Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Athletics (overview): Difference between revisions

Athletics (overview) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Contested PROD: we already have articles athletics (sport) and athletic sports, another article is hardly needed. But despite it's title and lead it has little on athletics, but is mostly a list of criteria for what makes as good athlete. JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Athletic sports is a stub. Athletics (overview) is a new page, approved directly by the project manager, SillyFolkBoy. The new page is clearly much more developed and referenced than the extremely weak stub, and it links to many pertinent Wikipedia pages. JohnBlackburne's suggestion to delete the much stronger page seems to be worthy of ridicule, as Athletics (overview) was a much-needed page to elaborate on the general topic of athletics, whereas the existing WP pages all fall under the more general topic.TommyKirchhoff (talk) 22:25, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At the suggestion of Tesscass, I have also posted a discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation to escalate the ambiguity of "Athletics" and "Athlete."TommyKirchhoff (talk) 22:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think this page deals with a notable topic, but it is one which we are struggling to find an appropriate disambiguation for. I had hoped to cover this (chiefly American) topic when I created athletic sports, but this title ignores the fact that athletics goes beyond just the sports and include the ideas of physical training, games and fitness. This problem is further complicated by the existence of the more narrowly defined European idea of "athletics", which can be found at athletics (sport). I do not think "Athletics (overview)" is the best title we could find – perhaps we should merge the ideas found here with those at athletic sports under a different title? SFB 13:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I exalt SillyFolkBoy for his ongoing efforts in this project, and apologize for any skinned knees I might have caused. Considering User:Earthlyreason's talk point below; and links I posted at the end of the Talk:Athletics (sport) page (i.e. Gaelic Athletic Association has football and coaching http://www.gaa.ie/); the fact that North America and Asia use the term "Athletics" in the same general way, I agree that Athletics (overview) is a clunky name, but believe the page should just be called Athletics with a tophat link to Athletics (disambiguation) and perhaps Athletics (sport) which is another ambiguous page name (I still believe "Athletics (games)" would be more clear). Based on Earthlyreason's citation from Collins, Sportsperson should also be called Athlete in an effort to reduce the ambiguity.TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

User:Earthlyreason posted this on the discussion page of Sportsperson:

As 'athlete' has a single major meaning, which this page aspires to describe, that should be the page name, with a separate disambiguation page for the other minor related terms, such as the band. 'Athlete' is much more common than the ugly and rare 'sportsperson' including in the UK (I speak as a Brit who defends British English against marginalisation.) As a start to improving this page, I've removed the inaccurate reference to AmE, and - in a first for this page - included a reference to back it up. Here it is in full (note that order of meanings implies importance):

Collins English Dictionary (Millennium Ed) - a British publication

athlete (1) a person trained to compete in sports or exercises involving physical strength, speed or endurance. (2) a person who has a natural aptitude for physical activities. (3) Chiefly Brit. a competitor in track and field events.

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sports-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:48, 11 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to sport. Needless, duplicative article with too many flaws that are not worth fixing. Alex Middleton (talk) 23:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:37, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Move Following on from my comments above, the best solutions I have for this situation are (a) Move these ideas to athletics (activity) or athletic activity, (b) Merge this with athletic sports.

I think the first option is the best because, primarily, it acknowledges the broadness of the term beyond its application of just sport (i.e. inclusive of non-sporting activities/exercise etc). Furthermore, it maintains the word athletics as the first in its title, which is desirable because that is likely the word that most (American) people will be using to find information on this topic. Contrary to Alex, I don't think a redirect to sport is the best option because sport has so much more of a competitive slant and includes activities with cars, boats and animals. In comparison, athletics is an idea which more encompasses the systems of human physical activity. SFB 10:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please see http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/ncaa/about+the+ncaa/diversity+and+inclusion/gender+equity+and+title+ix/facts.html (Third paragraph, and down...)

The NCAA is probably the largest athletics association in the world, governing more than 400,000 athletes http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_college_athletes_are_there

Though similar, the sport page is less-developed, has much weaker references (mostly dictionary), is poorly-organized, and admits the IOC recognizes Chess as a sport.

The reason Athletic sports is still a stub lies in the fact that it perpetuates the existing ambiguity surrounding "athletics." Clearly, no one wants to edit this page.

Athletics (overview) has been needed for a long time. It has excellent potential to be a informational cornerstone of WP, and also dissolve much ambiguity. I believe that if the name were changed to simply Athletics with an immediate hatnote to Athletics (track & field & footracing), this will best allow users to quickly navigate to the information they seek. TommyKirchhoff (talk) 13:26, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it is also important to recognize that Athletics (sport) (25 references) exists as a smaller, weaker duplicate of Track and field (120 references). The primary difference here is the European semantic inclusion of footracing i.e. walking and climbing stairs. "Track" as it is commonly known in N. America does not imply a circular path, but a "track or path," as in Cross country running.TommyKirchhoff (talk) 13:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]