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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - no consensus to delete, consensus does seem to exists that it should be merged or renamed. - SimonP 22:34, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

2005 New England Patriots Schedule

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I know that Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base. Therefore, I fail to see why we need to devote an entire article to the New England Patriots's 2005 16-game regular season schedule. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:18, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete - I was thinking of merging, but than we'd have to accept full schedules and results for every sports team as well as long lists of past games.--Sophitus 10:28, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
    • No, Sophitus, that wouldn't make sense from a sports Wikipedian's point of view. The NFL is very easy to set up as it always has only 16 games in 17 weeks. I would be appalled myself to see an 82 game NBA schedule or NHL schedule. However, on 2005 Boston Red Sox Season an obvious solution is reached: that of simply listing each opposing team with the number of games to be played that season. An aggregate won-loss record can be jotted down on each of the 20 or so lines. And again, NFL is very easy to deal with as far as writing this type of result as there are only 16 entries for each of the 32 teams and either 1, 2, 3 or 4 playoff scores to record for each of the 12 playoff teams.--McDogm 21:30, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Sets a thoroughly ugly principle. Harro5 11:27, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Can't really see that game schedules which change from year to year need to be in the encyclopedia. Besides, anybody interested in it would just go to the schedule on the NEP's website. Sjakkalle 12:16, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move/Redirect to a more reasonable detail-level article at 2005 New England Patriots Season -- this could be a substantial article in time, and the current Pats articles is getting big. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:45, 2005 May 28 (UTC)
  • Delete Not encyclopediac. BTW, Booo Patriots. :-P --Chill Pill Bill 20:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is the sort of thing we need to get the Superconducting Supercollider back on track.--McDogm 21:16, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, not encyclopedic, at best Wikisource, but even they would probably not want it. Do we want to keep a record of every team in every sport's schedule for every year? There are 162 games in Major League Baseball, and 30 teams at present. RickK 21:39, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
    • Wow, my delete vote is even more extreme now that the author has added all of that POV original research! RickK 05:38, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
    • Umm, it isn't really original; it is common knowledge. The POV could be better understood through Bill James. It is strictly neutral, sportswise, with a mild sports-like feeling. In this it resembles Deep Blue or the supercomputer competition covered in supercomputer.--McDogm 21:13, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The article has now doubled in size. The talk section is also begun. In any event the schedule will be available at User:McDogm/Pats Schedule. In passing, the investment community spends a lot of time with sports. It would behoove the science community to think about putting this potentially popular page on its own computer site in order to provide the basis for talking about money with people who have money to spend on the computer industry. It would puzzle the bank people in general to see a deletion area such as this one, and to then receive criticism for being unresponsive to the needs of the scientific community. Who do you think is voting on all this NASA stuff that keeps getting stalled? Politics is extremely important to getting money for quantum physics research and supercomputer research. Not to mention the internet. It is irritating to see science and sports fighting against each other. I would think that a simple schedule, which would go far towards establishing normal relations between the two camps, and which could be generated by interested sports fan Wikipedians at their leisure as the seasons unwind and repeat down through the years, would be a perfect addition to the body of knowledge here. In light of this present deletion difficulty, as a general trend indicator, it is easy to understand how difficult it is to obtain and give funding for important scientific research. Try instead to support a humble article like this one. Two-way communication is essential for generating massive expenditures in any field, including original science. It would certainly be appreciated. Remember, it takes two to tango. Let's try to set an example here. How can sports guys in congress vote for science when there is so much opposition to sports? They actually need your support in order to pass the necessary legislation! They really are eager to fund the science programs; they just can't receive abuse for doing so! Try not to make it too difficult. Its just common sense. Thanks for reading. --McDogm 22:34, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. A schedule is simply source material. Any expansion beyond the dates, times, and opponents is at best speculation and editorializing. As the season progresses, the relevant high points can be added to the main article on New England Patriots. If there is enough information to warrant its own article, then it can be spun off of the main article at that time. Like many of the votes above, I don't see the point of having a single sports team's schedule for a single year in an encyclopedia. ESkog 23:08, 28 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or Merge. I haven't seen any articles for the other 31 teams' schedules, or even an article for key games over the entire season. The only thing the main NFL article says about the regular season is a given team's opponent makeup. I think one article on the 2005-6 season highlighting key/good/interesting gameswould be enough. Megarockman 18:37, 28 May 2005 (CDT)
  • Comment The problem is that the schedule is ready to be merged to 2005 New England Patriots Season, as suggested above, as part of the preseason section, but the rules of deletion preclude any mergers or move of the article until the matter is resolved. On a seperate tack, 2005 Boston Red Sox Season is now more or less created, in the same vein as the future 2005 New England Patiots Season presentation. If one is concerned with 164-game lists, worry no more; the article is concise and interesting. I hope anyone concerned with this obvious worry would take a look should they have time. Tx. And as a point of interest, sports are such a huge part of our society, like the church, the military, art and science, that it is a bit odd to hear of it being spoken of as non-encyclopedic or even non-Wikipedic. I mean, it couldn't be more obvious. I think I understand some concerns, though. Although I am sure that there is no problem with sports articles that I write, I am sure that there is some small possibility of other teams' Wikifans not writing conscientious articles, to which I reply that any fan of the team or teams in question would simply have the authority by dint of love of the subject to create a better page. It is as though a free market force would take over bad sports pages, with incredibly proud and loyal fans replacing good with bad, in the case of un-Wikipedlian sports pages. Try to think along the lines of The Bad News Bears, Quiddich, George Plympton and Don DeLillo's End Zone. I could cite film; during the battle scene with the I-Fighters in the first Star Wars movie, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker and Harrison Ford obviously has the type of hand-eye coordination associated with participation in sports. Another point I could make is that I have seen pages on this site so unbelievably obscure in nature that it belies any attempt to speak of sports as being unworthy of mention. I mean, really! I would be prepared to argue the case of this page in arbitration on all these grounds should it come down to it. I really think sports are good for society, and will be with us until the sun turns into a red giant, and hopefully beyond, if science and science fiction have anything to do with it. And I don't think Wikipedia should be left out of it. Thanks again for reading. --McDogm 01:33, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • McDogm, I don't think that most of the Delete voters are implying that sports in general don't have a place in Wikipedia. The questions, in my mind at least, are as follows: (1) Does/should a list of team schedules through history fit into the rest of Wikipedia's sports coverage? (2) If such an article can be expanded beyond a simple list, is there any way to meaningfully expand it without suffering from extensive NPOV (neutral point of view) problems? ESkog 06:54, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • ESkog, I think that the obvious pro-Sox and pro-Pats nature of those two schedule/analysis articles really reflect the very mild sports sentiment that one could expect from sports, as opposed to food or geography, to give examples. I think it is actually quite comparable to the pro-computer chess feeling one gets from Deep Blue and computer chess in its nature. I have spent time with the Bill James Baseball abstract. James invented sabermetrics, the term for the science of baseball analysis, and of detailed math analysis of sports in general. It is a very sober yet enjoyable science that takes fan feeling as an obviously inherent part of its written product. What I am getting at here is that these two sports articles, from a sports point of view, have very solid NPOV. I again refer to big science articles, which use the reader's and writer's enthusiasm for science to communicate the facts involved, like in JWST and any quantum mechanics article. The happiness of sports should come through in a sports article, much as the solemnity and toil of a saint should come through in a saint article. And as someone who knows sports writing to some degree, each team's analysis would follow in detail with the results of the analytical writing in 2005 New England Patriots Schedule and 2005 Boston Red Sox Season, albeit with differing emphasis. It is a commonplace of sports writing that one doesn't tear down the subject while one is writing it, but it is also a commonplace of sports writing that there is another article right around the corner that is more or less diametrically opposed to it, in a very mild sports manner, like a possible 2005 Indianapolis Colts Season or 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers Season in this case. As different sabermetrics level articles get written about differing opposing teams, the discussion begins to resemble a university classroom in its enthusiasm and and free flow of conflicting ideas. As long as sports writers on the Wikipedia are functioning at Bill James level there isn't much risk of abuse of the Wikipedia. Is the reference to POV and NPOV due to unfamiliarity with the world of sports? IDK.--McDogm 19:56, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • ESkog Not only is there some fan feeling in any sports article, more importantly, and what I was trying to say, is that fan feeling is obviously a component of a team's success, according to sabermetrics. It almost goes without saying. Sox fans have a certain feeling for the Sox, Yanks fans have a very different feeling toward the Yanks. These differences are imnportant and yield easily to analysis. Individual stars also have different 'looks'. Roberto Clemente (Pittsburgh Pirates) is different from Kirby Puckett (Minnesota Twins) and each one has a different impact on the story arc of the team. This is comparable to the concept of good will in accounting where Coca Cola's good will, based on the value of its appeal as a nominable asset, is different from that of Toyota or Mozilla.--McDogm 20:55, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Transwiki to Wikicities where someone can set up a wiki for this stuff. — Phil Welch 01:59, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Could this be accomplished after several years of development here on the Wikipedia proper? Detailed sports analysis is a rather new subject here and it needs some incubation. I am thinking of access issues for sports fan Wikipedians. --McDogm 21:07, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, not encyclopaedic, trivial sports cruft. Megan1967 04:14, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge. As discussed, these "single season" articles do provide some interesting information and are not merely lists of events and dates. The information should be kept, but I think it would be better to condense them (to focus on encyclopedic rather than almanac information) and merge them into team histories. Dystopos 05:06, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete For reasons pointed out in Zzyzx11's comment. Article also has POV issues as noted by Eskog. --Xcali 01:24, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
(restoring my vote which was removed by McDogm) --Xcali 05:16, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Should we also consider 2005 Boston Red Sox Season at the same time? --Xcali 05:18, 29 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment Sorry, Xcali, your vote got crunched up because your vote and my second big comment got saved at the same time. I was planning to leave you a note. Sorry.McDogm
  • Delete agree with Zzyzx11. JamesBurns 11:29, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have an idea that may help here. My two pages seem to be pretty good, prima facie. Yet I am certainly aware of how bad sports pages could result in a lot of work for VfD workers. So let me be a VfD worker who is always available at User:McDogm in case non-sabermetrics sports pages ever appear. Here is a useful first rule: "Any person writing about sports on the Wikipedia should be familiar with Bill James' work. I would be glad to talk to people who don't fit this description on deletion pages such as this. In fact, it would be my pleasure. And, in fact, please let me know if there are any such pages extant now, beyond the normal one-page per team and one-page per star encyclopedia entries, that are difficult to deal with and I will get around to it. Thanks. --McDogm 16:32, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Here is a second rule or axiom: If any sports page is not sabermetrically competetive then it is not Wikipedia material. That is, if one isn't trying to get really good at sabermetrics, then what is one doing here writing? --McDogm 16:32, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I suppose this list of axioma could go on and on. It is a lot of work to write a competetive sabermetrics page. Therefore, the list of pages that could be generated is extremely self-limited. --McDogm 16:32, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete unencyclopedic - and most of it is speculation and opinion, suitable for a sports column but not an encyclopedia. CDC (talk) 01:26, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • How can such a well known thing be unencyclopedic?--McDogm 20:13, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • comment. Encyclopedic is not a synonym for famous. Please read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and pay special attention to the headings "Wikipedia is not a soapbox" and "Wikipedia is not a crystal ball." See also Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability for additional guidelines. I think some of the information in this article is useful, but "the Patriots are expected to face a tough match-up in week 3" is not material for a reference work. Dystopos 20:53, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Please explain why "the Patriots are expected to face a tough match-up in week 3" is not material for a reference work. It is kind of like "The Americans faced a tough battle in the Ardennes" or "Hannibal faced a tough challenge crossing the Alps." Also, please quote that entire line to not take it out of context. It would facilitate discussion. Tx. --McDogm 17:25, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) Also, I have been checking the Wikipedia: references you gave in your comment. I will have to ask, do you have any familiarity with sports in general? The reason I ask such a question is that the material in the 2005 Pats Schedule article is just obvious. It is something that every football fan already knows. It is difficult to verify, and it is difficult not to know this, if one had been more or less following any sports page in America. It is just very well expressed here, in a consciously sabermetrics level of intellectual discourse. There is nothing in the article that is not as obvious as knowing whether a light is on or off, to someone who has spent some time with the material, and who is willing to spend a lot of time bringing it to the Wikipedia, again in a standardized sabermetrics level of writing. --McDogm 17:39, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • The phrase "is expected to" indicates speculation. Speculation is inherently unverifiable. If, in fact, the Patriots barely squeeze out a victory in week 3, then the information may be encyclopedic after the fact. If so many people think that week 3 will be a tough matchup that it is selected as the "Game of the Week" by several media outlets, then that information may be encyclopedid. The content of a prediction is not encyclopedic or verifiable. The means by which predictions are made could be, the effect of a prediction could be, and the actual outcome of the event could be. -- As for the argument that sports fans consider these speculations to be obvious, that does not argue for their inclusion. There is no article on the predicted color of the sky in 2006 for the same reason. To answer your question I do keep up with sports and I am, in fact, familiar with Bill James' work on baseball statistics. The sabermetric content of the notes I deleted from the article in question is not the point of objection. Dystopos 20:05, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Then what is? --McDogm 22:52, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • The two games that the Patriots organization is concerned with are the Pittsburgh game and the Indianapolis game. The San Diego Chargers game is a third important hurdle for the team. These three games will be in the books by Week 9, halfway through the season. (Paragraph) Going into the season a second level of difficulty would include Atlanta, Denver and the New York Jets. Week 9 again is a milestone as 5 out of 7 of these difficult games will be complete by then. The Jets play on Week 13 and Week 16; the second game will be played on Christmas Day, December 25, 2005, very late in the season. This is the very material in question, italicized. You should try to think about criticizing this material more effectively. I am certainly at a loss at this point to continue this dialogue. I am not sure if this has turned into a excercise in foo fighting or not. I don't want to waste your time if it has. What is the procedure for withdrawing a motion for deletion? I am not trying to be nasty; I ask because the conversation is losing coherency and I have a lot of other stuff to do. Also, one's public statements should reflect well on one. Most of the comments here, all of which have been answered point by point, do not reach that standard. It is like sausage being made; its just ugly. What NFL team do you like, anyway? Please advise. I might have to give up on this deletion process as it is getting too weird. That certainly isn't good. --172.152.77.167 23:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) McDogm
      • I feel the same way. From my perspective I see everything as the exact opposite of your above synopsis. The material is not objectionable on a point-by-point basis. The class of material (speculation about future events) is inherently non-encyclopedic. The rest of the article is still up for VfD. I removed only the sections which were clearly against WP policies. I am not convinced that the remainder, though not so clearly objectionable, should remain as a separate article. Therefore I voted to merge it with a general account of the team history. I will understand if you do not wish to continue this conversation. I would be a bit relieved myself if it ended here. Perhaps it should be moved to a discussion page instead of Vfd. I am not sure the point of asking which teams I like. (I like the Saints, Titans, and Packers. I cheered for the Patriots in the Superbowl.) Dystopos 02:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Despite being against deletion, I agree that such material requires attribution for each of the facts presented, and in its current form is not acceptable. It seems to me this is just based on the records of the opponents from last season, and if this is so, that ought to be made clear. Again, though, the schedule and (AFTER the fact) a discussion of events in the season seems like legitimate material, and given the number of seasons the team has played and will play, putting all that into a single Pats article seems like too much. Having individual articles on each season seems like a good solution. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:43, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)
  • Delete. As noted earlier, Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base. Furthermore, I'm sure this is information that is very, very easily available elsewhere. I realize that sports fans are likely to be interested in this stuff, but that doesn't mean that Wikipedia is a good place for it -- there are other (and, I would say, better and more obvious) sources for finding game schedules. Bottom line is, I don't think this is encyclopedic information. Wikipedia is not a sports database dedicated to the minutiae of future events. I mean, we might as well start listing the air dates of upcoming episodes of ongoing TV series... -- Captain Disdain 23:47, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't think there is any minutiae in the document up for deletion. Please explain. --McDogm 16:33, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • "Minutiae", as in "small or trivial detail" -- well, it may not the best choice of words, really, but I do think that in the grand scale of things, it's fitting enough. I don't think this is the kind of information that belongs in an encyclopedia. Like I said, I realize that sports fans are likely to be interested in this stuff and that it's certainly not irrelevant information in itself, but that doesn't mean that it's relevant to Wikipedia. And I'm certainly not opposed to sports in Wikipedia, but it's one thing to write articles about sports and another to create pages for upcoming events. Bottom line: listing the dates and various details of future sports events is not encyclopedic information, and Wikipedia is not a scheduling tool or a repository of general knowledge. -- Captain Disdain 00:56, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge into New Englands Patriots. I don't believe their is anything wrong with wikipedia having the next years schedule but it doesn't need its own article. Falphin 21:35, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. News report, so a move to Wikinews may make sense.--Nabla 00:28, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)
  • Merge per Falphin. This sets a terrible precedent that would allow large schedules from, say, hockey or baseball to be posted. I don't really think this is encyclopedic, but it might be good to post the upcoming schedule (perhaps with updated results as the season goes on) on each team's page, as this is good, current information that warrants its own subsection (at most). -Tadanisakari 07:51, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep the content. We now have articles on each British cricket match so one on an entire NFL season is not out of place. Should be merged/renamed into a page on the season, however. - SimonP 22:36, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.
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