Talk:List of England international footballers

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I am planning on building this page up so it lists all players will all appearances

Contents

[edit] Merger

It has been suggested that England Caps be merged into this article or section.

I'm not convinced of a merge. there is no source for the other page, and don't want it clogging this one up until it is sourced. --Robdurbar 18:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't Merge. The merger proposed is between an article concerning players with 25+ caps (113 players) and an article concerning players with one cap (333). According to englandfootballonline.com, England has capped 1143. There's a huge gap consiting of 697 players. If someone wants to put in the hours...  SLUMGUM  yap  stalk  18:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion

I think the article should be expanded to include every player who has represented England. Any thoughts? GiantSnowman 20:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment As this would entail over 1000 players it would be a rather long list! 80.9.112.249 06:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Very true! But surely point of an encyclopaedia is to provide as much information as possible...GiantSnowman 18:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've just edited it for the first time, and I won't be editing it again. This page is too complicated, confusing and drawn out. The previous page which listed those with 25 caps or more was much more manageable and I was happy editing it each time. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of England international footballers (alphabetical)

At long last I have completed the task of turning this list into a (rather large) table. Subject to a bit of checking & cross-checking (any help will be gratefully received), I plan to merge this with the main List of England international footballers. --Daemonic Kangaroo 04:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American date of birth format

This table has all the dates in American format! They really should be translated into English. Postlebury 11:32, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

As the table is too large to use the proper date sorting format, there has to be a compromise. To maintain the integrity of the date sorting, the only workable format is yyyy mm dd. --Daemonic Kangaroo 12:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

A pedant writes... the date format is ISO, not American. Does the auto date formatting get affected by the transclusion limit? I thought it was only templates. Oldelpaso 20:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
When I was creating the table, using the {{dts|3|November|1933}} template I found that there is a practical limit in WP as to how many templates can be used on a page, and this was reached after only about 95 entries (out of 1150); I put the problem up to an admin for help and he suggested using a substitution after the templates were used. This resulted in a page over 700k in size; again for less than 10% of the total entries. Goodness knows what size we would have ended up with, even if would have been possible to edit this, so I had to arrive at a compromise. If anyone can make the date-sort template work I'd be eternally grateful. --Daemonic Kangaroo 05:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
The sorting doesn't work properly anyway so we may as well use readable dates. Catchpole (talk) 22:53, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
It takes me a few minutes each time I have to add a date to realise what order the figures go in! Won't be back. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:42, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Opponent' column.

I think we should change the 'Opponent' column from [[Austria national football team|Austria]] to {{fb|AUT}}; this would be both easier to update and more aesthetically pleasing. Any thoughts? GiantSnowman (talk) 14:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merger?

I note that users Catchpole and Bentley Banana have reverted the list that had been merged from List of England international footballers (alphabetical) and List of England players with only one cap with no real explanation other than comments on Cathcpole's talk page. As the previous discussions seemed to indicate that there was a consensus to merge these 3 articles, I would appreciate other editors' comments/suggestions. --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 13:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that they should be merged. GiantSnowman (talk) 13:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, they should definitely be merged. Revert their edits with extreme prejudice please. – PeeJay 17:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I have been asked to expand on my reasoning. The List of England international footballers used to contain a list by number of caps. While I had no objection to this list been expanded to include all English international footballers in alphabetical order, it was no longer possible to order the table by number of caps (when I tried to do so it merely ordered the footballers by first name - this is not very useful). So in my view the article became less useful after the merge than it was before the merge. If 3 articles contain more useful information than can be found in a single article then we should keep the three articles. This makes it easier to distinguish between 'one cap wonders' and players who made a significant contribution to the national team (those with more than 25 caps). As Bentley Banana had mentioned after he updated the article following the Austria game, the date format used in the table was also confusing. So I restored what I felt were the better versions of the 3 articles. I will reiterate that I have no problem with a merger, if it can be done in a way that allows the information in the article to be sorted in a useful manner. Catchpole (talk) 18:05, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Was there no way you could have modified the single article to make it properly sortable? You know, do something constructive instead of destructive. – PeeJay 18:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I've just gone to the previous version of the list, clicked on the caps sort button, and it sorts into ascending order of caps, click again and it sorts into descending. Unless there's some browser-dependent problem, or I'm being really stupid, I don't know what you mean by not possible to order by number of caps. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I think my changes were constructive, they made the articles more useful to me. I'll admit to not being an expert on sortable tables, but when I try to repeat Struway's experiment, I get Safari popping up with an unresponsive script warning. I get the same issue when I try it on List of England international footballers (alphabetical). This may just be a problem with very large articles, (when you edit the latter, you get the following message - "This page is 260 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. See Wikipedia:Article size"). Catchpole (talk) 18:53, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, so it's cos you're on a Mac! I mean, why else would you be using Safari when you could be using Firefox? Well, the vast majority of us don't use Macs, so I suggest that your edits be reverted, to benefit the majority. – PeeJay 18:57, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
I have tried it on IE7 and Firefox and it works. It is a "very" large article though. I think dial-up will groan under the strain. I agree completely with the old version (ie before catchpole reverts), yet I think the size might be an issue. Splitting it in half is not an option though as it will break the sortable table. Woodym555 (talk) 19:02, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
The pre-catchpole article is a far better navigational tool because sortable tables are ace. It should be reverted to the way it was. King of the NorthEast 22:30, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Don't really see why we have to have one or the other. There's no point removing the excellent list as set up by Daemonic Kangaroo purely because some people's configuration makes one of the features unusable, while as demand exists for a more restricted set of information why not have that as well? I'd propose (1) that the main list be reverted to the sortable version, as it is complete and useful for a significant number of users, although the size is clearly a problem for some. And (2) as a separate article, a List of England international footballers with 25 caps, as per the current Catchpole version. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes I was thinking about that, but what title? top capped players? Notable players? Woodym555 (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Hadn't thought about it :-) There was consensus on the merger to List of England international footballers, and there appears to be consensus that the complete sortable list should be at that name. You could call the other one List of most-capped England international footballers, or List of notable England international footballers, or if all else fails, List of England international footballers with 25 caps. Each to have a hatnote pointing to the other. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

When I merged the three articles I thought that there was a consensus that this was the right thing to do. Consequently I found Bentley Banana's comment on Catchpole's talk page describing it as a "rotten merger" and an "abomination" rather offensive and arrogant. I'm therefore grateful that the consensus here is in favour of the merge. Moving forward, it seems to me that we still only need one list covering all England players (good and bad, major or minor). In view of the size of the list this will always cause problems for those on a dial-up connection - as for Apple Mac users, I'm afraid that I have no knowledge. Perhaps this particular problem as pointed out by Catchpole should be put to a techie for advice. WP must be all-embracing and be equally functional whatever platform is used, although good features should not be thrown away to accommodate lesser used platforms.

At present we have four, possibly five, different articles covering the same ground:

All of these will need updating after every England match. The (post-Catchpole) List of England international footballers includes players who have 25 or more caps. Why this particular bar? If the bar was raised to, say, 50 caps this would reduce this particular list to 47 players. This list could then be merged with that in the England team article. Can we agree a final consensus? I can then go ahead and re-merge the articles. --Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:16, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I've been asked to contribute - firstly, however I have two apologies to make. Firstly, an apology to Daemonic Kangaroo for my terminology in describing his changes. My wording was rather strong, I accept that and withdraw it wholly. My second apology comes in advance of what I'm about to say, as I'm entirely inept with tables and wikipedia terms and therefore exist here purely as a writer with some reasonable understanding of the England team and what is required on these pages.
I would argue most vociferously for the retention of the List of England international footballers page in its reverted form, containing the players with 25 caps or more. I would argue that there is no other way to measure footballers in the international game other than by dint of caps won; doing so by surname or date of birth turns it into a rollcall rather than a list which is defined by actual achievement and notability. Alan A'Court shouldn't be at the top of any list of England players; Peter Shilton should be. It's all about the caps won. Nobody is going to come on wikipedia looking for the information about who would be top of an England list alphabetically, but a new user might use our reference to find out who has won the most caps. This is where this page is too vital to consider merging into something which will change the entire focus of its existence.
I have never used nor accessed with List of England players with only one cap and feel that while it's an interesting list, it's not a be-all and end-all list. There is limited notability about such players; we're dealing with novelty rather than anything else. A page which lists everyone who wasn't goo enough to play for England after one solitary go but not those who were sturdy and steady enough to hang around more than 25 times suggests to me a lack of priorities.
The England national football team records page has, I confess, become a labour of love to me. I am fiercely proud of how that page has turned out and I think it is as vital a tool as any researcher on England can find, even from official sources (indeed, I've seen evidence of more official sources using statistics which I myself researched entirely for the benefit of this page). I would ask it remains as it is.
Lastly, on the subject of the merged page, I would ask that consideration is given to those who choose to keep these pages topical as soon as matches are completed. I had an awful time trying to suss out the dating system, find the players in question etc when faced with an alphabetical list rather than one which relied entirely on achievement and notability. The list of 25 caps or more needs to remain as an independent page; even if the full list of alphabetical players stays separately. To remove the shorter, more easily maintained and digested page says that accessibility for both readers and editors has become too low a priority, and that's where people like me, who just want to keep pages digestible and accessible, are alienated.
One final comment aside - my main bugbear with the England pages are with editors who go on the main England national football team page after a match and change just *one* fact, rather than the several which always need changing - details of games, caps and goals updates, manager stats etc. This gets right up my nose as you end up doing someone else's tidying up rather than merely a gentle update which should not take up too much time or sweat.
Thanks for reading, apologies for my lack of terminology and my previous comments once more. Bentley Banana (talk) 13:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
I still think that the sortable table is a far better navigational tool, does anyone know if there is a way to default set it to show the players by number of caps?King of the NorthEast 03:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion was copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 14#List of England international footballers in order that users may be aware of previous "merge" discussions. Daemonic Kangaroo (talk) 06:04, 6 February 2008 (UTC)