Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 35

Adding XFL to WP:GRIDIRON
Like the title says, has it been brought up or discussed yet about XFL being added to the list of professional leagues? The league is fully professional and is being broadcast on major media stations. Seems like a no brainer? I didn't see anything in the archives, but I could have been searching wrong. Any guidance or things I should know before formally proposing this? I'm fairly new to this realm of Wikipedia. Cheers. Sulfurboy (talk) 05:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Would love some kind of evidence that xfl players who don't otherwise qualify for gridiron are notable. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:33, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm just going by the standard in place that's set by the other leagues in prong one. The viewership, attendance, media coverage, pay of players are all higher in the XFL compared to both AFLs, AAFC and USFL. So logic would follow that either XFL should be added or those latter four should be taken out of the first prong. Sulfurboy (talk) 06:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Support latter four taken out absent evidence that players from those leagues almost always meet GNG. Levivich (talk) 06:52, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The requirement is that they are "likely" to meet GNG. Don't know where this "almost always" comes from. Nigej (talk) 08:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The FAQ on this page, Q6: Consider what criteria that, if met, nearly 100% guarantees the sports figure will have significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources. Levivich (talk) 16:54, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The FAQ has no status. It is propaganda from those who want to tighten the criteria but have been unable to do it in a proper way. We have seen from attempts to change the footy guidelines that there is no consensus for the tightening. Nigej (talk) 17:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * No the FAQ is a listing of the results of consensus discussions. -DJSasso (talk) 17:07, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Does anyone else feel that the FAQ has no status / is propaganda? Levivich (talk) 17:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The only ones that ever get mad at it are the ones who want to loosen things up. Footy already is an outlier to everything this SNG stands for. -DJSasso (talk) 17:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Propaganda is several notches over the line for me. But I think I fall closer to "no status" than to "virtually the same status as the guideline". If there's a consensus that a new criteria with X% (where X is less than 99) should be included, I would be aghast if a closer discounted that consensus using the FAQ as a basis. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:17, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's time for a "What is NSPORTS?" RFC. Is it an alternative to GNG (as some editors treat it, pointing to the second sentence of the SNG, that old chestnut)? Is it a predictor of GNG, and if so, by what level of accuracy ("likely"? "nearly 100%"?)? What do we need for an article to be kept at AFD (Sources showing the topic meets GNG? Sources showing the topic meets an SNG?)? What do we need to add a new SNG to the list? Looking back at the recent discussions about GRIDIRON (this one), NOLY, baseball, and of course the recurring NFOOTY, it seems clear that these questions don't get resolved because we're not all on the same page about the fundamental questions, about what NSPORTS is. It's been years since we've had an RFC on this (right?). I think it's time to clarify, and then update the text of NSPORTS and the FAQ accordingly. Levivich (talk) 17:38, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That could be a good idea. That being said we have had nearly yearly RFCs on the lead sentences of NSPORTS. And they almost always turn into a "What is NSPORTS? RFC" so the question on if we have had one recently in and of itself probably isn't all that clear. Because what NSPORTS is gets talked about at RFC quite a lot but maybe just not as the specific purpose of the RFC. -DJSasso (talk) 17:44, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Consensus has been affirmed over and over again on this talk page that the sports notability guidelines do not replace the general notability guideline but act as rules of thumb to defer deletion when there is good reason to believe that appropriate sources can be found. However, as discussed about three weeks ago at, according to one admin, standard practice at deletion discussions is that guidelines only apply to the extent that commenters make use of them. So if they only refer to the sports-specific criteria without making reference to the rule of thumb portion, then closers aren't considering that. And while I personally don't think it's a very good idea for guidelines to basically be treated as just a set of pre-written arguments from which you can pick and choose, with no additional force of consensus behind them, I appreciate that on the ground, that's what's happening at AfD. isaacl (talk) 18:23, 28 February 2020 (UTC)


 * IMO it is way too early to make such a proposal with respect to a league that has only played three games in it entire history. To persuade most people that XFL should be added, they will want to see empirical evidence that the overwhelming majority of its players pass WP:GNG. If you want to pursue this, you should compile data on a random sampling of, say, the full roster of the 2020 Tampa Bay Vipers season and show that the overwhelming majority (say, 95%) receive the type of significant coverage that is needed to pass the GNG bar. Cbl62 (talk) 08:05, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , Where are you getting "overwhelming majority" or 95% from? When has that ever been the standard? Sulfurboy (talk) 14:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's any true consensus defined on this question but I would probably need something in the mid 80s range for a sample of players to justify adding it. I respect those who would desire a higher number and can even see a lower number though at a certain level the error bar becomes too big especially because of how difficult it is to delete those "misses" at AfD. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:25, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The guideline uses the word "likely" a number of times. Simple common sense tells you that "likely" is not the same as "overwhelming majority" or "nearly always". It could say "overwhelmingly likely" but it doesn't. Nigej (talk) 15:36, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The amount that usually gets quoted in the discussions as being "likely" is usually 99.999% when we discuss adding new criteria. -DJSasso (talk) 15:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Likely: "probable; having a greater-than-even chance of occurring". That's the "usual" meaning of the word. I'm not at all convinced by any argument that tries to persuade me that a word used has a completely different meaning to that in the English language. Nigej (talk) 16:08, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The whole point of NSPORTS is to be an almost unquestionable rule of thumb that a player meets GNG. If you go by just being greater than even that would mean you would be having barely a 50% chance of someone meeting NSPORTS meeting GNG. You would be defeating the whole purpose of this SNG. -DJSasso (talk) 16:13, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with DJSasso here. The point of an SNG is to provide a set of objective criteria in order to help us decide which topics have a good chance to be notable for a Wikipedia article. Setting that chance at 51% means that the SNG would be essentially no better at predicting notability than random guessing. I would hope we can assume that the idea behind SNGs would have stronger predictive value than that.  C Thomas3   (talk) 00:33, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * If AfD discussions had that interpretation of the guideline I'd agree with you . Hence my "I don't think there's any true consensus defined on this question". Beyond that it's all personal opinion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:56, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The idea has generally always been that every single person in a league who even played a minute should meet GNG if we made a criteria that all players from a given league meet NSPORTS. The reason we say likely and use numbers like 99.999 is that we understand there is always some really oddball case that won't meet GNG so it can't be perfect. But our goal has always been to try and have it that every player that meets an NSPORTS criteria should meet GNG. FAQ Q6 above lays out that we want a near 100% meeting of GNG when we create new criteria. -DJSasso (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The intent of the sports-specific notability guidelines at their inception was not to create an achievement-based standard for having an article in Wikipedia, but to provide guidance to avoid quick deletions of article stubs that, given enough time to find appropriate sources, would be fleshed out anyway. As such, the impact of a false negative is less than a false positive: you can resort to digging out the necessary references for a false negative, but to remove a false positive requires demonstrating that a sufficient search has been done for sources and has failed. The two areas where finding sources for otherwise notable subjects can be difficult are historical sports figures, and sports figures covered in media difficult to access, due to logistic or language barriers. For the second category, it may be more fruitful to try to recruit editors from corresponding sports audience with access to the necessary sources. isaacl (talk) 18:39, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd have to say yes it should be added as it is a professional national league. Technically it would already qualify under the "any other top-level professional league" criteria under rule 1 of WP:NGRIDIRON. So really just adding it to the list of leagues is just a technicality but would be good to clarify.  The C of E God Save the Queen!  ( talk ) 10:26, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with, evidence of meeting WP:GNG is required for adding to any SNG in NSPORTS, not simply because a league pays players. I would not be surprised if 90-95% of the players in the XFL already meet GNG due to player coverage in college football or having played a few NFL games previously. I would probably start with evaluating a few of the players that played in only one game so far, especially if they got cut after that game, if there are any. Evaluating how many at the lowest bar of entry that meet/fail GNG might be telling. Yosemiter (talk) 12:46, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I think Cbl62 is sensible here. Before we tell people that XFL players are likely notable, we need to first actually establish that.  Just a "I think they should be" is a meaningless vote.  Either source material exists to use to help us write good articles about these players, or else it doesn't.  If we can show the source material does exist for a sizable sample of them, then we should move forward with adding them to the guideline.  But NOT until after someone does that work of researching the issue and compiling the data.  -- Jayron 32 13:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with above comments about it being too soon to judge. Later, if you can take a roster and find that say 70-80% clearly pass then the "likely" part of this guideline is clearly satisfied and it can be added. Nigej (talk) 13:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Just want to point that that prior consensus and the FAQ above requires an almost 100% meeting of GNG for new criteria or if editing criteria. 70-80 aren't remotely close enough. -DJSasso (talk) 16:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , If that's the case I wonder how the AFLs, AAFC and USFL ever got added, because I would doubt that even 50% of those players meet GNG. Sulfurboy (talk) 17:19, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Can't say for sure. Some of the various leagues in various sports date back from the very beginning of nsports and probably got a lot less vetting than new criteria do. But I do know when we first were creating NSPORTS from what used to be ATHLETE the whole purpose of it was to get away from the idea that just playing pro meant you were notable and to get more specific. (The only hold out against this were footy editors which is why their guideline is essentially still the old ATHLETE.) But I can say when we were coming up with the various criteria for the other sports we tried to set the bar above the line of 100% of players meeting GNG so that even some notable ones would not meet NSPORTS and would fall to GNG to meet it. For some sports football definitely being one, we assumed most top level pros probably had standout college careers so would likely already meet GNG. This may very well be the case for XFL as well. But we can't know that till we check. -DJSasso (talk) 17:25, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , As someone who constantly reviews and has to approve super short stub articles because someone met one of the NSPORTS prongs, I'm totally okay with stricter standards. Sulfurboy (talk) 19:23, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Further on that point: criteria with 70–80% accuracy rate would mean the number of sports figure biographies would be inflated by approximately 25–42%. That's a lot of burden on AfD to deal with. isaacl (talk) 22:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the Tampa Bay Vipers being a guinea pig of sorts for this is a great choice: they play in a smaller market and have the worst record of the eight teams so far. Some stats: of the 52 players on the current Vipers roster, 23 pass NGRIDIRON as it is currently stated. The four quarterbacks likely pass GNG as they were starting quarterbacks for FBS schools. The remaining 25 players (48% of the roster) are:


 * 1) RB Jacques Patrick
 * 2) WR Ryan Davis
 * 3) WR Reece Horn
 * 4) WR Daniel Williams
 * 5) TE DeAndre Goolsby
 * 6) TE Pharoah McKever
 * 7) TE Colin Thompson
 * 8) OL Daronte Bouldin
 * 9) OL Jerald Foster
 * 10) OL Martez Ivey
 * 11) OL Marquis Lucas
 * 12) OL Isaiah Williams
 * 13) OL John Yarbrough
 * 14) DL Josh Banks
 * 15) DL Shane Bowman
 * 16) DL CeCe Jefferson
 * 17) DL Ricky Walker
 * 18) LB Emmanuel Beal
 * 19) DB Marcelis Branch
 * 20) DB Bryce Canady
 * 21) DB Micah Hannemann
 * 22) DB Anthoula Kelly
 * 23) DB Tarvarus McFadden
 * 24) DB Herb Waters
 * 25) LS Nick Moore


 * Can we identify how many of the players above pass GNG? (Keep in mind, just because there are currently articles for some of these players does not mean they pass GNG.)  Eagles   24/7  (C)  14:33, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Ain't the XFL just like Professional Wrestling? Mostly entertainment based, with less concern for authentic football? GoodDay (talk) 20:49, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * No it's competitive football. They do some stuff to increase the viewer experience (like micing a lot of people) but these are competitive football games, albeit played by people not currently in the NFL. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:56, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , You're probably thinking of the first iteration of it 10 or so years ago. It was still real games then, but they had these weird like build up stories like they do with WWE off the field. This newer version doesn't have any of that, just straight football. Sulfurboy (talk) 21:28, 28 February 2020 (UTC)


 * It is plain that the league is getting significant coverage. It is not plain that 90%+ of every roster has received significant coverage.  What we do not need are future deletion discussions on scrubs from Div II schools who played five minutes of action, filled with droning keeps of "played in a professional league."   Ravenswing      21:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The XFL may be fully professional, but it is not “top tier”. It does not attempt to compete with the NFL (or even the CFL) for players, viewers, or market share, or hold itself out to be their equal in terms of quality of play. Technically it would be a minor league, and other than FOOTY we don’t generally grant SNG status to minor leagues. I agree that the Arena league should also be classified as such, but I would suggest that be the topic of another discussion.  C Thomas3   (talk) 00:27, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That would still qualify under the "any other top-level professional league" wording of rule 1 of WP:NGRIDIRON anyway. I think the crux of this discussion should be if it is made explicit by listing the XFL in the criteria.  The C of E God Save the Queen!  ( talk ) 09:16, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Greetings, I am explicitly arguing it is not “top level” and thus shouldn’t qualify under GRIDIRON#1. Why do you think it should? In your opinion, what makes the XFL “top-level”?  C Thomas3   (talk) 05:58, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a national professional league with the same breadth of coverage as the NFL.  The C of E God Save the Queen!  ( talk ) 07:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * What do you mean, same breadth of coverage as the NFL? It has fewer teams, it's in fewer markets, and it receives less media coverage, doesn't it? Levivich (talk) 07:52, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
 * For an example of how it's not getting the same media coverage, see this tweet which lays out how Fox Sports, ESPN, and Yahoo are treating it. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * A good sample at the end of the season would be seeing how many of the offensive lineman who played a game are notable enough for an article. OLs generally don't get much coverage.—Bagumba (talk) 05:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Notability of club/team
I'm sure this has already been discussed, but can't we propose a notability guideline for clubs or teams? For association football, for example, maybe if they have participated in the national domestic cup competition? Nehme1499 (talk) 22:10, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Covered by WP:GNG and WP:ORG, and for association football teams, WP:FOOTYN. GiantSnowman 22:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
 * There is one for orienteering. Feel free to propose one to sports that lack one. I think that every team sport or sport with relays should have one. Per W (talk) 07:20, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's more accurate to say it's covered by GNG and NCORP. This seems to be suggesting having FOOTYN or something similar be incorporated here so it's not just an essay for which I think we'd agree there is no consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 07:48, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:NCORP actually does not apply to sports teams. It explicitly states: "The scope of this guideline covers all groups of people organized together for a purpose with the exception of non-profit educational institutions, religions or sects, and sports teams." These carve outs were inserted when NCORP was modified to crack down on corporate promotion. NCORP was modified in such a way that it is now stricter than GNG, and it was agreed at that time that schools, churches, and sports teams should not be subjected to these stricter requirements. Cbl62 (talk) 14:08, 6 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Exactly as stated, my idea was for WP:FOOTYN to become a proper guideline, not just an essay. Is it possible to gain consensus (positive or negative) on the subject? Nehme1499 (talk</b>) 14:50, 6 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Don't get confused by all of the insanity of these granular guides. The only thing you have to ask yourself is "Can I gather enough reliable, independent source texts that I could write a reasonably comprehensive Wikipedia article about this team."  If the answer is "yes", write the article.  If the answer is "no", don't write the article.  This is distilled down in WP:GNG and WP:42, but the basic principle is uncomplicated, and if you clear all of the dross from all of the confusing conditions laid out in the insane number of "notability guidelines", they all boil down to "is there enough reliable, independent text out there that I can write a good Wikipedia article from it".  If you let that be your guide, you can ignore all the rest of it.  All of the law and the prophets hang on this one principle.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 15:28, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Notability of national sports organization
Is a national sports organization notable, if it a member of the international federation governing the sport which is a member of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations? See Draft:Israel Taekwondo Federation. Thanks. --2604:2000:E010:1100:3078:18A6:187C:8568 (talk) 04:54, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It would have to pass WP:GNG, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:42, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Mediterranean games athlete notablity
I couldn't find anything on the automatic notabilty of athletes in the Mediterranean games (or the Pan American games either). I know playing in the Olympics garners automatic notability so we don't need to keep checking WP:GNG. But what about the Mediterranean Games? I have made an assumption that a Gold medalist is always notable for the Mediterranean Games, but entrants and lesser medalists are not. They would have to face the scrutiny of GNG proof. I couldn't find an exact project with any guidelines on this, or at Nsports either. I don't think there was anything on the Pan Amercian games either (except for equestrian). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Apart from the Olympics there are no games-wide notability criteria; it's on a sport by sport basis, even for gold medalists. Nigej (talk) 19:32, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Yep, take it on a sport-by-sport basis. Looking at the redlinks here, for example, I'd say they'd all pass point 2 of WP:NTRACK as a starting point.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 19:56, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This came up with a conversation about Luis Riba. He fails everything Tennis Project and Nsport and I don't think he ever won a minor league tennis match. But he did get a bronze medal at the 1987 Mediterranean Games. It is also claimed he coached an Olympic tennis champion and top 10 player, but while it's true he coached that player it is unknown whether he coached him when he was in the Olympics or in the top 10. Riba may pass other GNG but I see nothing that makes it automatic since he never played on the main ATP Pro tennis tour. Thanks for the input since i wasn't sure. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:47, 18 April 2020 (UTC)


 * No problem. Maybe there's some coverage of this guy in Spanish, that would be my next step. But as the article currently stands, it probably doesn't pass any notability.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:29, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Guidance for creating sports-specific notabiity guidelines
Regarding this edit: as previously discussed at, the intent of the sports-specific notability guidelines is to provide a highly accurate prediction that the general notability guideline is met, in order to reduce discussion at articles for deletion and promote article stability. Accordingly, proposals over the last decade for new sports-specific notability guidelines have only succeeded when persons meeting the criteria have a very high probability of meeting the general notability guideline. Thus the recommendation in the FAQ that proposals should consider making the criteria strict enough to have as few false positives as possible reflects current practice. The use of "likely" in the guideline is a softpedalling of what sports-specific guidelines have actually gained consensus support. For better or worse, even minor wording in the guideline has proved very difficult to gain consensus to change, because many commenters don't think wording tweaks will change how editors are interpreting them. I appreciate the desire for complete consistency; sadly, writing by committee just isn't very conducive to achieve this. isaacl (talk) 21:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The whole point of a FAQ to a guideline is surely that it should answer questions people might have about the guideline. It shouldn't redefine the guideline. Nowhere in the guideline (WP:NSPORT) does it say "highly likely". So the FAQ should not say "highly likely". This is just attempt to change the meaning of the guideline by the back door. If someone want the guideline to say "highly likely" then they should get it changed. Until that happens the guideline and the FAQ should match. Nigej (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The crux of my point is that the guideline says "likely" and arguing that that this REALLY means "highly likely" or "nearly always" or "99.999%" is just ridiculous. What planet are we on. Nigej (talk) 22:27, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The planet where much community discussion determined that the meaning of likely was that it was effectively every time, giving leaway for the extremely rare oddity. -DJSasso (talk) 22:33, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Sadly, the words that get agreed upon in guidelines are compromises. There has been no change in practice, as far as I know, since the inception: the sports-specific guidelines have always been intended to have a very low false positive rate. I can propose other ways of wording the answer to question 6, but in the end, the best advice is still to craft guidelines that have a very high positive rate, because that's what's gaining consensus support. It would lead people astray to recommend that criteria with an 80% positive rate, for example, are sufficient. isaacl (talk) 22:54, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * "Highly likely" is falling from broadly consensus related to the relation between notability, the GNG and the subject-specific notability guidelines (SNG). The SNGs like NSPORT establish a rebuttable presumption of notability, in that if a criteria is met, then we generally will allow for a standalone article until such a time that it can be shown that there is just simply not enough sourcing for example that article any further (via a proper BEFORE search), at which point we will consider deletion. As we don't want to be dealing with a huge amount of cases of articles that turn out to be non-notable, we want criteria used in SNGs to eliminate too many false positives (topics that may appear notable but that really aren't, and hense we expect the criteria will highly likely lead to sourcing for the topic. --M asem (t) 23:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Reply to all three of the above. Seems to me that there are two possibilites. (1) There is consensus that where the guideline says "likely" it really means "highly likely" (or some other term). In this case the obvious this to do it change the guideline so it says that. OR (2) there is no consensus, in which case the FAQ should say the same thing as the guideline. Otherwise it might seem that the FAQ is written by a small group who wish to push their definition of "likely" for which there is no consensus. Nigej (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Frankly I think you are just trying to do just that by nitpicking what likely means. Since the very beginning of this guideline likely has meant this. It has been discussed and confirmed in countless discussions on this talk page. Most people take likely to mean this. The difference between likely and highly likely are just something that it appears you are trying to conjure up to get around the communities determination on what the guideline means so you can create whatever articles it is you want to create. We used likely because at the time of creation people understood it meant low false positive rate, if you use highly likely you still have the same issue, people trying to get around the guideline will still say yeah but how high is highly. The FAQ was created to stop those arguments and had broad consensus to say as much, the fact that it has remained the same for almost a decade only goes to further show it does. -DJSasso (talk) 10:39, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The fact that the FAQ has contradicted the actual guideline since it was created in 2013 is no reason to leave it unchanged. Nigej (talk) 10:46, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * That is where I and presumably the others disagree with you, I don't think it does contradict. This is what I believe likely means in this case. I believe the distinction you are trying to make between likely and highly likely is artificial. -DJSasso (talk)
 * I am not a new editor. But I'm not sure I've ever come across anything so ludicrous as much of the stuff written on here. In normal English "likely" and "highly likely" are quite different. I'm completely lost as to whether you're saying that they are the same thing (in which case my change would be ok) or whether you're saying that they'rre different (in which case the FAQ clearly contradicts the guideline) Nigej (talk) 10:54, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I am sure you have heard of context. In this context likely means a near 100% chance of meeting GNG. And if the word highly helps you we can certainly modify the rest of the guideline to say that, because if you have noticed the FAQ is actually on the guideline page meaning it is part of the guideline. -DJSasso (talk) 10:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Frankly, the guidance should be: "Don't". Guy (help!) 23:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Apparently black means white and white means black and everyone knows that because it was accepted by everyone 10 years ago and it can't now be changed. Nigej (talk) 10:47, 29 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I support the change to the FAQ to "highly likely" (or even "almost certain") which reflects the current guidance. SportingFlyer  T · C  21:20, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * To my mathematical mind "likely" means >50%. In common usage I'm inclined to think that highly likely is perhaps >90%, almost certain - perhaps >99% (a horse that is 100 to 1 on is almost certain to win). Personally I'd be happy to go with "highly likely" on that basis. Nigej (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I support the change per Nigej and SportingFlyer above.<i style="color:#800000;">dawnleelynn</i>(talk) 21:56, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Nigej's comment makes sense to me, and I've no problem with changing it to "highly likely."   Ravenswing     22:54, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Given that it's been existing practice since the inception of the guidelines, and no one is arguing for the utility of setting criteria with a higher false positive rate, I have changed the uses of "likely" in the general sections of this guideline page to "highly likely". I have left the few uses within the sports-specific guidelines to allow for subject matter experts in those areas to review them. isaacl (talk) 23:33, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be very useful if you could point to somewhere where it actually says that this was the case. Otherwise it seems like a Kremlin-style strategy that by saying something often enough everyone will come to believe it's true even when it isn't. Personally I'm still not convinced. I've reverted your edit until we get a consensus that this is the way forward. Nigej (talk) 06:44, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Since multiple persons have already expressed this to you based on their familiarity with past discussions, it might be more convincing if you went through the archives yourself to read the past threads on new sports-specific criteria. Consensus support is achieved when the participants are convinced that the criteria produce a low false positive rate so that they are useful in articles for deletion discussions as a clear rule of thumb. Otherwise, the criteria are seen as not being sufficiently effective. Where the disagreements come into play is if an achievement-based standard should be used instead of appropriate secondary coverage, and what constitutes significant, non-routine, independent, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources. isaacl (talk) 11:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I came here as I saw Nigej was blocked after a 3RR warning. The wording being returned to " if met, nearly 100% guarantees the sports figure will be notable". What sort of wording is this?! I would much prefer a better worded phrase for this, which "likely" seems like a good fit. Else, "very likely", or even the inverse that "if met, it's unlikely that the subject doesn't have significant, independent..." as that is what is what we are trying to avoid - a lot of cases where the SNG is met, but they aren't notable. Best Wishes,  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:33, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The unlikely language Lee proposes seems like a good way of phrasing this sentiment to me and offers better guidance than what we have now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:15, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I actually prefer unlikely as well, second choice very likely. SportingFlyer  T · C  18:13, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I feel that double negatives are more difficult to parse, and so personally prefer to avoid them. isaacl (talk) 18:48, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would agree with that. The double negative actually makes it harder to understand. What we were trying to get across was that it should be very rare that someone meeting the criteria would not meet GNG. A number often used in new guideline discussions is 99.999%. The reason we use a number is that people like Nigej try to argue that likely only means a 50% chance of meeting GNG. Which is ridiculous. His last edit should be undone until this new discussion is done as the the FAQ page is transcluded onto the guideline which means its part of the guideline, so until there is consensus to change it he shouldn't be changing the guideline. If it needs to be a word as opposed to a number "near certainty" as TastyPoutine mentions would be my choices. -DJSasso (talk) 21:03, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the comment is fine, but I think we're overly focused on probabilities here and that's muddling the discussion a bit. What we need the guideline to say is that all athletes covered by the guideline should meet WP:GNG, with the occasional exception. Considering the FAQ is hidden in a drop-down box, whether this makes an iota of difference could also be up for debate. SportingFlyer  T · C  21:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Fully agree, you are right the gist of what we are trying to convey is that all athletes covered by the guideline should meet GNG with the occasional exception. -DJSasso (talk) 21:41, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * We are indeed discussing changing the main guideline page itself. (Whether that makes any difference either is debatable.) If there are any follow-on consequences for the FAQ, it can be changed accordingly. The first section of the guideline page states "In addition, the subjects of standalone articles should meet the General Notability Guideline." I've tried very hard in the past to change the introduction to make this more evident, and have gained some support, but have always been stymied by those who think the existing wording is sufficient. But if there's renewed interest in making a change, that's great! isaacl (talk) 22:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would support “highly” likely or “very” likely as a standard if the intent is to move off current wording. I suppose my actual preference would be for “near certainty”. In the end, it’s all just semantics since one person’s highly likely is another person’s “probably”.  TastyPoutine  talk (if you dare) 13:51, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I would support a change. <i style="color:#800000;">dawnleelynn</i>(talk) 23:58, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Change to WP:NOLY
Following on from the ANI thread at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and the improperly speedily kept Articles for deletion/Yun Chol (weightlifter), I want to propose a change to WP:NOLY.

Our SNGs are designed to cover topics that pass WP:GNG, but not all Olympians will pass WP:GNG. Many competitors, especially those who don't win medals, are relegated to the agate of the sports pages and may never be significantly covered. For instance, a recent search looking for newspaper confirmation of the competitor at AfD on newspapers.com brought up nothing at all in English-language press. This isn't a great example, as it was a North Korean weightlifter who finished 12th, but I would have expected his name to have been listed by someone. However, no newspaper on the site appears to have printed a full list of finalists. Two I checked only printed the top five in each event.

We have many stubs based on WP:NOLY that can't be expanded and a couple of our most contentious deletion reviews of late have involved historical, poorly finishing Olympians from non-English speaking countries. This is not a formal RfC, and perhaps it should be, but I propose limiting WP:NOLY to any individual medalist, require WP:GNG to be met for all other individual Olympic athletes, and allow team sports with SNGs to determine whether playing in the Olympics qualifies a player for an article. SportingFlyer  T · C  08:28, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I thought that our SNGs are designed to cover topics that pass WP:N but other than that point, I agree with the jist of what you say. NOLY is much too wide. I'm not so sure about North Korean weightlifters (a specialist area) but many of the competitors in the early Olympics are clearly not notable. Nigej (talk) 09:06, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * SNGs are a guide to the kind of person likely to pass GNG, and a means of achieving some level of consistency by setting a minimum expectation. They are not a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS allowing articles on people who have no non-trivial independent sources. The best solution IMO is to have list articles for those who have no sources other than results lists, and full articles for people who are covered in depth in multiple sources. This is much how we handle schools. Junior schools are generally redirected to lists articles on the school district, colleges are almost always sourced enough to qualify for a standalone article. Anyone who wins gold is likely to have feature articles. People who travel to the event but do not place, not so much - Eric Moussambani is the classic illustration of an exceptional case where a losing competitor actually gets significant coverage. Guy (help!) 09:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * SNGs are a guide to the kind of person likely to pass WP:N. Nigej (talk) 09:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Two things I want to weigh in on here. First is the meaning of "presumed notable" - my read is that "presumed notable" means that we expect to find sources for people who meet the threshold (so the article shouldn't be summarily deleted as non-notable if it meets the threshold), but if people can't find those sources, then the presumption of notability is gone. Second, as seen in the deletion discussion linked above (which I was involved in), we have an inherent bias toward English-language and online sources, and this affects how we handle GNG. An article subject may have significant coverage in places difficult for us to turn up (in the deletion discussion above, the subject was from North Korea, so a language barrier and not somewhere most of us are likely to travel), but how much effort do we expect someone nominating for deletion to put in searching for those sources? It's fine that the SNGs say that we presume there's coverage out there about the subject, and there may well be, but if we can't find it with a reasonable effort I feel that we shouldn't have the article sitting around as a permastub because "there might be SIGCOV out there somewhere" (but if someone does find that coverage, then they're welcome to recreate). creffpublic <sub style="margin-left:-8ex"> a creffett franchise (talk to the boss) 14:38, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , exactly. Presumed notability doesn't remove the requirement to prove notability. Guy (help!) 12:13, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree the NOLY presumption should apply to medalists only, not all participants (and I generally agree with Creff about how an SNG should work). Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 14:46, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * So, we'll have an article on the 2016 French guy Kévin Bouly but not the 1992 North Korean guy Yun Chol? -- Jonel (Speak to me) 14:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)]
 * , I'm fine with deleting that one too if there's no sources out there beyond what's in the article. I'd say there's a better chance of finding sources for Bouly than Yun Chol (since 2016 means any coverage is likely available on the Internet), but that's no guarantee. creffpublic <sub style="margin-left:-8ex"> a creffett franchise (talk to the boss) 15:26, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You will find tons of sources for Bouly; he competes in the internet age and is from France. And yet he has done nothing more significant than Yun. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 15:45, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I completely agree that he hasn't done anything more significant than Yun. creffett (talk) 21:19, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I wasn't able to find "tons of sources" on Bouly, just   . An AfD would be close - I would probably be a weak delete on the sources. SportingFlyer  T · C  23:22, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with Creff on what presumptive notability means for NSPORT. I would support a narrowing of NOLY to medal winners - perhaps even with an explicit note that coverage of other participants is appropriate in list form rather than seperate article (if they do not satisify GNG or some other notability standard). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * This proposal may well have merit (I've long suspected the Olympic SNG too loose), but in order to assess properly, it would be helpful to see some data showing that Olympic participants do not meet WP:GNG at an overwhelming rate. As a test case (and to avoid issues arising from inaccessibility of foreign language or pre-Internet sources), someone could take a random sampling of 50 (even better 100) non-medaling Olympians from English-speaking countries at the 2016 Olympics. If less than 90% satisfy GNG, that would firm up the contention that the SNG is unwarranted. I understand this is a substantial effort, but it seems appropriate if we are to overturn a longstanding SNG. Cbl62 (talk) 16:09, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's reasonable, but there's a simpler test. There are 555 individuals listed on United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics and 366 at Great Britain at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Excluding medalists, there are still hundreds of people listed on those two pages. I would be utterly shocked if a single one failed. If someone can get consensus that *one* 2016 American or British Olympian is not notable, I will support revision of WP:NOLY. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 17:42, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That may be true but how many of the golfers listed at Golf at the 1904 Summer Olympics – Men's individual are notable? Allan Lard is a typical example. Nigej (talk) 17:48, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * NYT, Golfers Magazine, this book, this book. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 17:54, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Allan Lard trivia: When he died in 1946, he was remembered not for competing in the 1904 Olympics, but as an inventor whose innovations included a money counting machine used in banks, a steel shaft for golf clubs, and a single trigger release for double-barrelled guns. See here and here. Cbl62 (talk) 18:43, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I think what's interesting is that some of these athletes may pass WP:GNG but not because they made the Olympics. Looking through the U.S. at the 2016 games, Chloe Woodruff gets mentioned in bike magazines and Corben Sharrah won some BMX thing so they may pass an AfD on WP:GNG grounds, but not necessarily because they were in the Olympic Games. I'm not sure Kasey Perry-Glass is notable, either - she's received coverage but only in specialty equestrian magazines. I also don't want to lose sight of what's important - the U.S. divers all received significant coverage, even the ones who didn't do well, because they're the best divers in the United States. We absolutely should have articles on Olympic athletes who receive coverage, and I don't want to set off a deletion spree - but we do want to avoid creating stubs like Perry-Glass or Clark Montgomery which would be nearly impossible to improve. But probably 95% of contemporary Olympic athletes from the US or the UK would be notable. SportingFlyer  T · C  23:36, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Zero chance Kasey Perry-Glass gets deleted even without WP:NOLY. Yes, shocker, Olympic athletes tend to be involved in their sport beyond the Olympics. And thanks for acknowledging that this change would keep all or essentially all recent, Anglophone competitors while deleting older and more foreign athletes. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 02:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Needs more research first including searching non-English sources to test notability of non medal winning participants, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 16:16, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Related discussions can be reviewed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 30, Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 23, and Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 2. Cbl62 (talk) 16:21, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Generally supportive of these experiments. Would be good to get a random sampling of sports, countries, and years. In the end, if an SNG routinely fails to point us to subjects that have significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject, it's a flawed SNG. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 18:07, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose change WP:NOTABILITY is quite clear. "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline".  When notability was being debated years ago, it was determined what would qualify articles of being notable for an article.  Just getting covered in a couple of random news sources was one way.  Scientists are notable for their accomplishments, musicians for how well their songs sold, actors for how notable their films were they were a significant part of, and athletes based on their accomplishments in sports.  You get to the Olympics, then you are a notable athlete.  That should be common sense.  Whether or not you did a lot of interviews or were interesting enough for people to write about, is irrelevant.   D r e a m Focus  18:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The RfC that created the sports-specific notability guidelines was clear that it was not establishing an achievement-based standard for having an article, but was creating rules of thumb to evaluate the likelihood of the general notability guideline being met. This consensus view has been affirmed multiple times since then. isaacl (talk) 19:18, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , that is a stupid policy as it implicitly allows WP:LOCALCONSENSUS to override policy. I could get a group of editors interested in porn articles to agree that appearing in three porn films is notability, those articles would still fail core policy because they would not be verifiable from reliable independent secondary sources.
 * WP:GNG is the minimum bar a Wikipedia article must pass. That has consensus well beyond what can be achieved at any subject guideline. Guy (help!) 12:12, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Just a note that for a subject-specific notability guideline to be enacted, it has to go through the policies and guidelines procedure, which requires a consensus to be established within the community, and not just a local consensus among a limited set of editors. isaacl (talk) 15:52, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I and others voted and successfully eliminated the porn subject specific guidelines. Subject specific guidelines are not local consensus, you seem to say that in various places, it clearly not true.  No matter what you say, an article can pass a subject specific guideline to prove it is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, that is why they exist.   D r e a m Focus  15:21, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Very sensible suggestion. If all we know about an athlete is that they came 12th in weightlifting at the 1960 Olympics, we maybe shouldn't have a standalone article about them. If we don't have sources to write a proper article, we shouldn't have an article. —Kusma (t·c) 18:51, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The Olympics is the highest standard any athlete can reach. If anything, NOLY is more restrictive than some other NSPORT policies, since it's limited only to the best of the best of athletes. Whereas many sport-specific policies allow anyone who ever played in certain leagues, which for some sport-specific guidelines can include quite a lot, NOLY is very restrictive and limits itself only to athletes who have competed at the pinnacle of their sport. Someone who competed in the fourth division of English soccer, and never beyond, hasn't come close to playing at the pinnacle of their sport, yet we consider them notable under NSPORT. Someone who competes in the Olympics, no matter where they finish, has competed at the pinnacle of their sport. And let's not forget that even a 12th-place finisher is still the 12th best athlete in the world in their respective sport. And I'd be hard-pressed to argue against the notability of someone who's been the 12th best person in the world at anything, or at least anything as notable as an Olympic sport. Maybe the 12th best Tiddlywinks player in the world isn't notable, and certainly the 12th best serial toilet clogger isn't (if there are even rankings of those) but to compare to other similar categories, certainly we'd consider the 12th best professor, or actor, or CEO in the world to be notable if there were some objective rankings of those. I don't see why the 12th best weightlifter, or equestrian athlete, or modern pentathlete, or whatever other Olympic sport you want to throw out there, in the entire world, should be any different. Smartyllama (talk) 19:35, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Insufficient data found for the 12th best serial toilet clogger (though this impressive Wisconsonian may rank at No. 1), but there actually is an official tiddlywinks world championship. See here, Larry Kahn (tiddlywinks) and Dave Lockwood (tiddlywinks). Anyone want to take a shot at WP:NTIDDLY ... wink. Cbl62 (talk) 20:32, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose change -- NO changes to WP:NOLY. Jeff in CA (talk) 21:03, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Since I haven't actually replied to the proposal: I support narrowing the definition of NOLY to medalists. However, I do recognize the point of "if you're sent to the Olympics, you're one of the best in the sport," so I'd compromise by suggesting that those athletes who didn't medal and don't meet GNG be listed in brief somewhere, either in the (sport) at the (year) Olympics or (country) at the (year) Olympics pages. creffett (talk) 21:24, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose This is a tough one. Representing one's country in the Olympics is a very high honor for every athlete. I would assume there should be RS for any athlete invited to the Olympics. But because of the international competition and rarity of the honor, the SNG should probably stay as it is. I do not like micro-stubs which cannot be improved, but I will stop short of calling for their elimination. Lightburst (talk) 22:48, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose change. Based on the level of national coverage I'm already seeing for athletes who have been selected to compete in the 2020 games in obscure sports (and are not likely to medal) I think the vast majority of Olympians at all levels are GNG-notable and that putting the question to the test for individual Olympians is a waste of time. Also, many editors incorrectly use the sports SNG to keep out athletes who are GNG-notable (but do not meet the SNG) and this would only encourage more of that incorrect interpretation. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:49, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * , and the ones who don't meet GNG should be included because...? Guy (help!) 12:28, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The guideline already covers that scenario. isaacl (talk) 15:56, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , as far as I can see it "covers" it by saying that we can have an article even if the subject doesn't meet GNG, which is a repudiation of WP:NOTDIR. Guy (help!) 08:58, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * We talked about all of this a year ago, in the context of Olympians, no less. We talked about the onus being on article creators to ensure that the general notability guideline has been met, how the sports notability guideline has agreed with this from its very inception, and how this has been affirmed multiple times since. I talked about how my attempts to change the second sentence failed to get consensus support, and I added a FAQ to clarify its meaning. If closers of deletion discussions are failing to respect the consensus that has been established in this guideline, then we need better closers. isaacl (talk) 09:14, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I'm not sure I agree - if an article fails WP:GNG but nobody in the deletion discussion mentions that except the nominator, and no voters !vote delete on WP:NOLY grounds (let's assume there are multiple keep !voters), any closer who closes the discussion as delete would be immediately dragged to DRV for supervoting/ignoring the consensus and probably wiki-tased as a result. It's difficult to close against consensus and the times when it'll stick is when a minority consensus group have a clear argument and the majority group don't rebut it. We need to make it easier for the voters, but I'm not sure what that looks like at the moment. SportingFlyer  T · C  11:19, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The thing is a (somewhat broader than most deletion discussions) consensus was formed when this guideline was created. Ignore all rules only applies when there is a clear problem with following a guideline, and it's supposed to be a rare occurrence. If dozens of microstubs are being kept on a claim of ignoring all rules, then a consensus should be formed to change the guideline accordingly. But time and time again the current consensus has been upheld. isaacl (talk) 11:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , that is exactly what happened with user:Sander.v.Ginkel. Guy (help!) 16:24, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , It doesn't matter how often you talk about it, a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS can't trump policy. Guy (help!) 16:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Only to say that nothing has changed since the last time we discussed this, so the answers haven't changed. The sports-specific notability guideline is still not a local consensus; it was approved by a general RfC. The sport-specific notability guideline continues to defer to the general notability guideline; no local consensus was achieved to change this. If standard practice as described by Bagumba below is occurring regularly, then the local consensus issue is with the deletion discussions, where guidelines are not being treated as community consensus, but as crib sheets to summarize an individual editor's argument. Changing this guideline won't have any effect in that case. isaacl (talk) 16:36, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose I dislike the mass creation of microstubs, but IMO there is inherent notability in representing your country at the Olympics. I suspect many could be expanded if people had the time and resources. I recently came across an obituary that prompted me to turn this microstub into this decent article, which has some good stuff in it (the subject held the national record for their main sport for 61 years) and could have been a decent DYK if I could be bothered with it anymore. Rather than change the guideline, perhaps a better way of dealing with this particular issue is a restriction on certain editors who mass-create these microstubs, and try to get them to focus on quality rather quantity. Number   5  7  17:38, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose Based on historical destubbing efforts, I don't buy the premise that most Olympian articles can't be expanded beyond two-sentence stubs. Consider The Africa Destubathon, a destubbing contest in 2016 that focused on African topics (which, for full disclosure, I was a participant in). The entry pages for the contest are full of Olympians, many of them from small countries that typically get little coverage in major English-speaking news sources, and many of which did not come close to medaling in their events. Just looking at the first page of entries, there's Nádia Cruz, Laraïba Seibou, Odile Ahouanwanou, Naomi Ruele, Abraham Niyonkuru, Lidiane Lopes, Chloe Sauvourel, Carine Ngarlemdana, Bibiro Ali Taher, Feta Ahamada, and Maoulida Darouèche, nearly all of which were once the sort of short stubs that inspired this discussion. With sufficient effort, the microstubs can generally be improved into longer well-sourced articles; in the meantime, there is no deadline, and a microstub is better than having nothing. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose: I am not as sold as others about the exalted nature of "making" the Olympics, considering the relative ease someone competing in an obscure sport from a tiny nation-state has in doing so. But ... quite aside from the earthquake in notability standards for sport this would provoke (when 4th place at the Olympics isn't presumptively notable, how could being a Paralympian at all possibly be?), the existence of many microstubs isn't a failure in notability standards, but evidence of both the Game High Score mentality in article creation and sheer laziness.  Yes, I know that looking for sources in unfamiliar languages is a pain in the ass, but I wager that far fewer of these "obscure" Olympians are unsourceable than some might claim.   Ravenswing      23:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * So this won't pass, and that's fine, though we should still go through and check to see if every Olympian is actually notable. I still think the vast majority will pass GNG, but that's not the 100% we currently presume. I still think the SNG is too broad. I also want to note though how many users are voting simply on the SNG at Articles for deletion/Yun Chol (weightlifter). SNGs require GNG to be met, and while in Chol's case GNG has been neither proved nor disproved, I do see a problem if we're keeping a stub article on someone where they've demonstrably failed WP:GNG. SportingFlyer  T · C  04:35, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you're misunderstanding what SNG is all about. SNG says that "If the article does meet the criteria set forth below, then it is likely that sufficient sources exist to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Failing to meet the criteria in this guideline means that notability will need to be established in other ways (for example, the general notability guideline, or other, topic-specific, notability guidelines)." Note that GNG is just one of the options to achieve WP:N. Also note the important word "likely", not "100%". My own view is that, as it stands, NOLY does satisfy the "likely" part of this. However, I also think that with some tweaking, the likely-hood of being notable could be increased without throwing away too many notable people. Nigej (talk) 09:41, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Nope - any article at AfD must ultimately pass WP:GNG, and any SNG should be written to give a presumption to articles that will definitely pass WP:GNG. Articles which meet SNGs but demonstrably fail GNG are almost always deleted. The grey area is where an article meets an SNG but can't be shown to pass or fail a GNG, such as the Yun Chol AfD. He doesn't pass GNG, but he doesn't necessarily fail it, either. I'm not stating this because I think it should be the case, I'm mentioning this because it's routinely what happens at AfD, especially with football articles. SportingFlyer  T · C  10:16, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * While its generally true "that any article at AfD must ultimately pass WP:GNG", logically that treatment of an individual doesn't imply the rest of your reply, that "any SNG should be written to give a presumption to articles that will definitely pass WP:GNG." Indeed that's not at all what it says. It says "likely", not "definitely pass" or "100%". Clearly it's unsatisfactory that a SNG should be so loose that only say 10% of the sportspeople that pass are notable, but it's equally unsatisfactory that it's so tight that only 10% of the sportspeople that are notable, pass it. We are looking for a balance in between, where it's loose enough to catch most of the sportspeople but tight enough that we don't have large numbers of non-notables included. Nigej (talk) 12:38, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * For clarity, if you're referring to a sports-specific notability guideline, could you use the expanded term? "SNG" is more often used to refer to the subject-specific notability guidelines. (The sports-specific notability guidelines indeed are written in deference to the general notability guideline.) Thanks very much. isaacl (talk) 19:07, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The sports-related notability guideline is an SNG, and functions like all the other SNG, providing criteria that one can presume notability (read: eventually showing GNG-like sourcing) to allow a standalone article to be created. The only SNG with anything more unique to that end is WP:NPROF due to the nature of that profession. --M asem (t) 20:48, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, as you are aware, I know this. I still feel that if the sports-specific notability guidelines are being referred to, it would simpler to use the expanded term, to make it clear that the scope of discussion is this notability guideline, and not the general class of subject-specific notability guidelines. isaacl (talk) 20:57, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , This is certainly the intention, note there are some things in NOLY and a few other places that contradict this:
 * Nations participating at an individual Summer or Winter Olympic or Paralympic Games are considered notable, e.g., United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics or Great Britain at the 2002 Winter Paralympics
 * Sports at individual Summer or Winter Olympic or Paralympic Games are considered notable, e.g., Archery at the 2004 Summer Olympics or Wheelchair curling at the 2006 Winter Paralympics
 * Events at individual Summer or Winter Olympic or Paralympic Games are considered notable, e.g., Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's road race or Skeleton at the 2010 Winter Olympics – Women's
 * The "are considered" wording here should probably be "are presumed" to match the rest of the SNG. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    21:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This would make sense and should be non-controversal. --M asem (t) 22:32, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Strongest support I don't care if people are stacking on for the status quo of quantity over quality, the mass-production of stubs over supposed automatic notability is ludicrous. There are so many tens of thousands of competitors and they should meet out actual standards of SIGNIFICANT COVERAGE like everybody else. This is just BLP1E failures. SNGs can influence how sources are interpreted but should not completely exempt articles from the simple minimal expectation of even a single source with slight prose coverage. Statistical results entries are not the basis for an article and this makes a mockery of GNG. A presumption that certain classes are likely to be notable is not a mandate that they are notable and that articles are immune from merging/redirecting/deleting their redundant nothingness until actual sources of substance are found. There's no deadline to write them as FAs but there's no deadline to have separate micro-stubs for every one of them either. Reywas92Talk 21:11, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The Olympic sports notability guideline does not exempt articles from meeting the general notability guideline, and does not mandate that subjects meeting its criteria should have an article. I agree that there's no rush for micro-stubs to be created. isaacl (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * A certain user has made literally tens of thousands of micro articles on athletes, largely sourced to stats websites and game records. He certainly believes the GNG does not apply to those, as do those reflexively voting "Keep, he was in the Olympics" or "Keep, he played one game of cricket a hundred years ago." It's preposterous how low the bar is for athletes compared to anyone else. Reywas92Talk 00:10, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Closers need to read the entire sports notability guideline and evaluate whether or not the presumption of the existence of suitable sources meeting the general notability guideline has been borne out. If they aren't, they're ignoring the long-held consensus view of every discussion on this guideline. isaacl (talk) 01:36, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I can say that closers often do not. Eample: Articles for deletion/Philipp Offenthaler. In this case I asked the closer to expound upon their close and they declined to clarify. In general I'd say that practice at AfD is "Keep, meets WP:NFOOTY" (or similar) ends up overriding the GNG in most cases. The "Keep meets NFOOTY" crowd have largely worn down those of us that actually care about the notability guidelines to the point that I don't really nominate articles of footy players anymore (and generally avoid reviewing them). If they meet NFOOTY I'll just tag them and move on. I know this is wrong, but it will just end up getting kept at AfD and I'm disillusioned. Likely some other reviewer just ticked them off, but there is nothing I can do about the satus quo; it's all swimming upstream. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    01:46, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This is definitely a problem. The SNGs (like NSPORTS and NOLY here ) are not meant to be used to create microstubs just because we're presuming notability is there. There are meant to allow the edges cases of keeping articles that are in progress, that show a bit more work in research but maybe not at the GNG, for cases where it is likely more sources will be coming. If editors are abusing the SNGs to make microstubs, something needs to be fixed. --M asem (t) 02:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think the Philipp Offenthaler AfD really is indicative of anything, to be honest - this is a young professional player whose article passes WP:NFOOTY but also IMO readily passes WP:GNG, the result of the AfD was crystal clear, and the only objector other than you as a nominator has a noted history of !voting delete and ignoring WP:GNG-qualifying coverage at football biography articles because they've specifically noted in the past they don't like football biography articles. However, this was the article that was nominated for AfD, so the AfD nomination wasn't necessarily wrong, and the early votes in the AfD didn't clearly identify sources, which I agree is suboptimal. The article only really began to take shape after the first relist. SportingFlyer  T · C  04:03, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * BS. What's the WP:THREE for Offenthaler? There are no Offenthaler sources that meet GNG. That was one of the worst AfDs (as in, most incorrectly decided) that I've had the pleasure to participate in. Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 04:30, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , Ok... ok... lets let the sleeping dogs lie. I'm sorry for bringing it back up again, but lets not rehash that here. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    04:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but that was a pretty unnecessary swipe at me by SF up there. And not the first or second or third time, either. I got hammered pretty well in that AfD, too. And I got attacked as NOTHERE in the Yun Choi AfD. I'm getting sick of getting attacked for–god forbid–thinking articles should meet GNG to exist in mainspace. Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 04:35, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I also am pretty exhausted by the lack of respect for the word 'presumed' and its intentional choice. Then again, the lede of this SNG is not clear at all that the GNG should be passed, in fact it implies that the SNG alone is sufficient to 'keep' at AfD. Perhaps we should have a wider discussion/RfC regarding the wording of the lede and whether articles that demonstrably fail the GNG (but can be demonstrated to meet the SNG should be deleted). I know this has been affirmed in the past, but the current lede does not bear that out. At the moment we are fighting against unclear guidelines that on one hand say 'presumed' (intentionally), while on the other hand the lede is implying that the criteria alone are enough to be kept at AfD. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    04:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I think one problem is what does "demonstrably fail" mean. With Yun Choi, there's the question of whether print-only North Korean sources must be searched before we can say the topic demonstrably fails GNG. In my view, that's an impossible-to-meet standard; we would presume that everything North Korean is notable because we would never be able to search print-only NK sources to demonstrate GNG failure. It's the classic proof-of-absence problem. But that aside, I would generally welcome any RfC that can clarify global consensus surrounding notability, or even a top-to-bottom re-examination of the whole deletion system, which, right now, I don't think works very well. Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 05:09, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tried to have the second sentence changed before, but failed to gain consensus support. I added a FAQ that explains that the second sentence only indicates that sources must be provided for whatever guideline is being used to presume notability. It does not indicate that the general notability guideline does not have to be met. isaacl (talk) 08:13, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * To be fair, it will be a very rare situation when someone passes WP:V and a WP:SNG but WP:GNG has not been demonstrably met. No one is arguing all North Korean articles which on their face fail WP:GNG should be kept because no one has checked local sources. Unfortunately, I would imagine the very rare situation encompasses quite a few Olympian stubs. SportingFlyer  T · C  08:27, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I think that may well be a naive assumption. But if it's true then we don't need to suggest that the SNG overrides GNG. The only reason for asserting the SNG over GNG is if there are subjects who do not meet GNG but who you want to include for "completeness" (i.e. a directory). Guy (help!) 16:21, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's naive at all, it's very specific and it seems as if my point has been missed completely. At almost every AfD, we should be able to determine whether someone meets WP:GNG fairly easily through a WP:BEFORE search. However, and this typically occurs with biographies of people from non-English speaking areas who were pre-internet, a WP:BEFORE search based only on an English internet sources will not be enough to definitively disprove notability. SportingFlyer  T · C  03:09, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I spent six months trying to prove that it's not a rare situation at all, that a topic will meet an SNG (specifically NFOOTY) yet not meet GNG. I came up with like 50+ examples of meets-SNG-but-not-GNG AfDs, listed in a pretty colorful table at User:Levivich/NFooty AfDs. We can also all see on that list how often an article is kept despite there being zero GNG sources. However, it seems there has been a noticeable decline in "NFOOTY-only keeps" at AfD over the course of 2019, so I do think that aspect has improved. But you're seeing the same thing right now at the Yun Choi AfD that sparked this latest round of discussion.
 * Did you know we have something like 50,000–100,000 microstub footballer BLPs, sourced just to a statistics database? These meet the SNG, but the vast majority will not meet GNG. Good luck proving that, though–that's a lot of BEFORE searches.
 * Because it's impossible to do the BEFORE searches for that many articles, the SNGs essentially become guarantees-of-existence-in-mainspace. And so we have editors churning out microstubs by the thousands, where all the stubs do is establish that the topic meets the relevant SNG. There are so many of these that we'll never, ever, go through them. They are being created at a rate (50 a day) that is higher than anything we can keep up with in terms of vetting or BEFORE searching. Also most will never be maintained or updated. It's just spam, pure and simple. Pages that no one will ever read. By the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands... really, millions. We have millions of pages that no one will ever read.
 * Two things are absolutely, without a doubt, true:
 * There are many articles that just meet SNGs without meeting GNG, and
 * There are many editors who are just fine with that.
 * After seeing what's happening on Wikipedia with television episodes, barely-known bands, albums and songs, pro wrestling, railroads, athletes, and portals, for over a year, it's finally dawned on me that this fight is not worth fighting. If we deleted all the non-notable athletes on Wikipedia, we'd reduce the encyclopedia by maybe 2%. Nobody would even notice; it wouldn't make a difference to the article-to-editor ratio; it wouldn't actually improve anything. Spending time discussing this 0.5%, or that 1%, is not efficient. We're just spinning our wheels, nibbling at the edges.
 * At a fundamental level, either Wikipedia is going to require that every article be sourced to multiple independent, secondary, reliable sources–anything that doesn't meet that standard gets deleted on sight–or Wikipedia will not require all articles to be sourced or be deleted. So long as with continue with the latter approach, we're going to have millions of unsourced or undersourced articles–and there's really no point in trying to delete them, or go through them. Millions is too many to go through, so why bother?
 * Obviously, I'm in favor of deleting any article that isn't properly sourced. I think we're past the point where the most important thing is growth of article topics, and we're at the point (due to WP's ubiquity in search results) where the most important thing is verifiability, not growth of article topics. Delete unsourced articles and we'll cut the article-to-editor ratio in half and be able to concentrate editor resources on developing the articles that people actually read and find useful.
 * This wall of text brought to you by Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * After seeing what's happening on Wikipedia with television episodes, barely-known bands, albums and songs, pro wrestling, railroads, athletes, and portals, for over a year, it's finally dawned on me that this fight is not worth fighting. If we deleted all the non-notable athletes on Wikipedia, we'd reduce the encyclopedia by maybe 2%. Nobody would even notice; it wouldn't make a difference to the article-to-editor ratio; it wouldn't actually improve anything. Spending time discussing this 0.5%, or that 1%, is not efficient. We're just spinning our wheels, nibbling at the edges.
 * At a fundamental level, either Wikipedia is going to require that every article be sourced to multiple independent, secondary, reliable sources–anything that doesn't meet that standard gets deleted on sight–or Wikipedia will not require all articles to be sourced or be deleted. So long as with continue with the latter approach, we're going to have millions of unsourced or undersourced articles–and there's really no point in trying to delete them, or go through them. Millions is too many to go through, so why bother?
 * Obviously, I'm in favor of deleting any article that isn't properly sourced. I think we're past the point where the most important thing is growth of article topics, and we're at the point (due to WP's ubiquity in search results) where the most important thing is verifiability, not growth of article topics. Delete unsourced articles and we'll cut the article-to-editor ratio in half and be able to concentrate editor resources on developing the articles that people actually read and find useful.
 * This wall of text brought to you by Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I'm in favor of deleting any article that isn't properly sourced. I think we're past the point where the most important thing is growth of article topics, and we're at the point (due to WP's ubiquity in search results) where the most important thing is verifiability, not growth of article topics. Delete unsourced articles and we'll cut the article-to-editor ratio in half and be able to concentrate editor resources on developing the articles that people actually read and find useful.
 * This wall of text brought to you by Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This wall of text brought to you by Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * This wall of text brought to you by Leviv<span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(45deg);bottom:-.57em;">ich 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about what we are discussing here. No one is doubting that an individual athlete article should meet GNG. The issue at hand is where sports-related notability guidelines should stand. This is essentially a debate about false positives and false negatives. Some want them to be so tight that there are no false positives (ie everyone who passes is notable), others want them be so loose that there are no false negatives (ie everyone who is notable passes) and some, like myself, think there is some middle ground. Nigej (talk) 22:00, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * , I'm fine with a middle ground "presumed notable". The issue is when someone does a WP:BEFORE search on an athlete, finds absolutely nothing to meet the GNG, then nominates it on AfD even though they once participated at the Olympics. Nobody can find sources to meet the GNG, but you are guaranteed to have a bunch of !keep votes saying "Meets WP:NOLY". —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) (click me!)    23:26, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * If it is the case of closers not taking into account the demonstration of a valid BEFORE search and the lack of anyone challenging the quality of the BEFORE search in their keep !votes, then we have a AFD closure problem. This is the entire basis of "presumed notability" that NSPORTS and all other SNGs rest on. Now, important is how well the AFD nominator spells out their BEFORE search too. If they said "I couldn't find anything" and don't spell out where they looked, that's not good enough and keeping is valid. --M asem  (t) 15:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * "No one is doubting that an individual athlete article should meet GNG." This is sadly wrong. You have all these people at Articles for deletion/Yun Chol (weightlifter) saying "Keep, he was in the Olympics" without giving a shit about the GNG, and we've seen this in countless other places in a variety of sports. One user has spammed tens of thousands of articles on people who have received no coverage but just participated in an athletic event long ago, and this makes is awfully hard to tackle this single-handed precedent. Just participating is largely WP:BLP1E. Reywas92Talk 00:20, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe you could identify this one user, without casting any further aspersions?  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:39, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree. One point to remember is that GNG is just a guideline, we are trying to establish WP:N here, so there's no "must" about it. However this is fundamentally a more general issue than NOLY. WP:N says "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: 1. It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right" (which includes "Sports and athletes"). Superficially this gives validity to the "Keep, he was in the Olympics" argument (since it clearly says "or"). If you want to stop the ""Keep, he was in the Olympics" argument you need to change some of the wording elsewhere. Nigej (talk) 10:15, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * As I most recently discussed at the end of : The wording at WP:Notability is general to allow for flexibility. This allowed the editors who created the sports-specific notability guidelines to reach a consensus, at the time of creation, that the guidelines will act as a supplement to the general notability guideline by providing rules of thumb for presuming the general notability guideline has been met. Closers need to respect the consensus view underlying the sports-specific notability guidelines. isaacl (talk) 11:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Closers need to respect the consensus view underlying the sports-specific notability guidelines: The onus is mostly on the !voters to apply guidelines "correctly". While WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS asks closers to uphold policies and overrule a local consensus, if necessary, it doesn't mandate that guidelines be enforced if !voters (presumably) apply common sense and ignore them.—Bagumba (talk) 11:16, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem with this approach is it dooms interested parties to visit all deletion discussions forever. We should be freeing people up to do more useful things than re-establish consensus in every deletion discussion. isaacl (talk) 11:34, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * We should be freeing people up to do more useful things ...: Sure, so either one group needs to be "educated" as to the written guidelines, or the written guidelines need to better reflect standard practice. Which one is "the problem" is subject to consensus.—Bagumba (talk) 11:54, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is that standard practice, as you describe it, treats guidelines solely as a summary of the argument of the commenter referring to them (and no one else), and in fact only of the specific cherry-picked portion the commenter chooses to quote. In which case there's no use in updating the guideline; people will continue to cherry-pick the portion that matches their argument, and ignore the rest. Which means deletion discussions are bound to have inconsistent results, as they're decided by whoever shows up at the time, rather than reflecting a community consensus captured within guidelines. isaacl (talk) 16:18, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * they're decided by whoever shows up at the time That applies to any discussion that involves guidelines that are inconsistently applied, not just NSPORTS.—Bagumba (talk) 03:55, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not a question of inconsistently applied guidelines, but that in your description, guidelines are only used to provide guidance to participants on how to argue in a discussion, since no weight is given to the consensus that enacted the guidelines. (Yes, this would be true of any discussion closure that follows your description.) isaacl (talk) 04:55, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I've heard this argument before. Personally I'm very sceptical about it. Take WP:NGOLF. The criteria were suggested here: Special:Permalink/155555839 at 03:37, 4 September 2007 and then created here: Special:Permalink/155557783 4 minutes later with no further discussion. They are largely unchanged since that date (with the exception that "They have competed in" has been changed to "They have made the cut in" and one category has been removed). The idea that there was "a consensus, at the time of creation, that the guidelines will act as a supplement to the general notability guideline" makes no sense to me. Someone proposed something, 4 minutes later someone else added them. This was the wild-west days of Wikipedia. Things got added without any discussion or consensus. That is the reality. Nigej (talk) 12:34, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The FAQ links to the RfC in July 2010 that promoted this page to guideline status where the relationship to the general notability guideline was spelled out. Now I completely agree that the individual sport-specific guidelines have never really been tested regarding their ability to predict if the general notability guideline has been met, because it's a lot of work to do. So if you can convince others that a stricter standard for any of the sports can produce a lower false positive rate, great! (As previously discussed, I believe reducing false positives to be more important than reducing false negatives.) I know it's unfair, but like it or not, some data would be helpful to convince others. If enough deleted articles can be brought forward with an established pattern, for example, then it should be easier to gain support. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The fact that the "FAQ links to the RfC in July 2010 that promoted this page to guideline status" apparently says something very important but which neither WP:N or the sports guidelines mentions, seems decidedly bizarre. Any argument based on finding something in an obscure archaic document, is inherently weaker than something clearly written and clearly current. Surely much better to have something in WP:N or the sports guidelines. Nigej (talk) 17:01, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * You said "The idea that there was 'a consensus, at the time of creation, that the guidelines will act as a supplement to the general notability guideline' makes no sense to me.", so I provided a reference to this consensus. The current guideline has text indicating that meeting these guidelines doesn't mean that an article must exist. I've tried several times to get the language changed in various spots, and have not been able to obtain a consensus yet. So I created the FAQ instead. Many editors are unconvinced that changing the language would stop the arguing; they feel that the arguing will just move to another sentence in the guidelines. And if closers don't care what the guideline says beyond what commenters quote, then it doesn't really matter anyway. By all means, make your arguments for tightening the guidelines for any sport, or loosening them. I understand the point of view of those who think microstubs encourage others to flesh out articles, but personally I think it is much better to write the article when the sources are at hand and a brief article can be written. isaacl (talk) 17:18, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * And if closers don't care what the guideline says beyond what commenters quote, then it doesn't really matter anyway If the closer does not agree with how a guideline is being applied, they have the option to !vote themselves instead of closing, especially if the result would be a WP:SUPERVOTE. However, those not familiar with the domain are less likely to choose to !vote (or suspect that the guideline is being misapplied).—Bagumba (talk) 04:08, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * When I said "don't care", I didn't mean if the closers personally agreed, but if they would consider anything other than what the commenters chose to quote. You said that the onus is mostly on the !voters to apply guidelines "correctly" and that closers are not mandated to enforce guidelines. As I understand it, you are saying that closers must interpret consensus amongst the commenters in the discussion on the basis of how they explain their viewpoint, which may include applying a guideline, and closers aren't supposed go beyond how the commenters have described their interpretation of the guideline. To wit, a guideline is just a set of pre-packaged arguments that commenters can pick and choose from, and no consideration is given to the consensus formed when the guideline was promoted to guideline status. If that's the case, then it doesn't matter how much or little this guideline emphasizes deference to the general notability guideline, since if commenters don't apply it during their arguments, closers won't consider it. isaacl (talk) 04:44, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * it doesn't matter how much or little this guideline emphasizes deference to the general notability guideline, since if commenters don't apply it: It should be in the guideline so it is available for commenters to consider. Do not consider this to be a unique weakness with NSPORTS. There's similiar GNG discussions where !voters can overlook the finer points of signficant coverage, multiple sources, independent sourcing, etc.—Bagumba (talk) 05:06, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * In discussing your description of discussion closures, I haven't said anything about your description being unique to sports notability discussions. Regarding deference to the general notability guideline, what I'm saying is all of the arguing about how much emphasis to give it is beside the point based on your description of standard practice. It's mentioned already, and giving it more prominence is unlikely to change the minds of commenters currently ignoring it. isaacl (talk) 05:24, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * If we're looking for data on articles failing the GNG through an AfD after satisfy the presumption of notability in an athlete-specific SNG, you can check User:Levivich/NFooty AfDs. Unfortunately, we stopped updating the page months ago, but I think if anything the GNG-failure rates have increased since then. For the months covered (January - August 2019), I see 35 AfDs for footballers with less than 5 matches played in fully-pro leagues. Among these, 9 resulted in Keep, while 5 were No Consensus. That's a pretty strong signal (at least for the fully-pro leagues involved) that a minimal amount of play doesn't justify the presumption. In fact, if you go further and look at footballers with a single match played in these leagues, the GNG-failure rate is dramatically higher. Jogurney (talk) 22:56, 3 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment There is an odd fixation in the discussions above on the idea that some athletes have done nothing but appeared at an Olympics. That is an exceedingly rare thing to occur as Olympic sports are among the most highly participated sports globally and athletes typically need to achieve a certain standard to gain selection for an Olympic team. The majority of Olympic athletes will usually also have been national champions or major regional medallists, else they will rank among the world's best performers if they come from a particularly competitive nation. Yun Chol (weightlifter) is a clear example of this reality with the most minor of searching. It's important to gain wider consensus on subject-specific guidelines, but it's also important to listen to subject specialists to get a grasp of the topic. I'm sure the nominees at 1996 Country Music Association Awards might at first glance look like a bunch of no-names to some Olympics contributors, but I'd expect those people to learn about the structure of American country music before making bold moves like, say, nominating John & Audrey Wiggins for deletion on the basis the duo never reached the top 20 of the US Country music charts. SFB 01:30, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Which is a fallacy as the two topics have completely different characteristics. The John & Audrey Wiggins clearly meets WP:GNG. Chol's does not clearly meet WP:GNG. SportingFlyer  T · C  05:21, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * We have to be conscious of the systemic bias inherent in such statements, particularly in reference to a country like North Korea. I'm sure a North Korean person could draw the exact opposite conclusion given their mirroring lack of access to (and ability to understand) American media. The sport-specific guidelines are to counterweight such biases. Weightlifting is one of the most prestigious sports in North Korea – and its most successful sport internationally. On that basis, it is a fair assumption to suggest that Yun Chol's major medal-winning exploits (against South Korean opposition no less) warranted quite a bit of coverage in Korea (accepted on the knowledge that we don't have access to 1990s North Korean media).
 * A dearth of sources on foreign subjects should never make us automatically assume a topic is not notable. For example, I have struggled to locate sources on the 1987 National Games of China, yet we know all for an absolute fact that a gathering of 7,000 elite athletes in the world's most populous is without doubt something that many people have remarked on. SFB 23:47, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that on the extremely rare occasion some random person does manage to qualify for the Olympics in spite of doing nothing else of note, it typically manages to attract significant coverage due to the highly unusual nature of it. Smartyllama (talk) 13:00, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. My worry is that if we went for the original proposal (medalists only) we might reduce the number of athletes passing NOLY by 90% (false negatives) to cut out the 1% (or whatever) of modern-day olympians that are not notable (false positives), which would be a massive imbalance in my view. Nigej (talk) 13:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Change the early olympics (especially 1904) had no limit to competition in a way that would at all suggest all competitors were notable. The current rule has created a glut of sub-stubs with one source that languish at that not at all useful level.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose The argument is mainly about the people from the old Olympics, and the people of not-English speaking countries. About the old Olympic, many sources of that time are not available online. Many old newspapers are coming online over the last year, but that is still a small number of all published newspapers and reliable sources. With newspapers and sources that just came online in the last years I created Géraldine Mackie, Hattie Donaldson-Briggs, Florence Hurd who participated at the Olympics as a demonstration sport and didn't win a medal. Not in these articles, but I found several newspapers with the full results listed. And for example after finding this interview see here I added content to: József Gurovits. If the stub wasn't there, I wouldn't have created the article. I added to many many more articles information I found from old newspapers. And again, if the stubs weren't there, I would have added the content. And the second thing discussed here about the people from non-Enlgish speaking countries like the one from South-Korea, probably his name is written in Korean sources in Korean language. SportsOlympic (talk) 09:20, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This breaks the tables for most events in the Olympics. Say if I want to research the flow of the event (including heats et al), you'll end up with a redlink to the competitor. If you qualify for the Olympics, no matter which one or in which sport, you should be considered sufficiently notable to have an article. A standard should be objective and easy to ascertain, which the general Notability guidelines do not achieve. Benkenobi18 (talk) 06:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)