Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ihar Dolbik


 * 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. Sarahj2107 (talk) 13:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Ihar Dolbik

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Non-notable masters athlete who fails to meet WP:GNG. All of the sources on the article are just routine result lists. A search has not produced any "significant coverage" as required by WP:N. DJSasso (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor Talk! 14:06, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Belarus-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor Talk! 14:06, 16 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep As the article's creator. I will copy what I wrote in advance of this on the article's talk page so you understand what is happening here.  This was directed at the nominator and his agenda:
 * Lets it be clear, you have expressed you want to discount ALL Masters athletes from WP:NSPORT here with the completely unrealistic expectation that all of them must achieve WP:GNG or the category should be eliminated. The removal of that point of the criteria occurred April 16, 2016 or you would not be able to say it failed NSPORT and we are involved in a debate about that point now.  You are using this article as your test case vs my sample test cases demonstrating these athletes do get sufficient coverage to meet GNG.  If you successfully shoot this down, you will open the door to deleting hundreds of articles about Masters athletics.  You are challenging a Belarussian athlete for his press coverage being routine.  I will admit, getting Belarussian sources is difficult considering most of it is written in Cyrillic script that does not google translate well.  You are taking a very broad version of WP:ROUTINE.  If we were to eliminate all routine news coverage of such things as announcements, sports etc, then we might as well eliminate NSPORT entirely or certainly a large chunk of it.  Thousands of our stub articles only report a single result.  Eliminating all those articles I would assume would be unrealistic, so you have not gone out on a limb to make such a claim.  With 13 independent sources, this is far better sourced than that.  This athlete is clearly one of the best in the world at what he does.  His club president is quoted in an English language magazine saying that about him.  He has two World Championships, and three additional World Championship level medals.  He also has two European Championships and two additional silver medals at the Continental Championship level.  Those accomplishments over a 3 year timespan have been reported by multiple international sources.  Several of these are lists, but they are lists of Champions, not routine sports scores.  A routine score would list the winner of one game out of a season of 162 games for example.  Marathoners might only get one, two attempts a year.  By the nature of what he does, he might only get a few results to report a year.  Would you dare to challenge an Open Division or even Junior Division level athlete with similar accomplishments?  You know you would be shut down by a snowball if any rational wikipedians were watching.  I am removing the proposed deletion template, which is only supposed to be used for uncontroversial deletions.  This clearly is controversy. Trackinfo (talk) 03:16, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * No actually I don't want them all deleted. What I said is I don't believe they belong on the NSPORTS list and should rely solely on WP:GNG. If you can prove they meet GNG then great. I think you have a very very poor understanding of what constitutes in depth coverage as spelled out in the various notability guidelines. A list is not in any way possible to establish notability. If you don't agree with me go ahead and ask on one of the notability talk pages, you will find out very fast. Routine coverage is anything that will happen automatically, ie, a list of results for a championship. I think you completely misunderstand what NSPORT is. NSPORT is not a way around GNG. NSPORT is guidance on when an athlete is 99.9999% likely to meet GNG. So yes, you do need to show that the majority of masters athletes would meet GNG if you want them to be on the NSPORTs list otherwise they need to go straight to GNG to prove they are notabable. If an athlete with the amount of accomplishments this one has can't seem to get the news coverage to pass GNG then what hope do the one off winners. You don't get articles based on how good you are in a given sport, you get them based on how many in depth sources are written about you indicating that you are worthy of note. You could win 20 gold medals, but if no one wrote any news paper articles about you then you would not be notable. -DJSasso (talk) 18:28, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You wish to place the weight of your argument on our ability to see and understand all of the Belarussian media. For this one guy, as I have been searching, I found evidence that suggests he is a business owner in Minsk.  I can't even find the business name listed.  You have very high expectations for what is available from that country to the outside, english speaking world. Trackinfo (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That is however, how Wikipedia works. You need to provide sources to meet WP:GNG. -DJSasso (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Your obstinance has sent me wading into one of the most limited media environments in the world. Granted sports is not politics but it overflows into very little content being available on line, most of it not even using roman characters.  From that search, we are now at 29 unique sources cataloging his accolades as a marathoner.  While the majority are results that paint a picture of a prolific and highly successful masters marathoner, as would be expected for a World Champion--the whole point of this exercise.  I have also found a quote from a competitor talking specifically about Ihar's strategy against him--not routine.  And after finding blog comments showing his respect among the running community, I found a major Belarussian sports news site who conducted an athletic roundtable where he was invited to participate because of that respect.  They published a three paragraph quote from this man, a translated version now included in the article.  There is no way you can call this routine. Trackinfo (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
 * No, but you can call it running afoul of the relevant guidelines stating that quotes from a subject cannot be used to sustain the notability of the subject.   Ravenswing   01:02, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I will grant the quotes would not be necessary in the article as they are not substantial to his accomplishments, though we use similar quotes to explain an individual's perspective on events. I will probably remove them once this blows over.  The point you fail to get from this is;  he was invited to comment in this forum on this subject in the first place because of his athletic accomplishments.  That is exclusively to establish notability for the hard headed.  This is coverage of this individual by major sports media in his home country (in addition to them covering his results).  Similarly, the quote from his competitor criticizing his race strategy wouldn't be very relevant except to prove it and he was relevant to the outcome of the race.  Not routine coverage.  By the way, a distance runner with an overly aggressive race strategy is a national hero here in the U.S., they've made two movies about Steve Prefontaine.  It is a relevant subject that reveals this guy's personality as a competitor.  And that quote was easier to come by because it did not originate in the very tight lipped media of Belarus. Trackinfo (talk) 03:50, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Honestly, you're starting to get a bit pointy here. Let me get this straight: you've added fluff quotes to the article you don't genuinely believe belong there solely in the hopes of swaying an AfD vote? Quite aside from that, let's examine the tidal wave of sources you've tossed in.  The first two I took a peek at back up your assertion that he is "Highly regarded as a leader in the running movement of Belarus."  The sources you present to back that statement up are an Instagram photo and a forum post.  These are followed by citation after citation which turn out to be mere one-sentence match results that are exactly the sort of routine athletic coverage WP:ROUTINE explicitly debars: "The second athlete to cover the distance was the Belarussian Ihar Dolbik." "9. Ihar, Dolbik, 02:41:04, Berlin, 2015-09-27" "4.Igor DOLBIK BLR 2:45:10." "Behind him finished from Minsk Igor Dolbik - 2: 40.25 and Igor Novitsky of the village Gorodishche - 2: 55.06."  Further, a head-scratching number of these statements double up on the citations; may I ask why you felt the need to get multiple citations on Dolbik finishing fourth in a 2012 marathon, among several other examples? Look, this is pretty basic: meeting the GNG means multiple reliable sources -- not blog posts or Instagram photos or forum posts -- which are about the subject and accord him "significant coverage."  Find us some feature articles about Dolbik: not quoting him, not an article about a race in which he happened to come in sixth among many other runners.  Several paragraphs ... about Dolbik.  Without those ... I'm wishful of assuming good faith here, but I'm hard pressed to think of why we're being drowned in one-sentence casual mentions beyond that this is the hill you've chosen to die on, you haven't found any qualifying sources, and you're hoping we won't notice.   Ravenswing   08:19, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete: I'm not seeing any qualifying sources either. As far as Trackinfo's arguments go, there's a fatal flaw: neither WP:V nor the GNG (nor, as to that, any Wikipedia policy or guideline) enshrine notability for people who claim to the "best in the world" at something.  Notability hinges on the world noticing you, and if that means that the Khloe Kardashians of the world have notability that the Ihar Dolbiks lack, well, neither you nor DJ nor I get to decide what mass media finds important. Trackinfo, you make an all-too-common argument in that if excuses can be made for the "significant coverage" in multiple reliable sources the GNG requires not being there -- "he's a marathoner," "there must be sources in the Belarusian media," "there are other articles like this" -- the provisions of WP:V and the GNG ought to be suspended in the subject's favor.  Needless to say, this curious notion is likewise not found in any policy or guideline.  The answer, I'm afraid, to there not being qualifying sources, is that an article cannot be sustained on the subject.  Further, the only reasonable responses to your statement that if this article is deleted, similar articles on hundreds of Masters will follow, is (a) who wrote so many stubs on subjects knowing that they fell short of the GNG? and (b) well, yes, unless properly sourced, and the sooner the better.   Ravenswing   18:41, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete at best as the current article could nearly be acceptable, but it's still questionable at best and I see nothing else convincing. Delete for now at best and wait for better if ever, SwisterTwister   talk  19:22, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Nakon  02:25, 24 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete Lack of coverage in reliable third-party sources beyond routine reporting of results; nowhere near enough to establish individual notability per the GNG. Regarding the WP:OTHERSTUFF point on other similar articles, if those also have similar problems establishing notability and verifiability then they should be nominated too. ✤ Fosse   8 ✤  10:29, 1 June 2016 (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.