Template:Did you know nominations/List of baseball deaths

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The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Allen3 talk 10:21, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Insufficient progress toward resolving outstanding issues

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List of baseball deaths[edit]

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Created by Colonel Warden (talk). Self nominated at 07:54, 27 September 2013 (UTC).

  • Good work here, but technically this fails the DYK criteria. For "1500 characters of prose", we don't count the items in a list: we only count the prose text, and you're way short of that. However, I'm not sure that we should apply this: your list includes extensive prose. If we exclude the bits before the dashes ("beanball —", "commotio cordis —", "lightning —", etc.) but count the prose after those items, we're at about 1900 characters. I'm going to ask at WT:DYK about this. In the mean time, I see no other issues with the content: it comes from good sources (great work on finding relevant articles in academic journals!) and it's clearly new enough. I'd only ask that you revise the hook — it reflects the article accurately, but the wording is somewhat clunky. Could you just write a new hook with the same facts? Nyttend (talk) 00:27, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Agree with Nyttend. WP:DYK b) says "Prose character count excludes wiki markup, templates, lists, tables, and references; it is calculated using User:Dr pda/prosesize.js or a similar extension.". The way to do this would be to rewrite the bulleted "causes" section as prose. Also, I'm concerned about the scope of this article. Death of natural causes is not a death caused by baseball, and should not be included in a "list of baseball deaths". — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:28, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I have added a couple of ALTs to try variations of the hook. Please take another look.Warden (talk) 10:56, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I share some of the concerns noted by Nyttend and Crisco 1492. I see multiple issues with this article.
The article scope is excessively diffuse. As I see it, it is a conglomeration of (1) generalizations about the life expectancy of ballplayers, (2) short factual statements about causes of deaths at ball games, and (3) a "list" of five ballplayers whose only unifying characteristic seems to be that they died. Five items isn't much of a stand-alone list and this isn't a reasonably developed article about the life expectancy of ballplayers, beanball deaths and their prevention, or the hazards of playing baseball or attending games.
The "Causes" section of the article needs to be rewritten as prose. There is no reason for this content to be presented as a bulleted list. Discussions of topics like death from beanball deserve to be expanded to include information on topics like measures to prevent such deaths.
The individual entries in the "list" seem deficient. For example, if a list tells me that someone was the last minor-leaguer to be killed by a beanball, I expect the list to tell me when he died.
More work is needed on the article before it can be featured in DYK -- and I predict that judicious improvements to the article can easily carry it past the "prose length" threshold for DYK. --Orlady (talk) 15:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Such considerations are irrelevant for the DYK process. This article is a new one and the DYK process requires such new content to be submitted within a tight timescale, which does not permit leisurely expansion to a complete state. The appropriate process for such objections is GA/FA, I believe. As for the scope of the article, I have anticipated such objections by building the article upon a foundation of excellent sources such as The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, which is at my elbow here. They cast their net quite wide and so there will be no difficulty in expanding the list to cover other causes and deaths. I am veteran of AFD and am well satisfied that the topic will pass WP:LISTN easily. But feel free to nominate for deletion if you don't agree, so we can get that out of the way. So far as DYK is concerned, Nyttend seems to be the reviewer here. He just wanted some tweaks to the hook, which I have done. The other issues belong elsewhere, I reckon. Warden (talk) 16:26, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • The article fails the DYK prose length criterion (it's not even close to 1500 characters of prose). It won't qualify for DYK unless the prose is significantly expanded or unless someone manages to convince us that this article deserves an exception from the standard rules. And you are saying that the deficiencies in the article content aren't relevant to its eligibility for DYK? If you want this article to be considered at DYK, you had better either build it up to 1500 characters of prose or create some content of exceptional quality that will convince the rest of us to waive the prose-length rule. (Note that it's not just Nyttend who has to be convinced -- he doesn't WP:OWN this DYK review and no one reviewer can waive the rules here without the support or acquiescence of the "DYK community".) --Orlady (talk) 05:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
One thing confuses me. I expected a list of people who died during a game of baseball. But then there are people who are included on the list for no exceptional reason other than the fact that they died. This list should only include deaths that occurred during a game, because a list of every Major League Baseball player to die would be way too long and would probably be sent to a AfD discussion. Beerest355 Talk 19:34, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Article remains under 1500 prose characters despite specific statements above that this is a requirement, and that material in lists do not count here at DYK—Nyttend asked at WT:DYK if an exception is appropriate, and the responses were made here and have been clear that it is not. Orlady and Crisco 1492's concerns are valid and still unaddressed; the only edits have been to the lede, which now specifically adds death at extreme old age to the criteria for inclusion despite the discussion here. I agree with these concerns, as the article seems to be combining two quite distinct topics that seem only related by the fact that many thousands of people who are baseball players will eventually die of some cause or other. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:37, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
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