Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Christie


 * 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 of the debate was keep. Mailer Diablo 10:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Michael Christie
About fairly unknown minor league golfer that committed suicide. Burgwerworldz 00:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep if the information given is accurate, he did win some tournaments, setting one course record while doing so. IrishGuy   talk  02:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Most of the information in this article is verifiable. While Christie played most of his career in the minor leagues of golf (he won four times on the second-highest U.S. golf tour), his performance was good enough to graduate to the highest tour for the 1997 season and then stay on the highest tour for the 1998 season. Two years as a PGA Tour member should be enough to qualify under WP:BIO. --Metropolitan90 03:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to add a few things. I'm disagreeing that being a member of the PGA Tour for 2 seasons is enough to assure notability. Looking at his stats, he barely got his exemption in 1997 (finished like 112th on the money list, 125 is cut-off) and played pretty lackluster (as explained by article) for the rest of his career. There are literally hundreds of golfers in the recent past that have had short careers on the PGA Tour, and IMO, I don't think winning a PGA event should even assure you of an article. Even Calvin Peete, one of the best golfers of the 80s who won 12 PGA events (including a Players Championship) does not have an article. I feel that notability guidelines should be written for sports figures, or more in-depth ones. Also, looking at the BIO link given, there are different guidelines for the dead than living. And I’m a pretty big golf fan, and I’ve never even heard of this guy until I was editing some other pages. Burgwerworldz 05:06, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Easily and indisputably meets the WP:BIO criteria for sportspeople. Calvin Peete is one of just over a hundred red links out of over 900 names on list of golfers and at the current rate of progress they will all have articles in a month or two. Osomec 08:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete Easily and indisputably fails WP:BIO criteria for sportspeople as a basic requirement is for them to be um... alive. Also fails WP:BIO basic test for deceased persons - "Has the person made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in the specific field?". The Nike Tour (or "Nationwide Tour") win record is not notable enough - here is the description of the tour of the wikipedia article - "The Nationwide Tour is the developmental tour for the PGA Tour, and features professional golfers who have either failed to score well enough at that level's Qualifying School (the main tour's qualifying tournament, popularly referred to as "Q-School") to earn their PGA Tour card, or who have done so but then failed to win enough money to stay at that level." So it he won several times at a tour specifically for lesser professional golfers who are still "developing". Also, the description for the NGA Hooters Tour he won at too says it is less significant than the Nike tour. Also as per the objections about PGA tour notability from Burgwerworldz who knows much more about golf than I do. Delete as per nom. Tragic, but not notable Bwithh 17:21, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * He does meet WP:BIO. Being alive isn't a criteria for golfers or for anyone else, and Wikipedia would be a total joke as an encyclopedia if it was. Calsicol 18:46, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The sports criteria in WP:BIO falls squarely under the "People still alive" subheading. Since the subject is deceased, he gets to be judged under the "Deceased people" subheading Bwithh 19:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:BIO is NOT a policy. All the criteria should be the same for living people as for dead people. I've looked at the detail before, but I've never noticed this totally false distinction it makes between living and dead people before like others seem not to. It makes the page worthless if you take that structure literally, but I don't think you should. Golfcam 12:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep There are thousands of articles about sportspeople further down the hierarchy of sporting achievement, eg losing Olympic competitors, Aussie Rules footballers who played one AFL game and reserve players in the English Premiership who haven't played at all. A player who finished 112th on the PGA Tour money list would probably have been in the top 200 global practitioners of the this major sport at that time, and Wikipedia goes a lot lower than that in accepting notability in thousands, probably tens of thosuands of cases. If you think that Wikipedia's criteria should be narrower, that is your right, but this guy very clearer falls within the consensus level of notability and there is no justification whatsoever for this totally random and arbitary nomination.  Calsicol 18:46, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Random? I was cleaning up all the pages for events on the Nationwide Tour, which had all past champions of said events listed. Most are redlinked, as a vast majority of winners never had long or steady careers on the PGA Tour. When I got onto a page of a tournament that said subject won, I visited the page as I had never heard of the player to make sure it wasn't directing to another Michael Christie. So, this was not a random posting whatsoever. Burgwerworldz 20:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong keep This nomination is dangerous threat to Wikipedia's golf coverage, which has been improving more rapidly lately than it did before. He was the equivalent of a major league player in team sports, and when was the last time one of them was deleted? Golfcam 21:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * First off, golf is not a team sport, so calling him equivalent to a "major league player" is dubious at best. Your logic is also quite flawed. So if someone had played on the PGA Tour for a season (even if they missed all cuts), they are notable enough to have an article? I hardly see how a journeyman golfer can be one of the 1,000,000 most important subjects in the world. There needs to be some set guidelines for including athletes rather than the vague suggestions given by BIO. Also keep in mind, this golfer is dead, so he should be judged by the simple question posed by BIO at the time being. Burgwerworldz 22:51, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's unreasonable to consider a PGA Tour player equivalent to a major league player in team sports. There are over 1,000 players on opening day rosters in the National Football League and over 700 players on opening day rosters in Major League Baseball. Looking at the PGA Tour exemption list, there are fewer than 250 players who can claim tour membership at this time. That's fewer even than the number of players on opening rosters in the National Basketball Association. We can dispute whether a deceased player who spent two years on the PGA Tour meets WP:BIO, but if Michael Christie doesn't meet the criteria, neither should someone who played only two years in the NFL, NBA, or MLB. --Metropolitan90 04:54, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it's quite unreasonable, and i'm stunned that there aren't more delete votes. Also, golf is not as popular as other team sports, and that means that the proportion of golfers included from a roster should be lower. I look at a lot of the players on the 1997 money list, and if you get toward Christie's name, there are a bunch of players who may have only had status for a few years that I just couldn't fathom an article being created for them. Christie's case is the same, except he shot himself. His suicide is his most notable characteristic, and if you let him in, you'd have to let every golfer that has ever played a full season on tour, and that is just absurd. Burgwerworldz 05:03, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I wrote "equivalent", not "the same as". Golfcam 12:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Had a tour card for two years. -- Mwalcoff 04:36, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep There aren't many delete votes because it really couldn't be much clearer that he meets the relevant criteria. You can't dispute whether he meets WP:BIO without making yourself look ridiculous. He just does, period. If you don't like it, that's tough, but please try to read what's there, not what you want to see. In the long run there probably will be an article for every player that spends a season the PGA Tour in the future, but Wikipedia isn't mature yet. There are articles for most current players in the top teamsport leagues in the English speaking world, including fringe squad/roster players. There are a lot more of them per sport than there are golfers on the top golf tours. ReeseM 11:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I would like the following vote to be disqualified, as it is a personal attack against me and others who are in favor of the deletion. Burgwerworldz 17:26, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The one above or the one below? I don't see any "personal attacks" in either. Landolitan 01:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep If anything the requirements for living people is *higher* than that for dead people, because we fear autobiographies. Over time, we've progressively "opened up" the rules on WP:BIO to more people.  Such updates have gone in the "living section", because most new bios are obviously for living.  And it makes it look now, like we're softer on the living.  But this was never the intent.  If somebody is notable alive, they're at least as notable after death.  --Rob 15:34, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep PGA Tour golfer. I found this because he's one of the two blue links on the article about the Rex Hospital Open, which was this week's Nationwide Tour event. I would like to see all of the links turned blue. How can it be better to have more red links than blue links in that article? Landolitan 01:10, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Clearly meets (but not exceeds) established standards of sporting success, despite golf being the dullest game in the history of the world. -- GWO
 * ZZZZZZZZZ Oh what? The golf game is over? *Yawn*... Keep per WP:BIO as someone who played on the PGA tour... even if he is dead... and golf is more boring to watch than paint drying.--Isotope23 18:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, Wikipedia is not a memorial and the article is highly unlikely to be expanded beyond a stub. Stifle (talk) 21:30, 6 June 2006 (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.