Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barry Lakin

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. I see a rough consensus that the sources provided do not contain SIGCOV. I'm fine with restoring this article to Draft space if anyone would like to work on this article and a Redirect can be created from this page title to an appropriate target article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:46, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Barry Lakin

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This former athlete biography article has one dead-link reference, one external link to the player's statistics. After further searching, I am unable to find additional sources to establish notability. It is missing Encyclopedia biography information such as Early life, Career information since 2013, Personal life, Achievements and honours (if any). Created on 27 July 2011. JoeNMLC (talk) 03:49, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sportspeople, Football, and England. Shellwood (talk) 10:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in WikiProject Football's list of association football-related deletions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:09, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - clearly notable, this confirms 54 appearances in England's professional football league. Decent amount of coverage online, such as this and this, COMMONSENSE says there will be more offline given this guy was active 30 years ago...a bad nomination where no BEFORE has been performed. Giant Snowman 20:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Per the many points made by GiantSnowman above. I also found [1] and [2], Article needs Improvement, not deletion. Thanks, Das osmnezz (talk) 21:14, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The Gazette article is a match report and clearly routine coverage. ~~The Times article seems to be a passing mention but I don't have access to the full article.~~ The Times article is a passing mention. The articles I found at Newspapers.com and ProQuest are all passing mentions like match reports unless I'm mistaken. If there's significant offline coverage surely some would show up there? Robby.is.on (talk) 00:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Article fails WP:GNG (I can only find routine coverage like match reports and a brief note about his argument with manager John Sitton). He played a total of three seasons in the third and fourth tier of English football, among which only the 1992–93 season was a successful one for Leyton Orient. I don't see any indication that he attracted much attention during his playing career, and certainly nothing after it ended. Jogurney (talk) 15:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fails WP:GNG due to lack of significant coverage. WP:COMMONSENSE tells me that there isn't much likelihood that this career lower league player gained any notability at all. Alvaldi (talk) 14:01, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This has been a stub article since 2012, if someone wanted to fix it up they could. But why say keep when all you have is an infobox and one single sentence. Unless it was expanded to a decent agree and I agree it could be a keep article if done up. However there is nothing there. At the moment I side with the delete voters unless someone decides to create something here. Govvy (talk) 09:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting as this is not a unanimous consensus to Delete. If "article needs improvement", now is the time to do that.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:36, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep'. I added several references, including a replacement for the broken one. He's probably notable both as a player and as a coach/manager. One of the references is from the Daily Mail, which normally isn't a reliable source, but I reached it from Ebscohost. I suspect that the Daily Mails sports coverage is generally reliable. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 06:10, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:DAILYMAIL makes no exceptions for sport. I have removed the article. Robby.is.on (talk) 10:38, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Unfortunately, all of the references Eastmain added to article except for the article by the The Sunday Times are match reports and transfer announcements (coaching appointments) and therefore routine coverage. The articles I found at Newspapers.com and ProQuest are also passing mentions like match reports. I had hoped the Sunday Times article would have more but it turns out it is about "fly-on-the-wall documentaries" with the only mention of Lakin being "First, the co-manager John Sitton sacked his friend, the long-serving defender Terry Howard. Then, he offered to fight players Barry Lakin and Mark Warren". The bottom line is: There is no WP:SIGCOV for this lower-league player and coach. Robby.is.on (talk) 11:02, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I agree with Robby.is.on that the newly added sources do not come close to significant coverage. These are routine transactional coverage or match reports that often mention Lakin only once. I appreciate the effort, but I don't see how it gets the article in compliance with the GNG. Jogurney (talk) 12:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I believe there is enough there and more out there.KatoKungLee (talk) 19:37, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Perfectly valid stub, not every source in the article meets WP:GNG but enough do, and sources will be hard to search for anyways due to being quasi-pre-internet. SportingFlyer T·C 19:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SportingFlyer: not every source in the article meets WP:GNG but enough do Which ones? Robby.is.on (talk) 21:43, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, most of them are non-league. I'm still surprised he's been covered comprehensively and routinely for non-league stuff but we can't find a single source on him during his Leyton Orient days. Common sense would say that this would be easily sourced if he had played twenty years later. SportingFlyer T·C 22:10, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how the coverage could possibly be described as "comprehensive". All references in the article are extremely short, barely going beyond "Lakin has agreed to take over as manager at <club>". Robby.is.on (talk) 22:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's not comprehensive in the sense any one individual article is particularly comprehensive, but rather that in terms of non-league he would frequently be written about routinely. It's just frustrating - I don't have the ability to search for 1990s era sources or to even check which teams he scored against in the league, whereas now with the loss of the SNGs we have minor league baseball players who easily pass GNG even though they've accomplished nothing sporting (this is just a rant you can ignore.) It's clearly been an untended garden for a long time looking at the history, but I'm surprised a player in the old Division Two would never have been covered significantly, and the fact it's been in such poor shape for a long time reflects either that there's nothing out there or that pre-internet sources can be difficult to find. At worst, we should redirect to a list of Leyton Orient players, since we can WP:V the fact he played for them. SportingFlyer T·C 23:14, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how complete Newspapers.com and ProQuest are but as mentioned above they threw up quite a few match reports but zero SIGCOV. (You can get access to both Newspapers.com and ProQuest through Wikipedia Library.) We're lucky to have these resources for English players, many other countries don't have archives like that at all which results in articles of players being deleted with record number of appearances or goals for their national teams. Robby.is.on (talk) 23:32, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone checked the British Newspaper Archive? That would probably be the best place to find potential SIGCOV. BeanieFan11 (talk) 23:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just did. There's 40 results for ""barry lakin" orient" and it's all match reports and brief mentions of transfers (example: "Midfielder Barry Lakin, who scored Saturday's match winner against Bromsgrove in the third round, has had his loan spell from Leyton Orient extended for another two months"). There's 14 results for ""barry lakin" chelmsford" – same. There's one for ""barry lakin" helsinki" which does not mention a move to Finland for Lakin suggesting he never played for HJK contrary to what our article claims. Robby.is.on (talk) 00:48, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I don't know why people are adverse to match reports, they do help a lot. That's part of the sport. That's why I haven't really done a proper vote, I see this one down the middle a probable no-consensus. Govvy (talk) 12:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You cannot write an article based on ten "Lakin scored the second goal in the 72th minute"s. Robby.is.on (talk) 12:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, there are thousands of articles of top level footballers that simply are sourced with signing, match reports and stat mirrors. :/ Govvy (talk) 13:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a different problem. Those footballers don't lack SIGCOV like Lakin does. Robby.is.on (talk) 14:30, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, agreed with Jogurney and Robby about the lack of non-routine, SIGCOV, IRS sources. GNG is not met, and there is zero presumption of offline sources existing accorded to footballers now that NFOOTY is deprecated. JoelleJay (talk) 00:46, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per sources identified and the WP:GNG. gidonb (talk) 22:46, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Gidonb, which sources are SIGCOV of this person? JoelleJay (talk) 23:57, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see that there are very passionate debaters also at this AfD! This was my conclusion when I read through the sources. Now I would need to get back that. I will do so soon. gidonb (talk)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:43, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist. I don't think a "no consensus" close is necessary here yet, I'd hope that the discussion would develop a little further.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Actualcpscm (talk) 21:52, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I don't think match reports and coverage of changing teams is sufficient to meet WP:GNG or every pro player would merit an article. I also don't think managing a team at the 9th level of British football is grounds for WP notability. Papaursa (talk) 00:07, 16 August 2023 (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.