Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Allen (cricketer)


 * 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 speedy keep. Nomination withdrawn. A special thank you to and  for improving the article by adding sources. (non-admin closure) 4meter4 (talk) 23:54, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Michael Allen (cricketer)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Unreferenced article. Fails WP:SIGCOV. 4meter4 (talk) 19:25, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:31, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Cricket-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:32, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:32, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment and Keep - If your issue with the article is the words "External links" instead of "References", you can always fix that yourself. This was mostly in the days when I was basically transcribing articles from Cricinfo - and once again, the fact that this main text hasn't changed in 15 years is strange. If you feel you have anything to add, please feel free. Deleting players with nearly 200 first-class appearances seems excessive and once again, makes me question our aims. Bobo. 03:26, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep clearly meets any reasonable criteria for inclusion. The unreferenced nature of it is unfortunate, but it would be straightforward to find reasonable references, for example his Wisden obituary. I should imagine there are others as well. Blue Square Thing (talk) 08:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep played nearly 200 first-class matches! This mentions his Derbyshire career, along with a obit. in Wisden.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:50, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep a significant career of nearly 200 matches at the top level, and as others have pointed out there is sourcing available online and in Wisden. Obviously needs improving, but Afd is not clean-up. Rugbyfan22 (talk) 09:06, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Passes WP:NCRIC and played nearly 200 FC matches to receive enough coverage. For more than one month, there were very few AfD nominations of Cricket Articles as User:Storm stopped driving them. But now sad to see that 4meter4 also has taken the job of driving articles to AfD. I noticed 4meter4 also nominated many articles of athletes who participated in Olympics. I don't really understand why some users have no interest in improving article, just their goal is to delete them all. Those users who don't have good idea about cricket and have not significantly contributed to the project should not be rush to nominate articles for deletion. &mdash;  A.A Prinon  Leave a dialogue 09:08, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The fact that people who contribute to a project are more willing to destroy it than work collaboratively on it, makes me question their motives. If their motives are, "we're trying to make a better project", how are we doing so by hacking it down? Is it because they have nothing to add? How are substub Test cricketer articles with zero references making it under the net with 17 years of their prose content reading the same? Randomly selecting articles from Category:West Indies Test cricketers yields Lionel Birkett, Adrian Griffith (cricketer), whose article talks about nothing other than the game in which he was involved, Rajendra Chandrika - ditto, Dave Mohammed, an unreferenced substub - which ironically I created, 16 years ago, and others. You would think those who were so keen to delete had anything to add in order to improve content. Bobo. 09:28, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Please refrain from personal attacks. If you look at my edit history, I have many years of productive editing on wikipedia. My main concern here is WP:SIGCOV. Fortunately, other editors more familiar with cricket are doing a good job pointing to sources in this discussion, so it's likely this article will not only pass this AFD, but in the end will have better referencing in the article than before this AFD. It's a win for the article, which is pretty awful in construction at the moment, and therefore a win for the encyclopedia.4meter4 (talk) 15:06, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It wasn't a personal comment, forgive me. I was just making a point about the project as a whole. If we're not trying to create a complete project, why are we here? Bobo. 17:28, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep, obviously. Note to nominator: the article was never unreferenced; external links are often sources. wjematherplease leave a message... 09:11, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * No external links are just that, external links. What we call things and where we place them matters. Readers and other editors can not assume other contributors got their information from listed external links. Additionally, external links often do not meet the standard for sources at WP:Verifiability.4meter4 (talk) 14:52, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but you're wrong. The external links in this article were very obviously placed there as reliable reference sources, meeting the requirements of WP:V. If you have issues with this article structure, fix it (but be aware, there are thousands of articles that will require your attention!) – but tagging as "no sources" is inappropriate and, as Rugbyfan22 noted above, AFD is not clean-up. wjematherplease leave a message... 15:09, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I suggest you read WP:UNSOURCED at WP:V, which specifically states "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[2] the contribution." All material lacking inline citations per policy is "unsourced". A list of external links simply doesn't count. Further, the policy is clear that all content without an inline citation can be challenged and removed or tagged as unsourced. The burden of removing those tags or restoring content is on the editor who added the information and must be done with the accompaniment of a supporting inline citation. 4meter4 (talk) 15:20, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * 15 years ago when I set this and other such articles up, this references system wasn't how it was done. The fact that the article had received barely any attention for 15 years is by the by. And in any case, the "references" for most articles would read almost exactly the same as the external links, so it probably doesn't make much of a difference. If you want to change all articles which read "External links" and reference every statistic to the same source(s), that's fine. Would that have solved the problems with previous AfD discussions? That's not my question to answer. If the issue with previous mass-AfD nominations was not "this article is unacceptable" but "please change the external links to references", then none of this would have had to occur all along. Bobo. 17:33, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice sidestep. You wrongly tagged the entire article as unsourced and claimed the same here; I note you have since placed an appropriate refimprove banner on the article. wjematherplease leave a message... 19:46, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did after another editor added the obituary to the article; making the article no longer completely unreferenced which it was before the obit was added. The statistics in the table also were sourced by the subscription access cricket website with an inline citation. It wasn’t a side step but a response to improved referencing based in policy.4meter4 (talk) 19:58, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment. All of this complaining is not helpful, and the article did (and does) have serious issues at demonstrating GNG as well as overall verifiability. At the time I nominated the article, the only visible external link was, which is essentially a statistical table of content which does not support the prose of the article; and is routine coverage which does not rise to level of sourcing required by WP:SIGCOV. The CricketArchive link is a subscription access service, which per WP:External links should not be included in external links because it is not visible to the general public. Such material can be used as cited sources per policy, but that is not how it was used here. For those claiming the external links somehow verified the article, I'm just not seeing it. They didn't. The article still is largely unsourced and unverified. This nomination was therefore appropriate per policy at WP:AFD and WP:Verifiability. The fact that such issues are widespread in cricket articles is not my problem, and points to systemic verifiability issues in this area on the encyclopedia that apparently leaves a large percentage of cricket articles at risk for deletion.4meter4 (talk) 18:36, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Taking articles to AfD as and when you find them is not the way to sort out problems. If you want us to change the source(s) of every single article from Cricket Archive to Cricinfo because Cricket Archive is behind a(n) (easily negated) paywall, please let us know in good time rather than nominating tens of thousands of cricket articles. If you want us to find further sources before you make these decisions, please let us know in advance. Bring these issues to the appropriate channel(s) first before nominating tens of thousands more articles as you happen upon them. Bobo. 18:43, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Tens of thousands? As far as I can recall, I've only ever nominated three cricket articles for deletion. I've hardly made a habit of it, and I don't plan on making it a habit of it. I will however use the AFD process when it's warranted. I'm still not convinced this article meets GNG, simply because only the obituary rises to the level of significant coverage from what I can tell. Multiple articles of that level of significance are needed. Statistical tables in cricket fancruft websites aren't significant coverage.4meter4 (talk) 18:49, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Just a theoretical remark based on the number of cricket articles on the site. Not a personal statement - please understand. There are still dozens of unreferenced international players which need eyes upon them. Bobo. 18:53, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you seem to be blaming me personally for the practices of your project which are not in line with written policy, and then when I point it out attack me personally, as if I am a trouble maker for pointing out the errors in your projects widespread practice. WP:ELREG states A site that requires registration or a subscription should not be linked unless the website itself is the topic of the article (see § Official links) or the link is part of an inline reference (see Wikipedia:Citing sources). It's not my fault that your project decided to ignore that policy and break it systemically in cricket articles. That just shows blatant disrespect from your project towards our governing policies as an encyclopedia.4meter4 (talk) 19:03, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * One more point, other editors can't simply swap out a subscription service source from an eternal link into a sources section. For one, we can't see what content, if any, is verifying the article in its current state. Two, subscription sources are supposed to be used only in inline citation right after the content its verifying (See WP:ELREG and WP:UNSOURCED). Trying to throw the burden back on me, who doesn't have access, isn't within policy. Further, WP:UNSOURCED is clear that the burden of sourcing of content is on the person who added it and no one else. Telling others they have to do the work of sourcing material that isn't sourced isn't within policy.4meter4 (talk) 19:36, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * "That just shows blatant disrespect from your project towards our governing policies as an encyclopedia"... bit like nominating a player with 193 first-class appearances and 500 wickets shows blatant disrespect to the Cricket Project. StickyWicket (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Any excuse to stop our project from being as complete as possible - pursuant to subject-specific guidelines - is against our basic goal as far as I'm concerned. I can't imagine why anyone would want it any other way... anyone? If we really were talking a "quality over quantity" argument, we wouldn't still have single-sentence Test cricketer articles after 15+ years. Why can't those so keen to delete articles work on those instead? Wouldn't you consider that more productive? Or is it just because you have nothing to add and it takes less effort to insert a "send to AfD" template? If we were all working towards the same goal, these conversations would not be necessary. Bobo. 00:46, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * To phrase it slightly more gently, let me ask a question of those members of the project who are so keen to delete. Why aren't you sending Test cricketer articles to AfD too, for being unreferenced and unsourced to non-database sources - or even unreferenced altogether? What if someone who knew nothing about the subject and saw the same, were to do so? I can imagine little more than a significant lambasting - ironically from the same characters. Bobo. 00:52, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Um, I didn’t break any policies. I followed them. Also, please don’t make WP:OWN statements. There’s no rule requiring notification to the cricket project before nominating a cricket article at AFD. The attitudes of this group are so hostile, I am not likely to bother communicating with your project at all in future anyway.4meter4 (talk) 22:47, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It's worth checking that there truly are zero sources available before you do anything which ends up with debates like this, surely. Just let us know that any article does not pass your own personal criteria for inclusion, and we'll likely be able to do something about it as we will have more idea where to find information. Being in a state where we can only do anything about it while a debate is going on, defeats the object. Want us to work at finding more references? Let us know.
 * The irony about making comments about "ownership" of content when most of the articles I initiated which have been sent to deletion had prose content written by myself and myself alone. The fact is that the cricket project has turned against itself like Frankenstein's monster. That is not something we should be proud of. The same is true of the disgusting level of disrespect shown towards 02blythed, Lugnuts, and AA, and their contribution history. Bobo. 08:27, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd saying nominating a cricketer with 500 first-class wickets and 193 appearances is "hostile". StickyWicket (talk) 19:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep. Truly one of the most pathetic and lazy nominations I have ever seen. StickyWicket (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep this seems to just be a nomination to argue about CricketArchive as a source, something that is perfectly permissible. Played almost 200 first class matches, no evidence the nominator has even tried to do a WP:BEFORE. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:35, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Obviously, with ~200 top-class appearances. But it is in a bit of a mess, and I think the nominator is acting in good faith, although there are obvious alternatives to AfD, such as bringing it to the WP Cricket Project's attention. Johnlp (talk) 23:27, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep since subject comfortably meets WP:NCRICKET and moreover WP:GNG, though the article's text is rather messy. -The Gnome (talk) 17:11, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment there is some coverage, in old newspapers, and as he comes from pre-Internet era, I would expect lots more to exist in offline historical newspapers where available. Joseph2302 (talk) 08:03, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - 4meter4, to rearrange comments on the page in chronological order rather than by thread of conversation makes it look like the members in question are talking to themselves. The reason we put replies where we do is so that we know who is talking to who - not so that we know who leaves the first or second comment. Bobo. 16:26, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You interrupted my comments in the same conversation thread, distorting the meaning of my statement and the flow of dialogue. I didn't appreciate that; that's why I put things down further where they should have been posted in the first place. I'd appreciate it if you not comment to me any further. I am feeling harassed. See WP:STICK.4meter4 (talk) 16:32, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Harassed? Sure. Anyone who is going to leave an AfD template on a cricketer who has made 200 first-class appearances is likely to have questions asked about them somewhere along the way. Please, if you find any other articles you dislike, don't take them to AfD just to get them seen by others. Put them in the appropriate place where you can request they be cleaned up. Bobo. 16:39, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You have stated this multiple times. Everyone can see your posts. You don't need to repeat yourself and keep commenting. This is the definition of harassment. Please stop.4meter4 (talk) 16:41, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Until you can provide us with reassurance you will take this advice, I do not believe you have taken it in. Bobo. 16:42, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Please stop WP:POV Pushing and read Civility. We have a difference of opinion, and that's ok. I don't have to agree with you, and I am not sure why you feel the need to hound me as its clear there is a building consensus to keep. I can have a minority opinion and thats ok. If you keep this up I will be taking this to WP:ANI. Please leave me alone.4meter4 (talk) 16:47, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Telling someone how to arrange comments on a discussion page is not "POV-pushing". This conversation is becoming strange. Bobo. 16:52, 15 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep: The sources are clearly out there, even if they aren't on-line - I have just added info on the '64 season from the 1965 Wisden, and at least similar levels of detail should be available from Wisden or from newspapers for other seasons. This should ensure that GNG is met.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:36, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. Obvious pass of WP:NCRIC. If Wisden isn't WP:RS for cricketers' biographies (link), I don't know what is. 500 wickets at 22.43 in FC matches isn't chopped liver. It's like saying an MLB pitcher with an ERA of only 3.00 over a 10-year career is WP:NN. I'm close to calling this nomination frivolous. Narky Blert (talk) 20:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Taking 10 wickets in a match is roughly comparable to completing 9 innings while conceding one or no runs. Allen did it three times. I'll go further, and will call this nomination frivolous. Narky Blert (talk) 20:24, 15 June 2021 (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.