Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1917 Temple Owls football team

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Withdrawn as there is agreement in the discussion to merge this (and other articles) to an article about the decade instead. Fram (talk) 08:15, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1917 Temple Owls football team

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Lacks notability. No independent sources available (in the article or online). This "season" consists of one game played between the senior team and junior team of this college. The template on the right side ("1917 Eastern college football independents records") doesn't even mention the team, for what it's worth. Fram (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of American football-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions. Fram (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This article was created less than eight hours ago and is a work in progress. I will be expanding it today. It concerns the Temple Owls football program which is a Division I FBS program. Cbl62 (talk) 15:16, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- It is a Division I FBS program now. It was an independent college program then, playing one game against a team from the same college. Notability is not inherited, and the notability of the current program and team doesn't automatically make the older team notable. As for "work in progress", you created more than 20 such "teams" articles today alone, 17 or so yesterday, 8 the day before this, ... It doesn't look as if these are "works in progress", these are rapid-fire mass creations, and waiting until some uncertain date when you may continue editing them is not really how we normally treat new pages. Fram (talk) 15:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Division I FBS programs receive extensive coverage and interest both for their current seasons and for their histories. Cbl62 (talk) 16:06, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Then you should have no problem showing us that "extensive coverage" of the 1917 season, and this can soon be closed. Fram (talk) 16:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Working at it as we speak! Cbl62 (talk) 16:16, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: I respect your opinion but hope you will reconsider your position on this one. Yesterday, I began a process of improving Wikipedia's coverage of the Temple Owls football program. Additional articles will be rolled out today with incremental efforts to improve them in the days ahead. Cheers. Cbl62 (talk) 20:28, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Temple Owls football#Early history per WP:NSEASONS. The team played one game, against what was basically it's JV squad. Nothing significant here, and Temple wasn't an early football history power. A sentence stating that the 1917 season was mostly cancelled can be added to the Temple Owls football page if desired. Hog Farm (talk) 15:42, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I have reformulated the article to cover Temple football during World War I. This includes the 1917 season in which six games were forfeited due to manpower shortages caused by the war and the four following seasons in which the program did not field a team. This is a reasonable approach as part of the WikiProject College Football's efforts to build out our historic coverage of Division I FBS (i.e., highest level) football programs. I have added some sourcing including this from the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. For an article that is now 9 hours old, this is taking good shape IMO and should be saved. Cbl62 (talk) 18:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep re-purposed article per Cbl62. Jweiss11 (talk) 18:19, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the re-purposed article per Cbl62's work. Ejgreen77 (talk) 18:31, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per excellent work, as per usual, by Cbl62. PCN02WPS (talk | contribs) 19:50, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the new article. The topic of Temple football in WW1 appears to be notable, and it's much improved over the single-season article. Hog Farm (talk) 01:48, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is very bad form to simply repurpose and retitle an article during an AfD, "While there is no prohibition against moving an article while an AfD or deletion review discussion is in progress, editors considering doing so should realize such a move can confuse the discussion greatly, can preempt a closing decision, can make the discussion difficult to track, and can lead to inconsistencies when using semi-automated closing scripts." (WP:AFDEQ). Furthermore, there are no independent sources actually discussing this topic either. Looking at the 8 sources now in the article, we have four primary sources (the "2019 Temple Owls Football Media Guide" and "Temple University: 125 Years of Service to Philadelphia, the Nation, and the World." are both published by Temple University, and both used twice), two local articles from 1917 which were already present in the article before it was repurposed anyway, (one announcing the first annulation, and one announcing the complete end of the never-started season), an article on the coach with one line about Temple[1], again about 1917 only, and another article, again about the coach, again with one line about Temple in 1917[2].
Basically, there is nothing more about Temple in 1917 than was here at the start of the AfD, and nothing at all about Temple in 1918-1922, which is the supposed added scope of this article. I have no idea what the "excellent work" is that others see here, I have no idea where the promised "extensive coverage" is supposed to be as it is still completely missing, and the again repeated "Division I" red herring is still not applicable per our notability rules. I have no idea why these cosmetic changes have convinced the others, but basically this still is an empty box pretending to be a well-sourced article, but without a single independent source about the years after 1917, and local routine coverage or extremely passing mentions for 1917. Fram (talk) 07:19, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Season articles for top-level schools in college football are typically kept (see discussion at essay WP:CFBSEASON). Sometimes season articles are grouped based on logical arrangements such as by coach, by decade, or by a noteworthy event. This article is an example of an excellent start and I look forward to watching its further development. But even as it stands now, it seems to be a good pass of WP:GNG.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Merge I had originally typed keep but then read Fram's comment above and then went back and re-checked things. I'm not actually sure this season is notable in spite of the sourcing - hell, it wasn't even played! There's only really one article on the season itself. This'll probably be incorrectly kept based on the discussion but there's a better WP:ATD available to us which would immediately improve the encyclopaedia. Per the improvement and looking at surrounding seasons, I'd take this a step further and make a 1910s decade-based article for the Temple football team. We get to keep the improved bits of this article, which are good, but unfortunately don't show notability. You could easily send 1915 and 1916 to the AfD chopper yesterday, but the 1914 article looks good. Combining all four of these would be an easy keep. Maybe just keep this for now and then merge? SportingFlyer T·C 01:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SportingFlyer: Funny you say that, I was having the same thought earlier today. Having dug deeper on the 1910s Temple teams, I actually reached the same conclusion -- that the Temple teams of the 1910s may be better suited to a decade article. But @Fram: already got irritated when I reformulated this once; if he's cool with withdrawing the AfD, I will bundle these into a 1910s decade article, leaving redirects behind for the 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917 seasons. Cbl62 (talk) 04:39, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I created Temple Owls football, 1910–19 which could potentially serve as a host for the content currently under discussion. I am fine with either (a) allowing the current AfD to run its course and abiding by the outcome, or (b) if Fram agrees to withdraw of the AfD, I could then merge the existing content into the decade article -- unless other "Keep" editors strongly object to this outcome. Cbl62 (talk) 05:40, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that seems like a much better solution than the first attempt (not that it wasn't made in good faith, but, well, I gave my opinion already above). I'm happy to withdraw this, but I'll let it open for a bit longer to let others chime in as well if they want to. Fram (talk) 07:06, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I obviously support the merge - should we close and create a merge discussion or just leave it open to run? SportingFlyer T·C 17:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like this is down to an editing and housekeeping issue.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:18, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fram indicated he would withdraw. He just wanted to allow a bit of time for others to chime in. I don't see the need for a merge discussion when this is withdrawn. I can just go ahead and do it. Cbl62 (talk) 21:29, 27 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.