Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of the oldest living Major League Baseball players

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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. ✗plicit 00:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of the oldest living Major League Baseball players[edit]

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List of the oldest living Major League Baseball players (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This is not, in fact, a list of living baseball players. Nor is it the oldest people to ever play. It's not even the longest lived baseball players. This confusing list reports the succession of players who have held the made-up title of "oldest living former baseball player". Surprisingly, it's not original to Wikipedia: the baseball-reference.com wiki has a similar list which predates this one by a decade or more.

A single baseball statistics wiki isn't sufficient to demonstrate that this record is in any way notable, so the list fails WP:LISTN as well as WP:NOTSTATS and WP:NOTMIRROR. pburka (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. pburka (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Baseball-related deletion discussions. pburka (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per NOTSTATS, just copied from baseball-reference.com, without further sources explaining why this is such a notable distinction. Nate Berkenstock played one single game and coincidentally lived 28 years after that – who cares? Reywas92Talk 23:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. It's not even clear what it means by "oldest living" -- and it's easily confused with List of oldest living Major League Baseball players. This is not something that appears important, encyclopedia worthy, or notable. – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 02:20, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per above. That is some seriously terrible grammar— nobody says “oldest living” to mean “longest living” just like they don’t say “building that stood the oldest” to mean “buildings that stood the longest”. Dronebogus (talk) 11:35, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The grammar is convoluted because the concept is convoluted. If someone actually needed to know who were the longest-lived ballplayers, they'd need to look for List of centenarians (Major League Baseball players). pburka (talk) 15:06, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. First, I disclose that I created this article two years ago, with the title "List of the oldest living Major League Baseball player" (singular), which I believe is more accurate than the current title; it was changed by somebody else after its creation, and I'll be glad to change it back. Although I don't think that the original grammar was poor, grammar can be changed. The article complies with Wikipedia:Lists in Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists#Selection_criteria in that it is not making judgements, it is not original research, the criteria for inclusion are clear, etc. It does not merely duplicate the information on Baseball Reference. I also confess that I don't understand how it fails the policies cited so far, any differently than do dozens of other baseball list articles such as List of Major League Baseball career home run leaders, List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders, List of Major League Baseball career wins leaders that appear non-controversial, and hundreds of other list articles when including other sports. As somebody who is interested in geriatrics, as well as baseball statistics that are generated off the field or outside of games, I believe that there is value in this list. Thanks for reading. Ira Leviton (talk) 18:45, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • The three lists you refer to are very different from this list. They're not about succession, but more importantly they're all about notable records which are widely reported and followed. How many newspapers reported when Ike Kahdot (who played 4 games in 1922) broke Red Hoff's record for oldest living ballplayer in 1998? pburka (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand what you're saying, but I don't think that the issue is about how many newspapers report something, it's about whether an event happened and was recorded so it can be cited, and whether it was notable. Of course home runs and hits in baseball are much more important than the longevity of players. But player longevity has been reported on and researched in general, and I believe that it meets notability criteria for Wikipedia, so that's why I made the list. (By the way, the three lists that I mentioned could have been copied from many other sites, probably thousands. That arguably makes their listing on Wikipedia trivial. But don't worry – I'm not seriously advocating that they should be deleted.) Ira Leviton (talk) 19:46, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Notability is determined by significant coverage in reliable, independent sources. To show it's notable you need to provide examples of sources that address the topic directly and in detail. (The topic, in this case, being the succession of oldest living ballplayers.) pburka (talk) 20:21, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Pburka:I've added citations to a number of the individual entries – as many as I had time to find within the 7 day time frame. I used a variety of sources, including books and newspaper obituaries, in an attempt to show significant coverage in reliable and independent sources as you mentioned. More than 2⁄3 of the entries now have at least one citation that is not simply from a similar list. I left in the Baseball-reference.com citations because they still provide useful information about the players, and I'll continue to add citations to the remaining players if the article survives.
    • Temporarily holding a certain unremarkable record within a certain area, with the record having nothing to do with said area, is not notable information. Dronebogus (talk) 20:01, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep No different from the List of presidents of the United States by age page. Bkatcher (talk) 02:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • How many times must it be stated that “other stuff exists” is a meaningless argument? Dronebogus (talk) 14:37, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as utter trivia. (Also to preclude the crime against English grammar of possibly restoring the original page name.) Clarityfiend (talk) 03:32, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: List of centenarians (Major League Baseball players) already covers the most significant examples.4.71.249.251 (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hey, that's an IP address with only three edits, purely used for voting! Please discount their vote! Bkatcher (talk) 02:02, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • Their argument is a lot more competent than “I like this” etc. so it’s valid. The problem is new IP editors who jump on bandwagons without good arguments, which suggests they might either be be sockpuppets/meat puppets or completely ignorant of how AfD works. Also I’m pretty sure you’re being sarcastic but most editors aren’t going to get your in-joke so please don’t confuse people. Dronebogus (talk) 14:54, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'm not joking. How do we know this IP, which has only edited on this AFD, isn't the sockpuppet of someone who already voted here? If this is an experienced wikipedian, wouldn't they already have an account? Or DO they? Bkatcher (talk) 17:18, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • Well even if it is voting is based more on the strength of the arguments, not the number of votes. If most of the votes are already leaning one way with solid arguments attached another vote for the same doesn’t change much. And in any case admins are allowed to give registered users more weight anyway when closing so there’s no point in deleting/striking out the vote or whatever unless something can be proven. Dronebogus (talk) 17:30, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
          • Please remember to WP:AGF and WP:DONTBITE. pburka (talk) 18:43, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
            • I did note vote multiple times on this discussion. My vote was based on the fact that “oldest living person to happened to have been a Major League Baseball player at some point during their lives” doesn’t seem to be a noteworthy distinction discussed by sources.4.71.249.251 (talk) 15:35, 23 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. Consensus at AFD recently has overwhelmingly supported not utilizing lists of "oldest living..."; largely because such lists are constantly changing as people age and die and maintaining accuracy and verifiability is a difficult and on-going task. Many editors consider such lists not encyclopedic (because they are inherently unstable) and in contradiction to policy at WP:LISTN. I share that view which I consider now to be the standard modus operandi/precedent at AFD within the application of NLIST in these type of list discussions.4meter4 (talk) 22:10, 25 September 2021 (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.
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