The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. WP:NFOOTY establishes a presumption of notability that can be rebutted by showing that there is not in fact sufficient coverage to meet WP:GNG. The arguments of the "delete" side that this is the case here remain unaddressed by the "keep" side, who do not cite any relevant sources, and whose opinions I must accordingly discount. Sandstein 10:31, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lambert Golightly[edit]

Lambert Golightly (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Fails WP:NFOOTY due to being an amateur footballer playing in an era before the English Football League was "fully professional". More importantly fails WP:GNG due to complete lack of WP:SIGCOV. Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 20:08, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Football-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:19, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete (despite reservations about the speedy mass nomination of other similar articles) 1919 is a long time ago; but the one obvious thing here is that if one had to go dig through census records and the England and Wales death registratin index, obviously, this is WP:OR, which likely isn't published anywhere else... The actual article looks like routine coverage of a non-remarkable sportsman; the only sources only trivially mention him, the only one that appears to support anything that isn't routine match coverage (i.e. "X played in Y"; often sourced to places like this); is a newspaper from 1921, which apparently only provides the short snippet that "he was "unknown in London [but] has shown consistently good form for Darlington""... This looks like a textbook example of WP:OR (based on digging through primary sources, ...), and disregarding entirely whether the English league was or not fully professional, it is entirely routine to disregard marginal NSPORTS passes (only 10 games at the senior level?) if there is a thorough fail of GNG, like here. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:32, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - playing in the Football League confers notability per WP:NFOOTBALL. Article needs improving, not deleting. GiantSnowman 16:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per GS. The man played in seven FL matches and was an amateur international. Anyone who knows anything about football before WP:RECENTISM times will tell you that playing for the England amateur team was a distinction. We can safely assume that pre-internet offline sources provided coverage. No Great Shaker (talk) 20:12, 25 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  To the above two, I reply: notability requires verifiable evidence. If you cannot find acceptable sources to write an article, then you are furthering WP:BIAS, and you are also, counter-intuitively, promoting RECENTISM by projecting modern expectations (which likely do not hold true) backwards in time. And whether he meets NFOOTBALL or NWHATEVER, all of these are clear that meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included. The purpose of requiring actual non-trivial sources is to write an article which complies with WP:V and WP:NOR. Given that the keep voters have so far failed to do so and instead have merely taken the opportunity to vaguely point in the direction of the relevant SNG, one should feel free to disregard them. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  And as one would expect, the first of the above keeps appears to have been copy-pasted between multiple AfDs simply because the subject supposedly meets NFOOTBALL, without addressing any of the nomination arguments. I count 21 AfD comments in less than 10 minutes... (including what looks like 8 exact copies of the mentioned comment). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 05:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)In a case like this, it is necessary to use WP:COMMONSENSE and remember per WP:IAR that we are here to improve the encyclopaedia. Someone with Golightly's record easily meets NFOOTY and the article improves our football coverage. In due course – see WP:DEADLINE – the article will be improved by the addition of offline sources as WP:FOOTY is highly active in improving its historical subjects. As for what one should do, one should disregard anything said by someone who is known for using WP:BIAS when relisting discussion topics. No Great Shaker (talk) 05:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, one should ping GiantSnowman if one is inclined to have a go at him. No Great Shaker (talk) 05:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can't invoke IAR willy-nilly for every subject that fails GNG. A mundane sportsman, who played maybe a few games, where that is essentially all we can say about them (plus some bare minimum [birth and death dates] biographical information from primary sources), doesn't seem to justify ignoring the rules here. It doesn't improve an encyclopedia to have dozens of unremarkable articles about unremarkable sportsmen from a century ago; and I don't see what is so exceptional about this one as to justify keeping it while deleting all sorts of other articles routinely for having exactly the same problems as this one, whether they pass NFOOTBALL or any other N(not-magic-password-but-used-as-such-anyway-acronym). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 12:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I also think there are WP:BLPPRIMARY concerns with this article. Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 13:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How does the BLP policy apply to someone who died more than 30 years ago......? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:PRIMARY in this context is an issue, with or without the BLP part. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep passes NFOOTY. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ortizesp (talk • contribs)

  I could make a point about WP:VAGUEWAVE, or I could just prove it much faster by parodying the above: "Delete, fails GNG"... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Doesn't seem to be any real concern regarding WP:NFOOTY, but a lack of overall concensus around GNG. Nothing has been presented to indicate anything approaching significant coverage. Feel that this is a delete given the current input and complete lack of sources, but the NFOOTY / GNG discussion needs more time to be discussed to allow the presentation of sources that satisfy the claim to GNG which NFOOTY presumes.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Fenix down (talk) 22:40, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's quite an interesting disconnect between claims that WP:NFOOTBALL "confers" notability, and competing claims that it merely "presumes" notability. Just so we're clear, which one is true? Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 21:29, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bring back Daz Sampson - it depends on the context. If we're talking about a pre-internet player, where internet searches will have limited value, we can say that it confers notability. If we're talking about someone who made a handful of FPL appearances in 2011 then disappeared, we could call it a weak presumption of notability. This is because internet searches should give us a better idea of notability in the latter example and, if nothing turns up for them, we could say that the presumption of notability is invalid. That's my interpretation of the current consensus anyway. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:39, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can you point me to any evidence of this emergent consensus? Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 13:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Spiderone and Bring back Daz Sampson: AFAIK, absolutely nothing on God's green earth "confers" notability (look at the big bolded and linked answer a few posts earlier). From even a quick glance at NSPORTS, it should be obvious that it is only a presumption (as one can notice from the ever repeated and bolded "An [x-sport person] is/are presumed notable if [...]"), and presumptions can be rebutted. Now, to be pragmatic, there tends to be more leeway for subjects which are marginal NSPORT-whatever passes if they are from a while ago, but this isn't a free pass to keep such articles when a look through period sources (i.e. the newspapers already cited) reveals only trivial coverage, Even less so when a fair bit of the rest is based on primary sources (census records). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and the presumption of notability from NFOOTBALL is predicated on professionalism, but this guy was an amateur footballer. I suppose next year we'll be able to see from the census what he did for his day-job. That's pretty standard since the supposedly 'fully-professional' English Football League was replete with coal miners, steel workers, school teachers etc. until quite recently in historical terms. Here the only reference which isn't a routine stats listing or an original analysis of a primary source is a single line in a local newspaper, which explicitly describes him as being "unknown" outside his own locality. Hardly the stuff of WP:GNG! Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 20:28, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - passes WP:NFOOTY and squeezes past WP:GNG. Paul Vaurie (talk) 03:43, 7 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: So far there is obviously a majority in favour of keeping, but I can't bring myself to call it a consensus, since it entirely ignores RandomCanadian's policy-based argument. Can we have one more try at discussing this without the WP:ITSNOTABLE !votes? See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles Orford.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, – Joe (talk) 19:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Agree fully with RandomCanadian: what evidence do we have that players of his era and location reliably meet GNG, whether through offline or internet sources? Considering how obsessive local football clubs are in documenting their history down to the minute of every game, wouldn't we expect them to have uncovered all SIGCOV available by this point and at least referenced it on their websites? Restated: if the people most intimately familiar with players in his league, who not only live in the area and have access to historical documents curated by their club but also are incentivized to promote coverage of such players, haven't discovered enough to write a biography of this dude, then who are we to assert some future editor who happens to be in the area will be any more successful? JoelleJay (talk) 01:31, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Notability not established with the coverage being a combination of primary sources, routine life/career details and passing mentions. Avilich (talk) 18:16, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.