Talk:Rasta Rasivhenge

Refereeing nationality

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Looks like an agreement between the two editors originally involved in this dispute to archive this and instead start a new RfC to try and better resolve this disagreement. -- Shudde^talk 19:30, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

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How exactly should nationality be defined for a referee? Obviously in the vast number of cases, a referee would represent a country he has citizenship of, or was born in, but this isn't always the case:

• Example 1: Steve Walsh – born in New Zealand, refereed for New Zealand between 1998 and 2009 and for Australia between 2009 and 2015. Should he be regarded as a New Zealand referee, or as both an Australian and a New Zealand referee?
• Example 2: Rasta Rasivhenge – born in South Africa, refereed for South Africa since 2011, except in 2014, when he refereed for Australia. Should he be regarded as a South African referee, or as both an Australian and a South African referee?
• Example 3: Andrew Brace – born in Wales, but refereed for Ireland. Should he be regarded as an Irish referee or a Welsh referee?

If one refers to a referee as an "<country> referee", what does this mean? It it his actual nationality (i.e. what citizenship he has), or is it "sporting nationality" (i.e. which country he represented as a referee).
By my logic:

• If nationality refers to the country the referee is actually from, then Walsh should be classified as a New Zealand referee, Rasivhenge as a South African referee and Brace as a British referee.
• If nationality refers to the the referee's "sporting nationality", then Walsh should be classified as both an Australian and a New Zealand referee, Rasivhenge as both a South African and an Australian referee and Brace as an Irish referee.

Which interpretation should be used to determine a referee's nationality? Feedback greatly welcomed. TheMightyPeanut (talk) 00:12, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Personally I dislike the nationality games that come with this project. Half of WP:LAME are disputes over nationality. A simple solution is just to ignore it all together and open with something like Fhatuwani 'Rasta' Rasivhenge (born in Johannesburg on 3 January 1986) is a rugby union referee who is a member of the South African Rugby Union (SARU) Premier Panel.. I never really got the need to claim somebody as a nationality, it seems easier to just say where they were born and then where they lived if that is different and a notable part of their bio. It is only ever an issue in the lead as it is usually spelt out in the body better. However, If we are going down the nationality route I would go for country nationality. That in itself is a minefield as people change that quite a bit nowadays. I am pretty sure with actors, musicians and the like we go with their chosen nationality over where they are living and plying their trade. AIRcorn (talk) 05:58, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
  • By the way, it's also an issue in categories, i.e. should he just belong to the "South African Rugby union referees" category, or also to "Australian Rugby union referees"? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 06:40, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
• Comment I would agree with Aircorn that nationality should be downplayed where possible. On the category issue I would suggest Rasivhenge is a "South African Rugby union referee", but also an "ARU referee" & a "SARU referee". Another odd one is JP Doyle, who I believe is correctly assigned as an Irish nationality, RFU referee. On Andrew Brace, given he is a Belgian international should he be considered a Belgian referee??? Skeene88 (talk) 19:06, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree with Skeen88 on the categories. I am happy with the way this is presented in Rasta's page. It may be a bit of a case-by-case basis though as I have no real problem with the presentation at Steve Walsh or Andrew Brace (who are slightly different) either. AIRcorn (talk) 21:52, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
    • You're assuming Brace is Belgian. Hack (talk) 02:58, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
• Comment The main parent category is named "Rugby union referees by nationality". Therefore in my opinion if a referee is placed in the category:"Australian rugby union referees" he should be actually Australian. Spending five minutes in Australia does not make you Australian. I created the parent category:"Rugby union referees by governing body" as there are a number of referees, some of whom are mentioned here, are nationals of one country but are employed by the rugby union of another. If a referee has clearly changed nationality that is different. Also referees are employed by individual unions to act as independent arbitrators. Strictly speaking they are not representing a country. Djln Djln (talk) 13:35, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
  • If a referee is placed in the category:"Australian rugby union referees", why should he be Australian, and not (as the name suggests) simply an Australian rugby union referee? And of course referees represent countries. Have a look at this link; the "Glasgow Sevens" referees are clearly listed along with the countries they represent. The Pro14 referees list for the season strictly refers to the relevant unions, while World Rugby's Sevens referees list uses a mixture of countries and unions, which seems to indicate the terms are generally interchangeable. All those refer to the referee by the country he represents, not the one he was born in.
    There are also some issues with using someone's actual nationality. Firstly, all English, Welsh and Scottish (and possibly some Irish) referees would all have to be classified as British then, because they are nationals of the United Kingdom. However, since we're referring to referees in a sporting sense, it would make more sense to use countries acknowledged in a sporting sense. Secondly, would it be at all newsworthy if a referee changes nationality? Steve Walsh spent 6 years in Australia, he probably could have applied for citizenship. Did he? Is this even relevant? Yet, he achieved several noteworthy achievements as an Australia, including being in charge of the 2012 Super Rugby Final.
    The categorisation should not be an anthropological study into referees. Is it so outrageous to classify Andrew Brace as a Belgian player, an Irish referee and a Welsh (British) national? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 22:57, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Outrageous, maybe a bit strong but it certainly matters. Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopaedia. It therefore need's to be as accurate and correct as possible. Placing Rasta Rasivhenge and Steve Walsh in Australian nationality categories when they are not Australian is at best misleading or sloppy. At worst it is blatantly untrue and lying. Same goes for Brace. Citing media sources that are equally misleading or sloppy does not justify doing it on Wikipedia. Alternative categories have been created to resolve this issue. Would it be so outragous for you to use them ? Djln Djln (talk) 15:51, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with Aircorn that nationality in rugby union articles are often handled poorly -- far too often really. Regarding this specific article, Djln makes the perfectly valid point that Rasivhenge is not Australian, and so we have to be careful not to give that impression. I thought this RfC was supposed to resolve the categorisation dispute, but it has not been well constructed in order to do this. Can it be written a little better please if this is to be done? I completely agree with Djln and their comments above though, the category implies nationality when it should in fact be explicitly clear that in fact that referee is/was merely "affiliated" with a national union. It may be easiest to do this by renaming some categories rather than creating others. -- Shudde^talk 17:16, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Can you please recommend how to construct the RfC better then? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 12:12, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
    • @Shudde: I would be grateful if you could recommend how to construct the RfC regarding this issue. Djln Djln (talk) 13:41, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@Djln and TheMightyPeanut: At the moment the RfC is far to broad for one article. I did mention that if the dispute involves more than one article the RfC should not be conducted here. As well, I thought you two had discussed this issue here first, but instead you did it on each other's talkpages! Discussion regarding content should, as much as possible, be conducted on the relevant article talk page so that others may participate and so that any resolution can be seen by other editors later on. At the moment these comments are on user talk pages, which doesn't do anyone any good in a year or two. Thirdly, this is a living person (WP:BLP) and so caution should be used, anything contentious should be removed when in doubt, and only re-added once consensus is reached. I completely forgot about this being a BLP, but it's important, and as such the category should be removed while there is a dispute over what it means. I will remove this and I will close this RfC and think of a better constructed one that will apply to this article only. Then we will see what everyone thinks. I'll try and get this done soon. Sorry for the delay in replying! -- Shudde^talk 14:14, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• Proposal: "Acme 'Refman' Referee is a Sport referee from City, Country who referred the State Cup between 2003 and 2006, and the Country Tournament between 2008 and 2014." -- Cheers, Alfie. (Say Hi!) 14:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfCs on categorisation

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There are two proposals.

1. Should this article should be included in the category Category:Australian rugby union referees?
2. Do we need a more general discussion over how referee articles are categorised?

-- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal 1

Should this article should be included in the category Category:Australian rugby union referees?

There is a disagreement over how this article should be categorised, with two editors in particular disagreeing over this. See the talk page discussion at User talk:Djln#Rasta_Rasivhenge for more details on this. There does not seem to be a disagreement that Rasivhenge is South African, but he did spend some time refereeing in Australia under the authority of the Australian Rugby Union, and it is over this that the dispute revolves. -- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Please remember this is a WP:BLP, and BLP policy also applies to talk pages.

Survey proposal 1

• Oppose inclusion I think it would confuse people to see that he is listed under and "Australian" category when everyone agrees he is not an Australian, and he is now categorised under Category:ARU referees and Category:SARU referees which makes it clear which governing bodies he has refereed under. So I think listing him under Category:Australian rugby union referees would add nothing and just imply he is an Australian.-- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose inclusion Based simply on the fact, he is not Australian. Working in Australia or working for an Australian organization does not make you Australian Djln Djln (talk) 13:48, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• See the previous RfC listed above for some earlier discussion. -- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposal 2

A more general Request for Comment is needed to more broadly resolve the question of how referee articles are categorised

Do we need a more general discussion over how referee articles are categorised? Or is this issue something that can be resolved on an article-by-article basis? -- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Survey proposal 2

• Oppose -- Think it's premature at this time. We have categories listing referees by governing body now, so hopefully this resolves the issue. -- Shudde^talk 19:51, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
• Support -- It's never premature to come up with proper guidelines. Re listing them by governing body – since category names should not contain abbreviations, Category:ARU referees should be renamed "Australian Rugby Union referees" anyway, which will mean the difference in the categories will be capitalisation only. Why not thrash this out and come up with a decent classification acceptable to all? TheMightyPeanut (talk) 22:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Everything is on an article-by-article basis, but I see no reason not to come up with some general guidelines. Not sure this is the best place to host it, but it is already here so we may as well run with it. I think the horse has bolted anyway as discussion has started and we may as well see if anything comes of it. AIRcorn (talk) 07:25, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• I agree with The Mighty Peanut above that we should not use acronyms in categories. ARU has lots of meanings and while we all know what is meant we should not assume everybody does (while SARU is less ambiguous it would still be confusing for anyone not familiar with rugby). Spelling out the name would then become confusing in itself because we would have "South African rugby union referee" and "South African Rugby Union referee" or whatever nationalistic version repeated in multiple venues. Maybe it should be the slightly longer "Referees affiliated with the South African Rugby Union" (or some similar but more condensed version). AIRcorn (talk) 07:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree, but this can easily be fixed by renaming the category. I noticed it as well, but it's a separate issue so I didn't include it here. -- Shudde^talk 08:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
    • Since this has stalled and is a separate issue anyway is there any objection to changing Category:ARU referees to Category:Referees affiliated with the Australian Rugby Union, Category:SARU referees to Category:Referees affiliated with the South African Rugby Union etc? Otherwise we may have to go through a requested move. I am open to alternatives if anyone has them. AIRcorn (talk) 21:20, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.