Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Josh Bunce

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 keep. RFerreira (talk) 18:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Josh Bunce

Josh Bunce (discussion|history|protect|delete|undelete|logs|links) – (View log)

This user played in the major leagues, but that seems to be all he did. Looking in google, all I find about him is stats. If he was notable, he would have at least some more info about him. Soxred93 | talk count bot 02:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• Weak Keep I think by virtue of playing in the major leagues, passes athlete notability, however also keep in mind he played more than 100 years ago and what newspapers covered at the time may have differed greatly from the 'player took a step, that's News!' that exists today. Travellingcari (talk) 03:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - Baseball Reference verifies he played in the major leagues, so he meets notability. Case closed. matt91486 (talk) 05:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete, one game in 1877 is not enough on which to base an article. Punkmorten (talk) 06:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm afraid notability standards say that one game is. matt91486 (talk) 16:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Played Major League Baseball. Thus is definitely notable. Article needs work though. Spanneraol (talk) 15:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Baseball-related deletion discussions. -- the wub "?!" 15:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: Played in the majors. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep: Meets Wikipedia:BIO#Athletes which says "Competitors and coaches who have competed in a fully professional league".--Fabrictramp (talk) 17:37, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Played in majors. Snowman (talk) 20:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep Playing in the Major Leagues is considered notable. --Borgarde^talk 22:52, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete the issue with players back in that era is that there isn't significant information that he played in that one game. Stats from that era is almost impossible to vertify, as there are very little sources to prove it. For all we know, he might have been a replacement player for a day, and went back to his normal job of who knows what. Even meeting WP:BIO, this player must meet the sourcing criteria of our notabilty guidelines first, as sourcing trumps guidelines period. Secret (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Note I support creating an article on all the one gamers who has the same sourcing concerns as this article, with something simliar to List of one-gamers in the National Hockey League. Again the sourcing concerns are a serious concern, and should be met in this AFD. Secret (talk) 23:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Interesting concern, there has to be somewhere that the ~30 sites (total drops at page 2) got theit information because it isn't a direct copy paste. A good source would probably be MLB archives to confirm that he did indeed play -- but that would be a primary source and not independent. I think if a page were created we'd have to do the same for the '2 seconds of fame' footballers as well. Travellingcari (talk) 00:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Well I just found a link verifying he played in one game. [1]. --Borgarde^talk 00:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh I don't think that's Secretalt's concern, but rather whether that's true and/or whether he was more than a flash in the pan. I said keep because he squeaks by as having plated in MLB. Travellingcari (talk) 01:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• • Note all those 30 sites, give the same one lined stats info, and all copied from the same source, yes he played that one game over 125 years ago, but any other sources that gives more then that basic information needed for WP:N. Secretalt (talk) 01:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
    • We have a date of birth and death, we know he played in the major leagues and how he performed in that. He meets the widely accepted standard for athletic notability. I don't see how there's a problem. You can't penalize him because he played before the internet age and we don't have easy access to 5000 transaction reports like we would if he played last season for the same amount of time. Presumably, some offline sources will exist, but there's not much sports news reporting from the 1800s online. matt91486 (talk) 02:54, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - On the notability page, "This page in a nutshell: A person is presumed to be notable enough for a standalone article if he or she has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. Notability criteria also must be met for a person to be included in a list or general article; in this case, however, the criteria are less stringent." This person has received very little coverage. Soxred93 | talk count bot 01:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

On the internet, anyway. There's not a lot of news coverage from 1877 around online. Offline research could perhaps find greater sourcing. Either way, there are plenty of baseball statistic sites which will verify him. I already provided a link to one of them, Baseball Reference. matt91486 (talk) 02:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Realistically speaking, no one's going to come forward with any newspaper articles about this guy. I've looked where I could (Access Newspaper Archive), and I've only found one relevant mention: a 1951 Long Beach Press-Telegram review of a baseball encyclopedia. And all it says is this:

"Opening this 620-page volume at random -- say, to Page 38 - you'll come across the name of one Joshua Bunce who distinguished himself by batting a rousing .000 as an outfielder in one game with the Hartford, Conn. club of the National League in 1877. That's the only major league appearance the gentleman ever made, but by golly there's his name in the same size type as that of Tyrus Raymond Cobb on Page 56." (Fred Delano. "Majors have known nearly 9000 players". Long Beach Press-Telegram. April 27, 1951. page 13.)

The database I'm using goes back to the 1700s for some newspapers, but I couldn't even find any 1877 articles about this guy's team. Now, there are plenty of old newspapers that aren't electronically archived, so it's possible there's more information about Josh Bunce in a library somewhere. But it would take some superheroic sluething to find anything like that before the end of this discussion, and, frankly, I've never seen anyone at AFD exert that kind of effort.

That said, I'd hate to get rid of this completely, because I think it's cool to have comprehensive coverage of every major league baseball player. I'll vote for the creation of a List of one-gamers in Major League Baseball, just so that this information can find a home. Maybe one day someone will be able to expand this article, but I doubt it. Zagalejo^^^ 03:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Well if anyone lives near Hartford and can find a library with some old newspapers on microfilm.. maybe we can get more info. Still, the guy is notable as having played in a major league game. The page is only a stub right now so perhaps a relative of his with newspaper clippings might someday expand the page. Spanneraol (talk) 03:25, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. Personally, I wouldn't mind leaving the article as a stub, but the days of "inherent notability" seem to be in the past. An article on an Olympian was just turned into a redirect due to lack of sources, and I wouldn't be surprised if baseball articles started to receive similar treatment. Zagalejo^^^ 03:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

If I remember correctly with the Olympian article, there wasn't evidence that he had competed or withdrawn, and that was the rationale. We have conclusive proof that Bunce competed, so that shouldn't work as precedence. I was definitely against the Olympian one as well, though. matt91486 (talk) 04:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• • For the Olympian there was evidence that he withdrew from the contest, I think a merge of these one/two gamers to one of these list of all-time players for a team is the best fit, instead of the one gamers one, yea i agree that they should be mentioned, but there isn't enough information to write a useful stub on the subject. But we need a notabilty discussion in general, as there are many for multiple sports. Maybe a discussion in WP:SPORTS would do (note that was rejected, but we can always restart it), and I recommend this AFD be closed until the discussion is over. Secretalt (talk) 15:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Playing for the major leagues is sufficiently notable in my book (and our guidelines for notability, too). (jarbarf) (talk) 08:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - satisfies notability criteria in WP:BIO#Athletes. The arguments for deletion essentially say that these notability criteria should be tightened--however, that debate really should take place on Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) rather than with an AfD nomination. A few thoughts on one-game players: (a) You can't tell, just by looking at the statistics, which biographies will be easy to expand and which ones won't. For example, I've recently found quite a bit of information on a baseball player who played one major league game in 1913 and will soon be expanding his article. (b) If a person with experience in historical or genealogical research made a sufficient effort, most of these stub articles could be expanded to full articles. The research, however, would involve trips to research libraries and hours spent looking at microfilm. (c) Realistically, most articles of this type are doomed to remain stubs, not because there isn't verifiable source material available, but because Wikipedia doesn't have the editors who are willing to do the work. So, I think a discussion of changing the notability criteria could be an interesting one, but under the current notability criteria this article clearly needs to be kept. BRMo (talk) 00:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

• Scratch most of what I said before. I've actually found a New York Times obituary for this guy, from May 2, 1912. It's available from ProQuest. I had to do some tricks to find it; searching for "Josh Bunce" or "Joshua Bunce" didn't get me any results, but Bunce+1912+baseball did, for some reason. It's not a full-length article, but it provides some non-statistical information on this guy, and can push the article beyond a sub-stub. Zagalejo^^^ 01:22, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

• Decent save, I still want full discussion for all these baseball players, i checked the source myself from proquest, was a oneliner, still want this closed and make the communitty discuss. [[User:Secret|Secret]] (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

• In all honesty, what are the chances in getting WP:SPORT settled? I don't see why this can't be closed as keep since it meets the current standards. I don't think it's fair to judge it on a change to the guidelines that could happen at some unknown point in time. If a change is made to lump all the 15 seconds of fame athletes in their respective sports, this can always be redirected at that time. Travellingcari (talk) 04:41, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
• There may be even more information on this guy. I have no idea how the search functions work at Access Newspaper Archive and ProQuest, but the results tend to be somewhat unpredictable, especially when searching through the older papers. Many relevant articles are not listed. I've since found lots of information on this guy's team (more commonly known as the Brooklyn Hartfords during the 1877 season), including box scores and game recaps, but I can't find the box score for the game he appeared in. I'll keep looking. Zagalejo^^^ 04:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Through Google books I found (and added to the article) a couple more references; these discuss his service as an umpire. I believe that with a visit to a decent research library it should be possible to fill in a stub for almost any major league player, no matter how brief his career. The newspapers have always covered baseball and almost every player good enough to play in the majors had a significant career in minor or independent baseball that would have been covered in the old papers. BRMo (talk) 04:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Great researching, guys. I agree wholeheartedly: there's a reason why all professional athletes meet WP:BIO; sometimes it just takes a little work to get it there. matt91486 (talk) 05:04, 12 February 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.