Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pantacles of Athens


 * 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 Olympic winners of the Stadion race. There is a good consensus for merging all articles apart from Phrynon. Some support has been shown for keeping other articles (Dandes of Argos, Philinus of Cos (athlete), Oebotas of Dyme, Eurybus of Athens), and discussions should be held on their talk pages or at Olympic winners of the Stadion race as to whether sufficient sources exist for standalone articles. I've started sections on their talk pages to start this off, please share your opinions and discuss sources there. Sam Walton (talk) 09:50, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Pantacles of Athens

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Not notable, lacks significant coverage in reliable sources. I'll be nominating a ton of other articles just like this one, so be patient. Pishcal — ♣ 17:06, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Here's the rest of the articles I'm nominating. All of these articles rely on the same source and are pretty much the exact same thing, and thus I'm nominating all of them for the same reason.


 * Although I oppose the deletion as a whole, I'd like to add a number of articles, but I'm not familiar to the procedure, so I'm afraid that I didn't get it right. These are the first two:
 * Maybe you can check if they have been added to the procedure? I don't quite understand why you chose Pantacles as your example, since he was the first incumbent in history to defend his title, which does not appear as a totally secondary feat. So I must tell that I don't understand what makes Anticles of Messenia more relevant than Pantacles of Athens. I therefore find it hard to decide which biography is ok and which not and I think it would be necessary to define some criteria. Pantacles yields six books (without considering that Pantakles might yield more). What would be enough in your eyes?
 * Actually, I feel a bit mobbed by this deletion request, because you have added only articles created by me, while there is a whole number of very similar articles which were previously created by other users, with nobody ever opposing. Moreover I want to say that it was my intention to add more information on specific athletes where available. I have already done so on previous occasions, expanding even some biographies created by other users, but at the moment I'm not always able to tell which articles will be developed and which not. And I doubt that anybody else could do so without serious study of the subject.--Hyphantes (talk) 18:34, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your response, and I apologize for mobbing you with this request. The reason for this is that I was browsing the new pages and found a lot of these articles relied upon the same source. As for your intention to add more information on specific athletes when available, there's still time, but to be honest I would recommend having more information than less when starting an article. Choosing Pantacles as the inital subject was random, no intentional choice there. I'm not sure of the reliability of the source provided for most of the given articles, and I'm honestly not sure what more information could be added. Many of the subjects have barely anything said about them other than that they won a race, and a quick search didn't reveal any more information. To sum up my points, I'm not entirely certain how much COULD be added to these articles, and as of now I don't believe they stand on their own. Pishcal  — ♣ 19:54, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, I feel a bit mobbed by this deletion request, because you have added only articles created by me, while there is a whole number of very similar articles which were previously created by other users, with nobody ever opposing. Moreover I want to say that it was my intention to add more information on specific athletes where available. I have already done so on previous occasions, expanding even some biographies created by other users, but at the moment I'm not always able to tell which articles will be developed and which not. And I doubt that anybody else could do so without serious study of the subject.--Hyphantes (talk) 18:34, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your response, and I apologize for mobbing you with this request. The reason for this is that I was browsing the new pages and found a lot of these articles relied upon the same source. As for your intention to add more information on specific athletes when available, there's still time, but to be honest I would recommend having more information than less when starting an article. Choosing Pantacles as the inital subject was random, no intentional choice there. I'm not sure of the reliability of the source provided for most of the given articles, and I'm honestly not sure what more information could be added. Many of the subjects have barely anything said about them other than that they won a race, and a quick search didn't reveal any more information. To sum up my points, I'm not entirely certain how much COULD be added to these articles, and as of now I don't believe they stand on their own. Pishcal  — ♣ 19:54, 16 April 2015 (UTC)


 * It seems like we already have a list of Olympic winners of the Stadion race, also by Hyphantes. I think redirecting the shortest stubs, the ones offering no additional information, to that list is more reader-friendly than lots of mini-articles (less clicking, less frustration at finding nothing that wasn't already in the overview). A list is also easier to maintain. I'm not sure about the more developed articles, but I think I'd prefer merging those into the list by adding notes to individual athletes below their name ("first runner in history to defend his title four years after his first victory" would seem to fit fine between two entries). Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 19:49, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I understand why you started this request, Pishcal, but I think you shot too fast on the wrong target. You may check again the first eight or ten from your list, to see what further information can be found. I appreciate QWERTYVS' suggestion, and I agree that there may be frustration. Consider though that these pages are not only accessed from the list, but also from the categories. That may be important especially for minor towns, allowing to add "famous people". Athens and Alexandria don't need that, okay, but Aegium might be proud of Ladas of Aegium (I believe I have already added him there, and I certainly did so for Sicyon). But there is one more argument that explains why you are probably both mistaken and that is chronology. Stadion victors were used by ancient authors to date historic events and that makes them no less important for the Greek historiography than the consuls were for the Romans. I think indeed that they should be added to the years pages together with the consuls and the Athenian archons, but I haven't yet started to do so, because there are still so many missing. I don't think that anybody would oppose a page on a Roman consul, even if he is only a name and a date, and the same should apply to stadion victors.--Hyphantes (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Greece-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:10, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 17 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're saying, but if, as you say, ancient authors used stadion victors to date historic events, then certainly there should be citations to support this and these people should be mention somewhere, right? As of right now the majority of the articles I've nominated fail WP:GNG. Pishcal  — ♣ 19:50, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * This is because you looked up the Alexandrians from the 2nd century AD when the system was largely replaced by ab urbe condita. Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the 1st century BC and is probably our most important source for dating ancient history, introduces every year not only with the names of the Athenian archon and the Roman consuls (as well as the historians who started or stopped their accounts), but adds also Olympic victors. In the surviving books he relates 56 names between 580 and 304 and so he seems to miss only 14, which may be explained with the missing parts of his work. I don't know how many he relates afterwards, because the source that allowed me to count them ends 300 BC.--Hyphantes (talk) 22:16, 17 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Again, I don't entirely understand what you're saying. You clearly have much more knowledge in this subject than I do, but I'm not sure what your argument here is. Either way, I would support Peterkingiron's solution of merging many of the nominated articles into a list article. Pishcal  — ♣ 14:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge all back to Olympic winners of the Stadion race and the like. All we know of most of these people is that they won a race; nothing else.  Greek dating was by Olympiad.  ab urbe condita is the Roman system of dating. A few of the articles seem to contain a little additional information, which should be placed after the names in my merge target(s).  We ought to treat Diodorus Siculus, as a reliable source, since we have no one to contradict him, but stubs like these with no hope of expansion are better dealt with in a list article.  If that becomes too long it can be split by century.  Peterkingiron (talk) 15:50, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Here are the facts: Olympiad.--Hyphantes (talk) 23:26, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Adding another two:
 * --Hyphantes (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * --Hyphantes (talk) 01:06, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Undid those nominations, reason here. Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 14:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * While these nominations do seem like an obvious example of WP:POINT, I would not be opposed to nominating those articles as they have the same problems that the articles I've nominated have. Pishcal  — ♣ 15:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * FYI I've expanded both these articles to demonstrate the difference between modern vs ancient topics in terms of what we can achieve with the available sourcing. SFB 13:53, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that we've taken this long enough as a joke. When Pishcal nominated Pantacles for deletion he obviously thought that I was kidding with my 40 articles in 24 hours. I understand why he came to that conclusion, but I was very serious. His first error was that he didn't ask me the reason for these creations, which I would have gladly explained. His second error was that he nominated 40 articles all together without giving any criteria that would allow to discern between articles to keep and those to delete. All this happened because he didn't care to collect the information necessary to understand what was going on. When he started the procedure there were lots of things he didn't know or consider:
 * ... that Pantacles was the first athlete from Athens to win at Olympia.
 * ... that Pantacles was apparently the first to win two running competitions at the same Olympiad.
 * ... that Pantacles was the first athlete in history to defend his title four years later.
 * ... that many others who have been nominated for deletion have similarly interesting specific situations.
 * ... that every article I created has very specific categories in which it appears.
 * ... that many of these articles are (or will be) linked in specific pages, especially those regarding the provenience of the athletes (like Aegium).
 * ... that many of these articles have already been expanded and will see further expansion in the last week.
 * ... that all articles are on winners of the stadion race, which means they won the most important competition at their respective Olympiad.
 * ... that their names were used by Greek historians and chronologers to name each Olympiad and define the respective period of four years, as is very clearly explained here: Olympiad.
 * ... that these articles tend to complete a work started about three years ago by User:Francois-Pier with his excellent list on the Olympic winners of the Archaic period.
 * ... that my work on the articles nominated for cancellation served to correct errors and fill gaps in that list.
 * ... that all these articles are part of a large project on which I've been working for weeks and which is by now about 2/3 of completion.
 * ... that all these articles are invoked in a calendar module Module:Year in other calendars which is now online on Wikipedia, although not yet complete, because I'm still working hard on assembling the data. I suggest that you verify the output in pages like 776 BC, 696 BC or 692 BC.
 * ... that there is still a number of red links in that calendar, which means that more articles need to be created.
 * ... that all the names mentioned above are still recorded after 2000 years which means they have stood the test of time.
 * ... that Wikipedia has thousands of stubs on modern athletes from all nations which have never been nominated for deletion, although the articles give much less information than mine and their names are already forgotten after a decade or two, for example Anthony Ketchum and half of the runners on the table in that page.
 * ... that there is a good reason why these articles are not deleted, because applying such a measure would turn hundreds of tables into a barren red desert.
 * ... that it is quite arrogant from a modern point of view to say that Anthony Ketchum (a.o.) deserves a page on Wikipedia and Pantacles of Athens not, because he is more than 2500 years dead.
 * ... that there are very few contributors on Ancient Greek History active on Wikipedia and that we might need help rather than cancellation requests which will have the only effect to drive people away.

Considering these facts, I find it quite extravagant to have a short look, say "Merge" and leave all the work for collaborators who aren't there. Regarding the list on Olympic winners of the Archaic period done by User:Francois-Pier, it appears that it should have been completed with three more pages, but since it was a hell of work, the project was never completed. It's also possible that he abandoned it after receiving "helpful" comments like the above. My work, although different in style, aimed at completing what he did and I also corrected a number of links. With more contributors on ancient Greek history, we could hopefully complete what Francois-Pier intended, but this discussion goes exactly in the opposite direction.

Now that we have cleared that these winners were epoch-defining names who have stood the test of time and are still recorded after 2000 years, I find it even more extravagant to have them cancelled when there are thousands of sports-stubs on modern athletes who never even made it to the Olympic Games. If you take a look at the one listed above, Anthony Ketchum, you'll find a table of running competitors which is 4/5th blue, but full of similar examples from all nations. If you applied the criteria you're proposing here, that table would turn 2/3rd red again. Going through similar lists you could find thousands of articles to cancel.

I know that some people enjoy undoing other people's work, but I hope that you do not belong to this category. I therefore propose that we close this procedure as soon as possible. That would be very kind, because it would allow me to get back to my work on the calendar data. Thanks for your attention.--Hyphantes (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * "Now that we have cleared that these winners were epoch-defining names who have stood the test of time and are still remembered after 2000 years..."


 * You've done nothing of the sort, and I'm afraid that nobody is joking here. You keep asserting that these people have incredible historical significance and not once have you provided a reference to support yourself. I did not give individual reasoning for each article because, as you yourself have stated ("I write these articles with copy and paste"), most of these articles are almost the exact same thing, and thus suffer from the same problems. The fact that your articles fill in links on list pages is irrelevant as to whether or not they should be deleted. I feel bad because it's clear that you've spent a lot of time and effort on these articles, but that doesn't change what they are or the problems that they suffer from. If you can improve these pages such that they no longer meet the criteria for deletion or prove to me that in their current state they do not meet those criteria, I would gladly withdraw every single one of my nominations. As it stands, the articles fail WP:GNG and none of your arguments have convinced me that they do not. Pishcal  — ♣ 01:38, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * "Now that we have cleared that these winners were epoch-defining names who have stood the test of time and are still recorded after 2000 years..."
 * This is very clearly explained here: Olympiad.
 * I hope you have found the time to read it, it's not very long.--Hyphantes (talk) 10:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * If you have problems with the modern athlete articles then please nominate them separately. No athlete article gets a special inclusion preference from me, but I think I've done a clear job of demonstrating both the potential for expansion of modern topics compared to ancient ones and my willingness to build content rather than delete it. SFB 20:46, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment -- These artiles are largely about people of whom we know nothing, but their name, their city and that they won a race. We can never have more than a stub bio for them.  Merging them all into a list article (or several) leaving the present articles as redirects deals with that problem.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:37, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge all apart from Phrynon of Athens, as it seems that he is the same person as Phrynon, who we have a little more information about. (I'm taking it on trust that he is the same person.) For the rest of them, a list article is probably going to be more helpful than a one-line stub, and we can always expand the redirects into full articles if we find enough information about any of them that they pass WP:GNG. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 15:17, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is an excellent idea. I'd invite you both to go ahead and complete the three missing pages from User:Francois-Pier's project. When you are done, we can create the redirects. In the meantime I would like to point out that the entire discussion here is based on the assumption about the future that "we can never have more than a stub bio for them". User:Pishcal must have come to the same conclusion half an hour after the articles were created. Very quick indeed!
 * But as far as I know the fact that an article is a stub is no sufficient reason for cancellation. That would be quite a disaster for Wikipedia indeed. Then again I think that the stub category is not well defined. Sometimes we have little information on a subject and then it's useless to expand it. All encyclopedias have these articles without dubbing them stubs. Important is that they are well done and collect all the relevant facts.
 * In his previous comment Peterkingiron talked about "stubs like these with no hope of expansion". I think this has already been belied for many articles in question, most of all for the first. In any case I, who have studied the argument for a while, couldn't tell you which have hope and which not, neither has anybody given an instrument to distinguish the two categories.
 * I guess you have read Olympiad by now, but still I would like you to comment on 696 BC or 692 BC and all the others down to 4 BC. Who will be able to reprogramme the Greek calendar if we cancel these pages?--Hyphantes (talk) 15:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I'd just like to clarify something. This entire discussion isn't based on any assumption, or the fact that the articles nominated are currently stubs. This discussion is based on the reasoning that in their current state, these articles do not pass WP:GNG. In addition, I'm not certain about the reliability of the one reference that most of the articles nominated have. (That would be this.) Pishcal  — ♣ 17:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know how much these people are competent of the matter, but maybe we should consider the following little discussion from the Portal Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics:

Quoted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics by --Hyphantes (talk) 17:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting question, and you may have a point there. I don't think we should automatically assume that Ancient Olympians should be treated the same as modern Olympians, but there is certainly room for interpretation. I'll leave notes at some of the relevant WikiProjects in case anyone's interested. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 17:36, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Notes left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Athletics, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Sports and games. (There was already one at WikiProject Olympics.) — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 17:45, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge all - Clearly, WP:NOLYMPICS was never intended to apply to ancient Olympic Games athletes. It is impossible for the overwhelming majority of ancient Olympic athletes to satisfy the general notability guidelines per WP:GNG, because there is not now, and never will be, significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources.  In fact, we don't even know the names of most of the ancient Olympic athletes, and for those whose names do know, that's all we know.  No basic biographical data -- no birth date, no birth place, no parents, no non-sports career, no date of death.  All notability guidelines, including specific notability guidelines like NSPORTS and NOLYMPICS only impart a presumption of notability, not a guarantee of inclusion as a stand-alone Wikipedia article.  As GNG specifically states:


 * "'Presumed' means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article . . . ."


 * This is a perfect example where these topics, in the absence of any depth of coverage sufficient to create more than one-sentence stub articles, are best covered as elements of a larger list article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:33, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * "In fact, we don't even know the names of most of the ancient Olympic athletes, and for those whose names do know, that's all we know. No basic biographical data -- no birth date, no birth place, no parents, no non-sports career, no date of death"
 * Sorry, but this is all wrong. First we are not talking about "most Olympic athletes" but only about winners. We have lots of biographical data on these, sometimes even the exact birth year like for Leonidas of Rhodes or Philinus of Cos (athlete). The second article has also the name of the father and so do many others. We almost always have the birthplace (99%). The birth year can be determined approximately (usually within a range of 10 years, sometimes even much more precisely). Several of these athletes had also a second career like Phrynon of Athens or Pythagoras of Laconia to name but a few from the first 100 years. The only info that is rarely recorded is the date of death. If you want to help please define some criteria as to when the available data is worth an article and when not.--Hyphantes (talk) 18:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hyphantes, you're not helping your case by hperventilating. Trying to discredit my obvious generalizations by focusing on the limited exceptions is a transparent tactic.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, we know the Greek city state they represented, not the birth place.  We don't know the parents.  By your own admission, we don't know the birth dates for most, but we may know a range of years in which they may have been born.  We don't know their non-sporting occupation for the overwhelming majority.  Bottom line: what I said above is not "all wrong"; it's an accurate generalization that reflects the extremely limited biographical data we have for these men.  The fact that most of these "articles" are one-sentence stubs tells the tale.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:06, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I didn't want to be offensive, just put a few things right, because your generalization was really too "general" and certainly not very "accurate". Of course, saying that it's "all wrong" is another generalization, and unfortunately this is the level of discussion here. It will remain that until somebody has the generosity to define some criteria as I'm asking since the very start of this procedure. As long as this is not done I can't take this seriously and propose to adapt the guideline that goes for modern Olympics (which is the only one at the moment available, as far as I can see). After all, here we are talking not about "any competitor in the Olympics, whatever their performance and result", but esclusively about winners of the most important competition who defined an era.
 * Bottom line: If you knew how citizenship worked in ancient Greece, you'd understand that the effective birth place is of no importance. In fact, we don't know that for 99% of ancient biographies. But in 98% we know the citizenship and so, as a standard in ancient history bios, we put that in place.--Hyphantes (talk) 19:28, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hyphantes, the standard "criteria" in this case are going to be those of the general notability guidelines per WP:GNG: significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources. Each of those elements is a Wikipedia term of art, and is described/defined in some greater detail at GNG.  It would probably be helpful if you familiarized with those elements.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:02, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, very impressive. Still that doesn't help us much in deciding whether and why Phrynon of Athens or Philinus of Cos (athlete) should be considered WP:GNG and Pantacles of Athens not. User:Francois-Pier uses basically four sources to his list, which are all online, except one. A majority of the athletes in his list are cited in all four of them, even many of those who are still red. Many others are cited in two or three sources. Only nine athletes are cited in a single source, and none of them was a winner of the stadion race, which means that they are not in question here. In my own work I have used three of the four sources used by Francois-Pier. Moreover I have found a fifth source which is in German language and very informative. I had just started to work it into my articles when this mess occurred. Francois-Pier never cites Diodorus Siculus, probably hoping that he is covered by the other authors, although his Bibliotheka may offer more additional information on the 56 names related. Another one who hasn't been considered, although he gives a lot of names and additional information with interesting detail on statues, families and later careers, is Pausanias. For the first 120 Olympiads Pausanias has over 220 significant entries covering all kind of stuff ignored by User:Dirtlawyer1: birth date, birth place, parents, non-sports career, date of death, and more. For the following 100 Olympiads numbers will be similar, although certainly lower towards the end.
 * So this remains to be done, too, for whoever is going to complete the new list (at this point certainly not me). When you're done with that, regarding the single articles you should decide whether 2, 3, 4, or 5 sources should be enough to guarantee WP:GNG. That would probably be of some help for the compilers. Good luck!--Hyphantes (talk) 21:24, 21 April 2015 (UTC)--Hyphantes (talk) 16:05, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Simply pointing to other articles of equal or lesser quality and saying "Those things exist" is not an argument as for how the articles nominated meet WP:GNG. You have not yet proved that the articles nominated have significant coverage in reliable sources, and as User:Dirtlawyer1 has said, I doubt there will ever be enough information for an encyclopedia article. Also, if I understand what you're saying at the end of your comment, then I have to say this: nobody has any responsibility to prove anything or add anything to an article. The WP:BURDEN is on you to prove notability. Pishcal  — ♣ 17:05, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge most, but Keep 3 (see below)- Most of the articles are stubs with boiler plate text, so they should be merged into a list. However, a few of the athletes (specificallyPhrynon, Dandes of Argos andOebotas of Dyme) do seem to have enough coverage to write more than a one sentence stub. Per NOLYMPICS participating in an Olympic game is enough to meet notability requirements and the sources we do have were written during the first few centuries AD, meaning that individuals who had been dead for nearly a millennia were getting coverage in an era before the invention of the printing press. While the articles of some of the athletes I want to keep may be on the short side, I believe that the athletes are notable enough for articles and there is evidence that there is enough coverage to expand their articles further. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:36, 24 April 2015 (UTC) (Note: I originally voted to keep all, but have since changed my argument due to further comments.) Spirit of Eagle (talk) 18:59, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Quoting the general notability guidelines: ""'Presumed' means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article . . . ." Given the paucity of in-depth coverage of these subjects, covering 100 one-sentence topics as elements of a list is common sense.  This is what list articles handle best.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:57, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I see your point. Most of these article simply state that such and such person won such and such event in such and such year, and expansion will be difficult since most coverage of these individuals will have long since been lost to the ages. While I believe these people are notable, a list would do a good job concisely covering these individuals without any loss in information, so I'll support a merge to the appropriate sections. However, there were a few individuals who I felt should keep their articles since they contain information that would be lost if they were merged to a list:

Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:49, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Phrynon: as a general, meets WP:SOLDIER. Also, extensive coverage and impact.
 * Dandes of Argos : Multiple sources and impact in terms of a poem published about him.
 * Oebotas of Dyme: information in his article about a statue built in his honor and rituals in Achea that centered around him.
 * Thanks, I think you have made some excellent points, especially regarding temporary notability. I have to thank you also for your edit on Oebotas which was, as far as I know, the first substantial contribution to the ancient sports section since I have started working on it. If you continue you might discover a lot more interesting athletes.
 * I was seriously thinking if it had any sense to continue working on Achaean League. When I started, most of them had the following form: Dioedas. I'm thankful that User:Pishcal didn't find them before me, because he would have liked to delete those too, leaving nothing to edit. But now I see that they're protected by WP:SOLDIER and so I think I can create some more of them ;-D

"When reason fails it's always good to have a guideline."

- Hyphantes

--Hyphantes (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't appreciate your comments about me and my actions, could you please strike them? Pishcal  — ♣ 14:47, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would also be careful about creating an article for every single ancient general when only enough information is available about them to create a single sentence stub. If you are creating article after article with boilerplate text where the only things that change are the general's name and date of service, then it might be better to compile them into a list. These individuals may be notable, but it would be easier for our readers to see all of this information presented on a single page that sorts the Greek generals by the few known differences between them. Also, this point doesn't apply to Phrynon since he has had decently significant coverage, so its possible to write a more expansive article about him. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 17:34, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge all (except for Phrynon and Philinus of Cos) The entire sum of human knowledge about the majority of these people can each be given in one sentence. It is not appropriate to have stand-alone articles on such topics. I appreciate the efforts of Hyphantes, as coverage of these athletes is indeed important, albeit that I differ on the presentation of that information. The fact that the athlete's importance is linked entirely with one event and is shrouded by the passing of history doesn't help. The use of the people to mark epochs is more a convenient and somewhat incidental choice of archaeologists – it doesn't represent the people being the truly definitive humans of the period any more than some Welsh rocks are a defining element of 60 million years of history.
 * If we could interview these people now then surely we could have the sources to write an article on these people, but that isn't the case. I concur with Hyphantes that modern athletes should have the same criteria applied. The specific examples of Spearmon and Ketchum probably aren't the best, though, as these are athletes who have won national titles and international medals for the United States (including some gold) in multiple competitions. Redirects can be left and categorised for the ancient athletes as this will be a useful feature to retain. SFB 20:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: Does anyone have any specific objections to the three exceptions to the general merge I proposed? These three had more coverage from sources and a demonstrated impact, especially for Phrynon, and I don't think they should be merged/ redirected simply because they were nominated alongside numerous articles where this would be an appropriate outcome. Legitimate encyclopedic content would be lost, and per WP:PRESERVE, we should be keeping, not eliminating, encyclopedic content. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 20:37, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * SOE, I think Phrynon crosses the finish line to have sufficient sources and content to sustain a viable stub/start article. The other two articles, IMO, are much closer judgment calls and I will defer to those participants who are more knowledgeable in these eras of ancient Greek history.  The rest of the one-liners should be merged to the list, with redirects to the list article.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:57, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Phrynon should definitely not be merged as these is more than adequate coverage to justify an article. I also think that Philinus of Cos is sufficient as an athlete with coverage in multiple competitions and years. Not fully convinced about any of the others, whose information could be easily accomodated in a brief "notes" field in a table of winners. SFB 21:47, 24 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Support  Spirit of Eagle -- Several people have refered to what I said. I do not think that analogies with the modern Olympic Games is helpful.  They are a worldwide competition; the ancient Olympics only operated in the Greek world, an area larger than modern Greece, but still only a small part of the world.  My merge proposal would have left most of the winners' articles as redirects to a list, so that they will readily come up on searches.  For any person for whom there is further information, keeping a substantive article is appropriate.  For the rest, we know nothing but that they on a race in a certain year.  Such a short article will probably get tagged as a stub, but it is a stub that cannot be expanded, because there are no other sources whatsoever.  One may be able to find a dozen secondary and tertiary sources, but they all depend on a single primary source.  Anything beyons what that primary source says is "original research" (in the WP sense of speculation or invention), whether by the WP editor or one of the derivative authors.  Peterkingiron (talk) 10:26, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment: I changed my initial vote to merge all but a small number of the athletes. Some of the athletes do in fact have enough coverage from reliable sources to write more than a single sentence stub article. I personally support keeping the articles that have any significant sourced information beyond boiler plate text because of the impact of Olympic winners on Greek society and because of the specific individual impact listed by the sources, but in the entire list I found only three athletes who had enough non-boilerplate information to justify a keep. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 18:46, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * As nominator I would support merging all into a list article, except for the more notable ones. The consensus seems to be that Phrynon is the most notable out of all of these.  Pishcal  — ♣ 12:38, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge most articles into a list. Phrynon clearly deserves an independent article as a solider. Oebotas of Dyme also crosses the threshold with his statue. However, there's only one sentence about Dandes of Argos's poem. It would be more substantial if we had a copy of this poem, otherwise this poem is merely a footnote that could fit on the list. Elassint  Hi 15:15, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  01:09, 29 April 2015 (UTC) Comment: I found an online version of Poetae lyrici Graeci, the book in which the poem Simonides of Ceos wrote about Dandes of Argos is published:. Hyphantes, could you find the specific poem you cited in this work? It also looks like the book might provide background information on the poems listed within. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:54, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep all The notability of these subjects is assured per WP:NOLYMPICS. The details of how we organise and display this notable information is not a matter of deletion but our policy WP:NOTPAPER indicates that it is fine to have a separate page for each as there is no significant cost in doing so.  Having separate pages facilitates the use of organisational standards such as PERSONDATA while our lists tend to be idiosyncratic and so less helpful to people wanting to navigate or analyse this data in a structured way.  If the amount of information about particular athletes is small then this is not a problem because we have no need or requirement to display some fixed quantity of information about a topic - "enough is as good as a feast".  Conventional print encyclopedia commonly have small stubby entries for many topics and so it is quite reasonable and respectable that we should do the same.  Finally note that the general shift to use of mobile devices should encourage us to break up topics into small pieces rather than having great walls of text in the style of many FAs.  Atomising this data fits this trend nicely. Andrew D. (talk) 07:10, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
 * No, like all guidelines, WP:NOLYMPICS is subject to interpretation and common sense. Furthermore, like all all notability guidelines, NOLYMPICS, if satisfied, imparts a presumption of notability.  As WP:GNG specifically states:


 * "'Presumed' means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject should be included. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article . . . ."


 * Bottom line: we may decide that the best presentation of these subjects is in a list article, even if they satisfy one or more notability guidelines. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 07:56, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Additionally, WP:NOTPAPER specifically says "However, there is an important distinction between what can be done, and what should be done ... this policy is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must abide by the appropriate content policies". Additionally, I wouldn't say that an article being short and thus easy for mobile readers to access is grounds for inclusion. Pishcal  — ♣ 13:24, 29 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Merge most into well annotated list: as a few people argue here, a couple of the articles have value as independet articles, but there is no sense of having a whole slew of articles that have less than 50 page views a month excluding initial creation (and including bots), when we could encourage people interest in one of the persons to explore the others in the same page, Sadads (talk) 16:49, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Keep, but without prejudice to merging. I agree with Andrew D.'s comment above: "Conventional print encyclopedia commonly have small stubby entries for many topics and so it is quite reasonable and respectable that we should do the same." Placeholder articles are often better if the alternative is a combination of articles and redirects to lists. Srnec (talk) 23:59, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 19:35, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge all - I think these are clearly notable people, and thus should either be kept (in cases where sufficient information can be written for a stand-alone article) or should be merged (when there is not sufficient information for a stand-alone article). WP:N says to use coverage in reliable sources to assess notability because that is a straightforward way to tell if something is likely notable.  However, it is not the coverage in sources that makes the subject notable, but rather the interest from the world at large.  WP:N also says to use common sense, making it clear that coverage isn't necessary to assess notability when it would be blatantly obvious that the subject is notable.  I think it is blatantly obvious that the champions of what were the greatest athletic events of their time would be notable people, and thus in depth coverage of these people is thus not necessary to assess their notability.  Because these are notable people, there articles certainly shouldn't be deleted outright.  However, the WP:WHYN section of WP:N also makes it clear that significant coverage is required so that we have enough information to write stand-alone articles on notable subjects, and that notable subjects without significant coverage should instead be covered in a larger article or list.  Thus any of these people without significant coverage should be merged, and any with significant coverage should be kept, but none of them should be deleted. Calathan (talk) 18:59, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, per AndrewD above. As for the arguments relying on the supposedly parochial nature of the ancient Olympics, does that mean that we are going to start deleting articles on champion Australian rules football and Gaelic football players too? -Jpbrenna (talk) 04:43, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
 * "Parochial nature of the ancient Olympics?"  Those words, or even words to that effect, do not appear anywhere in this discussion except your comment.  The question is not whether the ancient Olympics were important to the history of sport and the evolution of Western culture generally.  Clearly they were.  And the ancient Olympic Games are indisputably "notable" in the Wikipedia sense, too.  Those points are not the issues at hand here.  What is hotly contested here is (a) whether all of the listed ancient Olympic athletes are "notable" -- in the Wikipedia sense -- in their own right, based on significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources per the general notability guidelines per WP:GNG (and a small handful of those listed may be), and (b) even if they are "notable," given the relative absence of any detailed information about the subject athletes, does it not make more sense for them to be covered as elements of a list article, rather than having perma-stubs for all of them?  Even if all of them are determined to be notable in the Wikipedia sense per GNG, that is "not a guarantee, that a subject should be included.  A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article."  Common sense suggests that these subjects should be covered within a single list article, where they may be discussed as a group, rather in 40 separate one and two-sentence stub articles that have ZERO chance of ever being expanded.  More people will read the list than will ever find the individual stubs.  If you can't see that, you probably have not looked at all 40 of these stub articles.  Moreover, your comment regarding "champion Australian rules football and Gaelic football players" strongly suggests that you do not understand that "notability," as used in these AfD discussions, is based on in-depth coverage in published sources, not some subjectively perceived sense of the subject's importance.  Notability is determined by the existence significant coverage in reliable sources.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 09:14, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Words to that effect do in fact appear above: "...I do not think that analogies with the modern Olympic Games is helpful. They are a worldwide competition; the ancient Olympics only operated in the Greek world, an area larger than modern Greece, but still only a small part of the world..." If that is the objection to applying the modern Olympic notability criteria to ancient athletes, then logically it calls into question the notability of modern practitioners of sports that are not played world-wide. Otherwise, we should apply the same standard to ancient Olympians that we apply to modern ones. As for multiple independent, reliable sources, well yes, we do in fact have them for some if one bothers to look. I will stipulate that the majority of of these athletes seem to be attested only by Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon, but not all, e.g. Phrynon. Several are the subjects of poetry and had important military and political careers in addition to their Olympic victories. This proposed deletion list ignores that and lumps them all together, as if our only source for them is Eusebius, and they are only notable for their Olympic victories. Not all of these articles have "ZERO" chance for expansion. If you can't see that, then I question whether you yourself have in fact looked at all forty of these articles. --Jpbrenna (talk) 19:26, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
 * JPB: "If that is the objection to applying the modern Olympic notability criteria to ancient athletes, then logically it calls into question the notability of modern practitioners of sports that are not played world-wide." No, the standard is significant coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources: "significant coverage" does not mean one and two-sentence mentions in one or two history texts.  That's the reason the list option is the most sensible way to present this content to our readers, in a single coherent article -- with the exception of three or four athletes who may have sufficient content for viable stub/start articles.  As for modern athletes, they are included because most of them are awash in in-depth coverage of their personal and sporting lives, and coverage does not need to be world-wide to be "significant."
 * JPB: "As for multiple independent, reliable sources, well yes, we do in fact have them for some if one bothers to look." Okay, please list those multiple, independent, reliable sources for each of these 40 article subjects, and please quote the language dealing with each subject athletes if you cannot link to the source online.  I  maintain that significant coverage does not exist for 35 to 38 of these subject ancient Greek athletes.
 * JPB: "Several are the subjects of poetry and had important military and political careers in addition to their Olympic victories." I think it was pretty well established that one became a notable military leader, and couple of others may have been referenced in ancient poetry.  That does not justify a stand-alone article for the other 35 athletes.
 * JPB: "This proposed deletion list ignores that and lumps them all together, as if our only source for them is Eusebius, and they are only notable for their Olympic victories." Actually, a collective AfD made perfect sense for these topics because there needs to be a merge (with redirects) of most these subjects, and a list is the logical, well-established way to handle that.  Furthermore, there is a fairly obvious consensus demonstrated above to merge, not delete these articles into a single list, while allowing that three or four of them may have sufficient sourcing to fill out a decent "Start"-quality article.  So, please identify the three or four you think can be expanded beyond a one- or two-sentence stub.
 * JPB: "Not all of these articles have 'ZERO' chance for expansion. If you can't see that, then I question whether you yourself have in fact looked at all forty of these articles." I looked at all of them six weeks ago when this discussion started: I stand by my assertion that no more than three or four of these subjects has any chance of being expanded beyond a one- or two-sentence stub.  Those exceptions are already discussed above.  Cheers.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Convenience break, no. 1

 * Further comment: I still say merge into one list. In any cases where there is anything else known apart from theri victory in a race, a substantive article should be retained, but with these exceptions, we know nothing of them except that they won one race.  ZERO other biography and ZERO sources for furthter research, because there are no other WP:RS on their lives.  Comparison with modern sports is a false comparison, but we generally have other sources on their biography.  My argument is not that their achievement was NN, but that a stand-alon article ought normally to have one than a single statement (and its background).  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:30, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The only following articles seem to have additional content, but often only very slight:


 * Eurybus of Athens
 * Phrynon of Athens
 * Dandes of Argos
 * Epaenetus of Argos -- possibly: there is one extra sentence.
 * Cratinus of Megara -- possibly as his brother won the boxing.
 * Dionysius Sameumys of Alexandria -- possibly as he won twice.
 * Oebotas of Dyme -- had a statue at Olympia
 * I suspect that this needs to be followed up by a nom for some hundreds more articles to be merged in. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:47, 26 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Peter, I would agree that there are enough sources and substance for Eurybus, Phrynon and Dandes to have stand-alone articles. Epaenetus, Cratinus, Dionysius and Oebotas should be merged into the list.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:45, 26 May 2015 (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.

Since nobody has thought it necessary to post a count before concluding the discussion, I'll do it.


 * Keep: 5
 * Merge all: 2
 * Merge, but keep some:7
 * Delete: 0

This means that the original deletion request was rejected. I want to thank everybody for this unanimous vote, because it attests that my contributions were valid.

Actually this appeared quite clear from the start as even the originator of the request, Pishcal, has never cast a vote for deletion. His vote is Merge, but keep some.

Thus remains the question why the deletion request was filed at all. I think that Pishcal  had every right to question the utility of the pages created. He was also right trying to influence the further development of the project. There is an instrument on Wikipedia to do that. It is called Talk page.

However he decided on another instrument without ever contacting me and this gave a number of people, who had never taken any interest in the argument, the power to interfere. What followed has been called a "mess" by Dirtlawyer1 and I would rather agree with his definition.

More precisely, I'd tend to call the procedure an abuse, since it has been wielded to install a kind of preventive democratic control over how users have to submit their contributions to Wikipedia, which is certainly not the purpose of a deletion request.

According to the spirit of the compromise reached and to judge from the messages posted on the single talk pages, it is now in the competence of the admins to decide which articles on ancient athletes are permitted, how many and why. Thus everything has been burocraticized and as a consequence the whole area of research has been transformed into a minefield. So who would ever touch it again?

This approach hasn't worked in the past and it never will. Probably these power plays are also among the motives for the loss of so many valid editors whose enthusiasm must have vanished for a reason. As long as these stupid games have the better, I'm afraid the future looks bleak. Wikipedia can only survive as a free encyclopedia and today we have lost some of that freedom.

After many words, here is the body count of today's battle:

This user has stopped contributing to Wikipedia.

What I leave on the field is a rudimentary list of Olympic winners, thirty-five marginal articles with a merge tag and an incomplete calendar which is currently displayed on 776 pages and should have been expanded to 400 more.

Maybe the users wielding paragraphs and guidelines will take care of the completion of these projects, but from what I've seen I'm not very optimistic. Thanks everybody for watching. Good bye. --Hyphantes (talk) 22:35, 27 May 2015 (UTC)