Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Louis Balmain

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 redirect‎ to List of Nelson representative cricketers#B. The arguments to keep have little basis in policy. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Louis Balmain

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Still fails NATH. Jay Cubby 09:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Cricket and New Zealand. Jay Cubby 09:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As well as outlining an unusually successful brief cricket career for the period, when complete team innings seldom reached three figures, the article provides a sound basis and incentive for future expansion. It is informative and interesting as far as it goes, and it is as worst harmless. Sammyrice (talk) 09:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 13:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Lack of significant coverage. A 1-match career is notable only in the most exceptional of cases. Geschichte (talk) 16:06, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment the length of career cannot be relied upon to provide an indication of the notability of the career of a sportsperson. This has been discussed a number of times, both in relation to cricket and other sports, and formed at least some of the discussion around the revision to NSPORTS a couple of years ago. A variety of quantifiable limits were proposed at various times and non were deemed to be acceptable. Balmain's notability rests with whether to not he is notable, nothing else.

In this case, there is clearly some notability and some sources exist which tell us things about him. I suspect that there are more – I'm not certain where McCarron has found him to be a soldier from, but that would indicate that other sources can be presumed to exist. Are those sources enough to show notability? Not sure – there are other passing references to him in PapersPast, including some nice little quotes, but the limited amount of time he appears to have spent in New Zealand means that there aren't many. Fwiw, I declined the initial PROD, partly because I wasn't awfully happy that the nomination had been made seriously, partly because I wasn't sure that a search of PapersPast had taken place, and partly because I wanted to work on List of Nelson representative cricketers, which now exists. That provides an obvious ATD, allowing the article to be redirected to there if it's considered not to be notable. Much of the prose content of the article could be the basis for a note applied to Balmain' list entry, rather like the notes added at List of Otago representative cricketers, for example. Certainly redirection would appear to be the worst case outcome. I can see merit in keep; I don't see a reason to delete given the ATD. Blue Square Thing (talk) 17:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to List of Nelson representative cricketers. I found this article interesting and searched for some time to try and find content to bolster it but alas without success. Purely on a policy basis it probably fails the significant coverage test but I would prefer to follow @Blue Square Thing in their suggestion of redirecting with the prose content added as a note on the _target page.

Shrug02 (talk) 22:56, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Per Sammyrice. Good sourcing for now, would be surprised if more didn't exist. AA (talk) 20:38, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep almost notable and if we give it more time to develop then it will pass WP:GNG. Gheus (talk) 16:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete good sourcing, seriously? One source is database which is behind a paywall. Another is a news article from 1881 which doesn't mention the subject. The book is just a one line mention and in no way SIGCOV. The remaining sources are WP:ANCESTRY.

I don't know how one might expect this to develop if you give it more time. The guy died over a century ago and no SIGCOV appears to exist. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:17, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete largely per Traumnovelle. Given the person has been dead for over a century, it is highly unlikely that new material will emerge. The current sourcing in the article does not meet the GNG threshold for significant coverage in my opinion - fn 1 may, fn 2-4 are either match reports with passing mentions or statistics, and fn 5-6 are from ancestry.com and are primary sources. Daniel (talk) 15:56, 10 January 2025 (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.