Category talk:History of sports

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[edit] Proposed forum

I propose that this page be used as a forum to discuss sports history in terms of how it is presented on Wikipedia and perhaps as the forerunner of a dedicated project. All contributions welcome. --Einar 20:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree we should have a central forum until a formal WikiProject is started, though unless there is prolonged and growing interest in such a project, I'd be loath to start one. I've a few thoughts about sports history:

I've tried to integrate the cricket history material into the "years in sport", "seasons in sport", centuries in sport" series with a view to that being a standard practice across all sport projects, so we ought to encourage all projects to do that. From what I could see, soccer and baseball were well ahead of cricket in this regard and part of my incentive was to catch up with them!

I can see that Einar has done some good work on this category and tidied it up. I'm interested in his idea of having both an article and a sub-cat for each sport within the category and I'd like to know if he thinks there is sufficient material already to do this across the board or if a lot of sports are short of historical material.

We should leave messages for user:P64 in the hope that he will return as he did most of the early work on the "years in sport" series.

I think the article Pre-1850s in sports is a bit of a sticking point, although it is very good, because as the cricket articles have shown, modern sport at an organised level goes back into the 18th and even 17th centuries. I think we need to break up this article and expand much further into the past, although I've no real alternative at present for a better cutoff. At a guess, and using cricket as a yardstick, I might go for 1550 as that marked the earliest definite cricket reference, but it depends on the histories of other sports.

Those are a starter for ten. I'm not going to be available much over the next three weeks but I'll look in and perhaps make a start on the pre-1850s somewhere.

All the best. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 07:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I entirely agree with the points made. To answer the second one, I think the majority of sports do not have a history article and few have enough material to even start a history category. I'm afraid most sports editors focus on the present (as you must have found when doing your cricket history). It will need a lot of work to create the necessary material.

I certainly think for starters it would be a good idea to decompose Pre-1850s in sports and work backwards in time but I would only create a "year" if there is actual content for it. I would not have a cutoff. I think we should go right back to 3000BC and beyond if the content is there.

Well, now I must apologise. Having kick-started this, I must now take my leave for a few weeks due to a secondment at work which involves relocation. I doubt very much if I will have any time for WP but I will try to stay in touch if possible. Good luck. --Einar 07:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)