Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cricket matches articles

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 of the debate was Uhhhhhhh, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... (17 merge, 13 keep, 9 delete) no consensus. And yes, AllyUnion's bot shall do the oldafdfull and removal of AFD template, it'll take ages for me to do 508 articles! - Mailer Diablo 09:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cricket matches articles (508 articles)

Delete. This is a bit silly. All these articles are merely a short stub paragraph of a cricket match... I don't think the Wikipedia has a record of all baseball matchs played worldwide, so I find these articles rather... not useful. If they are useful at all, they need to be merged into a simplier article. --AllyUnion (talk) 11:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

After reading much of the previous discussions that I did not know existed, (look, the fact I found one out of many means that I'm not alone in the thought that they shouldn't be in the main article space), I believe any of the non-important cricket match articles should be moved to a subpage and out of the main article space. --AllyUnion (talk) 23:25, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Furthermore, it should be noted that some of these matches are hard to verify as you'd need the news source links for these, which I don't see I can easily find. The only link I see is a scorecard for the match, and the article itself is slightly opinionated in how the match played out highlighting what was important in the game. --AllyUnion (talk) 06:05, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard "partial unverifiability" as being a criterion for deletion. It's also new to me that newspaper stories are not reliable sources. Guettarda 06:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

What I mean is that it is hard for me to find the news sources in question, let alone some other source like a book on this material. I didn't say newspaper stories are not reliable sources, I said that some of these articles are hard to verify. Simply put, I can't find the newspaper stories online about these matches. --AllyUnion (talk) 06:42, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not to say these articles are not available in print, which I'm certain they are likely are, it is just that I can't find them in particular. Furthermore, who is to say that the article is written in a NPOV view? Certainly not I, perhaps another cricket fan... --AllyUnion (talk) 22:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

So I was wrong. But it took awhile to find it, and it took a considerable time to make certain that it was what it was. Here's a news link for the first article in the list: [1] Most of my searches turn up scorecards, rather than news reports. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of articles

See /list for the full list of articles under consideration of this AfD. [[Sam Korn]] 17:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links to previous discussions

Previous discussions on the same subject: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Stephen Turner 12:04, 7 November 2005 (UTC).

Tranclusion discussion on cricket articles, June 2005: Wikipedia_talk:Template_namespace#transcluding_prose

Ian ≡ talk 15:18, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Opinions

• Merge into articles for each team, and articles for each competition, as promised in previous AfD discussions linked above. Stephen Turner 12:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC). However, Keep all international men's matches (i.e., England v Australia, England v Bangladesh, Australia v Bangladesh and any others) — these are of significance in their own right not just as part of the season. Stephen Turner 13:00, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Also, if they are to be merged, how do you merge the page history into the main article? Place it in the talk page or what? --AllyUnion (talk) 12:19, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Never merge page histories when doing an article merge. It makes the history utterly useless. The way to do it is to acknowledge in the edit summary where you are merging from, keeping the history behind the redirect. [[Sam Korn]] 13:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Why not? Factual. Useful (assuming you want to look up the matches). And why not all baseball games? Only argument I see against is storage space. --Alicejenny 12:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  They are stub articles that would never expand, and seem highly irregular. --AllyUnion (talk) 12:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Respectfully disagree. I think they are useful small articles in themselves. Seems a shame to remove factual information from WP - but happy to go with the majority.--Alicejenny 12:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Well, what's to stop you from adding every match for every sport played in the world? Want to go add all the soccer matches? Want to go add all baseball games being playing the world? Basketball? Hockey? I'm sorry, but the level of detail on these articles is something we don't need. Just like we don't need to know when every person is picking their nose. --AllyUnion (talk) 12:58, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Well you are entitled to your opinion. Personally I think a resource that had an account of every (professional) match played in every sport in the world would be valuable. --Alicejenny 13:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete all. A cricket match is a one time event, and similar to most other cricket matches. It is OK to have articles on a few of the most notable matches, the same way that I would support retaining an article on the various World Cup finals in football, and I also support that we have a few articles on games of historic significance in Category:Chess games. But trying to be a comprehensive source on each and every major cricket match is not what an encyclopedia should strive for. These games are of hardly any historic significance, if any at all. They get press attention in the sports press alright, but the games are very seldomly truly memorable and are usually forgotten very soon. We don't have articles on individual Premier League football matches, on individual NHL ice hockey matches, on individual NFL American "football" matches, on individual NBA basketball matches, etc., and there is no reason to make an exception for cricket matches. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it is not a sports news service, and not infinite. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep England Games at least. The summer of 2005 will be long remembered in England (and Wales?) for it's amazing series of cricket matches. Of course the Ashes could be in just one article, but to do it justice it would be an extremely long article. I can understand that other games are probably of less value and take up space, but it seems a shame to destroy such a lot of work. Bevo74 12:47, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, in Wales too! [[Sam Korn]] 13:24, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep all. Factual, useful small articles in their own right. Wikipedia is not paper. To be a comprehensive source on each and every major sports event is what an encyclopedia which aims to put the sum of human knowledge in the hand of every human being on the planet should strive for. Kappa 13:03, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Do we need to know about Joe Smuck's son, David Smuck son to a potato farmer, living in La Crosse, Florida hit the homerun win for David's baseball little league team game for the Alachua County playoffs that ended in the score to be 5-4? I think not. --AllyUnion (talk) 13:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  "Information is not knowledge." -- Albert Einstein --AllyUnion (talk) 23:25, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Not the same thing at all. These are articles about the second most popular sport in the world played at professional international level.--Alicejenny 13:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  So your saying that all the professional international level sport games need to be listed, especially all the football (soccer) games? --AllyUnion (talk) 23:25, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Need? No. But why do you want to stop people being able to write about them? You have your interests. They have theirs. You stick to yours, they stick to theirs Why prevent them from writing about their interest? These articles do not harm Wikipedia. [[Sam Korn]] 12:54, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, as before - notable, factual, verifiable. And why re-list things that were just kept a few weeks ago? Guettarda 13:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  They were only kept before with the promise that they would be merged at the end of the season. That's why I voted Keep before but Merge now. Stephen Turner 13:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  I could live with Merge.--Alicejenny 13:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  For AfD purposes, Merge and Keep are the same - merges don't require admin priviledges. I am voting with the assumption that they will be merged as was discussed earlier. AfD is an up or down question - does the content stay in the encyclopaedia or not. I think it belongs. Guettarda 14:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep on the understanding that they be merged soon. I am astonished that AllyUnion saw fit to ignore the "no consensus" summary of five previous AfDs and a centralised discussion. There is absolutely no consensus at all on this issue. If I wasn't heavily personally involved, I would do a speedy keep. Cricket need not become the new GNAA. Please think before nominating: is there a realistic chance of this being deleted? The very conclusive no-consensus before should have shown you that the answer is "no". Please, no more of this. [[Sam Korn]] 13:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Excuse me, do you expect me to find 5 of those previous AfDs on 5 out of what seems to be hundreds of articles that are merely short stubs? --AllyUnion (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  Maybe it wasn't clear that I'd put in the links to previous discussions, not you. Perhaps I should have signed them. Stephen Turner 13:55, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  There's a big box on top of each AfD page these days, with Centralized discussion in it - and in it there's a link called Sports results. You didn't think there might have been a connection there? Sam Vimes 16:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Keep Cricket matches last much longer and have stronger narratives than other sports matches and they are covered in more detail in standard reference works than matches in other sports. CalJW 14:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete not encyclopedic. Not paper, but finite. First cricket, then baseball, then jai-lai. And "stronger narratives"? POV. - brenneman^(t)(c) 14:04, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge there'll end up being too many in the end. It's better if a section is devoted to each specific team on their page with wins and losses during the current season. Do we really need a bunch of stubs about every specific game ever played by every team... and every sport? The information can be kept on the team's page, and only the current season and memorable historic games should be kept. PRueda29|Ptalk29 14:30, 08 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. As a rule, individual matches are not of historical significance. This isn't the Cricket Almanac. Pilatus 14:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

• Speedy keep, I thought we had a rule that you couldn't try to AFD something more than 4 or 5 times... Alphax ^τεχ 14:57, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge (per previous vote on this issue). There seems to be two quite separate issues being discussed here. Firstly, is it appropriate to record details of verifiable and notable matches in Wikipedia? I say that if someone wants to write a good NPOV article on these, let them as it expands the usefulness of the encyclopædia. If a fan of another sport wishes to do the same then go for it, for the same reason. Secondly, how should those articles be organised: As individual articles or larger season, comptetition or club articles? I say probably the latter, although I'm not all that fussed. -- Ian ≡ talk 15:14, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• From reading point of view, my preference is merge Tintin 15:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• I don't feel particularly strongly about this. There are lots of cricket archives on the Net, but these many entries seem to complement them OK and only duplicate a bit. I would leave it to the Wiki experts. My (marginal) vote would be to retain; but I wouldn't fight on the barricades! PaddyBriggs 15:56, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• From the author of most of these articles: Merge all - even the men's internationals, since context is better preserved on pages like The Ashes in 2005. I'll spend the rest of the day finishing off the clean-up process on this (some spelling things), and then they can be easily merged by replacing the transclusion code on pages like 2005 English cricket season (1-13 September), and all changed into redirects so the history is preserved, the way Sam Korn suggested (or deleted - I don't really mind either way, if a bunch of redirects are viewed harmful I won't stop anyone). Oh, and whoever nominated - why don't you just make a link to Category:2005 English cricket season matches instead of wasting time putting the tags on everything? Sam Vimes 16:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or merge. These are very tenuously borderline notable at the most, and every one of these stubs is a) short, b) badly written, and c) in severe need of a NPOV check. Ambi 16:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge as per all previous discussions on this issue, and a further view that if there is a need for these articles to exist temporarily in preparation for larger articles, they be kept on user or Wikiproject subpages, both of which are allowed by WP:SP. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 17:18, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or merge. This is nothing that you wouldn't find in Wisden, so it's all verifiable and encyclopedic. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 17:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• During earlier discussion on this topic, we were told that these were "temporary" articles that would be merged. Many of us thought that such projects were best done offline until they could be written in a presentable form. The fact that most of these are pretty poorly written articles that you'd expect your local sports news guy to blabber out instead of find in an encyclopedia doesn't help either. There have been god knows how many professional sorts games played in the world ever. Millions maybe. This project has shown that Wikipedia can't even do individual articles for a single season of a single sport well. Trying to do them all would be a disaster, so it shouldn't be attempted. I think it's about time people made good on their promise to merge these articles. so smerge the hell out of them or delete them. I don't much care which. -R. fiend 18:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete All. Individual matches are generally non-notable, and don't need to be mentioned. There are about 5,000 professional sporting events in the US alone which are at least as notable as most of these cricket games. Having articles on important games is fine (World Series in Baseball, perhaps international cricket, etc), and having season summaries is fine, but mentioning every single game in a "summary" is like having a phone book in an article about a city. Most of the articles are also quite poorly written and would be more appropriate for wikinews or a separate cricket wiki. Sortan 18:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Could anyone help me out here? Ambi made a quite constructive comment (which I managed to shout the hell out at her for - sorry) about NPOV in these articles a month or so ago. As it looks like these articles are going to be merged, how would the people who are saying they are "poorly written" want them to be, instead of just saying that they are? Sam Vimes 19:25, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, just taking the first article from the list, Somerset_v_Northamptonshire_2_July_2005, I see words such as "control" and "smacked" which are nice vivid words for a sports report, but unsuitable for an encyclopedia. The season summaries which use these reports don't flow together as a result of these results being transcluded, and rather than being a cohesive article, instead serve as shallow containers. Sortan 20:23, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. All the reasons above for keeping it plus why not have them? Its not like they are stealing the article name from more encyclopaedic articles. If you don't like them then you won't even know they are there. Borb 19:02, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
  • That's not strictly true. Disk space is cheap, but not free. Sever time does scale with number of pages in database. Human interaction required to maintain and patrol not expanding at same rate as numbe of articles. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Not to mention the extra work required to weed stuff out from a print version of Wikipedia or a DVD version. I carry around a 1GB SD card with the April dump of Wikipedia and it barely fits (with most of the pictures removed or compressed). Sortan 00:47, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Total size of the articles in question: Roughly 1.5 MiBs, of a total of 508 articles. --AllyUnion (talk) 08:59, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Strong merge. Three or four national-level professional sports games are played every day. Keeping these as standalone would be a terrible precedent; cricket isn't particularly more (or less) notable than, say, soccer or rugby or baseball or any number of other sports, and if this precedent were extended to cover all sportscruft, you'd have hundreds of unexpandable stubs with few users interested in going through and maintaining them. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 21:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge individual matches somehow into articles on individual teams. I'm editing lots into cricket at the moment, and I feel, despite my avid inclusionism, that this is going to be a heck of a lot of focus on having thousands and thousands of cricket-related articles. Somehow let's make tables to represent individual matches, and their results, without having to show their whole scorecards. Better still, do what has been done with soccer teams, such as Bolton Wanderers into matches by individual team, and test matches between nation. Articles such as Australian cricket team by season, or LCCC by season. Sure, the pages will be large, but all the information can stay. Bobo192 22:01, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
• Bot-assisted keep (which doesn't preclude a merge). --SPUI (talk) 22:46, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  What does that mean ? Tintin 22:57, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

  He means that all the nominations are invalid because I programmed something to nominate all these articles for deletion. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

  Actually it means that when this is done you should remove the vfd templates with the same bot you used to add them. --SPUI (talk) 22:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

  Why don't I just bot-assist merge all the crap into the articles it's transincluded to, and redirect all the crap to appropriate articles? Yes, why don't I do that? Well, I could, and I will, but little did I know these fricking articles were transincluded from the article namespace. --AllyUnion (talk) 10:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

  Maybe you should have learnt more about them before nominating them then. As for the bot, I strongly recommend that you let someone who knows about cricket do the merge, if merge is the final conclusion. PS It's not necessary to get insulting when you start losing the argument. Stephen Turner 10:27, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

  I haven't called anyone names. PS It's not necessary to rub it into people's faces. --AllyUnion (talk) 20:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, this is information for a sports book, not an encyclopedia. A single, regular cricket game is not notable enough for an inclusion. -- Kjkolb 06:03, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge as promised in previous AFDs on this topic. It's about time this happened now, the English season is well over. --Ngb ^?!? 09:25, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep/merge. Let those who are creating and making use of these pages decided how best the information should be formatted. - SimonP 19:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, or, if that fails to gain consensus, merge. Neutrality^talk 23:43, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge as per previous AFDs, as Ngb says above. Loganberry (Talk) 00:01, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge, theres nothing wrong with them, we are talking about the sum of all knowledge which will live on way after we've all gone, such details add to this. It is safe to assume the scores are correct as there is a book which has all these score in them Wisden. Merge them as Man in Black has a very good point.bjrobinson
• Keep. No basis for deletion; this nomination was unfortunate. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Again. I see no harm here. Steve block talk 13:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. No harm, no foul. (preceding unsigned comment by 130.89.18.176 (talk • contribs) )
• Strong merge as already suggested, though I would also support a decision to transwiki all of them to Wikinews or Wikibooks if we must have articles on individual matches. At Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Sports results, Sam Korn and several other editors promised that the cricket stubs would be merged. He said this two months ago. It's time that people keep each other honest about this. Individual sports matches are not notable, but season reviews certainly are. We have 2005 in baseball, for example However, it certainly does not cover every professional baseball game that was played this year, only those with particularly unique events occurring in them. As Stephen Turner pointed out at the discussion page that I just mentioned, "The people writing the cricket articles claim to be doing something different, however — the articles are supposed to be temporary, as a convenient way of writing season reviews for each team and each competition without duplicating the reports of the same match in several different places. I think these reviews of the whole season are sufficiently notable to be articles, and the sub-articles should therefore be allowed to stay until the end of the season (which is very soon now)." We are not some worldwide equivalent of ESPN or a newspaper's sports section. Subjects like individual matches are why Wikinews is there - to get current events while they're current and preserve them as a news archive. --Idont Havaname 05:34, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
• Merge stubs on individual matches, as was agreed would happen before, but if that is not done reasonably soon, delete. Jonathunder 18:02, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
• Delete this is what categories are for -- ( drini's _vandalproof page ☎ ) 07:09, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

This series was originally written as a set of subpages attached to a main article page. Popular consensus was that working like that was not acceptable, so as per the majority opinion, they were elevated to full articles, with the understanding that they would be merged into single articles. And then the individual articles were targetted one by one. Guettarda 14:12, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Have you got a reference to that previous discussion, Guettarda? I've never understood why subpages weren't the right answer. Stephen Turner 14:24, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I see Ian has provided a link above. And I've just read Wikipedia:Subpages which answers my other question. Stephen Turner 16:10, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Odd... I think "Drafts of major article revisions" would be allowed reason enough to keep the material. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I've just discovered that the Ashes 2005 page is also facing deletion, this is akin to deleting this year's Superbowl. Is Cricket going to be reduced to nothing other than a page of rules? Bevo74 14:33, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it is. I think it's just picking up the AfD templates from the individual matches. Stephen Turner 14:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Which is another reason why transcluding those pages is a bad idea -- Ian ≡ talk 15:59, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

One part that I think people forgot on that discussion was that the transinclusion doesn't save a page edit history... it branches it. --AllyUnion (talk) 00:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of novel arguments are being made here for deletion, like that fact that they only link to score cards, or that server space limitations are grounds for deletion. If we are going to use lack of citations or server space are reasons for deletion (a) this is a major policy issue which cannot be addressed in a single AfD, and (b) most of the encyclopaedia would have to be deleted. I just looked at 53 random articles; 3 were disambiguation pages. Of the 50 non-dab pages, only three had references and only one was adequately referenced. If we apply the standard that AU quoted at the top, about a lack of a readily available source for all the information, we probably have to delete 98% of our content. Guettarda 06:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

These articles were written in a bottom up approach when most of our articles should be written at a top down approach. The point that I was making is what is to stop someone from inserting a fictitious entry on a Cricket match to a supposed score card? How are we to verify that? Furthermore, it makes more sense to have a comprehensive encyclopedic article on the entire English season rather than describing each match. This concept is applied for different subjects such as minor characters in fiction works. We don't have an entry on every minor character in fiction works, becuase that's just absurd. Why should cricket matches and sport entries be any different? --AllyUnion (talk) 12:34, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• The point that I was making is what is to stop someone from inserting a fictitious entry on a Cricket match to a supposed score card? - I don't understand what you mean, "supposed score card"? There's enough information on a score card to tell what happened. As for details not on the score card - there will be newspaper reports, etc. Would it be better if there were links to newspaper stories or other reports - sure. But their absence is not grounds for deletion. I don't understand your statement How are we to verify that? I could verify a lot of these matches in the Trinidadian press (from here in Oklahoma), much less the English press.

  How are we to tell if a scorecard site is reliable? And I never claimed their absence is grounds for deletion, don't put words in my mouth. I said I can't find anything on them, meaning it's harder for me to verify the information, but it is not to say that I can try harder. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Cricket matches are not fictional. You're talking about first class matches in the No.2 sport in the world.

  I was citing a hypothetical situation if someone inserted a fictitious cricket match out of the 508 articles we have. How long such an article go unnoticed? --AllyUnion (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• These articles were written in a bottom up approach when most of our articles should be written at a top down approach - but this is an AfD - your assertion is that this material is not appropriate for Wikipedia. You didn't post a merge request, you didn't go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket and say, "hey guys, these articles are a mess, why don't you clean them up into a single article or two". So it's disingenuous to suggest that it's a formatting or construction issue - you know that if these were to be merged they would have to me maintained as per the GFDL.

  Read again. I said, if it is useful at all, they should be merged. --AllyUnion (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• And, yes, we do have articles on almost every minor character in fiction - see Tom Riddle. We also have articles on individual Star Trek DS9 episodes. Guettarda 19:51, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Um, no, we don't have articles on most minor characters from fiction. Gee, we have an article on Tom Riddle. How does that prove your point? We don't have an freakin' article on Captain Ahab! And AllyUnion has a point. When we have half a million articles on cricket matches, who is going to have a half million article watchlist to make sure they aren't vandalized? Wikipedia can't monitor it's current articles as is. I've seen pretty severe vandalism and high traffic pages that has sat there for weeks unnoticed. There are thousands of non-articles sitting in wikipedia right now that have slipped through the cracks. -R. fiend 20:38, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• We have articles hundreds (probably thousands) of minor characters in fiction. And many thousands of missing articles which we should have. As for vandalism - are you advocating we delete articles which remain vandalised for more than a certain amount of time? And can you point to any of these which have been vandalised? I fail to see the relevance, again. I think I need to make a list of 'new deletion criteria which have been proposed in this article. The list keeps getting longer and stranger. Guettarda 21:00, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

• Hundreds or thousands is a very far cry from "most". And many of those could be merged, which seems to be what many people are talking about here. The simple fact is Wikipedia is never going to have a good article on every cricket match ever played. It's basically impossible. So why are people trying? This quantity over quality mentality that has been pervading wikipedia is proving to be pretty harmful, as only about 2/3 of the nearly 800,000 "articles" wikipedia claims to have are actual articles in any real sense of the word. Instead of writing a few thousand poor articles on individual cricket matches, why not write a few dozen good ones summarizing the season, or whatever? We could avoid debates like this, and the project would be vastly better off. -R. fiend 21:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
• The point I'm attempting to make is that there is a dam, and water is about to overflow. You let the dam break, you'll have a mess. You let the water come out slowly, you'll have no problem. The issue I have is that, if you allow the content on here to stay the way it is, what is it to stop from another person saying: "Oh, look, they have individual cricket match articles. Hey, my favorite hobby are stamps. Why don't I start making an entry for every stamp I have in my collection?" --AllyUnion (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's actually suggesting keeping them as they are: our intention from very early on was to merge the match articles at the end of the season by substing them into the articles in which they're currently transcluded. This merging does need to happen soon, though. --Ngb ^?!? 23:26, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

No one's voting to keep them as they are? What do these keep votes mean then? Yes, merge them (well, smerge them, really) I think that would appease the vast majority here. -R. fiend 04:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

What do all the keep votes mean? There are really only two valid options on AfD - delete or keep. Merging does not require an AfD. Guettarda 14:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

True, to an extent, but the votes still have different meanings. I think if everyone wanted to merge, they would be phrasing these "keep" votes as "merge", as many others seem to be doing. and although an AfD is not required for merging an article, this is not an article. On a project this size it helps greatly to have some sort of consensus to back up (or, in a way, "force" such a merge) particluarly when it had been promised long ago. See AllyUnion's comments below as well, though I'm not entirely sure deletions of redirects are necessary. -R. fiend 15:11, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Deletions of double redirects which no one - guaranteed no one - will type in, I see no problems with. (i.e. the 2005 English cricket season/MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005, not MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005, which actually has the page history). As for "forcing" a merge - if it was that crucial, someone should have asked and it would have been done within a day. The reason why it was delayed was that I wanted to look through and check the articles for typos and things before they were substed (since it's much easier to correct typos in one place than in four) Sam Vimes 15:15, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand... why does it have to be the same writing in all four places? And why four places? Is it necessary for the organization of these articles to be this diverse? --AllyUnion (talk) 20:44, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't the former subpage redirects be deleted after the pages are merged and redirected? --AllyUnion (talk) 11:03, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Yep, see no reason why not. Good thinking. Sam Vimes 11:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Majority will

As far as I can see, this subject has already been through Vfd at least five times and come out as a "keep". I can't see any reason why that would change in the near future. How many times must the same cycle be repeated? --Alicejenny 13:20, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think the consensus has generally been "merge" as distinct from "keep". That (merging) hasn't yet happened. -- Ian ≡ talk 15:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bot code to fix articles

The following code here is to fix the articles accordingly.

The code does the following:

1. Takes all the linked pages from Template:2005 English cricket season chronology excluding 2005 English cricket season
2. Gets the text for one of the linked pages (for all purposes, I'll refer this as a main article)

   Example: 2005 English cricket season (8-30 April)

3. Searches for all text in the format of {{:2005 English cricket season/*}} (where the asterisk indicates a wildcard)

   Example: {{:2005 English cricket season/MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005}}

4. Substitutes all the appropriate transincludes from the text from the appropriate former subpage moved article (minus the AFD notice and category links)

   {{:2005 English cricket season/MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005}} is replaced with the text from MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005 (minus AFD notice and category links)

5. Takes the former subpage moved article and redirects to the main article

   Example: Redirects MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005 to 2005 English cricket season (8-30 April)

6. Fixes a double redirect error:

   Example: 2005 English cricket season/MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005 is changed to redirect to 2005 English cricket season (8-30 April) instead of MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005

   Technically, 2005 English cricket season/MCC v Warwickshire 8-11 April 2005 should be a redirect deleted as it is no longer necessary.

7. Posts the new corrected merge page

See: User:AllyUnion/cricket code --AllyUnion (talk) 11:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• No, no, no! You've completely wrecked all the tournament pages by not doing the substitutions there. For example, Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy in 2005 contains hundreds of matches which weren't in that competition.

I specifically asked you above not to do the merge yourself, but to let someone who understood the articles do it. Please revert all your changes, or mend the broken pages. Thank you.

Stephen Turner 14:58, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• And each team page too, although Sam Vimes seems to have mended those already. Stephen Turner 15:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• I think these merges have to be done by hand, because let's face it, they need some rewriting and fixing, and there's no way for a bot to do an elegant merge. Cut and paste merges suck. Almost without exception. Some pruning is necessary as well. -R. fiend 15:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• Although cut and paste merges suck, the fact of the matter is that the information is transcluded anyway, meaning the content is left alone as is. --AllyUnion (talk) 21:58, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's fixed now... Did I miss anything? --AllyUnion (talk) 00:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Apart from turning the old subarticles into redirects, no. If that can be done by bot, that is. And on another note, this has been open a week with a strong consensus merge, so can it be closed now? Sam Vimes 07:27, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

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.