Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gérald Bertheloot


 * 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. KaisaL (talk) 16:02, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Gérald Bertheloot

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Meets WP:NOLY as an Olympian, but fails WP:GNG as there are no significant, indepth sources about him (and meeting GNG is a requirement under NOLY as well, just being an Olympian is an indication of possible notability, but not a default pass). Note that the article (based on a database source) even gets his name wrong, he was Gerard Bertheloot, not "Gérald". All I was able to find was some local stuff from his city Kortrijk, and one picture in an old local newspaper.

Contrary to current competitors at the Olympic, many competitors at the early games (pre-1940 roughly) are barely documented or remembered, and got little attention at the time either. This is one of those who is barely something beyond a name in a database, and thus not fit to be the subject of an enwiki article. Fram (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Belgium-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 09:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Competed at the Olympics, so meets WP:NOLY. A couple of recent similar discussions for Olympians at AfD can be found here and here. Both were kept.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 09:48, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * As the current discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports) makes clear, meeting WP:NOLY gives someone a presumed notability, which has to be demonstrated when challenged. You are simply restating the presumption, without any evidence. The first Afd closed as "no consensus", hardly an overwhelming reason to keep this one. The second is about someone with a much larger palmares, and where there is trouble accessing sources (at least more trouble than with sources for Western athletes). Fram (talk) 10:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That discussion is neither clear or indeed current.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 10:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * A discussion started on 31 January 2020, not archived, is not "current"? Fram (talk) 10:28, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's had no input for the best part of a month.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 10:34, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * And has rather predictably just commented, therefore extending the time until archival for another 30 days. Seriously, this is all getting quite disruptive and a huge waste of time. Might be time to escalate things if it continues. Smartyllama (talk) 23:43, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I respect that Lugnuts has put in a lot of time here to create articles on Olympians. If you Google search them and find multiple sources which can be used to expand them, great. But when you search and literally find nothing but the database mentioning one Olympic appearance, how do we expand ones like this? I think in cases where they'll only ever remain database stubs we should redirect into lists like List of competitors at the 1928 Summer Olympics. When creating the stubs I would check to see if there are further sources available for later expansion, if not then perhaps consider merging into a list which gives birth and place of birth dates of each competitor. I think this a wider issue, not just one off Olympians but villages (even a lot of ones I created), moths etc which currently only have stark database mentions. At the end of the day we want to write an encyclopedia and if there's nothing which can be used to even write a 1 kb stub we should consider a way to convey the same info in lists without readers having to search through hundreds of pages...♦ Dr. Blofeld  10:30, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep After the last two failed AfDs, the proper place for this discussion is the policy page, not individual articles, and the discussion linked above does not seem to have led to anything clear at all. I'm going to essentially copy and paste what I wrote the last time: WP:NOLYMPICS doesn't exist because someone decided out of nowhere that all Olympians are notable or to override general notability guidelines. With arguably the exception of the earliest editions, but certainly by 1928, people who attended the Olympics were not just picked out of a hat, they were elite athletes at the national level. In 2020 in English, yes, the only thing that is readily available is that he participated in one event at the Games, but the fact that he was there in the first place suggests that he had at least some success in his home country, which is probably difficult to find information about unless you have access to Belgian publications from the 1920s. WP:NOLYMPICS exists, therefore, because consensus determined that if the individual was at the Games, there is a significant likelihood that sufficient sources for a biography exist that may just be difficult to access. My work is on pre-1952 Egyptian athletes, and information beyond their Olympic appearance is difficult to find in Arabic online, let alone in English. But I happen to have access to newspapers and sports journals from that era and there is plenty of coverage on all of them that would satisfy WP:N with ease. For a country like Belgium, which at the time had a better-developed press and sporting infrastructure, there must exist coverage of all of their Olympians that would easily satisfy WP:N, I just can't access it (or at least read it). WP:NOLYMPICS represents that consensus that these sources likely exist for all Olympians, even if we cannot find them, and so we can avoid discussions such as this and presume notability unless there is convincing evidence otherwise. Canadian   Paul  17:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per Canadian Paul.--Darwinek (talk) 18:31, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete There are no indepth sources. The assumption that every olympian ever is notable is wrongheaded and wrong and leads to a huge number of worthless articles like this one.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:08, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per all the arguments made every time one of these comes up. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 21:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep Disruptive, POINT-y nomination. Only delete !vote other than nom is a notorious troll deletionist. Speedy keep, close, and don't waste any more of our time that could be spent improving articles rather than piling on here. Smartyllama (talk) 23:41, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Calling someone a "notorious troll" is very, very insulting. I have made over 350,000 edits on Wikipedia, created well over 1000 articles, and sought to improve the encyclopedia in coutless ways. Under sourced participation at the olympics should not be used to force micro stubs. The abuse that people who stand up to the tyranny of the Wikipedia establishment get is unconscionable. This is why Wikipedia remains a presentist, overly covering males project that attracts mainly males as contributors, because the existing values are fought for to the point of anyone who tries to change them gets harrassed, insulted and oppressed. Calling someone a troll is unacepptable and wrong.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Striking personal attack and replacing it with a more neutral term. The main point stands - this isn't going to be deleted and it's best not to waste any more time on this. Smartyllama (talk) 01:44, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The arguments made here clearly mininterpret the actual notability guidelines for olympic competitots. Presumed notability does not overpower GNG in this case, only suggests we should search long and hard to show passing of GNG. Here searching was done long and hard, but not enough sourcing was produced but people are ignoring this reality to advocate for the article anyway.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, the way that GNG and WP:N are written presumed notability DOES overpower GNG - it says one or the other. Perhaps this should be discussed elsewhere. Nfitz (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Meets WP:ATH. The question of should the standards be so open should be discussed elsewhere. Nfitz (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete – We can't write a biography without in-depth (read: GNG) sources. Meeting an ATH SNG, alone, isn't a reason to keep. NOTDIR is the policy that governs here: we are not a directory of Olympic athletes. Levivich  [dubious – discuss] 19:32, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. We should not be trying to create articles without secondary sources to speak of; per WP:NOTDIR which trumps notability guidelines. SNGs that recommend the creation of such unsuitable articles should be revised. NB, calling a good faith editor "notorious troll" is completely unacceptable. buidhe 04:35, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. A google search is woefully inadequate in assessing notability for someone like Bertheloot. Likewise, databases such as Newspapers.com are also insufficient because they do not include sources from the non-English speaking world. It seems prudent (perhaps essential) to check French and Belgian sources from the late 1920s and early 1930s to see what type of coverage Bertheloot actually received. Barring negative results from such a search, and in the case of a pre-Internet subject most likely to be covered in the non-English-speaking world, I do not think that there is a sound basis for rebutting the presumption of notability that flows from WP:NOLYMPICS.  Cbl62 (talk) 04:50, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * States the guy who's written thousands of "useless substubs". Don't worry, I'll arrange for everyone to help clean up my mess after me, but hide it in the guise of a destubathon.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 18:47, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * But that was like ten years ago and he's since stopped making them. Others not so much. Levivich&thinsp;[ dubious – discuss] 18:54, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Comparing articles about locations with articles about people is apples and oranges. People are a special case. Species and lakes don't mind as much when their articles get vandalized. Levivich&thinsp;[ dubious – discuss] 20:27, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Dead people such as the person in question generally don’t care either. Smartyllama (talk) 19:47, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * But their living relatives and friends might. Levivich&thinsp;[ dubious – discuss] 19:48, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * And someone might be upset if their hometown or favorite animal article is vandalized. I’d be very upset if someone vandalized the llama article with an anti-llama rant. That’s all irrelevant. We have tools to fight vandalism if need be. AfD is not one of them. Smartyllama (talk) 19:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep I think WP:ATH is met here. Not surprising there isn't a ton on the internet, but there probably is some more in print sources. We do have this image FWIW. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs )~ 14:51, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:NEXIST, which says that if reliable sources exist, then the subject is notable. Dr. Blofeld's point that "we can't currently access them and are unlikely to for a Very long time if ever" isn't relevant; offline and hard-to-reach sources still exist, even if an individual editor can't access them. Likewise, WP:ARTN says that the current state of the article doesn't affect the subject's notability. Personally, I agree that this article is not interesting and won't win any awards, but I disagree that it makes the website crap. The website is fine. -- Toughpigs (talk) 23:39, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * However, once an article's notability has been challenged, merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive, especially if time passes and actual proof does not surface. – WP:NEXIST Levivich&thinsp;[ dubious – discuss] 00:10, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Nominator acknowledges that the subject competed in the Olympics, so the subject meets WP:NOLY. What else? As it is the subject passes the SNG. Those who appear in the Olympics are notable. In addition to SNG - not that it is needed but WP:NEXIST as other editors have stated. Lightburst (talk) 02:35, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Competing in the Olympics makes you notable based on common sense. Not sure why this keeps coming up since these articles always get kept don't they?  The Notability guidelines all have a disclaimer saying "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."  See that last part?  And despite some desperately trying to ignore the subject specific guidelines, WP:NOTABILITY clearly states "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right".  So either common sense or the subject specific guideline for this sort of thing, proves the subject is notable enough for an article on Wikipedia.   D r e a m Focus  03:47, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:NEXIST, which says that if reliable sources exist, then the subject is notable. I agree with the reasoning of Toughpigs. the subject meets WP:NOLY.  For sure, sources are out there, but they are antiquated and not on the internet.  7&amp;6=thirteen (☎</b>) 12:44, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep OK, the minimum standard I expect is now there, I got it to 719 bytes of readable prose and 124 words. Please try to expand these stubs a bit so they actually half resemble encyclopedia articles, thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld  14:30, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:NOLY, and WP:NEXIST. KartikeyaS (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.