Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-02-27/Deletion report

Deletion report

The 10 most SHOCKING deletion discussions of February

Last month, you got a very serious and well-written deletion report. This month, well — I've been busy with some stuff, so you're getting a deletion report.

NSPORTS RfC continues sailing past outfield and into bleachers

Remember that massive village pump discussion about the sports notability guidelines, which was covered in length in last month's deletion report? Well, it's still going. It was 400,000 bytes then, and it's 800,000 now, so who knows what we'll be looking at by March. Maybe it'll have increased again to 1,200,000, doubled again to 1,600,000, or ed again to 3,200,000. Or maybe it's a factorial, and the entire world's industrial output will become subordinated to manufacturing storage media to host discussion of the sports notability guidelines. It's anyone's game right now. Bottom of the ninth. Triple overtime. Thirteenth subproposal. Let's go for the gold!

Longest AfDs, by size

All of that pent-up frustration over the sports notability guidelines had to come out somewhere. Was this football player notable? Nobody could tell. More importantly, was the discussion "bush-league song and dance" or "nonsense wikilawyering"? No consensus could be found on that, either. Or on whether the article should be kept.
Is he a prophetic geopolitical analyst or a non-notable literally-who? The no-consensus close, by Sandstein, said that nobody could tell because the AfD had been "bludgeoned to death by walls of text by the nominator, who has since been blocked for this kind of conduct". They advised a renomination, without their participation, could result in a clearer consensus. Said second nomination is already rolling – we'll have to see what shakes out.
Keep !voters say that deletion is not cleanup. Delete !voters say that the list criteria are impossibly broad. Some point to the category system as a remotely maintainable alternative to this article. Some point to the bathwater, and advise against babies being thrown out with it. Whose arguments are more persuasive? Well, we don't know. It hasn't been closed yet.
Geostubs really bring out the sword in the Wikipedian's soul, don't they? A long time was spent delving into census records, newspaper clippings, and that old favorite, the conduct of other AfD participants. In the end, it was kept.
While it would be possible to write a succinct description of what went on in this protracted no-consensus nomination, perhaps the best way to summarize this AfD is by a verbatim transcription of Vanamonde's close note:
What a mess. Those arguing to keep this article have spent far too long badgering the opposition, and far too little providing reliable sources and explaining what makes them so. Conversely, the few sources that have been provided (albeit late in the discussion) haven't been commented on by most !voters. The walls of text are long enough to scare most fresh eyes away; so I'm closing this as no consensus, explicitly with no prejudice against speedy renomination. I would like to remind the "keep" !voters in particular to confine their attentions to evidence for notability, substantiated by sources, in any future AfD, and to lay off of personal commentary.

Largest AfDs, by participation

There's a war going on, which is a serious and dismal event in which many people have died and many more have suffered greatly. This is not a subject of humor; it is a human tragedy. However, this article – what's even going on here? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it even a real person, or simply a meme run amok? Is it notable when a meme runs amok? The non-admin close, by Styyx, was a SNOW keep "before it turns into a clusterfuck of a thing". Indeed!
No, get out of here, I already wrote about you. You can't be in both lists.
This is one of those weird batch nominations you see sometimes. Initially, it was a batch of five Nielsens: Poul, Leo, Kaj, Jørgen and John. All five, according to nominator RandomCanadian, were created in a "rapid spree based on database entries only". This was a perfectly respectable batch, but after a few comments had been made, a much larger list was contributed by another participant. It turned out that those five Nielsens had been part of a family of speedily created articles – Wilhelm, Poul, Leo, Kaj, Kai, Jørgen, John, Hugo, Henry, Frank, Flemming, Erik, Erik, Benny, Arthur, Arno, Allan, Aksel, and Ernst. Once noticed, this new, nineteen-strong nation of Nielsens was notched (none too neatly) into the nomination, making it nearly nonsensical and nudging it towards being a non-starter. The current imbroglio over NSPORTS was cited in the note from Star Mississippi, who closed it as "no consensus/trainwreck" and said "I would suggest rather than 19 separate AfDs, which no one wants, that the creator, nominator and interested parties see if draftification might be an amenable solution until such point as suitable sourcing can be identified".
CFORK created to split out content from a bloated main article, or POVFORK to avenge the deletion of a category? It's hard to say. The article was nominated fairly shortly after creation, but consisted of a few short paragraphs (mostly duplicated from other articles). Some SYNTH concerns were raised. Mostly, what I learned from this is that there's an ice cream shop named after Hitler. And a pool parlor named after Hitler. What's next, "I Kissed A Hitler And I Liked It"? Maybe if that hit the charts in Mumbai, this article would still be standing. But it isn't – the discussion was closed as "delete".
This one is still ongoing. Arguments in favor of deletion are primarily based on WP:NOTNEWS, and allege undue detail in the article. Arguments in favor of keeping it revolve around the information being properly attributed to reliable sources; a tale as old as time. The nomination is batched with similar timeline article for 2021 and 2022.