Talk:Larry Wheels

Personal records

If it's helpful, can someone add his personal bests. mcloco95 (no) (talk) 19:35, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Anatoly

In Special:Diff/1289073831 ("do not think that this is notable enough to be included in article, not every collab/video needs to be noted") the following sentence + citation was removed:

In 2024, Wheels produced an hour-long video together with Ukrainian weightlifter Vladimir Shmondenko (Antoly).

Per WP:BRD process, a discussion should then have been be opened. As of two weeks later no discussion has been opened by the reverter—thusly it would seem correct to restore the removed content + reference. —Sladen (talk) 07:19, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Hey, sorry, that was my deletion--didn't realize the process. My thoughts:

1. The fact doesn't fit under "Bodybuilding career"--Anatoly is a powerlifter and really doesn't focus on physique. Seems like it should belong under a different section, perhaps "Social media career" or something to that effect.
2. I'm also still not sure that the video is on its own notable enough to be included in the article. It's not one of his most viewed videos and it doesn't seem to have spurned anything particularly notable in Larry's career, nor did it spurn a lot of talk from quality sources--though to be fair, we kinda have to be ok with less-than-scholarly sources in writing Wikipedia pages on strength athletes--and Anatoly himself isn't a super notable figure, just a decently popular social media figure.

I'm not entirely convinced it belongs, but if you think it belongs and you want to add it under a new "Social media career" section (or something to that effect--not sure what the best phrasing would be), I'd say re-add it. Pkoroly (talk) 04:03, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

(Also am just generally cautious about the page getting kinda bloated with unsourced or irrelevant information, as many strength athletes' pages tend to get--like, the info box is full of random stats about PRs, measurements, etc. with zero context or sourcing. I've seen the PRs and I know they're real, but they were all performed to different standards, none were performed in competition, and I don't think they really belong there. It'd be like putting Tom Brady's longest pass in his Wiki infobox--it belongs elsewhere if it belongs anywhere.) Pkoroly (talk) 04:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Removing clutter from infobox

Not sure how to go about this process, but I believe that the "Best statistics" section of the infobox should be removed. It's unsourced, it's cluttered, it doesn't adhere to the format of other notable powerlifters or bodybuilders, and it doesn't seem to adhere to the typical format of most athletes' pages.

Personal records are featured on some athletes' infoboxes (looking at Usain Bolt and Lasha Talakhadze), but those are competition bests while I believe that the numbers featured here are training bests. (I think training bests need to be removed from a lot of lifters' wiki pages, but that's another project entirely) Anyways, just think we should try to keep things clean and efficient. Pkoroly (talk) 18:56, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

Pkoroly, a primary benefit of Infobox fields, is that the field content is then machine-readable; thus allowing facts to be much more easily presented by search engines. Which precise field(s) are being proposed to be removed? —Sladen (talk) 18:05, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

All personal records (bench press, squat, and deadlift). None of these appear to be done in competition nor have they been verified by any source in the article, and unofficial gym PRs don't seem to be featured on any other athlete's page on Wikipedia (nor should they be--there's a reason that competition-verified results are the only ones featured on sports pages).

Bicep, forearm, height, and weight measurements also appear to be unsourced--and, again, not featured on other bodybuilder pages (see e.g. Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler (bodybuilder), and Phil Heath for a few prominent bodybuilder pages).

I don't think that we should prioritize machine readability if it ultimately leads to us putting unnecessary and (more importantly) unsourced info in the infoboxes. The goal should be to offer a quick summary of important facts to a reader--prioritizing machine readability could compromise that. Pkoroly (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2025 (UTC)