Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tatiana Rafter


 * 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 delete. Much discussion here about the wisdom of the sports-specific notability guidelines, and discrimination against women in sports, but the bottom line is that there's clear consensus here that the subject fails some combination of WP:GNG and WP:NHOCKY. It was pointed out that there's multiple mentions in reliable media, but mentions are not what establishes WP:N, in-depth coverage is. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:54, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Tatiana Rafter

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Non-notable ice hockey player. Was a removed prod with the mistaken idea that playing in a national league in itself was notable. Subject fails to meet WP:GNG. And they also fail to meet WP:NHOCKEY which requires women's players to play in the World Championships/Olympics. DJSasso (talk) 16:16, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 16:30, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 16:30, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ice hockey-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 16:30, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 16:31, 23 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete: Subject fails to meet NHOCKEY, and no evidence she meets the GNG beyond scanty references in routine sports coverage (and damn little enough of that) explicitly debarred by WP:ROUTINE from supporting notability. I'd be very interested in what notability criterion the deprodder thinks "playing in a national league" satisfies.   Ravenswing    17:41, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Fails WP:NHOCKEY and routine sports reporting is insufficient to meet WP:GNG. Playing for Canada in the 2013 Winter Universiade games is the closest she's come to meeting any notability criteria. Papaursa (talk) 00:13, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. Plainly and obviously notable as a successful professional sportswoman: WP:NHOCKEY is irrelevant here because all of its criteria only apply to male players and, short of transitioning in succeeding in a male league, that is literally impossible for any female players. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 08:32, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that women's professional hockey does not garner the media attention necessary to be included on NHOCKEY, it receives less than most male leagues unfortunately, which is why to meet it women's players must play in the World Championships to meet NHOCKEY where they are likely to garner the media attention required to meet GNG. -DJSasso (talk) 09:16, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That is a ridiculously discriminatory claimed standard. There's more on her than for many, many male players and it's more than sufficient to pass GNG in my book. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 09:58, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice try, but no. Almost every citation in the article is a primary source, which cannot count towards the GNG and notability. Of the two that are not, one's a broken link, and the other's a press release.  If you're going to claim that this article meets the GNG, you're going to have to identify some sources that satisfy its provisions.  Otherwise, would you care to identify the notability criteria which being a "successful professional sportswoman" satisfies?   Ravenswing    10:53, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Of the two non-primary sources (here is the archive link for the dead one), in one she is simply mentioned in a list and the other is about a local fundraiser for an injured player which Tatiana and her brother hosted. While the fundraiser definitely interviews her, it does not have much in terms of significant depth of coverage on here, no more than any local paper would have on any person hosting a fundraiser. Seems pretty strictly WP:ROUTINE as these types of articles are in every local paper every week, regardless of the host's notability. I'm not sure how that article would make her any more notable than, say, a firefighter's pancake breakfast. As to women's hockey players presumed notability, unfortunately, the leagues are so poorly cover in the media (players included), that I have had a really hard time just trying to find verifiable info on teams, much less so who was playing for each team at any given time. Because of the guidelines calling for significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject needed to meet GNG, than if wikipedia is being discriminatory, it is only the media has decided not to cover it. The only way to fix this is to start demanding more coverage the leagues from the media itself, which can be done by watching games and showing interest. It's getting better, but it's not there yet. Yosemiter (talk) 15:04, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is more than happy to accept much less than this standard for tens of thousands of other sporting articles. The only reason we're even here is the overtly discriminatory guideline that says that that standard is okay if those athletes are playing in male leagues. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 15:08, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:NSPORTS entire purpose is to make an easy guideline through a set of parameters in a given sport so that any subjects that meet one of the criterion will consistently meet WP:GNG. NSPORTS constantly is evaluating whether new criteria should/could be added, usually within the specific sports projects. Hockey is not a worldwide popular sport, such as football or cricket, and its widespread coverage for women is limited to the Olympics and Worlds. The women's leagues have been evaluated several times, and a set of criteria could not be made where players will consistently meet GNG on their own merits. There are several women hockey players who do meet GNG without playing the Olympics or Worlds, so GNG is still the governing guideline. So it appears your problem lies with the need to meet GNG, which is what is at issue here. Does this player meet GNG? Yes or No? If you answer yes, then please provide some independent, non-primary, reliable, coverage of significant depth. That is the first step to making criteria for an SNG, male, female, or anyone else. Yosemiter (talk) 15:18, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Comment I don't see how playing in NWHL would make her notable, but I thought her college accomplishments had a better chance. The CIS awards page does not even mention her being 1st team all-Canadian but this article validates it, if that matters. I did however find the following: from the Winnipeg free press,  from the Winnipeg Sun. Not sure there is enough for a keep vote, but should be considered. I should add the hockey writers article, but I am not sure how that website is viewed in a GNG discussion.18abruce (talk) 18:49, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm actually leaning towards a weak delete on this one. While looking for sources, I also came across the Winnipeg Free Press and The Hockey Writer's articles (linked in 18bruce's comment, which was posted while I had to go do real life stuff), plus this one from the same THW author. Personally, I feel THW is usually more independent than any SBNation article, only because THW covers all hockey subjects, an not just the local team(s). However, the author of those articles, Dan Rice, works for the NWHL and covers the NJ Devils (Rafter's team, the Riveters, play in the Devils practice facility) for THW, which really makes me question the independence of the articles. Again, we still cannot claim there is a consistent criteria for NWHL players, but some do get some minor independent coverage. In fact, this subject's best articles are from her time in college, not the pro league. In the end, this particular player could go either way for me, but two articles from her home papers and a few from a hockey-specific blog/newsite written by a likely non-independent writer pushes this towards the delete side. I'm not sure what to make of the coverage on the charity event covered in the Manitoba papers. Yosemiter (talk) 19:21, 25 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Passes WP:GNG.    (brief mention, but quality source)  (same as SI)  (heavily mentioned there). This isn't an exhaustive list, either - it's easily web searched. There's quite a bit written on the league and it seems WP:NHOCKEY is currently too exclusive for women's sports. SportingFlyer  talk  03:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment Errr ... second cite, casual mention. Third cite, blog.  Fourth cite, a fleeting mention wouldn't satisfy the GNG (as I am sure you know) if the source was the Britannica. Fifth cite is a link to her iTunes page, are you kidding?? Sixth cite is routine sports coverage debarred by WP:ROUTINE.   Ravenswing    04:31, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * As I said, this isn't an exhaustive list. There's a lot of coverage from blogs, excluding the ones she wrote herself, and a lot of game coverage in routine articles from reliable sources which is why we assume GNG is passed for a lot of men's players. She's come up in Sports Illustrated/ESPN/Yahoo Sports more than probably the majority of hockey articles we have on this site, though! Finally as noted she was the best player in her collegiate conference (Canada West), which would qualify a man for WP:NHOCKEY. WP:BASIC is easily satisfied. No reason to delete this. SportingFlyer  talk  06:41, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Except that blogs don't meet WP:GNG nor does WP:ROUTINE game coverage. And being the top player in a Canadian collegiate conference does not qualify a man, only the NCAA conferences listed as Canadian collegiate hockey garners very little media coverage. -DJSasso (talk) 13:23, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Right, but good Canadian men go play in minors - I believe that's one of the top competitions she could have played in at her age. SportingFlyer  talk  17:04, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Which rather puts paid to the notion of the NWHL as a "top" league, doesn't it? In point of fact, nothing debars women from playing in the minor leagues, or indeed in the NHL, and there've been a trickle of women doing so since the 1960s.   Ravenswing    19:53, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It doesn't remotely. Good Canadian men play in the NHL - or the NWHL. It hasn't even remotely been denied by the delete voters here that we wouldn't even be having this discussion and it would be considered indisputably notable if Rafter were a man in an exactly equivalent situation with exactly equivalent article sourcing: it is the first time in Wikipedia history that I've seen delete votes which fundamentally (and in some cases here overtly) amount to "because she's a woman". The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 21:43, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Again not true, here are two male AHL players with more coverage of the same type found here (routine/regional or non-independent blog-type coverage) that were deleted just last month. Articles for deletion/Matt White (ice hockey) (2nd nomination) and Articles for deletion/Joey Anderson. You'll notice Matt White gets 194 news hits and Anderson gets 2000 compared to Rafter's 191. Yosemiter (talk) 22:57, 27 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The number of hits on Google News has no bearing on whether an article passes WP:GNG or not. We've devolved into a ridiculous argument in which "women can play men's minor league hockey" has come up instead of being focused on the sources. To be fair, these are all borderline articles, but I still think she passes WP:GNG and see no reason why we need to discount the coverage, and agree with Drover's Wife a similarly sourced article would be kept if she were playing in an equivalent men's league (which is not a "right great wrongs" argument, either). I know this article'll get deleted, want to put this on the record nevertheless. SportingFlyer  talk  00:12, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I just pointed out two similarly sourced (or more even sourced) articles (specifically addressing "a similarly sourced article would be kept if she were playing in an equivalent men's league") that have gotten deleted just one month ago. So while quantity of GNews hit may not be directly responsible for meeting GNG, the quantity often correlates to at least few of quality. By my understanding, every woman who has played in any men's league ends up meeting GNG just by the rarity of it getting widely covered.. So by "equivalent men's league" do you mean top tier in skill or top tier in meeting the standards of players consistently meeting Wikipedia's General Notability Guidelines? If it is the former, then that is against WP:N. If it is the latter, then there is an interesting discussion taking place right now at Wikipedia talk:Notability about how notability is treated when reliable sources for GNG are lacking due to historically systematic bias in the general media. If something comes from that discussion that changes WP:N, then this would be a very different conversation. Yosemiter (talk) 01:18, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I mean both of those things, and I've made a post or two at the WP:N discussion (thank you for the link, though). Rafter is one of the best female hockey players in the world but maybe isn't quite elite enough, doesn't quite meet WP:NHOCKEY and as I've stated before, WP:GNG is borderline here, but I think it gets over the line. Same with Katie Fitzgerald, another open AfD, which I think is an even stronger keep than Rafter. I don't expect this article to be kept, but I'm fighting to keep it because: 1) I think it does pass WP:GNG or else I wouldn't be wasting my time; 2) I think comparing women's hockey with men's hockey isn't an adequate comparison - if you're a professional female hockey player, you'll likely be playing in the NWHL, Canadian league, or maybe a top European club, as it's the best competition available to you to play in (I don't buy the men's minor league argument); 3) I think the current notability guidelines under-represent female hockey players (same with football), since at AfD we're generally too focused on whether the SNG is met (myself included); 4) a general difficulty of applying WP:GNG to athletes, especially with agreement on what is a routine source or not; 5) even if it's not kept, I hope this makes it easier to recreate the article once there's more of a consensus WP:GNG is passed. It meets WP:BASIC, and it's not as if there are promotional concerns with a typical WP:BLP. SportingFlyer  talk  02:14, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) I also think it is borderline (definitely not the worst sourcing I have seen deleted or kept, male or female). My vote had more to do with "if I read this about a current hockey player, regardless of age, gender, or location, does it seem more or less notable than other players that gave been deemed to meet or not meet GNG." I am fine if the article is kept, but it did not compare well with other deleted/kept articles in my opinion. (FYI, the ice hockey project deems SBNation-hosted sites as blogs as they are sometimes unreliable and very specific in coverage, as in a Metro NY hokcey site covers a Metro NY hockey player would be very routine as a topic.) 2) Not sure how to address this one, but if women's hockey would be viewed as an entirely separate sport from men's (lets call it Wockey), then what kind of SNG could be created from it? Is it very niche? How widely covered is it on its own merits? Just off the top of my head (I have been working on improving/fixing the team pages for these women's leagues) while looking at sources it would probably fall within the coverage of water polo, ringette, or lacrosse as being sparsely covered outside very specific news coverage. IMO (again), the NWHL is not quite the best women's league in skill (that would be the CWHL as they seem to have a higher quantity of higher skilled players right now), but being in the US it gets somewhat more coverage with the US being sports obsessed, especially in blogs. (I also don't buy "they can play in men's leagues" argument. If that were true, they wouldn't be meeting GNG just because they played in the ECHL, but they do because it is so rare.) 3) Agree completely. Women and minorities, especially in sports, are underrepresented in GNG-type media coverage. (On the other hand, I think some SNGs are too loose, even for men's players.) I actually pushed to look into the NWHL and CWHL last year for inclusion into NHOCKEY and the results were inconsistent. Most wanted it ideologically, but it would have needed some strange phrasing and singling out very specific coverage as an SNG line item. And that still would not be enough for some editors pushing for its inclusion, which they were advocating as "they stepped on the ice for the NWHL, they are inherently notable" (which goes back to the GNG notable vs. real-world notable debate). But if the leagues were better covered, I wouldn't need to create Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Archive72 to try and figure out what CWHL Toronto team played in the 2011 Clarkson Cup (not really covered in any media sources, but the final answer seems to be an expansion team created using some players from the Mississauga Chiefs and was called the Aeros on some fan-run stats sites, but not by the CWHL itself. The unnamed Toronto team then became the Furies the next season). 4) Also agree, some projects are looser with what they deem routine vs. others. NGRIDIRON sometimes advocates for keep if they are covered in entirely local sources ("QB had a good game, named ACC Star of the Week", "Next season RB Joe Shmoe for UofHere is looking to break records" etc), whereas others call these expected/routine articles from that newsite for that player (such as this particular AfD with the Winnipeg, MB, articles for this Winnipeg local). Seems to be applied at random in the AfDs. 5) Should be recoverable from archives, but I have heard there are instances where the archives get lost. AfD is good for history though. I personally really only prod if it is completely unsourced or just made up autobiographies. Yosemiter (talk) 03:43, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the response. To respond to #2, the easiest would be to simply add it to NHOCKEY #3 and give the benefit of the doubt if NHOCKEY is not met and there are ample routine sports sources covering the player (not box scores). May be a bit too slippery of a slope though. If you treated women's hockey as a separate sport, the SNG would be quite niche. And again, my argument isn't that we should be loosening notability guidelines - there's just a conflict between the current SNG and players which are borderline GNG. I would typically argue someone who is borderline GNG who doesn't meet the SNG should be deleted, but I don't agree with these AfDs, since the SNG presumption for women's hockey (national teams, major tournaments) is much higher than for men's hockey. (As an aside, the gridiron project treats WP:GNG as a very low hurdle.) SportingFlyer  talk  04:18, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete Aside from a few people's political grandstanding, she fails the standards required by the WP:GNG. Deadman137 (talk) 00:05, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep, she passes basic with multiple mentions in reliable media. Szzuk (talk) 18:59, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, T. Canens (talk) 04:55, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * delete Fails both the GNG and NHOCKEY. The coverage does not meet the significant independent coverage in multiple reliable sources standard.Sandals1 (talk) 16:05, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete: per Deadman137. Women's hockey doesn't get media coverage, and that's just why SNG's don't favor it. No kidding. Also maybe some people here need a reminder on the GNG. "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" is the language. Doesn't matter if a person got fleeting coverage on the tablets from Mt. Sinai, that doesn't meet the GNG.  Nha Trang  Allons! 19:25, 5 October 2018 (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.