Talk:Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders

Notable members

At the moment, this list has one notable member.

In general, we would not add, for example, Tom Cruise to this list because, although he is certainly notable, he is not a member.

I am unsure why the reverse of this -- where someone is a member but is not notable -- makes any more sense.

We can certainly find reliable sources that show my niece is from Philadelphia (she was interviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer for a story on a project she was involved in). However, so far, she is not notable (she's in high school). As a result, she is not listed at List of people from Philadelphia and shouldn't be. She also is not listed as being notable in her high school's article.

That there really aren't many notable former Eagles Cheerleaders is not a good reason to set lower criteria to inflate the list, otherwise, we'd be puffing up lists left and right. - SummerPhD^v2.0 02:35, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Tagging Steve70196, to ensure they have seen this discussion. - SummerPhD^v2.0 19:31, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, it’s greatly appreciated. I’ll review the Wikipedia notability criteria and try to do my best to follow. Regarding the Eagles cheerleader page in particular, you stated that only one cheerleader currently listed was actually notable. Which one?

Previously, as I was adding some new names, I looked at other NFL cheerleader pages on Wikipedia and tried to use that as a guide. It appears to be fairly common for Wikipedia users to consider cheerleaders who’ve appeared in the Miss USA or Miss America pageants to be notable. A couple of cheerleader pages considered former cheerleaders that were now choreographers or cheerleading coaches to be notable. Still others cited cheerleaders who were actresses (some admittedly famous, but it seemed that most had lower profiles, e.g. actresses in indie films, small single-episode supporting roles on TV series, or reality TV show contestant). Finally, others had gained visibility through some level of local celebrity or accomplishment (e.g., reporter, radio host, meteorologist, spouse of a celebrity or local pro athlete). These were the common threads I noticed on other pages.

Again, I did appreciate the feedback. If you’d like to delete any of the names I added, you’re welcome to do so. I won’t restore any names that are deleted, and it wasn’t my intention to artificially inflate the list.

Steve70196 (talk) 23:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:NOTABILITY is going to cause some confusion here. The guideline deals with whether or not a topic should have a stand-alone article. Betty White, for example, is notable because multiple independent reliable sources discuss her in reasonable depth. My niece is not notable (so far) because such coverage of her does not exist. So, Betty White exists but Dox's niece does not.

Yes, there are other articles about other groups of cheerleaders. Some of them might be very well done. Some of them are certainly horrible and need a lot of work. Modeling one article after what you find in other articles does not guarantee that this article will be improved. It guarantees that the collection of articles will be homogenized toward the current average. If you apply your strategy to all of the articles, the bad articles will get better, but the good articles will get worse. Instead, Wikipedia prefers to have articles written to meet agreed upon standards, outlined in our policies and guidelines.

What we should be discussing here is List selection criteria. Basically, we need objective, sourced criteria for who does and does not belong on the list. WP:CSC outlines three commonly used and widely accepted criteria.

The first common criterion (and the one that makes the most sense here) is every member of the list who is blue-link notable. This would include all current and former Eagles cheerleaders who have individual articles about them. Currently, the only member who meets this test is Beverly Lynne. This test is common to lists like List of people from Philadelphia, List of Berklee College of Music alumni, South_Philadelphia#Notable_people and tens of thousands of other lists.

The second common test is every entry that fails the criterion. It's a rather odd test, is never used for living people and clearly does not apply here. See WP:CSC for more info.

The third common criterion is every member of the list. This is useful for short, discrete lists where leaving out some members would be a bad idea. For example, you would expect List of mayors of Philadelphia to list everyone who has ever been mayor, even the ones who do not have articles. At 99 entries, it's a bit long but reasonable. Using it in this article would result in a complete list of every Eagles cheerleader ever. Whether or not we could generate such a list, it should be fairly clear that this would WP:NOT be a good idea.

The fourth criterion sometimes used is criterion from a reliable source. For example, though we could create List of green mushy vegetables, we would not as reliable sources do not discuss green mushy vegetables in a way that makes it clear which vegetables are unambiguously "green" and "mushy" (such a list would include "green beans that have been boiled for too long", "wilted spinach", etc., but exclude "raw spinach" and "gently steamed green beans", presumably).

I am advocating for the first: Including only those cheerleaders who meet blue-link notability. If there are other former cheerleaders that anyone feels should be included who do not have articles, write the article first.

If you or anyone else has sourced, objective, unambiguous criteria they feel should be used here instead, I am all ears. - SummerPhD^v2.0 03:39, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again for the guidance. If “Blue Link” notability is the best criterion to use, then I have to agree that Beverly Lynne is the only former cheerleader who currently appears to qualify. It does seem, though, that other former Eagles cheerleaders do seem to sufficiently meet “notability” criteria to merit their own articles on Wikipedia and eventual inclusion on this page (that is, they’ve been adequately discussed as the main subject of articles by one or multiple independent sources). The articles just haven’t been written yet; I wondered if I should try and write one. And, I agree that most of the notable members lists do seem to be larger than they should be, and fall short of wikipedia’s “blue link” criterion. Hopefully these lists will improve in the future. Steve70196 (talk) 04:11, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

If think you have sufficient coverage in reliable sources and you'd like to give that a try, you can either pick one and try to write a full article on them or start with stubs (short and simple articles intended for later expansion) with sources. See WP:IDEALSTUB for some guidance.

One of the pitfalls you might run across is notability. I once interviewed a Miss (state) winner for a research assistant job. There probably wasn't enough to say about her: she was born, went to college, won the title and promptly disappeared into a series of air talent jobs at increasingly small stations throughout the state. While she would be presumed notable based on "(receiving) a well-known and significant award or honor", the only real depth of coverage was newspapers apparently regurgitating info from a press release (basic bio, a factoid that the title was something she had dreamed of since she was a specific age and an answer she gave to a question during the competition).