Talk:Akron Aeros

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[edit] Current roster deletion

I've deleted the "Currnet roster" section in accordance with WP:NOT. Point #7 under "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" most closely describes what I believe to be the function of the roster in this article. Furthermore, I am aware that there has been some discussion about this issue on this user talk page and I would like to see further discussion on this talk page before any editors attempt to add the roster back. -- backburner001 14:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with current rosters? As long as its kept up-to-date, which it has been, I think it should be allowed. What's the difference between updating roster and people updating things like team standings and stats everyday? Andouble, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

There's another discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Baseball#Current_record, and the community is against updating standings and stats every day also. An encyclopedia entry, years from now, is not going to care that someone was hitting .250 on July 22 and .246 on July 23 and so forth. At the end of the season when such things are "final", then great. There's no objection to linking to externally-maintained sites (such as the Aeros' own roster page), but someone shouldn't need to be updating the Wiki pages every two days. In theory (WP:OWN), no one truly "owns" a page (though I'll admit my local teams are near and dear also). Plus if that person gets hit by a bus or something.... Dakern74 19:58, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
...Now you wouldnt happen to be driving that bus would you? 152.163.100.199 23:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure there is much more I can add to this discussion aside from saying that I agree with the comments made on the WikiProject Baseball talk page. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to highlight the significant aspects of the topic an article covers (not to list every detail and statistic about the topic). I would agree that WP:NOT applies here, specifically the sub-section that excludes Wikipedia as a collection of indiscriminate information. -- backburner001 14:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Team roster and roster notes to be added back

Hi, I realize that certain users are probably not intentionally trying to piss me (and others) off by repeatedly removing the current roster so I will kindly assume good faith.

I do not however appreciate being a subject of “don’t do this or else” dialogue (i.e. Do not add the current roster back to the page or it will be considered vandalism: see “further addition of content without talk page discussion will be considered vandalism”). On that basis, shouldn’t your constant removing of critical information (the roster) be considered vandalism?

I really don’t plan to go back and forth on this, but since backburner wants a discussion about it (see “ I removed it again. Until the editors who keep adding it back actually talk to us, the roster goes. It's as simple as that.” -- backburner001 13:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)), well...

The article is called “Akron Aeros” so it really makes sense that the real-life present day Akron Aeros are on the page (i.e. the player roster). The current players represent who the Aeros are better than anyone else. The article is already extremely weak as it is! Most (maybe all) of the info is either copied or slightly re-worded from one/two source(s) (Aeros team website or Eastern League website). Removing the team personal only limits the article even more! Why do we want that? Instead, lets make this page top-notch!

Yes, keeping the roster would require an update possibly every other day (this is really the only compelling argument), but it has been proven that during the course of the 2006 season, there have been several users eager and willing to accurately update the page using a variety of sources (problem solved!). In other words and more to that point, if one roster contributor were to get hit by a bus, there will be other contributors to fill the void. (FYI, At some points throughout the season already, the Aeros official website fell days/a week behind wikipedia in terms of updating the roster.) I don’t know if there is such a thing as a “Frequently Updated Page” tag that could put near the top of the page, but maybe that’s an option.

Finally, sure most of the players are not notable, that is why they are not linked to respective articles. However, they do represent the Aeros more than anyone or anything else and need to stay on the page in the roster format. 152.163.100.199 23:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your intent to WP:ASG. I realize that my edit summary here may have seemed offensive, but I urge you to understand that this isn't a matter of me saying "don't do this or else" to you or any other editors that may want the rosters included. If you had classified it as a matter where I said, "Don't do this without discussing it further or else" - I would not object. As it stands, the rosters were being added back without any consideration (as far as I could tell) for the editors who had good faith objections to their inclusion. That said, while I understand that my tone may have caused you frustration, you must also understand that it was precisely that tone that brought about this discussion (rather than risk creating an edit war over the issue).
I'm not disputing the relevance of the rosters to the Akron Aeros. What I am disputing is that the addition of these rosters violates the spirit of WP:NOT, specifically the section that excludes Wikipedia as an indiscriminate collection of information. In other words, while the rosters do have relevance to the article's topic, creating a good article about the Aeros requires that we be selective about the information we choose to include. Instead of listing every possible detail about the team (which is what I believe the rosters aid in achieving), we must choose information about the team that highlights its notability in a useful manner. In that sense, I believe removing the rosters actually strengthens the article. By removing the rosters, we are getting rid of information that is relevant, but only minor. The added benefit of removing such info is that the article, if indeed weak in other areas, may gain more attention because the rest of the information will remain on the page (thus making it more visible to those who might improve it).
Please address these concerns before you consider adding the rosters back. We both want the same thing - an improved article. Let's continue discussing how we might work toward that goal. -- backburner001 22:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'll chime in since I sort of started this whole discussion. And I'm not trying to drive a bus over anyone either. However, I started updating the Eastern League teams a couple months back, since many of them were very small stubs. And since I follow the league rather closely, I have a lot of historical info on the franchises and players and so forth. So I was trying to have some common sections (such as the history, "notable alumni", and records) that could be a consistent bare minimum across all the teams in the league. So yes, I did lift a lot of the history (though not verbatim) from the Aeros' own website. If you've got more to add, go for it. Certainly we don't need extreme details of who was the winning pitcher on May 6 of 1998 or something, but I wanted there to be some basic background in that section.
Around this same time, there was a discussion on the baseball project page about major league teams, and apparently there are similar "issues" with people updating the current records and division standings for some MLB teams on a nightly basis. (This also happens on a couple other Eastern League pages as well.) Rosters seemed like the same type of thing. I have no doubt that everybody means well, but at the same time, I thought the goal was to create relatively stable pages that don't need updating every couple days. I don't view the roster itself as an "indiscriminate collection of information", but since we know it's going to change rather frequently, I also didn't want the article to get to where it needed one of those "current event", "information may change quickly" tags either. That's why my first thought was to replace the hard-coded roster with an external link to the team site.
The other day I also discovered Template:Maintained which can be put on an article, not so much to claim ownership, but to announce that certain specific users are active in the upkeep. Maybe that would be a good course of action here. Allow the hard-coded roster, but add this tag and list off the couple of users that are maintaining it. Then if someone has questions, or if it gets out of date, or whatever, there would be sort of a "contact list" (for lack of a better term). I just don't want to see a "permanent" article that's designed in such a way that it requires updating all the time, without any idea of how (or by whom) said updates are going to occur.
BTW, same or similar problems exist on a couple other team pages in the Eastern League. Akron just happens to be first alphabetically.  :) Sorry for starting the grief, but I think we can find some middle ground here. Dakern74 04:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Points well taken. I failed to mention, but my basic thinking is that this article (and all minor league baseball team articles) should be modeled after a MLB team article. Although they are not a major league team, the Aeros are a professional sports team - and a well established high-level minor league team at that (we are not talking about a low level rookie league team or something else of that nature). It's a fact that each and every MLB team article includes a current roster (which is usually updated hours after a roster move occurs). I don't know if there is a discussion for or against including MLB rosters with their team articles but maybe someone could enlighten me. I think if rosters are accepted (and it appears that they are) on a MLB team article, it naturally makes sense to include them on (upper-level) minor league articles as well. After all, former major leaguers often frequent the rosters of AA and AAA teams. I think we agree, work still needs to be done on the Aeros article and I simply think that mirroring it to a MLB team page as much as possible is the way to go. I simply feel that if rosters are accepted in major league articles, they should be accepted in minor league articles (all least down to the AA level).

Finally, in light of all that, I would be in favor of a simplistic roster (i.e. player number, flag, player). This would also take up less space and be placed at the bottom. (The old style was advantegeous simply because most of the current players did not have their own articles but there was still a short discription for each (birth date, birthplace, etc. was nice to have) 152.163.100.199 16:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

So what's the final word on the roster? As one of the persons who updated the Aeros roster regularly, I'm interested in the final verdict.Andouble 20:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
I guess, to follow the format of all the MLB teams, it wouldn't be a "major infraction" to keep the simpler version with just number, flag, and player name. In fact, I hadn't realized there were separate entire articles just titled, for example, Cleveland Indians roster. That seems absurd to me, since the exact same info is already within the regular Cleveland Indians page. But whatever. Maybe with the increased following that the minor leagues are getting, we should be moving toward having rosters on every team page, rather than trying to stay away from it. Maybe you guys are actually starting a trend, instead of being the oddballs in the league. (If you'd like, you can be both.) Have fun. Dakern74 17:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:TorontoBlueJays.jpg

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BetacommandBot 04:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC)