Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Figure Skating

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Merging and improvement of PSA articles

I've merged Professional Skaters Guild of America and American Skaters Guild to Professional Skaters Association, as I believe that the renamings (edit: referring to the guilds renaming, not the Wikipedia articles) do not come with any significant change in purpose or function. i'd really appreciate the community's opinion on the merge. In addition, the new article would really benefit from the review of someone more knowledgeable about figure skating. In particular, the first two sections have very few citations, and the statements that are sourced rely on physical publications which don't seem to have been archived. I would really appreciate if someone who has access to older Guild materials could verify existing citations, and potentially add some. JarJarInks (talk) 18:54, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@JarJarInks, I think the merge is fine. The problem is that the More citations needed templates that appeared on both versions are even more glaring now, which could be a problem going forward. I suggest that someone (not me, I don't have either the time or the inclination) should do some more research and find more sources to support all its claims. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 19:09, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. Figure Skating Championships

I’m done arguing with this guy over at U.S. Figure Skating Championships and Template:U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Would uninvolved editors please take a look and chime in. Other nations’ national championships do not feature rowspan like this and I’m sorry to have introduced it in the first place. Additionally, unless there is some reason why a competition was not held in a particular year (like major events like WWI or WWII), then there is zero reason to include it. It just clutters up with the tables and templates with pointless garbage. Bgsu98 (Talk) 04:28, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With the template, 2026 should not be introduced yet. Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. As for the US Figure Skating charts... tennis has pages with and without a player in every row. I actually think it is easier to follow with only a single name over multiple years. It takes less coding and it is easier to see blocks of dominance. As for the missing year, tennis always includes those missing years in grey. And there was a reason many sports got canceled or shortened in 1919... the Spanish Flu Pandemic! Quarantines, fear, difficulty planning... all these were because of the pandemic and still some war recovery. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:58, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notability guidelines

I don't understand why participation in a World Championships is not included on WP:NSKATE. And even a national championships medal is not. I remember when people created articles for everyone who had advanced to the free skate in the worlds and even in the junior worlds. Many such articles exist for 10–15 years or more and are reasonably developed. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:04, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we change the notability guideline. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:06, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm writing this because of a user named Bgsu98 (I hope the ping goes through) who decided to mass-delete articles that don't comply with WP:NSKATE. He doesn't seem to even google a bit and check compliance with WP:GNG. I am sure most articles he deleted had the right to stay per WP:GNG. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide evidence where I have unilaterally mass-deleted anything. Bgsu98 (Talk) 15:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I meant "mass nominated for deletion". --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:16, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And again, you wrote that I "deleted" anything, and argued that they "had the right to stay", despite the fact that the community decided through the AFD process that they did not meet notability guidelines. Your bad-faith accusations of malfeasance show a gross ignorance of the deletion processes here. Bgsu98 (Talk) 15:22, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even the admins have noticed that you were mass-nominating articles for deletion with a little consideration. (Doczilla noted that at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kamil Białas.)
Also, you must understand that there are a very few people here on Wiki that are willing to spend their precious time on checking a random skater for notability. Most people rely on the nominator's competence and just blindly vote "delete", "delete".
P.S. This is not a game. If you nominate articles without actually checking them for notability, you harm Wikipedia and its readers. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if you may notice, I didn't start this discussion to attack you. I'm proposing to change WP:NSKATE to be more in line with Wikipedia:WikiProject Figure Skating/Notability or other guidelines the creators of figure skater articles may have acted upon back in 2010–2015. Cause many of these articles have something like "He advanced to the free skate at the 2005 World Junior Figure Skating Championships" in the lead. Also, I don't understand why the guidelines don't include Grand Prix participation. At least for some other sports, a simple participation in that sport's Grand Prix series is enough. --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:45, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Even the admins have noticed that you were mass-nominating articles for deletion with a little consideration. (Doczilla noted that at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kamil Białas.)"

Doczilla said nothing of the kind. Again, another example of your bad-faith accusations and outright lies. I don't see you chiming in on all these AFDs that have you so bothered. Either put up or shut up. You want to roll WP:NSKATE back to the criteria in place in 2010? I think it was updated because many skaters who may have peaked by "advancing to the free skate at the 2005 Junior Figure Skating Championships" or whatever simply did not have the press necessary to meet Wikipedia's basic standards in the long run. Not every person who laces up a pair of ice skates merits inclusion. Bgsu98 (Talk) 16:05, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not talking about "every person who laces up a pair of ice skates", I'm talking about the top skaters in their country, national championships medalists who represented their country at the highest possible level of competition. --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think a free skate at the senior worlds and a national senior medal are reasonable criteria for inclusion. --Moscow Connection (talk) 16:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

re: "Doczilla said nothing of the kind." Oh, I absolutely said something of the kind. From my close: "The nominator's burst of dozens of nominations within half an hour failed to stimulate any discussion about many of them." Doczilla _{Ohhhhhh, no!} 03:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's not what he said; he said I'd put little consideration into my nominations, which was not true. The fact that they were all submitted at once was because they had all been de-PRODded at the same time. You said they'd generated little discussion, which was true. Moscow Connection was once again being disingenuous, which is par for the course with him. Bgsu98 (Talk) 04:11, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the part about your "burst of dozens of nominations within half an hour" was not blunt enough. Yes, I meant you'd put little consideration into those nominations because otherwise you could not have produced that "burst of dozens of nominations within half an hour" and Moscow Connection recognized what that plain statement meant. Doczilla _{Ohhhhhh, no!} 13:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But it is the same thing cause random people at AfD don't care about actually checking the notability and just vote "delete per nom". --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:21, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This page's daily views count [1] is in single digits. So I guess I will be talking only to Bgsu98... --Moscow Connection (talk) 15:50, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Moscow Connection I have voted on several of the aforementioned AFD discussions and can assure you I have done my best to find significant coverage on each before giving an opinion. I assume others who have taken part in these AFD discussions have done the same. To suggest otherwise is insulting and not in keeping with the "working together" and "assume good faith" ethos of Wikipedia. I suggest you take part in any current or future discussions and, if possible, add significant coverage to the articles in question. I would certainly rather see articles improved and kept than deleted but there is also no point having articles for Joe or Jane Blow who once placed 25th in the Azerbaijan national championships! As for changing the criteria as you suggest, I would oppose any such move. There are already far too many sports articles on Wikipedia that exist thanks to criteria tinkering and loopholes but in reality are of no interest to more than a handful of people at best. Shrug02 (talk) 18:59, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shrug02, I appreciate your input at my AFD's, regardless of whether you concur with my assessments or not. It's not like I get a bonus for each deletion. Bgsu98 (Talk) 19:26, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Shrug02: I'm sure most (if not all) of the skaters who skated at the worlds even once are notable. It is just that online sources don't live that long. Or/and become hard to find, especially given that normally you need to search in a foreign language. And you absolutely need to visit a library to find printed sources, especially for those who had skated before 2000 or 2005.
I think it was a terribie decision to change the rules. Tens or hundreds of thousands of articles may be deleted now absolutely unfairly. --Moscow Connection (talk) 20:28, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But participation isn't used for the Olympics either. Certainly you wouldn't raise the World Championships above the Olympics? You need to win a medal. Would I like to see the bar lowered to include top 16 finishers in both World Championships and Olympics... sure. But even if you did so we would still be required to show the person meets GNG. It would simply be a guideline to editors who create articles that notability if very likely. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, for the Olympics too — participation should count.
It is just that I completely missed the changes in the sportspeople notability guidelines. I remember the guidelines like this: https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Notability_(sports)&oldid=835426898#Figure_skating. --Moscow Connection (talk) 21:31, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually quite shocked. What happened is unfair not only to figure skaters, but to the editors who, in full accordance with the then-existing rules, created articles about them. That's crazy, laws aren't retroactive, the already existing articles should have been immune to any change.
Back in 2010–2015 or so, there were several editors who created articles for figure skaters as soon as they met the requirements. I wonder how they feel. --Moscow Connection (talk) 21:45, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Moscow Connection, as a long-time WP editor myself, I can say that I'd be disappointed. However, I understand that conventions and policies change and develop over time. After I got over my disappointment, I'd go back and try to rescue those articles if they came up for AfD. If I wasn't able to because the notability guidelines have changed, I'd go oh well and move on. Guidelines change because the editing community has come to consensus about it. If you don't like the guidelines, then try to change them. If there aren't enough sources out there about the subjects of a figure skating AfD, that's unfortunate. That just means that we have to search more diligently for them and resort to using Google translate if the sources aren't in English. I sympathize with your position, but I think that's what we have to deal with. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 19:18, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]