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Notability guidelines and policy for eSports

I am wondering if it might be a good idea for the community to consider a notability guideline for eSports, in light of the increasing number of articles being created about teams and competitors. Unlike most sports, there is no guideline under Notability (sports), so at the moment only general biography rules seem to apply. A nomination - that so far is a keep - at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rekkles has suggested that we need a "serious evaluation of all esports articles" and certainly it does seem like a field that is growing and so we should at least have guidance on. Thoughts? KaisaL (talk) 22:41, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Speaking from the stance of the video games project, compared to athletic sports, the amount of coverage esports gets is still very low and weak. Whereas athletes that achieve some level of professional play will likely get coverage due to the volume of sources that cover traditional sports, this simply doesn't exist yet for eSports, so the best advice is to stay with the general notability guidelines. --MASEM (t) 22:52, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
I agree that eSports is still minor in the mainstream, but it doesn't change that the number of articles being created for players and teams is increasing. By our very nature, we're more likely to attract content on the sport. We have specific guidelines for rodeo and curling, and a lot more editing comes into the eSports topics - so it may still be a good idea to create a guideline to be added to the sports topic. Just at a glance through the categories, it is very contentious as to how a lot of it would do at AFD or whether individual players are relevant. KaisaL (talk) 23:02, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
I brought up the issue with the drastically low-quality of eSports articles to Drmies a couple days ago. ESports as a whole is appropriate to keep on Wikipedia, but we at this point have hundreds of low-quality articles, with many featuring dubious notability, that largely are relying on Daily Dot and Liquipedia referencing- the second being a serious no-no, for as referencing is concerned. We must find an effective way to comb through these articles are either fix them or toss them, as the whole topic is running counter to Wikipedia standards. Furthermore, we have a number of categories and navboxes featured on these pages that contribute next to nothing, other than adding to the enormous pile of vague categories. I'd say with the number of eSports player articles, one could click at random on them and almost certainly find what I'm saying to be true verbatim. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 22:56, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
As with any other SNG, one should be tailored to reflect the point where we can presume a subject has achieved the necessary coverage in reliable sources to produce an article. I guess the first step is to consider what sources are reliable, given eSports really doesn't appear in mass market media all that much. What absolutely should not happen is to just say "appeared in random event x or is popular on reddit" = notable. Resolute 23:01, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of picking out some articles, almost at random, to demonstrate the issues with the content:

1. Lustboy - Won a professional championship as a "support player" in a team and is now a "strategic analyst" in a national league. All sources from Daily Dot. Does winning the championship justify inclusion, or is a support player not important enough? Is a strategic analyst a notable role? Without an expertise of eSports and a guideline it is very difficult to know.
2. FORG1VEN - A player for a League of Legends team that is "off of the starting roster due to lack of motivation". This almost reads like cruft, but there's a reference pointing to ESPN too.
3. Origen (eSports) - A team that finished "3rd-4th" in a League of Legends world championship. What criteria should a team have is a question we haven't really asked - in some sports you need to be winning things and is eSports important enough to include everyone?
4. League of Legends Master Series - A professional competition with a large prize fund, but no real reliable sources. How much coverage does an eSports competition need to be notable, or is being professional enough?

This is just a few examples I've plucked out for a feel of the current content, but there's plenty that are a lot more contentious, and only a few that are clear cut keeps (typically those notable for more than competing in the competitions, so those without a following and press coverage). KaisaL (talk) 23:14, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

  • There was a long and oft-caustic debate several years back with "eSports" advocates trying to get a set of guidelines written into WP:NSPORTS. Editors from the various sports WikiProjects were all but unanimously opposed, with the consensus being that they are not actually "sports" -- the wishes of their fans notwithstanding -- but games, that they could always get an independent set of guidelines created, and failing that could rely on the GNG.

    That being said, any set of proposed guidelines for presumptive notability ought to come with ironclad, demonstrated evidence that someone who meets those guidelines will likely meet the GNG. Given my own experiences with AfDs involving "eSports" figures, the overwhelming number of sources proffered as "reliable" tend to be their inhouse blog- and fansites, and I'm concerned that guidelines will reflect "We think this is important" or "ZOMG I love this game so much anyone who's good at it must be a figure of legendary repute!" more than any extant standard of notability. Ravenswing 00:09, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

    • That particular discussion can be found here, for reference.--Prisencolin (talk) 01:16, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
    • Whether or not eSports are a form of "sports" is a side issue: at that time, the regular followers of sports notability guideline did not feel particularly suited to develop rules of thumb for notability of participants in eSports. But as long as the guidelines are reviewed by the general community of editors, they can be formed and maintained by any suitable group, such as the video games WikiProject. isaacl (talk) 01:18, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
  • One of the "regular" guidelines for sports notability is "participated in Olympics" or such events. I don't see how we have such a thing here--the events are much less selective, and there are no national committees (the plethora of flagporn on all those articles notwithstanding). I agree that articles on Daily Dot don't amount to notability: it's a niche publication, explicitly. The Rekkles article has better sources, but (and I raised this at the AfD) whether those sources provide the extensive coverage required by the GNG is a matter of discussion, and I am of the opinion that they don't. What's happened with these articles, these hundreds of little biographies and dozens of big, fat, directory-style articles on the teams, is that notability is presumed. BTW, MMA, which is also a kind of a sport, I suppose, was able to draw up guidelines, and the MMA articles have not been brought up in any forum that I know of recently, so it can certainly be done. Drmies (talk) 00:37, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I've just been making articles for things that get coverage in, among other sources, The Daily Dot, TheScore eSports, and ESPN, and from there those articles should meet WP:GNG. From what I've seen, because the landscape of esports is constantly changes, achievement based notability requirements like those in WP:NSPORTS may not work very well. More specifically, making requirements like "players are notable if they have won the League of Legends World Championship" may not work because while the winners of the most recent tournament are notable, because League of Legends was much smaller in 2011 not every player on the 2011 championship team seem to be notable. --Prisencolin (talk) 00:19, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
    • I don't see how getting written up in Daily Dot or on theScore adds up to notability via the GNG. Do any of these publications matter? Are they reliable, but also, do they have weight? Are they considered to be independent of their subject matter? ESPN isn't, for instance; they depend on the sports they present in all kinds of ways. The landscape of eSports may be changing, but so is that of death metal and Barbie collecting, and neither of those get every participant written up without some kind of standards. For death metal, for instance, WP:NALBUM, WP:NSONG, WP:NBAND still apply. So, if it's a sport, sport guidelines should apply, for instance. Drmies (talk) 00:41, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
      • Those publications appear to meet requirements to be reliable sources, and can thus help an article pass WP:GNG. Beyond this whether or not the websites or the topics they cover have any lasting significance to humanity is up to opinion.--Prisencolin (talk) 01:10, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
        • Well, informed opinion. And "appear"--yeah, I don't know. Can you prove that they have reliable editorial boards? Do they publish writing by recognized experts and journalists? Are they truly independent of the topics they cover? I don't know who argues that ESPN is truly independent, for instance; I'd love to see that evidence. Drmies (talk) 03:10, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
          • According to its website the Daily Dot was nominated for a Digday Publishing Award, has also received acclaim from other news agencies and has a large writing and editing team.--Prisencolin (talk) 03:40, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
          • I don't think there is a dispute regarding ESPN being a third-party source, and I think its analysis can be fairly called independent. However its sports coverage, just like most mass media sports journalism, has an entertainment role, and so not everything reported can be considered to be indicative of meeting Wikipedia's standards for inclusion. isaacl (talk) 03:45, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

So, moving forward: Where do we go from here? Would a formal RFC be an idea here? What are we thinking in terms of guidelines? My thoughts at the moment are that there's three directions we could go in:

1. eSports articles needing independent coverage outside of specialist websites, so only players with significant coverage not exclusive to niche websites covering the sport and related topics;
2. A general rule that certain achievements are a sign of notability (as with, for example, junior gymnastics) - like winning a professional competition of a certain standard solo or as a main part of a team. (Or this could supplement point one.)
3. A decision that the status quo is reasonable, and that all participants in professional competitions are eligible for inclusion.

Obviously we'd need to discuss these, but the general hunch I'm getting - from participants so far here at least - is a concern at the amount of references to The Daily Dot and The Score, and I would agree that their suitability in defining notability is questionable. KaisaL (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

  • There are more reliable sources than just The Daily Dot and TheScore, and there are also many foreign languages sources that I listed at User:Prisencolin/esportsnews--Prisencolin (talk) 23:42, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
    • I think the problem is that so many of these sources are specific to eSports, so they may be reliable within the eSports community, but they don't necessarily prove the notability of eSports articles on Wikipedia. An earlier contributor made an allusion to death metal, in that there's many death metal blogs and websites, but that doesn't automatically make the bands that they cover notable. Some of this sources, certainly, have names attached that make me think they could be useful, like Yahoo! and ESPN.
The key point I would make is this: With most sports, they have their niche websites and blogs, but then they receive coverage on more general websites too. So for Formula One, there's websites like F1 Fanatic and James Allen on F1, but there's also the BBC and national newspapers and so on. It's the same for football, cricket, baseball, and countless others. The question for me is, where is this wider significant coverage beyond websites like Blog of Legends and The Score eSports? I do not dispute their reliability for facts and figures, but I do dispute it for proving that these articles are notable.
This is exactly what we need to explore, else we'll end up with articles for every eSports player and team that these specific websites cover. I personally don't feel that coverage on these should be enough, and that only major competition winners and those with substantial wider coverage should be included, but an RFC or similar process should decide these guidelines.
Your input is massively valuable by the way as you clearly know the topic well. KaisaL (talk) 23:51, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
I understand your concern, but just wanted to point out that neither Blog of Legends nor TheScore eSports specialize in eSports coverage; Blog of Legends is owned by FanSided, which covers general sports and entertainment, and is in turn owned by Time Inc., the holdings company of Time magazine, among other publications. TheScore publishes a general sports score app and news webste, and a fantasy sports game.--Prisencolin (talk) 00:14, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Going back to the question, the reasoning for having the subject-specific notability guidelines (SNG) like NSPORTS is to spell out conditions where if a topic has met some milestone, there will likely be sufficient sourcing that already exists or will come to exist to have that topic meet the GNG eventually. For example, a Nobel prize award winner routinely gets several articles after the award is named that detail their life and contributions, if this has not already been documented, so an SNG saying that Nobel prize winners are presumed notable works. In sports, a broad line is drawn for those that have in professional games, as to get to the professional level they likely have had to performed exceptionally at lower leagues (college or minors or equivalent), and the volume of coverage of those sports in reliable sources is still high such that these players will be documented there, if not from their current career. These SNG don't need to be 100% accurate in the source availability, since we're only making a presumption of notability, but they need to be the rule with only few exceptions.
The problem then with eSports is that we don't have enough time or sourcing to go on to assure that if an eSports player makes it to a certain level that they are going to have sources sufficient for GNG in the future. It's probably far too early given how new eSports is relative to other sports to be able to make a fair assessment of what "rules" work to make an SNG case out of. Hence that the GNG is a safe backup, and that then leads to the discussion of what are reliable sources for eSports, which is a fair but separate question. --MASEM (t) 00:08, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
GNG is a safe bet. I would say a good start for examining what is reliable is to see what pages utilize Liquipedia, which is a completely unreliable source. I fear two things from this discussion. The first is that we will simply find ourselves losing interest or going in circles, as I proposed an evaluation of esports about a year ago and it accomplished nothing, as nobody even began to comb through the articles with proper scrutiny. My second fear is that we'll try to reach a resolution for esports standards that will be inadequate, in comparison with general Wikipedia policies.
I believe the million dollar question is, how do we ensure that every esport article is reviewed for being up to par? There are hundreds that are probably eligible for deletion as of now, so it's a monumental task to bring the project up to snuff. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 00:44, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
This is a good argument Masem, however I would have one point to make regarding it: The fact that eSports is so new and in its relative infancy only supports the notion that blanket inclusion of professional players and teams is probably not appropriate at this time. I do not feel we can allow wide inclusion simply because of the work involved with checking sources. Some basic guidelines, even if they aren't quite as inflexible as something like WP:NFOOTY, would be a great help in deletion decisions. One other thing, too: I personally feel a good half of the eSports players on Wikipedia could reasonably go to AFD and be expected to fail. Such a flood may not be helpful, and we've encountered issues with that sort of thing regarding schools and Pokémon among other topics in the past. KaisaL (talk) 13:46, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

I believe the million dollar question is, how do we ensure that every esport article is reviewed for being up to par?

This part isn't hard. The vast majority of new (and old) eSports articles are by Prisencolin, so if we make it clear that new (and old) eSports articles need to be sourced to vetted reliable sources, with no unreferenced content in biographies of living people, then the fight is already over. Hopefully this would mean Prisencolin going back to correct previous articles before the rest of Wikipedia was as firm about the sources being used. czar 18:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't have time to wade through the proposals above but I wanted to add that this has been discussed at WT:VG for some time. Instead of following Prisencolin's list of sources, I would encourage you to look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources/Archive 14#eSports revisited and the related/linked threads, where the sources had at least a modicum of vetting. I don't think we need an automatic bar set for eSports players—I think a surprising amount of them meet the GNG, mainly surprising because few expected so much coverage so fast. An automatic bar would undoubtably lead to even worse articles, like the lowest ranks of any of the athletic notability guidelines, as player articles will/will not be created for the major teams regardless of their actual coverage. So I'd scrap that idea to focus on the GNG. I think there is a question of whether a player is notable if their only coverage is in the Daily Dot. If Daily Dot is presumed reliable, and I believe it is, the only case for not having such an article would be that Daily Dot-exclusive coverage (with no other outside coverage) is not significant coverage for the GNG. Feel free to make that argument if it's convincing, otherwise the most obvious way forward is to check whether each article is significant in WP:VG/RS-vetted sources. Also I'm interested in these "hundreds" of deletion-worthy eSports articles—care to share examples? Because I've been following their creation and while their quality is low (prose copied from another cc-by-sa encyclopedias) and their sourcing needs cleanup, the majority of them do pass the GNG, at least sufficiently so that they would live through AfD noms. I am, however, glad that this content area is finally getting some attention outside the project. Please ping me if I can be useful. I am no longer watching this page—ping if you'd like a response czar 18:21, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
@Czar: I would support a requirement for coverage outside of The Daily Dot and eSports sources, with the usual requirements (substantial, significant) for that. That would remove any competition requirements while those are in their infancy, but mean they need to be notable beyond niche eSports circles. I think this might be worth drafting into some sort of remedy to maybe add to Wikipedia:Notability (sports). As an aside, if the same user is creating a lot of the articles, we're kind of going off their judgement, and as the area grows - and from past experience - that doesn't end well. Certainly Prisencolin is the most vocal in AFD debates about eSports. As for there not being many that are debatable, the debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FREAKAZOiD being so contentious is a sign that there's a few to look into, and my list at the beginning of this debate has more samples. FREAKAZOiD is one of the better sourced and even he's got delete proposals, so the area could easily fall victim to a particularly proactive AFD lister if some guidance isn't put in a place. A list of reliable sources on the WikiProject probably isn't enough, so I'd go with the outside coverage requirements for now. Sorry for the long reply. KaisaL (talk) 22:53, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
It is going to need coverage outside of e-sport sources like The Daily Dot; they are a closed loop of non-WP:INDY sourcing: gamer writers catering to gamers' hero-worship of other gamers, and everything paid for by advertising of the games. We've already gone through this several years ago with the demo scene, demo artists and demo crews, demo parties, etc., etc.; it was not enough that computer "demo" art online-zines declared someone a demo superstar and a demo event or demo award the most notable thing since Star Wars, and it's not enough that gamer sites/mags gush all over gamers that no one other than hardcore gamers has ever heard of or cares about. While in theory it's true that WP:GNG is sufficient, that's true of all topics, in theory. In actual practice, fanciers of numerous topics misinterpret GNG and it has to be laid out in nit-picky detail why promotionalism of non-notable things in that topic isn't actually acceptable, and why what they want to do is actually promotionalism of non-notable things. This is the entire reason that we have a large number of topical notability guidelines.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

eSports proposal

  • Proposal. Ok, per Czar and other comments, here's a starter - I'm not suggesting it's added exactly like this - for an addition to Wikipedia:Notability (sports). Thoughts?
eSports:
1. eSports subjects (competitors, teams and competitions) that have received substantial coverage via significant reliable sources beyond the eSports community and media are considered to be notable;
2. eSports subjects that have only received substantial coverage via The Daily Dot, The Score eSports and similar sites are not considered to be notable;
3. Competing in a professional competition is not considered to qualify a subject for inclusion on its own.
This definitely still needs work but it's an idea for starters. Pinging: @DarthBotto:, @Prisencolin:, @Drmies:, @Ravenswing:. KaisaL (talk) 23:02, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Haven't made up my mind yet about these, but I do object to the guideline's inclusion into WP:NSPORT without broader consensus, since a lot of people just don't consider video games a sport.--Prisencolin (talk) 23:07, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Ok, shall we discuss the guidelines and then worry about where to put them later? They're not going to be added overnight, but at least we're finally trying to gauge a consensus on them. KaisaL (talk) 23:09, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I'd simplify as "Significant coverage for separate articles on eSports players/gamers requires coverage outside of dedicated eSports sources (e.g., The Daily Dot, Red Bull)." That seems to be the heart of the discussion above, at least. A discussion at WT:VG could lead to its inclusion in the video games WikiProject guidelines and you could RfC all the way to another notability guideline if you want. I don't think it needs more clauses than that (I don't think we need a site-wide verdict on whether eSports are sports—sounds like a waste of time). czar 23:20, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I think this wording would have the effect of not including teams, which are just as potentially troublesome, because by stating "separate articles" it might suggest they can be covered in a team article. Players, teams and competitions should ideally be covered and all should require coverage outside of the decidated eSports sources. The other problem is that this might make The Daily Dot - we seem to have a degree consensus that this is a problematic site - seem legitimate as it isn't purely for eSports. I think it's important to give examples. The list also conforms to the existing notability formats and, with the greatest will in the world, restricting this to a WikiProject guideline might make it less likely to be effectively referenced in notability debates. I'd like to see it in one of the proper guidelines. I think WP:NESPORTS or siimlar would be a good abbreviation. KaisaL (talk) 23:27, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
But, perhaps, to avoid this becoming essay length might we look to develop a consensus on these generally being a criteria rather than the technicalities just yet? If we can agree on the points broadly we can look into drafting and where they'd be put later on. KaisaL (talk) 23:29, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Examples are fine—added above. Another angle to consider: I suggested starting with a local guideline as a band-aid for now, but the wound is really the larger point about niche topics and notability. This is really a discussion about what constitutes significant coverage for the general notability guideline and whether several sources from a vetted but niche source together constitute notability. This is like a local/regional paper publishing several articles on a local business, or several low-grade indie film magazines with editorial staff publishing on an indie film, or several mobile-only games websites publishing on indie mobile games—what kind of line is being drawn about the types of noteworthy coverage considered in deciding whether a topic is independently notable for its own article, if we are discussing drawing a line at not including articles that have only been covered in The Daily Dot? czar 23:41, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I think we'd be saying any sort of coverage that would meet the usual sort of biography guidelines, we don't have to be too over-specific there, the rest of notability is well-established. KaisaL (talk) 23:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
In my view every single one would come under point two in my list, requiring coverage via reliable sources outside of the eSports community and media. KaisaL (talk) 23:30, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
But if an eSports-specific source isn't reliable in the first place then the conversation would be over before it begins czar 23:41, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
Of course, however it can also be reliable but not enough. Yahoo! has an eSports section, for example; We'd say Yahoo! is reliable generally, but if their coverage is confined to their eSports section and niche coverage of competition outcomes there, that wouldn't necessarily be enough. Also, making these sorts of notability criteria makes it less likely we'll be constantly debating the reliability of sources and relevance of them as well. KaisaL (talk) 23:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I would staunchly oppose the inclusion of any such guideline into NSPORTS. My view from the 2011 RfC hasn't changed, and I'll be happy to quote myself: "Playing video games /= "sport," no matter how much their partisans hunger to be considered Real Athletes ... This recent flurry is by no means the first attempt to claim that video gamers are "athletes" and should be covered by WP:ATHLETE. It won't be the last." Prescient of me.

    That being said, I don't think this proposal does video gamers any favors. It doesn't set up any level of presumptive notability beyond the GNG, and its only stipulations are restrictive. Surely there must be some championships, some level of dollar earnings at which participants can reasonably clear the GNG. Ravenswing 04:54, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I think the last part of your point is a lot of the problem - you're raising championships and dollar earnings, but we really have no precedent or prior discussion, so it's difficult for it to be referenced or used as any sort of criteria. My view is that eSports is in its infancy to such an extent that winning a competition alone should not be enough, but the biggest winners are likely to satisfy the criteria by other means. KaisaL (talk) 12:09, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Fair enough, KaisaL; I agree that there hasn't been. But it seems that most of the editors involved in this discussion aren't video game experts, and people are commenting here less out eagerness to set forth new and accurate criteria than out of grim determination to clear up ongoing messes at AfD. This isn't the way to go about it. Criteria should be developed by people out of the video games WikiProject, they should be well tested to gauge whether those who meet the criteria are likely to meet the GNG, and all that legwork should be done prior to a formal proposal being raised here or anywhere else. Failing partisans doing that work, I'm entirely comfortable with continuing to rely on the GNG. Ravenswing 13:34, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I absolutely agree that the input of experts on eSports and video games is important. However, and having seen this happen in the past, purely having the debate between those especially invested in a field without outside input can lead to a natural bias. I suppose you're right that, if this subject were being discussed actively between those parties now with a specific view to establishing guidelines and recording a consensus, there would be no need for input generally at this stage. I have purely taken on a role here intending to kick start the debate, an advocate for the discussion in a way; This discussion is almost certain to fizzle out for the archives, and my most recently nominated articles for AFD are receiving a response that is going to make it difficult to gauge a consensus on the wider issue from those too. As such, I just hope that the WikiProject and the "video game experts" you refer to actually have this debate before the topic grows much further. I hope this makes sense. KaisaL (talk) 14:30, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I honestly believe that GNG does the job already. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to having this included, so you can count my input as Neutral, but conditional; I insist that there's a tighter leash on this topic, unlike all the previous attempts to fix this particular WikiProject, where people claim they have consensus, but nothing's changed. Implementing these rules may save a number of articles from being deleted, but if it's decided that it's not in favor of the project, I will insist that GNG is followed to the letter. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 08:27, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment This debate, closed a few hours ago, is an interesting case to reference here. It went to a delete, but a brief discussion of the reliability of sources about eSports occurred; Prisencolin listed a number, and The Daily Dot particularly was disputed by the other user. The AFD went to a close, and this was an eSports topic with an above average amount of external coverage. It could be quite easy to nominate a lot more on similar grounds.
The two key problems I see with just using WP:GNG is that the reliability of the sources that most of our eSports content references is disputed, and will continue to be in debates, and secondly that we have passed no community judgement on this coverage of eSports as a whole. Is an article on a sub-section of Yahoo! dedicated to eSports about the outcome of an event or somebody changing a team, for example, enough to give them notability here? Someone will say yes because it's Yahoo!, and others will say no because it's an area dedicated to the subject. For me, at this time, it's akin to saying that The Non-League Paper is enough to qualify a footballer. However what is unfortunate and may doom this debate, sadly, is that we seem to be more caught up on whether eSports is a sport and not on the actual criteria. The only other solution may be to simply start sending articles to AFD, and see what precedent forms. KaisaL (talk) 12:19, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
If anybody wants to know, I talked to the deleting admin, and he's allowed fFREAKZOiD to go to WP:DRV.--Prisencolin (talk) 00:08, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm opposed to currently including any notability guidelines specific to esports at this time, allowing the GNG to do its job, only because the topic is in its infacy and it is impossible to determine if any of these will, the near-majority of the time, lead to GNG-type coverage. Maybe after a few more years we'll be able to make a better assessment, but now is too early. Note that GNG does allow RSes that are not necessarily universally accepted as RSes for any topic and allows subject-specific ones as long as elements like editorial control and fact-checking stand, so while The Daily Dot, for example, I would avoid for some topics, does seem appropriate for the context of eSports. It should be kept in mind that GNG requires significant coverage, and BLP1E still stands, so if all we can do is talk about one win a player has, that's not sufficient for GNG. --MASEM (t) 13:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
The use of The Daily Dot is certainly contentious, as it the use of many of the sites most regularly referenced. I am inclined to test the AFD waters further because Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FREAKAZOiD going to a close - that was an article with references - suggests to me that we have huge swathes of non-notable eSports content. I had thought a better solution might be to establish some guidelines, but if that isn't going to be the case, I don't think it's fair to just let the content stand unchallenged due to a perception that a topic is in its "infancy" (which is anything only serves to promote the notion that individual players and teams shouldn't have articles unless they're somehow notable for major events with reach beyond the eSports niche). KaisaL (talk) 14:00, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I have nominated four eSports articles for AFD: Happy (video gamer), Lustboy, FORG1VEN and Allu (gamer). KaisaL (talk) 14:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
That was a bad close of Freakazoid: 3 deletes, 1 redirect, 2 keeps and a 'neutral'. Given two of the delete arguments were 'this isnt notable outside of egaming' - not a valid argument if it satisfies GNG, and 'doesnt satisfy GNG and per 1e' - when the numerous sources listed indicated both it wasnt a 1e (admittedly they were most notable for a particular event) and that it had general coverage for the area. You have at most, 'no consensus' to delete there given the weight of arguments on both sides. Only in death does duty end (talk) 14:38, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Though I would argue that the Freakazoid afd is a bad example to base the discussion of notability of esports players around given that the only real aspect was the player's role in a bullying incident at an esports competition and less about their skill/player achievements, so the weight of BLP1E readily applies here (justifying the AFD as delete for that purpose). --MASEM (t) 14:46, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
For BLP1E to be valid (and also the reason its not used that often sadly) it has to be the *only* reason for which they are notable. In this case primarily it was because of that incident, however since sources were presented which were unrelated to said event, it cant be said their only claim is because of that. BLP1E is very difficult to use to get stuff deleted precisely because keep voters will generally find some other coverage unrelated to the event, or will claim the event had wider implications etc. I have lost count of the number of times its blatantly ignored over the flimsiest of excuses. Dont get me wrong though, I dont think its a huge issue if the article stays or goes, however the delete closer listed no reasoning and failed to address the arguments either way (generally required in a close-run delete/keep). Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:18, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I suspect if you have issue with the close it would be best to take it up with the closer, Kelapstick. My reference to it was simply to point out how even articles with a bit more to them than niche eSports community coverage are disputed under the criteria we have for GNG and BLP1E, and the way that general criteria are being used only serves to strengthen my view (in my opinion, of course) that we need some more specific guidelines. KaisaL (talk) 19:19, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

The notion that esports related sources should be disqualified from esports related articles is just nonsense. There are plenty of topical publications for whom their topicality doesn't, and shouldn't, disqualify them from reference. There may be particular problems with particular sources, but a blanket disqualification is obtuse at best. So long as they are WP:INDEPENDENT sources, and the only interest they have is publishing content that people want to read (like everyone else), whether they concentrate on a particular area of interest is irrelevant.

Compare disqualifying Billboard, Vibe, or The Rolling Stone from music related articles. ESPN has been discussed, and I think it would be absurd to suggest that coverage by ESPN didn't lend itself to the notability of an athlete. So why should it lend itself less so to that of a player? Even more so to WSJ, USA Today, and the like that other's involved in the conversation have been referenced in.

Remove the mostly if not entirely arbitrary ban on a swath of relevant sources and the proposal says nothing. Oppose on the grounds of capriciousness and inanity. TimothyJosephWood 01:21, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

If it can fill up stadiums, make it's participants millionaires, make mainstream publications like ESPN take it seriously and with it's rising popularity among adolescents that it's only a matter of time before this discussion is obsolete but i strongly think X Games gold winners in e-sports should get the nod. I also think it's worrying that people with admitted ignorance, dismissive attitudes and belief of shock at the existence of the subject get to decide what it and is not notable in a field. Specialist websites are also used in most other cases too like Rolling Stone etc, as a fan of Death Metal sources like Metal Hammer are normally used, we can't expect the New York Times to report on everything can we? GuzzyG (talk) 01:49, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Notability is not based on popularity, though popularity can potentially lead to notable coverage. The field of eSports is clearly notable, but right now, for players, its hard to tell. As a relevant example, reality television is huge and here to stay, with similar prizes to be won and even larger audiences at times, but we don't cover every player or winner unless there is notability beyond their appearance on the show (eg someone like Susan Boyle or Rob Mariano). --MASEM (t) 01:56, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I'd support reality television winners, I made this comment a while ago on this subject and i think it suits it well. "I've noticed there's a alot of subconscious thinking on this encyclopedia that's associated with things that are seen negative in society like reality television, e-sports, porn, beauty pageants, criminals, mass murderers, internet personalities (memes/youtuber), heavier more extreme music (black metal, deathcore etc) and graffiti/street art, you're probably thinking "these are not important/shouldn't be notable/i just don't get it" but that's the point, there' just some notable things in these subjects that's not going to be reported in the mainstream media and where we should start looking in specialist media or we lose our viewers to sub wikis which i think is a waste. (notice there's specific guidelines that block these types of things?) It's a bold prediction but there should honestly be a relook at the qualifying criteria to online entertainment (youtube) and electronic sports as i can only imagine as this current generation gets of old age and is common to this type of thing that it will be the norm. I know some might want to resist that but it's a fact. Yes playing games and being notable at it may be odd to us but i'm sure dunking a ball in a hoop would be odd to some too." i don't think every player should get a article mind you but when it comes to winners of their equivalent of a world championship i do. GuzzyG (talk) 02:11, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
It's not about the topic being "negative". In fact, the success of the WikiProject Pornography to find a way to create encyclopedic bios for an industry that is looked down upon society is a counterpoint. What we have to recognize is that we are limited by what is covered in RS, and many traditional RSes shy away from these topics. There are bound to be more "new media" sources that will come in the future that will meet our RS definitions then, but they aren't there now, and there's no reason to make special cases in terms of subject specific notability guidelines, only to review RSes to show how the GNG can be met. --MASEM (t) 02:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I'd consider The Daily Dot and ESPN a reliable source, would you not agree? I'd also consider winning a medal in a competition like the X Games being notable. I just think that the mission of this site should be to cover notable things in every field, if you win a world championship in a field you get an article if you get nominated for the top award in your field you should qualify. I'm not a fan of sending people to a different place to get information that is source able (The Daily Dot). That's a general site issue though so with these current guidlines i can see that these e-sports players might not pass GNG, i just think that specialist media should be included and encouraged. Then again i have a Excel sheet of over 50, 000 people that should qualify but are bogged down by some ridiculous guideline so it could just be me. GuzzyG (talk) 02:38, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
  • My two cents I've mentioned at WP:VG in the past as well - I think the WP:GNG is sufficient at this point, I think the problem more lies in who is writing and maintaining these eSports articles. Much of the core, experienced editors at WikiProject Video Games just aren't all that interested in it (myself included). As such, many of the articles are being created and maintained by relatively inexperienced editors, or ones with extremely lenient interpretations of the GNG, RS, and significant coverage. I think that if/when more people just get more involved, we'll naturally be able to start weeding out some of the garbage out there. Sergecross73 msg me 12:34, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Support KaisaL's three points, in one exact wording or another. Sources that are just about e-sports are not WP:INDY and do not represent actual notability. Just being in a pro event does not confer notability; it simply means someone is at least marginally competent at what they're doing. I've competed in international pool championships, but no one is going to write an article about me as pool player. It's the same issue as writing articles on minor actors who've appeared in a movie or TV show as a supporting character. "I actually found work in my line of work" != notability.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:27, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
    • How do you conclude that a magazine entirely about eSports is "not independent"? Are they getting paid off somehow by the sports teams? Is a magazine entirely about association football also "not independent"?
      "Independence" means that you have no financial or other conflict of interest – you're making up your own mind, "independent" of the people and businesses that are involved in the subject. Independence means that you're not being paid by your advertisers or owners to give good reviews to certain products or to cover their granddaughters' birthday parties. I suspect that the words you're looking for are "niche" and "potentially indiscriminate". WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:23, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
      • See my comment in previous section for a rundown on the WP:INDY matter. It's an INDY failure for the same reason that the Albuquerque Labyrinth, Legend, Faerie, and Vampire Convention isn't a notable event if it's only covered in websites and zines devoted to fan-gushing about cosplay (even if they have an actual editorial staff), funded entirely by costume and comic book retailers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Apologies for length.

@Masem:, it seems, at least to me, that the actual special case is not allowing these sources to weight in on notability, but trying to establish an arbitrary guideline disqualifying them for no apparent reason. I'm only commenting on the League of Legends players, because I don't really follow CS:GO or Starcraft, but looking at the three recent AfDs for league players that partially started this thread:

  • Rekkles: 13 sources including USA Today and WSJ already in the article. News searches (WP:BEFORE plz) find further mention in Yahoo and ESPN. You can add the team's official site to the list as a primary. This is in addition to what appears to be probably thousands of hits for outlets that cover esports in particular in multiple languages.
  • FORG1VEN: Currently poorly sourced, that's a given, but does include coverage by ESPN. Searches find Yahoo. Official ruling by Riot, which in this case is not simply a game developer, but the officiating organization, so is the esports equivalent of a ruling by FIFA or the NFL. There is substantial corresponding esports coverage pre and post ruling, as well as a good deal of esports coverage regarding his exception from Greek military service.
  • Lustboy, currently a stub. Searches find ESPN coverage of him as a coach, and a half dozen other ESPN articles. Looks like he got passing mention in Forbes. I see a dedicated spotlight bio by Riot. And again, all of this is in addition to scores or more of esports outlet coverage.

So, at least for these three individuals, there seems to be no shortage of sources. If we do need a policy beyond WP:GNG these article are patently bad examples of why. Beyond this, there's been, as far a I can tell, no substantive argument as to why esports outlets should be a special case other than ones that seem to boil down to "I don't particularly care for it," "I'm not familiar," or "I'd really just prefer to get rid of a lot of these articles on people I don't personally recognize." TimothyJosephWood 13:18, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Your comments are kind of what I'm getting at in my comment above. Your examples show an extremely lax interpretation of our notability standards. For example, general consensus is to avoid Forbes "Contributor" written articles, because they're not of the same caliber of actual Forbes staff writers - they're semi-professional bloggers with a history for making mistakes or controversial claims. WP:VG consensus is generally not to use them. Your example of the ESPN source for "Lustboy" is pretty weak too - sure ESPN is a reliable source, but is that really significant coverage for Lustboy himself? Its a very short article, with very little about it in regards to Lustboy (most is about the team, not Lustboy). I think you're setting the bar a bit too low, as are the article creators, and that's why they keep getting sent to AFD... Sergecross73 msg me 13:54, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
The particular forbes contributor writer is John Gaudiosi and according to his self written biography: "I've been covering the video game space for 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, Reuters, CNET, AOL, Wired Magazine, Yahoo!, Entertainment Weekly, NBC, Variety, Maxim, EGM, and ESPN. I serve as EIC of GamerHub.tv and co-founder of GamerHub Content Network, a video game and technology video syndication network that works with Tribune and DBG to syndicate game videos and editorial around the world. I also cover games for outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, IGN, Geek Monthly, CNN, DigitalTrends and PrimaGames."--Prisencolin (talk) 00:27, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Keep in mind that notability is more than just being named in a source -we are looking for significant coverage across multiple sources. Most eSports players are listed as winners, but that's not significant coverage, instead we're looking for more to write about beyond the player's record. (Rekkles' mentions in the USA Today article are just about the minimum that we're looking for). If this is typical of the current type of coverage of players, then there's no way we can asset a subject-specific notability guideline since there's no assurance the GNG can be met on a regular basis by winners. But the GNG itself remains just fine for notability, as long as issues with sourcing and reliable sources (as Sergecross alludes to) are met. --MASEM (t) 14:06, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Timothyjosephwood, I'm going to have to salt your argument about the people here being ignorant to the topic, so they are not in a position to lend input, as I myself was in the upper management of several prominent esports organizations between 2008 to 2014, and I was the person who brought this issue up with Drmies in the first place. ESPN is terrific and reliable source, but most of the articles in question use it as a source to describe teams and not the players themselves and even then, its presence is light. On top of that, the articles up for deletion are being dared to present the content and reliable sources that will bring them up to par, but they've thus far failed to do so. Even upon independently researching the players, there was next to no content about game-changing transitions that unreliable sources could present. I mean, is there anything encyclopedic about FORG1VEN, aside from his business with H2k-Gaming and facing a ban? DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 23:09, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
There's been a real failure on both sides to define exactly what "encyclopedic value" even is. In any case, broader ideas of what does and does not belong on Wikipedia are probably discussion for another time. Consensus is that many athletes and competitors of other types of games belong on Wikipedia, so therefore why can't video game player, provided they have enough coverage in sources.--Prisencolin (talk) 00:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Not a single person has argued that articles on video game players don't belong on Wikipedia. Not a single person has argued that video game players inherently lack encyclopedic value. Ravenswing 03:48, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
DarthBotto has been continuously questioning whether certain types of content are encyclopedic, like here. That's what I'm alluding to.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:45, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
DarthBotto has said that eSports is an appropriate topic for Wikipedia, so I agree with Ravenswing: there's no attempt to argue that even with appropriate significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage in reliable sources, this topic should not be covered. isaacl (talk) 05:33, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
I have been wondering about somekind of "inherent encyclopedic value" concept for quite some time as well, be it for webcomics or Overwatch porn, so I simply decided that if something is described in words by a reliable source, it is likely to be considered interesting and worth including. The same should go for esports-related topics. The biggest issue in my eyes is that there only seems to be a small set of reliable source frequently discussing the topic. That makes it unclear whether every single thing that The Daily Dot writes is worth repeating on Wikipedia. If the same information is provided by multiple reliable sources, its inherent value is much clearer. The field of said sources is irrelevant, as long as the actual staff is different. ~Mable (chat) 08:48, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Some thoughts on the latest developments at AFD

The ongoing AFD debates on a number of players have had some quite back-and-forth discussions about eSports sources, the importance (or lack thereof) of competing in or even winning professional competitions, and whether passing mentions in articles about teams confer notability. There's also been some less savoury stuff about whether those that aren't experts on the topic have a right to an opinion (which is less up for discussion - they very much do per the way Wikipedia works). I am finding that the community is, indeed, torn on a number of questions:

  • What constitutes a reliable source for eSports coverage?
  • How important is competing in a professional team competition?
  • Should professional eSports competitions carry the same weight as other sports (classification disputed) in considerations of notability?
  • Does coverage of a team that mentions a player briefly confer their notability as an individual?
  • How important is generic coverage (firings, hirings, competing, results) in establishing notability on Wikipedia?
  • Is one or two passing mentions via well-established mainstream sources enough to justify an article?
  • What constitutes significant coverage within an acceptable source?

I'm not asking for answers to these questions - consider them hypothetical - but they do give us a feel of the clear split. Furthermore, that split isn't a case of experts versus outsiders, but is happening between contributors to the video gaming WikiProject. The current AFDs are all going to wind up contentious and I think we'll end up with a couple of them going to a no consensus. Some of this is a sign of differing interpretations of WP:GNG, WP:BLP1E, WP:RS and other general Wikipedia guidance. But some of it is a clear sign that a fuller discussion does need to take place about eSports topics - particularly those on individuals - else I wouldn't be surprised to see many more of the articles we have going through the AFD process, and that doesn't seem productive (even if it is appropriate when doubts exist on any topic). KaisaL (talk) 16:19, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

  • For my part, it seems strange to me that some of these elements are in dispute at all (although I do agree they are points of contention in the recent AfDs). I certainly do agree that "eSports" are prominent enough to have notability standards, but those standards do not yet exist, so no argument along the lines of "People who've participated in X competition should be notable!" or "People who've coached X team should be notable!" can be sustained. The GNG is unambiguous that fleeting mentions, however prominent the sources, do not count towards notability. WP:ROUTINE is unambiguous about generic coverage not counting towards notability. Ravenswing 17:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Although there are dissenters, a number of your questions have a current consensus view in the general English Wikipedia community:
    • Coverage of a team does not meet Wikipedia's standards of inclusion for the individual team members.
    • Routine coverage such as you listed does not meet Wikipedia's standards of inclusion.
    • Passing mentions do not consist of significant coverage and do not meet Wikipedia's standards of inclusion.
  • Regarding participation in competitions, although there are various subject-specific guidelines that list these as rules of thumb that suggest an individual meets Wikipedia's standards for inclusion, they do not set a new bar for inclusion. Wikipedia does not use achievements as a standard for inclusion: significant, independent, non-routine, non-promotional secondary coverage from reliable sources is required. The rules of thumb are just indicative that appropriate coverage can be found, given enough time to locate them. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
    • WP:NSPORT, which seems most applicable, does appear to set some variety of "new bar" for the particular areas it covers. Per the guidance, subject must either meet WP:GNG or the criteria of NSPORT. Even if it is officially just a rule of thumb, it is often used as a hard standard in practice. TimothyJosephWood 19:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
      • The first sentence, second paragraph, and third paragraph of the sports notability guidelines page provide details on the relationship with the general notability guideline, as well as the associated frequently asked questions page, which explicitly states that the guidelines do not create new criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia. This has been agreed upon by consensus since the inception of these guidelines and periodically since. If closers of articles for deletion discussion are ignoring this consensus, it's unfortunate. isaacl (talk) 22:46, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
      • It doesn't, really, and that's a misconception editors active on sports WikiProjects have to correct at AfD all too often. The whole purpose of NSPORTS criteria is to set forth achievements by which a player is highly likely to meet the GNG. A bunch of us consistently vote to delete at AfD if a player technically meets a criterion if after diligent search we can't find any coverage in reliable sources. Ravenswing 03:54, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
  • The article Karrigan was just WP:A7 speedily deleted by @Nyttend: after it had been in mainspace for over a month. Perhaps he wants to share his thoughts here?--Prisencolin (talk) 21:22, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
  • This article merely said that he was the "in-game leader" for an e-sports group, mentioned a couple of other groups of which he'd been a member, and noted an immigration hiccup that he'd encountered. It didn't demonstrate any evidence of real-life importance. Of course, A7 shouldn't be used on someone who's demonstrably notable, but it provided no secondary source coverage. This is distinctly not the kind of article that should be retained: barring solid coverage in solid secondary sources, professional video game players should be treated like anyone else. WP:ATHLETE provides for keeping professional sportsmen because they routinely get coverage in secondary sources, and it would be unhelpful to have notability-based deletion discussions for individuals who are almost certain to pass WP:GNG and unhelpful to have the occasional hole for that rare individual who doesn't otherwise pass GNG. Professional video game playing is new enough that there's no parallel to secondary sources such as Category:Baseball books, Category:Boxing books, Category:Association football books, Category:Olympic Games books, etc. Perhaps those sources will start to appear in coming years, but in the absence of extensive sport-wide reference works and other comprehensive publications, presuming these folks to be notable (or even A7-exempt) purely because of their video game accomplishments is fundamentally incompatible with WP:BALL. Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
The comment, A7 shouldn't be used on someone who's demonstrably notable, but it provided no secondary source coverage demonstrates a lack of understanding of A7. A7 says, The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source or does not qualify on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. That's a very low bar. If you're speedy deleting an article based on the lack of secondary sources, that's well outside what A7 allows. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:22, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure the proper procedure to do this but I would like to request the article back with an AfD if needed. The subject is one of the top Counter-Strike players in the world, and just look up "Karrigan" on the web and you'll find many secondary sources about him. Oh and there is coverage of him outside of just the teams, this article found on Sport1, for instance.--Prisencolin (talk) 03:32, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
      • Prisencolin, you may open up a review at Wikipedia:Deletion review. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 07:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
        • I was hoping to work something out with @Nyttend: first.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:09, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
          • So I've decided to submit a DRV (another one...), in case I forget it about it later or am unable to. For the record, for the record though, there are some books about esports, including Game Boys by Michael Kane, Raising the Stakes by TL Taylor, and OpTic Gaming: the Making of Esports Champions by H3CZ, NaDeSHot, Scump et al.--Prisencolin (talk) 23:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
            • Of course, you have every right to do this and I do agree that with this subject, it's necessary to be sure that everything was done correctly. In the meantime, I'd encourage you to lay off the creation of new articles until we have a developed consensus with assertive conclusions. In the time since this very discussion began, you've created nineteen new articles, which unfortunately comes across as an act of defiance. Mind you, I'm a big supporter of esports, but I also want to see the topic held to the same standards as everything else on Wikipedia. I don't believe just adding to the pile is going to help this discussion at all. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 22:51, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
              • Alright I suppose I'll stop for now as a good faith gesture, even though I've been holding myself to a timetable to create the articles that are notable.--Prisencolin (talk) 23:03, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

If any third party observers wish to know, almost every AfD that was brought up during the source of this discussion ( Rekkles, Allu, Lustboy, FORG1VEN), has either been a keep or no consensus. We're still waiting for Happy to close though, and this one looks like it will be a NC. Overall, this should be an indication that most (but certainly not all) of the eSports article currently on the Wiki are probably notable.--Prisencolin (talk) 00:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Much of the OP's list of bullets has been covered well, above, already. It must be said, under no uncertain terms, that competition in a pro event does not by itself make someone notable; it simply makes them competent. Winning a pro event doesn't make someone notable either, unless it's of the nature of a world championship, or national championship in a major world nation (US, UK, etc., not Botswana or Grenada), and a "legit" championship for WP purposes, i.e., and event that is itself notable. Generally, it's all going to come down to coverage in mainstream, independent, reliable sources, so any claimant to notability is liable to be winner of multiple such events.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Proposal 2

This proposal is broadly modeled after WP:NSPORT. Whether you consider this a sport in some broad philosophical sense isn't important, the continuity is in the competitive aspect as it defines notability, as well as the established history of using this type of guideline to determine notability in a range of competitions. Whether a guideline in this area is incorporated into the actual text of NSPORT is equally unimportant.

  • An attempt is made to define esports, and is largely done in an effort to remain as analogous to athletic sports as possible. The goal is to exclude as many newcomers or fads as possible, while providing a criteria where areas generally recognized as legitimate (namely Starcraft, League of Legends, and CS:GO) will easily qualify.
  • Emphasis is given to the exclusivity of high level competition. An appropriate level of competition should rightfully exclude the vast majority of players, which is what lends notability. This policy anchors this to national level tournaments or higher, in lieu of attempting to specify particular tournaments for each game, and this may not be possible in a policy that would have any longevity. My understanding is that most large tournaments take place on the multi-national/regional level, and so this is a standard that will set a bar easily met by established competitions, and yet easily exclude amateur and semi-professional play.
  • Further emphasis is given to continuity of participation. This is a departure from NSPORT, as single event participation in a sufficiently high level event (however unlikely without an extensive history), qualifies individuals in many NSPORT guidelines. This is done to further restrict the potential field and weed out minor players.

I have attempted to be broad enough to apply across games, and specific enough that there will be clear instances where individuals will objectively qualify and not qualify. Improvement can almost certainly be made, but hopefully this is a substantial starting place grounded in similar accepted policy. TimothyJosephWood 19:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Individuals participating in electronic sports/professional video game playing are presumed notable if the following criteria are satisfied:

1. The game being played qualifies as an esport or is otherwise included in high-level, professional competition. Consider the presence of the following:

  • Significant barriers-to-entry: Participation requires an extended successful amateur play, extended successful semi-professional play, corporate sponsorship, unusually exceptional ability, or similar requirements which prevent the vast majority of players from participating on a competitive level.
  • Status as a spectator event: high-level competitive play consistently draws a substantial audience of viewers as a form of entertainment, especially as events which are broadcast live. Competitions are regularly held in venues designed to accommodate a live viewing audience.
  • Codified governing rules, formulated, maintained and enforced by an officiating body
  • Regular national, regional and global tournaments including an escalation of the barrier-to-entry which ensures that even significant portions of those who play the game professionally are not admitted to the highest levels of competition.
  • Regular media coverage of events and players
  • Large consistent base of amateur players. Qualifying games should typically be stable among the most played games globally.

2. The individual has participated substantially on a professional level. Consider the presence of the following:

  • The individual consistently participated and was successful in major competitions on the national, regional or global level.
    • Participation in competitions taking place at lower than a national level may only be considered if it garners coverage comparable to that typically given to a competition taking place at the national level or higher.
    • Participation solely in competitions below the national level, even extensively or highly successfully, will most likely not qualify the individual under this critera, barring extenuating circumstances.
    • Individuals with single or very few instances of participation or achievement should typically not be considered notable unless there is reason to expect their continued high-level participation, such as admittance to an established franchise with an extended contract
    • Individuals with a history of participation in global-level competition will typically meet this standard, regardless of whether they have won at this level.
    • First place finishes do not automatically qualify an individual. Neither do successive lesser place finishes disqualify. Rather, career performance should be considered as a whole to establish the degree of overall success.
  • The individual consistently earned substantial income from sources related to their competitively played game.
  • The individual has achieved other milestones related to their competitive play including:
    • Being admitted to a high-profile franchise
    • Receiving honors related to their participation
    • Was involved in other achievements of a historic value
  • Oppose I'm sorry, but not at all. I admire your passion for eSports and certainly you have been a strong voice in the ongoing AFD debates about this, but it is not football, baseball, hockey or a sport of that ilk. Being successful in "major competitions on the national, regional or global level" is an unthinkable level of inclusion for an area with such limited mainstream coverage, and especially when those major competitions are still broadly so niche and receive only specialist coverage the vast majority of the time. Simple "participation substantially on a professional level" is even more so. As for defining a criteria by "being admitted to a high-profile franchise" and "substantial income from sources", those would be dubious even for a genuinely top-level sport. The only thing I could possibly support in terms of competition level for such a niche field (as it is right now) would be to allow winners of the most significant global competitions to have an article, as we (for example) have for gymnastics. But then those winners are often teams, so the individuals should really be merged to those team articles if their only notability were that competition play. I really just think this is a criteria better suited to an eSports Wikia than Wikipedia. KaisaL (talk) 21:09, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Honestly, besides a rewrite of the main League article last year, I haven't contributed to this area at all prior to this. What about settling on world level competition? This seems to be ubiquitous in NSPORT. I didn't even know badminton had a world championship until today. Is that a minimum that could potentially be agreed upon?
As to the franchise and income clauses, those are meant mainly to be exclusionary...as in...if you don't do this full time we're not even going to have the discussion. They both can be removed. I have no objection to that.
I realize you may be against the topic generally. Like it or not there seems to be hundreds of these articles. I actually started to list them and stopped straight away. I'm not sure that the argument they are inherently less notable than badminton or curling really stands muster. So I'm trying to find some kind of middle ground that can be agreed upon. TimothyJosephWood 21:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Well there's multiple parts: we have the leagues, the seasons, the teams and then the players. For some "major" sports, the players are generally notable based on a small number of games played. For college football, the league, teams and season articles are but not players. For others, it's more of a mix. There's a middle ground on all of them. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:49, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Well do in fact have articles for some current D1 college football players, just not all of them obviously.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:00, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
There may be hundreds of articles, and a large number of them may be of dubious notability. There's four at AFD right now and not one of them is proving to be a clear-cut keep. Badminton and curling are Olympic sports so I would say they're absolutely more notable than eSports at this time. My personal opinion is that a maximum for meeting the notability criteria by way of competition is winning a major individual competition; I wouldn't even say being part of a team that wins a major competition, that should qualify the team and not the player. I would personally say that any guidelines should be focused instead on what constitutes significant coverage for this field, which is what my initial proposals attempted to address. KaisaL (talk) 21:54, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
What of players who play for multiple notable teams? The teams are just franchises, or in Asia and increasingly the US, just glorified extended corporate sponsorships. It's rare cases where any team goes a season without significant roster changes. TimothyJosephWood 22:12, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
No current esports team is really a franchise of (this was a typo) a larger organization, so the particular word should probably be replaced with just "team".--Prisencolin (talk) 22:35, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Samsung Galaxy Blue/White, SK Telecom T1, Jin Air Green Wings, SBENU Sonicboom, ROX Tiger (Guongzhou Huaduo Network Technology, LLC). In the US, TSM and CLG are multi-game esports organizations. None of these are a group of five guys who like playing together and when they decide to stop the team ends. They are franchises proper. TimothyJosephWood 23:25, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
There was a typo, I mean "franchise OF a larger organization" not "franchise OR a larger organization". And by larger organization I'm talking about a league or association like the NFL--Prisencolin (talk) 22:05, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, for bands for example, the members almost never have their own articles unless they've received substantial coverage or achieved significant success separately. But I don't feel that simply playing for two teams is enough in this sport either, it's just not important enough yet. And, I've not really delved into teams but I'm sure there's issues with some of those too. KaisaL (talk) 22:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm not going to be online much for the next few days (I'm sure you'll be delighted by this!) but I think I've made plenty of quite clear arguments by now anyway. I feel consensus on this whole issue is going to be very hard to come by and so we might indeed be debating WP:GNG for years to come at AFD. KaisaL (talk) 22:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Strong Freaking Oppose: That's an impossibly vague set of criteria. What's "substantial income?" What's a "high-profile franchise?" How broadly do you define "honors?" Do consider that over the years, the various SNGs across Wikipedia started out just as loosey-goosey, and keep on being tightened and tightened, as editors hellbent on saving their creations claim that a collegiate "Academic Rookie of the Week" award constitutes a "preeminent honor," or that having had a speaking line in two Oscar-winning movies constitutes a "significant body of work." Ravenswing 04:02, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Starting out with something "loosey goosey" and then tightening was kindof the point. And I would appreciate quite more strong opposes so long as they include specific parts people take issue with. Eliminating the honors is perfectly fine. It is vague and there isn't an obvious way to fix that. The goal of the income portion was to categorically eliminate everyone who may play in local tournaments but don't do is as an actual job. What do you think about language saying that players should have played full time? The focus being on categorical elimination of those who don't, not categorical inclusion of those who do. TimothyJosephWood 10:17, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Consider changing to: "Full-time players: While not all full time players will be notable, those who play competitively on less than a full-time basis will generally not meet notability under this guideline. This includes students who play competitively as part of a scholarship." TimothyJosephWood 12:05, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Here's the issue with that: a recent discussion took umbrage with the NHOCKEY guideline, feeling that a couple of leagues (of which she happened to be a partisan) were undervalued, and that they should be considered top-tier leagues. Our retort was, as all NSPORTS guidelines exist as guides as to what athletes can reliably pass the GNG, that she had to do more than assert that some of the players in those leagues were notable. For those leagues to be in the top tier, it would have to be demonstrated that each and every player in league history who had played so much as a single minute could meet the GNG, and it was provably not remotely the case.

If, therefore, you assert (for the sake of argument) that players on eSports teams in a competitive league should be presumptively notable, it needs to be the case that every player on every team in that league can meet the GNG. Demonstrate proof of that, and I'm perfectly willing to support such a criterion. Ravenswing 22:56, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

  • Oppose "Esports" are a modern enough phenomenon that there is no need for a SNG "presumed notability" either the subject is notable per GNG or not and there in not a significant body of indivduals whose RS are hard to find because they are old, offline etc.

    This should be read by the closer, as a flat opposition to any SNG for "Esports" because SNGs, particularly in sports, are abused to include articles on subjects who do not have nor will ever have coverage which meets GNG. JbhTalk 18:12, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

  • Abstain, this set of guidelines is just too vague to be accepted, as other users have pointed out. It also seems to just uphold the status quo by reiterating Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Any_biography over and over again in different ways. Another concern I have is that there isn't a real definition what "national level tournaments" are, because eSports aren't organized along national borders, unlike football competitions. The closest analogue we have, and what you're probably alluding to are the regionals League of Legends leagues, like the LCS, LCK etc. I'm not opposed to these guidelines per se, but they just way to vague to become an official guideline.--Prisencolin (talk) 22:21, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
As I said originally, I just wanted to provide a more substantial starting off point for discussion about what might be agreed upon. It's vague by design. But there seems a general feeling of "I don't want anything at all" or people that have been unresponsive to attempts at trying to formulate their criticism into actual changes. So it seems this will probably go nowhere on any front. TimothyJosephWood 23:25, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
My thought is that if it's this vague, we might as well not have it at all. Either that or we could just have a notice where that just reaffirms the fact that eSports articles need to meet WP:GNG. There's no need define which games are eSports; we can just list out high profile games like LoL, Dota, SC etc. and any new emerging titles can be added later. --Prisencolin (talk) 23:34, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Mostly oppose. I would prefer something structured like WP:NHOCKEY and WP:NHOCKEY/LA, where we would have a tiered list of esports based on community consensus (e.g. LOL, CS:GO, DOTA II, SC2 etc. as top tier, smaller titles like WOT as a lower tiers) and assess notability for players and teams striclty based on results at top events. For example, community consensus on League may be that a player on a team that reaches the knockout bracket of the League worlds is presumed notable if mentioned in sources covering the event/team result and players on a team that reaches the finals of one of the regional LCS championships is presumed notable if mentioned in sources. For CS:GO, this could be making the finals at a CS:GO Major, for SC2, making the finals of WCS, or winning GSL or Proleague, etc. Of course if a subject could also meet GNG without meeting these standards. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:58, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Prisencolin, Patar knight, Maybe there's a different take away lesson here. Maybe what needs to happen is an esports WikiProject, and after there is a substantial involved community knowledgeable about the subject, we should revisit issues like these. TimothyJosephWood 11:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of creating a place holder page here. I'm gonna poke around and see if I can find someone more versed in setting all this up. TimothyJosephWood 12:12, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm wholly in support of this, but pretty sure you need permission before creating a wikiproject page, so I would move this into userspace for now if I were you.--Prisencolin (talk) 20:45, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I read the rules again and found no such guideline. There is a suggestion though that these pages be kept in userspace until enough editors come aboard.--Prisencolin (talk) 20:48, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Before adding any SNG criteria, we first should ensure that it really does mean that in a vast majority of cases, subjects covered by it would in fact meet the GNG. SNGs are not "alternate criteria" to the GNG, but instead are meant to highlight cases where sufficient coverage would exist in almost all cases. If that's not in fact true here, such an SNG would be deceptive and unhelpful. Let's figure out that before proposing anything. Seraphimblade Talk to me 15:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: Too detailed in some ways, not enough in others, and generally too permissive. In particular, it's missing any requirement of coverage outside of non-WP:INDY gamer mags/sites.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:29, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

    To elaborate: The attempt to forge a 1:1 correspondence between pro-gaming/e-sports and athletic competition is unworkabe. I think some of those points can be retained, but it's too soon in the development of this type of competition to treat it entirely like football, or even billiards/pool/snooker. The "high barrier to entry" stuff is good, the venue-related requirements not so much; it's entirely likely that many events will be "attended" mostly by remote audiences, for example. A principal stumbling block is that this cannot be tied to specific games, because that's a rapidly moving target. Someone is a notable pro gamer because either a) they win frequently, across many events and are just so legendary that mainstream RS write about them (in-depth), or b) there's something compelling about their story (e.g. made a huge pile of money in a short time, whatever) and again attracted serious mainstream press coverage, or were the focus of a serious book or documentary or something. It might actually be better to approach them like artists rather than sportspeople in some ways, and I would also look to how we figure notability for pro poker players (especially), "reality" and game show contestants (almost as much), and pro chess players (to some extent) as models for some other aspects of how to approach this mess.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:29, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Strongly oppose - This is extremely vague. Ethanlu121 (talk) 17:51, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposal 3

I've noticed that the articles that meet these criteria seem to always have significant coverage in sources. Note that the dates are arbitrary cutoffs that nonetheless seem to reflect the existence of sourcing. Also note that this list assumes the current eSports afds will pass, otherwise it may have to become more restrictive:

Individuals participating in electronic sports/professional video game playing are presumed notable if the following criteria are satisfied:

Teams[1]

Players

  • Dota 2
    • Winning The International

Competitions

  • Dota 2
    • Dota 2 Majors + TI
    • ESL One

Notes

  1. ^ refers organization pages, not sure about standalone articles about an individual squad like Fnatic (Dota 2)
  2. ^ this is a logical one, but it seems that six winners of the OSL currently don't have pages
  3. ^ the paper trail of secondary sources seems to run out after Summer 2013, the NA LCS Summer 2013 was only added because it was discussed in Playboy

Discussion (esports)

  • I agree with what @Seraphimblade just said:

    Before adding any SNG criteria, we first should ensure that it really does mean that in a vast majority of cases, subjects covered by it would in fact meet the GNG. SNGs are not "alternate criteria" to the GNG, but instead are meant to highlight cases where sufficient coverage would exist in almost all cases. If that's not in fact true here, such an SNG would be deceptive and unhelpful. Let's figure out that before proposing anything.

    This is what you would need to show before this could even be considered. czar 06:33, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • That makes little sense, except maybe you think that GNG means that we have the material to write an article, but that isn't necessarily the case.  If Wikipedians agree that a criteria shows that the topic has attracted the attention of the world, that suggests that the world wants a WP:Verifiable article about the topic.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:57, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Without any explanation, these all look rather...arbitrary. This is all far less clear or clean-cut than, for example, how in the music world, there's the argument that "if a song charted, its likely to have received the significant coverage to meet the GNG. I'd ask how you determined some of these criteria (Why top 4/8/X and not other numbers? Why is $1 million a cutoff point?) but I also agree with Czar/Seraphimblade's notion above, and it may be better to address that first (and my question would probably take a lot of research/explanation, and may well be rendered moot by SB's concern.) Sergecross73 msg me 16:04, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Support – A precise set of criteria will avoid protracted edit wars and pissing contests, saving lots of editor hours and headaches. Sure, criteria can and will change, and there will be arguable exceptions, but this proposal looks like a solid start to bring order and quiet. — JFG talk 17:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per JFG. For CS:GO, and Starcraft these are all high selective criteria that would only capture the absolute best teams and players that would all meet WP:BASIC if not WP:GNG, and based on my limited knowledge of LOL and DOTA 2, it seems similarly highly restrictive. No comment about the fighting games, but it always can be refined and tweaked if need be. In general terms, this is the kind of SNG I would support. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:43, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment I can hold no opinion as I am under WP:COI. But the current criteria for League players does not include World Championship winning players? I was wondering if this was an oversight or intentional. Thank you, Richard Yetalk 04:33, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
    • Just winning Lol worlds might not make a player notable, as the players Shushei, LaMiaZeaLoT, and Mellisan from fnatic's season 1 worlds team don't seem to pass WP:1E, and some of the Season 2 Taipei Assassins playera are iffy. That being said I think all players post Season 3 are notable so I'll change it.--Prisencolin (talk) 18:31, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: This is a mix of WP:RECENTISM and WP:POV, i.e. "if it involves these current games that I happen to like, then it's notable". Um, no.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:31, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
    This is a bizarre oppose.The very nature of Esports and reliable reporting on esports is "recent". An esports SNG cannot be like the hockey notability guidelines I linked above that include provisions for defunct leagues without compromising its ability to guarantee that people who meet it would also meet BASIC/GNG. For older esports teams, events, and players, not having much if any reliable sources is the norm, not the exception (e.g. how mainstream Brood War got in Korea)). All the games listed here are basically among the Esports that have the most viewers, most prize money, most players, most cultural significance, and most importantly most coverage from reliable sources. Tweaks can be made in regards to what games should belong (e.g. Maybe Hearthstone should be on the list), but this is not some motley collection of games that one or a few users like, it's an accurate reception of what games are most likely to have their top players meet the GNG. If you do some research on largest, most-watched esports, these are the games that would appear.-- Patar knight - chat/contributions 04:36, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
    "I don't understand your point" != "your point is bizarre". Obviously "recent" is relative and contextual. All of human existence is "recent" on a long enough scale, and what happened yesterday rather than within the hour is not, on another. I don't think anyone else will have trouble getting my meaning.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 
  • The utility of these criteria are impossible to evaluate unless you're intimately familiar with the subject and the sources. Have you considered not doing this at this time, and instead saying something like "eSports people are presumptively notable if they meet the WP:GNG, which typically is the case for people who meet these criteria:"? It might be useful to give examples of the best reliable sources, and to explain what might be typical (e.g., if you could quantify "significant coverage" as "at least one article should have 500 words or more about the person, not just about gameplay", or something like that). WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:30, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
    • This sounds like a good idea too, so I'll look into it. Anyways, the primary reason I decided to make this specific SNG is because of the dissatisfaction with Proposal 2, which was criticized for being too vague. Are there any other guidelines like this based on article length?--Prisencolin (talk) 05:50, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Support – I think this is a very selective list of criteria and don't think that the one oppose by User:SMcCandlish makes very much sense. Esports has only become popular recently, and so it's not like this user is saying "Well, I know there is a group of people playing Super Mario 64 competitively but I hate that game with a fiery passion and so purely out of spite I'm going to leave it off the list!" I think that if you compare it to other sports-related notability guidelines that it's not a different kind of list, it just happens to cover a lot more ground than the guideline for gymnasts, for example, because like the broader sports guideline itself it is essentially covering a bunch of different sports. Nobody has provided any detailed substantive disagreement with this proposal, aside from one person who thinks it's too stringent. Personally I think this proposal is much better than Proposal 2 because it will keep people from arguing about the details, which after all is the point of notability guidelines. All things considered, I'd have to say that most of the opposition to this idea (rather than this particular proposal, which doesn't seem to have attracted too many eyeballs) is reflective of a lack of knowledge about esports (we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether esports are technically a "sport," but regardless people are competing in them for sizable amounts of money in front of large audiences, which seems notable to me!), not a lack of appropriateness of having a guideline to clear up these recurring notability issues. AgnosticAphid talk 23:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
    • Here is the crux of the problem with this and similar proposals: "people are competing in them for sizable amounts of money in front of large audiences, which seems notable to me!" Competing, for money, with an audience has nothing whatsoever to do with WP:Notability, which is, and only is, about non-trivial coverage in multiple, reliable sources independent of the subject-matter. That it totally misses the point is the most substantive possible objection to this proposal, and no one need ever go into line-by-line details about it, because they've all missed the boat. I could offer a huge prize at a farting competition, and you can create a website and zine about farting competitions, and 10,000 people can show up to watch this farting competition, but if mainstream publications do not write in detail about the farting competition and its champion farters, nothing about this stuff would be notable. Notability does not magically accrue just because money changes hands, people show up, and some individuals devote a lot of time and effort to their involvement in whatever it is. Here's a more concrete example: There are many more professional dog walkers than there are pro gamers, and as a micro-industry, far more money changes hands for pro dog walking than pro gaming, and the activity involves a far larger number of people in the general population as customers/audience, and far more people are aware of the existence of pro dog walkers than of pro gamers. We have Dog walking#Professional dog walkers, and given enough development we could have that section split off into a separate article. We even have an article, Jim Buck, on a pro dog walker, because mainstream reliable sources have written about this person in depth. What we do not have is 100+ articles on dog walkers, despite the fact that Dog Fancy and other specialist publications that are not independent of the subject, regularly interview, mention, or have articles by pro dog walkers. In short, the world as a whole doesn't give a damn about dog walkers as professionals, just like it doesn't give a damn about videogamers as professionals. To the limited extent pro gaming is attracting mainstream press coverage, we already have the articles (mostly about competitions, not individual competitors) that can be supported by that low level of in-depth coverage. The idea that if someone is on a team invited to The International to compete in Dota 2 they're automatically notable, which is exactly what this proposal says, is absurd, is not supportable by policy, and is in fact an attempt to exempt videogamers from WP:N and WP:GNG.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:07, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
      • Well, it's certainly true that I made my point awkwardly. And you're also certainly right that the fact that these people compete in giant events for lots of money in front of big audiences doesn't itself inherently make them notable. However, I think the underlying point I am making still stands. If you go to ESPN's esports site, you'll find a whole boatload of articles written just within the past few days not just about big esports events, but also about various competitors in those events. (I was going to list a sample, but there are so many it's kind of silly.) You might think that esports is trivial and pointless and that nobody cares about people who compete in esports, but that's a point of view, and it's really not an accurate one; I think that ESPN's website is pretty unimpeachable as far as reliable mainstream coverage goes. Your analogy to professional dog-walkers is inapt. I think that I was correct to say that there is room in Wikipedia for detailed and specific notability guidance relating to esports, just as there is for (for example) boxing (WP:NBOX), which says boxers are "presumed notable" if they have competed at specified classes of events or have attained specified rankings by specified organizations. I stand by my conclusion that nobody has said anything to the contrary that makes any real sense. AgnosticAphid talk 20:23, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
      • I'd like to add that there are more apt comparisons than WP:NBOX, I just came up with that off the top of my head. A more apt analogy would be something like WP:NGOLF, which is more focused around notability-via-competition. AgnosticAphid talk 20:37, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm going to oppose each and every one of these categorically since none are based in WP:N or WP:GNG, and a WP:SNG cannot override the former. This is also premature. Let AFD hash on each article--the number of these articles, much less the number of these articles AFDd, isn't going to cause grief at AFD. --Izno (talk) 11:22, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
    • From my experience browsing the web for reliable eSports coverage, these guidelines seem to best fit the scope of reliable coverage on eSports at the present. Go ahead and list some pages at afd if you disagree.--Prisencolin (talk) 02:15, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
      • The operative phrase in your comment is at the present. One of my points is that the present is premature. This is the more minor of my multiple points: WP:GNG serves everyone pretty gosh-darn well, and hyper-specific guidelines don't. --Izno (talk) 11:14, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
        • I mean, if it meets GNG now, then it just be notable. Several esports tournaments have declines in prominence throughout the years, if this happens we can change the SNG by clarifying that only participants in a tournament from certain years are notable.--Prisencolin (talk) 19:26, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose. WP:GNG or nothing. There's no compelling reason why we would refuse to accept an article if the subject passes GNG, nor has one been presented why we would want an article for which no reliable sources exist. The particular category a subject belongs to is irrelevant. --Jayron32 12:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I've been away on vacation and break, but I've thought things over. I say that we stick to GNG and what I mean by that is that we stick the hell out of GNG to every last article of this topic and make sure that every one that is left standing actually belongs on Wikipedia. DARTHBOTTO talk•cont 05:44, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Manchester City sign first esports player

Here, for information purposes. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:25, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Sources that cover eSports players?

Before we can write an SNG, we need to examine a few examples of reliable independent sources that typically cover eSports players. Once we see what things the sources actually take note of, then we will have a better idea a) whether we should create an SNG, and b) if so, what things we should include as criteria in an SNG. Blueboar (talk) 19:14, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I didn't realize this conversation was still ongoing. I'll just say this re sourcing for what it's worth. A theme on the earlier AfDs seemed to be that outlets which cover esports predominately or entirely are somehow less reliable as such. As I argued at AfD, I don't think this holds water. TimothyJosephWood 12:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, I also agree that we can't institute a blanket ban on source that predominantly cover the subject. That seems completely stupid. That's like saying "Sources that predominantly cover chemistry, like Journal of the American Chemical Society, cannot be considered reliable sources about Chemistry." Instead, we should be judging reliability in the context of the subject; that is what esports sources have the hallmarks of reliability, as laid out at WP:RS. --Jayron32 12:32, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

As this search shows, we have around 4900 links to Google Translate's versions of non-English web pages, mostly in citations, in page sources. (This does not include links that are reasonably included in subtemplates of {{Expand language}}, like {{Expand Bulgarian}}).

I've recently removed one instance, in a citation, here. There was absolutely no need for that. We don't do it for the vast majority of our non-English sources. Likewise, here's a removal from an external links section. We should not, I'd argue, be pushing people to one online service, when they may prefer another; or prefer to use a local app, or indeed be able to read the language concerned.

How should we deal with this?

[My post here repeats points I made at TfD.]

Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:18, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Both in citations and external link sections, we should not be promoting a particular machine translation service, nor need we assume that our readers are unable to read other languages (provided that we indicate the non-English language with {{link language}}). Graham (talk) 18:37, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree with both Andy Mabbett and Graham11. However, if the link appears in a citation and the author of the Wikipedia page relied upon Google's translation to substantiate a claim in a Wikipedia article (or if the article quotes google's translation), then editors should indicate (in the citation) that they are relying upon google's translation. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 18:57, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Surely, Google translate is not a reliable source and should not be "relied upon"? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:42, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. A human editor can rely upon whatever tool they want to make a source readable to them, but WP's own article WP:Verifiability relies upon what the real source actually says (i.e., as parsed by a fluent reader). WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT should not be misinterpreted as requiring us to do something like misusing the |via= parameter of the cite templates to indicate that we used Systran or Google Translate on our end to read and understand the source, any more that we'd expect a vision impaired users to list the JAWS screen reader in a citation as a tool that helped them read and understand a source, or I would list Firefox as how I read the source. What we're supposed to do is identify the actual publisher of the source and, if there is one, an intermediary republisher/redistributor of it (like Project Gutenberg, Google Books, or a journal article aggregation gateway like PubMed). WP doesn't cite what software we piped an online source through for our own temporary use. It has nothing to do with what we're linking to (or otherwise identifying, e.g. with an ISBN or DOI) as the cited source.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
I agree entirely that we should not be linking to Google Translate, for the reasons noted above. It's irrelevant how the original editor translated the source; all that matters is providing access to the original for others to evaluate. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

As far as External links go, WP:NONENGEL says English content is preferred over non-English. I have to admit, I thought there was much more. This is definitely an accessibility problem for External links. I think it would be extremely helpful to include a working translation for any link to non-English content. This applies to references as well for verifiction. --Ronz (talk) 20:19, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I think it is an assumption to say that they are relying on machine translation, a fluent contributor could have just as likely added a translation link as a convenience for readers. The reason for the link is unknown without asking the contributor. Moreover, the lack of a translation link in an article does not exclude the possibility that machine translation was used and just not mentioned.
Separately, I think this kind of linking is not "promoting a particular machine translation service" anymore than a contributor choosing to add a Google Books link, instead of a HathiTrust link or an Internet Archive link to the same book, is promoting Google Books – it is, in my opinion, up to the contributor to decide what they contribute and for others to improve the contribution if they want to. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:22, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I disagree that a convenience link to Google books is the same as all linking to to (google) machine translation. The issue with linking to machine translations is not just that a particular translation engine might be promoted, but more importantly that currently machine translations are still shitty and unreliable as sources. The latter is the important difference to Google books which provides access to a reliable sources. Moreover the main reason for linking to Google books are the cases where no digital copies are available in non-commercial archives.
So personally I don't have issues with linking to a preview on Google books if no other online copy is available, but i do have an issue with linking to any translation engine (including google):--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:10, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Aye; a common reason to provide a GBooks link is that the work is available there but not on Project Gutenberg, etc. Another reason is that you found a particular items (e.g. a statement as a specific page) via a Google Books search, and do not have the actual book in-hand; in such a case WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT indicates we should provide a proper cite to the real book, but indicate one way or another (e.g. with a |url= to the GBooks search hit, and a |via=[[Google Books]]) that we were working from a digitized copy via GBooks.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
If you used the Google Books resource as the source for the information, then link to it; but if you used a paper copy of the book, use an ISBN or OCLC link, not a Google Books link. I remember seeing a couple of cases where the ISBN for a book in a citation was different from that on a linked Google Book instance because the two were different editions; that's a completely wrong way to write a citation. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:41, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Agreed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Google is just too convenient. I link to Google Books unless I consciously decide not to. The machine translations may be shitty but, again, Google Chrome, a browser with many users, is too convenient with a right click machine translation link – the translation happens whether or not the link is in Wikipedia or in the browser. The reader determines whether or not that translation is helpful. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 01:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
That's beside the point. The fact that you can have Chrome auto-translate for you has nothing to do with whether promote Google Translate in citation is legitimate, nor with reasons to use Google Books URLs. There's no connection between these things other than Google has something to do with them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

This is something currently up at meta's glbal blacklist. There are more sides to this coin - the links can and have been abused (blacklist evasion). These links should be blacklisted just for that reason, just like the google.com/url links. But that is besides the point.

Outside of the templated use, these links should not be used. I ran recently into a reference that linked me to the google translation of an external site. For me it raised several questions: 1) did the editor use the Google translation as the source, if they link to the translation, it suggests that they did not have command original language, and, knowing machine translations tend to be bad, the attribution may be wrong; 2) this is the English wikipedia, but the writer is not to decide to tell me which languages to translate for me. I had, in the earlier example, sufficient command in the original language to see whether the attribution was right. I think that linking to the original source overrules the preference to link to English language content. I don't buy the convenience story either, machine translations tend to be bad, and seen that my mother tongue is not English, maybe I want another translation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:24, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

  • We should definitely never be linking directly to any machine translation as the source, since it is not the source, it's someone's temporary, munged copy of the source filtered for their personal needs as a reader. We should also not be adding "convenience links" to machine translations that overwhelmingly market for no one but Google. If consensus arises that providing convenience translation links, somehow, is something we should do, this should be handled the way we already handle ISBNs: by linking to and building on-the-fly a special page that provides many options (in this case, to all the free online translation services we know of, rather than to all the ISBN lookup services we know of). Those of us who use machine translation frequently know to use multiple such services, because (except for very, very simple and short things) they all produced radically different results, which must be contrasted to get a sense of what the original probably actually is saying. It's not just non-neutral and spammy to shunt everyone to Google Translate, it can be directly misleading, suggesting that WP endorses and holds to be correct the gibberish that that particular translation bot spews out.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:47, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
Blacklist evasion through a proxy, like Google translate, could be reduced or eliminated by improving URL scanning for the undesirable or blacklisted strings located not at the beginning of the URL. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 14:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: I agree with you that "should be handled the way we already handle ISBNs". It seems the only reason for this discussion is because the target translator is Google – there is no mention of any other site in the discussion. A discussion about a convenience link to a translation of a properly cited source has nothing to do with the objective accuracy of the translation or the subjective benefit a user gets by reading it. {{Machinetranslate}} provides more than just a Google link without the weight of a separate page. Of course it should not be used as the source for the content added to article but contributors will do that and not indicate that they ever did. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 14:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
"It seems the only reason for this discussion is because the target translator is Google" Not in the least. I'm in the process of reviewing all our external link templates, and had I found one for a different translation service I would have sent that for TfD. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:13, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
P.S. In fact, we have just 152 links to www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from translations; and 330 using http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url - the latter site is defunct, so they don't work. I have just amended {{Machinetranslate}}, of which I was not previously aware, so that it points to Bing, not BabelFish; however that has only 42 trabnsclsuions.. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:32, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
@Beetstra: we assume WP:GOODFAITH and have no knowledge if an "editor use[d] the Google translation as the source" unless we ask. A convenience link in an English wikipedia article to a translation of a foreign language reference is reasonable and logical – the foreign language reference is the source and it never affects "the preference to link to English language content" because the linked reference is in a foreign language, i.e. two links: one to the foreign language reference in the citation and another convenience link to a translation. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 14:19, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
@BoBoMisiu: - I assume good faith in that they used the original, so that should be linked, not the translation. I still disagree with the 'convenience', a lot of English speaking people do not have English as their primary language - not any convenience .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:21, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
This could be handled, for logged in users, with a class; i.e., the ability to hide the template if you don't want to see it. I'd like to see {{Machinetranslate}} offer more options than Google and Microsoft.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:35, 20 August 2016 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: This should then be handled, for logged in users, with a script/gadget that adds a translate link of the user's choice (google, yahoo, microsofttranslate, babel, ..., or all) to all external links (set to autodetect source language) for editors who want such a convenience link. For the link to be a convenience, you'd have to offer multiple translation sites for every non-English link as different translation engines give different outputs of different quality, and on site A (language A) google may be 'good enough', it may be totally useless on site B (language B), and yahoo may be a better choice in the latter, or a 'language B based translation engine'. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:48, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
@Beetstra: Exactly what I was thinking.! I did a bit of work on the template today to un-break it (to the extent possible - MS/Bing Translator cannot handle any "https" address, for example), and make it more sensible. I've installed the CSS classes in it and in {{Google translate}}: a general class manchinetrans, and coded language-specific classes based on the source an destination language parameters, in the form machinetrans_to_{{{foo}}} an machinetrans_from_{{{bar}}}, so you can address the entire thing, or only when a specific language is involved. I guess it could also have machinetrans_to_from_{{{foo}}}_{{{bar}}} and vice versa. Whatever people want; it's easy and painless to change at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:43, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm opposed to a convenience link in an English wikipedia [sic] article to a translation of a foreign language reference - because we have no way to verify the quality of the translation. When we talk about external links to English-language content, we're talking about human-written content in English, not a machine-translation of some other language. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:17, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

In fact, to quote one of these translations: The great rejection that generated in the Colombian public opinion the shooting death Hippo Pepe has made ​​hunting and breeding female is temporarily suspended. (from this translation). Hunting and breeding females? Killing an animal like this can not like anyone Did you mean "No one can like killing an animal like this"? Probably, but I can't be sure. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:42, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
  • As per WP:RS, "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process."  [1] is an example of where I've included a quote from Google translate.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:24, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
    • There's a difference between quoting a small piece of a machine translation (where you take personal responsibility for its accuracy and readability) and linking to a machine translation (where, for all you know, they may change their algorithms the day after you linked there, resulting in sentences like the ones I quoted). A machine translation is never a reliable source, but if you are willing to state that a certain sentence is a good translation of an original reliable source, quote the sentence and link to the source. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:32, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

How should we deal with this?

The question in my OP was "How should we deal with this?". Does anyone have any practical suggestions? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:15, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Deprecate every instance of a Google Translate link when used as a reference. Since Google change their algorithm literally every few minutes, there's no way of verifying that what any given reader will see when they click on a link is what the person inserting the link saw, so I can't see how it would ever be appropriate for use as a reference. ‑ Iridescent 12:19, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Certainly they should not be used as references.
However the case in question used Google Translate as a convenience link, something like this:
It seems to me that we cannot simply say that "people know where to find Google translate" and at the same time "people do not know that Google translate may be inaccurate".
We can perhasp label these items clearly as "Machine translations".
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 26 August 2016 (UTC).

Guidelines on links to user pages in article space

Could someone remind me where we keep the guidance on when to link to a user page or credit a user within an article, for example a caption to a picture? Many thanks, Hiding T 08:22, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

For image captions specifically, WP:CREDITS (and WP:WATERMARK is closely related). —Cryptic 08:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
This has always bothered me in the context of NFC. We really should be giving such copyright holders credit wherever the content is used, not just on a click-through page that most readers will never see. postdlf (talk) 15:32, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
For compatibly licensed or public domain text, WP:FREECOPYING. For copying text within Wikipedia (or from other Wikimedia projects), WP:COPYWITHIN. - Evad37 [talk] 02:57, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Page creator should be allowed to use fair use image for BLP

Some articles about living people which were created around 2007, don't have any free image and those articles lack images. Many articles about sportsperson, cinematographers, scientists, doctors, professors, archaeologists, soldiers, lack images.

Wikipedia's fair use image policy doesn't apply for living people.

I want this policy to change, as there is no guarantee that less popular people will have a free image. We have to wait for eons; someone will take snap with their camera and upload the image at Wikimedia commons as free license.

If any free image is available in near future, then the image will be deleted.

There will be "picture edit war", if this policy is passed. That's why only the article creator or the editor who took the article to GA/FA level should have the right to upload fair use image at biographies of living people.

Please be WP:BOLD and WP:IAR and support this. --Marvellous Spider-Man 03:11, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

The disallowance of using non-free images of living persons extends from the Foundation, not en.wiki policy. You'd have to convince the Foundation to change their stance on non-free images for this to happen. --MASEM (t) 03:15, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Two reasons to oppose this, even ignoring the foundation issues. 1) "It's too hard" is not a reason to violate the "free" aspect of Wikipedia's charter. When we say "free" we mean both free as in free beer and free as in free speech (that is, Wikipedia is both without cost to use, and more importantly for our discussion, unencumbered by restrictions for down-stream users). Every non-free image in Wikipedia hurts the ability of down-stream users to continue to use the encyclopedia, and for that very reason, "fair use rationales" should be extremely limited. 2) The requirement placed on putting the restriction to "article creators" institutes a whole lot of WP:OWN issues that I am also not comfortable with, as it violates Wikipedias open collaboration model. --Jayron32 14:18, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, though sadly we see "page creator" and "primary editor(s)" being accorded special rights (or proposals to do the same) in an increasing number of discussions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
Typically, an unfree photo of a BLP fits the first issue at WP:FREER - namely, it could be replaced by a free version that has the same effect. If you can reasonably demonstrate that, in a specific case, there is no way that it could (such as a person who, due to a medical condition, is now externally deformed), then you could use an unfree image. To quote Wikipedia:Non-free content: Non-free content should not be used when a freely licensed file that serves the same purpose can reasonably be expected to be uploaded, as is the case for almost all portraits of living people. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:39, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
That's why EVERY case needs to have INDIVIDUAL rationales that are SPECIFIC to each fair use; there is no such thing as a "blanket fair-use exemption". There have been cases of fair-use images being used in BLPs, but each one has a very specific rationale tailored to the one use, and the rationale is never "I don't feel like waiting for someone to take a picture." For example File:JD Salinger.jpg was included in his article when he was alive, because it was literally the only picture known to exist of him; he was a well-documented recluse and consensus had been reached that this one usage was allowed in this one article because of the particulars of Salinger's life. Public figures who frequently have appeared in public should never be allowed under "fair use", with the exception of those who died before widespread copyleft licenses. --Jayron32 15:44, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
It hasn't been mentioned much above, but I strongly oppose any new policy that will give any sort of exclusivity of article content to specific editors only, please see the Wikipedia:Ownership of content policy for more rationales on this topic. — xaosflux Talk 17:23, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
It is undoubtedly the case that many valid fair use images could be added. The question arises therefore whether they should be added. The arguments against are broadly:
  • it discourages searching for, or creating free images.
  • it's too hard to police.
  • unfree is against the spirit of WP and is to be used only as a last resort.
All these have some merit, but I have never found them, even in combination, totally convincing.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:47, 26 August 2016 (UTC).
The basic principle: unfree images can only be used when it's highly unlikely that a free image would ever be created. With living people, it's generally not the case that such images could not be created; however, this issue has nothing to do with our Living People policy, and exceptions can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis - and my example, of a person with external deformation, would be a perfect example of that. It's the uploader's responsibility to convince the community that, in that specific case, no such image could be created. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:09, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
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