Talk:Chris Conroy

Undue weight to individual games

@FuriouslySerene: Currently there are two passages that I feel give undue weight to individual games that Conroy has umpired. I believe this goes against WP:BLP, in particular WP:BALASP and WP:BLPSTYLE.

• On September 3, 2015 in a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, Conroy failed to invoke the neighborhood play,[8] ruling Justin Upton safe at second in the sixth inning and subsequently drew the ire of Dodgers manager Don Mattingly.[9][10] Upton later came around to score the first run of a six run rally, helping the Padres to a 10–7 win.
• On June 26, 2016, Conroy was the home plate umpire in a game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers. In the bottom of the 7th inning, Conroy called Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen out on strikes. McCutchen, who had protested other pitches during the course of the game, threw his bat upon Conroy's called strikeout of him, and was ejected for the first time in his career.[11][12] Following the conclusion of the game, the Pirates sent video evidence to the league office for Major League Baseball to review.

These two quoted paragraphs make up over half of the information we have about Conroys umpiring career. There is no indication in the sources that these particular rulings had any effect on his career. Most of the sources are local with some being nothing more than blogs and opinion pieces. So for an umpire that has been involved in 165 high profile games we are highlighting two decisions out of the thousands he has made to cast him in a bad light. I think both these should be removed unless editors are prepared to add similar information from his other games. Policies that support this position are:

• WP:BALASP For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and impartial, but still disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic
• WP:BLPSTYLE The idea expressed in WP:Eventualism – that every Wikipedia article is a work in progress, and that it is therefore okay for an article to be temporarily unbalanced because it will eventually be brought into shape – does not apply to biographies.

You could probably throw in WP:Recentism and WP:Reliable sources for this. Comments on individual decisions in games fit better in the game article or tournament home page than on a biography if they don't result in an impact on his career, change of rules or some other lasting effect. 04:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this Aircorn. I do want to say that with respect to this page my revert may have been too hasty, so I apologize. I want to comment generally first because I know we've disagreed about a number of edits to different umpire pages.

First, I think you are misreading the undue policies slightly. All of them say that content that is covered in reliable source should be included in an article, the question is how much weight or space to give them. I'm not aware of any policy that says that reliably sourced content about the article's subject should not be covered at all. For example:

• WP:UNDUE says "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources."
• Similarly, WP:BLPSTYLE says "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone."
• Finally, WP:PROPORTION says "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject."

Thus, if an umpire made a notable error in a game, and it was then covered in reliable sources, it should be covered on the umpire's page. I do agree that it shouldn't receive undue weight - a sentence or two may be sufficient, depending on the context and coverage. However, it's not persuasive to me to say that because the sources are in regards to a single game, they should not be covered. Based on that, the length of articles of most MLB baseball players would be significantly reduced. Unfortunately, most of the reliable coverage of umpires tends to be about incidents in which a wrong or controversial call was made. However, if the criticism is sourced to a blog or a low quality source, then I agree it need not be mentioned.

As for this page, I've looked further into both incidents you were trimming. Re the September 3, 2015 event, Yahoo Sports and CBS News are both reliable sources that specifically covered Conroy's call. The incident was also covered in ESPN. I do think three reliable sources are enough for a mention, but I agree with you that it can be shortened, which is what you were trying to do originally, so my apologies as I think you were right to remove the last sentence. I think your edit for the June 26, 2016 incident was also correct, as the source article notes that the Pirates frequently send video to the league office. I will undue my edit. It is also sourced only to a local newspaper, so I agree with you there. There doesn't seem to be any national coverage of the incident, so I agree it should be removed. FuriouslySerene (talk) 16:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I think we both agree that notable incidents should be included, we probably vary quite a bit on what we consider a notable error though. Umpires, and in fact all referees, are human and will make mistakes and sports journalist is incredibly bias when it comes to reporting on these mistakes (or sometimes correct calls that they don't understand). Home town papers, even ones that would generally be considered reliable, will tend to exaggerate close calls that go against them in an unbalanced way. That is what I believe WP:BALASP and WP:BLPSTYLE is trying to address. We are writing a biography of the person so we need to cover their whole career not just pick specific incidents within that career. Otherwise we end up with articles like Gary Darling and Phil Lucket, which basically boil a professional career down to a series of sourced complaints. To use your player analogy it would be like an article on a baseball player that just contained a listings of the times they struck out (in fact that would be more due as it happens much more often than umpires make mistakes).

I have been doing this a while,[1] but have only recently moved onto American sports. As this is an article on their career, I believe criticism does belong, but only when it has an impact on their career. A de facto rule of thumb that seems to work in these other sports is that an incident becomes notable enough to include when the officials governing body reacts to it (either defending or condemning the decision, which can be through demotion). Like all things there will be exceptions. Otherwise it is just the usual whinge that follows almost every teams loss.[2] This is also a good way to make sure we have a reasonably objective threshold on what is notable and what is not as we are not relying so much on partisan reporting.

I think this low impact critical information has its place in Wikipedia though, just not at the umpires article. We have articles that cover most series, tournaments and even some individual games. This is where this I think this critique belongs and where it can be mentioned in depth if necessary. If you haven't seen it yet I have been developing an essay on this topic area with most of these thoughts at User:Aircorn/Sandbox/REF. AIRcorn (talk) 09:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I can tell you have strong feelings about referee criticism but I actually disagree with a lot of what you said here (personally, yes, referees get a rough go of it since they only make the news when they screw up, but that is simply not relevant to WP policies). First off, your claim that "sports journalist is incredibly bias[ed]" when reporting on referee controversies is a completely subjective statement that is contrary to our core policies on verifiability. If you have an issue with a specific source, you can take it to WP:RSN but it seems you think every sports journalism source is unreliable, which I think most editors would disagree with, since this encyclopedia relies on the reporting of reliable sources. I think if you want to propose a change to WP:UNDUE, WP:BLPSTYLE or other policies, you are free to do so. Unfortunately, none of the above arguments are supported by Wikipedia's current guidelines. It's simply not correct that criticism can only be included if "it has an impact on their career" or "comes notable enough to include when the officials governing body reacts to it." In any event, this isn't a good general rule - for example, the NBA releases a Last Two Minute Report on any game that is within 5 points, so there's an official reactions to dozens of games that don't finish controversially. Some leagues are more protective of their officials and do not officially respond to criticism, even when it is clearly notable and covered in dozens of sources. I would suggest that you take your proposed threshold to the village pump, or elsewhere, and see if you can garner support. Personally, I would not support this threshold and would stick with our current policies, which is that information that is covered in reliable sources can continue to be published to pages. Remember that Wikipedia is WP:NOTPAPER. However, as I said above, if an incident is only covered in local media, then an argument can be made that it should not be included. But if an umpire makes a mistake that is the focus of an article in Yahoo Sports, CBS, and ESPN, I'm really not sure how you can argue it should not be included. Furthermore, there's no reason why content can't be included on both the individual umpire's page and the event page itself. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I probably have strong feelings and will definitely admit to a certain amount of cynicism. There is a lot of crap that gets inserted into these articles after every game, much of which is unquestionable inappropriate. You do begin to question the motives of some editors who need to introduce large paragraphs attacking a referee when a team loses (I am not including you in this). I do believe I have the right of it though, although in my experience here everyone on different sides of a dispute believes they are right.

I admit my general rule was mostly anecdotal, although there has been some minimal discussion (e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket/Archive 70#Umpires). In any case there will be exceptions to any general rule so it is not a hard and fast threshold and specific incidents can certainly be discussed on a case-by-case basis. I have even suggested adding an edit based on this [3] and been overruled,[4][5] so it goes both ways.

I think I am reading WP:BALASP, WP:UNDUE and WP:BLPSTYLE correct. In fact the whole point of undue is to prevent the "if it can be sourced it can be added argument". So I don't think the policies need to be changed, it is just our differing interpretations that need clarification, which is kind of apt given the subject matter. I am also not so sure that most here would agree with you, editors seem to take WP:BLP concerns much more seriously now and I have currently done similar edits to soccer, rugby, cricket and NFL articles with relatively minimal pushback (see User:Aircorn/Sandbox/Ref links for the most recent discussions.

I am willing to take this to WP:RFC though to get more outside input as I would like to continue to making these articles my version of "WP:DUE", but only if this is the same as the consensus version. I would normally suggest holding it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Referees, but as I recently created and am the major participant there I would understand if you thought Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Sports and games or somewhere else was a better location.

Ideally though I would like to convince you, so for one last go I suggest you take a look at some of the old umpire articles and compare them to the modern ones. The older umpires are written from sources that look back on a career in hindsight, while many modern ones are written from sources that are very much in the present. The older ones are able to put the whole career in perspective, whereas the modern ones are almost WP:OR in that we choose what to add based on snapshots of incidents as they occur (some could even argue that they are primary sources). Of course we can't write modern articles with sources which show as much hindsight, but it might give an idea on what we should be aiming for. AIRcorn (talk) 01:09, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Well I think you acknowledge at the end that your ideal referee page can't exist until they retire. So unfortunately all we can do is add content from reliable sources, and wait until retrospectives are published in reliable sources after retirement. This isn't a failing on WP's part - it's simply impossible to assess a subject while they're still doing their work (of course any criticism must be proportionate and written in a disinterested tone). In any event, I don't think we're going to agree so an RFC sounds reasonable, although I'm not sure what you're planning to put in the RFC. I don't agree with going to a Wikiproject that isn't heavily used and may not be representative of most editors. I continue to maintain that all of the three policies you have cited refer to balance and giving proper weight, but none say reliably sourced content should not be included at all. As WP:BALASP says, "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources, so long as the material is presented responsibly, conservatively, and in a disinterested tone. Do not give disproportionate space to particular viewpoints; the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." Unless you maintain ESPN or CBS Sports are tiny minorities, then I'm not sure how you can maintain that content should be removed completely. FuriouslySerene (talk) 16:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think we are really that far apart, we have reached a tacit agreement here and I am sure we could probably do the same at the other umpire articles. I think our differences lie in what is disproportionate more than anything else. It would be good to get a clear agreement or even more participants in the discussion. Maybe a RFC at Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball would be best as it is clearly active and this is the focus of the dispute presently. I would like to post a notification at a few BLP/NPOV boards to bring in some editors that are familiar with the policies we are quoting though. I think the RFC should be headed something like How should reliably sourced criticism of baseball umpires individual games be presented. An example opening summary could be:

When an umpires performance is criticized in reliable sources how should this be presented on wikipedia with respect to WP:BLP (particularily WP:BLPSTYLE) and the neutral point of view policy (including WP:Undue and WP:BALASP). For the background that led to this RFC see Talk:Chris Conroy#Undue weight to individual games.

We could also add some options for consideration. For example my position would be include in the BLP if the incident has a clear impact on their career (i.e they are dropped or sanctioned due to it), otherwise it can be presented at the relevant game/tournament article. Or we could just leave it blank (obviously I would be presenting the above as my proposal along with my reasoning). Not fussed either way there. Anyway open to any changes to the wording to make it more neutral or any other suggestions. AIRcorn (talk) 05:02, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Chris Conroy

Is Chris still a active Major League Umpire 2601:583:600:10C0:6814:F6CF:3ED8:C103 (talk) 15:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)