Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pietro Farina (athlete)


 * 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 ‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__  no consensus. There are lingering concerns that the sources provided in article are largely based on interviews that lack independence, and that what is left is not the in-depth coverage that confers notability. I found no formal policy or guideline specifically concerning the status of interviews as sources, only an essay, WP:INTERVIEW, where the positive and negative considerations have been presented. The fact that a fairly large newspaper published an interview indicates that the publishers consider the person to be of some note, but using the material in an interview as a source does bring up valid independence issues, more so if the claims are contentious. There was at least one objectively incorrect claim from the "keep" side (that the subject was an Olympic medalist), but the main thrust is that the sum of coverage, including the interview, is sufficient. Aside from being in the majority, those claims were not unreasonable. Sjakkalle (Check!)  06:23, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Pietro Farina (athlete)

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

Not a notable athlete; source 3 (at least as of nomination) shows minimal SIGCOV, and overall not enough to justify inclusion.  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 06:44, 2 December 2023 (UTC) Relisting comment: Evaluation of expansion of article would be helpful. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 07:30, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sportspeople and Italy.  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 06:44, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Olympics-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 11:38, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep, thank you for nominating the article and giving us the chance to improve it. I added a few sources to the article but the most notable of them is this one, which contains a lot of information about Farina (I am just not comfortable parsing most of it due to the language barrier). It can be difficult to find info because there are so many people with this name but he is definitely widely covered in Italian sources as a coach and associate of famed sprinter Pietro Mennea. --Habst (talk) 00:07, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. Habst's source looks like significant coverage; as we already have coverage to satisfy WP:SPORTCRIT, I think its safe to assume an athlete like this will have more offline coverage as well, considering he competed in the 1970s. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:07, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star   Mississippi  15:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment. The material added from Italian sources is currently looking weird. Surely he was a coach in years other than 2019 and 2021 as well? I added something more tangible, though, namely his medal at the 1977 Universiade. The Universiade had a higher status at the time, when World Championships did not exist. This should of course be followed up by contemporary news sources discussing his exploits. Geschichte (talk) 11:25, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Geschichte, thank you for helping to improve the article. My citing of the Italian sources was awkward because I don't know Italian and I was trying to be as accurate as possible based on the machine translation. And thank you for including his Universiade medal -- that should make him meet WP:NATH as a medalist at a major international competition as well. --Habst (talk) 15:30, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete. The source mentioned above is 85% quotes from Farina. This is the only content that isn't part of the interview, with material that is actually directly on Farina bolded:
 * A local interview with so little secondary independent commentary is not enough for NATH. JoelleJay (talk) 06:42, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for voting and bringing this to our attention. I was able to find many matches for articles about Farina at the Corriere Della Sera archives, but I had issues logging in through the Wikipedia library so I'm not sure how I can share them here. I captured the image of one and added it to refideas in Talk:Pietro Farina (athlete), the image is here: Oggi la finale dei 200 metri. Do you know any Italian to help us go through these matches? Thanks, --Habst (talk) 14:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, that source only has a passing mention of Farina in a routine event recap. My own search of Corriere only returned 4 hits from 1972 to 1980, two of them being the source above, one being a mention in a discussion about athlete pensions, and one a false positive for a "Pietro Fanna". JoelleJay (talk) 17:57, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for looking through the sources. Can you try to incorporate the pensions citation into the article, as that would help us build a case for widespread coverage? Looking at some other athletes from that time period, it looks like Farina competed during what some called "the Pietro Mennea era" in Italy where athletics was of prominent national interest, so I want to look into other Italian news sources. I was also able to find Farina's name in this list -- I think it is a list of national champions? It would really help if we had an Italian language speaker to decipher some of these sources for us. --Habst (talk) 18:55, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The pensions story is minor and his involvement in it only passing, it would be UNDUE to include. Given the extensive coverage of Mennea in Corriere during that time, if Farina was notable I think we'd expect to see more than a handful of articles within that database that mention him. JoelleJay (talk) 00:26, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for replying and translating the pensions story, at least we know more about it now. I think we have to look at other news sources and ask for the help of an Italian speaker if needed -- when the article was first proposed for deletion, it was only one sentence long, and now we have already found several sources mentioning Farina and the article has improved despite not knowing the source material language at all. I found that with Vittorino Milanesio, it was helpful to search for specific region names alongside his name as local coverage endured, and by doing that with Farina I found another source noting his coaching position at an athletics club, which I added to the article. I suppose the next step, then, would be to look at local papers near Belgioioso, Lombardy and see if their archives are accessible? --Habst (talk) 02:43, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter what the state of the article is or was if we don't have multiple sources of IRS SIGCOV. An article full of trivial mentions or non-independent material is no more encyclopedic than a single-sentence stub. The lack of easily-accessible sources is just another indicator that the subject isn't notable, per WP:N: Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability. JoelleJay (talk) 05:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for the helpful response and motivation to look for better sources. Switching gears to IRS SIGCOV then, what do you think about the idea that the la Provincia Pavese article about Farina is independent and reliable, despite its inclusion of many quotes by Farina? I say this because per the three bulleted criteria at WP:IS,
 * Is this source self-published or not? -- No, it is published by Di Roberto Lodigiani and La Provincia Pavese.
 * Is this source independent or third-party, or is it closely affiliated with the subject? -- It is independent as La Provincia Pavese is a general purpose newspaper that doesn't appear to have any connection to Farina.
 * Is this source primary or not? -- No, it is not a primary source because La Provincia Pavese has its own editors / editorial standards, the purpose of the article appears to be to tell a history of Farina's life that may in part be in his own words, but the editors of the paper are responsible for fact-checking the statements unlike e.g. Farina's club website atletica100torri.com, which might be considered a self-published source.
 * So, by the Wikipedia policy definition, it appears that article is considered independent, I don't see any policy that says because an article includes mainly quotes that it should not be considered. What do you think? --Habst (talk) 12:14, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The material in the interview that is directly from Farina, or is simply summarizing what Farina said, is not independent or secondary and so does not count toward GNG. We would need to see substantial secondary commentary by the interviewer for this to be considered usable SIGCOV. The policy you're looking for is WP:OR which notes that interviews are primary sources. JoelleJay (talk) 19:55, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for clarifying. I looked at the WP:OR page, and I could not find any mention of the word "interview" in the main text of the policy. The word "interview" is only mentioned in the footnotes, and even then it says, including (depending on context) reviews and interviews specifically emphasizing that whether or not an interview is original research is depending on context.
 * I think it is clear that in the context of being published by a newspaper, the Provincia Pavese article is not original research -- I think that WP:OR is actually referring to if an editor were to interview Farina directly, then obviously that could not be used as a source, but as long as a reputable third party is conducting the interview (in this case, the newspaper), it is okay to use. What do you think? --Habst (talk) 20:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It is most certainly not referring to "an editor interviewing Farina directly" because the classification of interviews as primary comes from UNR and Duke, not Wikipedia. The "context" mentioned is the existence of independent commentary by the interviewer, which is acknowledged to be secondary. Since you seem to cite essays, read this one, which states  See also this uncontroversial AfD nom by an admin: This article on a tattoo artist is sourced mainly from interviews. Being primary sources, they don't help us establish his notability. Or this other AfD by another admin: WP:BLP of a radio personality and podcaster, referenced entirely to WP:PRIMARYSOURCES and Q&A interviews that cannot support notability with no evidence of reliable source coverage shown at all. [...] media coverage about him, written in the third person rather than featuring the subject talking about himself, are required for passage of WP:GNG. Or this statement in another AfD by a third admin: Things like "interviews" and "press releases" are often not considered to be "third party coverage", even if posted by a third party website, because the account is largely (sometimes entirely) from the first party itself. Or these closes of AfDs by a fourth admin: The result was delete. Interviews are primary sources so the delete argument is the policy based one. The result was delete. I am more persuaded by the delete arguments around the necessity of independent sourcing for a BLP then keep arguments that articles that are basically interviews are independent. Or this close by a fifth admin: The argument that interviews are admissible is an oversimplification; interviews may count toward GNG when they have intellectually independent content; that has not been demonstrated here. JoelleJay (talk) 22:18, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for your research. Putting aside this discussion for a moment, I found another SIGCOV article about Farina here:
 * I will add it to the article as well as it contains new information. This one is not an interview, so what do you think of it? Thank you for your help. --Habst (talk) 13:49, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Interviews alone don't warrant inclusion.  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 00:20, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @InvadingInvader, thank you. I found another article that is not an interview, in addition to those already in the wiki article, here:
 * I have added it to the page. This one is not an interview, so it can be used to warrant inclusion. --Habst (talk) 13:57, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * I have added it to the page. This one is not an interview, so it can be used to warrant inclusion. --Habst (talk) 13:57, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete: Subject lacks independent coverage with which to pass the GNG (the only source provided is comprised primarily of quotes from the subject themself, which is not independent). The tired WP:MUSTBESOURCES is not a suitable deletion argument and should be discounted completely. Let&#39;srun (talk) 18:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @Let'srun, thank you for voting because it is important to scrutinize our sources. There are 9 sources provided in the article, plus one on the talk page and one additional source mentioned in this discussion. What policy-based reasons do we have to discard the La Provincia Pavese source? I tried and I could not find any Wikipedia policy saying that a newspaper article quoting someone is not independent.
 * La Prov Pavese has its own editorial team that would be responsible for the content in articles -- Farina is not responsible and it is not self published, which would make it independent.
 * P.S. I have wondered, is your username named after LetsRun.com? I'm admittedly a big fan of their work. --Habst (talk) 11:53, 17 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep – More sources have now been located by Habst, and there are certainly more offline. Svartner (talk) 13:39, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep as an Olympic games medalist per WP:NTRACK बिनोद थारू (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a false claim – he never won a medal in the Olympic Games.  Invading Invader  (userpage, talk) 00:24, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Can you point to which ones are SIGCOV? Maybe I missed them... JoelleJay (talk) 18:34, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for responding. Yes, the La Provincia Pavese article written by Di Roberto Lodigiani is plainly SIGCOV. Per the examples at WP:SIGCOV:
 * addresses the topic directly and in detail -- Farina is the subject of the article, and he is addressed directly in detail.
 * no original research is needed to extract the content -- the content is stated plainly in the article, no original research is required.
 * Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material. -- in the Provincia Pavese article, Farina is the subject, he is not just trivially mentioned. It is clearly not similar to the "trivial mention" example in the policy, and it is more similar to the IBM example of non-trivial coverage.
 * --Habst (talk) 20:07, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you seriously claiming the five sentences of non-quotes in that article are closer to the book-length history of IBM than to the one-sentence example of trivial coverage? Again, the only content in that source that could contribute to notability is the secondary commentary by the author; nothing the subject says directly, or that is simply repeated by the interviewer, counts at all to consideration of GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 21:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi @JoelleJay, thank you for scrutinizing the sources because it challenges us to improve the article. I added a new reference for Farina to the article here:
 * This one is not an interview, and it is solely about Farina, and it is longer than five sentences. May I ask you to reconsider your vote based on this reference in addition to the other 9 sources already used in the article? --Habst (talk) 14:01, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * ? But that article is an interview? JoelleJay (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for pointing that out. As I don't know Italian and am relying on machine translation, I thought the quotes were someone else talking about Farina. I used a regex  to remove the quotes from the articles, here is the result:
 * @JoelleJay, thank you for pointing that out. As I don't know Italian and am relying on machine translation, I thought the quotes were someone else talking about Farina. I used a regex  to remove the quotes from the articles, here is the result:

Farina senior e l’amico Mennea L’ex atleta papà del bomber OltreVoghe 21 Gennaio 2014 alle 03:07 OGHERA. . La carriera di Farina, che aveva come specialità i 200 metri, dura dieci anni: dal 1976 al 1986. Diversi titoli italiani conquistati e il risultato di vice campioni del Mondo a Sofia nel 1978 quando Mennea era infortunato. . Nel 1986 Farina vince il concorso e viene scelto dalla Federazione come allenatore nazionale delle categorie giovanili e per diversi anni è preparatore della squadra di basket dell’Annabella Pavia in A1. Con la nascita nel 1990 di Marco (che gioca nell’OltrepoVoghera) l’atleta, che tra pochi giorni compirà 59 anni, si dedica alla famiglia. Il rapporto con il figlio è stretto, ma non ossessivo. . Partecipa alla conversazione Cosa ne pensi? Esprimi ora la tua opinione \ufeffCommenta per primo Ora Farina jr. è quasi pronto al rientro. . Marco Quaglini

Relisting comment: This needs a little more discussion given the consensus has not been completely reached yet. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Zippybonzo &#124; talk  &#124;  contribs  (he&#124;she&#124;they) 19:16, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Combined with the non-quoted information from the other nine references, I think this is enough to establish SIGCOV. What do you think? --Habst (talk) 22:14, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, I am not quite sure how to classify this article on second thought. It does contain many quotes (presumably from Farina), but it also contains prose between the quotes and does not seem to contain any questions. I think it would be very useful to have a native Italian speaker to analyze these for us. Is there a standard way of requesting this? --Habst (talk) 22:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Interviews don't have to be in Q&A format... 4-5 sentences isn't much, especially when it's from an interview scenario. JoelleJay (talk) 01:54, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Keep. At the minimum, I say that to err in favour of the subject. My notion is however that Wikipedia's guidelines have been met: Farina has indeed received coverage in Italy, on which we can build a fairly in-depth article. At the same time there are problems both with bad claims in this discussion ("Olympic medalist") and bad prose in the article as it stands. The attempts to denounce any and all coverage about Farina as trivial or non-independent, seem undue and on the verge of WP:WIKILAWYERING. Frankly, deletion discussions should not be characterized by the sheer energy displayed here, which will serve to exhaust most editors/contributors. With everything taken into consideration, it seems to add up to the coverage being significant enough. Geschichte (talk) 16:46, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep per the above and per WP:HEY. The article may be small but the refs should notability and hopefully it will be expanded soon. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 04:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)