Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 201

RfC on draftifying a subset of mass-created Olympian microstubs
Should the following biographical microstubs, which were mass-created by Lugnuts and cover non-medalling Olympians who competed between 1896 and 1912, be moved out of article space? 08:15, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Details
Selection criteria: Generated using a Quarry query, these 960 articles meet the following criteria and are a subset of the articles created by Lugnuts:
 * 1) Athletes who competed in the 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, or 1912 Olympics
 * 2) Never won an Olympic medal
 * 3) Articles are smaller than 2,500 bytes
 * 4) Referenced only to Olympedia or Sports Reference
 * 5) No significant contributions from editors other than Lugnuts

If this proposal is successful: All articles on the list will be draftified, subject to the provisions below:
 * 1) Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months)
 * 2) Any editor may userfy any draft (which will prevent autodeletion)
 * 3) Any WikiProject may move a draft to their WikiProject space (which will also prevent autodeletion)
 * 4) Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG
 * 5) Editors may return drafts to mainspace for the sole purpose of redirecting/merging them to an appropriate article, if they believe that doing so is in the best interest of the encyclopedia

Background (Olympian draftification)
In the 2022 Deletion ArbCom case, ArbCom found (Finding #6) that User:Lugnuts had created over 93,000 articles, "the most articles of any editor ... Most of these were stubs, and relatively few have been expanded to longer articles", which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom.

Arbcom also mandated an RfC on mass deletion. A mass creation RfC took place but the mass deletion RfC did not, and the RFC mandate was rescinded, leaving the question of how to handle mass-created microstubs such as these unresolved. This proposal suggests a method for resolving this question, with a group of articles that can be used to test the proposed resolution.

Survey (Olympian draftification)

 * Support. The alternative to this proposal is bringing hundreds or thousands of articles through AfD each month and that alternative is not practical. These are articles that took minutes, sometimes seconds, to create; each AfD consumes hours of community time and it would be a waste to spend more collective time assessing each of them individually than was spent on their creation. Further, editors who support keeping these articles object on the grounds that the workload is too high; that it is impossible to search for sources with the diligence required in the time available and as a consequence articles on notable topics are deleted.This proposal resolves both of those issues; editors will have time to search for sources, and considerable amounts of our most limited resource, editor time, will be saved.We also cannot leave the articles as are; we have a responsibility to curate the encyclopedia, to remove articles that do not belong on it due to failing to meet our notability criteria or due to violating our policies on what Wikipedia is not. Failing to do so is also harmful to the project; it reinforces the perception among the public that Wikipedia is mostly empty around the edges and that anything is notable, and it reinforces the perception among editors that creating large numbers of microstubs that do not inform the reader is as good or better than creating smaller numbers of informative articles.These are articles that all violate the fifth basic sports notability criteria, on topics that usually lack notability, that no one edits, that almost no one looks at, and that are so bereft of information that they are of no benefit to the reader. Removing the group will improve the quality of the encyclopedia, and by doing it in this manner we provide the best hope of the articles on notable topics being identified, improved, and returned to mainspace. BilledMammal (talk) 08:15, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Disagreed on pretty much all points. These articles improve the scope and quality of the encyclopedia, they are often useful for every day users, and have little to no impact on how others view Wikipedia in my opinion. Ortizesp (talk) 05:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * These articles receive less than one page view per day, so they are not often useful; even the web crawlers don't use them every day. Levivich (talk) 05:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * And? It's useful to that person per day that's looking at it, not sure there's a number for usefulness. Ortizesp (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Less than one per day means nobody is looking at them except web crawlers. The lowest one on the list has 20 views in a year. Some of these have been like this for over ten years. These articles are dust in the attic. Levivich (talk) 00:32, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that the views an article gets dictates whether it should be kept or not. Ortizesp (talk) 03:01, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, what’s the harm in keeping all these? No problems were brought up in nom about verified information, so I don’t see how they hurt anything.
 * I guess in general, I don’t really get the point of notability in general across wiki if information can be verified, it might still be useful to someone. BhamBoi (talk) 05:49, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * @BhamBoi, I think you might be interested in WP:WHYN. Basically, the point of notability is to make it possible to write a proper encyclopedia article that complies with the core content policies.
 * No reliable sources at all? You can't comply with Verifiability.
 * No independent sources? It'll be difficult to comply with Neutral point of view if you can only source the subject's own view, especially once you get past a simple introductory statement like "Widgets, Inc. is a widget manufacturer".
 * Only trivial coverage? It'll be difficult to write a proper encyclopedia article (because you can only extract a limited amount of information from a passing mention, like "Alice Expert, a consultant in the widget industry, said that demand for widgets was steady", and having dozens, or even hundreds, of such passing mentions doesn't really solve the fundamental problem).
 * WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support assuming the query issues are fixed. Not worth the time to individually delete. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I'm generally suspicious of mass action, but this feels like a reasonable first step to solving a difficult situation. For one, it's clear that some kind of cleanup is required, and increasing AfD workload by something like half for literal years simply cannot be the only solution. The proposed extremely extended draftification seems like a suitably conservative approach (to the point that I'm not sure five years is truly required), giving editors plenty of time rescue any articles that warrant rescuing while ensuring that (most of) those which do not warrant retaining are eventually (even if after an extensive wait) removed. The set of articles identified here (or rather, the criteria used to identify it) seems like a very "safe" subset with high accuracy to the point of sacrificing recall.I'm sure that this type of mass action will not be sufficient to solve this situation completely: there will inevitably be literally thousands of articles that will need to be checked by hand and discussed individually. But filtering out some of the "worst" ones out for a start should conserve everyone's energy for the less clear-cut cases.I'd also support an alternative where these would be redirected to "Country at year season Olympics" as suggested by in § Discussion, below. -Ljleppan (talk) 12:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I just rescued Addin Tyldesley now. Just wasn't aware of it previously, but I saved an article in probably even less time than it took to suggest it be deleted.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:16, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No independent RS were added demonstrating he meets GNG, so the article wasn't "rescued". JoelleJay (talk) 01:25, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Articles can't be judged on new standards, as those can always change. Just as someone had 5 years to edit this, people here had years to mark this as a draft or to delete it.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:59, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Your response is farcical. You added literally nothing to that article that would get it to pass this project's notability threshold. That is not debatable. Zaathras (talk) 02:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I prefer draftification as I believe it makes the articles easier to work on but I would support redirection as a second choice, with the requirements to restore the article being the same in regards to sourcing.
 * As it appears there is some support for this alternative I've created a list of proposed targets to allow it to be properly discussed. Note that some articles have multiple targets; a way to resolve that issue would be required.
 * I assume the editors in support of this proposal would support this alternative, at least as a second choice, as this proposal already includes that possibility; Rhododendrites, Black Kite, Pawnkingthree, would you support this alternative as your first choice rather than opposing entirely? BilledMammal (talk) 17:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That would be my first choice, yes., Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support These have not been shown to meet the basic notability requirements of NSPORTS including "A person is presumed to be notable if they have been the subject of significant coverage" and "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." Draftification is the best solution to prevent these mass-created stubs from being any more of a time sink, while giving folks the opportunity to work on any that can be proven notable. I think this RfC format will be the best way forward to deal with these mass creations. –dlthewave ☎ 13:52, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support For the reasons given. IMO the ideal final result would be to have each of these end up as one line in a table in a broader article. This proposal is a good framework handle that possibility if the 5 year thing is doable. If not, then we have 6 months for somebody to take that on.  North8000 (talk) 14:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - Per above as a necessary step in clearing out the issues caused by the mass creation. — Ixtal ( T / C ) &#8258; Non nobis solum. 14:19, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Draftification when the author of the page is blocked is just delayed deletion. Contrary to what BilledMammal says, creating a glut of AfDs is not actually the only alternative. There are three other options: (1) redirect them all to the relevant team/event articles. Articlespace pages for people mentioned in other articles should redirect to those articles anyway, even if the articles are draftified. If redirects are reverted, choose another from this list or send to AfD at that time. Further, for those whose efforts at redirecting have been thwarted, I'd even support a proposal to redirect them all, putting the burden on anyone recreating the article to demonstrate notability. (2) Rather than assume all 960 people are exactly the same, with exactly the same available sourcing, help figure out which are actually notable and improve those. (3) Anything else. There's zero exigency here. I certainly wouldn't say these stubs do anyone any good (and am opposed to the creation of stubs based on databases), but these stubs weren't created illicitly, and they don't harm the project in any way except for the drama that has grown around them. There's no obligation to deal with them. Personally, I prefer #1, but including the others because the threat of "otherwise we'll have to tank AfD" is silliness. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 14:31, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Non-notable stubs are of no benefit to the reader in their current form, and AfD can't handle this amount. Avilich (talk) 14:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose, deleting a thousand pages (which is what this amounts to) for drama-based reasons doesn't build the encyclopedia but seeks to tear out a major part of its Olympic collection. Voices of reason needed please, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirection, Oppose draftification Even as something of a deletionist, I am somewhat perplexed as to why these need to be draftified. If they're not good enough, why not simply redirect them to the relevant event, event group or Games article?  At least that might help someone searching for them. Black Kite (talk) 15:18, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support as Lugnuts created so many thousands of Olympian biographies that comprehensively fail WP:SPORTCRIT that it is not realistic to expect that editors can address them all within the next several years using our standard processes (i.e., finding and adding WP:SIGCOV, which if it exists most of it is stored in difficult-to-access, non-English-language archives, identifying appropriate redirects, proposing and nominating for deletion) without completing overwhelming AfD. This moves these biographies out of mainspace for 5 years, so there is sufficient time for interested editors to address them. As the query shows, on a given day, Lugnuts was often creating 50+ of these biographies. I think that Lugnuts' highly unusual article creation justifies the movement of so many of those articles out of mainspace at once. Jogurney (talk) 15:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Articles should not be judged under rules that didn't exist when they were created. And we know this is happening, because if those rules existed, those articles wouldn't have existed. If someone tomorrow makes a rule that all articles have to mention "jello" or be deleted, we would lose almost all of the site overnight.KatoKungLee (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Even if that nonsensical approach was used, the rule that all athletes must meet GNG was in place at the time Lugnuts created these articles. JoelleJay (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, we considered all Olympic athletes at the time automatically notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:28, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That is not true, GNG coverage was always presumed to exist for Olympians but it was never an automatic notability pass. Editors were just more reluctant to challenge Olympians because that presumption was considered strong. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - When someone copies a database and pastes it into Wikipedia by the thousands, creating tiny stubs on subjects that don't meet WP:GNG or any WP:SNG, and then never touches the articles again, and no one else reads or edits the articles, for years, even over a decade... the articles are not worth keeping in mainspace (WP:NOT). We will never be able to get through these at AFD, there are too many. Some say redirect them all, some say expand them, some say delete... this procedure is flexible and allows editors plenty of time (five more years) to deal with these titles as they see fit (redirect, merge, draft, expand, userfy, WikiProject). It's better than an WP:XCSD, and it's better than leaving them in mainspace, unedited and unviewed, forever. Levivich (talk) 15:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose (now support redirection) I don't see any reason why every single one of them cannot just be redirected to the relevant Olympic article.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If this proposal passes, they can still all be redirected, by any editor at any time. If this proposal fails, they won't be redirected. So why oppose? Levivich (talk) 15:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Draftification of a stub is only useful if there's someone immediately available and interested in working on it. Instead of having them sit for five years in draftspace, the title should be in mainspace redirecting to a useful article if a reader searches for it.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand your point -- in fact, I agree with it. But right now, we can't turn them into redirects (when editors try, it gets reverted). We can't have 1,000+ discussions about "should this be a redirect". If this proposal passes, then we can redirect these titles. If this proposal doesn't pass, then we're back to the status quo: can't redirect, would need a second RFC just about redirect, which we can't have for a while after this RFC ends (for the usual reasons). So if you believe these should be redirected, I urge you to support this proposal, so that anyone who wants to turn these into redirects can do so for whatever articles on this list they think should be redirected (and of course the articles could still get expanded into real articles by anyone who wants to do so). Proposal Provision #5, about redirects, was written specifically for editors who believe these should be redirects. #5 (redirect) is an option on the menu of this proposal; I don't think it would help improve the encyclopedia to oppose this proposal because #5 isn't the only option on the menu: that would be letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. I'd ask you to consider "support #5 only" rather than opposing. Levivich (talk) 16:46, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can turn them into redirects. In fact, many redirects have g45one unopposed. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:43, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So if you believe these should be redirected, I urge you to support this proposal - (Here and elsewhere) your argument that redirect is compatible with this proposal is bizarre. By the same logic, it would also be compatible with absolutely any other mass action that's not redirecting, because you can always redirect them afterwards. For anyone who thinks they should be redirected, draftification is just an unnecessary additional step that adds a countdown clock to the redirection process. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 16:51, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No because if you go and redirect the articles now, someone will revert you, and then you have to WP:BRD that stuff, meaning 1,000 discussions. If this proposal passes, then someone can redirect these articles, and no one could revert that unless they added a GNG source per #4 and #5 of this proposal. This proposal fundamentally is about getting consensus that these microstubs should not remain as they are, and then allowing a wide variety of options for how to deal with them. IMO no one should be opposing unless they think the stubs are fine to be left alone the way they are (which some people do, reasonable minds can disagree). Levivich (talk) 17:06, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support: When articles ammount to little more than a name, birth date, death date, nationality and a sport they have competed in, they should not be kept as articles. And with 960 of these articles it is unrealistic to keep them in the article space and add more references and information for each in a timley manner, so draftifying these articles is the appropriate action. Terasail [✉️] 15:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support: and, I'd argue that this IS the way to address Rhododendrites' second point casualdejekyll  16:33, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per a few above. Mass draftifiying Olympians is not a good idea for several reasons:
 * Many of these are notable and can be expanded: As I said at the original discussion on this at the proposer's userpage, many of these are notable. I chose for example two random participants – Albert Bechestobill and Lou Scholes. For Bechestobill, quickly located was full-page coverage in major newspapers; for Scholes, easily found were articles describing him as "the best oarsman the world ever produced." The majority I would say could be expanded if the right sources were used, it just takes time to write things (unlike deleting them) – just yesterday I wrote a decent article on Emil Schwegler (formerly on this list) and today I plan on getting to Jay Nash McCrea – its just it takes time to do it; I can't go around and write 900 articles a day.
 * This will result in the mass deletion of boatloads of notable articles: As said above, many of these are notable. That being said, what this is basically is just the delayed removal of the majority of them under the nice-sounding tone "you can just move it back if its notable – and everything works out" – if this is approved here's what will happen: all these articles get moved to draftspace, only a couple get worked on (I doubt that there's going to be a ton of eager editors who want to help out in writing articles on 1900/10s Olympians), and then eventually just about all of them get deleted. Additionally the proposer has made it clear he plans on going after the rest if this passes, which will result in not just the initial 1,000, but then the rest of the 90,000 also being put there. We do not have the time, energy or resources to expand 90,000 articles in a short period of time with deletion the consequence if we do not. And I'll bet that BM and his deletionist buddies will go after other sports if they get rid of the Olympians, and then the rest of stubs until this place becomes a perfect deletionist paradise. But back to the consequences of just this being passed: many many notable articles will get deleted in the end, and a few improved. Does that help the encyclopedia? NO.
 * There is no harm in keeping these. The only harm that could possibly be done would be if this is passed, which will (as said above) result in many notable articles being deleted, and a few improved. That is not an improvement to Wikipedia at all And it would especially not be an improvement if this passes because then it would possibly lead to absolute loads more being proposed to be removed and likely removed . 1,000 short articles provides much more overall value than a few nicer-looking ones in my opinion.
 * There are other ways in dealing with them. As Rhododendrites said above, there are several different ways that these could be dealt with than mass draftification. The proposers are stressing that "oh its way too hard to have these at AFD" – AFD is not the only option. Of the numerous different ways these could be dealt with, my personal favorite – expand them.
 * So in conclusion, mass draftifying nearly a thousand Olympians would have a terrible effect on the encyclopedia, and is completely unnecessary. Signed, BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:38, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose So, there are several problems with this discussion. First, and only tangentially related to my vote, but still bears mentioning, is the statement "which led to sanctions from the community and to Lugnuts being indefinitely sitebanned by Arbcom.  The initial ban was for "Canvassing, incivility, bludgeoning, spamming" (quote taken from the initial ban proposal); it was not the creation of stubs per se that led to the ban.  Furthermore, the Arbcom ban does not explicitly state that it was merely for creating the stub articles in the first place.  Indeed, the ban was enacted under a variety of problem, including "making personal attacks, engaging in battleground behavior in deletion discussions, and other disruptive deletion behavior." and notes things like "been blocked for conduct at AfD" (both quotes from the ArbCom page).  The OP makes the disingenuous post hoc ergo propter hoc assertion that they were banned because they created the above article stubs.  They were banned for things like being disruptive to the AFD process and battleground behavior, making personal attacks.  All of that is sanctionable offenses.  Creating stub articles is not.  I can go create a stub article right now and no one would be proposing to ban me.  So the very premise that the ban was enacted merely because some stubs were created is a non-starter for me.  That being said, what do we do with all of these stubs?  Nothing at all.  If the article meets the standards to be an allowable stub article if it hadn't been created by Lugnuts, like if it was just a stub created by someone else, then there's no reason to do anything special to it because it was created by Lugnuts.  They're perfectly fine in the mainspace.  If you find one of the stubs you want to expand, do so.  If you find one of the stubs should be deleted, WP:AFD is thataway.  If you don't want to do either of those things, doing nothing is perfectly fine too.  Even if the OP's initial statement wasn't fraught with the errors I already noted, I would still oppose treating these stubs any differently than any other random stub someone might happen to trip over.  -- Jayron 32 16:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Preliminary question. I am open to a proposal to delete many of the early Olympic participants, but this appears a proposal to delete hundreds of articles without even providing a list of the articles to be deleted. Maybe I'm wrong. Is there a list of the proposed deletions? Before casting a vote, I would like to see a list and have an opportunity to peruse it. Cbl62 (talk) 16:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Cbl62: The list is in a collapsed green box at the top of the proposal, right below the question and above the "details" section. Levivich (talk) 17:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Cbl62 (talk) 17:11, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. There are not any perfect options here, but I think this is the best. If someone wants to shepherd some draft stubs back, there's ample time to do so. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 17:00, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support either this or mass redirecting. Pre-WW1 Olympians are usually not notable, and so most of these can never become full articles. —Kusma (talk) 17:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, I propose removing from the list those who competed in the Olympics after 1912 – this is supposed to be from 1896 to 1912, not after as well. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:30, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We also should not have ones that were kept at AFD (post sports RFC) on this list. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This discussion has been added to Wikipedia's list of centralized discussions. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 17:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Support, and I would add that we need to review more than 960 articles at a time; at such a low rate, cleaning up after Lugnuts will take about 8 years.—S Marshall T/C 18:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Per Wikipedia's deletion policy, draftification must not be used as a "backdoor to deletion". Because abandoned drafts are deleted after six months, moving articles to draft space should generally be done only for newly created articles... or as the result of a deletion discussion. Older articles should not be draftified without an AfD consensus, with 90 days a rule of thumb. This proposal is an extremely clear attempt to mass draftify articles as a backdoor to deletion. The nominator writes that the alternative is not practical but there is another alternative not considered in the OP's arguments—using the articles for deletion process to make decisions with respect to a single mass AfD of these sorts of things. Also, WP:DRAFTOBJECT is pretty clear that literally anyone can object to the draftification of a particular article and revert it to the mainspace, so I'm not sure that this would actually achieve the resolution that the proposer of this RfC desires (all it would take is a few editors to restore one article to mainspace per day over the next six months for this mass draftification to end up back where we started, and that seems to just be delaying sending these to AfD). — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 18:10, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * By extending the autodeletion period to five years the specifics of this proposal are intended to prevent this being a backdoor to deletion, and the various options around article adoption and article redirection are also intended to prevent that. It will also prevent improper restorations; if there is a consensus for this proposal editors will only be permitted to restore these articles to mainspace after adding sources containing significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 18:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Will this apply to all draftified articles, or just to the 960? My understanding is that we have an adminbot delete old drafts if they are more than 6 months untouched. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 19:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Only to the 960. The specifics of this need to be determined, but there are plenty of options and the required bot modifications will be minor. BilledMammal (talk) 00:41, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. The proposal is unprecedented, and I am generally opposed to mass actions of this type. Despite my reservations, I do support this proposal limited to early Olympians. My rationale is as follows:
 * No reasonable expectation of notability. The past year of dozens and dozens AfD discussions has clearly demonstrated that mere participation in the Olympics in the early years of the games is in no way a basis to presume or expect that the individual is notable under our WP:GNG standard.
 * Mass creation. The articles at issue were the product of a well-documented mass process in which thousands of articles were created at the rate of approximately a minute per article.
 * Lack of substance. The articles are microstubs that contain limited narrative text simply reciting that the person was an athlete in a particular sport who competed in the Olympics X year. If the articles are ultimately deleted, nothing of real substance is lost. If SIGCOV is later uncovered and brought forth, and given the fact that only a minute or so was devoted to the original effort, the articles can be re-created without any meaningful loss of prior effort.
 * Violation of SPORTBASIC. The articles violate prong 5 of WP:SPORTBASIC which provides: "Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources." The articles here are sourced only to database sources and do not include SIGCOV.
 * Cleanup of "deliberate errors". A departure from normal processes is also warranted by the unique case involving Lugnuts and his admission in August 2022 (here) that he added "countless deliberate errors on pages that have very few pages views." Draftification of these low-page view articles permits screening for such errors.
 * In sum, I support draftification in this narrow situation. In normal and less egregious circumstances, I would expect normal AfD or redirect procedures to be followed and would likely oppose such a proposal. Cbl62 (talk) 18:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I originally supported but now BilledMammal is objecting to the removal from the list of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) even though they have been expanded, now include SIGCOV, and are not based solely on database entry. IMO the extreme remedy of mass removal of articles should not be considered for articles that fall into a gray area. Such articles, if challenged, should be dealt with under regular order, by normal AfD processes. Cbl62 (talk) 06:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Restoring support based on representation that Spitzer and Greene will not be draftified. Cbl62 (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - seems the best thing to do. GoodDay (talk) 19:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose This is a backdoor attempt at deletion of articles via the Village Pump, and as such is an obvious violation of deletion policy. Take them to AFD if you want them deleted or demoted to drafts. Steven Walling &bull; talk  19:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Lugnuts is Wikipedia's most prolific article starter, ever. He started rather more than 90,000 articles, most of which were biographies, and he's told us he put deliberate inaccuracies in them.  If we nominated 10 of them at AfD every day, it would take nearly thirty years to process them all.  I'm afraid that it's simply unfeasible and unrealistic to use AfD to clean up after Lugnuts.  It would also be profoundly unfair on other editors to swamp our normal deletion processes with the quantities of articles involved.—S Marshall T/C 23:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Nominating a group of articles like hoaxes is explicitly called out as allowed in our deletion policy, per WP:BUNDLE. In addition to this being the wrong venue, the stated intent of the proposal is to test the waters for establishing a precedent for mass deletion, which is bad faith and not clearly about removing demonstrably bad articles that violate notability or verifiability policy. Steven Walling &bull; talk  04:59, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "he's told us he put deliberate inaccuracies in them" - is it proven? Not much room for inaccuracies in a stub. Pelmeen10 (talk) 10:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course it's proven. Lugnuts claims he introduced deliberate inaccuracies into his stubs in this edit.  Some don't believe him on that point, because he was ragequitting Wikipedia when he wrote that.  Others might suspect that someone who often started upwards of 20 articles a day wasn't checking his facts carefully in the first place.  Whichever side you take, it's my view that we have reasonable grounds to doubt the accuracy of this content.—S Marshall T/C 11:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Deleting 960 articles on the chance that there might be inaccuracies is a bit of a stretch. There might be inaccuracies in basically everything that isn't a GA or FA article, but there is no deadline for fixing work in progress, and perfection isn't required. These aren't BLPs, either. Steven Walling &bull; talk  23:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When the article author admits they've put deliberate inaccuracies and obfuscated copyvios in biographical articles, I'd normally expect a more active response than this from a sysop. I do hope you'll reconsider your position here.—S Marshall</b> T/C 23:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Like you said, he was ragequitting. I wouldn't be surprised if he said that in order to make people delete all his articles as a "f*ck you" to the project. <span style="font-family:Linux Libertine, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling &bull; talk  01:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If that was what he wanted, he could have achieved it for almost all his articles with G7. I don't think that is what he wanted. BilledMammal (talk) 03:13, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Either way, the argument that we should mass delete a series of articles via a straw poll at the Village Pump is utter nonsense. These articles met notability requirements when they were created and many, if not most, of them probably still do. There's no way of knowing, when you nominate 960 at once based on a hunch, rather than an actual review of the articles and research into all the possible source material. <span style="font-family:Linux Libertine, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling &bull; talk  05:37, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Have we gotten any proof aside from Lugnuts statements, that he has introduced deliberate inaccuracies? It's better to have no articles rather than a faulty article. &maltese; SunDawn &maltese;    (contact)   03:42, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Plenty of inaccuracies have been found; whether or not they are deliberate is impossible to say for certain. One example has already been given in this thread by CMD. I just checked another random article myself; literally the first one I clicked on, Fyodor Zabelin, has the wrong birth date in the infobox. Since Lugnuts specifically mentioned birth dates in his claim that he had introduced deliberate errors, one might wonder whether this gives some ground for believing him. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sojourner in the earth: Thank you for the information. This is a really strong case for total draftification. &maltese; SunDawn &maltese;    (contact)   12:51, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Neither of them can be described as deliberate errors. Wrong date on infobox for Fyodor Zabelin must've been an error, as Lugnuts created Yrjö Vuolio (with that birth date) just 4 minutes earlier. Pelmeen10 (talk) 21:10, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * , thanks for looking that up. I didn't read as far as your contribution but thought "Lugnuts introducing deliberate errors? No way!" I've worked a lot with Lugnuts on rowing articles and have always found him conscientious. So I did the exact same as you did: looked up what else did Lugnuts create on 16 July 2019 in that batch, found that he created 10 articles during 29 minutes, Zabelin was the second article in that batch and the birth date belonged to the first article. A simple database / copy-paste error. I think we should dismiss the idea of Lugnuts having introduced errors deliberately; that is simply not the editor who I had the pleasure working with.  Schwede 66  05:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * - Just to be clear on this, this kind of totally careless article-creation (systematically reproducing errors), spread over many thousands of articles, is the kind of thing that would get you a warning first and eventually banned if you persisted in doing it nowadays. Accidental or not, competence is required. FOARP (talk) 09:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose as Village Pump is not the place to mass delete articles, as is effectively beimg proposed here. No need for a mass decision on all of these articles, they should be checked according to relevant AFD policies individually as some will definitely be notable. Speedy redirecting should be used when there is clearly no notability. This range of dates is also completely arbitrary, with no justification for why the specific dates were chosen and why these people's notability should be assessed differently to Olympians of different years. <b style="color:#0033ab">Joseph</b><b style="color:#000000">2302</b> (talk) 20:12, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose unless there is a guarantee that the sources already in each article have been examined and any even marginally close calls removed. For example, I would have concerns about the inclusion of Alf Davies (swimmer) on this link - the sources suggest that there's a decent chance that there's more there in newspapers and so on. This isn't the first time lists like this have been put forward - I think we found a knight of the realm on one list... At that point I would still oppose in favour of redirecting where even remotely possible per WP:ATD (which is a policy not a guidelines) - draftifying like this is an utter waste of resources for everyone concerned, whereas a redirect preserves the page history and attribution and enables an article to be returned to if sources emerge and someone has the time and motivation to do so. Finding those initial sources, especially when some are archived, isn't as simple as some of the views here might suggest. We have alternatives to deletion; these are flat out more efficient and we should use them. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:16, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Somewhat beside the point, but I can't find any evidence that Alf Davies is notable. I checked a few newspaper archives (e.g. 1), and there's stuff about a boxer and a footballer but no swimmer. If that short bio is correct, his winning of the The Serpentine seems unimportant; it's a small regional festive race. I'll probably redirect him to Swimming at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's 200 metre breaststroke, which seems like the appropriate target. Suriname0 (talk) 17:40, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't expect NewspaperArchive.com to have sigcov of Davies; it would likely be at the British Newspaper Archive or similar. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:42, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Didn't see anything on BNA either. No problem with discussing at AfD; see here. Suriname0 (talk) 18:21, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I made a similar proposal at one of the many RfCs this past year, so of course I support this. I don't understand the "backdoor to deletion" hand-wringing or complaints about the possibility of inclusion of maybe notable athletes in this list. If there are people in there who you think might meet GNG, guess what!! You can personally take them out of draft space and work on them in your user space, thereby avoiding the extremely overly-lenient 5-year deadline. Or you could redirect them. Or put them in project space. These are all better for people who want to keep articles than leaving them in mainspace where they will likely be athlete #22 taken to AfD on any given day and you'll only have a week to find all those difficult-to-access sources that surely exist. JoelleJay (talk) 22:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, the proposal is for a very targeted list, and the way these articles have been generated seems problematic. The first one I clicked on was Alexander Martin (Canadian sport shooter). That article, in its entirety: "Alexander Martin (28 December 1864 – 26 October 1951) was a Canadian sports shooter. He competed in the 1000 yard free rifle event at the 1908 Summer Olympics." I checked the Olympedia source and was immediately struck by "Born: Glasgow, Died: Woking". These are clearly not Canadian locations. Olympedia also lists two family member Olympians, both of whom apparently competed for the GBR NOC. So while Alexander Martin may have competed for the Canada NOC, there seems a lot of evidence that describing them as primarily Canadian is a mistake. If somehow the first article I clicked on was the only problematic one, then I suppose I'd have to revise, but that seems unlikely. I would strongly support mass redirection to the relevant Olympic page (if available), and of course would also support people expanding these where possible to be useful and accurate. Both these actions are possible with or without the passing of this proposal though, so I don't understand how they are coming up as oppose rationales. CMD (talk) 00:05, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at the article, I noticed that the source used for his Olympic participation refers to a certain Arthur, not Alexander, Martin from Canada born in a completely different year! Tvx1 16:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Look at the Olympedia source, which states "Name previously given as Arthur Martin, but this is not supported by contemporary Calgary newspapers." BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:15, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But that is a wiki just lile this one and thus unreliable. And what about the twelve years discrepancy in the birth year? Tvx1 16:23, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Olympedia isn't an unreliable wiki. As for the birth year, it seems that the people who run SR/Olympedia originally believed the shooter to be Arthur, but then later realized it was actaully a Martin named Alexander, born twelve years prior. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I do not see anything that makes it reliable. Moreover, the official site says it was Arthur, not Alexander, Martin as well. The Calgary statement doesn’t even make sense. What do local Calgary newspapers matter to an athlete who was allegedly born in Glasgow and died in Woking?? Tvx1 17:33, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Olympedia isn't an unreliable wiki" - I see absolutely no reason at all to believe that Olympedia is particularly reliable. Whilst the sports statistics on Olympedia come from official bodies (though the chain of ownership is unclear) and might be said to be reliable for that reason, there is a strong wiki-like aspect to the prose content, birth/death dates, and also potentially to the names used on the database. For example when an AFD was raised against our article about a non-notable rower called Francis English it turned out that the death-date was wrong and Francis English went under the name "Frank", Olympedia was updated to include the nickname and the corrected death-date soon after the AFD meaning they were relying on Wikipedia to do their fact-checking. Prose content on Olympedia also appears to come from e.g., families of the Olympians concerned and thus is not independently sourced. I get that the head of Olympedia is supposed to be an expert but the database is run by volunteers and there is no clear editorial system or rigorous fact-checking. T's concerns are thus well-founded and cannot be dismissed simply by saying "I haven't seen many errors" or that the IOC has used it. FOARP (talk) 11:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree. That’s the exact same sentiment I have. The Alexander/Arthur Martin case is another example of the issues they have. Tvx1 16:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support competing in the Olympics is not an indication of athletic greatness. Participation is often decided by politics, or there may not be any gatekeeping at all. See also the 1904 Summer Olympics, 1904 men's marathon; apparently a free-for-all. Schierbecker (talk) 00:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose It is against policy to use draftifying as a backdoor for deletion. Red-tailed hawk sums it up perfectly. --Rschen7754 01:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose I find no reason to delete them. There could be a reader looking for information on the topic; we are an encyclopedia; why do we feel the need to delete information? I this context, I think the stub-quality of the articles is irrelevant. Perhaps the content would be better served as part of a larger article, but I wouldn't know where to begin. Further, it would be a fallacy to assume that an "oppose" vote would necessarily lead to mass AfDs — it is a false assumption that the articles involved need to be deleted at all. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) 01:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:N; just because there is verifiable information on a topic doesn't mean it belongs in Wikipedia. These are also why failing to deal with these articles through a process other than AfD will lead to mass AfD's; leaving non-notable topics in mainspace makes Wikipedia worse, and it is against policy to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 02:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support If someone spends a few seconds doing something mildly disruptive, we should have no qualms about undoing that thing. If anyone wants to create a well-sourced article on one of these individuals, these stubs will be of no help at all. The community has found Lugnuts' mass creations to be disruptive, why immortalize his inappropriate creations? In fact, I'd support deleting all of them that haven't attracted major content contributions from others. No prejudice towards decent articles on the same topics being re-created in the future. Ajpolino (talk) 04:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Although they should really be deleted after the normal 6-month period. Also rather disappointing to see the same cheerleaders from the non-notable NFL player debate weighting this discussion down. Zaathras (talk) 04:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support draftification as first choice. Aside from the problem of notability, many of Lugnuts' articles have been shown to have serious verifiability issues (almost inevitable with articles created at speed). If it's true that Lugnuts has admitted to introducing deliberate inaccuracies ( do you have a diff for that?), that's all the more reason to remove these articles from the mainspace as soon as possible. I came into this expecting to support redirection over draftification, but I've explained below why I don't think this is practical. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Sojourner in the earth - See here. I guess I should say that many think he was lying about this. FOARP (talk) 09:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Support - And yes this should be rolled out to Lugnut's 19th-century cricketer articles, his 19th/early 20th century footballer articles, and to sub-sets of the mass-created articles of other historical mass creators (e.g., Carlossuarez46, Dr. Blofeld). WP:PROVEIT is pretty clear on what happens to content the notability of which isn't supported - either the people who want it kept find support for it, or it gets deleted. Any other position is allowing editors to establish a fait accompli of mass-created articles that will never be improved to meet notability standards, and most of which cannot be improved. WP:FAIT is clear that we should not allow that.This cannot be handled one-by-one by the normal AFD process as it would jam it permanently. Mass deletion through AFD is possible but this discussion is frankly just as valid as any AFD discussion and probably will engage with more editors which, frankly, is needed, as AFD discussions are often dominated by people heavily invested in the deletion/keeping of article-sets such as this one.
 * Some argue that the fact that some of these articles may be notable is a reason to keep all of them. It simply isn't. What that is is a reason for people who want them kept to go and establish the notability of those articles and bring them back to mainspace. Anything else is accepting a WP:FAIT situation.Finally, this is not personal. I would also support the same measure be used against other articles sets that were created in violation of WP:MASSCREATE, even by editors I generally like.
 * ETA - my favoured position is actually just straight deletion of these articles. Draftification is something I'm OK with as an alternative to that because in reality everyone knows that only a handful will be saved even with years of time to work on them because so few of them even can be saved. Redirection is basically a non-flyer for the reasons I discussed below in relation to "Harry" Oppenheim - there is no reason, no reason at all, to redirect people to a list in which specific non-notable Olympian is possibly mentioned (many of the redirects will have the wrong name, because of the poor methodology used to create these articles), rather than serving the full search-results to them and allowing them to see all of the other places that person and other people with the same name listed on EN Wikipedia. FOARP (talk) 09:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Support per nom, 5 years is ample time for any interested editor to expand on any of the articles. Redirect to the relevant pages would also be fine in my opinion. BogLogs (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I just saved an article now - Addin Tyldesley. Just wasn't aware of it previously, but I saved an article in probably even less time than it took to suggest it be deleted.KatoKungLee (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose as the solution to the problem is needlessly complicated. Seems to me that the simple(st) solution is to delete all relevant stubs created in this way immediately. WP editors who are interested in writing about any Olympian who is truly notable could presumably get the same starting information from the same sources that the current stubs used, so there's nothing to be gained by draftifying. JMWt (talk) 10:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Would you support the alternative of redirecting? BilledMammal (talk) 13:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * well I don't know. Firstly I don't know how automated the process would be or whether it would need considerable manual editing time. Second it seems to me that there is quite a high risk of good-faith errors creeping in when trying to do this with so many pages (for example an Olympian being accidentally attached to the wrong team). This in turn could lead to even more circular referencing and the errors being repeated in off-wiki sources. For me the most accurate solution is delete. The databases still exist, there's no presumption that any of the Olympians in these stubs are not notable - so recreation if RS become available for particular people shouldn't be an issue. I accept that it looks like a sledgehammer solution, but for me the main overwhelming issue is the integrity of WP as a usable encyclopedia. If we routinely do anything which adds to the risks of spreading errors, that's bad. I'd rather keep the stubs that simply reflect the content of off-wiki databases than do anything else that introduces errors. JMWt (talk) 13:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It would be easy to automate, and no new errors would be introduced; it might continue to include existing errors, but in that case we are no worse off than we currently are. BilledMammal (talk) 14:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. per BeanieFan, my comments at the previous discussion about olympian stubs and most of the other opposers here. The way to deal with a mass creation of notable topics is not mass deletion or mass draftification - there is no deadline, and it is much better to get the right answer slowly than the wrong answer quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 10:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This assumes we have a good interim position right now, which given the lack of attention that seems to have been paid to these articles I am not convinced of. There's no deadline by which redlinks have to be turned into tenuous blue links either. CMD (talk) 14:56, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The past is prologue... There's not anything we can do about the fact that they have already been created, but as Thryduulf notes, now that they exist, we might as well deal with each thoughtfully. You are correct as the best action was probably not to have created these so rapidly, but we can't go back in time and make that unhappen.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 19:20, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, we can make that unhappen, that's kind of what's being proposed here. Levivich (talk) 19:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We can make that unhappen and per WP:MASSCREATE and WP:MEATBOT they shouldn't have been able to be created in the first place. Since 2009 it is policy to request permission for mass creation of articles here. And I'd argue that creating several articles within minutes or a few hours are likely to be considered bot like editing as mentioned at WP:MEATBOT. Per MEATBOT is also required to request permission at the same place. WP:MEATBOT is within a policy, for admins it would technically be possible to enforce it. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment in addition to my note above and discussion below in the redirect section, there seem to be quite a few of these which have a reasonable claim to notability. We really need to read the sources and not rely on a machine query. Philip Plater, for example, seems well worth looking in to and if we delete this via drafting it'd be a massive mistake. A number of the British ones seem to have details that would be worth looking in to. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:39, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Why would it be a headache? Nothing is being salted and the Olympedia pages will still exist. The sources currently in Philip Plater doesn't suggest GNG, although the story should certainly be added to Shooting at the 1908 Summer Olympics. CMD (talk) 14:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah never mind, it has been included at Shooting at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's stationary target small-bore rifle since 2006. CMD (talk) 14:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The Olympedia source, when you look at it, does in a way suggest that GNG coverage exists – I've found that when they give decent bios, the Olympians usually have a much higher GNG rate than when they don't. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would agree! Maybe someday someone will be able to look into such cases and write some articles with more than a database pull, that could do basic things like not make slightly misleading nationality claims and include links to the events the athletes participated in. As noted above, there is no deadline for this. CMD (talk) 15:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But we already have the articles! Why would we need to delete articles on a topic to be able to write something on that topic? BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this was missed, but we should have articles "that could do basic things like not make slightly misleading nationality claims and include links to the events the athletes participated in". CMD (talk) 15:51, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The articles do link the events that the athletes participated in – and I haven't seen very many with the wrong nationality – just about all of them seem fine to me. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No they don't, Philip Plater which you linked just before didn't until I made the relevant edit. As for "very many", maybe not very many, but how many? We don't know, because these are procedurally generated sentence pairs. CMD (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Lets see, I'm going to pick ten random people on this list and see if they have the link or not: Francesco Pietrasanta, no; Arthur Maranda, yes; Arthur Seward, yes; James Cowan (sport shooter), no; John McKenzie (wrestler), yes; Orazio Santelli, no; Yrjö Vuolio, yes; Jules Roffe, yes; Pierre Saintongey, yes; and Ödön Toldi, yes. That's 7/10 have it. And even if they were missing it, that's still no reason to mass get rid of them by the thousands. As for the nationality, to check, you can just click on the Olympedia link and it will tell you – I have only seen a handful with any issue, and in most of those cases it was half-right, i.e. they were born in e.g. Switzerland, and then became U.S. citizens and competed for the U.S., and the article referred to them as American. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I checked the first yes of yours, "Arthur Maranda, yes", and it doesn't link to his events at all. He participated in the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's long jump, the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's triple jump, and the Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's standing long jump. If even a second layer of checking isn't correctly assessing these articles, a new process is needed. CMD (talk) 16:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It says he "competed at three events at the 1912 Olympics" and links "Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics" in the words "three events." BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Correct, it does not link to the events he was in. CMD (talk) 01:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, Blue Squared Thing, many of these are likely notable. I've checked a bunch and for some I've seen Olympedia bios describing them as having been the best of the era, among the most famous, etc. For example, when I chose a random one in Lou Scholes and did a quick search, I found articles describing him as "the best oarsman the world has ever produced" (not surprising, though, considering this is the Olympics). And then for Albert Bechestobill, I was able to locate full-page long articles in major newspapers. When I looked for Arthur Burn, he was given headlines for his life and death. And another one I think would probably have good potential: Carlo Bonfanti – Olympedia mentions how the way Italy viewed diving was changed all because of him – there has got to be coverage on figures like that. And many Olympedia references have enough coverage that I'd consider them a SIGCOV source all by itself. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Checked out another one, Donnell Young, and he had in-depth feature stories published on him and was one of the only Olympic centenarians. This is really, really, really a bad idea to mass get rid of articles without any effort made to see whether they're notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It was a really, really, really bad idea to mass create these articles without any effort made to see whether they are notable. This proposal is what is required to correct that error. BilledMammal (talk) 17:31, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When these articles were created, they were considered notable. Later modifications to the notability guidelines removed their automatic notability (but many are still notable). BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * They were presumed notable (under some interpretations of WP:NSPORT), and it was a really, really, really bad idea to mass create these articles without any effort to see whether they are are notable and thus ensure that this presumption was correct. BilledMammal (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Presumed notable" back then equaled "notable." BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:44, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It actually never did, but many AFD closers just mistakingly assumed it did. It doesn’t do so anymore at all and actually most of these are not notable.Tvx1 17:25, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The proposal is not get mass rid of them. It’s to move them to an appropriate place to dustinguish the non-notable ones from the one which are and actually make the keepable ones encyclopedic. No one is requesting blind deletion here. Tvx1 17:27, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Garnett Wikoff: Another clearly notable article from this list that I was able to substantially expand. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Another one who has potential for notability: William Valentine (archer) – per Olympedia, he was an owner of a pharmacy for a while and trained Charles Walgreen – the founder of Walgreen's! It was partly because of him the business was founded! BeanieFan11 (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * More with potential (going off of Olympedia): James O'Connell (athlete) - national AAU triple jump champion; James Murphy (athlete) - English national champion cross country runner; António Pereira (wrestler) - thrice competed at the Olympics (we really should not be listing those who competed after 1912!); Archibald Murray (fencer) - given the Order of the British Empire; Harold Bartlett - important military person and awarded the Navy Cross, also aide to president Woodrow Wilson; Gaston de Trannoy - two-time Olympian, later important official, and president of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports; Georg Andersen (wrestler) - European champion in wrestling; James Reilly (swimmer) - coached swimming at Rutgers for 40 years - inducted into their Hall of Fame; etc. just from looking at Olympedia for a few random ones! BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Another interesting one: George Retzer. He lived to be 96 and was still regularly working out into his mid-90s (50 situps, 50 pushups every day, wow), and received UPI and LA Times feature stories for it, in addition to having more coverage for being the Pacific Coast wrestling champ. Clearly notable. Just like many others here. Mass throwing them out without any attempt to see if they're notable is an absolutely horrendous idea. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yet another that seems highly likely to be notable: Iraklis Sakellaropoulos - the Greek wiki has a much more detailed article on him, he competed at three olympics, was a champion runner in Greek in the 1910s and 20s, and there seems to be a bunch of mentions of him online and in books using his name in Greek (unfortunately I do not speak Greek, so can't tell if its sigcov - but even if those aren't, I'm 99.999% sure the newspapers of the day would have covered him). BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:47, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Every each of the defended Olympians by @BeanieFan11 I checked are only sourced with databases. WP:NOTDATABASE,WP:NOTWHOSWHO. Both shortcuts are to policies. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:20, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No they're not, I've improved many of them (for example, Fred Narganes, Herbert Gidney, Garnett Wikoff, Thomas LeBoutillier, J. Nash McCrea, and others) – there's just so many that we're trying to get rid of here, I haven't been able to get to them all. As for NOTDATABASE, that does not apply. It only applies to: Summary-only descriptions of works – nope; Lyrics databases – nope; Exhaustive logs of software updates – nope; Excessive listings of unexplained statistics – nope (the statistics and events are explained; I don't see how it would fall under that). As for WHOSWHO, that one says "Even when an event is notable, individuals involved in it may not be. Unless news coverage of an individual goes beyond the context of a single event..." – for many of these coverage exists that goes beyond their Olympic appearances. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:34, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's great, you found some. You can expand them from draftspace. No-one will oppose you. The sources used of the unexpanded stubs are still databases, check Antonio Pereira for example. And an OBE gives a phrase more, that's it. And they were still created ignoring the policies on WP:MEATBOT and WP:MASSCREATE as Lugnuts actually did create more than 50 articles on several days and more than 25 often and then any semiautomated or high speed editing can be considered bot like editing.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 02:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd also support that the one who save such articles are able to voluntarily receive the same notifications the article creator does, as the expanders are likely more interested in getting aware of (potential) wls to and from the article. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:35, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - This has nothing to do with articles and is just a continued harassment campaign against Lugnuts. How can you possibly judge Article A based on Article B and Article C? These articles and the people who they are written about have nothing to do with each other. Why would they ever be judged together? And this idea of an article not only having to pass current rules but also needing to pass future rules that didn't even exist is horrifying. This is not in good faith and this goes against everything this website should be. I'm absolutely disgusted by this.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strongest possible oppose tremendous waste of time and resources, and as I've reiterated times, there's nothing wrong with stubs. Many of these could be fleshed out and pass GNG, and many of these are useful to users. If you want to merge them to a list one by one, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed.--Ortizesp (talk) 05:28, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The good news on the merge front is they all appear to have been included in relevant lists since 2006 to 2007. CMD (talk) 08:36, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support either draftification or redirection per BilledMammal. These articles can always be recreated if anyone can find sources showing their notability. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  05:43, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The only thing the subjects of these articles have in common are 1) they competed in the Olympics during a certain time frame 2) they were created by a certain editor. If you believe that mere documentation that someone competed in the Olympics is not sufficient to confer notability, then neither of the things these articles have in common have any bearing on the article subject's notability. That means the responsible thing to do would be to go through and determine notability for each article on an individual basis. Dealing with them in bulk is inappropriate, and would make it inevitable that some babies will be disposed of with the bathwater. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:21, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The contents of the bathwater aren't being thrown out here; they will still be available, whether in the form of a draft or a redirect.
 * In addition, one of the issues with dealing with them individually is that it will overload AfD. Do you, and other editors opposing this proposal on that basis, have no objection to 25, 50, or 100 of Lugnut's articles being taken through AfD each day (a process that will take between 5, 2.5, or 1.25 years, respectively, if we conservatively assume that only half of Lugnuts articles have notability issues)? BilledMammal (talk) 06:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Putting them in draft space makes it less likely that anyone will ever actually improve them. I haven't the foggiest idea what's in draft space right now. And when I am using the site as a user, if I come across a redlink and think "gee, I expected Wikipedia to have an article on this," my first inclination isn't to check draft space to see if there's something that just needs to spruced up a bit. I would be very surprised if that is actually part of anyone's workflow.
 * If it is a long and painful process to put them through AFD then so be it; that is the pain that the nominators choose to endure themselves, and inflict on others in the process. Presumably should they choose to do so, it's because they've examined an individual article and found that it is in fact not notable, and can prove that at AFD. Circumventing the process simply because it will take more effort than some people care to do is simply cheaping out. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 11:31, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of the proponents of dealing with these articles individually also oppose sending them en masse to AfD, since the seven-day deadline gives too little time to find sources. This is a proposal to extend that deadline by 4 years and 358 days. Those who wish to examine these articles one-by-one will have plenty of time to do so. I'd also note that all the articles covered by the proposal are extremely scanty; even if they were deleted, any one of them could be recreated with better sources in a matter of minutes. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 11:52, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Presumably should they choose to do so, it's because they've examined an individual article and found that it is in fact not notable, and can prove that at AFD. They would be able to prove that the individual article doesn't demonstrate notability; there is no consensus that they are required to do more than this when nominating mass created articles. BilledMammal (talk) 12:05, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Draftspace is an invisible graveyard. It wouldn't matter if the auto-delete period was set to 50 years; approximately nobody beyond the original author ever stumbles upon a draft. Articles get improved by attracting editors, and editors get attracted as a consequence of visibility, which drafts simply do not enjoy. Therefore the practical eventual outcome of draftification would be deletion.
 * However, I also do not support deletion. Several editors have proposed redirection instead, and I agree that this would be better. Regardless of the possibility of (potentially deliberate) errors within the articles, I don't think anyone is doubting that these people existed and had a verifiable association with a particular event - therefore it should be possible to identify an appropriate redirection target.
 * Finally, I'll also mention that this whole set of articles feels like it skirts WP:COPYVIO as a potential infringement of Database rights, and for that reason I do not support doing nothing. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Support. I don't see why we can't draftify the articles and then create redirects. People can work on any drafts they feel are viable without losing the info already in them, and in the meantime the redirects serve the reader looking for information. Valereee (talk) 11:48, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support as deliberate errors had been introduced, per the evidence by Chipmunkdavis. There is no time to check it all, and it is better to have no articles than hundreds of faulty articles. I would agree that draftification would be a better option, but there is no way we should have thousands of articles that have deliberate errors on them. &maltese; SunDawn &maltese;    (contact)   12:55, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I highly doubt that he made "thousands of articles with deliberate errors in them." I've checked many articles written by Lugnuts and only very rarely have I found errors. BeanieFan11 (talk) 21:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, with a preference for redirection over draftification. Either way, the article histories will be preserved, and can be used if someone can find reliable sources that establish notability. (IMO, notability is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for an article, i.e., just because a subject is notable does not mean that Wikipedia has to have an article about the subject.) - Donald Albury 15:10, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, many of these articles could be improved to pass notability, but they should not be in mainspace until this has been done. However, to increase the chances of editors improving them I suggest adding a note about drafts to the tasks/to-do lists of the relevant wikiprojects (olympics/fencing/swimming…) with a link to the "other" section in their article assessment page. EdwardUK (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per above. Therapyisgood (talk) 16:40, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support There are to many articles that are only notable because of topic specific notability rules. Such rules only serve to formalize the systemic bias of Wikipedia. My general preference is that WP:GNG replace all topic specific notability guidelines. I recognize that is unlikely to reach a consensus, but I fell this is a step on the right direction. — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * These aren't notable per topic specific notability guidlines. But many are notable through GNG. BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:06, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose mass deletions without a detailed look are never a good thing, especially when a lot of the articles likely are in fact notable. Draftifying them is a poor choice, because that makes them hard to find (and therefore, interested editors won’t find and work on them), and just results in a shortcut to deletion. There’s nothing wrong with stubs - in fact, for the same reason, I’d argue having a stub encourages people to expand it more than not having an article at all does. Anything that is truly not notable can be deleted via the standard AfD process, which the village pump is not an appropriate substitute for. Deletion of notable material is not an acceptable side effect. Claims of “it can always be recreated later” are not useful: any recreated articles will likely be rapidly sent to AfD and deleted before someone interested happens to see it and dig up some appropriate sources. Frankly, I’m a little bothered at the very high notability standard that seems to be set these days, as it encourages a perception that the encyclopedia is complete and new contributions aren’t welcome. A lot of us treat Wikipedia as the one-stop shop to learn something, an image that’s taken 20 years to cultivate. It’s going to lose that if it keeps going this direction. Obviously there has to be some kind of notability standard, or else everyone and their dog would have their own article, but accurate content should be a far greater priority. Highway 89 (talk) 21:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If accurate content should be the priority, then mass-creating articles without spending time to ensure accuracy seems a detriment. CMD (talk) 02:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So where was the "detailed look" when these were mass-created? Don't applying standards in just one direction. Reywas92Talk 23:02, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support That way, they can stop cluttering mainspace while people prepare them in draftspace. QuicoleJR (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't see how they are cluttering mainspace, it's not like people fall on these pages accidentally. Ortizesp (talk) 00:27, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to clear up a common misperception, there is no way to clutter up Wikipedia mainspace because, given the right computer tech, Wikipedia can fit on the head of a pin. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - per others who note that draftification as a backdoor deletion is inappropriate, and a better solution (as offered above) is to redirect these to the appropriate Olympic games. Rlendog (talk) 02:02, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per Levivich.  starship .paint  (exalt) 15:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support-ish. After reading Lugnut's final goodbye post where he admitted to leaving false statements in article for years, I can't see how we can leave these stubs in article space. I also don't think we need to spend countless hours to check each one. I would prefer deletion, and if not, then a normal 6 months draft. Regardless, redirects from the person to a relevant article is always helpful and I would support mass redirect (but not with the same content deleted, that invites reverting the redirect and leaving the bad content there). --Gonnym (talk) 22:10, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I highly doubt that was true (about the false statements). Having known Lugnuts when he was still here and having checked many of his creations, I very highly doubt that his final statement was true; it was likely just made to piss off all of those who did not like him. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:35, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Another reason why this proposal is a terrible idea: John Hession. Hession received TONS of coverage (so much that I was originally going to expand it, but was so overwhelmed by the amount of coverage that I thought it'd be better to save others and then afterwards expand him) and was described by some as the greatest shooter of all time. We should not be blindly getting rid of these, especially since many of them received sigcov and some of them received coverage calling them the greatest in their sport ever! BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You will have 5 years to work on them from Draftspace, they aren't disappearing. If anything, your comment reinforces why draftification is the optimal choice here. As for your claims about Hassion and the "greatest shooter", that is a wee bit of hyperbole. You're basing that on a title of an obituary which itself uses the vague verbiage of "some claim". Zaathras (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * But when a high percentage are notable, it makes no sense to send them to draftspace! I would much prefer not to spend the next five years of my life expanding articles on Olympians or they all get deleted! (and additionally, if this passes, BilledMammal is going to do the same with the other 90,000) As for Hession, he won many world titles, set many world records, won national championships and won records in them, etc., so I think while he might not be the best, he's still one of the best. We should not be blindly getting rid of all these! BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:16, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support -- seems like a well-thought-out solution to a complex problem. Renata•3 02:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Huge Oppose this is exactly the thing Wikipedia shouldn't be doing. This should be handled case-by-case and we should never just wily-nily dratify them en-masse. They certainly aren't hurting anyone by being there and as we come across them we can re-check gng to see which are worthy and which are not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose I agree that something ought to be done about this subset of articles. Draftification is the wrong way to tidy this up. If we agree that these stubs should not retained, then let us redirect them to the appropriate article. There is nothing to be gained from moving the articles to draft space; it would be a disservice to our readers. Why should a reader looking for an early Olympian not find a result? Draftification would create holes. Redirects would lead the reader to an article where they can find out about the person. Draftification leaves behind red links elsewhere. Creating redirects does not have that problem. Draftification is fraught with problems and should not be pursued.  Schwede 66  05:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support If any of these people pass the GNG, editors can expand them and provide proper sourcing. If they can't they will be deleted in 6 months. -- In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 07:41, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that BilledMammal has been reverting when I've removed articles from this list containing SIGCOV, saying that he controls this proposal and anyone who wants to remove an entry must discuss with him. And I went and started a discussion 30 minutes ago, but he's refused to respond while actively editing other areas. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It appears he started a discussion on it with you on 3 March. CMD (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it is a little unreasonable for you to expect me to drop everything and respond to you immediately; when you commented I was in the middle of opening two large move requests (Talk:Aaron Callaghan (footballer, born 1966) and Talk:Alakol, Azerbaijan).
 * I also don't expect people to discuss every removal with me. I have no objection to people removing articles when they provide sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG or to editors removing articles after providing just one source if that source is extensive. My objection is to you repeatedly reinstating removals that don't meet these criteria. BilledMammal (talk) 16:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose As someone already said it takes time to write things, while deleting them is easy. Wikipedia is not finished and there is no deadline. Those articles have basically nothing in common except they were written by the same editor (which is irrelevant), so binding them all together without any BEFORE and without any actual demonstration that these articles are not notable is not appropriate and this is also not the place for such discussions. They should be taken to Afd individually, if you have some concerns. Someone commented that deleting them this way would take min. 8 (or even 30) years, but then you expect people to rewrite them in 5????? I believe it is more than obvious to everyone that this proposal of draftifying is actually a backdoor proposal to deletion, which is basically gaming the system. I am strongly against massive deletion of so many sports articles and the eradicating of so much olympic knowledge, that is very useful to us readers (those who are not interested only in most commercialised superstar champions of the present days) and that is not doing any harm whatsoever. Furthermore (and what actually made me write this comment after a long time of just reading) it was clearly stated that if this proposal succeeds, this anti-sports modern book-burning crusade will continue with massive deletions of other athletes (post 1912), which I again find very worrying and utterly un-encyclopedic. I know I will achieve nothing but I simply had to write this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.76.250.241 (talk) 18:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Nothing in common? Takes time to write? Have you looked at the articles? They're carbon copies with some variables that differ per page. Assuming they weren't automated, they took probably a minute or two each at most. CMD (talk) 04:31, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per Levivich and pragmatism. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:56, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose as articles that meet SIGCOV are being kept in the proposal. If the SIGCOV articles are removed, I would be Neutral on the proposal - clearly we can't have a ton of permanent stub articles with little to no notability, but I'm not sure userficiation is the right idea. Redirects seem far more helpful. <i style="color: green; font-family: Mistral;">Toa</i> <i style="color: green; font-family: Mistral;">Nidhiki05</i> 14:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree with Mistral. For this reason, I originally supported but BilledMammal is refusing to allow amendment of the list to remove articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) even though they have been expanded, now include SIGCOV, and are not based solely on database entry. IMO the extreme remedy of mass removal of articles should not be considered for articles that fall into a gray area. Such articles, if challenged, should be dealt with under regular order, by normal AfD processes. BilledMammal's refusal to allow amendment of the list renders this proposal objectionable IMO. Cbl62 (talk) 14:20, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It is standard practice to not edit RfC statement content after RfCs are opened, especially after there have already been comments. It is best practice to not edit content currently under an RfC. Fine to oppose, but it seems unfair to blame BilledMammal for following WP:RFC. CMD (talk) 14:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Disagree. BilledMammal initially said he would agree to allow amendments to the list, but then threatened me at my talk page saying it was a violation of WP:TPA for me to remove two that had been amended. He said he would only allow amendments if he approved in advance. He has refused to give his OK to removal of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) which are now clearly out of scope. I initially supported the proposal but such extraordinary mass removal should be limited to the most extreme cases with zero SIGCOV and only database sources. Cases like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) should be challenged, if at all, only under regular order. Cbl62 (talk) 15:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not following on what exactly you disagree on. The standard practice? Obtaining consensus seems to be a good way to work within the RfC guidance. CMD (talk) 15:50, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree with not striking entries from the list that no longer fit the scope of the proposal. The proposal was to remove from Main space Lugnuts' early Olympic articles that lacked SIGCOV and were based solely on databases. That scope seemed reasonable, and I supported it. Consistent with that scope, BilledMammal initially invited users to strike individual entries that no longer met that scope. He then reversed course when BeanieFan (an editor with whom BilledMammal has a history of disputes) improved a couple articles and struck them. By reversing course, BilledMammal has changed the initial nature of the proposal and is now insisting on including articles that are out of scope. That's what I disagree with. Cbl62 (talk) 16:47, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, although I don't think I said the point you are disagreeing with in my comment. At any rate, the risk of contention that you describe is exactly why the WP:RFC page suggests not doing exactly what BeanieFan is doing. CMD (talk) 17:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Conditional support - The proposal is a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff. No direct deletion and a fair opportunity to turn the stubs that are keepable into encyclopedic articles. However, five years is way too long not to autodelete. That really should be just one year or two years at the very most.Tvx1 21:01, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, no preference for redirects or draftification. If the article is draftified or deleted and it actually has sources that meet GNG, it can be improved or recreated as a proper article and not a 1 or 2 sentence stub sourced to a database. Sennecaster  ( Chat ) 04:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. If anything, the proposal should be even broader.  As the RFC notes, Lugnuts does not deserve "Assume good faith" and even to the extent that the articles are not inaccurate, they are largely woefully undersourced - if someone attempted to get such a shoddily sourced article past AFC, it would never pass.  I have no objection to saving articles which is why a 5-year moratorium on deleting drafts is good, but I don't see that as relevant to this RFC - if there are articles in the list that genuine SIGCOV has been found since (note that some of the examples above are still rather shaky), whatever, it just either won't be draftified or can be moved back to the mainspace immediately, and it can go through normal AFD if desired.  SnowFire (talk) 06:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I see this proposal and the "just redirect instead" as equivalent in all but name, so putting my support here. I am in favour of either/both of just draftifying or dradftify-and-redirect, with a mild preference towards the latter. I actually prefer draftifying for a much shorter period of time than 5 years, potentially the standard 6 months (?) of Draftspace simply because I do not think 5 years is a reasonable amount of time, and the articles that ought to be deleted would instead just linger in draftspace for years until they're eventually deleted long after being forgotten. I'd rather have a concerted effort and save whatever articles can be saved, failing which they should ideally be put under the same scrutiny and procedures as the rest of Wikipedia. Being created by a prolific admin should not grant 5 years of "free Draftspace stay" compared to other articles. Soni (talk) 08:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose the only problem that's been identified with these articles is that the subjects may not pass the sports notability guidelines. I don't think that's nearly a big enough deal to warrant something like this. Mass deletion/draftification is reasonable if there are more serious problems with the content, such as copyright violations, hoaxes and the like, but notability guidelines are not that big a deal.  Hut 8.5  08:50, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Other problems have been identified, they are mentioned in a couple of places in this discusison. CMD (talk) 10:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Like what? I shouldn't have to read an entire 13,000 word discussion to see the rationale for this. The proposer only mentions the notability guidelines or logistical problems related to enforcing them, as do the vast majority of the comments in support.  Hut 8.5  12:55, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hut 8.5 - Except for lack of notability? Accuracy is the main one. Lugnuts admitted to purposefully putting inaccuracies into his articles, and whilst there's those who think he was lying about that, it's also inarguable that he made a lot of mistakes when filing in those article-templates at one-a-minute - more than a few of his articles have turned out not to even have the correct name. WP:MASSCREATE violation is another additional reason.
 * However, the lack of notability issue is enough by itself for these articles to be dealt with as that's a DELREASON. FOARP (talk) 13:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you don't think that articles by this person can be trusted then we should be considering deleting all of them, not just Olympic athletes from a certain period. (FWIW that comment sounds like trolling from someone who's just been indef blocked and I wouldn't read too much into it.) The only distinguishing feature about these ones is the sports notability guidelines, which seems to be the main rationale for this. While lack of notability is a valid reason to delete something under the deletion policy, you are proposing to ignore the deletion policy with respect to these articles. I don't think mere failure to follow the notability guidelines is enough for such a drastic step. I would expect to see a bigger problem, preferably one which is grounded in a policy rather than a guideline.  Hut 8.5  17:47, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Just as a data point: as far as I can tell, the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Contributor_copyright_investigations/Lugnuts&oldid=1104574210 contributor copyright investigation] didn't find evidence of deliberate errors being introduced. isaacl (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course it didn’t. That searched for copyright violations, not inaccuracies. Tvx1 20:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Some of the comments in that investigation explicitly referred to looking for inaccuracies, though not all of them. As I said, it's just a data point. isaacl (talk) 16:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support in the cases of those that are just regurgitation of database entries. Oppose for the few that have been expanded to be more encyclopedic. WP:NOT a database or an indiscriminate collection of information.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:46, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I've got to say, I've always hated the low bar set for including sports figures here. (Do we still have the article about the ball player with no name? Moving on). That said, I cannot favor mass deletion at this point. The 5 yr limited draftification seems to be the solution to an extraordinary problem.  Extraordinary problems require extraordinary solutions. A clear case of the need to Ignore All Rules on a massive scale. I would hope that this process could somehow be automated and perhaps a database/index of these article drafts could be made accessible for those who would want to avail themselves of it. Also, another thought: Is it technically possible to symbolize (mark unobtrusively) red links that have articles in DraftSpace?  Regards,  GenQuest  "scribble" 01:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per Snowfire. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Qualified Support I'd much rather see these articles redirected and even thought of opposing this, but ultimately I feel that something needs to be done. So if the alternative to redirect doesn't happen this has my weak support. The reason this has less support from me is that draft imposes time limits and requires moves. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ambivalent, leaning oppose. This proposal really seems like draftifying as a backdoor to deletion, which is against policy, and I think it's fairly harmless to have a bunch of borderline-notable stubs lying around. People can always PROD them as needed. I am concerned about the inaccuracies reported above, but I spot-checked a few articles and they seemed to match the sources. I'm also concerned about the WP:TRAINWRECK concerns mentioned by some participants who say that some of the articles listed pass WP:GNG. It's an unfortunate situation, but dealing with the articles on a case-by-case basis (PROD, redirect, or expand as appropriate) may be best. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:05, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mx. Granger: In your view, how many can I PROD or redirect in one day without being disruptive? Levivich (talk) 19:14, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. It's not realistic to expect people to deal with hundreds of PRODs in the same topic area all at the same time. Given the special circumstances, I think it would be reasonable to PROD 5 or 10 a day or maybe more (though under normal circumstances that would be a lot for one topic area). Redirecting is easier to undo than deletion, so that could probably be done at a higher rate without being disruptive. But I realize the list might take weeks or months to get through at that rate. Hence my ambivalence – I don't really see a good solution, so I'm not sure what the best approach is. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 19:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Not weeks or months, years. 93,000 Lugnuts stubs, the ones listed here are less than 1% of the total. At 10 a day, we're talking 90 days for 900 articles, plus AFDing the removed PRODs (or some of them), so it'll extend beyond 90 days. Now, I know people will say, well not all 93,000 Lugnuts stubs need to be dealt with at all, some are good. That's true. We don't know how many. But even if a mere 10% are bad -- 9,000 articles -- PRODing 10 a day would take 3 years. And if it's higher than 10%, if it's 50% bad, then we're talking over a decade to PROD them all. To go through them case-by-case is totally impossible, in my view. It must be done by batch processing, because of the number. They were created by batch processing, so I don't feel bad about not going through them one by one, but I feel a lot better about it when I realize that it's functionally impossible to get through 10,000 articles or more, one by one. Levivich (talk) 19:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Depicting my opposition to mass article creation, microstubs are not a value-add to the encyclopedia. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 15:21, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support: Wikipedia is not a sports database and many of these people will not be notable. The efforts of those who have expanded articles under this scope is appreciated, but it is not clear why this is made easier by having an existing sub-stub article rather than directly using the two website sources to write something from scratch. You could even keep an outline of the wikitext in userspace or start by copying a similar article. If it took minutes for Lugnuts to create then it takes minutes to re-create, not much overhead. I am persuaded against redirection by FOARP and I believe that it would fall afoul of WP:R#1 and #2, by indiscriminately redirecting many common names with more notable targets to very brief mentions (if any) of very obscure sportspeople that no-one would be using the search function to discover anyway. — Bilorv ( talk ) 22:26, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Rhododendrites. I suggest AfD-ing the worst 5%, and then review. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:02, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I guess that merging possibilities are poorly considered. SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What would we merge? And plenty of these microstubs have been AfD'd and deleted or redirected...in the past 11 months we've had 214 bios of Olympians and 75% of them have been deleted (71), redirected (88), or merged (2), and that's including a lot that don't meet the criteria for this list (and so would be expected to have a greater chance of being kept). Why should the community have to spend 2.5 more months reviewing 50 AfDs (using the archive average of 19/month, which a lot of people complained was too high) just to arrive at the same conclusion: we have way too many non-notable Olympian stubs? JoelleJay (talk) 00:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What would we merge? Any proposal to delete, even 5-year slow delete, should require the proponent to explain what merging is not possible.  For William Horschke, for example, why not merge all USA participants to USA at the 1904 Summer Olympics?  I agree that the article creator should have asked this question.
 * Plenty have been AfD-ed? I didn’t know that.  Was it stated upfront?  It would be helpful, it is what I was asking for.  This data would change my mind, if the were all deleted.  But they mostly weren’t. Looking at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Olympics/archive, a minority were deleted, and almost none were draftified which makes draftification and odd proposal here.  “Redirect” looks to be a prominent outcome.  Assuming that a redirect implies that the subject is mentioned at the target for having done something, I consider that similar to a merge of a stub.  Redirection, with optional merge, is something that could be done without special authorisation by RfC. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:49, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So far as I can tell, all of these individuals are already mentioned in the relevant Event at the X Olympic lists. If that is the merge needed, then it is already done. CMD (talk) 08:28, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A far smaller minority were kept and the merge rate is negligible, which supports the reality that these subjects are not notable. The proposal to draftify for five years is simply to address claims that 7 days at AfD or 6 months in draftspace is "too short" to find refs, and mass redirection poses its own issues as described below. JoelleJay (talk) 13:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I accept that “keep” or “do nothing” not good solutions. I would prefer mass redirection to deletion or draftification, the first per policy WP:ATD-R, and the second because draftspace should not be used as purgatory, because draftification should only be used for pages that are envisioned to be returned to mainspace, and this clearly will not be the case. Redirection allow easy bold editing should new sourced material be found.  Unjustified reversions of redirects should be responded to promptly by AfD, with consideration of sanctions due to disruptive editing if the reverts were done en mass. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:24, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The issues people have brought up with redirection are 1) not all subjects have a suitable redirect (e.g multiple Olympics) and 2) redirecting wholesale brings up issues with names shared with other mentioned-but-pageless people. JoelleJay (talk) 16:22, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * (1) Any person who has participated in multiple Olympics is quite a step above the typical example, and their article should be Kept, of AfD-ed. If it is in anyway complicated, there is need for discussion, and with deletion or pseudodeletion on the cards, AfD should be used for that discussion.
 * (2) So, why not WP:Move to an unambiguous title before redirecting? The current excessively minimalist titling practice doesn’t apply to redirects. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:43, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Several articles on multi-Olympians have been deleted due to failing the requirement for SIGCOV. JoelleJay (talk) 02:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support mass automated deletion or userification, both in this case and as a general solution where anyone mass-creates articles and and any discussions (before or afterwards) that occur fail to produce an affirmative consensus supporting their creation or retention. The ArbCom case showed that Lugnuts' judgement when creating articles is not good; and the listed sources look like raw databases, which likely do not pass WP:RS in all the places where Lugnuts used them, failing the GNG. Redirection, as some people have suggested above, is not reasonable because we can't verify that these articles are actually appropriate for the target they would be redirected to (or that they reflect any sort of reality at all, given the terrible sourcing); nor is it reasonable that people spend several times the amount of time and effort Lugnuts spent spamming out these to "review" them. Anyone who believes there are individual articles worth salvaging has had ample time to do so. If people believe the database entries that were indiscriminately dumped into Wikipedia here can be turned into valid articles, the WP:BURDEN is on them to produce proper sources for them, and the WP:ONUS is on them to demonstrate a consensus supporting it - arguing that article-shaped-objects that were mass-produced in mere weeks or days must consume months or even years of the community's time to clean up is unworkable. A mass-edit that was done with one press of a button, with no discussion or effort to seek consensus, should not be so drastically more difficult to review and reverse. --Aquillion (talk) 04:53, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose I prefer the redirect option if there the community determines a problem exists. I am not convinced that a problem actually exists as Rhododendrites says in point 3 above ("There's zero exigency here"). This proposal appears to be a way to avoid a formal community discussion on how to resolve the question about how to handle mass nominations at Articles for Deletion. There are some things to like about the proposal, such as long term draft space, but in my mind, any mass nomination process should involve a group of uninvolved editors to review the nominated articles prior to beginning the AfD process. --Enos733 (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Please explain this theory. Levivich (talk) 18:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This is mentioned in the background section of this proposal. I believe the proposer wants to suggest "a method for resolving this question, with a group of articles that can be used to test the proposed resolution." To me the way forward would be to continue the discussion and evaluate the proposals articulated at WP:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/AfD at scale before launching a test. - Enos733 (talk) 19:03, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I wrote that sentence :-) This RFC is a formal discussion on how to resolve the question (or, at least, a question) about how to handle mass nominations at AFD, and it proposes a method for avoiding mass nominations at AFD for articles that meet a certain criteria. I understand preferring redirects, or believing that these can just be left in mainspace as is, but I don't understand how an RFC avoids an RFC. Levivich (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * To me this is a little bit of forum shopping, as a discussion was happening elsewhere (and yes I understood it stalled). I would rather see a more complete proposal, rather than an ad hoc test. - Enos733 (talk) 20:04, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a lot easier to say than do. Levivich (talk) 20:09, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The discussion wasn’t just stalled, it was cancelled by ArbCom. BilledMammal (talk) 02:26, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Junk the lot. Virtually useless to man and beast. Complete anathama to everything Wikipedia is trying to achieve.   scope_creep Talk  16:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment Seems kind of silly when we change the notability criteria then have to do mass deletions. Now we only consider GNG or SPORTS rather than anyone who's competed in the Olympics. Oaktree b (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Draftifying this many articles is pointless; just delete them. They can be re-created when sources show up. Cleaning the cobwebs out of wikipedia is important. Still seems silly to have changed the notability criteria, but here we are. Oaktree b (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support draftification or redirection. Either one works. If the only references given are a database source, then they aren't even giving a presumption of notability, particularly since they aren't even medalists. Any that have been expanded or otherwise had proper sources added can just be moved back to mainspace after draftification by the editors who made the improvements. Considering this could have instead been a proposal to delete them all, which would have been valid due to the requirement for all sports biographies to meet the WP:GNG, I think draftification is getting off light, particularly with the special extended time period consideration given here. Silver  seren C 00:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per NOTPAPER and, more importantly, NTEMP: if we remove what cannot be easily added to today, we skew the balance inexorably towards recentism. Kevin McE (talk) 08:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strongest support ever Let's consider the options.
 * Doing nothing - It should be clear by the discussion reasons that the articles can't stay the way they are. We have to do something.
 * Drafts - The extended autodeletion means it's not a deletion backdoor, and draftifying them is our best bet. While some people say no one will improve them, I think the people discussing have the village pump watched, and will most likely go to the draft space to improve the articles if the proposal passes.
 * Redirect - To what? And also, no one will search them, so it won't help the encyclopedia at all.
 * AfD - That will increase the workload, and there will only be 7 days to find notability, as oppose to 5 years if the proposal passes. Such AfDs will most likely be delete, so why discuss it instead of discussing something actually meaningful to discuss?
 * That is why I support. Nononsense101 (talk) 17:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support based on evidence of low page views dictating that drafting articles will have minimal impact. Cherry-picked examples of articles that have proven their notability with improved references would be returned to mainspace as users search for such athletes, recovering the minimal bycatch BluePenguin18 🐧  ( 💬 ) 03:16, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support There are several existing wikipedia rules that would have prevented their creation if they had been enforced. (detailed reasoning comes later).Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:26, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Reconfirm support and also to discourage future mass creation of stubs. The Lugnuts stubs were created ignoring the policies of WP:MASSCREATION, WP:MEATBOT or WP:BOTUSE. Those are policies and should have been enforced. Most of the articles were not edited considerably by other editors except for Lugnuts and draftifying them would still provide potential expanders with 5 years time to expand the articles. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 03:16, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose This has been shown to be a test case in deleting most of the 90,000 stubs created by an editor. I would be open to a separate proposal to redirect some of these to the nation's teams.  A delayed deletion is not the only way to handle this issue.  A dedicated group of 20 to 100 could fix these articles in a reasonable amount of time.  Abzeronow (talk) 19:20, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So your proposed “fix” for this is that a substantial percentage of the actually-active editors of EN Wikipedia (a 2017 study showed nearly all articles were written by about ~1,300 editors) dedicate months/years of time to fix the problems entirely created by a single editor?
 * Yeah, no.
 * But even if this is the way to fix it this proposal doesn’t prevent this from happening? The articles can still be fixed in draftspace if people wish to do that? FOARP (talk) 08:23, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support for the love of god please. I've come across so many of these stubs of sportspeople created by Lugnuts that have zero claims of notability besides the criteria of being an olympian. Sportspeople is an area where we ought to be more strict practicing the notability guideline. Database entries do not count to notability. SWinxy (talk) 04:14, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would also prefer deleting them outright FWIW. SWinxy (talk) 01:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, per FOARP. This is a reasonably pragmatic compromise that addresses the fact that many of these "articles" are potentially not even accurate, let alone notable. Even if the Lugnuts sabotage admission is untrue, other editors in this RfC have detected errors that – in my mind at least – call into question the reliability of the datasets used to create these stubs. I further agree with FOARP that an approach similar to this should be taken with regards to many other mass-created stubs that have little hope of satisfying the GNG or becoming reasonably-substantial articles, and that leaving said articles alone – or trying to mud-wrestle over a few of them at a time at AfD – legitimises using fait accompli as a work-around for the burden of establishing notability and reliable sourcing. Protestations such as those from BeanieFan11 are not at all compelling: they argue at one moment that [the] majority [of the stubs concerned] I would say could be expanded if the right sources were used, it just takes time to write things, then at the next admit that nobody actually wants to do that work of expanding them (I doubt that there's going to be a ton of eager editors who want to help out in writing articles on 1900/10s Olympians), thus undermining their own suggestion that an Olympic stub cleanup project be created as an alternative to the headline proposal. Similarly from Abzeronow just above me here; [a] dedicated group of 20 to 100 could fix these articles in a reasonable amount of time. I wish them, or any and all other editors, the best if they do genuinely wish to start a Lugnuts Stubs WikiProject and set to the task of making decent articles out of these database entries – but I see zero reason as to why that work cannot be carried out over the next five years in the peace and quiet of draftspace. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 12:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would further add, for the avoidance of doubt, 1) that I support the principle of the proposal and the methodology used to prepare the query, and that my support endures on those terms even if the list of articles produced by said query changes in the course of the RfC; and 2) that I oppose systematic redirection as an alternate proposal on the grounds that there is no clear methodology for selecting appropriate targets for redirection. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 12:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I find the "articles shouldn't have to satisfy Wikipedia standarads" argument extremely amusing. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:43, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Per XAM2175. This gives people an option to sort the wheat from the chaff while also keeping most of the chaff out of article space. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:03, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirecting, Neutral on draftifying. Wikipedia isn't a burocracy, so I don't think its a problem to do this process here instead of AfD if enough editors come to a disagreement. Different room, same discussion. — PerfectSoundWhatever  (t; c) 20:01, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support It is clear that these articles should never have been created. There is no reasonable expectation of notability: Participation in the early Olympics was often who could attend, not who had already shown they were one of the world's best through international competitions. They violate GNG, as well NATHLETE, even before the Olympics change was made: it has always been the case that significant coverage is expected, and simple database listings are indequate. These "articles" have little to no context, merely stating their participation, which is already included in the relevant event articles. It is entirely appropriate to take bulk action such as this against low-quality mass-creation, which would be impossible to address any other way, and we should do so in many more cases, including cricket and football players and place names. If you're whining that draftifying is back-door deletion, I'm happy to fully delete! One should not be able to exempt one's articles from deletion or similar action because you made tens of thousands of such one-line litter pages. A vote to oppose is simply a middle finger to our basic concepts of notability, which call for substantive independent coverage, without exception for atheticism. No one's stopping anyone from writing actual articles or even creating redirects if they want. Reywas92Talk 23:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support Either is fine, the idea of having to patrol thens of thousands of minor articles that I'll have to check for notability sounds painful and doesn't really add anything of value. I've seen sports articles like this go both ways at AfD with people willing to die on these molehills.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 04:48, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose. As others have noted, draftification (especially mass draftification) is simply a backdoor version of deletion, which is an extreme remedy that should be reserved for content that is demonstrably harmful to the project. This proposal is without any proper basis unless there is some reason to believe that these articles are in any way harmful to the project or its users. -- Visviva (talk) 02:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:NOHARM. Reywas92Talk 04:35, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose, not so much because I care about these Olympian sub-stubs, but because I do care about WP:CREEP and about not expanding the already-problematic process of using draftification as a way of getting rid of articles for which there is no immediate prospect of active improvement and resubmission. Regardless of whether the gotten-rid-of-articles are deleted from draftspace or just left there to molder forever, they have been eliminated out-of-process as Wikipedia content, debasing both our proper deletion processes and our proper use of draftspace to foster drafts. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:59, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose I think I am just repeating others above, but in my own words -
 * These pass special notability criteria that we have for historical biographies. We are talking about 1000 articles and that number will not grow. For this and other records starting in the Industrial Age like military awards with no other info, we give a pass to scant biographies. Wikipedia has the space, and sometimes we compromise on content qualtiy to keep our inclusion rules uniform and easy to understand. We routinely keep Olympians now; it makes sense to me that we would want completeness in our set.
 * I do support alternative forms of presentation, like migrating these into related lists. I recognize that readers may not want individual one-line biographies, but it is more likely that they would want sports records from the era. If someone has a clever way to keep and combine biographies, then I favor that over keeping individual articles.
 * Two things are happening in this discussion- the proposal to remove the articles, and also a propose to handle such content with an alternative to AfD. The AfD process gives Wikipedia a lot of stability and I push back against circumventing it. I like the idea of "draftify for 5 years, then delete if no one touched it" as a potential solution. What I do not like is proposing it ad hoc here in this discussion, rather than pointing to it as an independently documented Wikipedia process with centralized discussion. I might and probably would support the 5-year draft solution if that were a documented, reusable, community discussed process. It seems clever, but not as a one-off with no place to discuss it.
 *  Bluerasberry  (talk)  15:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
 * These pass special notability criteria that we have for historical biographies. We are talking about 1000 articles and that number will not grow. For this and other records starting in the Industrial Age like military awards with no other info, we give a pass to scant biographies. Wikipedia has the space, and sometimes we compromise on content qualtiy to keep our inclusion rules uniform and easy to understand. We routinely keep Olympians now; it makes sense to me that we would want completeness in our set.
 * Have you been following Olympian AfDs lately? Or NSPORT in general? In the past year alone I've personally participated in/watched 150+ AfDs on Olympians that resulted in deletion/redirection because they didn't meet GNG. We don't have "special notability criteria for historical biographies", and in the case of sportspeople such a consideration was explicitly rejected: all sportsperson biographies must meet GNG and contain at least one SIGCOV SIRS demonstrating this.
 * I do support alternative forms of presentation, like migrating these into related lists. They already are in other lists/pages. JoelleJay (talk) 22:43, 12 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Weak Oppose I think redirection of most of them is, on balance, the better approach, but will support 'whatever approach we can agree to that gets these articles out of the mainspace', i.e. either is better than neither. Jeff UK
 * Support - These articles will never meet GNG and are basically just cruft. We don't need to waste more community time debating them individually. Nosferattus (talk) 06:50, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
 * These articles will never meet GNG – Obviously you're wrong, as numerous have already been proven to pass it. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Qualified oppose First, procedurally, as I do think that while discussion can function here as well as or better than a mass AfD, hosting it here instead of there gives the air of being less "serious" and so may be more likely to produce the desired outcome. Second, also procedurally, because of the stated intent to use the outcome (apparently assuming it will be the desired?) as precedent to take the same approach with other articles. Third, I don't think the proposal has appropriately noted the different limits to sourcing for the historic period, and the recency bias that may be introduced by not encouraging article development (instead of the proposal of hiding then deleting). Fourth, and getting to the issue at hand, because while the proposal says that there are no other viable avenues of tackling the issues in these articles, it does mention that a WikiProject may "adopt" the articles to work on... this avenue has clearly not been explored. As far as I can see, such a suggestion was never made to the Olympics project. Given the work there in a semi-organised manner already to improve other Olympic bio stubs, I think this would be the best option. A qualified/limited oppose, though, because I would like to say that I think draftification with an extended deadline is preferable to redirection without discussion; redirects where appropriate are better but there will be salvagable articles and it's harder to find and work on them as redirects. Kingsif (talk) 23:52, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Kingsif - Just on the question of venue, who, that might normally be expected to comment on an AFD related to an Olympian, has not yet already had their say here? What, that might have been said in an AFD discussion, has not already been said here? Conversely, what that has been said here would definitely not have been said in an AFD? I think the main result of having it here is simply that the discussion has been less dominated by the people who normally dominate at AFD and more eyes have been on it, but this is a good thing surely? FOARP (talk) 11:50, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
 * As I said, discussion can function here as well as or better than a mass AfD. But also as I said, hosting it here instead of there gives the air of being less "serious" and so may be more likely to produce the desired outcome. I do not think either point needs expansion but let me know. Kingsif (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose I see little to no benefit and many aspects of harm in this proposal, all of which have already been stated by others above. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 07:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support As other users have stated, it would be best to change these all into redirects to "[Country] at the [year] [Summer/Winter] Olympics," and make there a list of each athlete and their performance. Occidental Phantasmagoria (talk) 18:00, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose The decision should be about long term good for the encyclopedia, not revenge against an editor. For example, the evidence presented includes a list sortable by number of articles Lugnuts created that day. When deciding if article x is notable, what difference does it make if the author created 1 other article that day or 40? The decision should be based on the article subject, not the activity level of an author we no longer like on a given day.Dave (talk) 19:31, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not, and was never, about revenge; it's about, and has always been about, percieved lack of notability and standards enforcement. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 20:47, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Qualified Support for outright deletion (not draftification) of any remaining articles on the proposed list that remain unsourced and are now non-notable (as per WP:NSPORT). This mass deletion will still demand a manual, individual human review of each individual article prior to deletion. Also, this deletion rationale is completely independent of both the size of the proposed articles and the total number created, neither of which are relevant to their notability or possible retention. If somebody is keen to create new list articles out of these names, I would caution that they too are likely non-notable as well. Loopy30 (talk) 01:38, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support According to BilledMammal's draft, it's unlikely these will ever improve if left in mainspace, so the potential copyvio and inaccuracies (if we believe Lugnuts) are troubling. Ultimately, we're faced with mass-creation of stubs based solely on databases (of questionable reliability), and WP:N treats databases, even reliable ones, as poor evidence of notability. So we're likely faced with WP:DEL-REASON #2 and #6, at least. The concerns about backdoor deletion (WP:ATD-I) are easily addressed with the 5-year period, though I support tougher measures (like bringing it back to 6-months, or straight-up deleting) because there's no point in "rescuing" stubs that likely need to be fully rewritten from reliable sources (given that these databases are unreliable, per FOARP and CMD). Also agree with Cbl62's rationale. DFlhb (talk) 09:56, 29 April 2023 (UTC) edited 11:09, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * oppose draftification, support deletion. shoving these articles into drafts for them to rot for 5 years and then be ultimately deleted is a pointless endeavor. skip the 5 years, why don't ya? lettherebedarklight晚安 10:42, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * While I would also support deletion, I don't think that there will be a consensus for deletion here. Would you be willing to support draftification over doing nothing, even if it is your last choice behind more final actions such as deletion, redirection, etc? BilledMammal (talk) 17:52, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * i mean, sure, that seems to be the only choice... lettherebedarklight晚安 03:16, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I'm of two minds: one, these articles likely fail modern notability guidelines and quite possibly have purposefully introduced errors (see this diff and comments from above), but two, I can't help but think that the mass deletion or redirection of 1000 articles (or 93000 should people decide to propose more) is not the best way to go about resolving this. We didn't indiscriminately delete Neelix redirects and that had comparable numbers, so I don't see why this case should be any different. Make 930 pages with 100 articles each and let editors slowly run through them all, nominating any problematic ones via PROD or AFD. We could look to introduce a new CSD like we did with Neelix, too. This proposal has a timeframe of five years; it may take longer than this to manually check each article, but at least they'll actually be checked.  Anarchyte  ( talk ) 11:18, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This proposal has a timeframe of five years; it may take longer than this to manually check each article, but at least they'll actually be checked. Will they, though? I respect the good faith inherent to proposals like this, and please excuse my cynicism, but there's absolutely nothing to suggest that anybody will take systematic action to improve these stubs without being prompted to, and figuratively telling the stubs to shape up or face get shipped out is the closest thing we have to such a prompt. There's nothing about draftifcation that prevents the making of 930 pages with 100 articles each for editors to work through, and it doesn't make working on them compulsory; it simply incentivises people to act according to their apparently very sincere belief that the stubs have potential to be policy-compliant verifiable articles on notable people. As to five years potentially not being long enough – I'm sure that, if the community see real progress being made on the work, there'll be no difficulties arranging for a suitable extension. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 13:23, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect – i.e., have the articles be only slightly less accessible than drafts, without impending deletion being necessary, all whilst helping readers' navigation.  J947  † edits 02:43, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose for the reasons listed above. At most, redirects seem the best approach, as then users are able to more easily navigate the encyclopedia. I see no point in deleting/draftifying the pages, as it removes the most positive component of these stubs: allowing them to come up in searches. This is why redirects seem like a reasonable compromise. I understand that the concern is that it will take a long time to go through these articles to decide whether to improve or redirect them - to which I say, so what? Wikipedia is an unending work in progress. We have all the time in the world. Why not do it right? --Nerd1a4i (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 03:02, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 *  Support, whether it's this proposal, outright deletion, or redirection. The status-quo is untenable, and our usual processes cannot handle the volume here. The articles were created against policy WP:MEATBOT. There is some harm to leaving non-notable articles in mainspace: it sets examples for new users who will get a frustrating experience at WP:AFC when creating similar articles. There is further harm from the fact that these articles contain (purposefully added?) inaccuracies. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:04, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - We should be raising awareness about these stubs, not relegating them to forgotten drafts that'll all likely be deleted in 6 months 5 years. It's my view that Lugnuts was lying about inserting those deliberate inaccuracies, and was simply giving the finger to Wikipedia after his forced resignation from the project became inevitable. Tim O&#39;Doherty (talk) 11:00, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * relegating them to forgotten drafts that'll all likely be deleted in 6 months ...did you read the proposal? JoelleJay (talk) 16:18, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose I fully get why this is being proposed and respect folks for trying to find a way forward. But draft space is a horrible way to deal with pretty much any problem.  And to quote from above "mass deletions without a detailed look are never a good thing, especially when a lot of the articles likely are in fact notable. Draftifying them is a poor choice, because that makes them hard to find (and therefore, interested editors won’t find and work on them), and just results in a shortcut to deletion.".  Hobit (talk) 23:05, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Considering 75% of all Olympic bios (not just the microstubs here on the earliest, most under-sourced participants) at AfD are deleted or redirected, I find it extremely unlikely that "a lot" of these articles are on notable subjects. JoelleJay (talk) 23:37, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Even if 75% of Olympians were non-notable (and I think thats not even close to true) that's still 250 notable articles we'd be getting rid of here alone. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:41, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You'd have five years to find them all and try to improve them, though, together with all your colleagues in the Lugnuts Stubs WikiProject! XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 00:17, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * But why not have them improved in mainspace, where they are several times more likely to be seen and thus improved! BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:21, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You said so yourself: I doubt that there's going to be a ton of eager editors who want to help out in writing articles on 1900/10s Olympians. Draftication of these stubs – especially in such a high-visibility process as this – is a wonderful incentive, if you'll forgive my bluntness: improve them or lose them. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 01:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * And there's going to be even less editors expanding them if they are moved to draftspace... There is absolutely no issue in having them in mainspace; they should stay. BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:20, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no issue with having 750+ PAG-violating articles in mainspace? What is your proposal to deal with the articles that violate PAG's? BilledMammal (talk) 02:50, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Template:No significant coverage, Template:Notability, and other maintenance tags exist for articles created lacking sigcov (which is what I assume you mean by "PAG-violating") – my proposal would be to start a project that goes through them: improving the notable ones, redirecting/PROD-ing/AFDing the non-notable ones, etc. BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:00, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * which is what I assume you mean by "PAG-violating" I also mean violating WP:NOT and WP:N. While I support you creating that project, I would oppose that as an alternative per FOARP; I don't believe it is a practical alternative, and there is no deadline to have articles on these topics. BilledMammal (talk) 03:49, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The articles do not fail NOT (I believe you're referring to NOTDATABASE and so here's why it does not apply: it gives four different examples of what would be violating it - Summary-only descriptions of works - nope - Lyrics databases - nope - Exhaustive logs of software updates - nope - and Excessive listings of unexplained statistics - nope (most of these do not have statistics and those that do have them explained)) and many of the articles have been shown to pass WP:N. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:14, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * there is no deadline to have articles on these topics – I could say just the same thing the opposite way – there is no rush to delete these. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The examples under each section are not intended to be exhaustive. JoelleJay (talk) 22:16, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * 75% of Olympians taken to AfD in the last year were deemed non-notable. The bios in question here are on Olympians who are even more likely to be non-notable since they represent the earliest non-medalling competitors and their pages have not been substantially edited by anyone except Lugnuts. JoelleJay (talk) 00:51, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually looking at the first ~100 AfDs on Olympians since April 2022, out of 57 athletes competing in 1936 or earlier, only 6 were kept. And of those, two were kept for meeting unrelated criteria (NARTIST and NPROF). That's at best ~11%. None of these were closed as soft delete, either. JoelleJay (talk) 01:43, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok I looked at the rest of the Olympian AfDs. Out of 91 on competitors at the 1936 Olympics or earlier, 8 were kept, 1 was NC, and 1 was soft delete. That's 9%. JoelleJay (talk) 02:43, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * What if this does pass (which definitely seems possible, given the previous close), User:BeanieFan11 or some other interested party takes responsibility for the articles, and the articles are noindexed and moved without redirect to subpages in WikiProject Olympics's projectspace? That way mainspace is cleansed of these potentially error-having stubs, no information or edit history is lost, draftspace retains its stated purpose, the articles can be improved / prodded / MfDed as appropriate, and there's no five-year deadline? Wikiproject Olympics can create a project page overviewing the effort, link all the pages from there, and link the overview page from their talk page banners so interested editors can find out about it?
 * Folly Mox (talk) 03:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That is already contained within the proposal; editors are empowered to move any of these articles from draft space to project space or user space. As such, if the closer sees procedural problems with moving the articles to draft space, I think what you propose, moving directly to project space, would be an appropriate way to address them - and in general, even absent procedural issues, I have no objection to it. BilledMammal (talk) 03:49, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per @BeanieFan11. As has been stated, in practicality, the proposal here is whether we should these articles—as draftifying would have the same effect as deletion. Unless it can be shown that all of these Olympian articles are non-notable (and that's been shown to not be true), there's no good reason to delete them en masse, instead of actually examining the individual articles. : 3 F4U (they/it) 01:37, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Support As someone working through the BLP rescue project - I highly support removing them from the namespace. I would, also, highly support mass deletion.  We've used mass deletion in the past for un-referenced BLP's, I'd support extending to this use case after a reasonably sized test pool is completed. Mr.weedle (talk) 04:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * They're all sourced and none are BLPs... BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per David Eppstein and Hobit. L EPRICAVARK ( talk ) 18:59, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, primarily per Levivich and JoelleJay. Looking at an arbitrary set of 10 of these (and AfDing one of them) has convinced me there is extremely little value in the articles as they exist now. This is the kind of situation that Wikipedia processes are uniquely ill-equipped for: there's probably a consensus that something should be done, but no consensus can reasonably form around a particular action, so instead they will exist in perpetuity. I think maintaining these database entries as stubs does cause sufficient harm to require addressing, and I also think draftification is a relatively conservative move that enables future AfDs, redirects, and expansions as needed. For that reason, I support the proposal. Not my preferred solution, but better than doing nothing. Suriname0 (talk) 19:02, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Suriname0, just a note to say that drafts cannot go to AfD. That avenue of review is closed if these articles are moved to draftspace. – bradv  03:30, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Bradv thanks for clarifying. WP:MFD is functionally equivalent, right? I've only participated in AfD. Suriname0 (talk) 12:13, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Suriname0, MfD does not evaluate drafts on notability grounds (at least not that I've ever seen). Non-notable drafts that do not meet any of the "G" speedy deletion criteria stay in draftspace until moved to mainspace or deleted under G13. – bradv  12:55, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Got it, thanks! Suriname0 (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (Olympian draftification)
UTC)
 * Comment I think the better WP:ATD is to simply redirect them to "Country at year season Olympics", as mass-draftification has been routinely rejected as being against the purpose of WP:DRAFTIFY, which clearly states that the process is . Curbon7 (talk) 08:32, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Such redirects are often reverted. This specifics of this proposal are also intended to ensure that it is not being used as a backdoor route to deletion, by extending the auto-deletion period to five years, and by allowing the articles to be returned to mainspace without improvement for the purpose of redirecting them. BilledMammal (talk) 08:39, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That discussion seems to relate to American football players, which is a topic-area with very fervent advocates. As far as I'm aware, no one is disputing the illegitimacy of Lugnuts Olympian sub-stubs. Thank you for the correction of the 5 years, I had missed that point. Curbon7 (talk) 08:45, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Query I checked the most-expanded entry on the list, Alfred Bellerby. Why is this +651 byte edit not a significant contribution? -Ljleppan (talk) 08:59, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It should be, there must be a bug with the query. I'll resolve it and remove any articles that don't meet the criteria from the list; thank you for bringing it to my attention. BilledMammal (talk) 09:09, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thought as much :) If you need another test case, Special:Diff/856423499 appears to be +415. Ljleppan (talk) 09:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * There were two issues; the query was excluding articles with contributions <-200 bytes, and including those with >200 bytes, and the query was not considering edits made immediately before an edit by Lugnuts. I've fixed both; for the first, I've decided to continuing excluding contributions <-200 bytes rather than adding articles to the list after the RfC has been opened.
 * This has reduced the number of articles listed from 1,027 to 971.BilledMammal (talk) 10:07, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for being so fast with the fix. Could you also check this +233 at Edward Carr (athlete)? Ljleppan (talk) 10:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think I found that one at the same time, on Adolf Davids. I've fixed it now; the issue there was that it wasn't properly including edits with a change tag other than reverts or undo; that diff was tagged with 616, or wikieditor. This has reduced the number of articles listed to 960. BilledMammal (talk) 11:25, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The delete after 5 years seems like it might be annoying to do (since the drafts would have to excluded from any bots and automation that assumes drafts are G13 after 6 months), and I don't know if it's necessary unless some editors argue that there's something to be saved. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The other issue with the 5 year rule as currently written is what should an admin do if a human updates one of these pages 4 years 9 months after draftification but hasn't moved it in to mainspace yet? We can solve this problem by clarifying that this 5 year timer is a one time extension of WP:G13's 6 month timer and human edits after 4 years 6 months extend the timer in the normal manner. This also lets admins simply delete using WP:G13 (instead of having to cite this RFC) once the 5 year clock runs out. Iffy★Chat -- 14:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My thought is that doing this subversion of G13 might be trying to square peg the round hole. Would it be worth creating a psuedo-namespace for this, similar to UBXspace? casualdejekyll  16:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Objections to a separate proposal to go along with it, asking if we should mass redirect these articles? Does anyone actually object to redirecting them all (i.e. would only be satisfied if the articles were deleted)? &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 16:53, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I object to any proposal that has the concept of "them all". If you find that one of them is best dealt with by redirecting it, do that.  Some may be best handled by expanding them (or leaving them for someone else with more interest in doing so to expand).  Some of them may be best handled by deleting the article outright.  Let PROD or AFD handle that.  Some of them may be best handled via a redirect.  Wikipedia has millions of stub articles.  The handwringing over these is primarily about the personality that created them, not about the quality or potential of each one assessed on its own.  Yes, these thousands of stubs are a lot, but far less than 1% of all stubs we have at Wikipedia, and proportionally are not that big of a deal.  We don't have to do anything with the full set of them, other than approach each one as though it were any other stub we came across.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 17:01, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Reframing my meaning: is there anyone who supports draftification who would object to them being mass redirected? There are clearly at least a few who oppose draftification but would support redirecting. I don't doubt there are still some who would oppose either one, but redirecting seems obviously preferable to draftification. All of the arguments about redirection above assume "someone will revert". Well, if the proposal is to redirect, that becomes moot. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 17:17, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I for one wouldn't object, but I think it saves a whole lot more time to say, in this RFC, "Support #5 only", and see if that carries the day. Levivich (talk) 17:23, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So, while I certainly don't fit in the camp you're targeting, I am going to push back on a couple of things. Each proposed alternative to deletion has its own unique problems, and none of them really satisfy all possible issues.  Some people may support draftification because it preserves, in the currently viewable state, the article itself in a way that allows for people to more easily expand it.  Redirection makes the initial text harder to recover.  I mean, only a little if one is an experienced Wikipedia editor, but undoing a redirect and turning it back into an article does involve some rather arcane moves (available to any editor, but tricky nonetheless) that draftification does not.  For many purposes, redirecting is tantamount to deletion and salting.  Indeed, even deleting and leaving redlinks behind is a better solution, as a redlink at least says "here's an article that you might want to create if you can get the sources together" whereas a redirect basically says "Don't even bother".  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 17:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * undoing a redirect and turning it back into an article does involve some rather arcane moves (and BilledMammal's I believe it makes the articles easier to work on) - When was the last time either of you saw a newbie find a draft and improve it? Apart from the drafts that get outside attention (high-profile controversial article, canvassing, etc.), I'm not so sure I've ever seen it happen. Not in browsing on-wiki; not the new users I've worked with off-wiki. It's part of the failure of draftspace (or rather, why it failed as a collaborative space and turned into a trap for bad content): on the chance that someone goes to create a new article at the exact page name of the draft, nobody sees the notice that there's a draft, and the processes to discover drafts apart from seeing that notice are far more arcane. Way back in the early days of draftspace, I loved the idea and created a few thinking it would spark collaboration, but nobody ever edited them; to the contrary, people (experienced users, not newbies) just went ahead and started the article anew. With extremely rare exceptions, people don't discover and improve drafts. I agree it's also unlikely that someone will look in the history of an article to see the material, but it's not less likely. And really, if we're being honest, what is the value of what's there in the first place? There are two reasons I'm opposing the proposal above, and neither is because Lugnuts created a treasure trove of quality material for the ages: one is it's frustrating to see deletion-via-draftification, even with a 5-year countdown. It just doesn't do anything other than delete with a veneer of preservation. The other is the article titles should redirect, so why not keep the piddly bit of content that's there per WP:PRESERVE yada yada. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 17:57, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When was the last time either of you saw a newbie find a draft and improve it? MY POINT EXACTLY.  We shouldn't do anything with these stubs outside of the normal things we would do with a stub when we come across it during our own random wanderings through Wikipedia.  Sometimes, when I find a stub, I don't do anything with it, and leave it for someone else to handle.  Sometimes, I'll be like "I know enough about this, and I think this is a worthwhile project to handle" and I'll expand it.  Sometimes, I'll be like "I'm not entirely sure there's enough source material to justify an article about this" and I'll search, and find out there isn't, and I'll nominate it for AFD.  My entire point here is that every person in this discussion should be handling these stubs in this manner, and not fretting about what to do with them all.  They'll get handled.  Or maybe they won't.  But we don't need to do anything special.  Stubs exist.  They existed before Lugnuts created this relatively small set of them here.  The will continue to exist and new ones created tomorrow as well.  There's no need to do anything special.  Ignore them.  Expand them.  Delete them.  Whatever you would do if you found a stub that had nothing to do with Lugnuts, you should do with each one of these.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 18:28, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Do any of these articles have nontrivial incoming links? —Kusma (talk) 17:50, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This comment, and the discussion in general, seems to be full of people who believe that draftification = deletion. This proposal is explicitly NOT that and I'm not sure why people are so convinced that it is. casualdejekyll  15:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Because it will result in having been a backdoor route for deletion for the majority of them. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * why people are so convinced that it is - For the reasons I wrote above (and below, and elsewhere). The usefulness of draftspace, to the extent there ever was any, was eroded through a series of RfCs maybe 5-6 years ago which turned it into a bad content trap. Even before then, it was very rarely used for collaboration or article discovery, at least in part because it was never adequately integrated into our technical systems and editing norms. It had potential, but now it's limited to trapping spam/cruft/attack pages/nonsense. It may be useful for that, but I wouldn't support any proposal based on the idea of people somehow finding drafts and improving them, because that just doesn't really happen outside of token cases. This is unhelpful busywork with a veneer of "preserving content" when the goal is really just to delete them (which I wouldn't support, but have more sympathy for than draftification). It's even stranger because there's not really anything to collaborate on or salvage. What we're talking about here is the preservation of 960 instances of Lugnuts creating a placeholder, yelling "first!", adding it to a running tally, and moving on to the next one, leaving the hard part for someone else. Some people say stub creation inspires passersby to develop articles, but in my experience those who want to write a decent article are more likely to do so if they also get to create it (and/or don't have to work within someone else's structure), for better or worse. Not that I think stub creation should be disallowed; let's just not pretend like there's a lot of value here. I digress... Extending 6 months to 5 years doesn't transform draftspace into a useful collaborative space and doesn't create something valuable out of these stubs. It's a way for those who think the stubs shouldn't exist to functionally delete them where a mass deletion proposal wouldn't succeed. I get that some folks are opposing because they see some value in these drafts, but I'm opposing because (a) moving to draftspace is pointless because of the nature of draftspace and because they're not particularly valuable, (b) I don't support their mass deletion, and (c) redirection is just obviously preferable. With that, I'll take some time away from this thread, as I'm writing a disproportionate amount. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 16:49, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason that we cannot enact this proposal, but then, instead of R2ing the redirects, retarget them to the associated "Country at the year Olympics" article? We would then be able to slap on a R with possibilities, which would automatically include a handy note that says "This is a redirect from a title that is in draft namespace at Draft:(name of page), so please do not create an article from this redirect (unless moving a ready draft here). You are welcome to improve the draft article while it is being considered for inclusion in article namespace. If the draft link is also a redirect, then you may boldly turn that redirect into a draft article." HouseBlastertalk 18:20, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One hurdle appears to be that Someone needs to figure out what to do about the cases where the subject participated in multiple Olympics. See bolded entries in the collapsed list in § Alternative: Redirection targets below. Ljleppan (talk) 18:49, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How is #1 ("Draftified articles will be autodeleted after 5 years (instead of the usual 6 months)") going to be enforced? A lot of G13 deletions are done by bots, the ones that aren't done by bots may be done by people unfamiliar with this unending saga, and I don't envy the person who would have to babysit hundreds of drafts every six months for five years. Gnomingstuff (talk) 18:35, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * With something like a template or a category. In theory a faux-namespace could be used, but that has some disadvantages, although those disadvantages could be overcome with a redirect from draftspace to the faux-namespace, but that also has some disadvantages. I think the details of implementation should be left until after we see if there is consensus for the idea. If there is consensus for the idea, figuring out the implementation would be a next step, and then we would probably try nominating other batches of articles for the same process (with the implementation figured out). Levivich (talk) 18:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I wish people wouldn't use terms such as "microstub" or "sub-stub", especially in supposedly neutral places such as RFC statements. Our shortest articles are simply stubs, and the use of other terms serves to frame a debate against such articles before it has even begun. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:05, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * There are different types of stubs, however; we needed to make it clear what sort of stubs we were discussing. BilledMammal (talk) 00:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Request if the motion passes, could a page be created with the articles listed so that people can try to expand them within the 5 years. I know I might try to expand some of them but will have no time until at least July and without a page/list/something like that, I know I'll forget.  Red Fiona (talk) 00:21, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I intend to; this list will still exist, but I plan to create another one with all current categories listed. If you have any recommendations for where the list should be placed, please let me know. BilledMammal (talk) 00:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you :) Red Fiona (talk) 01:24, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I went through and added sources for a few so that they no longer met the criteria listed (no sources other than Olympedia/Sports-Reference), and BilledMammal has reverted me SIX times (clear violation of WP:3RR) – yet he's accusing me of being disruptive (I have only reverted three times)! BeanieFan11 (talk) 01:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I support editors removing items from this list if they meet the criteria defined for the restoration of articles if this proposal passes. This was not done for the articles I restored the list; for most of them only a single source was added, which is not enough to plausibly demonstrate WP:GNG, and for one no sources were added, only text. BilledMammal (talk) 02:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * By making those edits you're making your entire proposal false, as its no longer just a list of articles containing only Olympedia/Sports-Reference with no significant edits. And any explanation for why doubling the revert rule is acceptable? BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The criteria for how these articles could be restored is clear; it doesn't make sense to apply different criteria during the RfC than after it. Regarding the reverts, I believe editors are allowed, with some exceptions, to prevent alterations to proposals they make. I also note that you have done more reverts than I, but we already have a discussion about that on your talk page so I won't comment further on it here. BilledMammal (talk) 02:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I have not made more reverts than you (unless three is greater than six somehow) – I do not see anything allowing what you did at WP:3RR – and again, by reverting, all you're doing is making your proposal a bunch of lies. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This is troubling. I supported this extraordinary proposal only on specific conditions, including the absence of any SIGCOV. If SIGCOV have even arguably been added to some small portion of the articles, those articles should be stricken from the list. Otherwise, the grounds underlying the "support" votes (including mine) have changed. Cbl62 (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I note the WP:SIGCOV was added after the RfC was opened; I don't believe it makes sense to have different criteria to remove list items during the proposal (one WP:SIGCOV) than after the proposal (WP:GNG). However, if you or other !support editors disagree, I won't object to their removal. BilledMammal (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I checked one and it was removed due to the presence of a plaintext reference to the 1911 UK Census and a later death registry, so no sigcov issues there (assuming the references were accurate, they were plain text and even then hard to tell if it's the same person). CMD (talk) 02:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Would you say, CMD, that this is SIGCOV (from one of them that was re-added)? BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Be nice to have some diffs for context, but that is indeed not a plaintext reference to a census. CMD (talk) 03:07, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * BeanieFan11 has removed articles under four different categories:
 * Articles that included plaintext references like the 1911 UK Census and so were missed when establishing the list; for example, Wilfred Bleaden
 * Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added no sources but made an edit of greater than 200 bytes; for example, Carlo Bonfanti
 * Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added one sources that could plausibly be WP:SIGCOV; for example, Arthur Burn
 * Articles where, after the RfC had started, they added sources that could plausibly demonstrate WP:GNG; for example, Richard Genserowski
 * I consider removals under the fourth category to be appropriate, as that matches the criteria for restoring the articles defined in this proposal, but I reinstated the articles that were removed under the first three categories as those would be insufficient to restore the article if the proposal passes. If !support editors disagree with any of reinstations, then please remove the articles, or let me know and I will remove them. BilledMammal (talk) 03:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding full-page long articles (such as Bechestobill's case) would not pass your criteria for bringing it back? That is ridiculous. BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:16, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:GNG requires multiple sources. Most of your additions were also considerably shorter; for example, at Arthur Burn, you added a source containing three sentences. BilledMammal (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * ...with the comment "I could make an enormous expansion of the article with the sources that exist, but don't have the time currently so I'll add a ref so it doesn't get draftified." BeanieFan11 (talk) 03:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I removed Behestobil. That article now has a full page article from a major newspaper, a clear example of SIGCOV. This extraordinary proposal to bypass normal AfD processe was to be limited to microstubs lacking any SIGCOV and received my Support vote on that basis. Cbl62 (talk) 03:26, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Do you consider sources like the one added to Arthur Burns to also warrant removal? BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you have already found multiple sources then it would be easy to add a second reference. Why don't you just do that, demonstrate that WP:GNG is plausibly met, and uncontroversially remove the article from the list? BilledMammal (talk) 03:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, no, this proposal is about stubs with zero sigcov references. Not stubs with one reference. Zero. Considering you're the most vocal advocate of the proposal, I was hoping you would already know that, @BilledMammal. casualdejekyll  15:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * All of these stubs had zero sigcov references when this RfC started. I'm of the opinion that items should only be removed when the criteria for restoration is met (Any draft (whether in draftspace, userspace, or WikiProject space) can be returned to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG) as I don't think we should set lower requirements while the discussion is ongoing than we will set if there is a consensus for this proposal. BilledMammal (talk) 15:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Your proposal is just going to be a lie then, as its not a list containing only "Sports Reference or Olympedia" with "no significant edits other than Lugnuts." BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Then there is a grey area that needs to be somehow addressed. I think that generally your position on this is plausible, but the other hand of it is that the proposal hasn't actually been enacted yet - i.e. nothing's been moved into draftspace, so requiring the articles to meet requirements to move out of draftspace when they haven't even entered draftspace yet seems a little silly. I'd say that once the move is done, that's when we restrict it to only your "fourth category removals". casualdejekyll  16:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My concern is that will be gamed, and as the criteria for inclusion is the list is so conservative gaming it will be easy to do.
 * I don't believe there will be any harm caused by requiring that the restoration criteria is met to remove articles from the list, but I think there will be disruption if we allow the selection criteria to be used to remove articles from the list. BilledMammal (talk) 17:04, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * BilledMammal is repeatedly reverting when I remove entries with SIGCOV – see here, here and here. Pinging those who have talked about these matters (besides me and BilledMammal) prior for their opinions: . BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree with those reversions. If SIGCOV is found, then the affected article is in a different class from where the main problem under discussion is. It shouldn't matter whether the SIGCOV was added before or after this discussion started. Rlendog (talk) 18:17, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I also disagree. Rlendog is correct. The whole point of this proposal is to deal with sub-stubs lacking any substance or SIGCOV and based only on databases. I support the proposal, despite its drastic nature, but only on the basis that it is narrowly limited. If articles are improved to the point that they no longer fall within that scope, they should be removed and that should not be controversial. Will strike my support is this continues. Cbl62 (talk) 18:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Either find two GNG-compliant sources, or, in deference to Cbl's position while the discussion is ongoing, one GNG-compliant source that contains extensive coverage. However, I don't understand why you insist on working on this list while the RfC is ongoing; it does cause some disruption and clogs up watchlists, and there are many other articles on Olympians that need to be worked on - if it would help, I can provide you a list containing such Olympians. BilledMammal (talk) 18:25, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Why not just leave the list as-is and revisit whatever changes should be made to it after the RfC is over? JoelleJay (talk) 18:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Because the proposal is for drastic mass-removal of 1,000 articles that is an exception to normal processes. Given the concerns I raised in my support vote, I am willing to support the proposal in this unique case. However, it should only apply to articles that plainly fit the scope, i.e., zero SIGCOV and based only on databases. If there is SIGCOV and sourcing beyond such databases, the articles should be dealt with using normal AfD processes. Cbl62 (talk) 19:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I absolutely do not support mass draftification of articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter). Such close cases should be dealt with at AfD if someone wishes to challenge them. Cbl62 (talk) 19:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This proposal allows five years for anyone to do what Beanie is doing (BEFORE searches of 1,000 articles). No one claimed to have done BEFORE searches of all 1,000 prior to starting this RFC. The articles on the list met the criteria when the RFC was launched. There is no point in somebody going through the list during the RFC to pull articles out of it. To do that damn near 100 times is disruptive. And even if 100 articles are pulled out, there would still be like 800 or 900 left. It's not even a significant portion of the total. Removing articles one by one is purely disruptive, it accomplishes no constructive goal. At the very least, Beanie could just give BM a list of articles that were expanded during the RFC in the event this proposal passes, and BM can take those off the final list. Levivich (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what I had in mind. The list can be amended before implementation, but constantly editing it entry by entry during the RfC is disruptive. It would be clear GAMING if someone was to invalidate inclusion of items on the list by making 200+-byte fluff edits or by adding trivial non-database sources; I don't see how other edits that fail to meet list removal criteria are any different. Even if the list was draftified without amendment, if Beanie shows some individuals do meet GNG they can be moved back to mainspace immediately; if for some of them he can only find one SIGCOV source then he can userfy or work with a wikiproject to incubate the drafts in projectspace. If some NEXIST-notable subjects whose pages no one visits continue to not be visited in draftspace, and no one is interested enough to write a new article on them from scratch in five years, then so be it. JoelleJay (talk) 20:37, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Improving articles is the antithesis of "gaming" the system nor is it "disruptive". I support the proposal but articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are no longer in scope and should be removed from the list. Mass draftification is an extreme measure and should be limited to those that are clearly' within scope. If 25 of the 1,000 articles get improved while the proposal is pending, that's a good thing! Cbl62 (talk) 20:44, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * He can improve them all he wants, I'm just saying we can revisit whether they meet list inclusion criteria after the RfC but before implementation. JoelleJay (talk) 21:03, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If someone wants to challenge the notability of Spitzer and Greene, they are free to do so but such challenge should folow regular AfD procedures. Articles that include SIGCOV should absolutely not be part of this extraordinary mass removal. 21:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbl62 (talk • contribs)
 * Nobody is opposed to the articles being expanded/improved, and of course nobody thinks articles that include SIGCOV should be part of the mass draftification (or redirection). The point is, we don't need to remove them from the list during the RFC. It's not like just because they're on the list means they're automatically going to be draftified if the proposal passes. We can remove the expanded ones from the list after the RFC (if it passes), and people can still go along expanding them during the RFC, just don't need to be making 25 edits removing them one by one from the list day after day. It has nothing to do with the articles, it's about not spamming this page. Levivich (talk) 21:11, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So long as there is agreement that improved articles like Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are not going to be draftified as part of this proposal.  Is that agreed? Cbl62 (talk) 04:11, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Even if they are drafted, individual articles that have been edited to show sigcov can always be easilymoved back to the mainspace or recreated. This proposal is specifically designed to make that painless. CMD (talk) 04:39, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If a second independent/secondary/significant source is provided, yes. BilledMammal (talk) 06:17, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You're avoiding the question. Do you agree, as Levivich suggests, that Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) should not and would not be draftified under your proposal? Cbl62 (talk) 06:44, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Any that plausibly meet GNG would be removed; it would be helpful if editors provide a list of articles they improve, but I will also do my own checks. BilledMammal (talk) 06:52, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Still avoiding the question which is about Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter). Cbl62 (talk) 07:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I had a discussion with JoelleJay and Levivich; articles that meet WP:SPORTSBASIC #5 (one significant/independent/secondary source) will be removed from the list. However, it would be preferable if they are removed as a group at the end, to avoid clogging watchlists. This would include the two you mention. BeanieFan11, rather than removing items immediately after improving them, can you create a list of articles you have improved, perhaps on the drafting talk page? BilledMammal (talk) 01:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Don’t think these two meet that though. Tvx1 01:35, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If and when Roland Spitzer and Edward Greene (sport shooter) are removed from the proposal, I will restore  my  support  vote. Cbl62 (talk) 02:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with the assurance they'll be removed after the RfC is over? JoelleJay (talk) 02:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with removing them now? Others have been removed.  Why not these two? Cbl62 (talk) 02:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I am not saying that Spitzer and Greene meet GNG. They may or may not survive an AfD, but they clearly do not fit the scope of this extraordinary mass-removal proposal and should be dealt with under regular procedures.  Cbl62 (talk) 02:13, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't want to keep getting notified every time the list is amended, and allowing any user to unanimously remove entries at any time based on their personal interpretation of SIGCOV is obviously untenable. I guess if @BilledMammal wants he could ok the removal of those two specifically now, but future proposed changes would have to be held in a separate list in another subsection/userspace for editors to discuss if the proposal passes. JoelleJay (talk) 02:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Nor should it be based on your personal interpretation of SIGCOV. It should be based on whether the articles are within scope of the proposal. Also, who appointed you to issue a ruling that "future proposed changes would have to be held in a separate list in another subsection/userspace"? The RfC opened with the premise that it could/would be amended to eliminate articles that are not within scope, and the rules of the RfC should not be changed midstream. Many who supported the RfC may have done so on the premise that this would continue to be respected. Cbl62 (talk) 02:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't read the RfC as opening with that premise. It reads to me as here is the quarry, here is the list of articles that quarry generated. Changes to the question mid-RfC are extremely unusual and generally discouraged, while changes to content under WP:RfC is explicitly discouraged, so I doubt commentators made their comments under the expectation that these usual practices would not be followed. CMD (talk) 03:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be based on anyone's singular personal interpretation of SIGCOV! I am saying entry removals should be assessed by more than one person, and that won't happen if everyone is editing the list themselves. The proposal criteria were based on the history/status of the articles up to this point, before there was the incentive to make edits to the entries just to invalidate their inclusion. If editors claim they added SIGCOV sources, we should verify entries actually do now meet at least SBASIC #5 before removing them, otherwise the RfC will get bogged down by edit-warring on the list and it will become harder to track which entry removals had some agreement and which ones derived from one person's GAMING or . We clearly agree that the object of these criteria is to identify the stubs that are most likely to be on non-notable people; the quarry heuristic BM is using is merely a proxy for this, not definitional. Therefore removals that actually reflect the article now containing ≥#5 sourcing are acceptable, but forcing an entry out by making it fail a technical quarry parameter is GAMING that goes against the spirit of the proposal. The only way we can distinguish good-faith additions of plausible GNG sources from users inserting 200 bytes of contentless text is through multiple people evaluating the edits, and how would we do that when someone changes the list without comment? JoelleJay (talk) 03:39, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you want, go ahead and remove those two. However, please add future removals to a list instead. BilledMammal (talk) 23:24, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * And if I do wait until the end and show you a list, how do I know you won't just be like "screw you, I don't feel like removing them"? I'm not sure I trust you, considering you have absurd interpretations of notability and do not like me. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:37, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Would a pinky swear be sufficient? Levivich (talk) 03:36, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How about this: rather than remove them one-by-one, I remove them at three-to-five at a time. I will not wait until the end and show you a list. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:31, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK how about this: if you agree to stop messing with the list, you can remove 20 articles from the final list for any reason, no questions asked. Levivich (talk) 23:29, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If I don't accept that, I feel I could find more than that amount of notable ones with sigcov to be removed. How about this, I only remove entries from the list at most once per day (starting the day after acceptance if accepted), and only if the amount of notable ones that I've found is at 5 or more, and can only revert a re-addition at most one time, with me being allowed to remove 18 articles from the final list, no questions asked. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How about you just leave the list alone until the end of the RFC and we evaluate then if any need te removed, should the proposal to draftify be successful? Tvx1 07:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:AGF, and I don’t dislike you; I dislike some of your actions, but not you. Even Lugnuts I didn’t dislike and unsuccessfully argued against ArbCom banning him.
 * However, I think it is reasonable to allow other editors to review the articles you restore, so I would ask that you create a list rather than removing them yourself; for example, the coverage of Walter Bowler is lacking. BilledMammal (talk) 23:21, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Alternative: Redirection targets
This list is to allow discussion of the proposed alternative of redirecting articles to the relevant country and year article rather than draftifying them; the requirements to convert the redirect to an article would be the same as the proposed requirements to move an article out of draft space. Note that some of these articles have multiple possible targets; those are marked in bold.

Survey (Alternative: Redirection targets)

 * Support redirects. For reasons outlined in my comments above, I support both creation of redirects and draftification. The two proposals are not mutually exclusive. Cbl62 (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirects on general principle, everyone agrees that in normal circumstances BLAR-ing articles with no discussion is allowed, whereas draftifying or deleting them is not. There's no need for unprecendented procedure breaks when the problem can be dealt with while still following procedure. I also see some errors in the table: you listed the same article twice for Frank Ihrcke and George Stapf, and George Patching and George Pinchard are bolded despite not conflicting. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 23:48, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, fixed- duplicates were handled manually and I appear to have made a couple of mistakes. BilledMammal (talk) 00:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirects per Cbl and Pppery. I agree this and the draftification are not mutually exclusive. Levivich (talk) 00:06, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose with a similar rationale for opposing the other proposal. These should be discussed on their own merit. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:08, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * These really should be discussed individually – some are very clearly notable, some may not be. We should not be getting rid of them all at once when its been shown that many are notable, especially considering that no harm at all is done by leaving them as they are. I think its more harmful to mass get rid of articles, some of which may not be notable, but at the expense of many very clearly notable ones than leaving them as they are and discussing them by their own merits – as they should be. BeanieFan11 (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirects per my comments in the previous section. I agree something must be done but have reservations about draftifying. Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:24, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Since this appears to have turned into a !vote, Support as second choice per my comments in the previous section. BilledMammal (talk) 00:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also support, as long as it's clear the same requirements for returning to mainspace are enforced. JoelleJay (talk) 00:37, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose WP:TRAINWRECK. --Rschen7754 01:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support As noted, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. <b style="color: #0000cc;">North8000</b> (talk) 02:53, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong support, send the readers somewhere with information that has hopefully been looked at with some due diligence and might have wider context. No objection to drafting still happening, although I don't think it has much purpose at that point. CMD (talk) 03:02, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong support per my comments in the above section. BLARing is much more reasonable as it maintains page history, while also being semi-useful. Curbon7 (talk) 03:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak support [only choice], per what I wrote in a couple places above. Opposed to draftification; very weakly preferred to just leaving them alone. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 04:13, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I am not sure exactly what problem the OP is trying to solve. Stubs, per se, are not a problem. I do not think we are dealing with the additional considerations of living people with this list. So, while many of these articles may not meet WP:GNG in their current state, I struggle to see the harm to the project if these articles are left alone and nominated for deletion through normal channels. --Enos733 (talk) 05:52, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you supporting or opposing this proposal to redirect all the Olympians? You said "support" but your comments (stubs ... are not a problem ... I do not think we are dealing with the additional considerations of living people ... while many of these articles may not meet WP:GNG, I struggle to see the harm to the project if these articles are left alone) seem to say the opposite. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:29, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My thoughts are similar to what Rhododendrites says above. I prefer redirects to draftification/deletion. - Enos733 (talk) 21:18, 3 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Support Per my comment in the main survey. -Ljleppan (talk) 06:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support.—<b style="font-family: Verdana; color: Maroon;">S Marshall</b> T/C 08:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose - Per Harry Oppenheim, which is shining example of where the urge to redirect everything in all cases rather than delete "to preserve the edit history" is misguided. These redirects simply serve to cast in stone the erroneous methodology and bad sourcing used to mass-create these articles in the first place. Harry Oppenheim was someone who literally didn't exist under that name, the real name of the non-notable Austrian footballer was Heinrich Oppenheim, but we already have an article about a different Heinrich Oppenheim who is actually notable. There are also multiple other real Harry Oppenheims which a searcher is just as likely to be looking for (a news paper owner, and art-collector, a South African magnate etc.) because they are equally as (non) notable as the Austrian footballer, but for bizarre reasons we redirect searchers to a list of Austrian footballers who played a tiny number of games for the Austrian national team, with no real explanation as to why they land there, rather than just giving them the search results they would get for all the other Harry Oppenheims mentioned on Wikipedia which would obviously be of more interest to them. FOARP (talk) 09:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per FOARP. The solution to disruptive mass creation is to simply delete the whole batch without looking twice (or if that's not possible, draftify it). The redirects can be recreated from scratch when appropriate, and the ones that are not should certainly not be kept around for sake of preserving trivial edit histories full of low-effort useless information and cosmetic edits. Avilich (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per my comment in the previous section; these should be dealt with on an individual basis. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 06:27, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak support as second choice. I have many reservations about this, as explained elsewhere, but it's still better than doing nothing. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 12:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirecting. &maltese; SunDawn &maltese;    (contact)   12:56, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It's complicated, but redirection is so obviously a better option than creating a tonne of drafts - and is way more efficient technically. I would want, as per my comments below, to be sure that the sources already in the article have been checked for significant detail by a human being - this takes 20 seconds each article and in a 30 minute sample period threw up around 38% of articles as having prose sources already present and which suggest (strongly in around 20% of cases) other sources exist. We need a balance between throwing out everything and reducing the number of stand alone articles. That can be done. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:09, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Strongly Oppose - I don't support the idea or support lumping them all together.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment while my personal preference would be to keep the stubs as they are, I admit it's a personal preference and I can't back it up with Wiki policy. Of the two other options, I think redirecting is the better option, although I would like to make a suggestion that we hold off on redirecting the articles which could go to two possible Olympics, because I suspect those people are likely to be easier to find additional sources for (but I could be wrong).  Red Fiona (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose on principle, since we shouldn't be making bulk editing on so many articles (either to delete, redirect or draftify). If there is a consensus to bulk change these, redirecting is better than the other options, but checking them all properly is the vastly superior option to applying handwaving principles to batches of articles like this. <b style="color:#0033ab">Joseph</b><b style="color:#000000">2302</b> (talk) 16:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * These articles were created through bulk editing. If you oppose bulk editing on principle would it not make sense to make an exception to allow the undoing of problematic examples of bulk editing? BilledMammal (talk) 16:43, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Qualified support - I would support redirecting those that do not meet SIGCOV. If SIGCOV is met, those should be excluded from the mass redirect and evaluated on their own merits. Rlendog (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support I wish this was a more acceptable answer to both sides of the argument. Redirecting articles can be undone without the lose of any article history as and when SIGCOV sourcing is found, and it doesn't have the time constraints that making drafts does. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:18, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirectsif draftification does not find a majority.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:41, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support redirects since draftification is essentially a delayed deletion. We should only redirect those in which other sources cannot be found to improve these stubs.  Abzeronow (talk) 19:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per FOARP. I'm not at all confident that systematic determination of the redirect target can be trusted. If redirection is the best outcome for any number of these stubs, it can be determined by manual assessment of the draft. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 12:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support as a way of serving the readers and maintaing the history for any editor who wants to try to recreate an article. Valereee (talk) 11:57, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support over draftification, would also support deletion but as per WP:REDIRECTSARECHEAP (and redirects can be deleted in the future)  so I wouldn't let that stop us proceeding wiht redirecting them Jeff UK  14:45, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per my oppose in the main proposal. Anarchyte  ( talk ) 11:22, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per my comment last section. Each should be individually surveyed to a greater degree before redirection however: sometimes a dab, deletion, or a different target would be preferable.  J947  † edits 06:13, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (Alternative: Redirection targets)
One issue with this alternative that needs to be resolved is what to do with the articles like Alfred Keene, which could be redirected to either Great Britain at the 1908 Summer Olympics or Great Britain at the 1912 Summer Olympics. Are there any suggestions on how to do so? BilledMammal (talk) 03:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * In my view, this is a major problem that must be resolved before the proposal can be seriously considered. The sheer number of articles we have on the Olympics would make it a major chore to figure out what should be redirected where. As an example of the scope of the problem, there are actually six plausible targets for Alfred Keene: Great Britain at the 1908 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1908 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1908 Summer Olympics – Men's sabre, Great Britain at the 1912 Summer Olympics, Fencing at the 1912 Summer Olympics, and Fencing at the 1912 Summer Olympics – Men's sabre.The same problem exists even for the articles not bolded in BilledMammal's list. Carl Wiegand only competed in one Olympics, but should his article be redirected to Germany at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Gymnastics at the 1900 Summer Olympics, or List of Olympians killed in World War I? A third example: plausible targets for August Ehrich include not only the national article and the event article, but also List of Olympic male artistic gymnasts for Germany. Reasonable people can (and probably will) disagree over which of these targets is more suitable, so unless we want to end up discussing every article case-by-case, I think anyone arguing for redirection should also indicate how they think we ought to go about it. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 08:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One solution would be to redirect to the first (or last, or even random) Olympics they participated in, and then let normal editing processes handle it from there. Another would be to say "there is no obvious redirect target, so let's draftify for now" and let normal editing procedures figure it out from here. Both are far from perfect, but perfect is the enemy of good. Ljleppan (talk) 09:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Draftify first. Unintentionally, I'm sure, this issue of having to redirect has simply acted as a barrier on anything being done at all. FOARP (talk) 11:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Someone above made the explicit suggestion of COUNTRY at the YEAR SEASON Olympics as the most logical option. I'd be happy with that and it's clear and easy to use - see my point below for which one we use where someone has been to more than one games. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:33, 3 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Agree with Sojourner in the earth above - And yes, this is a problem generally for nearly all these redirects of non-notable sportspeople: there is a multitude of possible redirects, each as bad as the other. Returning to the "Harry" Oppenheim case discussed in my !vote above, Heinrich Oppenheim played two games for the Austrian national team but he also played at club level in Austria so why are we highlighting their very brief career on the Austrian national squad. Indeed, why are we highlighting them with a redirect at all when other Harry/Heinrich Oppenheims existed? FOARP (talk) 11:36, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a good point about other people with the same name. If we didn't have an article on the Olympian Alfred Keene, then the painter Alfred John Keene would be the primary topic, and should therefore be the target of the redirect. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 18:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Firstly I'm not even sure I'd be trying to do anything with Alfred Keene before doing a quite intensive search of The Times and the London Gazette - the notes on his Olympedia page suggest strongly to me that there's very likely to be something to allow us to develop a decent article about him.
 * In terms of where to redirect - in some cases it'll be obvious because someone will have had one relatively successful games, in which case the redirect should probably go there (Sidney Domville for example, although again the notes in Olympedia suggest he's worth a look as a keeper). In other cases it won't be so clear - I'd probably suggest their first games in that situation, but I could live with the last. It's just slightly easier for modern people to use the first (and bear in mind that stuff like shooting means people can have really quite long Olympics careers. Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:30, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * My plan, if there is a consensus to create redirects, to redirect to the country article for the first Olympics they played in. I'll also provide a list of the articles covering sportspeople who played in multiple years to WikiProject Olympics, so that interested editors may easily alter the target if desired. BilledMammal (talk) 16:22, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * BilledMammal - but then why redirect at all? With the redirect the user is taken to a single page. Without it, the user sees all mentions of that name on Wikipedia in their search results, including all the events and teams on which that name is listed, but also all the other people of that name who are equally as likely to be of interest - isn’t that better? FOARP (talk) 06:02, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, and have argued extensively for that position in the past, but I believe a few inconvenient redirects are an improvement over leaving these articles in mainspace, and if there is a consensus for the proposal only on the basis of redirection I don't believe it would be appropriate to omit a few. However, I would be happy to provide you with a list of articles with multiple appropriate targets, and can probably generate a partial list of clashes with other articles - you can then bring them as a group to RfD? BilledMammal (talk) 06:12, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems very arbitrary and potentially unhelpful, eg. if someone is reading about the 1912 Olympics, searches an athlete's name and is taken to an article on the 1908 Olympics, with no indication of where they can find the information they're looking for. It might do as a stop-gap measure, but if consensus is to make these articles into redirects, my preferred solution would be to merge them all into List of Olympic athletes (1896–1912). That would be a lot more work, obviously. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 12:00, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That would be a lot more work, obviously. Depending on what information you believe should be included in that list, it might not be. What information do you believe should be included in it?
 * My concern would be that the list would be very long (WP:LSC), and that it wouldn't fully resolve the issue as some athletes who competed between 1896 and 1912 also competed after 1912; I think that can be corrected by creating "List of Olympic athletes: A", "List of Olympic athletes: B", etc. BilledMammal (talk) 12:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't deal very well with people who appeared in 1912 and then in the 1920s, for example. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:04, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What information do you believe should be included in it? For the list to be useful, I think at a minimum it would have to contain birth and death dates, Olympic years and events participated in. This information would have to be checked against the sources, though, to make sure we're not propagating errors. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 14:48, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * We can check against the sports-reference source automatically; would that be sufficient?
 * If we are going to do this I think it will need further and separate discussion; both to determine what information to include, and to determine whether such a creation would be appropriate. BilledMammal (talk) 15:30, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would be easier than I thought, then. I'm completely ignorant about what kind of things can be accomplished with technology. I agree that more discussion would be needed. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That applies to something like 5% of articles. So I would suggest we redirect those that are unambiguous automagically; and the rest can simply be left for people to redirect, AFD or improve as they see fit.  (Or we can agree separately what to do with those)
 * It's a hell of a let better to only have 5% to work through 'manually'.
 * Jeff UK 14:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)


 * , This is something that my rather unloved Article Interlink Page proposal would work for. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 06:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (other article-sets which need addressing)
If this motion passes some serious thought should be given to sub-sets of other extreme-low-quality articles mass-created on Wikipedia. Off the top of my head:
 * The 19th-century and early-20th-century cricketer/footballer articles made by Lugnuts.
 * Dr. Blofeld's mass-created Bangladesh/Burmese "village" articles created using only GEOnet Names Server (GNS), a deprecated source for this purpose. Dr. Blofeld has indicated that they are OK with these articles being dealt with in some way in the past.
 * The Antarctic geological feature articles created based only on GNIS, a deprecated source for this purpose.
 * Carlossuarez46's Iranian/Azeri "village" articles, created based on GNS/the Iranian census (both deprecated for this purpose - the Iranian Census because it includes wells/pumps/farms/houses etc. as "villages").
 * Of course the process would be the same as here, and the search used to highlight it having similarly very low criteria for escaping draftification. FOARP (talk) 10:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, the problem for me is permastubs which can't be expanded or ever become a useful start class article. I think you'll find most stubs created by me can be expanded, but the "xx is a village" approach using a database, even with a population figure in many of them was a poor way to approach it. I'd be happy to delete all database type stubs from the site which can't be significantly expanded, or merge them into lists were appropriate. Carlos's Iranian stubs for instance, I think we'd be better off merging a lot of the smaller settlements into lists by district. ♦ Dr. Blofeld  14:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this discussion will need to be split off, but I've created two lists of articles created by Carlossuarez46 on locations in Iran and Azerbaijan. These lists attempt to include every article they have created, so they will include articles that would not be considered for draftification like Hadrut; filtering can be done later, if there is a consensus for this proposal and when we decide how we want to filter the articles. They also may not be complete; I am not certain yet what article or talk page categories are best suited to generating a complete list, and suggestions are welcome.
 * I am wondering, though, if these creations were fully automated; I'm seeing several articles with identical names disambiguated only by coordinates, and I don't believe that even an inattentive human using a semi-automated process would not realize that those are probably the same location. BilledMammal (talk) 17:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC

Alternative proposal to draftification and redirection: create an Olympic stub cleanup project
I have what I believe would be something much more beneficial, at least a hundred times more helpful to the encyclopedia, than the two above proposals (redirection and draftification): start a project dedicated towards expanding and cleaning up Olympians. I have found many people from this list above that are notable, some very highly notable (examples which I have expanded: Fred Narganes, Thomas LeBoutillier, Herbert Gidney, J. Nash McCrea, and Garnett Wikoff, to name a few – and for some others, which I haven't had the time to, I've just added sources to show notability, some of which had full-page long articles (Albert Bechestobill) and some of which had articles describing them as the greatest ever in their sport (Lou Scholes, John Hession)) – it is insane to suggest blindly removing (redirection=removing;draftification=backdoor route to deletion) nearly one thousand articles when many of which are very notable (unless there is a major issue otherwise with all of them, except that's not the case here). So I propose that we create a project to cleanup, improve and expand Olympian articles, with rewards for those who do so. As for what the rewards are, I've thought of this: improve two Olympian articles to the point that it would pass the WP:DYK criteria – one barnstar; improve three further – one more barnstar; then one additional barnstar for every time someone does five more (I've thought of different types of barnstars and awards that could be designed for this). I feel this would be much more benefifical to the project than just mass throwing out huge amounts of Olympians, when many are notable. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support as nom. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * An Olympic stub cleanup project sounds like a great idea, but I don't see why this is an alternative to draftification. The stubs can easily be worked on in draftspace. Contrary to the claim that keeps cropping up that draftification is being used as a backdoor to deletion, I very much hope that the majority of these articles can be rescued and restored to mainspace. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, BeanieFan, I'm afraid I have to add my voice to those who feel that your behaviour at this RfC is (unintentionally) disruptive. Removing Otto Feyder from the list in order to nominate it for AfD, where you propose to turn it into a redirect – a proposal already under consideration in this discussion – is only wasting the time of volunteers. You're doing some good work on these articles but it would really be so much easier for everyone if you would wait until the RfC is over. Regardless of the outcome, none of these articles are going anywhere for at least another five years. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 17:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Apologies about Feyder, I see now that that action didn't make sense. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - I would be interested in contributing to this. No rewards needed for me.KatoKungLee (talk) 16:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment I support this, but this can also be done from draft space. On the rewards I believe some more general award for the article expanders could be thought of. Organize "backlog" drives etc. Then also, the Lugnuts olympic stubs are just a start. There are likely tens of thousands similar ones that could need an expansion if sources exist.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 19:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - at least as an alternative. Experience has shown that these articles just won't be dealt with. Wikipedia just doesn't have that many truly-active editors that it can waste the time of ~100 or so of them for months sorting through Lugnuts' articles. There is a clear DELREASON for these articles as they currently stand. No opposition, of course, to anyone doing this ON TOP OF the remedy of draftification. FOARP (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose as alternative. Concur entirely with FOARP. XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 12:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)


 * As an additional strategy for dealing with this, great idea. You can start that today without an RfC. As an alternative, Oppose. Valereee (talk) 12:03, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per proposal or as a way of formalising the efforts already-present at the Olympics WikiProject. In this way, I also have to say that FOARP's reasoning doesn't ring true in this case - Experience has shown that these articles just won't be dealt with may be correct in many cases, but there has been a conceited effort to rescue Olympic bio stubs going for over a year as I recall already, so experience regards this shows they will be dealt with. I would also challenge FOARP and Valereee's views that (while a commendable additional method) doing this should not be an alternative: there is no harm in going slower about this, and we are more likely to reach a solution that adds to the encyclopedia if we do. Kingsif (talk) 23:58, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support as per my comment above. This seems the most productive path forward. It may appear immediately easier to draftify, but though this is longer term, it adds more quality to the encyclopedia. --Nerd1a4i (they/them) (talk) 06:34, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (general)
Perfection is the enemy of progress. We're talking about an immense amount of stubs that the creator spent perhaps 1 minute each creating. Any plan which requires a special discussion and decision-making process for each one (perhaps 1 hour of volunteer time for each) will not actually get implemented and would be an insult to volunteer time. Some way of efficiently moving forward on this is needed, even if imperfect. The potential downside of an efficient system potentially having non-optimal handling of some exceptions is easily fixed and not big. <b style="color: #0000cc;">North8000</b> (talk) 16:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Frankly my preference is for straight-deletion of failing articles that were created en masse, and the recreation of that part of them which may be notable as actual articles. The proposed process does at least eventually achieve that result so I am in favour of it.
 * Opponents are essentially admitting that even given years of lead-time, they are not going to fix these articles, in large part because many/most of them cannot be fixed. FOARP (talk) 05:54, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I"m not sure that that's necessarily true.
 * I just took a strict 30 minutes - timed - and clicked through the first 163 articles on the list of 960 above (17%) - working in the order they were presented, i.e. alphabetically by forename. For each one I checked the Olympedia article to see if it had anything substantial to say about the person. If there was anything relatively in depth that made me think there might well be further sources available I recorded it as "Definitely worth a look"; if there were a few personal details or details about their career I recorded "Possibly worth looking at"; if there were only passing details, such as the club they represented or their performance just in the Olympics I didn't record anything. On average it took less than 20 seconds per article, including recording.
 * Of those 163 articles, I recorded "Definitely worth a look" 31 times and "Possibly worth looking at" 32 times - so, 63 of the 163 had something on the Olympedia article which gave me significant pause for thought (38.7% - with 19% clearly, in my view, worth a proper look).
 * That's a much higher proportion than I was expecting.
 * This might be because the majority of those with detail on were British or American - more likely British fwiw. The 1908 London and 1904 St Louis games almost certainly mean that there are more of those articles - if the set had been 1912 to 1928 then I imagine the proportions would have been lower.
 * Obviously this is partially subjective. I tried to be as clear as possible and only record when there was clearly something that caught my eye, but at the same time was working quickly and there may be some blurring. I was focussing on the likelihood, in my experience of using newspaper reports from this sort of era, of other sources existing - after all, that's almost certainly where the Olympedia writers got their information from. In some cases there wasn't much in the way of information but hints that there must surely be more (Daniel McMahon (sport shooter), for example), whilst another cases there is already a significant amount of information (Daniel Flynn (cyclist), for example).
 * The set I looked at is here along with my notes. I took out most of BilledMammal's columns for simplicity.
 * Why is this "important"? It's reasonable to make the assertion that stubs can act as seeds for articles. I think it's also reasonable to assert that stubs in mainspace are more likely to be developed than redirects or drafts. I have absolutely no quantifiable evidence to back up that assertion, but I'm sure I've seen other people make it in the past and I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say.
 * So what? The query is good at identifying possible articles that might be dealt with. And by my book, 60-odd percent of these could probably be dealt with somehow. But my only request is that we look at the sources actually present first. For the list of 960 that's, what, less than four-person hours (20 seconds per article is easily doable over 30 minute bursts). Think how much time has been wasted on this process of discussing alone over the last couple of years. At least part of that - and a substantial amount of the opposition to the proposals - is people pointing out that some of the articles on lists which have been presented as clearly notable (Bill Huddleston was on one list for example, yet already contains a substantial prose source because the methodology assumes, as with these lists, that the sources included in the article are only databases). The discussions above have already thrown up plenty of other examples beyond the first 163.
 * Yes, let's do something. But let's not delete everything without even having the courtesy to spend 20 seconds on each article. Blue Square Thing (talk) 11:33, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it's also reasonable to assert that stubs in mainspace are more likely to be developed than redirects or drafts. I have absolutely no quantifiable evidence to back up that assertion, but I'm sure I've seen other people make it in the past and I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to say. I have quantifiable evidence to say the opposite; see my essay Abandoned stubs. Articles are much more likely to be expanded by their creator than by anyone else. BilledMammal (talk) 11:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's quite the same thing though, is it? And, interestingly, your 35% figure having been developed is quite close to my 39% figure for items on that list where there's a fairly significant flag that I can raise that says, hang on a minute, we need to look at this properly. Which is my main request here. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:03, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Not quite, but it is the best evidence we have or can get without an experiment that would violate WP:NOTLAB. BilledMammal (talk) 13:47, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think there'd be anything disruptive involved would there? Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * the methodology assumes, as with these lists, that the sources included in the article are only databases This isn't accurate. The method assumes the source has been used as a database, which is not the same thing. (And apparently used in a way that generates the wrong birth dates in some instances, somehow.) CMD (talk) 13:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I take the specifics of your point, but my point is that the way that the list that Huddleston was on was created using a query to produce a set of articles that are presumed to be inadequately sourced, which is often taken to mean sourced only to databases (see any number of discussion around the sourcing of articles about sports people).
 * The assumption behind that is that the sources, in that case CricketArchive, are assumed to be purely a database source. In the case of Huddleston that source contained a decent sized prose article about him as well as the standard data tables and so on. The same is sometimes true of articles sourced only to CricInfo - a point I've made a number of times elsewhere.
 * In the case of the list of 960 articles presented here, the assumption seems to be that articles sourced to Olympedia will simply have data tables rather than any reasonable prose that could act as a seed for article development. In around 40% of the 163 cases I've looked at so far I don't think that assumption is reasonable to make. Of course, identifying the 60% that don't have that and doing something with them would make the task of figuring out exactly what to do with the 40% much easier, and, with caveats, I support that. Blue Square Thing (talk) 15:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't see where that assumption is being made; I don't even think anyone has suggested Olympedia is a poor source. Whatever it (and Cricinfo) could be used for, it has instead been used to procedurally generate two sentences on each subject. Whatever is done to those sentences, Olympedia and its seed information would remain for those interested in the 40%. CMD (talk) 15:44, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the history of this subject area and discussions such as those at WP:ACAS and ones like this at the cricket project or those surrounding the changes made over the last 2-3 years related to WP:SPORTCRIT, I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to make given the point in the selection criteria section which says Referenced only to Olympedia or Sports Reference. As I say, I take your specific point about the way that they have been used in these articles at present, but my point here is that Olympedia clearly contains some detailed prose on some of these articles - as do CricInfo and CricketArchive. Not on all of them, but on enough to make it necessary to manually inspect the sources before we chuck stuff out that we should be eventually improving. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether I was involved in those various discussions you point to, but this proposal is specifically designed to provide time for people to manually inspect the sources and develop the articles. CMD (talk) 02:18, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Leaving aside that no one will do that if they're difficult to find drafts, rather than much easier to find main space articles, they can then move it back to mainspace when it contains sources that plausibly meet WP:GNG. Which getting on to 40% of my survey ones already do... Blue Square Thing (talk) 10:55, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * GNG requires multiple sources. In some cases, Olympedia might count as one (although many of the blurbs are too short to plausibly be WP:SIGCOV), but sports-reference never does. BilledMammal (talk) 11:05, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Blue Square Thing - The prose sections on Olympedia are not clearly reliably sourced. If you believe they are reliably sourced, you need to go beyond "I haven't seen any instances of them being wrong". I have, actually - Francis English was listed on Olympedia as having died in 1984 but clearly lived beyond that, Olympedia was corrected after the Wikipedia article was redirected but this just goes to show that they are relying on Wikipedia to do their fact-checking. You have to explain who actually wrote them and whether there is any actual rigorous editorial process, because as far as I can see the answer to that question appears to be that they are Wiki-like content written by the volunteers who maintain those databases, and include material e.g., sent in by the families of those listed. I also agree with BilledMammal that most/all of this prose content does not rise to the level of SIGCOV. FOARP (talk) 09:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The point isn't to draftify them in the hopes that someone outside of NSPORT editors will find them organically, it's to draftify them specifically so that the editors who insist there must be sources can work on them outside of mainspace and we don't have to go through hundreds of AfDs. Given their lack of attention over the last decade, no one outside of the usual sports editors/blanket inclusionists care about these stubs (and even that's just wanting them to exist for completion's sake), much less would notice they were gone, so I highly doubt draftifying would make any difference to their expansion prospects. JoelleJay (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Blue Square Thing, your study was responding to / responsive to a particular post but IMHO not to the main reasons for the main question here. IMO the main premise of the proposals is "if someone makes a real article out of it fine. If not, then it goes.  In a way commensurate with how they were created....en masse rather than requiring an hour of volunteer time to delete each article that took one minute to create.   <b style="color: #0000cc;">North8000</b> (talk) 18:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * How are these not "real articles"? Many articles in paper encyclopedias (that some of us remember, and Wikipedia is supposed to emulate) only consisted of one short sentence. "Joe Bloggs competed in the quadrathlon at the 1971 summer Olympics" tells the reader more than nothing. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:54, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * When a paper encyclopedia says just one sentence about something, that's called an "entry", not an "article." No one is arguing against "Joe Bloggs competed in the quadrathlon at the 1972 summer Olympics" being an entry in the article about the 1972 Summer Olympics, but we shouldn't have one-sentence articles because those aren't what articles are. Semantics aside, if we have one sentence to say about something, it makes almost no sense to put that one sentence on its own web page, alone. It makes a lot more sense to move that one sentence to some other web page that already has other sentences on it. Levivich (talk) 20:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

In draftspace no one can hear you scream - they could be there for 5 years without anyone improving them, yet many of these articles have been in mainspace for longer and have only drawn any interest once they have been threatened with draftification. The subjects may be notable, there may be sources available, and there is the argument that they should be kept because if left long enough someone else may do something to improve them. These stubs do not establish notability, they have few sources and yet they are still here when better quality drafts would be rejected by AFC. It seems that editors agree that something should be done, but not what? An option could be to run an Olympian WP:De-stub-athon that would cover the listed articles but as part of a larger improvement drive, rather than specifically honouring or condemning any individual creator. There are 133,000 articles classed as stubs by the Olympics wikiproject (including those listed here and many others created by Lugnuts). Afterwards the option will still be there to discuss what to do with anything on the list that editors have not been able to improve, but maybe the situation would be clearer. EdwardUK (talk) 16:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

From a couple of things raised here and what I came across with the Arthur/Alexander Martin case, I've grown seriously concerned that Olympedia is not the reliable source some think it to be. I also don't understand why all those articles seem to rely nearly solely on that for information and don't even cite the Olympics own official site's profiles on the people in question. In any case, a serious vetting of the sourcing is required.Tvx1 20:09, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Operating under the assumption that users self-sort into WikiProjects of personal interest, it seems unlikely that these stubs could be handled by a dedicated project. WikiProject Olympics reports 190K articles under their purview and only 5.5K are assessed as C quality or above. Thus, if only 2.9% of its articles have reacted a threshold of substantial content over 20yrs after the project's founding, it seems unlikely that a further fork of their labor will attract the necessary support to resolve the stubs BluePenguin18 🐧  ( 💬 ) 03:11, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Comment As of now and as to my count it was 63 support to 27 opposes to the draftification. Off course I can err but the supporters are very likely in the majority.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:25, 23 March 2023 (UTC)


 * And because consensus is determined by someone uninvolved evaluating the strength of the arguments, not by counting noses, that is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 17:09, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I hope this would be always like this. Mostly Often it's just counting votes. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 20:08, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Ludicrous talking shops like this are among the main reasons for this site's headlong plunge into a permanent downwards spiral. Why delete only the Olympians? The best solution for such a farcical mess of a site is to delete everything. 2.99.210.156 (talk) 13:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Comment Some other solution for the micro biostubs would be migrating the stubs to something like a directory of people. This would also be quite a boost for the closure of the gender gap I believe.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 18:05, 24 March 2023 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, virtually all initiatives to improve the gender gap (e.g., WikiProject Women in Red) focus on increasing Wikipedia's coverage of women, not on decreasing the coverage of men. This would narrow the gender gap on a numbers level but would do nothing for the broader aim of fixing the under-coverage of women, which is the entire point. Gnomingstuff (talk) 23:17, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Close appeal
This close of this discussion is being appealed at WP:AN; the discussion can be found here. BilledMammal (talk) 21:17, 24 April 2023 (UTC)


 * As a result of the appeal discussion, Bradv has vacated their close (Special:Diff/1152079957). XAM2175  <i style="color:darkslategrey">(T)</i> 11:02, 28 April 2023 (UTC)