Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Payne (umpire)

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was KEEP. -Splash talk 22:28, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

John Payne (umpire)
An umpire that has officiated only one match, in 1885? Certainly not notable if nothing special is added to the article. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 21:14, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I support retaining the article. By himself, perhaps he was not especially notable. However he is one of a select number of people to have umpired a Test cricket match between two cricketing nations. As such he - along with many others who umpired only one or two matches - deserves his place in a list of umpires in order to provide a complete record. MulgaBill 21:49, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

1) There have been statements that there aren't that many test umpires and that all of them thus should be included. Is that really true? Just the Australian Test Cricket Umpires lists 85 umpires, and I doubt that the (comming?) lists for England, India, and so on would have less than that, right? 85 umpires just from Australia, and every single one of them is notable enough to be on Wikipedia? As a comparison, Sweden has had a total of eight football referees that has referred over 20 international matches (as opposed to Australia's 11 umpires that have officiated 20 or more test matches), and I don't even believe that more than two or three, maybe four of them deserve their own articles. Definitely not all of them. Do you? If no, what is the difference? 2) Guettarda wants to compare a test cricket match to a World Cup match (I guess he means football). Very far from the truth... The List of test umpires has a lot of umpires with more than 25 test matches. I'd like to see someone find a few football refs that has that many World Cup matches. The probably most know referee today, Pierluigi Collina, has something around 40 international matches in total, whereof 11 are World Cup or EURO internationals. Is the test cricket match <-> World Cup match still a fair comparison? 3) Loganberry compares to a "notability" test of an artist. Well, I don't agree with that WikiProject's test. I am fairly certain that an artist from Italy that held the 97th position in 1974 would be deleted at once. At least I'd vote delete. Thus the comparison does not make any sense to me. It is also interresting to note that the only voter that is not part of the WikiProject Cricket voted merge. Too bad there aren't any other votes from outsiders that are not being as biased as the voters so far. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 16:55, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Then if there's a list of umpires, his name could be on it. The number of umpires over the years is not that select, and this guy is not deserving of his own article. Delete Proto t c 09:37, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * If any of the content is kept, we cannot delete the article a per the GFDL. So you are saying that this material is not suitable for Wikipedia in any form?!  Guettarda 21:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into the big list of umpires. Dunc|&#9786; 13:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. He meets my threshold of notability. There aren't that many Test match umpires, and it seems reasonable to give them a page each in order to make the collection complete. Stephen Turner 21:27, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * And your threshold of notability is? There aren't very many international floorball referees either, but that won't make it reasonable to give all of them an article. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 22:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * But are floorball referees well known figures in themselves? International cricket umpires are, to the extent of being better recognised than many international players - an even fairly dedicated cricket fan will recognise their names to an extent unusual in most other sports. Loganberry (Talk) 00:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Floorball? Is this whole nom a joke?  Cricket is the #2 sport in the world...second only to football (soccer).  Find an appropriate comparison please. Guettarda 02:02, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, possibly merge eventually, if nothing else can be added to the article. - You seem to be asking the question as to whether anything more can be added. "I don't know if enough can be added" is not grounds for deletion, AFAIK.  This seems to be "delete on the grounds that this is a stub".  Are you sure that he had not other contriutions to the sporting, cultural, civic or commercial life of Australia?  One test match is not the same as one match.  It's like saying that someone who ref'd one World Cup match is not notable because he only ref'd one match.  Guettarda 21:34, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * No, my reason for this AfD is that I believe that we should not have articles on every umpire/judge/referee that has officiated an international match, be it in cricket, football (soccer) or ice hockey. If John Payne did not make himself noted in any other way than being an umpire in one game, then I believe he is not notable enough to have his own article. And I don't know what a world cup has to do with a regular international match. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 22:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Because test cricket is not a "regular international match". Regular international matches are first class cricket, or maybe One Day Internationals.  Test cricket is the highest form of the sport.  It is far more comparable to a World Cup match than a simple international match.  Guettarda 23:00, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Verifiable? Yes.  Expandable?  Certainly.  I see no reason why this should be deleted.  [[smoddy ]] 21:48, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * One word: notability. Is he notable? For what? Is it really notable to have officiated one test match? -- Elisson &bull; Talk 22:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * One word: verifiability. If a subject is independantly verifiable (as in, not written by the author himself or complete guesswork), then it is notable, in my opinion.  I can't see why we should delete anything that can be shown to be true.  It's not as if the disks are full.  As to whether he fills any completely arbitrary notability criterion, yes, I think he is notable.  I hope, in time, to have articles on all the umpires and players we possibly can.  I see no reason to delete this.   [[smoddy ]] 22:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Umpiring any first-class cricket match makes someone notable enough for a WP article (for which the threshold is admittedly small). Umpiring in a Test is particularly notable, jguk 22:50, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep without a doubt. To illustrate the point: WP:MUSIC suggests that a top-100 record in any significant market is notable enough. Cricket is a major sport in much of the English-speaking world, and a Test match umpire (even one from the 19th century) is therefore more relevant to the English Wikipedia than a singer who reached number 97 in Italy in 1974 with a song no-one outside that country has ever heard of. Loganberry (Talk) 00:05, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. A Test cricket umpire is plenty notable. -- Ian &equiv; talk 01:35, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Test cricket players/umpires are notable. As I've said before elsewhere, we're less likely to get more information on people dating back to long forgotten eras. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  04:38, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep There's not many people who have officiated at the highest level. Easy keep, see Loganberry's argument. --Peripatetic 09:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * General comment I see I am going to "lose" this AfD, but I would like to make a few comments none the less:
 * WP:AGF! --Ngb?!? 16:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I am assuming good faith. I won't protest the decision of this AfD, I would just have liked to see a less biased group of voters, and I do believe I have the right to point out fallacies in some of the arguments used to support a keep. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 17:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Accusing other voters of bias is certainly not within my definition of assuming good faith. --Ngb?!? 17:10, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Being member of the WikiProject on cricket of course makes you more interrested in keeping cricket-related articles than the regular Wikipedia user? In the same way as I would be more interrested in keeping football-related articles, a Frenchman in keeping France-related articles or a biologist in keeping biology-related articles. I am only noting that this vote could have had a completely different outcome if a different group of people would have voted. Also remember that "Yelling 'Assume Good Faith' at people does not excuse you from explaining your actions". There has been very few arguments for keeping the article, some of them being completely wrong (se the test match <-> World Cup match comparison for example), others being simply "Test match umpires are notable", without explaining why they all are notable. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 17:22, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The fact that you choose to speculate about the motives of other voters says more about you than it does about them. Secondly, the corrolary of your expectation that we should 'explain our actions' is that yelling 'not notable!' isn't of itself a sufficient criterion for deletion: Wikipedia is not paper and you've yet to provide a convincing argument (to my mind) for why this article should be deleted. Finally, I think the comparison between Test matches and World Cup Football matches is a fair one -- Test matches happen more often than the World Cup, but they are at a comparable level within the two sports: the highest pinnacle of international competition. --Ngb?!? 17:39, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yep, all those areas of Wikipedia should have people arguing to keep stuff. Why should we delete something that is factually true and can be demonstrated to be true?  What is gained by deleting?  What is gained by not deleting?  If anything is  verifiable reasonably, it can be kept.   [[smoddy ]] 17:51, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't feel like arguing with the whole WikiProject Cricket, but I'll answer these last comments. One good reason? Out of everything, let's for example have a look at the (sometimes subjective) Google test of the article. "John Payne" cricket umpire gave 118 hits, of which the majority does not deal with "our" John Payne. Any sportsman worthy of inclusion should have at least a couple of hundred hits, IMHO, even if this particular umpire lived a long time ago. My opinion is also that if test matches were so uncommon that the top umpires of the world would have only 10 or 20 games, one game would be notable. However, as there are many umpires with over 10 officiated games, officiating one game would not be enough. Comparing World Cup with test matches is really out of control. Come on, I've found no football referee with even close to 20 World Cup games, and as said earlier, umpires with over 20 test matches are pretty common. I don't even know if I consider football referees with 1 World Cup game as notable enough to be included. I also feel this discussion is leading nowhere. You seem to be inclusionists, I am not. Nothing to do about it. -- Elisson &bull; Talk 18:14, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * You seem to be inclusionists, I am not. I think you've put your finger on it. as it happens, we are actually debating within the WikiProject right now whether and how we should set out inclusion criteria along the lines of WP:MUSIC, and it's fair to say that the balance of opinion so far has been heavily inclusionist. And for what it's worth, so am I. Loganberry (Talk) 23:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * * Comment. With all respect, the Google test is not a lodestone. I think the argument over disambiguating Bill O'Reilly was a good demonstration of that, although I agree John Payne isn't in the same league as Tiger O'Reilly. But the Google test is strongly biased and quite inadequate.


 * Keep per Loganberry. --Ngb?!? 16:55, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and there is too much good information in the article for a list entry. Why do people try and get good information deleted, they should use their energies at Active Wiki Fixup Projects instead?--Commander Keane 16:21, September 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge per Dunc. If there is an article for the test series in which he officiated then merge there as well, as the article focuses more on the test than it does the umpire himself. Oldelpaso 12:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep or combine with other historical umpires -- red stucco 09:02, 12 September 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.