Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (2nd nomination)


 * 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 merge to Neil Harvey. Of course, appropriate content may also be merged to other articles, provided proper attribution is made. Randykitty (talk) 14:51, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948
AfDs for this article:


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

This is a WP:CONTENT FORK from the main article Neil Harvey. The person is a cricketer who played in 79 International Test matches. The content fork discusses just 2 of these Test matches, in neither of these matches did anything notable happen for him. Most of the article discusses tour matches all of which is WP:Routine. This tour is already adequately covered in the main article. Desertarun (talk) 21:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to Neil Harvey. This article is from an earlier Wikipedia age. Just because something is true and sourced to RS does not mean that it is suitable for Wikipedia. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sportspeople, History, Cricket, England,  and Australia.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 22:00, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep Too big to merge, well sourced and a valid fork. - Bilby (talk) 22:08, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. See Articles for deletion/Ron Hamence with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (2nd nomination) and Articles for deletion/Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (2nd nomination) for AfD discussions about similar articles. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:57, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete All of these articles are highly improper and essentially prosified statistics. They never should have been created, and all of them should be deleted. We do not do articles on athlete with team in year. Neil Harvey is notable, the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 is notable, but the intersection absolutely is not. I was the nominator in both examples Mike Christie linked and the first nomination, all of which go into more detail as to why these articles are inappropriate for Wikipedia. "Too big to merge" and "well sourced" are fallacious arguments. The article is large, and is seemingly well sourced, because it is a giant list of statistics and game results turned into prose. There is nothing in this fork that justifies it being split off from Neil Harvey's article. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would not object to a selective merge to Neil Harvey. Basically only the relevant parts of the "role" section should be merged, however. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 12:52, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep – I'll raise a few points. In my opinion, the requirement of notability exists to ensure that each article may at length consist of relevant, verifiable information. This, albeit of lower notability, is a topic which evidently can do that. In addition, the encyclopaedia is still a child: merging featured articles together is at this present moment unnecessary and serving to devalue content contributions. Moreover, this topic fairly obviously meets the GNG in my opinion – there's swathes of prose evidently sourced, and believe me these are not just statistics: they explain the how and why. At the moment our coverage of Harvey's career is imbalanced, but merging this article doesn't make our coverage of other parts of Harvey's career more thorough – only seem like it is.  J947  † edits 00:38, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep - After reading the article, I am not convinced this is merely a collection of statistics. Additionally, I'm not swayed by the argument the article does not meet the notability criteria or is not a reasonable split. It may not be worth the FA recognition but in my eyes it merits its own article. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Non nobis solum. 00:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge. Almost half of this article duplicate Harvey's article and the tour article. What's left is about 2,500 words which is mostly performance statistics in prose form, sourced to a statistics database. Anything encyclopaedic and reliably sourced that isn't already covered in Harvey's biography can be merged there. This seems to be in line with the consensus at AfDs for Dough Ring, Ron Saggers, Colin McCool, and Ron Hammence on the tour. HJ Mitchell &#124; Penny for your thoughts? 10:21, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge for all the reasons explained by for why merging is the most appropriate course of action. Joseph2302 (talk) 11:07, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep : while HJ Mitchell raises valid reasoning, this situation is not like the other similar articles previously merged. This one is a correct use of summary style. The other main articles where content was merged are small:
 * Doug Ring 2,500 words of readable prose
 * Ron Saggers 1,800 words of readable prose
 * Colin McCool 3,000 words of readable prose
 * Ron Hamence 1,700 words of readable prose
 * While Neil Harvey is already at more than 11,100 words of readable prose. Separating out this one notable bit is a correct use of summary style for this case (which is different than the others), and merging it back in will make an already long article even longer.  Notability is met, and summary style for this article, unlike the others, is appropriate and useful. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  11:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem with content forks is that they can easily multiply. Harvey went on 10 or so tours so we could have 10 articles like this Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in India in 1956 or this Neil Harvey with the Australian cricket team in South Africa in 1951. Then there's the other Australian players, around 300, that played on overseas tours for Australia. So now we've got 10 times 300 = 3000 potential articles called Player X with the Australian cricket team in country Y in year Z. Desertarun (talk) 12:17, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Except they do not exist. WWGB (talk) 12:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If anyone tried the article would be back here and it'd be deleted. The only reason we have this one is because it was created a long time ago. Desertarun (talk) 12:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Desertarun, you haven't explained why that is a bad thing. If those were notable, and respected summary style, what's wrong with having more articles? Consider a counterexample: we can have 15 song articles from the same album.  By this logic, why wouldn't we merge and redirect all songs to the album?  You seem to believe that is a CONTENTFORK, where I see an appropriate WP:SPINOUT (which is an WP:OKFORK). Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  13:01, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Switched from Keep to Weak Keep per subsequent arguments. 'Tis a dilemma.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  18:59, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Sandy, would you mind assessing my last comment in the first AfD? My argument was that much of the content is way over-detailed and isn't actually DUE as it's mostly just editors prosifying raw stats. Plus a lot of it isn't actually directly on Harvey's role, it's just recounting the performance of his team in general. JoelleJay (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge, as the reasoning of others here has convinced me. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  13:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep. Why would we delete a Featured Article, "considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer". WWGB (talk) 12:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We can and have deleted featured articles in the recent-ish past. Simply being an FA is not a shield. Curbon7 (talk) 12:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you may both be using the word delete when you might mean merge. We have only ever deleted one featured article: ANAK Society. We have merged and redirected about a dozen and a half (you can search WP:FFA for the word "redirect"). Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  12:52, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You're right, I was misremembering WP:Articles for deletion/Lewis (baseball) (2nd nomination), it's been a while since that one. Curbon7 (talk) 01:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge to Neil Harvey, Australian cricket team in England in 1948, 1948 Ashes series, and anywhere else that's appropriate. We have an article about every international match played on this tour; we have an article about the series; one about the Australian team playing the series; and one about the player. Any information that doesn't already belong in those three articles is, IMHO, too much detail to be covered in an encyclopedia: it is also essentially prosified statistics that we're not a database for, as others have pointed out above. I like sports biographies as much as anyone, but I believe we're straying from our core purpose a little bit here. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:15, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Holy moly, what's going on that even Australian cricket team in England in 1948 is 13,000 words of readable prose? With one sentence about Harvey.  I don't know enough about the sport to understand what is driving the overall problem here. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:41, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem, in my opinion, is that one editor has written some very good-quality prose on this tour, but at a length and in a level of detail, that's not appropriate for an encyclopaedia. HJ Mitchell &#124; Penny for your thoughts? 17:17, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * While these articles are clearly a labor of love, at some point we need to recognize that not every incident in a month-long cricket tour is worth incorporating into Wikipedia. It may be the most famous example of an Ashes series, but there's been one approximately every two years for over a century, and it's hard to argue that similar articles could not be written about every player in the more recent ones, relying on online news coverage. Not every verifiable detail is encyclopedic. I'm inclined to believe the international matches, and the tour itself, deserve articles, but it's hard to justify coverage beyond that. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:20, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge what can, delete the rest. This is really Wikipedia going overboard. I don't see the equivalent in other sports – there is no Kylian Mbappé at the 2022 FIFA World Cup or Michael Jordan in the 1991 NBA Finals or Bob Gibson in the 1967 World Series.  Anything that really needs to be said about this subject can be said in the article about him or about the team's tour in England.  Yes, anything that won't fit in those won't get read, but that's already the case – in January and February this article averaged all of three views a day.  It's one thing to write about an obscure but once important subject knowing it won't get many page views, but it's another thing have a narrow topic intersection like this that no one will read. Wasted Time R (talk) 17:21, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep per Sandy, Airship and Bilby. Niche article of duplicate, to a minor degree, umbrella articles are neither unencyclopedic nor against summary style in being so.  SN54129  19:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Leaning selective merge per Vanamonde. I think this one is a little different from the four in this series already merged because those four were for figures that did little during the tour.  Still, I can't quite get past the realization that this level of intricate detail on sporting matches is largely unencyclopedic detail.  There's a place for highly detailed blow-by-blow recounting of sports matches, but that place often isn't Wikipedia, and spinning out a whole article for the purpose of allowing that level of detail generally isn't going to be a good idea. Hog Farm Talk 22:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge, per my and others' arguments in the first AfD and here. JoelleJay (talk) 22:07, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge HJ Mitchell summed this up well. There is no reason to fragment the subject into another article.  // Timothy :: talk  11:45, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge, per Vanamonde and HJ Mitchell. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:23, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Note, if this Featured article is merged, we will need to create a procedural FAR for the articlehistory bookkeeping.   until the articlehistory is sorted, if the article is merged, it will show at Featured articles/mismatches. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  14:02, 15 March 2023 (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.