Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northern Transvaal v Natal B 1-4 January 1972


 * 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.  

AFD result. There is a clear consensus that this article should be merged into at least one other. Debates as to the most useful disposition of cricket match articles are not new; to outsiders (to cricket) they can be extremely confusing. I'm one of these folks, so it took me a while to go through the articles and categories to familiarise myself with the issues. Briefly: I agree with Stephen Turner, OpenToppedBus, Ian, A Man In Black, and (I think) Sam Vimes that these individual match (not just the one here discussed on the AFD) shouldn't be maintained. The information is all in the larger articles, each of which consist of a series of substs of the match articles. The larger articles also provide the opportunity for context that the tiny articles don't (I'm sure a bit more could be said about the 1972 Northern Transvaal team, for example, than merely a list of the matches they played). I would also like to point out that the team articles (ie. what I mentioned in #4), are poorly titled. Rhodesia in 1971/2 may be an acceptable title for a cricket encyclopedia, but on a general encyclopedia like WP it is misleading.
 * 1) The article that is the subject of this AFD pertains to a single cricket match that took place during the 1971-72 South Africa cricket season. The article is four sentences long and is a short summary of the game. It is unlikely that there is much more that can be sensibly added to the page.
 * 2) There are dozens of SA cricket seasons, see Template:South_African_cricket_seasons.
 * 3) In the 1971-72 SA season, some 32 matches were played. See Category:1971/2_South_African_cricket_season_matches. Each of these matches has been given an individual page, usually only a couple of sentences long.
 * 4) Aside from individual pages for the matches, there are also individual pages for each team's performance in that season. For example, Transvaal B in 1971/2, Northern Transvaal in 1971/2, Rhodesia in 1971/2.
 * 5) Aside from individual pages on single matches, there are also articles on the various tournaments (I hope that's the right word) within that season. In the 1971-72 season, the tournaments were Currie Cup Section A in 1971/2, Currie Cup Section B in 1971/2, Gillette Cup in 1971/2, and Non-Castle Cup first-class matches in South Africa in 1971/2.
 * 6) The material in the articles on the tournaments (what I mentioned in #5), and the material in articles on teams (what I mentioned in #4), are all collections of substs of the individual match articles (what I mentioned in #3).

The disposition of articles not the subject of this AFD cannot be decided here, but there does appear to be a strong consensus, both within and without the WP cricket community, that the individual match articles be merged (and redirected if not deleted). I lend my voice in support of this idea. Finally, I'm a little mystified as to why the match articles were written in the first place, and agree with OpenToppedBus that they shouldn't be in future. encephalon 03:12, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Northern Transvaal v Natal B 1-4 January 1972
This is a nn cricket game from more than 30 years ago. WP:NOT a scoreboard Delete --JAranda &#124; watz sup 02:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, like Category:2005 English cricket season matches. Wikipedia is timeless so 30 years is irrevelant. Kappa 03:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Harmless. No reason why Wikipedia shouldn't include a guide to first class cricket matches. CalJW 03:48, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. We have other cricket matches articles. Carioca 03:58, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Im tempt to nominate all those cricket articles as Wikipedia not a scoreboard. We cant keep a page for every cricket game that ever played --JAranda &#124; watz sup 04:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd reckon you'd do the project a favor if you did. These matches are getting completely out of hand.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * How so? Kappa 09:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. The 30 years are completely irrelevant. If this is deleted then all the recent matches should be deleted as well. JPD (talk) 11:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into Currie Cup Section B in 1971/2, Natal B in 1971/2 and Northern Transvaal in 1971/2 when they're all finished. Sam Vimes 14:02, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Either Move to subpage of 1971-72 South African cricket season (or some such suitable title), or Delete . I voted to keep the 2005 English cricket season matches, but only because I understood that they would all be merged at the end of the season, and that it wouldn't be done that way again. I very much respect the authors' dedication to cricket and to Wikipedia, but I am unhappy that WikiProject Cricket is continuing to provoke so much controversy. Stephen Turner 14:19, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've just read Subpages, so I change my opinion to: Move to subpage of a user page immediately, and then Merge per Sam Vimes when the whole collection is ready. Stephen Turner 16:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Either merge per User:Sam Vimes and cleanup, or transwiki to Wikisource if they'll have it. --fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 16:28, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge per User:Sam Vimes. Some cricket matches might deserve their own article, if they were pivotal enough or eventful enough, but in general, the information would work better as a collected season or league or tour roundup.  I really doubt much more information could be inserted into this article than is already there.  &mdash;Morven 19:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge per His Grace. - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] 21:52, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Query - I thought the whole point of the 2005 English county match reports was that at the end of the season, they would all be merged together into a week-by-week analysis or a team-by-team analysis, and that the original match reports would then be deleted. Is my understanding wrong? If so, would very much appreciate knowing what was intended originally and what happened in the end, now that the season has been over for a month or more. --Peripatetic 00:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Your understanding is not wrong. However, because of holiday and things it's taken a great deal of time to clean all the articles up (I'm into the middle of August at the moment) - when that's finished, I'll subst them all in and ask for someone to merge page histories. Sam Vimes 07:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into relevant articles on the greater competition. Lord Bob 02:06, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep We've discussed this all before (is it four or five times now?). Why bring it all up again? The series of articles on the 1971/2 South African cricket season will be completed sometime, and this is an essential part of it, jguk 04:55, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Reply. It might be useful to have links to the previous discussions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
 * There was no consensus in any of these discussions. So pretending that a precedent has been established is disingenuous.
 * It was clearly stated by several contributors that the articles would be deleted promptly at the end of the season. I suspect that the vote would have been more negative without this promise. However, this has not happened, and I'm not even sure whether this is planned for these South African articles. I'm beginning to suspect that the authors quite like having the individual articles.
 * The fact that WikiProject Cricket is continuing to do something so controversial based only on the inability to reach consensus either for or against is itself worrying to me. We're not being good neighbours, and we're giving our project a bad name. Besides, we could do without wasting time having this argument every few weeks. We should be voluntarily finding a better way to do this.
 * As for myself, I can no longer support these individual articles, although I'd still be happy to have them as subpages . Stephen Turner 10:25, 4 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Merge to a higher level article per previous commitment to do so for the English 2005 articles -- Ian &equiv; talk 12:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into higher level article, and an extremely strong recommendation to the Cricket Wikiproject that future articles on individual matches, if they are only intended to exist temporarily for future use in larger articles, should be created either on user or wikiproject subpages rather than in the main namespace. OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 12:32, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong merge per Sam Vimes. Wikipedia is not a scorecard. Dozens of professional sports games are played every day, the bulk of which have no lasting impact even on the participants and observers. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 21:54, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge this article, along with everything in Category:1971/2 South African cricket season matches --AllyUnion (talk) 13:42, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge for this and delete for that. Why so ?Tintin 13:50, 7 November 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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.