Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aghabullogue hurlers

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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 Redirect all to Aghabullogue GAA. No merge, as the contents of the identical articles is already in the merge target. Black Kite 22:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Aghabullogue hurlers

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This is a series of 13 unreferenced articles on hurlers in the early days of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They were members of the Aghabullogue GAA club which, having won the county championship, represented Cork GAA in the 1890 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship: the article are identical in every respect apart from the names of the individuals and inconsistency in tagging and categorisation. None of the articles contains any individual information at all about the person concerned ... apart from the claim that in each case the person was "Born in Aghabullogue, County Cork", which seems to be nothing more than supposition.

I recommend deletion rather than merger because there is no referenced material to merge. If someone with appropriate sources want to work on this area, then the players could be listed in an article on Aghabullogue GAA and/or All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship 1890 ... if the references are available to write one. However, this collection of unreferenced clones is the sort of thing that bring Wikipedia into disrepute.

If these articles are deleted, the Template:Cork Hurling Team 1890 will be orphaned and should be deleted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:49, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Keep All Ireland winners and cork's notable ,Winners of ones the top prizes in Irish sport Gnevin (talk) 23:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Merge changing vote as BHG says they are just clones. Merge to All-Ireland Senior Hurling Champions 1890 and redirect articles to their Gnevin (talk) 01:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
This collection of cloned stubs article says nothing about the players which could not be said in a list, and some of what is said is probably inaccurate; the rest belongs in an article on the club, not copied into 13 pseudo-biographies. I have no objection to the articles being recreated if there is referenced info available on them, but there is no point an articles unless there is something verifiable to put in it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Gnevin, your merge proposal doesn't solve the problem that there is no referenced material to merge, and no article to merge to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
I have created at least the beginnings of an article on Aghabullogue GAA, so perhaps they could be merged into this? Tameamseo (talk) 15:05, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, merger to Aghabullogue GAA seems fine, now that the article exists. BTW, congrats on including references; I have been assessing articles for WikiProject Ireland, and I'm sorry to say that the overwhelming majority of the GAA articles I encountered were completely unreferenced, and the majority of the other GAA articles were inadequately referenced. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:21, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to Aghabullogue GAA. Pluswhich (talk) 02:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep for referencing as the tags for references were applied the day before listing. While online references will be sparse for the time period covered by the articles, contemporaneous references are available offline. We have thousands of articles with {{refimprove}} and {{unreferenced}} tags from two and three years ago and should go after them first. I would also hesitate to add to Wikipedia's systemic bias with a too-fast deletion here. B.Wind (talk) 16:30, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
    • Reply. If they are merged, nothing will be lost. Merger is not a one-way trip, and if someone then finds the sources to allow expansion of the coverage of any individual, then the material on that person can be unmerged to a separate article. As to your argument that that there is other unreferenced stuff, I rather despair :( Apart from reminding you of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, where is the systemic bias in dealing with unreferenced material as and when we find it? Every time an editor opens an edit page to crate a new article, they are reminded that unreferenced material may be deleted: do you want to change WP:V so that we can amend that say something like "unless referenced within a year or so"? Most unreferenced material which I encounter I simply tag and leave if there appears to be some likelihood of notability, but it's up to the editor who creates an article to supply references which establish notability, not to others to tidy up a sub-stub ... and in this case there was a series of cloned articles with nothing about the individuals apart from their names. If you want to go and work on the two-year-unreferenced articles and bring them to AFD, that's be great work ... but it's no reason to keep these clones. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
      • You claim no systemic bias when there, in fact, is. These went to AfD one to two days after being flagged for references, unlike most such flagged artticles, which are still flagged one, two, or even three years later. Contemporaneous material supporting the material predate the Internet by at least 90 years, and this is not North American or British but Irish in nature (please see WP:Bias and you'll see why it does fit my claim of systemic bias). While you claim no systemic bias, the quickness of this going to AfD is evidence of such. As far as WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is concerned, you might want to review that essay as to its applicability in this discussion. There is no need for a stampede here. B.Wind (talk) 00:57, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
        • I'm rather bemused to find myself being apparently accused of anti-Irish bias, particularly when it's only a few hours since I was accused of pro-Irish bias, but that's life.
          More seriously, though, there is a limit to how much systemic bias can be corrected, because if we rely on sources, that inevitably creates a bias to eras when much was recorded. We are never to going to have comprehensive coverage of sportspeople in Ancient Egypt, because scarce papyrus was not used to create squillions of copies of match reports. You seem to be presuming that somewhere out there, there must be printed sources on the individuals, but given the deep poverty of that area of Cork at the time, I think that's a very risky presumption.
          However, the systemic bias charge is in fact a distraction from the reason why I nominated these article for deletion rather than others, which is that they are simply clones -- and it defies probability that these hurlers all had identical biographies. I really think that before lazily reaching for the WP:BIAS charge sheet, you could have assumed good faith and/or had the courtesy look at my contribs list: I have tagged as unreferenced many hundreds (possibly thousands) of Irish articles in the last fortnight as part of more than 5000 I have assessed as part of WP:IE's WP1.0 assessment drive, including dozens (probably over about 200) GAA articles, and probably even more of footballers. Look again at the nomination, and you'll see the reason why these particular articles were AFDed, and not all the others.
          And finally, now that we have somewhere to merge to, from where the articles can be unmerged if and when sources are found, what purpose is served by retaining 13 unreferenced cloned articles? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mister Senseless™ (Speak - Contributions) 19:17, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge per Tameamseo. If, in the future, somebody wants to write articles that are actually about the team members individually (such as indicating when they were born, when they died, etc.) rather than identical duplicative articles, we can reconsider those articles if necessary. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge for now, but when sources appear, recreation of articles would be perfectly acceptable to me Hobit (talk) 03:06, 6 April 2008 (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.