GNG. No significant coverage beyond a listing of stats from his 3 games. Wes sideman (talk) 18:40, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sportspeople, Baseball,  and Massachusetts. Shellwood (talk) 19:07, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep How much searching did you do WP:BEFORE nominating this? Here's his obituary. It's not easy to find sources on him given the timeframe and his common name, but given that his brother is in the Hall of Fame, I'd be surprised if I couldn't find more if I put the time into it. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:03, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete: Good grief, everyone gets an obituary; that's no more indicative of notability than a birth notice. If you believe that the subject has received significant coverage in multiple reliable sources -- beyond casual mentions and namedrops -- provide the evidence.  Nor does his brother being in the HOF matter worth a fig. That it's putatively hard to find such sources doesn't constitute a waiver of the GNG; it means that an article on the subject can't be sustained.   Ravenswing      20:32, 13 February 2023 (UTC)


 *  Keep  has played at the Majors level, which is sufficient for our purposes. Oaktree b (talk) 20:43, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I swear we used to have a criteria for WP:BASEBALL but I can't find it. Oaktree b (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It was deleted in the giant WP:NSPORTS2022 RfC which affirmed the requirement all athletes must meet GNG. NBASE never conferred notability anyway. JoelleJay (talk) 23:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Come on, Oaktree b. That RfC closed over a year ago. Don't you think it's high time you acquainted yourself with the notability guidelines we have in place?  Either you're ignorant of the guidelines or you're just plain deliberately defying them (and perhaps hoping that closing admins don't notice), and neither is a good look for someone for whom the overwhelming bulk of your recent contributions are at AfD, many sports ones among them.   Ravenswing      05:21, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I haven't kept up to date on all the minutiae here, it's a rather overwhelming process. Oaktree b (talk) 16:49, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that; you are of course the best judge of your own time and energies. But if you're not able to keep up with current notability standards, you shouldn't be voting in AfDs until you can ... and one would think that you'd at least strike positions based on outdated information, as in the case here.   Ravenswing      19:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think that comment was called for. Not everyone can keep up with every change to notability guidelines and it is easy for someone to miss the fact that a guideline has changed.  It is not as if every change is broadcast widely in a manner that all editors can be instantly aware.  Editors are permitted to participate in AfDs without checking every notability guideline every time. Rlendog (talk) 18:06, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I never understand why "bite and berate" is ever considered a good strategy in this situation. Oaktree b's contributions to AfD are valuable. - "Ghost of Dan Gurney" (work / talk) 15:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "Don't Bite the OG Editors" isn't yet a saying yet. Newbies, yeah don't bit them. The old farts, go ahead (sigh). I'm doing my best with the time I have, I haven't asked to become and Admin for that reason. I'm also active in other projects off-wiki, so I can't be here as often as I'd like. Oaktree b (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Weak keep With the obituary and the book mention below, I'm willing to give it a pass. Oaktree b (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * And this with his brother's weight and some other silly stats that baseball nuts like myself enjoy. We can infer stuff from here, his father was a butcher. Here's a family photo  Oaktree b (talk) 20:27, 22 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Cincinnati Outlaw Reds all-time roster. Very little WP:SIGCOV to justify an article, please ping me if more coverage is found.  Frank  Anchor  21:28, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Changed to keep  per Rlendog and Hatman31. However if consensus not to keep is found, I prefer redirect as an ATD.  Frank   Anchor  23:03, 26 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Delete and redirect. No SIGCOV identified. JoelleJay (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Why not keep the history so it can be restored if sigcov is identified? BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Why keep the history when all it contains is three very brief sentences? JoelleJay (talk) 00:22, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Because its easier than to have to recreate the sentences, source, infobox, and categories. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment. There's a bio in this book which could be argued as sigcov (page 169). BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:43, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You requested to be pinged if any possible sigcov was found BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:46, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think the book entry you found and the newspaper entries found by Penale52 below fall a little short of GNG but it is certainly a start.  Frank   Anchor  11:38, 14 February 2023 (UTC)


 * That is a 2-sentence baseball directory entry, not SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 00:25, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Its 12.5 lines dedicated to him, not a "2-sentence baseball directory entry." BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you able to see more of the Frederic Robinson entry? All I can cobble together without page previews is the blurb on 169 sandwiching some semi-prosified stats, which obviously don't count:
 * That's really only one prose sentence. JoelleJay (talk) 00:52, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh I see now, the snippet says 169 doesn't have a preview, but it does. The rest of the bio (coverage of him bolded) says
 * Oh I see now, the snippet says 169 doesn't have a preview, but it does. The rest of the bio (coverage of him bolded) says

That's still barely anything; if that's the extent of all info on Robinson then there shouldn't be a standalone page on him. JoelleJay (talk) 01:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Timothytyy (talk) 04:13, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I found a few newspapers.com hits of Robinson. Two are from him signing with Cincinnati, and they mention he played for the Hudson club of Massachusetts, apparently as their captain. I didn't see much outside of boxscore recaps mentioning Robinson and his brothers for Hudson games pre-1884. But apparently they won a championship in 1880? Also found another write-up mentioning him in 1916. Penale52 (talk) 23:55, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the trouble is that none of that constitutes "significant coverage" of the subject. If casual namedrops in routine sports coverage sufficed -- which it explicitly does not -- every starter on a high school team in the United States would qualify for a Wikipedia article.  I could, for instance, easily present multiple articles from daily newspapers giving similar coverage to a local sports figure; she's a 9th grader who plays on small town high school softball and volleyball teams in Massachusetts' most rural county, and whatever Madi's virtues, no one sane is championing her for a Wikipedia article any time soon.   Ravenswing      05:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep - First of all, I disagree with the opinion that the bio in "The Rank & File" isn't SIGCOV - that guideline does not require coverage to be of any particular length, just that it "addresses the topic directly and in detail", which the author does in this case. Second, while none of the newspaper articles are especially in depth, NBASIC says that "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability"; while the second part of that guideline disqualifies "trivial" coverage from establishing notability, as I said above, I believe the "Rank & File" bio is nontrivial, so both parts of NBASIC are met, meaning this article narrowly passes Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion. That said, if consensus is that it doesn't, I would support a redirect to the page suggested by Frank Anchor as an ATD. Hatman31 (talk) 16:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Hatman31, even if you consider that source to be GNG-contributing, NSPORT and GNG still require multiple such sources, and NBASIC wouldn't be met either since it's just the one "good" source + trivial routine mentions. JoelleJay (talk) 21:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree with that interpretation of NBASIC. If that's how it's intended to be read, it contradicts itself. Hatman31 (talk) 17:47, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * How? NBASIC explicitly discounts trivial coverage, so you have to find sources that are somewhere in between "trivial" and "significant". JoelleJay (talk) 21:32, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge what is relevant into his brother's article at Wilbert_Robinson. Best, GPL93 (talk) 21:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Even if not notable, should be redirected to his brother's article, which has information about him. And no need to use the delete button before redirecting, tin case more information about him becomes available. Rlendog (talk) 17:27, 21 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak keep - I was on the fence. But he has coverage which, especially considering the vintage (and the fact that most reliable sources that may have provided coverage are now lost or at least difficult to find) I am willing to consider significant enough.  I will make 2 other points. While I agree with Ravenswing's analysis of Penale's sources that similar coverage of a high school player would not be significant coverage, playing for a Major League team is far more "significant" than playing for a high school team.  Even if we discount those, there is still at least the obituary and the and the Rank & File coverage.  And I'll note that the obituary - from 1933 and thus almost a century closer to the subject than we are - states explicitly that the subject "achieved noteriety", and I would trust a 1933 newspaper on that point more than our subjective judgments (and I realize that the newspaper is not necessarily applying Wikipedia notability guidelines, which of course did not exist then, but is trying to make a similar point). In any case, as per my earlier comment, if not kept it should be merged or redirected to his brother's article. Rlendog (talk) 15:53, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Rlendog, the obituary is not independent and so cannot count towards GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 20:06, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You don't know that. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * What is your basis for saying that? Rlendog (talk) 20:39, 23 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep. I think Rlendog makes a pretty good argument. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:09, 23 February 2023 (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.