Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of forty-plus point games by Kobe Bryant/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Dabomb87 13:59, 10 February 2010.

List of forty-plus point games by Kobe Bryant

 * Nominator(s): — Chris! c / t 20:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because I think it meets the criteria. And I am competing in Wikicup. — Chris! c / t 20:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Restarted, old version.
 * Note I have restarted this nom, as the page was getting long with comments, and it was not clear what had been addressed and what hadn't. Can all reviewers please restate their opinions and list whatever concerns they have left? Dabomb87 (talk) 16:28, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment still not sure what makes 40 points more significant than any other number of points. Seems like an arbitrary choice to me. Regardless, the list quality is high. So I'll remain neutral. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - The middle column between Team and Opponent, I'm wildly confused about.
 * 1) Is Note B meant to be for this column or the Opponent?
 * 2) Isn't it easier just to split it into Winning Team and Losing Team?
 * I'd like to specify, Currently I'm remaining Neautral on this. Afro  ( Its More Than a Feeling ) - Afkatk 21:20, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * At and verses are used to distinguish between home and away games. There are other ways to show this, but this is the easier and clearest imo. And I can called the columns Winning Team and Losing Team, but Team and Opponent captured the same meaning.— Chris! c / t 22:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

KV5: My comments had all been resolved when the nomination was re-started. I believe that the media examples that Chrishomingtang provided establish the notability of the forty-point guideline and, as before, I support the promotion of this list. KV5 ( Talk  •  Phils ) 23:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Support – My comments were taken care of before the re-start, and everything appears fine on a second look.  Giants2008  ( 27 and counting ) 23:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The list looks good but as someone who knows nothing whatsoever about basketball my main concern, like The Rambling Man above, is that the article gives no indication of the significance of a "forty-point game". Why do we have this list rather than, say, List of thirty-plus point games by Kobe Bryant or List of fifty-plus point games by Kobe Bryant?  Is it simply that players' totals of "forty-point games" are a widely-reported stat, one of the "magic numbers" by which players are measured?  Is there some way in which this could be briefly touched on in the lead? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * See below.— Chris! c / t 22:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Weak oppose on indiscriminate grounds. The list is good but, per TRM and Chris, 40pts seems rather arbitrary. I readily admit I know little about basketball but in a quick google I found hits for Kobe lists of 60+ and 50+. The only significance of the 40 seems to be that he hit the 100 milestone of them late last year. I realise the 60+ is unrealistic as a list but 50 also seems widely reported and I'm not sure of the significance of 40 over 50. Rambo's Revenge (talk)  17:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, I can use 50 as the arbitrary cut-off point, but likewise I'm not sure if 50 is anymore significant over 40. I totally did not expect that the use of 40 points as the arbitrary cut-off point would cause such a concern. Not trying to use WP:WAX as an argument, but there are many other FLs that involve the use of arbitrary cut-off point. Tallest building FLs, for instance, often use 300 feet as an arbitrary cut-off point. As I said the only reason "forty-point games" are used here is that it is a widely-reported figure that media often used and it seems like a reasonable cut-off between 50 points which is quite notable and 30 points which is a typical occurrence in basketball.— Chris! c / t 22:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "I totally did not expect that the use of 40 points as the arbitrary cut-off point would cause such a concern" - well, speaking only for myself, it's solely because I know absolutely nothing about basketball and the significance of the stat is lost on me. If "number of 40-point games" is a widely reported stat for players, then I am absolutely fine with the scope of the list, as long as the significance of the stat is explained, even if only briefly, in the lead.  But to me, with my lack of knowledge, there's no obvious reason why 40 points would be chosen.  As a football (soccer) fan, if I put together a list of, say, List of twenty-plus goal seasons by Alan Shearer, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see US editors popping up and asking "why 20?  why not 10?  or 25?  or 30?"  But, as mentioned above, if the stat is a widely-used one and that is explained, I will support -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Then I don't think there is anything I could do about that. Forty-point games is indeed widely used by the media, but unfortunately they typically do not mention or explain why that is the case.— Chris! c / t 00:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not asking for an in-depth analysis of why 40 points has been deemed to be significant in the grand scheme of things, just one sentence explaining that a player's number of 40-point games is a widely reported and analysed stat, something like that will be fine..... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * In my opinion you'd also need some evidence to support the fact that Kobe has done it a significant number of times - I don't know if he's 999th of a list of 1000 or top of a list of five.... The Rambling Man (talk) 09:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, I added a general statement about the significance of 40-point games and his numbers of 40-point games relative to other players.— Chris! c / t 22:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I said I would support if that was taken care of, hence I support -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:15, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Regarding the scope issue, I raised this article for discussion at a thread at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * (Referred here by Dabomb87 from above). I have to agree that this list is problematic. First, as we don't generally list regular season games of pro sports save for box scores for a team for a season, these lists are normally not things we include. Now, recognizing that scoring a lot of points in a game is something that can be notable, but there needs to be some source(s) that assert that 30, 40, 50 - whatever - points is an extraordinary result, otherwise it is an arbitrary value.  But once you assume that, the question becomes, why are we limiting that to just Kobe?  Surely others have reached this goal, and if the value is chosen right, this is representing a rare feat, similar to Mile run  world record progression, that covers all athletes of the sport.  That is, a better list is List of forty-plug point games by single players in the NBA, presuming 40 is the magic number for justification. --M ASEM  (t) 05:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I have to veer far off the track to editorialize for a moment here: Wikipedia seems to be getting more and more closed-minded as time goes on. I keep seeing people voicing more and more reasons for doing stuff or not doing stuff that seems to have less and less to do with our mission: gimme information. Any time I see someone arguing that we shouldn't add information in one form or another, I want to hear a really solid reason for it -- preferably one that derives from the five pillars. I suppose you could say, well, it isn't neutral, but if there's no compelling reason to not add a set of lists to round things out, then the answer is balance by expansion. And what would be wrong with having a "highest-scoring games" list for all players in addition to "highest-scoring games" lists for the highest-scoring players?--Father Goose (talk) 07:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC) To Chris, "The number of forty-plus point games players accumulate over their careers is often reported in media." this needs multiple refs, as you say "often" reported. But good work thusfar expanding the explanation of the significance. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC) Synthesis in this context involves collecting and organizing material based on an editor's original understanding of the subject, not in a way that has been externally validated or defined. The rationale for this list is provided by the (unsourced) statement "The number of forty-plus point games players accumulate over their careers is often reported in media". However, this statement provides a rationale for this list that is based on mass attribution. If I was Chrishomingtang tutor, I would award him with top marks for his research efforts, and would say he had a bright future in sports publishing. Alas, Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, and that lack of a clearly defined and externally validated rationale for this list disqualifies it from being a featured list. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't help but think all the "opposes" and hesitations are pretty nit-picky. Bryant is one of the top NBA scorers ever, so having a list of his top-scoring games seems quite encyclopedic to me.  If we don't have similar lists for Chamberlain and Jordan, we ought to.  As for what the cutoff/inclusion criteria should be, 40 seems very reasonable to me, at least for Kobe.  It produces a good-size list (~100 entries); is something of a "wow" figure (I know any time I hear about a 40-point game -- by anyone -- I think, "ooh, nice"); and so what if the cutoff is 40 or 50 or whatever?  The point is to have a list of his top-scoring games, so as to underscore what a top scorer he's been.--Father Goose (talk) 06:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If the goal is simply to show how good Kobe is by indicating how many games he scored more than 40 points, that can be done in one sentence in the article about him or in List of career achievements by Kobe Bryant; a full list with both the arbitrary break for including and the strict focus on Kobe is again before our goals of being indiscriminate and unbiased.  That's not to say a list of individual achievement across the NBA of highest individual scores above some threshold (50?, I dunno) wouldn't be appropriate, as long as that threshold is clearly shown to be considered significant by the field.  I point out that other similar individual achievements, like perfect games, 50 goals in 50  games for NHL, or winning a Grand Slam  (golf) are considered across the board for all applicable players, so it seems very strange to focus on just one achievement for one player here.  --M ASEM  (t) 07:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If the argument about bias is that we don't have similar information about other players, the answer is to add similar information about other players. Balancing by adding is always preferable to balancing by removing, even though removal is tempting because it's so much easier to do.  And "indiscriminate" -- that one tends to be as bad as "unencyclopedic".  Ten different people will give you a different answer as to what an "indiscriminate" vs. a "discriminate" list is.  A 40-point game is, to me, noteworthy.  It's not a made-up list and this particular cutoff makes sense to me for this list.
 * You can claim "nit-picking" but most, if not all of us are just asking to be informed of the significance of this list. As you yourself said, the cutoff makes sense to you, and that's key, we need a rational, neutral reason for this list to have such a cutoff, not just a "feeling" (from someone who clearly knows about basketball) that it's okay.  The list has to be universally accessible as does its reason for existing and being Wikipedia's finest work.  If NBA players don't have analogies such as hat-tricks, centuries, five-wicket hauls etc, which are widely accepted as a benchmark of excellence, then it's unfortunate and these kind of lists (and their inclusion criteria) will always be questioned at FLC.  This doesn't mean (and no-one is saying) the list shouldn't exist, by the way, as you seem to be asserting... The Rambling Man (talk) 08:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * A 40 point game is rare enough that it is noted in records (streaks, career, season), and in general it's just a rather high score. It's not one of those things that "has a name", like a triple-double, but it's a big deal in basketball to have gotten as many as Kobe did.  Mind you, if we did a similar list for Chamberlain, I'd choose 50-point games, as he had 118 of those, vs. 271 40s.  The point is that these guys are amongst the highest scorers ever, so they each deserve a list of their highest-scoring games ever.  Where the actual cutoff is, is to me unimportant: 40 is a suitable "round number" that is impressive in its own right and produces a list of a good length for "The highest-scoring games of one of the three highest-scorers in the NBA ever".  If we were doing a list of "all players ever", I'd probably go with 60-point games, since there have been almost 400 50-point games, which is too long a list.  It's the "high scoring" that is important, not the specific cutoff -- much like with our skyscrapers lists.  And Bryant, being one of the premiere scorers, gets to have a list of just his best scores.--Father Goose (talk) 09:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well these are precisely the kind of refs we're looking for, although "in general it's just a rather high score" is still vague. Once again whether something is "unimportant" to you and whether a score is, in your opinion, "impressive" doesn't cut it, a widely reported and universally significant statistic, on the other hand, is worthwhile reporting in its own right.  The Rambling Man (talk) 09:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I would still also argue that even if one is able to show that a 40pt game is considered through sources a "rare" personal achievement (though the fact there have been 400+ 50-pt games suggests that 40pt games are certainly not "rare" when one comes to perfect games or hat tricks), this is the type of statement that is better summarized on WP in one or two sentences rather than a full list like this. Part of this is the fact that we don't consider individual games notable and the only time we list such games out is generally as a box score for a season page for a team; individual stats for players are typically averaged per course of the season (spot checking, I cannot find any other use of single game player stats for major sports). In the case here, I would certain limit this to, at most, a season-by-season breakout of the number of 40 pt games.  It is important to note that that is giving me the same information that this list does now from a high-level perspective.  So don't get me wrong, the number of 40+ games is impressive and should be stated for sure, but providing a detailed list of each of those 40+ games is indiscriminate. --M ASEM  (t) 14:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose as no matter how skillfully this list is arranged, it is for all intents and purposes a synthesis, because it lacks an externally validated definition in accordance with WP:Source list.


 * Closing note This is uncharted territory for an NBA list at the FL level, and I'm glad Chris put in the effort. However, the concept of a list with a seemingly "arbitrary" inclusion criteria does not have consensus among FL reviewers, or even in the list guidelines, so I am archiving this FLC as unsuccessful. I hope discussion about the scope continues so we can solidfy the boundaries of what is acceptable in a list. Dabomb87 (talk) 14:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.