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A note on NSPORT systematic bias

Arguments have been made that these guidelines help address WP:SYSTEMATICBIAS; that they support the creation of articles about female athletes. The reverse is true; as can be seen in the table below these guidelines focus on men's leagues and men's tournaments, and in doing so make it easier to create biographies about men than it is to create biographies about women, likely contributing to why only 17% of biographies cover women. Further, these guidelines make it harder to delete biographies about men than it is to delete biographies about women, which likely contributes to why 41% of biographies nominated for deletion cover women.

This issue of NSPORT contributing to systematic bias extends beyond specific SNG's, and to NSPORT in general as it lacks SNG's on sports where women's participation and coverage exceeds men's, such as volleyball, netball, and softball.

Number of men's and women's leagues covered by selected SNGs - these cover approximately 52% of sports biographies, and 16% of biographies

SNG	Men's leagues covered	Women's Leagues covered	Notes
NGRIDIRON	5	0
NFOOTBALL	150	9	Listed at Wikiproject Football; note the women's list is marked as incomplete.
NCRICKET	44	7	Listed at Wikiproject Cricket; note that not all top tier cricket tournaments are considered sufficiently notable to provide presumptive notability, with 49% of listed men's tournaments being considered sufficiently notable, compared to 13% of women's.
NBASKETBALL	11	1
NBASEBALL	11	1

Partially, but not entirely, this reflects a disparity in participation and coverage, but it doesn't alter the fact that not only does NSPORT not reduce the disparity in coverage, it increases it.

To clarify: there are two requirements for an article to be created; notability, and editor time. The former is (or should be) based on significant coverage in independent and reliable sources, and any systematic bias that results from that is beyond our ability to address, and so this note attempts to address the latter.

To summarize this attempt, it is easier to create an article that meets NSPORTS than it is to create an article that meets GNG. Because this is true, because articles that are easier to create are more likely to be created, and because significantly more men than women are covered by NSPORTS, we are effectively encouraging editors to create biographies on men over women. BilledMammal (talk) 12:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC) Clarified BilledMammal (talk) 17:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Note that this issue also affects how our coverage is weighted towards the global north; in NGRIDIRON and NBASKETBALL, all the listed leagues are in the global north. In NFOOTBALL, 103 out of 159 leagues are in the global north, while NBASEBALL has ten out of eleven leagues being based in the global north.

NCRICKET is a rare exception to this, with 27 out of 50 cricket tournaments being in the global south, although as 70 out of the 91 listed as not being sufficiently notable are in the global south it is likely that issues remain. BilledMammal (talk) 12:34, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

In terms of cricket, the inclusion of leagues was based largely on whether we could with any reasonable confidence expect to meet GNG level sourcing for any article. This is partly why there are fewer women's leagues and relatively more from the global south are excluded from the list. For example, good luck finding much coverage consistently of people playing in the Logan Cup. It's there for some, but not consistently enough for us to have included it. There's also the caveat of Players that have played in tournaments deemed non-notable may still be notable if they can be shown to pass the wider requirements of GNG which allows inclusion of anyone playing in any of the other tournaments if there are suitable sources. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:16, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

You do realize that there simply are more countries in the global north than there are in the global south, don't you? That's why there are more articles on leagues in the north.Tvx1 22:18, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Global North and Global South - there are both more countries and more people in the Global South. BilledMammal (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

• This counterargument would only make sense if there was no link at all between these SNGs and GNG. If we were to do as some suggest and get rid of these SNGs, then what would happen is that editors would only create articles based on the coverage they see, and these are even more biased towards Men's sports and the "Global north" than is recognised in the SNGs. The disparaties that exist are down to disparaties in coverage by reliable sources, not disparaties in the SNGs. As for volleyball, netball, and softball, fix the problem and create an SNG for these sports. Iffy★Chat -- 12:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

  My objection to that is noted in the first paragraph; the effort and time required to create an article under one of these SNG's is considerably less than the effort and time required to create an article under GNG. When considered with the focus noted above, what this means is that the effort and time required to create a biography for a man is considerably less than the effort and time required to create a biography for a women.

I agree - and noted - that some of this issue is due to the disparity in coverage, but a lot of it is due to the fact that editors are effectively encouraged to create articles about men over articles about women. BilledMammal (talk) 12:57, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

• Personally I always treat NSPORTS as being equal and applying to both men and women. It's only harder because there tends to be less coverage of women who may be eligible for an article. I do think it would be good if we had an editing contest similar to WP:Atdrag with tangible prizes to encourage the creation of more sportswomen. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
• I've found this quite a difficult area to judge. Clearly there's generally much more coverage of male sport than female sport which naturally skews things. Also it's very difficult to judge any sort of "correct" ratio. Volleyball was mentioned above, and I gather that a lot more women play volleyball in the US than men. But is that true world wide? I'm an ex-volleyball player myself and where I'm from I never found that to be the case. The fact that we've got 3500 (3400+ living) female volleyball players and 3600 male golfers (2500 living) when coverage of male golf is 1000 times that of female volleyball in my neck of the woods, doesn't tell me anything about sex bias, it only convinces me that team sports in general are over-represented. Nigej (talk) 16:05, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
• We all know that coverage of men's and women's sport is disparate. What is your point? Is your "solution" to eliminate NSPORTS? If so, that is no solution at all. The disparity in coverage is, unfortunately, far worse that the disparity in NSPORTS. Moreover, your statistical survey is quite skewed in that it omits many sports where participation by women is much higher, e.g., figure skating, tennis, equestrian sport, and gymnastics. The NSPORTS guidelines for these and other sports have great value in encouraging the creation of articles on women. Cbl62 (talk) 16:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

My point is that there are two requirements for an article to be created; notability, and editor time. Because creating articles under NSPORTS requires less time than creating them under GNG, we are encouraging editors to write articles that are covered by the former, and because men are far more likely to be covered by NSPORTS than women, we are encouraging editors to write articles on men over women.

And the statistical survey covers 52% of sports biographies; I don't think it is skewed - compare this to 3.3% for figure skating, tennis, and gymnastics (I don't have the figures for equestrian sport, but I assume it isn't particularly high).

As for what to do, that is a more difficult question, but as part of considering these guidelines it is important to keep in mind the behaviours that they will encourage in editors, and whether these behaviours are desirable for the project. BilledMammal (talk) 17:26, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Including WP:NGRIDIRON in your analysis is dubious since there is no major league for women's gridiron football. And WP:NOLYMPICS is another guideline that treats men and woman equally. While progress is needed, the contention that things would be better without NSPORTS is specious. Cbl62 (talk)

I am curious about the stats. Do you have a breakdown by sport for what percentage each major sport makes up of Wikipedia biographies? Cbl62 (talk) 17:32, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

1. Is it easier to create articles that meet NSPORT than it is to create articles that meet GNG?
2. Are significantly more men covered by NSPORT than women?
3. Are articles that are easier to create more likely to be created?

If the answer to all of these is yes, then in the specific area of WP:SYSTEMATICBIAS, Wikipedia would be better off without the aspects of NSPORTS that result in #2 being true - though whether Wikipedia would be better of in general is a different question. As for including NGRIDIRON, the point is that it contributes to the fact that significantly more men are covered by NSPORT than women. Finally, in regards to the stats, I've been using the figures here. BilledMammal (talk) 17:39, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

We disagree as to whether coverage would be better for women without NSPORTS, but I do appreciate your sharing the stats. It would be interesting to see these stats broken down by sex. @Nigej: Do you know of any breakdowns by sport and sex? Cbl62 (talk) 17:57, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Cbl62: For the sports you mentioned: "figure skating, tennis, equestrian sport, and gymnastics" the numbers are male: 2000, 5700, 2100, 2900 female: 2300, 4300, 800, 3300 (based on categories like Category:Female tennis players), so roughly 53%, 43%, 28%, 53% female. Totals for all sports will be massively skewed by sports like soccer which has 10,000 female out of the 200,000 total (ie 5%). Nigej (talk) 18:04, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Nigej. So women do quite well proportionately in figure skating, tennis, and gymnastics (I expected it to be higher in equestrian), and I think NSPORTS helps in that regard. And, yes, soccer skews everything. Cbl62 (talk) 18:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if it helps, but it doesn't do harm. What does harm is the aspects that are wildly disproportionate (NFOOTBALL, NGRIDIRON etc) and it is possible that due to that harm Wikipedia would be better off without those specific SNGs. BilledMammal (talk) 18:14, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Has it ever occurred to you that there are certain sports that simply have fewer female competitors than male ones? Let alone notable ones.Tvx1 22:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I haven't explained myself well. That is true, and that is not an issue. What is an issue is if we make it easier to create biographies of a men than it is to create to biographies of women, as by doing so we encourage editors to create the former over creating the latter. BilledMammal (talk) 22:25, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

We don’t. Our guidelines are in balance with coverage in reliable sources of males and females.Tvx1 03:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd ask you to go over the three questions provided above; if the answers to those are all "yes", then we do. Whether this negative outweighs the positives of the SNG's is a different question, but that question won't change the fact that we make it easier to create articles about men than women beyond the external differences such as coverage, and by doing so create a disparity in coverage beyond what exists in reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 03:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Not to mention that the women's gridiron league that probably generated the most coverage for its players was the league formerly known as the "Lingerie Football League". Gridiron not only has far fewer women players, its sad that its most covered league was basically pay-per-view entertainment more in line with WP:NENT than NSPORT. Yosemiter (talk) 22:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

These are living and dead, which partly explains the equestrian (90% of the women are still alive but only just over half the men) Nigej (talk) 18:18, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: I answer these

1. Is it easier to create articles that meet NSPORT than it is to create articles that meet GNG?

   If the NSPORT SNG is accurately calibrated, it should be equal. The SNG by default should be able to GNG (which is true for most, but I do know there is disagreement on certain sports). The problem some have is that certain sports stubs are created without any immediate evidence (non-stats sites) provided, thus leaving others to either expand to prove GNG or doing a proper WP:BEFORE to and AfD/prod.

2. Are significantly more men covered by NSPORT than women?

   I'll fix this for you: Are significantly more men covered by NSPORT reliable and independent media than women?

   Yes, many sports have both a greater quantity of coverage and from better quality of sourcing for men's sports than non-men's sports. There are also usually a much higher number of men's leagues and players in the world in a given sport than women (which is a different set of bias). If there is systemic bias, then it is in the media we are given and we reflect that per WP:RGW. If we take WP:NHOCKEY as an example, the Hockey project has extensively looked into player coverage in the top level amateur and recent pro women's leagues. It showed that most mid-level players did not generate much coverage outside of blogs and school newspapers (about 2/3 might meet GNG, but we could not determine a set of standards that did not look like a bunch of gender-biased qualifiers). Making "special rules/guidelines" simply to make more women have "presumed notability" is just as problematic as equal rules as it would outwardly appear that we, as a group, are holding women to a higher bar of accomplishment when really it is the other way around: media only covers the higher bar of accomplishment. For now, it is what it is, and the only thing we can do to change it is to continue to support the non-men's leagues so that it will be apparent that people do want coverage of said leagues and players.

3. Are articles that are easier to create more likely to be created?

   Probably yes, because there are clearly defined rules of thumb for newer editors to have guidance on. Only have "special rules/guidelines" would alleviate this problem (see above statement).

Not sure this helps, but in short. If the NSPORTS SNG seems biased, it is probably reflective of the GNG itself. It is not meant to be exclusive. Yosemiter (talk) 22:30, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The problem some have is that certain sports stubs are created without any immediate evidence (non-stats sites) provided, thus leaving others to either expand to prove GNG or doing a proper WP:BEFORE to and AfD/prod. - this is the aspect that I am primarily addressing, as this issue encourages the mass creation of such articles on men, without encouraging any similar mass creation for women, and in doing so means that the disparity in coverage on Wikipedia is greater than the disparity in coverage in the broader world.

And to be clear, I don't believe that the correct response is to encourage any such mass creation for women, I believe the correct result is to discourage the mass creation of such articles in general - we'll still end up with more articles on men than on women, but at least our policies aren't exacerbating this disparity. BilledMammal (talk) 22:48, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I personally don't really disagree with you on that point, although I would argue it's not "easier" with an SNG, just more defined or "clearer". As a community, we have put restrictions on a few editors that were prolific stub creators because of not using sufficient sourcing, thus creating more work for others (a type of WP:DISRUPTIVE editing). The counterpoint usually used to that is when the stubs are questioned, folks can often find the sources to back up GNG, even if the article creator themselves did not. The argument should be where is the line between disruptive creation of stubs and helpful creation of stubs if they will end up meeting GNG either way? Usually it's if someone is making hundreds (or thousands) of stubs for players just because they met the SNG, not just a few. (And I have also seen mass creation of women's players, simply because they felt that the current SNG is biased for following GNG and that GNG is inappropriate for minorities and inherently biased. They are not wrong, but also not right.) Yosemiter (talk) 23:08, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Male sportspeople get a lot more coverage than female sportspeople. Since coverage is at the heart of the GNG, the GNG has more of a problem of systemic bias than this SNG. --Michig (talk) 17:43, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think I made my initial point well; I have tried to clarify. BilledMammal (talk) 17:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

No neither has that problem at all. If there is a difference in the quantity of coverage for male and female competitors in reliable sources in a particular sport, Wikipedia just needs to reflect that. We need to be in balance with the real-life situation. Wikipedia is NOT the place to right great wrongs. It is not our duty to generate a false parity.Tvx1 22:02, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

It is not a "great wrong"... that comes too easily exaggerated off too many tongues these days. We need flexibility in older records because sources are not as easily come by. We should not apply the same standards to things that happen today where sources come out of the woodwork. You don't make things up, and you use sources, but using data for a Wimbledon Champion in 1900 where the best records have been destroyed through time, should be more accepted. Today a high school tennis player can get written up in a newspaper, but they aren't more important than a tennis champion should be. This is where SNGs shine and help out women a great deal as a consequence. We are talking about a small article, not resurrecting the mass extinction of the dodo bird. Older women's tennis articles will almost always have less info than their male counterparts. Even recently the Men have a minor league tennis organization where winners of events only pretty much always have a lock on notability. men also have a minor-minor league where you aren't notable even if you win. The women only had the minor-minor league set up but had payouts in their top echelon that equaled the men's minor league. The WTA just failed to qualify them as minor league. Our guidelines simply struck a minimal balance. It's not righting a great wrong, it's simply fair and just, takes up minimal space and effort, and has worked pretty well. Turning Wikipedia into a strict computer generated yes and no pile of articles seems wrong to me. I saw the same thing with article titles because a few people don't want to allow flexibility, but that ship sailed. Maybe this one will too but I'll still think it's wrong. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

It's not about righting wrongs. It's about having sensible criteria for when a subject merits an article, which for sportspeople should be based on the significance of their sporting career, which will be determined to some extent by how much their career has been noticed, but that shouldn't be the be all and end all. People write a lot about things that don't really belong in an encyclopedia, which is why GNG is such a clumsy, ill-considered doctrine to follow, which also casts a shadow over many SNGs because of the insistence by some that SNGs must indicate that GNG is likely to be satisfied. --Michig (talk) 11:18, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

If you want to make NSPORT not require GNG coverage and instead by based solely on accomplishment, you should make a proposal at VPP. But since it explicitly does, making arguments that rest on ignoring it does not achieve anything in this discussion. JoelleJay (talk) 01:06, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

To each they're own I guess. If a group of athletes in a category meet GNG 95%-99% of the time, it is much easier, much fairer, and creates much less headache and edit wars, if we deem that category as meets GNG. Then if someone has an issue with one or two people, they can be looked a separately if someone complains. That's the way it should work and that's the way it usually works. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

• Here's my answer, and my perspective includes being someone who's actually been not only a regular attendee of women's collegiate and professional sport (something I wonder how many proponents of BilledMammal's POV can claim), I've been a print reporter for the same. And with that, feh. SYSTEMICBIAS isn't a guideline, a policy or any sort of mandate. It's an opinion essay. And if it fuels (frankly) bullshit like some of these assertions, it's not worth much even as that. BilledMammal comes up with statements, for instance, such as "NSPORT ... lacks SNG's on sports where women's participation and coverage exceeds men's, such as volleyball, netball, and softball." I notice that BilledMammal carefully left out sports such as gymnastics, figure skating, tennis, golf and athletics, where women's participation and coverage are at the least strong and in several of them exceed men's ... and where there ARE SNGs. And gosh, yes, the "global north" (which encompasses nearly ninety percent of the world's population) likely gets more press coverage than the "global south" ... unless one is ready to fudge the boundaries to better fit their amour propre.

  I could pick nits and poke holes until the cows come home, but here's the bottom line. Once we start ditching neutral, objective notability guidelines with the purported goal of righting great wrongs, where does it stop? Okay, half the planet's population are women. So stipulated. China, for instance, has nearly 20% of the world's population. Is BilledMammal willing to agree that 20% of all biographical articles be reserved for mainland Chinese? (Toss in India, and those two countries are over a third of the world's population.) Africa's got a similar percentage ... should we reserve 20% of biographies for natives of that continent? A quarter of the world's population is Muslim. Should we have a religious test, as well? How about an ethnic one? How many world leaders are black? And by whose count? Barack Obama was widely touted as America's first black president, but in truth he has just as much white ancestry as black.

  And so on, and so forth. Women have no better claim to demographic equality than those of any nationality, ethnicity or faith. And who's going to keep score? Never mind sort out the increasing number of trans and gender-fluid/neutral athletes and other public figures. The resulting firestorm would make ANI look like a garden party. Ravenswing 23:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood what I am discussing - I am discussing how our policies encourage the creation of articles for men over women, by making the requirements less stringent for such articles. Yes, the disparity exists, but the issue here is that we exacerbate it by setting our policies up in such a way that this is encouraged.

And 90% of the population is not in the global north - 75% of the population is in the global south. See Global North and Global South. BilledMammal (talk) 00:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah ... that'd be the "... unless one is ready to fudge the boundaries to better fit their amour propre" part. I completely reject such a completely racist set of boundaries influencing ANY discussion of Wikipedia guidelines or policies. Ravenswing 08:50, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

If reliable sources describe the Global North and Global South concept as racist then I would suggest you add such sources to the article, as currently it makes no mention of such claims. BilledMammal (talk) 09:38, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh for crying out loud -- is your intent to brawl for the sake of brawling? This is not about correcting mistakes in that article, and you ought to know it. This is whether your use of the concept holds water. My reason for thinking that the concept is innately racist is at a casual glance of the map, which very conveniently defines the "south" as everything south of the United States and Russia, except for sliding curious anomalies such as Australia, New Zealand and French Guiana into the "north" -- in other worse, the boundaries of "north" and "south" are defined more or less by whiteness. Ravenswing 17:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Not at all, although if you want to say that the concept I used in my analysis is racist without sources, you have to expect me to object to that. And you missed the "curious anomalies" of Singapore, Macao, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. 19:25, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The concept of the Global South is in no way racist - I'm frankly amazed that you never came across the Brandt Line in high school geography lessons. Perhaps you're old enough that they were called Third World Countries.

I felt it was interesting to consider the way in which different sports are represented with respect to what is essentially their development status. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

And we have told you umpteen times that your assertion is wrong. These guidelines are no intentionally set up to make creation of articles dealing with males easier. There is no pro-men program being wrong here.Tvx1 03:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

And I don't believe they are intentionally set up in such a way. However, the inadvertent but functional effect of these guidelines is to make the creation of articles dealing with men easier, and we need to consider this functional effect and factor it into our considerations and decisions. BilledMammal (talk) 03:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

It seems you are against GNG then. If people put in the work to make an SNG that regularly meets GNG, and sources that meet GNG happen to have bias, then you think you think we should throw that work away? It's not our fault, or our responsibility, to fix what outside media covers. There are some sports, right now anyways, where there are 10x-100x more pro men's players than women's players in the world (gridiron, football, hockey, and basketball just to name a few). We can not fix that here by deleting the SNGs. Yosemiter (talk) 04:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

No. While GNG does result in a gender disparity, it only does this because it reflects the gender disparity in coverage and there is nothing we can or should do to correct this. These SNG's magnifies the gender disparity by making the average requirements to create an article on men less than the requirements to create an article on women, resulting in the disparity on Wikipedia being greater than the disparity outside of Wikipedia.

You can argue that this is acceptable, that the benefit of this is greater than the cost - but I'm not sure I would agree, particularly since the benefit is significant numbers of micro stubs, and the cost is contributing to systematic bias, in addition to the harm this causes to Wikipedia's reputation. BilledMammal (talk) 05:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

And as you can see, there are quite a few editors who don't agree that this damages Wikipedia's reputation, that any fix you propose would reduce the number of microstubs, that "systemic bias" (or your definition of the same, anyway) is an evil which we must combat at all costs, and that imposing anti-"systemic bias" policies would create problems worse than you decry. Ravenswing 08:50, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

If deleting the SNG doesn't effectively change the inherent systemic bias in the GNG for a topic, then it's not a change at all (and some might call virtue signalling). It would just be throwing baby out with the bath water. Additionally, it would create chaos as each individual sports wikiproject would (and already has) come up with its own "rules of thumb" that would in effect act as a stand in for "presumed notability". At least by having it all in one place, we can monitor each other's assessments here. We shouldn't be hiding the bias by kicking it down a level, we should be highlighting how to counteract it (although, this would also look bad as it would look like we are holding minorities to a different standard). When it comes to bios, history is systemically biased in nearly all regards. It takes time to fix, but it shouldn't be hidden or ignored. Yosemiter (talk) 13:56, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

My point is that this creates bias beyond that which exists in the coverage, as (assuming it is effective as a notability guide) it doesn't result in more men being notable, but it does result in it being easier to create articles on notable men than notable women, and as a result the ratio of articles on men to articles on women is greater than it should be. BilledMammal (talk) 19:30, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Yet you have not been able to produce any evidence of that preposterous claim. There just is not greater disparity on-Wikipedia than there is off-Wikipedia.Tvx1 23:14, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Gender Bias in Wikipedia; it is a little old, though it continues to be highly cited suggesting it is not outdated, and its focus on prominent individuals means that it won't fully account for the situation here as the articles being created under WP:NSPORTS are not of prominent individuals, but it is evidence of that "preposterous claim", and I will keep looking for something more recent. BilledMammal (talk) 23:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Women through the glass ceiling: gender asymmetries in Wikipedia find that women with articles on Wikipedia are slightly more notable than their male counterparts, with the gap being narrower for "very notable" people compared to marginally notable people. This would appear to support the notion that SNGs - and more specifically, NSPORT, given its oversized influence within biographies - is having an impact.

Of further note is this statement: "1900–onwards: the three words most strongly associated with females are actress, women’s, and female. The three most strongly associated with males are played, league, and football". Setting aside the systematic bias issue for a moment, I think it establishes that biographies on Wikipedia are far too focused on sport. BilledMammal (talk) 00:09, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

• There's one area that relates to categories, not NSPORTS, which I'll mention, since the topic is being discussed. Most sports have pairs of categories like male/female tennis players, male/female gymnasts, etc. However that's not universally the case. Some sports have a presumed assumption in the category structure that players are of one sex (generally male). Soccer is like this. We have the (oddly named) Category:Women's association football players but nothing corresponding to that for men. So while Roger Federer is in Category:Swiss male tennis players and Fara Williams is in Category:English women's footballers, David Beckham is in Category:English footballers. A few sports have 100% of one sex (I think netball is an example) so they don't need such a structure but it might be worth sports in this boat reviewing this aspect. Nigej (talk) 07:13, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I did a study of 1,000 random articles. And I divided every biography category into recent (active at their noted thing in the last 15 years) and non-recent. I considered a test of male/female bias to be recent non-sports bios and those were about 50/50 men/women. Both sports bios categories heavily male dominated, but for the older category this is even more so. And, while not directly relevant here, sports bios were over-represented, being 31% of all wiki bios.

BTW, from my NPP work, the main "way in" for nearly all sports bios is the SNG, and specifically the "did it for a living for one day" criteria. My guess is that the SNG is problematic but not sex-biased. Collectively it mostly just goes by the number of professional athletes collectively over the last 75 years which is heavily male-dominated. If you go one step deeper and analyze how it tracks GNG, my guess is that it does. GNG itself probably needs to be calibrated for sports. This is because, for this field uniquely, coverage itself is created mostly a form of entertainment, and so creation of such is less an indicator of notability. North8000 (talk) 20:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with you. I've come to the conclusion that the "did it for a living for one day" criteria are a fundamental issue, and mainly relate to team sports. Most individual sports are more based on the "won something fairly big once" sort of criteria. I've not found much evidence that its sex-biased. I suspect the biggest problem related to sex-bias in the sports area is the sex of the editors, which is clearly male-dominated, probably even more so that male-dominated participation or coverage. In my own area, golf, I've focused mainly on the men's game but recently more on the "ladies", and I've found that there's actually a surprisingly large amount of coverage of the women's game in old newspapers. So in this area I suspect the issue is more related to the interests of the male editors, leading to an imbalance in our coverage. Nigej (talk) 20:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
• I for one would strongly oppose an apartheid-like regime (yes, hyperbole) under which athletes are treated as second-class persons or untouchables (yes, very bad and now mixed metaphor). I sympathize with and support efforts to reform those parts of NSPORTS that are not sufficiently calibrated to GNG, but then imposing a different GNG rule for athletes is "a bridge too far" (or adding to the metaphor spree, a "double whammy" -- though not the third through sixth linked definitions which I now see have surprising and unexpected sexual connotations). SIGCOV is SIGCOV, and reliable sources are reliable sources, whether we're analyzing athletes, entertainers, business persons, poets, or military leaders. Cbl62 (talk) 21:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
  • My own position is simply that (1) the "did it for a living for one day" criteria lead to an imbalance in the number of sports biographies we have compared to all other areas of Wikipedia and (2) there is SIGCOV out there, but the male-dominated editors are looking for male coverage and SIGCOV for women is being ignored. Nigej (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
    • Agree with you on both counts. My metaphor spree was directed at North8000's comment. Cbl62 (talk) 21:28, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
      • NCORP defacto tweaks the source requirements for GNG. Although the "did it for a living for one day" SNG is the primary problem, a recognition that source criteria might need a tweak similar to Ncorp when discussing calibration to GNG would also be helpful. And to continue with the metaphor hyperbole fun, it's dismantling apartheid not implementing it.  :-) Imagine if the "Bypass GNG if they did it for a living for one day" route available to he anointed class were available to the masses. :-) By that criteria, about 4 billion commoners would qualify for a separate Wikipedia article.  :-) North8000 (talk) 01:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Rather than rewriting GNG for sports (which I think is exceedingly unfair as applied to people rather than commercial enterprises), I believe that the better solution is to cut back significantly on the number of leagues that grant a presumption of notability. IMO NBASEBALL could be limited to MLB and jettison the Japanese and Korean baseball leagues and the World Baseball Classic, Baseball World Cup, and Olympics. Even more impactful would be eliminating all of the second-tier soccer and cricket leagues that currently grant a presumption. If push came to shove, I also have doubts under NGRIDIRON as to whether the Canadian Football League should bestow a presumption. I wish the "played one game" bit could be increased as well, but the resistance on that is surprisingly strong. Cbl62 (talk) 03:21, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree it would be invidious to have a different GNG standard for sports than for other things. But even if we were to eliminate or hugely tighten NSPORT, we'd quickly see lots of 'keep, GNG' !votes that get us fairly deep into the weeds of what is or isn't a reliable source for that purpose. So that maybe needs to be looked at in more detail. Maybe it needs to further spell out what does or doesn't pass 'significance'. I've wandered into these discussions via the NGRIDIRON criterion, which frankly does strike me as weirdly lax... And yet, there are articles on players that don't even meet that which I'm certain I'd get my head bitten off if I were to query whether we should have them or not. Look at all these sports websites discussing this player not actually playing. Clearcut significant coverage! But it does seem that's maybe actually one of the better ones. Never mind "played in the second tier", try "was an unused sub in fourth tier" -- good enough for English soccer notability. (I had to just check that the fifth tier doesn't quite make it.) Just in case there's ever an article on that match, to avoid the terrible same of a redlink in the teamsheet? I can't even begin to get my head around the rationale for that. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 05:31, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

For the more niche sports that aren't covered by mainstream, general news sources like The New York Times, The Independent, BBC, etc. what counts as a reliable source? And while I'm sure we have enough experts here for English sources, how many here are really capable of filtering out non-reliable sources from Google search results?—Bagumba (talk) 07:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

North8000 - I spent the first half of this week editing replication crisis, so I have a lot of the themes of that on my mind. Could you elaborate on:

• the randomised method by which you chose the 1000 articles (e.g. went into some wikiproject category and picked every 3rd one), and if possible which articles those were
• how many articles were in each category, and how many were in the recent/non-recent groupings of those categories
• how did you decide what should be in a sports category
• were any articles in more that one category

Obviously understandable if you didn't save that information, but it would be useful. --Xurizuri (talk) 12:11, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xurizuri: I have all of that info which I'd need to dig out. But I'll answer right now what I know from memory. I used the "random article button" on the main Wiki page. I went until I got to 1,000, excluding / not counting disambig pages. The only categories that I divided by recent / non recent were biographies. For recent/non recent I divided those by whether or not they we active at their "main thing" within the last 15 years. For classifying it as sports, I just went by competitive activities and physical activities....something that would normally be called a sport. In the 1,000 articles I didn't run into tough edge cases on that (e.g. chess players, gamers). No article was in more than one category. There were few tough decisions in the area of sports and bios. I also tallied "places" where I went with "broadly construed" on edge cases. I think I'll put the full data and criteria on my user page and ping you when I have that done. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xurizuri: I now have the methodology and all of the raw data up at User:North8000/Display I still going to add summaries etc. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:42, 17 February 2022 (UTC) Do we realise that there are for instance more than 40.000 men's and less than 5.000 women's football clubs in England? And that there are more than one and a half million registred men footballers and around 125.000 women footballers. In other countries the ratio is even higher. The number of covered leagues simply reflects that. NSPORTS does NOT increase the disparity. Even more, I am pretty sure that without this SNG the disparity would be even bigger, as average editors mostly have access to sources about male athletes from the English speaking and/or global north countries. I agree however that we should give more focus to the global south and east, which are often underrepresented, but that issue is not limited to sport. 212.85.174.201 (talk) 14:25, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I didn't argue for a different GNG for sports. I in essence argued for two things:

• Tougher standards for sourcing in NSport, similar to NCorp
• Just keep the noted issue in mind when trying to fix NSports.

North8000 (talk) 13:58, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Coach Notability

Hi all, Is there any specific rules while creating articles for cricket coach? Fade258 (talk) 14:32, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I'd say for if they were the first team coach for First Class teams. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:13, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

@Fade258: The criterion for inclusion is WP:GNG, so you should strive for that right from the beginning. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:43, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:NCRIC has no criteria for coaches, so refer to WP:GNG.—Bagumba (talk) 05:16, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Creation or foundation of NSPORTS

I have wondered why this guideline was created, founded, or established in the first place. Lately, I've seen proposal after proposal, drama after drama, etc over this guideline and how to expand or limit library of sports figures. Proposal to demote it into an essay has failed. I've not seen it demoted to a supplementary either. Actually, I've barely followed sports, and I'm acquainted with most famous sports figures like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady.... Rarely have I been familiar with lesser-known figures. Well, I created Tom Babson, a coach, mostly because he was seen in a sitcom Cheers. I still don't know how long the NSPORTS will last. --George Ho (talk) 21:46, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can work out this is the earliest sportsperson notability criteria. Cheers, Number 57 21:55, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Here's the talk page discussion that was mentioned in the edit 57 provided. It interested me. Blue Square Thing (talk) 22:09, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Chess Player notability

Hi all. Is there any guidelines for Chess player? If not then can we make the guidelines. Fade258 (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• I don't see the necessity for such a guideline. All Chess World Champions, and likely all challengers (back from the 19th century to today), already have an (usually quite decent) article, and that's the only criteria which would make sense to me. "All GMs" certainly wouldn't be an appropriate indicator of being notable; and otherwise I very much doubt there's another criteria in between those two which would make sense either (the only thing that comes to mind is "winners of [some] high-level/elite tournaments", but listing all those which qualify would at best be subjective and at worst pure instruction creep; and in any case the vast majority likely already have an article anyway). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:00, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
• Agree with RandomCanadian. In my purely-anecdotal experience as an amateur and fan of the game, chess coverage tends to be event-based rather than rank-based (i.e., people don't suddenly start writing about you when you hit GM), and the biggest events are already covered for. I don't think any guideline that expands on what we have now would truly be an indicator of significant coverage for those under it. Alyo (chat·edits) 15:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

  That is ok but on what basic do we assume that any Chess competition is high level competition? Fade258 (talk) 15:39, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

  "We don't assume any such thing" would be my reply. High-level competitions are likely to get WP:SIGCOV, and their winners (many of whom are amongst the best chess players around and have an article already anyways) maybe as well, but that's about it, and there's no need for a separate criteria. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:45, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• Is chess considered a sport? From what I know, it's been a centuries-old classic strategic board game. Chess doesn't have the physical and mental abilities that would be considered typically a sport. Furthermore, chess was discussed four years ago. BTW, as I just found out, the WP:WikiProject Chess established its own guidelines. George Ho (talk) 21:39, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  Chess certainly does have (and then a bit more) a requirement for significant mental abilities - and long games can be not only psychologically but also physically draining. But that's besides the point. Anyways, Wikiproject guidelines are not much more than essays and WP:LOCALCONSENSUS in the vast majority of cases, and while they might be indicative of something, if they are not listed here, it's for probably good reasons. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:27, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  Oh darn! Either forgot or didn't realize it's categorized a mind sport. BTW, Twister neither has notable players nor is often considered a sport, but it sure requires physical skill. George Ho (talk) 23:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

  @George Ho: And lest we forget, there's also Chess boxing :) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:08, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

  As I said in the previous discussion, whether or not chess guidelines are placed on this page is a social decision, not a categorization one. Wherever is most convenient for interested editors is fine. isaacl (talk) 02:54, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

• What's wrong with just doing what we normally do: see if there is enough substantial, independent coverage? Reyk _YO! 22:34, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
• There've been numerous attempts over the years to shoehorn guidelines for games into NSPORTS, and perhaps those who feel strongly enough over such efforts should attempt to create a WP:NGAMES guideline. This isn't the venue for it. But that being said, there already is a notability guideline covering chess players: the GNG. Those chess players who meet it are considered presumptively notable. Ravenswing 06:11, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
  • WP:NGAMES is currently limited to video games.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
• If you look at the category structure the distinction between games and sports is a bit inconsistent. Category:Game players is a subcat of Category:Sports competitors but if you look at Category:Sports competitors by sport you don't find any games. Also while Game players includes board game players (eg chess) and card players (eg poker/bridge) it also includes darts and esports which seems a little odd to me. As to numbers, Chess has about 4,500 biographies, which is the same as Golf and Figure skating. However the number living is less than 60%, which is at the low end of the scale for sports (Cricket and Baseball are also less than 60%) while many sports have a much higher proportion living (the average for all sports is 75%). Nigej (talk) 14:34, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Kickboxing notability guidelines

Hello,

I've recently suggested changing the notability guidelines for kickboxing and muay thai, as they haven't been updated since 2014. I posted my suggestion on the Task Force talk page, to which all the task force contributors who chose to participate in the discussion agreed. In short, the changes would replace WAKO, WKN and It's Showtime with RISE, ONE and WLF.

The changes I've suggested are as such:

• Prior to March 1, 2022:
  • fought for a world title of a major organization or promotion (K-1, WMC, ISKA, WAKO-Pro, Glory, It's Showtime, WKN, WBC Muaythai, PKA (through 1986), WKA (through 2000)).
  • Have been ranked in the world top 10 by a major, preferably two, independent publication that meets the definition of a reliable source or been a Lumpinee or Rajadamnern champion.

• From March 1, 2022 onward:
  • fought for a world title of a major organization or promotion (ISKA, Glory, K-1/Krush, RISE, ONE or WLF).
  • Have been ranked in the world top 10 by a major, preferably two, independent publication that meets the definition of a reliable source
  • fought for a Lumpinee, Rajadamnern, WMC, WBC Muaythai title, or won the Fighter of the year award.

Organizations which would be considered notable have ten or more kickboxers which are ranked in the top ten by an independent publication, while the muay thai guidelines would remain unchanged for the most part. It is important to note that the champions of organizations which are currently considered "notable" don't even pass the general notability guideline. This would furthermore tighten up the guidelines, as the number of "notable" title would be lowered from 168 to 44.

I thought about going by the WP:BOLD principle, but wanted to hear the opinions of people who aren't associated with the task force. If nobody opposes my suggestion, I will go ahead and update the guidelines on this and the task force's page.

Sincerly, GameRCrom (talk) 14:43, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Notability is not temporary, so removing previous leagues to simply start listing more recent entities should be avoided unless necessary. The two questions I have is: A) how many of individuals which meet these criteria have (or do not have an article)? B) how significant are the various achievements - in other words, outside of niche publications, how widely reported are they? it is far more likely some individual will be reported on in a fashion which could contribute to an encyclopedic article if the award/competition/championship they compete[d] in is more widely covered. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:11, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

And of course C) why the very specific date cutoff? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:12, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: A) 9 out 11 Krush champions currently have an article, 8 out 10 RISE champions currently have an article, 9 out of 9 ONE champions currently have an article and 8 out of 8 WLF champions currently have an article. All but three FOTY award winners have an article. The majority of individuals which meet the proposed criteria already have an article, i.e. they are already notable.

B) They are rather widely reported on, as can be see by going though the list of references on the pages of the current champions. I'm not sure how to provide other proof on their coverage.

C) I went with the precedent established by the MMA Wiki Project. The organizations that I've listed had 10 or more competitors signed which were ranked in the top ten of an independent publication in the six months prior to the month of March.

As for why I'd remove WAKO and WKN, it's simply because many of their current champions don't pass WP:GNG. It's Showtime, on the other hand, has ceased to function, which is why I put them in the "prior to March 1, 2022" category as well. Kindly, GameRCrom (talk) 17:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

• Mm. Especially given the ephemeral nature of many of the promotions, as you touch on above, I'd go full radical. Either abolish the guideline altogether (and rely solely on the GNG), or restrict it to the Fighter of the Year/top ten ranking. Alternately, have such a complex (and, after all, somewhat subjective) listing solely as an essay internal to the project, as guidance for authors interested in new article creation in the sport. That would seem easier to manage, in light of the probability that it will need frequent tweaking.

  That being said, I appreciate that you're one of the very rare editors who've done the work to verify whether or not your proposal reflects notability in advance of making the proposal. Ravenswing 20:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I see, thank you for your input. The loose and changing nature of the sport certainly makes it hard to determine what is notable and what isn't, especially for new users who wish to contribute. Would you be kind enough to expand on what a possible project-internal essay would look like? Would it simply guide new contributors to research which organizations are notable, or would it itself have an ever changing shape depending on which organizations hold the most notable competitors? Or perhaps something else altogether? Thank you kindly, as always, GameRCrom (talk) 20:41, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to clarify Olympic participation as an indicator of notability

For each of the sports below, should participation in the Olympics be removed as an indicator of presumed notability? There is one survey for each sub-guideline that includes this presumption, in order to allow each sport to be treated individually.

This is a follow up to the 2021 RFC that removed the general presumption of notability for Olympic athletes, and will have no impact on Olympic athletes who medalled, as they are presumed notable under NOLYMPIC. 22:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Association football (soccer)

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

It's plain that consensus is overwhelming to remove participation in the Olympics from NFOOTY. Consensus to remove women's play is less strong, but still solid. With no new votes or comments in weeks, it's time to close. Ravenswing 05:22, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in association football (soccer) at the Olympics here

• Support. Participation in team sports at the Olympics does not reliably predict sufficient coverage to write an article, due to the number of individuals involved and the grouped results. BilledMammal (talk) 11:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Won't do much because NFOOTY is absurdly generous, but still better than nothing. MER-C 20:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for the men's tournament Agree with MER-C, but on top of that, at least in modern times, the Olympic football tournament is far from being the pinnacle of the sport... Oppose for the women's tournament (the first women's Olympic football was in 1996, so there shouldn't be a need for a temporal cutoff here) per what Jkudlick writes, which I totally forgot about RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:00, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Suport applying the same standard across the board to the Olympics. It should be applied with particular force to team sports. Cbl62 (talk) 22:47, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support removing the men's tournament on the grounds FIFA considers it to be a youth tournament. Oppose removing the women's tournament on the grounds FIFA considers it to be a senior tournament. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 23:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. The RfC should also clarify NOLY presumes GNG coverage can be found, not "notability" itself. Editors may !vote very differently if they believe meeting NOLY allows a subject to bypass GNG. JoelleJay (talk) 00:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for men but I really want to emphasize/second Jkudlick's comments regarding the Olympic women's tournament. It's completely different from the men's tournament in importance (Olympic soccer is a big deal in the women’s game, ranking second in prestige and importance to the World Cup. In men’s circles, not so much.) and when the accolades of teams/players are listed, the two tournaments are always discussed together. 1, 2, 3, 4. Alyo (chat·edits) 03:22, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Football is harder than other sports to be qualified, but the U-23 limits (maybe) do not represent notability. I would support for women, also. Football is not important in the Olympics. Thingofme (talk) 13:40, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for men The men's tournament is primarily U23. The women's tournament is a senior-level event. --Enos733 (talk) 16:58, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for men the women's tournament are FIFA-recognised international matches, whereas the men's matches are under-23 fixtures. Therefore, no bias in having different rules for these tournaments. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:22, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Changing to support for the years that men's tournament is under-23 competition only. After clarification from GS in discussion that the men's tournament used to be a proper tournament. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:42, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
    • FWIW, since I also had to follow up with what GS said, I don't know if "proper tournament" is fully accurate. In 1900 and 1904 it was a joke, from 1908-1928 it was the biggest international tournament around, from 1936-1980 it was an amateur tournament that maybe wasn't very well policed for the Soviets, and in '84 and '88 professionals were allowed if they hadn't appeared much for their national team. It's hard to say that the whole pre-1992 period would create a presumption of notability or significant coverage. Alyo (chat·edits) 23:32, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for men since it's basically a youth tournament and isn't considered to be amongst the most high-profile in the sport. For women the Olympics are contested between proper senior international teams so it wouldn't make sense to remove them unless other international matches are removed as well. Hut 8.5 20:13, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose at least until 1928. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 11:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Actually pre-1928 is when we should support this removal the most. The further back you go the less clear it is that the Olympics made more than just a few of the top medal getters, pre-1928 I doubt it is even all medalists, and for 1904 it is clearly not even all gold medalists, notable. However I think Olympics notability of just letting medalists be notable is enough, and other articles need to have other ways of demonstrating notability, ultimately in all cases through passing GNG.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

  Did you make a research or how can you claim that? Again, I can speak Croatia, for instance 1928, Ljubo Benčić, Mirko Bonačić, Slavin Cindrić, Franjo Giler, Emil Perška, Danijel Premerl, Nikola Babić, all well known footballers with enough existing sources (but again, many offline). They are all notable and competing at those Olympics seems as a proper indicator. Are other countries really so much worse sourced? Maybe Egypt? Ludost Mlačani (talk) 23:04, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• If they are well known footballers with significant coverage than the articles will be kept regardless. The point is we can find lots of people who were involved in soccer in the Olympics for whom we cannot find significant coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:49, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support; participation in almost all Olympic sports is not an indicator of notability; even less so in team sports, and football is not an exception to that. Unconvinced that the women's competition is a special case since arguments for keeping amount to claiming inherited notability rather than being based on the availability of significant coverage of the players. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:48, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. It's a team sport. Individuals are not necessarily notable or covered in the press. Nosferattus (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support for men as it is a U-23 competition, oppose for woman as it is considered an international match so they would pass NFOOTY anyway and it seems odd to let any international match except the Olympics satisfy that criteria. If we want to take out the explicit reference to the Olympics, I really don't care as NFOOTY would apply anyway, as long as we don't explicitly exclude it for women as some are suggesting. Smartyllama (talk) 13:37, 17 February 2022 (UTC) (Note: I accidentally left this in the wrong section earlier and am copy/pasting)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

• Comment. This could prove problematic in that this could appear to introduce WP:SYSTEMICBIAS. I say that because although FIFA considers the Olympic Games to be a men's youth tournament – each team may have no more than three players over the age of 23 – they also consider them a women's senior tournament as there is no such age restriction. This actually makes the Olympic Games a more difficult women's tournament to reach than the FIFA Women's World Cup because, including the host(s), there are only 12 nations in the Olympics as opposed to 32 in the WWC. I concur that the Olympic Games are a far less prestigious men's tournament than the World Cup (especially given FIFA is seriously considering making the World Cup a biennial tournament as opposed to quadrennial), but in the women's game they are considered to be almost on par with each other.

Assuming this subproposal is accepted, if we disqualify both the men's and women's tournaments, that would invite the question "Why is this senior women's tournament not covered under NSPORTS if all others are?" If this is written to remove the men's tournament due to it being a youth tournament, yet still include the women's tournament due to it being a senior tournament, I can support the idea. Until then, I will abstain. — Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 21:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Everybody here is aware that the men's tournament has not always been an under-23 tournament, right? GiantSnowman 20:15, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Ooooh, I wasn't--I just really didn't want the womens' tournament to get swept up in this. I would support this going back to 1992 at minimum, as that's when the age limit was instituted. That said it appears the tournament has had a pretty varied history w/r/t amateurism, especially pre-World Cup, and I wonder if this needs to be split off into a separate bullet in NFOOTY. I don't know if we'll be able to get the appropriate balance in just having the Olympics be a straight up yes or no given the changes over the years. Alyo (chat·edits) 20:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Worth considering that there was less coverage in general in previous years; if we don't presume notability after 1992, we shouldn't presume notability at all. BilledMammal (talk) 20:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
      • I'm reading through the relevant chapter of my copy of The Ball is Round right now and I think you're right. The mens' Olympic tournament has its peak (as far as prestige/professionalism) from 1908-1928 and it's not reasonable to presume sigcov that long ago just because someone played at the Olympics. (More likely to be sigcov from club games or the South American tours of Europe honestly.) Goldblatt doesn't write about the '84/'88 Olympics, which may have included some professionals, but on balance I find the Olympics to still be lacking as an indicator of coverage/notability. Alyo (chat·edits) 21:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• Comment If they have GNG coverage OK, but we should not expand default notability beyond medalists. I even question assuming that all members of a team that wins a medal are notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:28, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment Are full-age Olympic matches not regarded as Tier 1 matches by FIFA? If they are, then we could remove all mention of football from the Olympics, as relevant matches would be covered by NFOOTY anyway. Number 57 17:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No I think the better plan is the put better limits on football notability guildelines. When 40% of articles on living people are on footballers it is 100% clear our football notability guidelines are far too inclusive.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Small brain - we have too many footballer articles. Big brain - we don't have enough bios on other professions. We're an encyclopaedia, we're meant to have more info, not less. GiantSnowman 18:57, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
    • (e/c) I don't think that's the case at all. I would say the reason for the high percentage is that football is the most popular sport in the world and there are far more people out there willing to write biographies of footballers than there are willing to write about other people, such as politicians. All these repeated attempts to downgrade sportspeople notability is going to achieve is to drive away potential editors. It's incredibly sad how much time some editors spend on these efforts, when they could actually be making a positive contribution to Wikipedia's coverage of other topics; I would much rather these editors leave the project that the ones creating content. Number 57 19:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
      • Exactly, if many articles get deleted then also many people, me included, will lose initiative to edit as not everyone is interested only in Messi and Ronaldo. That is actually already happening if we look closely to the current seasons articles. It is not our fault that people do not write articles about people from other professions and this is definetly not a solution. Wikipedia is not about ratios. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 09:52, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
      • Galaxy brain: realize that it's an entirely spurious argument that we must continue the pretence that people barely and briefly making a living from pro sports are 'inherently notable', lest we deter editors... that are highly emotionally invested in creating wholly unencyclopedic articles. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 12:01, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Athletics/track & field and long-distance running

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Survey

Please place !votes here

• Comment - I would like to see this tested. The sport is one of the Olympic “glamour sports” to the point where I could conceivably see all competitors who make the Olympics being notable, but I’d like to see the data. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support changing my !vote, at the end of the day not that big a deal if non-medalists need to demonstrate GNG Rikster2 (talk) 17:16, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support for Olympics prior to 1992. From 1992, I find that almost all Olympic Athletes from English speaking countries receive significant coverage and this is a reasonable predictor of notability - I assume this will also be true for non-English speaking countries. I note that some events, such as the 100m, have this become a reliable predictor much earlier, but I believe splitting NATH into different Olympic events will overcomplicated matters. BilledMammal (talk) 21:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Support in general; while there is more coverage after 1992, I have been convinced that there is no reason to increase the complexity of the guidelines by adding exceptions. BilledMammal (talk) 03:38, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
• Suport applying the same standard across the board to the Olympics. While there are "glamor" events, like the 100m, the long jump, etc., there are also events under the "athletics" umbrella that don't get the same level of attention. For example, we've seen AfDs recently, if memory serves, where no SIGCOV was found for pentathletes. Cbl62 (talk) 22:50, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

  I assume you mean the former Olympic event athletics pentathlon/women's pentathlon, as the modern pentathlon's not an "athletics" event, but it's own one-event-per-gender sport. If the former is especially light on coverage, it's possible there's an argument to cut it some CSB-type slack by way of extending indulgence to a fairly niche-participation woman's sport at a time that'd have been ramping up from a very low level to a much higher one by the time it'd morphed into the heptathlon. In terms of "glamour", it does share with all other athletics in being a "main stadium" event, so there's some halo effect there, even if it's far from the Blue Riband. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 15:36, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support. JoelleJay (talk) 00:29, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. without any exceptions. Nigej (talk) 19:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose if the Olympics are singled out from the current list of competed "in the Olympics, the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics, the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, or the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships (former IAAF World Road Running Championships)." The Olympics are an equivalent competition to the others championship events. Conditional support if there is agreement to changing all to placement in the final/top 8. --Enos733 (talk) 18:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• If simple participation in those events is equally unreliable as an indicator of presumed notability, they should also be removed (and replaced with achievement-based criteria, e.g. finalists). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:19, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Also think this should come with data/testing. If there is one sport where taking part in the Olympics is enough to presume notability it's athletics, since it's the most high profile. Hut 8.5 20:14, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support we decided that only Olympic medialists are default notable. We need to actually enforce this ruling.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose in silo, as Olympics are more notable than most other championships listed in that notability thread. Needs a wider discussion around which athletics competitors are notable. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; simple participation at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Track & field is one of the few sports where mere participation in the Olympics does generally lead to notability. I'm not sure what the point of mentioning pentathlete AfDs is as that is a completely different sport. Smartyllama (talk) 13:38, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

  The "other" type of pentathlon indeed was an Olympics athletics event, but I'm not sure if that was what being referred to. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 19:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

• I am not convinced in the pre-WWI Olymlics that even medaling is a clear sign of notability. There are porbably many recent non-medalists who get plenty of sigcov, and we will keep these. However having read through virtually every article in Wikipedia on people born from 1911-1929, I know that the vast majority of Olympian articles from that era have no sigcov sources at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:34, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• This is really needed. We see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manuel Álvarez (sprinter) where we have people voting to keep even though they admit a total failure to find significatn coverage.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Baseball

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in baseball at the Olympics here

• Support. Participation in team sports at the Olympics does not reliably predict sufficient coverage to write an article, due to the number of individuals involved and the grouped results. BilledMammal (talk) 11:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support The normal guidelines should be enough. Players who participate in the Olympics are more likely to be notable through other means, anyways (by, you know, playing baseball at a level where they get enough attention to get selected into national teams, such is the Japanese baseball league or in MLB), so this is a bit of a redundant criterion. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:03, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Suport applying the same standard across the board to the Olympics. It should be applied with particular force to team sports. Cbl62 (talk) 22:47, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support, per above. JoelleJay (talk) 00:30, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support per above. MER-C 11:38, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support I would not even grant default notability to medalists, but that may need a tweak of Olympian notability guidelines for team medals. Clearly not eveyone who played.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:35, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; it is evident that participation in team sports at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:01, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support playing baseball in the Olympics is not like playing in the MLB, where most people would be notable for it. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Team sport. Individuals are not necessarily notable or covered in the press. Nosferattus (talk) 03:32, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• 'Support Unlike most team sports, baseball does not feature the best players at the Olympics as it occurs during the Major League Baseball season. Smartyllama (talk) 13:35, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Cycling

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in cycling at the Olympics here

• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support 1) For modern day competitors, this guideline is likely redundant with the general cycling suggested cutoffs 2) it's difficult to extend this guideline too far in the past because cycling as an elite level sport wasn't quite what it is today for most of the 20th century... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Competing at the olympics is a great achievement and for most athletes there are enough sources. For the older athletes those are offline and harder to find, so this proposal is biased against recentism. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 11:42, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  The additional fact which you curiously do not mention is that for older athletes, coverage is nowhere near as prevalent as today (one could say that at the very least, this is simply because publishing something in a print newspaper way back then took more time, effort, and money [hence limited space] than in the current internet era; although that is likely only part of the solution...) RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:38, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  I did not mention it, because it is not true. I can speak for Croatia, for the athletes such as August Prosenik, Đuro Dukanović, Antun Banek, Stjepan Ljubić etc. there is enough inforamtion in old sports books and newspapers I have read. They were huge stars back then and Croatian sports journalism was relatively well develepod at the time. But if someone was to put them on Afd, they would probably be deleted, because in 7 days noone would bother to go to Croatia to a library to present that. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 18:26, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  "noone would bother to go to Croatia to a library to present that" you mean "the creator of the article did not bother doing the most basic thing, which is looking for sources BEFORE writing it"? And expecting people (unpaid volunteers) to do international travel (on short term notice, one week) to substantiate the possible notability of some random athlete from half a century ago is well and above the usual requirements - frankly, it's comical. And even if it might be the case for Croatia or a few other countries were "sports journalism was relatively well developped", that would still mean that most of these athletes from other countries are unlikely to meet GNG - hence, their shouldn't be an unwarranted presumption; and athletes which do meet the GNG will be kept no matter what, so there's no problem here. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:54, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  "And expecting people (unpaid volunteers) to do international travel (on short term notice, one week) to substantiate the possible notability of some random athlete from half a century ago is well and above the usual requirements - frankly, it's comical." My point exactly and still people have no problem of by the way apathetically voting about such proposal. And have you looked at the articles Cycling at the olympics at all? e.g. Cycling at the 1932 Summer Olympics, look at participating countries, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and United States. Are you saying those countries had much less developed sports journalism than Croatia? Yes, there is an odd athlete here and there, but removing this policy and deleting all the articles just because of that would be highly counterprodutive. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  No one is saying that we should delete all the articles. What we're saying is that assumption that you're automatically notable because you competed in the Olympic games should be removed. That's all. Nigej (talk) 20:13, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Yes and all I am saying is that the assuption is proper for Croatia and probably for most of the other countries and that despite that there will be a real possibility for all of the articles to be deleted, because (as the user above nicely said) noone is expecting people (unpaid volunteers) to do such international travel (on short term notice, one week). Ludost Mlačani (talk) 20:32, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  And, similarly, nothing will prevent those articles from being rewritten/recreated by people who access to actual sources. It's not like much valuable content would be lost. Having red links instead of blue links can be an encouragement to look for sufficient material from which to write an informative article for our readers. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:41, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Well, here we disagree. Firstly, I think a lot will be lost and secondly, there is a much bigger possibility that an article will get expanded than written anew, esppecially with a very discouraging notice that it has been deleted in the past. Wikipedia is not finished. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  Oh, and how bloody suprising, each and every single one of these articles was created by the usual suspect. I'd almost be tempted to create a speedy deletion criteria "Articles created by Lugnuts which are only based on databases"... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:56, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support per RandomCanadian. BilledMammal (talk) 12:13, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Poor predictor of notability. Nigej (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose if singled out for removal. Competition in the Olympics may be equivalent to competition in the UCI World Tour, Grand Tour or Monument, UCI World Championships, or UCI World Cup (for men) and UCI Women's team, UCI World Championships, or UCI World Cup (for women). Similar events should be treated similarly. --Enos733 (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Completely agree. It is often easier to compete on an Grand Tour or a Monument (especially as a part of invited UCI ProTeams) than to qualify for Olympics (128 cyclists competed at the last road race, while Tour alone had 184 competitors, let alone Giro, Vuelta, Monuments etc. Therefore the proposal is totally biased also in that way. Ludost Mlačani (talk) 10:33, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• If simple participation in those events is equally unreliable as an indicator of presumed notability, they should also be removed (and replaced with achievement-based criteria, e.g. top x finishers). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support we need to stop treating merely being in a competition as a sign of notability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnpacklambert (talk • contribs) 13:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; simple participation at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support: It's well proven by now that mere participation does not reliably indicate that a subject can meet the GNG. Being a "great achievement" is not only entirely in the eyes of the beholder, but is nowhere found in any notability criterion on Wikipedia. Ravenswing 04:58, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

• Comment People are porbably right that this is not much easier than being in a grand tour. Which is why we need to stop treating entry in the Tour de France as a default sign of notablity. I have seen too many articles on tour de France comepetitors that were one sentance, telling us only birth year, death year, and that they were in the tour, and sourced only to some sports database, to believe in any way that merely being in that race is a default sign of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:37, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Equestrian sport

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in equestrian sport at the Olympics here

• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Cbl62 (talk) 16:14, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose (if singled out). The guidelines also say participation in the Pan American Games or the FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG) meets the criteria. The Olympics may be similar to the other events and should be treated similarly. --Enos733 (talk) 18:29, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• If simple participation in those events is equally unreliable as an indicator of presumed notability, they should also be removed (and replaced with achievement-based criteria). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support - the listing of other events doesn't mean that participation in the Olympics is good indicator of notability, and per the former general discussion, it is not. BilledMammal (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support being an Olympian per se is not a sign of notability. I am unconvinced even all medalists are, but a fairly high percentage is. I think we do need to consider scrapping some other participation type notability as well. However we should not keep a really bad criteria just because there are other bad criteria.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; the notability of medallists in early Olympic equestrian events is questionable (indeed early Olympic equestrians are almost never notable for their equestrianism) making simple participation a completely unreliable indicator of presumed notability. If the criteria of simple participation in other events is similarly unreliable, they should be removed as well. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:08, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Nosferattus (talk) 03:33, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support It's important to remember what the question is here rather than just restating the result of the previous RfC, which explicitly declined to address these sport-specific SNGs. The question is whether participating in the Olympics, in this particular sport, and not in general, is a good guide to notability. In this case I do not believe it is as equestrian does not receive the wide coverage that some other sports do. Smartyllama (talk) 13:41, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support LibStar (talk) 00:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Figure skating

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in figure skating at the Olympics here

• Comment - I would like to see this tested. The sport is one of the Olympic “glamour sports” to the point where I could conceivably see all competitors who make the Olympics being notable, but I’d like to see the data. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support changing my !vote, at the end of the day not that big a deal if non-medalists need to demonstrate GNG Rikster2 (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support for Olympics prior to 1992; from 1992 onwards participation in figure skating is an excellent predictor of notability, but prior to then we start to see a significant percentage of figure skaters receiving only passing mentions instead of significant coverage. BilledMammal (talk) 00:40, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• What is the magic about 1992? What is significant about that year vs. 1988 or 1972 or any other date? Seems very arbitrary. Rikster2 (talk) 02:21, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• I haven't read fully into this - although what I have suggests that the concept of "changing media coverage of sport" is sufficiently notable to warrant an article - but it appears to relate to a changing media environment in the late 1980's and early 1990's. In particular, the commercialization of media, the concentration of media, and the connection between media and sports are all noted as having increased around that time, with a consequence of that being increased coverage of sports. BilledMammal (talk) 03:46, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Well, unless you have some data that points to a certain cutoff, perhaps you should refrain from putting a year out there as a formal suggestion. My point is that for a select few sports, the Olympics are pretty clearly the pinnacle. I believe gymnastics and figure skating (for example) have been pretty heavily consumed worldwide for quite some time. But that’s why I ask for data. Rikster2 (talk) 03:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• (ce) The dates came from a review of figure skaters who competed in the various years, and athletes who competed in the various years. The explanation came because you asked why they were the same, and I was curious enough to look into it. BilledMammal (talk) 04:03, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• Do you have a link to this? I ask because as someone who researches articles for historical sports figures frequently there has been heavy coverage of sport for much longer than that - it’s just less of it is on-line. But if you have a study or article that puts some numbers or data of the issue I’d be open to a change of mind. But until then, 1992 just feels like a year pulled out of the air. Rikster2 (talk) 16:55, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• • Support in general; while there is more coverage after 1992, I have been convinced that there is no reason to increase the complexity of the guidelines by adding exceptions. BilledMammal (talk) 03:39, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support without any exceptions. Nigej (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose if singled out. The guideline also says that participation in at an ISU senior World Figure Skating Championships, or in the free skate of the World Junior Figure Skating Championships, European Figure Skating Championships, or Four Continents Figure Skating Championships is sufficient. The Olympics is similar to these other championship events and should be treated similarly. --Enos733 (talk) 18:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• If simple participation in those events is equally unreliable as an indicator of presumed notability, they should also be removed (and replaced with achievement-based criteria). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:17, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support we clearly agreed that only medalists at the Olympics are notable. We should probably scrap the other participation crieria as well, but we cannot avoid fixing one problem just because we are not fixing all problems at once. Other stuff exists is a horrible arguments. Especially when it is not paired with any showing that this is an actual sign of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:40, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; simple participation at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose Figure skating is one of the few sports where participating at the Olympics is a good bar for notability. Maybe do like for the World Championships and require them to reach the free skate, but don't eliminate it entirely. Smartyllama (talk) 13:39, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

• • Figure skating is a sport where children are being subject to abuse and forced use of puberty blocking drugs to allow them to compete in the Olympics. We should not add to the exploitation of minors by creating more articles on these people, and adding to the reward incentives accruing to the unethical coaches who are carrying on these activities.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:51, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
    • None of this has anything to do with whether the athletes are notable or not. I think it is rather offensive to suggest people creating articles are adding "to the exploitation of minors". NemesisAT (talk) 14:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
      • No, what is offensive is how people look the other way at the abuse of minors. There is no evidence there is significant coverage for every competitor in figure skating. Actua;ly all the more so because the last few cycles really only competitors from one nation have even been considered possible medalists.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:50, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
        • Nonsense; what is offensive are people implying that others are implicit in child abuse because we don't agree with the tactics of their unsupported crusades. Wikipedia is still not here to right great wrongs. There are countless thousands of articles on reprehensible people, reprehensible concepts and reprehensible deeds. But if you truly want an encyclopedia that bases its content on (alleged) moral grounds, you're in luck: there is one. It doesn't actually have a figure skating article, though, unless you count its leading hit for the search term "figure skating" -- [1] Ravenswing 05:13, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per Smartyllama NemesisAT (talk) 14:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Gymnastics

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in gymnastics at the Olympics here

• Comment - I would like to see this tested. The sport is one of the Olympic “glamour sports” to the point where I could conceivably see all competitors who make the Olympics being notable, but I’d like to see the data. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support changing my !vote, at the end of the day not that big a deal if non-medalists need to demonstrate GNG Rikster2 (talk) 17:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support The reality is that there's lots of competitors making up the numbers, with no prospect of success. Nigej (talk) 20:03, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• What does that mean though? Success in the Olympics doesn’t have any bearing on WP:GNG. Rikster2 (talk) 01:59, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• Success leads to significant coverage; in general, simple participation does not. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose If singled out. The guideline also mentions participation in the World Championships. Like events should be treated alike. --Enos733 (talk) 18:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

• If simple participation at the worlds is equally unreliable, it should also be removed (and replaced with achievement based criteria, e.g. finalists). _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Support - the listing of other events doesn't mean that participation in the Olympics is good indicator of notability, and per the former general discussion, it is not. BilledMammal (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support We need to follow the Olympics notability guideline. We need to remove other places where we treat mere participation as a sign of notability, but that is a seperate issue to deal with seperately.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:41, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; simple participation at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:15, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Rugby union

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in rugby union at the Olympics here

• Support. Participation in team sports at the Olympics does not reliably predict sufficient coverage to write an article, due to the number of individuals involved and the grouped results. BilledMammal (talk) 11:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Suport applying the same standard across the board to the Olympics. It should be applied with particular force to team sports. Cbl62 (talk) 22:47, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support per above. MER-C 12:45, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support This is a clear need, especailly since it is a team sport. Also, for Olympics that had less than 5 Rugby teams, we should only consider those on the gold winning team to come under the medalists rule.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:42, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; participation in team sports at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Team sport per above. Nosferattus (talk) 03:34, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Triathlon

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Survey

Please place !votes regarding participation in triathlon at the Olympics here

• Support. The general Olympic guideline is appropriate. Rikster2 (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Cbl62 (talk) 16:12, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support. --Enos733 (talk) 18:36, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support - Per the previous general discussion, participation in the Olympics is not a good indicator of notability, especially for sports that receive less coverage such as triathlon. BilledMammal (talk) 18:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Participation in the Olympics is not a good indicator of notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:43, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support; simple participation at the Olympics is not a reliable indicator of presumed notability. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Support Nosferattus (talk) 03:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

Please place general comments here

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Combined survey

Please place !votes here if you are in favour of the same result, whether "support" or "oppose", for every one of the preceding sports. Added per comments by @Rikster2 and Cbl62: in the general discussion.

General discussion

As proposals as still being made, and there have been questions about why subproposal three doesn't cover Olympic participation, I believe it is appropriate to open this discussion. The format should also resolve the WP:TRAINWRECK concerns from the last time it was opened. BilledMammal (talk) 11:46, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

• Suggestion - just pull out any references to the Olympics on all SNGs since this is expressly covered elsewhere. Rikster2 (talk) 12:33, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I tried that. It is now listed as the example of a non-deletion WP:TRAINWRECK. BilledMammal (talk) 12:49, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Sorry. This discussion has gotten so long and unwieldy I can’t follow it very easily anymore. I would disagree that Olympic participants are dissimilar - if there is Olympic SSG guidance it should be followed consistently Rikster2 (talk) 13:08, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• I'd suggest mentioning these exceptions in NOLYMPIC until they are formally repealed. I tried to mention them but was reverted. It's a clarity issue. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Restored. On reflection, that edit makes sense. BilledMammal (talk) 12:54, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
  • I support getting rid of Olympic participation across the board as to all sports. I also think this subproposal is overly complex and could be rephrased so as to allow a single vote on all forms of Olympic participation. Cbl62 (talk) 15:48, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• This is really just picking at the details of the guideline, and isn't really relevant to the issue of how NSPORTS fits in with other guidelines. --Michig (talk) 16:12, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment We should not remove the "participation at the Olympics" from the guidance if "participation at X event" remains. For many, if not most sports, the Olympics is the pinnacle of competition, and if participation at a perceived "lesser" competition remains, I think we are doing a disservice to the project. --Enos733 (talk) 18:41, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Overall this is true, however we have to start fixing things somewhere. This is a clear case where we can justify the cahnge. Also at least in the 1911-1929 time frame, the source of sub-stub articles based only on a source databse is 1-Olympians, 2-Cricket articles 3-Rugby articles 4-Association football articles 5-baseball articles, 6-clcling article 7-a few American football articles and 8-maybe even a smaller number of Baseball articles. So for that time period only the cycling ones come into play where someone has argued there is a problem. However we should not fail to fix a problem just because there are other problems. That is the other stuff exists arguement we try to avoid.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:47, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I am ok with removal of other participation requirements as well (as appropriate and as tested). I just can't support removing Olympic participation when participating in the Olympics is more difficult than participation in other events. --Enos733 (talk) 16:46, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Your supposition simply isn't true outside of the leading nations in any given sport, where athletes in the world's top-20 or even top-10 commonly miss out on the Olympics. For athletes from elsewhere in the world, where competition in that sport is not great, it is far easier to get to the Olympics than other major world events. As a result, the Olympics is awash with completely uncompetitive participants who would not get close to gaining entry for other major events. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 17:12, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• Comment We also need to address participation in the Olympics arts competitions. Which considering how well they were covered, the level of notability of the participants and other things, I am thinking do not show at all that someone is notable. Most of our articles on such people are like this Raphaël Van Dorpe, which has one non-significant mention, and no sustained coverage. Most of them do show up in some massive databases on artists, but at least on my first glance I at a few over the last 2 months I have not been seeing anything that comes close to showing significant coverage. I think I will also post a note on a Wikipedia art related project page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:38, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment I think we can all see that this is not a perfect solution. It reminds me of the old joke: "How to I get to x?" answer: "Well, I wouldn't start from here". We are where we are, and attempts to start from a clean sheet of paper have failed, so this piecemeal approach is the only practical way forward. We may temporarily move to a more illogical position than we had before in certain aspects, but that will trigger further discussions. Nigej (talk) 16:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment Hector Dyer is an article on an Olympic medalist that has 0 sources. Maybe if people had not spent so much time on creating articles on every person in every competition, even those who did not finish, than maybe people would have devoted the resources to find actual sources on a person like Dyer. Or maybe there are not actually sources on Dyer.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:51, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
• Comment Something is clearly wrong when people ignore a total lack of GNG, an administator weighs the actual sourcing and arguments, and then gets attacked for it as is happening here Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2022 February 16.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Nice to see a closer do what they're supposed to do. The main reason that NFOOTY has been an "untouchable" area, is the usual mass turnout from that side, all with the same point to make, and a closer not prepared to weigh the arguments rather than the votes. Nigej (talk) 21:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

• 'Comment It's important to remember what the question is here, rather than just restating the result of the prior RfC, which explicitly declined to answer the question of the sport-specific SNGs. The question is solely whether Olympic participation in a particular sport should be considered a guide to notability for that sport. Views of Olympic participation in general as a guide to notability are irrelevant - I see people mentioning completely different sports in this discussion such as discussing modern pentathlon AFDs under athletics/track & field and that's all irrelevant to the task at hand. Smartyllama (talk) 13:44, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
  • No, the Olympics are awash with sub-standard athletes who are only there because their country wants to be represented. This was even more true before 1990 or so when they started to tighten a little bit the standards for participation, so the notion that any competitor in the Olympics who does not medal, or who medals by default in a competition with less than 4 competitors, or who medals as part of a team, is default notable is just plain false.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
    • This likely varies considerably from sport to sport (as well as period to period, as you imply), but the standards for participation are a pretty significant requirement, in the cases I'm familiar. Having to 'get the Olympic qualifying time' has been the case in athletics track events for a long time, for example. So those are objective achievements in themselves, to a degree. Now granted those in turn have exceptions made for them for sports-developmental reasons, so there's the further issue of how to deal with those. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 9 March 2022 (4)

Per Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Sports notability #5, please add Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources. Meeting this requirement alone does not indicate notability, but it does indicate that there are likely sufficient sources to merit a stand-alone article. as a fourth dot point within "Basic Criteria", as there is a consensus that all sports articles require at least one example of WP:SIGCOV. BilledMammal (talk) 23:23, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose: Discussion is needed as removal of the participation criteria is a contentious part of the close that has been opposed by senior editors including admin. The close should be reviewed before participation criteria is removed which would spike more edit warring, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 23:23, 9 March 2022

Is the close under review? –dlthewave ☎ 23:26, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

The closer has been questioned, that is the first stage Atlantic306 (talk) 23:33, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thete is no discussion on the closers page discussing the aspects of the close, just the mechanics of implementation. As RandomCanadian says, there is a proper channel to dispute an RFC close if you this the closer did it improperly, but be aware that is not a chance to re argue the issues again, only if the closer follow procedure. --Masem (t) 23:40, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

There is discussion of the close in the NSPORTS RFC section on Wugapodes talk page where he advises editors can start a review on the AN page Atlantic306 (talk) 23:45, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

If you personally don't like the close, then you know the procedure on how to challenge it. Until such time, the close stands. If you are not intending on doing so, then your opposition is nothing more than the exact same kind of bureaucratic nonsense and filibustering that has plagued any attempt at changing anything sports-related. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit warring is not a step forward. The page has been protected because there isn't a practical consensus just a forced consensus by a dubious close. Imposing a challenged close is the worst kind of bureaucratic nonsense. Atlantic306 (talk) 23:38, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Disputing a consensus (which has not been formally challenged nor overturned) at a well attended and well advertised discussion is in line with the kind of bureaucratic nonsense that has plagued any previous attempt to improve NSPORTS. Of course, I'm not surprised, but I also find it greatly disingenuous and frankly impolite that editors are simply not willing to drop the stick and stop fighting when the consensus is clearly against them. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:43, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Impolite? disingenuous is impolite. The consensus was forced and there would not be edit-warring if there was a clear consensus Atlantic306 (talk) 23:47, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

"forced"? Who on God green's Earth "forced" a consensus? An uninvolved editor read through the discussion and closed it after a polite request. That is not forced. That is just how things are done on Wikipedia. If you don't like the result of the close, that is another issue, but you shouldn't be disputing it solely because you don't like the outcome... There's WP:DEADHORSE, and this clearly applies here. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:50, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

The amount of opposition you're facing shows that, while you may have achieved a procedural consensus, you don't have a meaningful consensus. Continuing to demand your changes be restored after an admin has locked the page is procedural edit warring. --Nicknack009 (talk) 23:55, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

The opposition is coming from the same persons who firmly opposed the proposal or any variant, so you can read what you want from that... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:32, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

"The amount of opposition" that you describe is in reality WP:STONEWALLING. Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. Consensus found at a well-populated and uncontested RfC supersedes whatever you're trying to argue here. Pilaz (talk) 01:13, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I think it's exactly the opposite way around. A limited group of editors produced a "rough consensus" (in the face of some participants who "firmly opposed" it), and, when they tried to implement it, found that more editors had problems with it. You don't have a meaningful consensus, and insisting you do in the face of contrary evidence isn't doing your cause any favours.

User:BilledMammal and I have made some progress over at the Rugby Union project discussing what guidelines might be suitable for a sport like rugby where the most notable players are ones who have careers in the game rather than ones who win one-off competitions. Any solution there will necessarily involve some participation element, but should stress that this is a guideline only and an indication that that significant coverage is likely to exist rather than a criteria for presumed notability, and we're trying to find a way of tightening it to discourage editors from creating articles about players who are unlikely to be notable - my suggestion is appearances across two or more seasons. This, to my mind, is unavoidable given the nature of the sport, and respects the thought and effort the rugby union project put into creating the existing guidelines. BilledMammal is at least listening to my points. I would respectfully suggest that this is the way to go - recognising that the consensus you thought you had is not as clear as you thought, that policies that suit one sport might not be appropriate for others, and discussing on a case-by-case basis - rather than insisting "I will have my bond!" and trying to impose an unworkable blanket prohibition. --Nicknack009 (talk) 02:18, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not against discussing case by case (what the interim solution should be is another question), although that seems irrelevant for this particular proposal, which is not about any sport-specific criteria, but a broader statement which had actually even clearer consensus in support than the other. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:21, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• Of the many thousands of editors active on Wikipedia, and the many dozens participating in the relevant discussions, that a handful of rejectionists are trying to subvert the result by claiming no "meaningful" consensus (whatever the hell that is) is unfortunate, if unsurprising. As it happens, Wikipedia maintains no distinction between a "procedural" and "meaningful" consensus. Sorry, but one of my catchphrases is that a consensus-based system means that sometimes you're going to be on the losing side of it. No one editor, no handful of editors gets to have a veto over consensus, however little you like it. Ravenswing 05:20, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• This is functionally equivalent to replacing the guideline with the GNG, which was rejected in the close of the headline proposal of the RfC. The headline proposal will have got far more scrutiny than proposal 5 of 8 in a very long discussion. Hut 8.5 08:36, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

  That this has already been refuted at the RfC (it is not functionally equivalent to the GNG, and even if it were, it did gain a rather strong consensus), and the fact that subproposal 5 is the one which got the most comments other than the main proposal, makes your comment nothing more than obstructionism. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:40, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

  Come back when you've read WP:AGF. Hint: people who disagree with you might actually disagree with you and not just want to obstruct things. Hut 8.5 19:54, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:31, 13 March 2022 (UTC)