Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ben LeCompte (2nd nomination)

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 no consensus. Most people agree this fails WP:NGRIDIRON. The keepers are arguing that it meets WP:GNG by virtue of the media coverage received. The deleters say that he may have gotten lots of coverage, but it's routine, local boy makes good type stuff, and that's not enough for GNG. There's been extensive discussion here, so I think it unlikely relisting this for another week will produce any consensus. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:07, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Ben LeCompte

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Ben LeCompte (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Doesn't meet standards of WP:CFBNOTE or WP:NGRIDIRON, never appeared in a regular season game in the NFL and his college career was not notable enough to merit a page GPL93 (talk) 14:47, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 14:51, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of American football-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 14:51, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 14:51, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of North Dakota-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 14:51, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

• Delete – he's done practically nothing in the NFL; the body of the article is three sentences long and does not mention the NFL, but rather "The Spring League". Practically only an article because of his 5 national championships, but I don't see this as a reason for an article as he was only a special teams player. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 15:21, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Keep - The specific notability guidelines are shortcuts to whether the subject is likely to pass the basic notability guideline WP:GNG. This subject meets GNG and so whether he passes any specific notability guideline is irrelevant. Rlendog (talk) 17:27, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Comment It should be noted that while the coverage LeCompte has received may be significant compared to other, non-football related pages, this coverage is rather routine for the majority of football players that are added to preseason rosters. Best, GPL93 (talk) 17:46, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
• Keep per Rlendog. The article needs work to be sure, but that's an editing issue. As for NGRIDIRON and CFBNOTE, the sports guidelines are inclusive, and what matters here (as Rlendog said) is that LeCompte passes GNG. College punters, particularly at the FCS level, rarely get extensive coverage, but LeCompte did. Examples of significant coverage in multiple, reliable, and independent sources include: (1) Barrington's Ben LeCompte helps North Dakota St. reach FCS title game, Chicago Tribune, 1/16; (2) Barrington’s Ben LeCompte relishes chance with hometown Bears, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/16; (3) Bison’s LeCompte continues tradition of strong punters, The Dickinson Press, 11/13; (4) Family central to LeCompte getting a leg up at North Dakota State, Daily Herald (Illinois), 1/16; (5) LeCompte handles double duty for Bison, Grand Folks Herald, 8/15 (available via NewsLibrary.com). Cbl62 (talk) 03:19, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
• Delete He went to Barrington High. The Daily Herald specifically covers Barrington High. The Chicago Tribune is actually from the "Barrington Local Sports Page" from the Barrington Courier-Review - it's not as if it was a feature article for the entire paper, but rather a "local sports boy does something" you see in every small town newspaper from Wooloomooloo to Wausau. The Sun-Times piece is the same as the other AfD we discussed - it's not about him as a college athlete, but rather a local/former high school player trying to make the local pro team (and describes his chances of making it as a long shot). That leaves two sources, both of which specifically cover the college team he played for. That's not "extensive coverage." SportingFlyer talk 10:55, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

GNG was intended as an objective standard. Significant coverage in multiple, reliable and independent sources is what is required. You seek to turn it into a standard that can be ignored if you subjectively believe the person isn't notable enough (e.g., "I don't like it") and under which you can further decide to disregard the coverage because you choose to call it "routine" or "local". That is not consistent with policy. There is no bar under GNG of local coverage (efforts to insert such a bar were recently defeated), and WP:ROUTINE applies to brief transactional announcements and passing mentions in game coverage, not feature stories which is what we have here. Your view of notability is frankly troubling to the future of Wikipedia. Cbl62 (talk) 13:59, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

That's not true. Two of the sources I pointed out fail WP:NYOUNGATH, even though they talk about his college career, because they're in the prep sports section of the paper - one specifically covering his high school, i.e. he's not being written about because he's a notable college player, but because he went to the local high school. The Sun-Times story is the sports equivalent of an "and finally!" story. The two North Dakota articles are arguable, but again, it's their job to cover the minutia of the team he plays on. Not to WP:OSE, but this type of coverage is the low, low, low end of the notability scale. And perhaps I'm just frustrated we've recently deleted professional athletes in other sports with better coverage than this, but this is not a notable college football player. SportingFlyer talk 23:10, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I concur with User:SportingFlyer. If we don't include the context in which the article is written, then pretty much any regular starter on a college football team would technically be notable. Best, GPL93 (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@GPL93: With all due respect, the slippery slope argument "any regular starter" would be technically notable isn't remotely accurate. Based on my experience monitoring college football bios and college football AfDs over the past decade, I'd estimate that less than one percent of college football players pass GNG. The coverage tends to be focused overwhelmingly on skill position starters on the top 30 FCS teams. Very, very few FCS, Division II, Division III, or NAIA players pass muster under GNG. Cbl62 (talk) 01:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Cbl62: While I did use hyperbole, as someone who attended and still closely follows a FCS college that has had somewhat marginal collegiate success, I know for a fact that this is now routine coverage for most athletes who perform well at the FCS level. If LeCompte passes muster, so does pretty much any player who makes a preseason roster or is signed to a practice squad. I'm not "slippery sloping" it, this coverage is incredibly normal for someone trying to make an NFL roster. i understand where you are coming from, but we must look at sources and the nature of coverage critically in order to determine what is notable. Best, GPL93 (talk) 01:46, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@GPL93: While I voted "keep" on LeCompte, I do agree that someone has been overdoing it with the North Dakota State bios. FWIW, here are examples where I've done some WP:BEFORE and think there is a likely failure to satisfy GNG: Andrew Bonnet, Landon Lechler, Zach Vraa, Tyler Roehl, Bryan Shepherd, and Paul Cornick. Each of these would be a more meritorious AfD candidate than LeCompte. Cbl62 (talk) 01:48, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Cbl62: You are right about that, most of the articles you mentioned were created by the same editor. I proposed the AfD on Vraa and WP:PRODed two more NDSU player articles that were deleted, the only reason I didn't do the same with Landon Lechler yet is to see how this goes. I appreciate where you are coming from, it definitely gives more perspective to this discussion and to the notability of non-NFL FCS players as a whole. Unfortunately, now that the scope of sporting news has grown over the years GNG has been more difficult to figure out. However, I still stand by the fact that coverage LeCompte has received is now the norm for anyone who either is from or attended college in any sort of significant media market. Best, GPL93 (talk) 02:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

@Cbl62: Taking Tyler Roehl as an example, the coverage of him is actually very similar to the coverage of LeCompte: [1], [2], [3] (another source looked like a feature story but was no longer available). The difference is he didn't get a feature story when he tried to make the Seahawks (because he's from Wisconsin, just a blog post talking about his knee injury) and he wasn't as heavily covered by the paper in the town he grew up in. SportingFlyer talk 02:25, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I just don't see the depth of coverage on Roehl (two of the items you cite are from the same local TV station) nor the coverage in multiple media sources (compare: significant coverage in five different independent media outlets in LeCompte's case). My point, though, was to debunk the very incorrect notion that every college football starter (or even a significant percentage) gets GNG-level coverage. Cbl62 (talk) 03:04, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I think there's a lot of players you could make arguments for, though. Zach Vraa, who was apparently recently deleted, for instance, got what I would consider to be better coverage than LeCompte here: [4] But if we're playing the "count up the number of independent media sources which wrote feature articles," I strongly believe local prep sports articles (even if the player's in college) aren't independent enough of the subject for WP:GNG. These stories are local interest stories which get written all the time. Same with the "local tries, but is long shot to make local pro team". If a paper in Texas ran an article on him, I'd be singing a different tune. That leaves what to do with stories written from beat writers whose job it is to cover the teams these athletes play on: [5] SportingFlyer talk 01:01, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

GNG works very well. There needs to be significant coverage in multiple independent outlets. A bunch of stories by a beat writer in the hometown paper doesn't cut it. That's why I voted to delete Zach Vraa, but LeCompte passes the bar with significant coverage in at least five independent media outlets. GNG is a good system, and we should stop straining to find excuses to overlook/evade/negate/undermine it. Cbl62 (talk) 01:46, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

GNG is only a presumption - it is not the full stop at the end of the sentence. None of the coverage of LeCompte is discriminate - he is being written about either because the paper covers the team, or because he went to a high school that gets enough press coverage to cover a player . That is more than enough, in my mind, to overcome the presumption of GNG. (Whereas the Vraa Fox Sports article is clearly discriminate, IMHO). SportingFlyer talk 11:17, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• Keep. Meets WP:GNG and WP:BASIC, per Cbl62's sources. WP:GNG trumps WP:NGRIDIRON. Ejgreen77 (talk) 01:42, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
• Keep College punters certainly can generate enough pass to pass WP:GNG and this one certainly seems to have done so. A simple news search reveals a good amount of buzz in the media--far above what most other college punters receive.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:16, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
• Delete Fails WP:NGRIDIRON. Don't believe local coverage of a high school then college player followed by an article on his signing with the local NFL team (which he didn't make) is enough to meet the GNG. Certainly his name in a list of players for the Spring League doesn't add to his notability.Sandals1 (talk) 14:54, 22 October 2018 (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.