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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Murray Turnbull (2nd nomination)

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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 Delete. Consensus is that the local coverage found is insufficient to establish notability.Michig (talk) 14:10, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Murray Turnbull

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Murray Turnbull (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This subject is nowhere near notable enough.

  1. By chess strength, he is not even close to GM, the standard for having an article written about him. In fact, he never attained the IM title, and has no FIDE titles at all. His rating is in the 2300s, but that's merely National Master, not even Senior Master or FIDE Master (both well below IM) strength.
  2. Now, the second argument is that he's a cool human interest story. I don't see him as achieving much fame in this arena, either. I know a great deal of New England chess masters through friends, and most importantly, their award-winning publication "Chess Horizons". Even when they SPECIFICALLY covered street blitz players on Harvard Square, Murray Turnbull was rarely mentioned. When is the last time he had a game published or a feature in the national publication Chess Life? Did he ever get one? The only mention of him in "Chess Life", based on his Profile, is a "Yearbook" summary of past champions, where his name appears in 8 point font in a back page alongside a few hundred other names. (Virtually none of whom have their own pages on here, either)
  3. There are a great deal of street blitz players of master strength in San Francisco, New York, and Harvard Square. I can list a bunch of them if anyone cares. Do any of them have pages except Murray Turnbull? No.

I can go on and on if anyone seriously believes he meets any notability criteria. I don't believe he does, for the reasons cited above, as well as others. Delete ChessPlayerLev (talk) 02:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • ReplySunCreator, can you elaborate on your links? Okay, Turnbull appeared in a brief Harvard Gazette snippet in 2001, a longer feature in the Harvard Crimson in 2004, as well as the personal webpage of a Harvard undergrad back in 2000. Unless you can provide reasons otherwise, I believe the third link can be safely ignored as irrelevant. As for the first two, are a couple of articles in small newspapers with limited, regional distribution really that big of a deal? (Even if they are associated with a very famous university) Look, I've seen big features in much larger, local newspapers about chessplayers who weren't even close to national master strength, sometimes even 1,000 Elo points below the level of Grandmaster, which is the general notability standard. For instance, here is a news story involving chess players "Eugene Varshavsky" and "Steven Rosenberg" that appeared in major national newspaper like the New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, and ABC News. Pretty sure this major national coverage exceeds a couple of articles in local Harvard University papers by many orders of magnitude. And yet, we don't have pages on either chessplayer, as the story isn't quite notable enough by itself. ChessPlayerLev (talk) 23:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is established by whether reliable sources gives significant coverage of the subject. The sources supplied above are reliable, significant and independent of the subject. Strength of chess is only an indication to be used in absence of general notability. After all, many activities such as photography, have no criteria like a chess rating that could indicate notability without looking to sources. So a photographer with such sources would be notable but a chess player would not? No, a correct understanding of WP:GNG shows this is a minimium standard that enables notability regardless of the subject matter. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:26, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Reply As stated in the WP:GNG (which, it's important to note, are only general requirements)you linked to, one is expected to have multiple sources going into "significant coverage" of the subject in question. So far, only one source you cited above satisfies that requirement, a piece in the regional Harvard Crimson publication back in 2004. Furthermore, you kind of ignored my concern. By what you wrote, I come to the conclusion that "Eugene Varshavsky" deserves a Wikipedia page too, since multiple, highly visible national news sources went into "significant coverage" of his performance at the 2006 World Open. Yet, if we did that, we would probably have pages for tens of thousands of minor masters and even USCF-rated experts. It would completely overwhelm the articles (many of them stubs or Start-Class!) we have of actual top 100 GMs.ChessPlayerLev (talk) 03:46, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:50, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Being a GM (or IM with sideline) is not and should not be a minimium requirement for chess players. That is a misreading of WP:GNG. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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