Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leinster Chess Leagues


 * 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 Leinster Chess Leagues, to which the other pages will redirect. Noteworthy and verifiable content from the latter can be incorporated into the former at editorial discretion'''‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__.  Arbitrarily0  ( talk ) 21:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Leinster Chess Leagues

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

The Leinster Chess Leagues article, and the articles I am combining in my nomination below that represent to tropies of the different leagues for the main article, fail the test of independent notability for each article and further, these articles are large WP:NOTDATABASE violations and full of WP:OR. This content would be better suited on the website of the organization and not Wikipedia as the pages often boil down to league rules and not secondary independent coverage.

Also nomintated for deletion:

Thanks, microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 15:52, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events, Games, Organizations,  and Ireland. Skynxnex (talk) 17:00, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I have written a reply in the Talk page attached to this article. If you cannot read that reply I will copy it here. With thanks, sincerely JohnPDLoughran (talk) 18:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment. You should copy your reply here yourself. A closing admin may not (and is not necessarily expected to) search for comments placed outside the AfD discussion thread. You could consider leaving out the parts, of your comment, which are unrelated to the concerns raised in the AfD nomination. Guliolopez (talk) 19:29, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @JohnPDLoughran are you associated at all with the Leinster Chess Leagues or any of their associated divisions? microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 20:14, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Dear Marcus, copying my reply here as directed. Please excuse me as I am new to editing Wikipedia, and was confused as to where to post it. Some of the help files are confusing and mention the Talk area as a way to respond. Can I ask, should I prepend this reply with something like ? Here is my edited reply and answer to your query.
 * I was shocked to see that you were recommending the deletion of a large number of articles relating to chess in Ireland. These are valuable resources not only of current but also of historic interest, albeit to a small population of chess players. The Leinster Chess Leagues page links the different articles including one on the Armstrong Cup which I read with interest. It started in 1888 and may be one of the oldest such competitions in the world. The information in these articles is supported by two independent Irish chess history websites which are not affiliated to the Leinster Leagues. They quote many independent sources of information including newspaper articles, one written in 1888. If you delete these articles you will delete a valuable resource. Because the chess playing population is so small it is difficult to source more independent references, although I am continuing to work on this with collaborators, and I would be glad of advice on ways to improve this. Needless to say I am new to publishing in an encyclopaedia. One of the articles which first spurred my interest was the article on Chess in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
 * Regarding my links with the Leinster Chess Union. Firstly I am a player on a team that competes in the leagues, and currently the chairperson of Skerries Chess Club. I have no official membership of the LCU. Our club pays them a small fee to participate in the leagues each year. While it is true that Skerries did win the BEA Cup one year, it was before I was a member, so I had no personal interest in writing that first article. I added the article on the Leinster Chess Leagues after that simply to link various articles on each league together, and to avoid duplication of material within each league article. The reason I wrote the article on the BEA Cup was that we were given it by accident. Because it was a cup which had been donated in 1972 and passed from club to club since then and miraculously survived I felt it was worthy of note, so I did quite a lot of research, still ongoing, to discover the winners each season and record them in the article as well as taking a picture of this, in my opinion, priceless artefact, before getting its base repaired. I am of course open to suggestions as to how to improve the articles (BEA Cup or Leagues article) but I would be deeply disappointed to see these articles disappear, even moreso if their deletion was to have a knock on effect of causing the deletion of other valuable articles, which I had no hand in writing, on the other Leauges: Armstrong etc. With thanks, yours sincerely JohnPDLoughran (talk) 08:17, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment: The two independent sources in the article are WP:BLOGS and are therefore not reliable. I was able to find a few brief news items in the Irish Independent:, but it doesn't seem like quite enough on its own to demonstrate notability for the leagues, much less for the individual divisions. I would either redirect everything to Irish Chess Union or otherwise redirect/merge the divisions into the Leinster Chess Leagues article. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 20:05, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I just saw that the blogs cited old newspapers. If these sources can be confirmed, the individual divisions might very well be notable. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 20:23, 1 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Given that there are several titles here to consider, my own recommendation is to:
 * Delete O'Sullivan Cup. This article, on the seventh (childrens?) tier of an amateur/regional chess competition, doesn't have sufficient reliable sources to even support its text. Not to mind a claim to notability. Under any applicable criteria. (The article itself states that there aren't sufficient sources to establish what happened in relatively recent runnings of the competition. I mean, we're relying on this random picture to "guess" that the people (children?) pictured might have come third in 2015? Seriously?)
 * Delete BEA Cup. This article, on the fifth tier of an amateur/regional chess competition, doesn't have sufficient sources to support its text. The author (within the text) states that there aren't even sources to establish who won the competition on any given year. That we reliant upon "reading the engravings off a cup" (and using that as a basis for content AND justification a stand-alone article) is a very clear indication that WP:SIGCOV is not met. By a significant margin. The thing (the cup) cannot be a reference for itself or represent coverage of itself. It's just backwards and bizarre.
 * Redirect Armstrong Cup, Heidenfeld Trophy and Ennis Shield. And maybe O'Hanlon Cup. Either to Leinster Chess Leagues (if that title is kept). Or to Irish_Chess_Union (if not). Similar to the above, I have significant concerns with the reliability and accuracy of the sources and content in those articles. And do not see any justification for the project being a WP:NOTSTATS and WP:NOTWEBHOST repo for previous winners of these amateur regional chess competitions. However, there is some limited coverage - to just about justify a redirect as an WP:ATD. And to mention the competitions WP:WITHIN the target article. For example, the Armstrong Cup is mentioned (almost always in passing and always/only in regional newspapers), in places like this, this and this. Which could justify covering it in either the Leinster Chess Leagues or Irish Chess Union articles. And perhaps leaving a redirect.
 * Weak keep Leinster Chess Leagues (or redirect to Irish_Chess_Union). While I'm not swayed by the creator's arguments ("I'm shocked", "It's useful", "supported by 2x special interest websites"), there is a small smattering of limited coverage in some local sources. Like this, this and this or this. If kept, as a standalone title, the article needs significant work however.
 * My 2x cents anyway. FWIW. Guliolopez (talk) 13:04, 2 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Source assessment with many, many thanks to @Guliolopez for collecting a list of sources. I want to preface this by saying I am trying to be fair and impartial and stave off concerns that I am attacking a particular chess league or its members and, should the evidence arrive that any or all of the articles I nominated are WP:Notable, I will gladly change my vote. Please let me know, I would be happy to add to the following table. As it stands, I still believe the articles are a violation of WP:NOTDATABASE and would need to be reworked, but I am a big believer in WP:THREE. With that said:

I would gladly add to the above table if sources are provided, or if you believe my assessment of any of the above are wrong, I would be happy to discuss. microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 17:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 23:26, 8 May 2024 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Doczilla  Ohhhhhh, no! 07:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Given all the sources and analysis done to date in the table, I feel the like strongest !keep argument would be to have a Leinster Chess Union League as that seems to be the most frequently used identifier of the WP:NCORP, but I think this would come down to how strong the passing mentions are of the leagues in the event coverage above, and whether the coverage of the event is WP:Inherited to the Chess Union League itself or not, and whether the coverage satisfies as significant; I'm leaning no, based on my reading of WP:SIGCOV:
 * but I would understand where this might be interpreted differently here. Given that, then all the other articles could be redirects (see WP:CHEAP) and the ones which are sourced by only event coverage could have their own sections on the main article. I think that would be the strongest possible argument for keep, however, given the current references. microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 16:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A chess blog website claims that newspapers such as the Irish Times and Irish Press have written some sort of coverage about the various leagues decades ago, e.g. for the Branagan Cup. I have no idea what this coverage looks like, whether it's also trivial, etc. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 19:22, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmm, interesting. With respect to WP:OFFLINE, I can't help but feel as if these were present and properly cited in the article, they would be suitable, but to mass copy and paste them into an article from their collection on the organisation's website feels less-than-inline with WP:V. Given the context of the page, I would suspect someone has gone back (probably very labouriously) to compile the records and statistics of the page, but I doubt they are significant coverage of the organisation itself in such a manner to establish WP:NCORP. They would, however, be suitable to cite the (probably WP:NOTDATABASE violation that is the laundry) list of past winners, in such a manner to satisfy WP:OR concerns&mdash;that is, the ones that cite news articles and not tweets. microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 20:40, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * keep/merge my sense of the source analysis is we have enough coverage for the topic to have an article. I'm not sure which article title is best. We do have reason to believe there are offline sources too.  For now I'd say keep Leinster Chess Leagues and merge the rest (a couple sentences at most for all but the Armstrong Cup) into it.  I'm happy to take an expansive view of this article having coverage count that covers those various topics... Hobit (talk) 11:23, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep main page, merge and redirect cups, stubify to verifiable facts: As the nom, I think I'm the only hold questioning notability. For consensus, I would concede notability for the main league given the breadth of coverage, in spite of my SIGCOV concerns above. I think altogether these pages should be merged to the main article, the cup pages redirected, and the articles signifcantly reduced to simply contain facts and not the long NOTDATABASE violations.  microbiology Marcus [petri dish·growths] 16:29, 23 May 2024 (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.