Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Fully professional leagues/Archive 6

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Albanian Superliga

What evidence do you want to prove that the Albanian Superliga is indeed a fully-professional league? Oltianruci (talk) 11:58, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:RS Adam4267 (talk) 13:00, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a good question without, as far as I can tell, a definitive answer. Roughly speaking, and in my opinion, you need a credible reliable source that shows all the senior players in that league to be full-time professional footballers, i.e. playing football as their only paid employment. Some leagues have it written into their rules that clubs are required to give their players full-time contracts on a living wage, and then helpfully publish those rules online. For those that don't, you need to find a source good enough to convince other editors. Sorry if that isn't much help. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks mate, that did help. So basically I have to look for sources outlining player contracts. And considering the average wage in the country we an all see that the Albanian Superliga players are in fact fully professional and do not play football part time. Oltianruci (talk) 10:18, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Link1 Second to last paragraph writes about Arvis Gjata signing an 18-month contract at an average wage for the league, which is around 100,000 lek a month, around €715, which is a lot higher than the average wage which is at €246 a month. The minimum wage in Albania is 18,000 lek, which is 82,000 lek less than Gjata's professional contract was worth. Oltianruci (talk) 10:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Link2 Gjergji Muzaka is one of the league's best players and he recently signed a contract worth around €75,000 a season in a basic wage which is competitive for many leagues in the region and the rest of Europe. Oltianruci (talk) 10:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The problem with these sources is that they refer to specific players, and not the league as a whole. You're going in the right direction, but we can't infer that something is true for the entire league based on just a few examples, especially when one of them, as "one of the league's best players", is a clear outlier. Sir Sputnik (talk) 13:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Does the one about Arvis Gjata say that the average wage is around 715 euros a month? If it does then I'd say that seems pretty good evidence that the league meets our current notability guidlines. Obviously its not perfect but we shouldn't be denying a league that probably meets our notability guidlines just because a perfect source can't be found. Remember individual players may still meet [{WP:GNG]]. Adam4267 (talk) 17:02, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Link3 I have found this source regarding most of the Vllaznia Shkoder squad for th 2011-12 season. As you can see, the highest paid player is Xhevahir Sukaj with 35,000 euros a season. This also shows that even some of the younger, inexperienced players are still getting paid, even though it might seem like a low wage in Albania that means that they do not need to work for a living in any other field. Oltianruci (talk) 19:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Link4 This could be seen as irrelevant, but this source explains how newly promoted side FK Kukesi have invested in the region of 2million euros. This money has gone towards building a new purpose built stadium and the rest rebuilding the actual squad, making a number of signings. The club, like most smaller sides in Albania buy players who are free agents as the transfer market in Albania does not usually see players transferring with a fee attached. Oltianruci (talk) 19:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Notability requires verifiable evidence, and references need to clearly support the contentious material, so the sources used to put the Albanian top league in the list should explicitely report the league (prefered) or all teams (less prefered but still acceptable) as being professional. The links presented now only report some wages, whose height is not a valid indication of professional status unless being accompanied with appropriate evidence. Regards. – Kosm1fent 08:55, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Rulebook I believe I have found exactly what you're looking for. This is the Albanian Football Association rule book, it's all written in Albanian but I have read most of it, which explains all the rules of the league. It clearly states that for a player to be registered by the FA must be under a professional contract but players under the age of 18 can be under youth contracts. Look at 'neni 13: Llojet e federimit' and see for yourself. Oltianruci (talk) 16:30, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks like it's probably okay. Could you provide a word for word translation of what it actually says. Google's translation from Albanian are still somewhat lacking. Sir Sputnik (talk) 18:02, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Which exact part are you looking for me to translate and I'll do my best to translate it word for word. Just tell me what to translate or what you want to find out from the rule book. Oltianruci (talk) 21:47, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

"Neni 13", the part you say confirms the fully pro status of the league. Sir Sputnik (talk) 23:33, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

this is what google translate says

1. A player can becomes a federate member on behalf of a club that participates in Superior category, or Category One, just as professional player. 2. Players under the age of 18 (eighteen) years may becomes a federate member as players on teams ages. Adam4267 (talk) 23:38, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

This is why I'm asking for a human and not a machine generated translation. What does becoming a federate member mean? It could be confirming that the league is fully pro, but it's sufficiently unclear that it could mean something else. Sir Sputnik (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing it just means to become an official player of that club. Not saying the google translate is perfect but its better than nothing for those of us not of the Albanian persuasion. Adam4267 (talk) 00:08, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

To the best of my understanding, it is saying that players can be registered to a club and therefore the league in 2 different ways. 1. A player can be registered to a team participating in the Superliga or First Division only as a professional player. 2. Players that are under 18 can be registered as a youth player. I believe this means that players in the leagues over the age of 18 must be under a professional contract with a club which would mean that they are fully professional players. I have read the rest of the rule book which has a lot of information on contracts and issues surrounding the signing, termination and expiry of contracts. Oltianruci (talk) 13:56, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Based on the evidence presented above, I entered both Albanian Superliga and Albanian First Division as leagues which are fully professional. I am putting this page under my watchlist in order to track further discussion, if it will follow. If no valid arguments are presented, then the Albanian footballers which were deleted from the English Wikipedia merely based on the misconception that the Albanian Superliga and the Albanian First Division weren't fully professional, should be fully restored. (This one is the most recent list of Albanian footballers deleted based on this criterion only). Albaniafutboll (talk) 19:10, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand this page. No player, whether English, American or Albanian, should have an article unless it is clear that they meet the general notability guideline. A change to this page does not mean that we should indiscriminately delete or restore every player from the relevant league. —WFC— 20:03, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I understand GNG correctly. Please read carefylly what I said. I'm not saying that players who fail GNG need to stay in wikipedia, however I want to challenge deletions that are based merely on the misconception that the Albanian Superliga and the Albanian First Division are not fully professional, which they actually are. Oltianruci provided the source similar to the ones of the other leagues, and I used that source as a reference in the article. Hope this clarifies. The players who are deleted can be stubified and then I'll work to satisfy their GNG criteria. If you look at the deletion discussion, the main concern is not GNG, but insatisfaction of NFOOTY. Albaniafutboll (talk) 20:28, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

However, you could always show how those players met GNG during their AfDs. Their articles weren't deleted solely because of NFOOTY. Cheers. – Kosm1fent 21:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a little easier to delete 6 players than to write their articles. One at a time. I'm currently trying to resolve with the admin that deleted, then I'll go through the necessary steps. Albaniafutboll (talk) 21:30, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Just wanted to know what is going to happen to all the pages that I've created that have been deleted. I understand that not all of them meet all the criteria but the reason for much of the deletions was the issue of having never featured in a 'fully professional league'. As Albaniafutboll correctly put it, it is much easier to delete all the pages I've created than to actually create them all, seems like I've wasted a lot of time in the last few years due to all of these deletions. Oltianruci (talk) 23:16, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

@Sir Sputnik: Would it be ok for you if I ask for a relist in DRV? Since you brought them to deletion, I want to first clear that with you. The closing admin would rather have me ask for a relist or a stubification at DRV, since he is unfamiliar with the area ([1]). After my persistance, he reiterated his preference. I would prefer though that, before I go to DRV, you pour your thoughts here. In your first comment you seem to assert that "it's probably ok", but later you showed a concern about the word "federohet" [2]. After Oltianruci's translation: ("federohet" in Albanian simply means "registration" in a team for a specific sport season), you no longer commented. Is there anything else that concerns you about this matter? If Sir Sputnik is unavailable, any admin in the WikiProject Foobtall is welcome to stubify them (see Mark's suggestion). Albaniafutboll (talk) 00:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection to a DRV. My concerns about the translation were mainly for clarity's sake, and to ensure that we had an adequate translation on file somewhere for those of us who do not speak Albanian. I only had google's translation in front of mean wasn't sure what "becoming a federate member" was supposed mean. Given the translation above, I am now satisfied that the league is in fact fully professional. My only outstanding concern is including it here will be used to justify the creation of a large number of microstubs that will never grow beyond an infobox and one or two sentences, and that show sign of meeting notability in the general sense, but that can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Sir Sputnik (talk) 09:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Sir Sputnik, I appreciate. I filed with DRV. I honestly believe that 2-3 players out of the 6 could fairly survive an AfD, if relisted. Their GNG criteria should be easily fullfilled. Albaniafutboll (talk) 14:50, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

This is all good to hear, I appreciate it. I am constantly trying to update and progress everything to do with Albanian football but i feel that I could use some help in doing so. I am starting university soon so I doubt I'll have much time to edit Wikipedia often. Regarding the 6 deleted players, I truly believe that Erjon Vucaj should not have been deleted, whereas the others did have some question marks. From now on I will ty to only create and edit the profiles of the top players in Albania so that anyone will have trouble contesting them. Oltianruci (talk) 23:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Proposal

After several discussions in the football-project, including the two above, about the list of fully pro leagues, I've set up a table below, which is a proposal of how the notability-guideline could be instead of the current one:

• The first step might be thrashed, but I believe that when signing a professional contract with the best clubs in the world, the players should be assumed notable because of the media-coverage. G-14 is just sat as an example.
• I believe every editor in the football-project agree that playing a single match in the Premier League confers notability. I've also placed the next four big leagues in Europe as an "automatic notability", but I guess we can agree on a much larger amount of league where playing a single match confer notability.
• Playing for a senior national team confer notability, doesn't it?
• There are some league in the world, including "my own" Tippeligaen, where playing a single match shouldn't be enough to be notable. However, deleting all players from those league is wrong, as most players pass GNG after playing a dozen matches. This is in my opinion the most tricky part, and this category might be divided by putting an arbitrary number, like in WP:NHOCKEY; Playing 40 matches in Allsvenskan or 100 matches in Albanian Superliga.
• The last category is kinda explains itself - it's the same as the non-fpl league + others non-notable league who happened to be on the FPL-list.

League	Automatic notability when playing a single match	Assumed notability when playing for a while?	Articles needs to meet WP:GNG before creation
Premier League, La Liga, Fußball-Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 (for example)
National team
Most of the current FPL
Every other league in the world

The table should be expanded to include every league in the world, but as I've said this is only a suggestion, and opinions are welcome. Mentoz86 (talk) 07:49, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with the first step at all. To my knowledge, (most) youth players who sign a professional contract, even with a "G-14" club, do not receive enough non-routine media coverage to pass GNG. If this is the case, then all we'll have is a bunch of stub articles about players who have not played a single league game. The other steps are fine, except by which criteria would a single league appearance confer notability and please define "playing for a while" at the rest of the fully professional leagues. Cheers. – Kosm1fent 08:25, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Also completely disagree with this. A lot of the articles we currently delete are youth team players from big clubs. This would just enable them to stick around. Number 57 11:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The 'notable when signing a professional deal' element has to go straightaway, that's a non-runner from the start. GiantSnowman 11:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The French Wikipedia has the right idea although they are probably too strict in my opinion; they recognise that some leagues are of higher quality than others and thus fewer appearances are needed in those leagues (such as Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, etc.) in order to pass GNG. I think their guideline of 30 second-tier matches is far too high, and obviously we would need to expand to include leagues like League One, League Two, German 3. Liga but something like that could be the way forward. BigDom (talk) 12:01, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

What Dom said. To the letter. —WFC— 12:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Dom as well. There are some fully-pro leagues (and even some bottom-tier national teams) where playing sparingly in the course of one season may not be sufficient to pass the GNG. I don't know what the appropriate measure should be, but a single match in these leagues isn't enough (as I've demonstrated dozens of times at AfD). Jogurney (talk) 14:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with this as well, although I can´t see how could we make a random number of appearances that would not enter into OR. FkpCascais (talk) 15:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

A random number isn't really OR because its just a guideline as to when we are willing to accept that almost anyone that is at that number will have GNG sources. We aren't stating it as a fact that people who have played 100 games are notable. -DJSasso (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

This proposal has been raised several times in several locations. A figure is an arbitrary limit and i cant see how one can be set because its not going to be easy to set and gain overall consensus for a set figure or a reason why said figure is correct. Its also likely to be a more controversial system than the one we have and thats bad enough, i agree and have done in the past that change is needed but i don't think the french system is the correct path. We would be better sorting the current system than creating a new one that will likely have similar controversies where the leagues status could be seen as not set on a firm basis of fact and possibly which i know others don't agree with me on but discriminatory against certain countries. Blethering Scot 15:53, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

So do you disagree that a player in the Premier League would receive more coverage than a player in, say, the Welsh Premier League? There's nothing discriminatory about saying some countries' leagues are better than others. What this is about is determining a level at which players pass the GNG. As it is now, there are far too many players that do not pass those core guidelines. This is why nothing ever gets sorted; whenever someone proposes anything, people reject any kind of change without either a) saying why they disagree with it and/or b) not coming up with any ideas of their own how to improve things. I never said we should follow the French guidelines exactly as they are, but if the editors there managed to find a consensus why shouldn't we be able to? BigDom (talk) 16:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

We will need input from editors that work on biographies of players in specific leagues. I can provide input on a few leagues for which I have done biography sourcing work, but I can't provide much guidance on most leagues. Should we start compiling a list of who has experience with player biographies in particular leagues (we may need to invite some folks that don't frequent this portion of the Project Page)? Jogurney (talk) 16:18, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

We need to be careful if we ask editors who work in specific leagues, as they may have a tendency to over-inflate the importance of the league? I think what we need is some hard evidence that some players who meet criteria X also have articles that actually meet GNG, and then you can argue that other players who meet the criteria are assumed to meet GNG. Eldumpo (talk) 19:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I supose this comes because of my (ove)reaction for having mentioned Serbian SuperLiga earlier :)

Listen, I honestly don´t beleave at all to any of this random (30/50/100 appearances approach). We could eventually stick to the UEFA ranking and then make some sort of escalation, but even so, ends up being too random.

The reason for my overaction is the following one: I beleave that the main problem here is the ammount of BIO´s containing a couple of appearances in a league listed at pro list. However, as an editor specialised in Serbian SuperLiga I can say that things have been working quite fine till now there, and mostly only established players have articles (exception only the big clubs who´s youngsters also get articles as soon as they debut) but if you look closely you will see that in the total of players from all SuperLiga clubs, more than a half are redlinks, meaning, there has not been much of any abuse on making many weak player articles.

However, I do know other leagues where that is not the case, and where editors kind of abuse making articles for every single league player, even the ones which hasn´t even debuted yet. Anyone familiarised certainly knows a couple of leagues of which I am refering to and I don´t want to be the one pointing out the finger, but I really think those are the ones that should be dealt here, and certainly not the ones which have been working out fine as the Serbian one. Now, even so, I don´t want to be critical, but I really don´t see this being fixed the way it is proposed here. It will bring more problems, confusion and deletion work, than real improvement. FkpCascais (talk) 00:01, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

My main issue here isn't the articles about Serbian footballers, but the loads of stubs around Europe on footballers that have played a handful of matches in leagues ranked from 20 to 53 on the UEFA ranking. Mentoz86 (talk) 09:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I was just answering to Eldumpo, as he mentioned Serbian SuperLiga earlier in the previous thread, but doesn´t matter, as I think we (you Mentoz and me) absolutelly agree that the problem are the weak stubs with low number of appearances in low ranked pro leagues. Cheers. FkpCascais (talk) 19:03, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Through AfD-discussions, we've established some kind of a consensus that playing 1 match in a lot of the fully pro league isn't enough to have an article, so we should make the notability guideline reflect that. The French method is a good method, even though it might be a little too random. But what we might start with doing, is to determine which leagues that we certainly believe that playing 1 match is enough to meet GNG. I've suggested 5 leagues, but I guess there is a dozen more. Maybe we should make a "task-force" to make a proposal on how we could split the leagues into the French method? Mentoz86 (talk) 09:06, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Just start drafting on subpage of this page I suppose, with talk and co-ordination continuing here? Otherwise there's a risk of creating an unfollowable trail of links. —WFC— 09:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Spectator statistics could be an indicator --Blanc98 (talk) 22:12, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

They could - but not from Transfermarkt, that site is not trustworthy. GiantSnowman 08:02, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

The French Wikipedia guidelines have obviously a lot of mistakes. They sort nations and not leagues. As a result of this they for example treat Football League Championship and 2. Fußball-Bundesliga as equivalent of Serie B Ligue 2 and Segunda División although even Football League One and 3. Fußball-Liga do not have less coverage and success than second divisions in Italy, France and Spain. As well i doubt that instead of a player who made one appearance in the Premier League every player who was in the squad of a finalist of the OFC U-17 Championship should be regarded as general notable even if he never plays professional football (like it is the case in the French Wikipedia). --Blanc98 (talk) 12:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out that the English Wikipedia is four times the size of the French, so it's logical that our criteria would be less strict. Taking this seriously would be a good start.

The big problem is that we have it back to front at the moment. NFOOTY is nearly (but not quite) at a level where it is implausible that anyone notable could possibly fail to meet it. The problem with this approach is that a lot of non-notable people will slip through the net, and because they haven't received significant coverage, those who do not progress with their careers are bound to remain stubs. Worse still, the existence of NFOOTY means that such articles will invariably be kept, as participants at AfD invariably follow guidelines religiously. This is the wrong way around. NFOOTY should be set at a level where it is implausible that you would ever need or want to delete someone who meets it. At the same time, it should not be uncommon for players to be kept, where editors have shown that the player has received coverage above and beyond the norm.

For instance, Connor Smith received significant coverage for the three months he spent on Sky, and once you throw in a pro appearance he will meet the GNG whatever NFOOTY says. Once every couple of years at a club like Watford (more often at the bigger clubs, less often at clubs which have less local media coverage) a promising youth player will start receiving the sort of coverage that young pros at the same club could only dream of: once he plays a senior game, that coverage will invariably save him under the GNG, whereas others will play the odd game and slip almost entirely under the radar. On the other end of the scale, is it likely that the typical player who makes a handful of appearances in the paint pot will meet the GNG? Or that someone who plays 8-10 games in the Greek third tier would be well known for his footballing skills outside of his social network? —WFC— 06:34, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the mentality of 'automatic notability, no matter what' has to go - by all means create a brief bio once a player makes a pro appearance, and allow time for sources to be found / GNG to be met. But if a few months/years down the line there is nothing more than 'John Smith is an English footballer who played 4 minutes on the last day of the season before drifting into obscurity', then it just makes our WikiProject look like a joke. GiantSnowman 11:45, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Tighten to five appearances?

• It appears that ranking the "fully-pro" leagues is going to be very contentious, so can we agree that tightening NFOOTY so it requires 5 appearances (rather than 1) in a fully-pro league (or FIFA "A" international) would help discourage the creation of too many biographies on players of dubious notability? (Any player making one appearance in La Liga or a FIFA World Cup final will easily pass the GNG, so we're simply avoiding the need to rank leagues while at the same time discouraging the creation of articles about players who appear in one friendly for Guam or make a substitute's appearance in the last round of the Greek third division.) Jogurney (talk) 14:25, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, until we come up with something better. (I still want to try to make a proposal that looks like the French model, but I haven't had the time yet) But I do believe that playing for the best national teams in the world confer notability, what about saying that being capped for the 76 national teams that have appeared in the FIFA World Cup confer notability, while you need 5 caps for the other 140 national teams ? Mentoz86 (talk) 14:38, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Jogurney's proposal. Mentoz86, I highly doupt (for example) that El Salvador's two World Cup appearances in 1970 and 1982 would make young Salvadoran footballers notable by just one international appearance. Cheers. – Kosm1fent 14:48, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't mind the implementation of the policy for club players (although I can see it causing lots of problems when inexperienced editors start asking why players can't have an article until the end of August despite playing every game for their clubs), but I still think that even winning one international cap should be enough. Number 57 14:56, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Why 5? Why not 2, or 10? GiantSnowman 15:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, there will always be an arbitrarily drawn line. Better make it stricter in order to reduce the chance of articles of footballers impossible to meet GNG passing through. – Kosm1fent 15:18, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Exactly, the current number of 1 is just as arbitrary as 5 so that's an invalid argument. The point is, many players with one appearance do not pass GNG so the bar needs to be set higher. Number57, take the qualifiers for the 2012 Caribbean Championship that are happening at the moment. Should a player who wins a cap for, say, the British Virgin Islands in one of those matches have an article? Surely not. So many players like this have microstubs that can never be expanded because the sources simply do not exist – i.e. they are not notable in any way. BigDom (talk) 15:32, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Jogurney is talking about an interim step. And for an arbitrary number, 5 is a reasonable choice. The bar is somewhere between 1 and 2 appearances right now, in the sense that players who make fleeting substitute appearances outside of the massive leagues tend to get deleted. 10 would be quite a drastic step, if we're talking about introducing this threshold for all leagues. I fully agree with Number 57 in principle on international players by the way. In practise it results in articles with virtually no potential for players from certain countries, but I can't think of any workable alternative. Even for tiny countries, the claim for meeting the GNG is at least credible. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 15:38, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

1's not an arbitrary number though. I'm happy for us to get stricter for club apps - international should stay 1 - but I'm concerned about the number of players currently 'notable' who will have under 5 apps, and don't want to see mass deletions. GiantSnowman 15:57, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this is intended to be an interim step (since a better system is going to involve contentious discussions about which leagues confer significant enough coverage to pass the inherently subjective GNG). Also, I picked 5 because it seemed like a marginally higher bar than the current 1, and it is likely to affect only a small percentage of existing biographies (I don't want to see AfD clogged with thousands of nominations). Maybe we should start with 2 as the threshold and see how the PROD/AfD process goes? Assuming the process is not chaotic, maybe move to 5 as the second interim step in tightening the guidelines after a month or two? (I'm open to ideas on international players, but my experience is that there are plenty of biographies about players with 1 appearance that will never satisfy the GNG.) Jogurney (talk) 16:10, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd say we move directly to 5, and then we can have an period where we delete new articles created after we change the notability criteria with less then 5 apps, and use common sense on previously created articles. For instance Simon Markeng (who is playing for "my" club), has only played two matches in a FPL, but I wont propose it for deletion until I know if he'll get more chances or if he'll move to a third-tier team after his contract with Molde ends. Mentoz86 (talk) 16:17, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I would note WP:HOCKEY went from 1 game in the minor hockey leagues to 100 games and we saw little to no deletions based on the change. Mostly because it would be the odd person who would go digging through all the articles looking for articles to delete based on that criteria. All it affected was article creation going forward. We had the same concerns when we implemented the 100 games criteria we use and none of them came to fruition. Just thought you might like to know. -DJSasso (talk) 16:27, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I think going straight to five makes sense, but if that's a dealbreaker I have no intrinsic objection to a few baby steps up to 5. Alternatively, Mentoz's approach is good. What I also believe is that, once we move beyond one appearance, we should reiterate at NFOOTY that articles which go to great lengths to try to demonstrate general notability via the sourcing and prose in the article should be looked upon sympathetically. The point of this is not a witch hunt of articles which clearly demonstrate notability but happen to fall below an arbitrary threshold. The reason people have been pushing for change for a long time is to weed out dead-end stubs on people who have always been low-profile individuals. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 16:43, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback on the HOCKEY notability guideline change. Perhaps we should move this discussion to NSPORTS for more participation? Jogurney (talk) 17:45, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Given that we are talking about changing the NSPORTS threshold, but not this list, I agree that NSPORTS is the appropriate place. Unless there is any objection today, or someone beats me to it, I will close this discussion and copy entirely over to a new section at NSPORTS tomorrow morning. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 12:30, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The ice hockey guidelines differentiate between leagues (like Elitserien and HockeyAllsvenskan which is in ice hockey just the second division) So they obviously talked about their list or the sorting of their list. But it surely would not be wrong to make more people aware of this discussion. --Blanc98 (talk) 14:56, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I think everyone on this page would back me up in asserting that I'm this list's single biggest critic. But the reason that we have backed away from discussing the relative strengths of leagues for the time being is because it is far less contentious to agree on the broader point: that we can't automatically assume that one game establishes notability. When we start talking about differentiating between leagues, things get a lot more heated. I am pretty sure the phrase "Anglo-centric agenda" was used the last time it was suggested that the SPL or MLS be treated any differently to the Premier League. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 19:55, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

So the two different ways which you and Mentoz want to go seem to be contrary. When we differentiate between leagues without any indicator we surely will never get to the final point with naturally different perspectives. This only could work when the first step is to agree on some indicators. I opened a new section below to discuss this. --Blanc98 (talk) 21:21, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, since at least four years it seems to be common here that every player who made one appearance in a fully professional league is notable. I saw deletion discussions where even some of the few participants of this discussion here voted for keep because of this guidelines. A lot of Users (most of them do not know about this discussion) created all alone hundreds of articles, believing that this work will never be deleted after they received support in a lot of AFDs. But now you want to change all this in a few weeks with an interim step and look if the 5 appearances interim step will be executed strict what would cause the immediate deletion of thousands of articles? I seriously doubt that it is useful to make interim steps when you change guidelines which where common for more than four years. If this guidelines should be changed it should be a final solution and not an interim step which says five appearances in one of the three groups of Lega Pro Seconda Divisione make notable but four appearances in the Premier League do not. And if you have a final solution, there should be a fair reprieve for authors of endangered articles before the new guidelines come into effect.

By the way the main problem in English Wikipedia are not notability guidelines but very low quality standards. In another language versions the most articles would not be deleted because of notability but because of quality. This long-standing problem will not be solved by interim step new notability guidelines. --Blanc98 (talk) 23:36, 11 September 2012 (UTC) — Blanc98 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

This template would make more sense if I would create Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Simon Markeng (after the interim step notability guidelines are invented) just to look if there will be comments like: We did not intend to obey our interim step guidelines when we invented it officially. I apologize for trying to point out some arguments in a discussion (basing on an idea of people who regard the most recent players of this selection as more notable than a lot of Premier League players) of an elite circle which does not want to be disturbed when deciding about the future of football player articles in English Wikipedia which were created and edited by thousands of registered and unregistered Users. --Blanc98 (talk) 13:24, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The main purpose of these guidelines is to discourage creation of new biographies about non-notable footballers (especially articles that will only contain one sentence of text and an infobox). If there are biographies that have existed for several years that would fail the guideline, they should be improved or eventually deleted. However, I'm not suggesting we purge Wikipedia of every stub footballer biography created in the past four years. I would much prefer to improve those and discourage editors from creating thousands more that we cannot properly monitor or improve. Jogurney (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

But would it then not be then the better way to invent quality guidelines instead of new notability guidelines. What about creating templates which say: This article about a footballer contains the following quality lacks: ... If nobody adds enough text and sources the article could be deleted according to the football notability/quality guidelines in 6 months/1 year (for example). This quality guidelines could demand that the complete career of a player from his youth career until today (or the career end) with all his club stations is described and sourced in an article. So that it would not be enough to write This player had one appearance in the Austrian Football First League and then played for several clubs in the fourth or fifth Austrian division which I can not source with better sources than a transfermarkt.co.uk profile. --Blanc98 (talk) 14:56, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a specific quality criteria for Wikipedia biographies - other than the basic notability, verifiability and neutral-point of view guidelines. Usually, content is removed from an article for failing WP:V or WP:NPOV rather than deletion of the article itself. So, we are looking to WP:N to see if the article should be kept at all. Jogurney (talk) 18:26, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I fully understand and support what has Blanc98 been saying. I have spent a lot of time this last years expanding and adding prose to "simple stubs" with only an infobox and one sentence. And for your surprise, there are numerous quite notable chaps in that situation. I am more in line of what Blanc98 has been saying, than the 5 appearences limit approach. What I mean is that the 5 limit approach will still make it possible for editors to make quite basic stubs about hardly notable players. What would be much more better is to have a guideline which would basically say, in simple words:

"Dude, if you´re gonna make the article, do it right, with prose and everything, not just an infobox!"

I would be more excited to see this idea turned into a guideline for new football player articles, as basically, 1 or 5 appereances ends up being the same shit regarding our problem here. FkpCascais (talk) 20:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

That's a different approach to what is being suggested, but precisely the same thinking. The rationale behind this change is that NFOOTY should be the line above which there is no question of non-notability, not the level below which there is no chance that you could possibly be notable. Good quality articles will almost always rely on significant, reliable coverage from independent sources, and thus be unaffected by this change. It's unmaintained and unmaintainable articles on low-profile individuals that would be hoovered up by this. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 20:54, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I know WFC, I followed the discussion, but it´s just that I find that this idea is worth exploring and, in my view, demanding more from the editing point of view would be more productive. I think that this would be a bigger step that would fix our problem, while the 5 app. limit would only just minimaze it. And even "minmaze" is questionable, as I see more deletion work for us than real discentivation to unfamilirised editors...

We could explore some ideas like for exemple demanding 3 sources, or 3 sentence prose. That would discentivate non-English editors that don´t speak well English and only like to make the infobox, and I am fed up of those... We could just see if we can explore all ideas before implementing any solution. FkpCascais (talk) 21:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I admire and agree with what you want to achieve in the long term, but there is as much chance of me tattooing the entire content of Wikipedia onto my body as there is of us getting it done in one step. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 21:44, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I think the principle of coming up with a higher limit of games played (as an interim step) is sound, but there would need to be further discussion about the rationale, and any subsequent changes made to NFOOTY should be clearly explained. However, it won't necessarily do that much to solve the problem of huge numbers of footballer articles that don't actually meet GNG, and we should continue to keep the pressure up to get a proper longer-term solution. Eldumpo (talk) 07:01, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The quality problem in English Wikipedia also not concerns just articles of players with 1, 2, 3, oder 4 matches played. It also concerns a lot of articles of players with 100 or more matches. Surely we will find articles of players with more than 100 matches with an Infobox entry from 2008 which states that 1 match is played. The trend of the discussion in the section below confirms again that according to Wikipedia principles our objective must be called quality criteria and not new notability criteria. --Blanc98 (talk) 08:31, 13 September 2012 (UTC)