Talk:Rob Walker (sports announcer)

Notability

It's not clear to me that Rob Walker meets Wikipedia's criteria for notability. The specific requirement is for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". "Significant coverage" is explained as "sources address the subject directly in detail [...] more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material."

Searching Google News for '"Rob Walker" snooker' gives fewer than ten hits and none of those mentions Walker more than once. These sources would be sufficient as citations for Walker's catchphrase or the simple fact that he's the MC for world snooker events but they don't establish his individual notability. Likewise, I don't see anything beyond this level of coverage in a Google News Archive search. A general Google search also doesn't seem to give anything, either — mostly blogs and the occasional interview with Walker himself, none of which establishes notability. Note also that Walker is employed by the BBC and, I think, World Snooker, so articles about him on their site don't count as sources that are "independent of the subject".

Have I missed anything? Dricherby (talk) 10:38, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

The guy gets significant television exposure in a major country. People are going to want to know about him, and we are able, with reference to good sources, to tell them something about him. If he isn't notable by the wording of Wikipedia's guidelines, that just means there's something badly wrong with the wording of Wikipedia's guidelines. Compare him with the thousands of obscure American college athletes and porn stars and other very obscure subjects that (quite rightly) get articles on Wikipedia, even though you won't find a single word about them on Google News.

Also you'll find many more than ten hits if you look for mentions of him on the sites of particular national newspapers and sports sites. For me there isn't any point wasting time discussing whether he's notable or not - clearly he gets far more coverage than do the overwhelming vast majority of Wikipedia article subjects (even if much less than the more prominent ones). This is a non-problematic article that makes Wikipedia better (and can certainly be expanded to be even more useful), so if you're worried that it doesn't meet the requirements of some guideline that someone's written, just read WP:Ignore all rules and be happy. Victor Yus (talk) 18:31, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

If he gets the media coverage you claim he gets, please use use some of it to expand the article! Because, right now, anyone who's curious about Rob Walker and looks at the article will find out nothing that they didn't already know. (They're curious because they've seen him MCing the snooker; the article tells them that... he MCs the snooker.) Note that being on TV for a couple of minutes every now and again isn't "coverage": it's him doing his job. Coverage means that people not directly connected with him are writing about him and publishing it.

Comparisons with American college sport just don't work. Partly because of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but mostly because college sport in the US is a much bigger deal than it is in the UK. Essentially, every college sports match over there is as big as the Oxford–Cambridge boat race here; top-level college football draws similar sized crowds to the NFL, for example. Dricherby (talk) 18:49, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

And the World Snooker Championship draws British and international audiences of many millions. Of course I would like to improve and expand the article, and hope that other people that really know stuff about him will do so even more effectively than I can. But your carping and hassling and implying that you're thinking of getting the article deleted doesn't exactly encourage one to bother. (Though having said that, I should thank you for raising this on the talk page rather than doing an immediate deletion nomination, as some more desctructive Wikipedia "editors" are known to do.) Victor Yus (talk) 18:58, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Again, Rob Walker MCing the World Championship isn't coverage: it's him doing his job. If the "particular national newspapers and sports sites" you mention are writing significant amounts about Rob Walker, it shouldn't be more than a few minutes' work for you to add a couple of sentences and a couple of cites to the article. That would clearly establish notability and then there would be no grounds for deletion, even if the article was still pretty short. You don't need to write a great article about him; you just need to show that it's possible to write a good article. Dricherby (talk) 19:19, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I no nothing about Snooker and I'm not British, so I guess I'm a third party here. Searching "Rob Walker Snooker" in Google give a ton of hits. Refs just don't have to show up in Google News. There are plenty of obscure people with articles on Wikipedia, but as long as they meet the rules the get an article. Being in front of millions, does not make one notable. I just nominated an article for deletion because a musician sang in front of millions at a boxing match and he hasn't actually released any music or has an article about him.

Despite Victor's vitriol (please be calm and discuss without so much emotion), I do think Walker does stand a good chance of being notable. Journalist and sports announcers usually don't get alot of press about themselves. For example, Jim Nantz is probably the premier golf announcer in the world. Do "Jim Nantz golf" in Google news. It gives you very few hits with most of them not about him. Victor, could you get a couple more refs to show Walker's importance in the Snooker world. What does he do outside snooker broadcasting? Most importantly of all, what in tarnation is a baize? Bgwhite (talk) 07:43, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

As I said, tried a general Google search and, while there were indeed lots of hits, none of them seemed to be reliable sources (mostly blogs, other self-published material and interviews with Walker himself). That's why I asked if I'd missed something. Baize is the felt-like cloth used to make snooker and pool tables. Dricherby (talk) 08:11, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

You can find hits for him on sportinglife.com, dailymail.com, etc. etc. (better to use ordinary Google with the "site:" keyword than Google News or the sites' own search functions). I am not getting any reward for writing any of this, nor is this a primary interest of mine, nor am I the best person to write this article (I started it as a result of my vaguely wanting to find out something about this gentleman, rather than my knowing anything about him). So please let me and other volunteers develop this article in our own good time, rather than complaining a few hours after the stub being created that it doesn't contain as much information as clearly ideally it should. Victor Yus (talk) 11:39, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem being, as soon as an article appears, the article has to pass notability guidelines. Being a stub is perfectly fine. I look at all the biographies coming in everyday and one of the many things I look at is notability. Dricherby, (btw, you said up above google news not google search) could you add some of the more "important" interviews. Having a couple of interviews by the BBC or the like does help. Victor could you please add some of the sportinglife or dailymail refs. Both take 5 minutes and this thing will be over with. Bgwhite (talk) 20:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you misread my original post — I searched Google news and did a full Google search and neither came up with anything much. Since Walker is a BBC employee, I don't think a BBC interview would be an appropriate source as it's not independent (not that I've managed to find one, anyway). From the first fifty hits on Google search, the closest I saw to a proper source was an interview on prosnookerblog.com. That seems to be a step above being "just some guy's blog", in that he has managed to get interviews with ten or so players but I'm not at all sure it meets the criteria for being a reliable source. Dricherby (talk) 21:22, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Argh. I just said add some of the interviews. I know it does nothing to meet notability requirements, but it does add information to the reader. It also adds information to see how important he may or may not be. I just got done spending 5 minutes of searching and added a ref from the Yorkshire Post. If Dricherby could add the interviews and Victor adds what he has found, then we can get together to see if it is or isn't enough. If Dricherby feels it isn't, he has the right to take it to WP:AfD, but if that is the case, then Victor will have put up the best defense for against removal. I'm trying hard to be neutral, have everybody stop bickering, and put up the best information on Walker we can find. Bgwhite (talk) 22:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Seems my mistake was to Google with quote marks, since I figured there'd be too many spurious hits due to Rob and Walker both being very common names. Without the quotes, it looks like he's at least close to notability and I don't think it's appropriate to AfD unless it's pretty clear that somebody's not notable. Dricherby (talk) 22:56, 14 May 2012 (UTC)