Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 3

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Contents

Category:National Football League players

howcheng and I are discussing how to utilize this category (see: my talk page). He claims it is overbroad and thus not useful. In addition, he suggests recategorizing, and (if I'm correct in assuming this), essentially deleting the category. Finally, when I created the team categories, I made them sub-cats of American football players, rather than National Football League, which in light of the fact that there is not one non-NFL team category probably means that it should be a subcat of the NFL rather than American football as a whole. In summation... what the hell should we do here? Anthony 20:32, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, not deleting it per se, but more like Category:NBA players which is empty except for the categories by team (in fact, I'm thinking of having it retitled to Category:NBA players by team). As it stands now, Category:National Football League players is just overcrowded, and I don't see people browsing it to say, "Hmm, who else plays in the NFL?" IMHO people are more likely to wonder who else plays on or has played on a certain team. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm the one who emptied Category:NBA players (and a whole lot of other such categories) and made sure they were sorted by team and/or country, and so I'm biased when I say that I think doing the same with the NFL players is a good idea. I agree that few people are interested in these broad listings, but a lot of people would be interested in the players by team. I've also started to make this process friendlier to college football, by creating Category:College football players and a bunch of subcategories like Category:Michigan Wolverines football players, so that notable players can be referred to by their college team as well. If we go through and remove the Category:National Football League players tag from all the 1,000+ articles in the category, we can use that opportunity to add their college backgrounds and create a lot of really useful subcategories. I'd help with that, anyway.--Mike Selinker 15:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree completely. And after all the players recategorized in the 42+ team categories, the category that holds them should be renamed from Category:American football players by team. I'll help with the process, and taking the opportunity to add college info is a good idea. -Meegs 08:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Count me in however you want to do that.--Mike Selinker 21:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

On a related topic, I made team categories for the active teams that didn't already have one (in line with what they have in MLB and what Mike Selinker has been adding for college teams). Team player categories for renamed teams are members of their current team's category (e.g. Category:Arizona Cardinals contains Category:Chicago Cardinals players). There currently are no team player categories for defunct teams. -Meegs 09:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Summary

×Meegs 19:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Please note that I've created, with Meegs's aid, a list called Football players from small colleges. Basically, if you adapt an article to the above format but the player's college is not noteworthy enough for a category (yet), don't create a non-linked category; just put the player on this list. Eventually some of them will move off this list into their own categories. We're trying to avoid categories which only contain one player for the time being, just to avoid clutter. This seems a good solution for now.--Mike Selinker 03:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Fan templates

Not really NFL per se, but if anyone's interested, there's a page at Wikipedia:Sports Fans where you can use (and create, as I have been doing) templates for your user page to indicate your fandom for a particular sports team. For the NFL, so far we've got the Colts, and the Panthers template I created (natch). If you want to make your own, just follow the format: use the HTML from one of the existing templates, punch in the image for your team, change the cat names, and if you so choose (as I do), use one of the team's colors, instead of the bland "user:blank" one for the Pacers and Colts. Posted this here mostly to get the interest of all the fellow football fans here. Anthony 03:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

NFL player infobox?

I'm surprised there isn't one. Perhaps we should create one... what should be on it. Joe Montana's isn't all that bad. Gflores Talk 01:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I like that one. What I especially like about it is that it doesn't load itself up with fantasy numbers and details. Clean is better.--Mike Selinker 15:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I've come up with a draft of a parameterized infobox at Template:NFL_player, based on the nonparameterized one at Joe Montana, with a couple additional fields. I then applied it back to Joe Montana so it could be seen in context. Any thoughts/objections? --Arcadian 16:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I like the idea. I have a few suggestions, however. For starters, we should wikify the birthday, and put it in the mm/dd/yyyy format, instead of dd/mm/yyyy format. Typical US formatting for dates is mm/dd/yyyy, and since we're doing this for American football players, we should stick to that format. Secondly, wikify the position, and Pro Bowl (on the left-hand side; once we get more Pro Bowl articles, we can wikify the Pro Bowl years as well). Third, possibly add Super Bowl appearances in there? I know Montana will have a lot, and others won't have any, but I think it's of enough importance to include in an infobox. Those are just some of my thoughts, but I definitely think it's not a bad idea to create a standard box for all NFL players. Anthony 20:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
If the dates are entered in square brackets, as suggested in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), then the preferences of the reader determine the format dates are displayed in. I changed Joe Montana again, so it should look the way you want it to if your preferences. Second, I think Pro Bowl listings are unnecessary. They're not important, they make the box taller (it's already taller than a lot of players' articles), and most players have none to list. I would argue even stronger against superbowls listings for the same reasons. Also, if we're listing teams, I'm not sure the drafting team (or even the last team of retired player) should get its own entry. I'd suggest at least combining "drafting team" with "other teams" to make "previous teams". As it is, it's pretty confusing: listing the first team, then the last team, then any teams in the middle.-Meegs 21:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Fair point on the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl appearances... they are a pretty small number of players on the overall. I still think the position should be wikified. As per the team question, I say the "Current team" goes on top, and under "Other teams", they should be listed chronologically, with the drafted team on top, and any subsequent teams underneath. This way, if it changes, we just make additions to the bottom, rather than shifting teams down the list. I'm also suggesting this discussion, once we agree on a compromise and finalize it, be transferred to the talk page of the template, this way any newbies who want to start adding it to pages know how to set it up. Anthony 22:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I've updated the infobox to reflect the above (I think). How's it looking? --Arcadian 22:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I've looked at the boxes for a few other sports, and of the ones that don't take a minimalist approach, the one like the most is futbol;) Look at David Beckham, specifically the "professional clubs" section. Even though the current team isn't a special field, it's still easy to pick out immediately (especially with the dates). And putting all of the teams together in a single list seems to make much more sense for retired players too. -Meegs 23:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I've reformatted the teams/years section to work like it does for futbol. Take a loot at Joe Montana to see how it looks now. Is it okay, or at least close enough to start using on a few more pages? --Arcadian 01:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Also, I've put it on one more page, Alex Smith, to test that the draft round linking worked correctly (we don't have a 1979 draft page for Montana yet.) --Arcadian 01:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I like it. I did Morten Andersen. I also changed the template (please check my work - I'm not totally comfortable with the syntax) so that it behaves gracefully when either the "image=" is left empty, or when it's omitted altogether. We definitely don't want to encourage the masses to start adding images to every player, because most of them will have unknown/dubious copyright status - athlete pages are a mess with them already. It might be worth making the other fields "optional" too, but it's sometimes a good thing be able to explicitly see when a piece of information (e.g. DOB) is missing. Two questions:
  1. Should we include place of birth? Most bio infoboxes do.
  2. Can we think of a cleaner way to label the stats row than Stats:PFR? I has to fit on one line, and can only really be 10 or 11 characters.
--Meegs 02:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Very cool! I didn't know anything about that "hiddenStructure" trick before. I added a 'place of birth' field to address your first point, and for your second point, I tried to address it by creating a new page for Pro Football Reference, and then linking to it in the template. But I'm open to other suggestions. However, it's a lot easier to change labels after 'launch' than fieldnames, so unless anyone objects, I think Template:NFL_player is good enough to start using. --Arcadian 03:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Let's give everyone a couple of days to weigh-in on the field names, because they won't be easy to change after rollout. We've got Montana, Andersen, and Alex Smith to look at. I'm fine with it, but one thing that some might disagree with is the inclusion of the draft round, and/or the exclusion of the "overall" pick number. Someone might argue for the exclusion of the image field — as I write this someone is uploading random Cowboys pictures tagged "fair use: website screenshot" <groan> This kind of trouble will only get worse with the infobox. Also, we could add Anthony's pro bowl appearances as an optional row somewhere (I'm neutral on the topic, though I still oppose listing superbowls). It is sort a traditional stat to report. -Meegs 04:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I added a Probowl field It's an optional parameter and right now only Joe Montana's uses it. It could display either a list of years or a single number (# of appearances). I also made a little banner that could appear at the bottom of HOF players – again, only used on Montana's. ×Meegs 02:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Very nice work! I think that unless anybody objects in the next few days, it would be okay to start using it. Perhaps we could put it on the 32 starting quarterbacks. That would give the template enough visibility that we'd know if there were any huge objections. --Arcadian 19:33, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm going to start using it right now. --Jaranda wat's sup 02:09, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Me too. I'll sweep through the 16 AFC quarterbacks right now. ×Meegs 02:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The infobox is now on about 25 prominent players. GeorgeC made the following suggestions, which I moved from the top of this talk page to here: ×Meegs 09:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions

Meegs edited the infobox I had created for Carson Palmer. It was a beaut, too. I don't like the new official NFL player infobox one bit. I know it's not your fault, Meegs. You're only following the rules. But the truth is that the official one sucks.

I'd like to see a slightly wider box to accommodate longer entries, the players' name at the top of the box, the ability to customize colors to denote present team (or, in the case of a retired player, the color of the team he is most associated with — e.g., orange for Boomer Esiason of the Cincinnati Bengals or green for Joe Namath of the New York Jets.) And how about an option for overall draft position? To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out the one I did for Ray Guy.

And speaking of Hall of Famers, how about a logo denoting them like there is for baseball Hall of Famers? GeorgeC 09:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

  • There's nothing official about the new infobox, we're merely trying to create continuity between all of the player articles (active/retired, all-pro/3rd-string) and present a small amount of essential info in a compact form. The good news is, there's nothing keeping us from making it better. For reference, here is GeorgeC's nice-looking Carson Palmer. ×Meegs 10:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Hello, FYI, I have found another template Template:Football infobox, which predates the NFL player infobox. I don't know how many articles, if any, it has been used on. Johntex\talk 23:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
From Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Football infobox, it looks like it's not used on any articles. ×Meegs 04:01, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Meegs. I'm no expert on user boxes, but couldn't someone have used "subst:" to put the infobox on an article, in which case it would not show up int he Whatlinkshere? Johntex\talk 17:22, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
You're right, it would not show-up if they used "subst:", and the resulting table would be indistinguishable from any of a handful of other ad hoc tables that are scattered around the player pages. Also, if it is used that way, they've lost the ability to update all of the boxes at once, which is one of the biggest advantages of using a template. ×Meegs 21:54, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Here's a suggestion for a bit of a flavor addition - how about an option to use the player's current team logo as a sort of placeholder image when a photo of the player isn't available? It could help add some visual flair to the pages of players who don't have any usable/decent images to upload for use.
Oops, forgot to sign. Kybard 18:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
We've considered that. The fair use claim for the logos is much weaker in articles are not about the organization whose logo is it is. There're also potential problems with points 8 and 9 in Wikipedia:Fair use#Fair use policy. ×Meegs 19:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Makes sense. I can live without it. Kybard 19:27, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

All-Time Records

  • Should we being a list of the all time leaders in any given category? (Passing yards, rushing yards, catches, sacks, etc.) We can update it every year, so no one has to worry about every week. We could do the top 100 in the categories so we have an exhaustive list.
Ideally we would annotate every record with the date that it was last confirmed to be current - but that is probably unmanageable. Most people realize that recently-broken records are frequently absent from lists like this. There is one kind of record, at least, that I think we really should do it for: the active streaks of doing something in consecutive games. I looked quickly through the two pages and found three that might be ongoing:
  • Most Consecutive Games Scoring, 370, San Francisco 49ers(1977-current)
  • Most Consecutive Games Scoring Field Goals, 38, Matt Stover ended in 2001 [1]
  • Most Consecutive (Kicking) Points After Touchdown, 371, Jason Elam ended in 2002 [2]
Streaks for consecutive years might be worthwhile too, though they move a lot slower. -Meegs 19:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it would be ideal to add the current dates, but I too think that it might not be possible, esp since there are already a clutter of numbers on these anyway. I would just ask any Wikipedians to take note of any records that are broken on any given week (which there are usually a couple here and there, no matter how obscure). I also like the strikethrough on records that have recently been broken, in order to add the new one (although I know that was not your intent above). Right now, I am just concentrating on data and formatting and hopefully others will get involved in this page and add more records.Bill shannon 22:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Football-Bios.

I normally work on the football bios here and I'm noticing that alot of the current bios we have are either horribly written or sad-subs. I have completely rewritten a few articles today, and I'm noticing that there is just too much to be done. Examples Donnie Spragan is just one sentence with a few words, and the Jason Taylor article is just a sad stub and I've seen much worst around. We need to fix that. I nominated Dan Marino for the Wikipedia:Article_Improvement_Drive and maybe that could be a start and maybe we could have a few weeks exclusively for fixing all those articles. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 01:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that writing quality (along with a lack of citation) is a particular problem in the player bios. I'm not really bothered by the stubs at all, though. What, for example, is your biggest complaint about Jason Taylor's stub? Is it just its brevity? There's more content there than 3/4 of the articles I've seen while re-cataloging Category:National_Football_League_players. In any case, whether it be problematic long articles, or stubby articles of major players, I like the idea of defining some small subset of the bios and mobilizing to fix them up as models. HOFers might be a good set., or maybe this year's Pro Bowl starters. ×Meegs 09:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
If you haven't seen it yet, there's a list at 2006 Pro Bowl. Some of the players still have red links. For any new pages created, I'd recommend using the Template:NFL player infobox described above -- there's still some tweaking going on, but it seems to be doing okay in the wild. --Arcadian 23:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
  • For example the Jason Taylor article barely has info on his NFL, or college info. Just his high school carrer and info that he was picked for People magazine Ten Sexiest atheltes which is sad in my opinion. We should fix the articles on this year pro bowls starters at least. Marvin Harrison is pretty bad also for one of the best wide recivers in the league. We should start there and improve the writing quality. --Jaranda wat's sup 20:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I would submit that not every player needs a full-fledged article, as some players have plenty of material on other websites about them. For example, Jason Taylor is a fine player, but he's not necessarily worthy of a large, exhaustive article, as his career may not be considered that interesting, overall. Whereas someone like Terrell Owens (right or wrong) has a lot more interesting info about him, and might be worth of an article due to his controversy. We can get player bios on any team or sports website, just about. I don't know that every player needs much more than a stub unless there is something truly remarkable in their careers. Otherwise, I'm fine with a stub. Maybe only HOF player (as Meegs wrote above) would be a good place to start, and then we can start to fill in the blanks afterward. Bill shannon 23:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I have no doubt Jason Taylor is accomplished and interesting enough to support a full article, and I wish he already had one, but there are there are dozens of players of his caliber with similar problems. Defensive players an OLmen lag behind the others, but that's not surprising. Players for some teams like the Eagles, the Patriots, and the '85 Bears seem to have unusually good coverage too. It might be fair to subdivide the problematic articles into three:
  1. Superstars with detailed, but flawed articles, like Dan Marino. "Future Hall of Famers" probably deserve stellar articles too.
  2. Stars with minimal stubs, like Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, Ed Reed + retirees like Eric Allen or Ben Davidson
  3. non-benchwarmers with no article at all, including some in the 2006 Pro Bowl, and some old-timey HOFers
They're all important, by I personally prioritize #3 and #1 above #2, mainly because casual wikipedia users are best at improving #2, whereas it often takes a concerted effort to start articles about players who aren't in the spotlight (#3), or do extensive research and rewriting (#1). With #3, it has to be considered that it's not realistic to have an article for every single player, at least not anytime soon. There are a lot of pages out there for players drafted this year and whose careers appear to be over. ×Meegs 01:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
I've been doing expansion on several football articles, mostly on Carolina Panthers players (yes I'm biased, but I don't let it affect my writing). Namely what I do is go to the team website of the player's current team, and check their bio. Then, without copyvio, taking the information and turning it into an article. I'm well aware that a backup offensive lineman probably isn't going to become a Featured Candidate anytime soon, but at the very least make it beyond a single sentence and lone cat. If we can do that for all the current NFL players, then move beyond to the former players, HOFers, and so on, we could have an excellent compendium of football knowledge at our fingertips. Just my thoughts. Anthony 01:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I've done work on two player biographies so far (both Packers - Nick Collins and Samkon Gado - because I'm familiar with most of the best sources for information on Packer players). I've been doing basically what Anthony above described; finding information from either the team's website bio or other sources and putting the content into the article. The organizational structure I've been following (High school, College, Professional, Personal information) seems to be thorough enough for a reasonably comprehensive article for any player in the NFL - even those backup linemen, though one of the biggest problems writing much detailed information for offensive linemen is that most of their effort is transparent, represented in the success of the quarterback and running back rather than direct accolades. Kybard 18:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

a question I should know the answer to, but don't

When a player from the early years of the NFL is listed as an "end" (or with an "E"), is he a defensive end or a tight end? Woody Strode and Gene Stallings await your answer, at least in spirit. Also, does anyone know what football position Jackie Robinson played at USC?--Mike Selinker 18:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The second paragraph of End (football) reads:
More than 30 years ago, an End only referred to an offensive player who just assisted the guards, tackles, and center in blocking defenders. But this position was largely replaced by using another wide receiver or tight end.
Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

DYK

From my user talk page

Updated DYK query Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Greg Landry, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 15:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Is this our first DYK? --Jaranda wat's sup 17:39, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

college football players categories are clean

I finished going through all the college football player categories and making sure each player had their college (obviously), their position, and their pro team categories listed, and no NFL player category. I couldn't find positions for Jackie Robinson, Ralph Jordan and Cliff Hare.

Category:Entertainers who played football is a bit less settled. I couldn't find positions for these guys: Hugh Beaumont, Ward Bond, Ric Flair, Richard Grieco, Harold Hoag, Christopher Judge, Nikita Koloff, Ryan McPartlin, Ed O'Neill, Randy Thornton, Erik Watts, John Wayne, and Steve Williams (wrestler). Anybody who feels like checking those guys out is welcome to do so.

Best line that I had to edit out of existence: "John Henry Johnson (born November 24, 1929 in Waterproof, Louisiana) was an American football."--Mike Selinker 23:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Need Images.

Right now I'm currently trying to work the Terry Bradshaw article into featured status. But I really need images including a couple of him in his playing days and one of him in the Fox studios. Could anyone help me with those images. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 02:09, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

If you thought the running game-by-game commentary trend was bad...

...now we have people computing the tie-breaking scenarios!

Ugh! Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Oh, how I long to get these NFL team articles back into some sort of reasonable shape (like, the featured article Arsenal F.C. shape)... Zzyzx11 (Talk) 09:00, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Once the season ends, it might be worth recruiting one person (or more) to oversee each team article to ensure they don't get out of hand. --Cholmes75 03:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I'll volunteer to handle the Patriots article!!--Alhutch 07:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

now that that's out of the way... more category work

The category:National Football League players is scrubbed of individuals. Everybody who was there now has a position category, some number of pro team categories, and either a college team category or an appearance in Football players from small colleges. So what's left to do in this regard? I would say these things:

  1. Go through the List of current NFL team rosters and check the categorization of everyone there.Done.
  2. Go through Category:National Football League Draft articles and check those.Done.
  3. Go through Category:American football players by position's subcategories and check those for teams.Not worth doing. There can't be many articles in there without pro or college team categories.
  4. Go through (ulp) all the subcategories of Category:National Football League players by team and check those folks.Done.

I call "not it" on #4.Guess I lied.--Mike Selinker 01:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd also like to suggest giving similar treatment to Category:American Football League players (76 members) - that it be drained and deleted. I neither added nor deleted the category from players as I went though categorizing by NFL team, but I observed that most AFL players do not currently belong to this category, especially ones whose career lasted though the merger. Category:National Football League players by team already has categories for all of the AFL team names, including the ones that never made it to the NFL. I also suggest that Category:All-America Football Conference players (1 member) be given the fate, or, alternately, kept and populated with everyone that ever played in the AAFC. ×Meegs 03:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
You're saying that the AFL category gets removed from each player and replaced (if necessary) by team name? I'd be fine with that. In fact, this will probably lead us to do the same with Canadian teams, though I claim no particular expertise with that.--Mike Selinker 03:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Possibly. There are a lot of US college players and some forgotten NFL transients in Category:Canadian Football League players too. ×Meegs 04:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Nice job, guys. I'm surprised we were able to get it done that quickly. I've been helping out when I can, although with law school I don't exactly have all the time in the world to sit on Wikipedia and update thousands of pages (if only...). I think the American Football League categories are somewhat important, since it defines a particular era for the team. I note that the NHL teams that were members of the WHA have separate categories to define players who played for the four teams that merged; there are separate categories for the Edmonton Oilers and Edmonton Oilers (WHA). Perhaps we could do the same, i.e. San Diego Chargers and San Diego Chargers (AFL)? All of the requisite AFL team categories would therefore be included in the American Football League players category, which would be devoid of individuals like the NFL players cat. With respect to the CFL, I've been going through players who played in the NFL and CFL and deleting the extra CFL players cat if they have the team cats, much like the NFL. Finally, I'm sure we can find/create a few more player articles for the AAFC; it was an important era in pro football history, and should not be neglected. Well, those are my thoughts, tired though my brain may be. I'm off to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream... of a Wikipedia where everything is categorized neatly, and there are no stubs... Anthony 05:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I don't think I want to distinguish, say, the Chargers of the AFL from the Chargers of the NFL, because the two sets of teams flowed seamlessly (if acrimoniously) into each other. That seems like overcategorization. If someone was a Charger when the merger happened, I don't think he needs two categories. Just my opinion, though. (As for the time thing, I find my Wikipediing goes up as my workload goes up; the faster I'm trying to get a game written, the more my brain needs the downtime of mindlessly categorizing things. So I get both done at a faster rate, oddly enough. Which is a logic that doesn't apply to, say, my closet.)--Mike Selinker 06:25, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
The plan would clear-up some problems with our current system (especially if we did the same for the AAFC teams that really don't belong where they are now), but would make the system more complex and less accessible for some. One could also argue that experience of pre-merger NFL teams changed just as much as it did for the AFL teams, but splitting the Packers in two obviously isn't on the table. I'm pretty-much neutral, but I'll definitely help if others like it. ×Meegs 06:41, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm merely proposing it to give credit to those players who played in the AFL. Otherwise, there's really nothing that recognizes the players who played for those 7 (?) years in the AFL. If we eliminate Category:American Football League players, that's going overboard with the concept of merging the AFL & NFL. They merged, but the NFL still recognizes the AFL existed. I think we should do the same on Wikipedia. My main thing is recognizing a point in history; that's why we have separate cats for the Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix, and Arizona Cardinals. If we simply create a New York Jets (AFL) cat, all it does is merely create one more cat for Joe Namath. But we can link him to players who played in the AFL and never played in the NFL, guys whose careers didn't last all those seven years. My main point, simply put, is that we shouldn't ignore the AFL simply for ease of categorization. Just my thoughts. I'll go along with whatever the majority is, but I'm strongly voicing an opinion that we create separate AFL cats for the AFL teams. Anthony 13:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Question - Anthony, I started this whole thing by suggesting we get rid of the AFL category, but do you prefer the current system, where Namath is a Jet and a AFLer, or your proposed system where he's just a Jet (NFL) and a Jet (AFL)? I'm not sure how big the existing AFL category would become if we applied it consistently. Probably not too big. ×Meegs 14:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Jet (NFL) and Jet (AFL). Here are the cats that would have to be created:

  • Boston Patriots
  • Buffalo Bills (AFL)
  • Cincinnati Bengals (AFL)
  • Dallas Texans (AFL) [I think, regarding the discussion between Meegs & Mike on the three separate Dallas Texans teams, that we should have Dallas Texans (NFL), Dallas Texans (AFL), and Dallas Texans (Arena)]
  • Denver Broncos (AFL)
  • Houston Oilers (AFL)
  • Kansas City Chiefs (AFL)
  • Miami Dolphins (AFL)
  • New England Patriots (AFL)
  • New York Jets (AFL)
  • New York Titans
  • Oakland Raiders (AFL)
  • San Diego Chargers (AFL)

Note that the Los Angeles Chargers cat would not have to be created, and I've already moved it temporarily to the AFL cat, until we create (I'm assuming) Category:American Football League players by team. I realize it's quite a bit of work, but it's for the sake of consistency. Also, would we want to include (AFL) after the Boston Patriots, New York Titans, and Los Angeles Chargers cats, even though there are no other teams with that name? If it's a matter of doing the work, I'm willing to do the work myself, all I'm asking for is approval from the other members of the Project. If it's in everyone else's opinion that it's not necessary, then I'll do whatever we decide is best. But as I said above, I'll do all the work, just give me the thumbs-up. Anthony 14:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's a matter of work, as it's not that hard either way. I certainly don't have an objection to recognizing this stage of football, and it's an identical number of entries per player whether it's "Jets (AFL)" or "AFL players". So we do one or the other. I think the wacky Dallas situation made our decision for us: If we're going to have the Dallas category (which would move people out of AFL), we should have all of them. So yeah, I'm on board with Anthony if he wants to have separate team categories. Here's the problem I see: Some anti-abbreviation commando is probably going to tag all of them with a cfr tag, and the damn thing is that he'll be right to do so, based on the Dallas/Arena thing. We can't just ignore the chance that an Arena fan might show up and surround Art Donovan with half-fielders. I'm not sure what's the best thing to do here. (One thing I'm certain of: I don't want to give a player a tag for a team he didn't play for, so dumping Boston Patriots into New England is no good.)--Mike Selinker 16:25, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Abstain! I'm keeping my neutral position on Anthony's plan vs. the keeping the AFL category, but I'd like to wait on enacting it for a few days to see what others have to say. It's not much work at all, but doing and then undoing it would be. I'm slightly concerned about having Broncos & Brocos (AFL) rather than Broncos (NFL) & Broncos (AFL). I'm just not sure that 35 years post-merger vs. 10 years pre-merger is enough imbalance to allow it to go undisambiguated. On the other hand, adding (NFL) to the ten post-AFL teams is pretty obnoxious. I'm bothered by both names schemes about the same, I guess. ×Meegs 17:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, so what's the consensus? Is it New York Jets (AFL) or New York Jets (American Football League)? I'm against adding (NFL) to the existing cats, just because it's unnecessary, like Meegs said. I'm in favor of making it a simple (AFL) addition, and worrying about whether some "anti-abbreviation commando" will try to cfr it later. For purposes of simplicity and length I suggest making it (AFL). I'm just trying to figure out what everyone's opinion on this is before I start working, because once I start, I want a clear standard for all cats. Anthony 17:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
No, no, I think everyone is in favor of the abbreviated (AFL) if we do the splits. The question is whether each AFL team should have its own player category, or whether we should keep the status quo of a single category for all AFL players. Vote early, vote often ×Meegs 17:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Gotcha. BTW, does someone (preferably someone with a tad more experience and authority than I) want to archive some of these discussions... I'm getting a page size warning when I'm adding to the talk page. Anthony 18:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
actually, Zzyzx11 just did that about 36 hour ago. Everything left is < three weeks old ×Meegs 04:11, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, let me think about it for a day or two. I'm leaning toward just doing the (AFL) for every team that needs it and saying the hell with it, but I sure don't want it done twice. Meantime, I think I'll go check the draft categories.--Mike Selinker 18:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I didn't change my opinion after thinking about it a bit. We should break that category out by teams just like Anthony said, using the AFL tag (only) as necessary. We might want to make the Arena categories now just to stake out the namespace of using the (Arena) tag on the Dallas Texans. There's already a Category:Austin Wranglers players to use.--Mike Selinker 14:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, let's do it. And yeah, we might as well make the Texans (Arena) cat. A good defense is a good offense ;) ×Meegs 14:31, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Just curious... and I'm only asking this because I believe it's not necessary, but for the sake of continuity I'll ask it anyway: do we want to create two Oakland Raiders categories for the two separate stints the team had in Oakland? If we're creating different cats for each period of a team's existence, and every time a team moves it gets its own category (see: Cardinals, Rams, Chiefs, et al.), do we want to create two separate Oakland categories to distinguish between the first time (1970-1982) and the second (1995-present)? Obviously a separate AFL cat will be created; that goes without saying. But I'm only asking to see what everyone else thinks, since Al Davis had to go make life difficult for us (and everyone else). Anthony 18:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, not necessary. ×Meegs 03:10, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, one category is fine. The team and league designation is identical.--Mike Selinker 04:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

who qualifies as a player for a team

The draft categories are all fixed up, with correct links to teams and players with appropriate categories. Along the way I had to make a decision that players who got drafted by a team got to go under their team categories; otherwise, some of the more recent classes had no link to any team. This is a fan's link to info about their teams, so since that's part of their history, I left it in. Also, I think it's kind of fair in a they-also-serve sort of way. Note that I didn't put people who later tried out a for a team and didn't make it, because that's not the use of a precious resource by the team. Agree or disagree?--Mike Selinker 14:22, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree. In other words, players who were drafted but cut (e.g. Bill Goldberg from the Carolina Panthers) get the team cat, but players who signed in training camp but were cut (e.g. Taylor Stubblefield) don't get the team cat. That how it works? Anthony 15:08, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Yup, that's how I meant it.--Mike Selinker 15:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I've been excluding both classes (anyone who didn't see playing time and sometimes even a few who saw a little), and leaving some players categorized by position (and sometimes college & CFL team) only. I don't agree, but I'm willing to change to Mike's standard without debate. As I understand it, include anyone who plays a down in a real game or is drafted by the team. Actually, is being on the roster for a real game good enough? That info isn't always available, but we should have an ideal. ×Meegs 15:36, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Certainly being on the roster should be good enough. Imagine if Carson Palmer had decided to retire after the 2004 season. We'd still want him in the Bengals category, I think.--Mike Selinker 15:51, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

this project's "ultimate goal"

Maybe you folks have already discussed this. I noted this project's ultimate goal above is to compete with the cricket Wikiproject for number of articles and such. I'd just like to point out that I very much want to avoid doing this, regardless of what they do.--Mike Selinker 15:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

  • What part of "this" are we trying to avoid? Anthony 16:32, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually my understanding was to compete with the cricket Wikiproject for the number of featured articles, not overall number of articles. The Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Sports results was brought up because they were creating seperate entries left and right of every single non-championship game. So far we have limited the NFL articles to championship, playoff games, Super Bowls, and the significant games of NFL lore. The only reporting of non-championship games have been limited to the team articles by over-zealous fans. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 17:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Ahh, gotcha. However, would it be a bad idea to do what they were suggesting, as far as the WikiBook concept goes? Create a compendium of standings, stats, results, etc. Just something to consider in the offseason. Anthony 17:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Possible option

I know one of the sources of debate and discussion on this project has been the history aspect of the franchises. Well, being a hockey fan as well as a football fan, I've been perusing our sister project of Ice Hockey and noticed that NHL franchises have individual pages for the separate incarnations of a franchise. For example, there are separate pages for the Kansas City Scouts, Colorado Rockies (NHL), and New Jersey Devils. So I thought, instead of making redirects out of the Chicago Cardinals, Racine Cardinals, St. Louis Cardinals (NFL), and Phoenix Cardinals, why not give them all their own separate pages detailing the histories of the franchise during those years? Granted, certain franchies wouldn't get such a luxury, say, the Green Bay Packers. But what do you guys think?

I'm adding this non-related issue as a semi-warning: a lot, and I mean a LOT of the AFL players are copyvio off the AFL Hall of Fame website. As in, direct copying from the text on the site. So if you guys are going through and changing cats and stuff, rewrite it so it's not copyvio. It's hard, but I'm trying my best. Just FYI. Anthony 17:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I would not mind a seperate History of the Los Angeles Rams, but I am in weak opposition to changing the redirects. First, because of the AFD discussion I mentioned above was so heated, I would prefer the status quo because many opposition votes on that discussion also contribute to some of the NFL articles, and thus will probably revert the changes before even coming here. Secondly, there still should be at least some overall article that summarizes the team through its various incarnations. Thirdly, I am not sure about breaking up the Cardinals history – there is not much to say about a team that has only been to the playoffs 5 since their 1947 Championship. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 18:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Well, this is why I threw it out there, as a suggestion. I say we let the idea sit for a while before acting on it (or not acting, as the case may be). Anthony 18:19, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I don't have an opinion on this, except that I do want the St. Louis Rams page to contain the complete history of the Rams. Whether there's a separate, more detailed page for the LA Rams is not something I have a strong opinion about.--Mike Selinker 18:23, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
        • That is my position exactly. The one article that should contain a complete franchise history should be the current team's article (St. Louis Rams), though its LA-era content can be condensed considerably if a separate article is spun-off. Any LA Rams article should be auxiliary to the St. Louis one, not its peer, and I'd be much more comfortable with it being called History of the Los Angeles Rams than Los Angeles Rams. And I see nothing wrong with having these articles for some franchises and not others. ×Meegs 19:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Question on images

This is a common problem amongst Wikipedians, but I'm curious as to the copyright status of football cards. In other words, if I scan in a football card, and use that image on a player's page, is that fair use, copyright, or what? (I know it's not public domain.) I'm just curious because I was considering scanning in football cards to provide images of players, but I don't want to do it if they're just going to end up deleted in 2 days anyway. Can an admin or someone with superior knowledge of this answer my query? Anthony 18:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Short answer: If the image is only used to illustrate the subject of the article, it can be used under fair use. You tag it with {{Non-free fair use in}} and write something like: This image qualifies for fair use in [[ARTICLE NAME]] because it is used for information purposes only since it shows the subject of this article. See Wikipedia:Image description page#Fair use rationale for more. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 22:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

User template

If anyone wants to use it, I've created a user template at {{user WikiProject NFL}}. I was tempted to use the NFL logo, but I figured some fair use nutjob would go crazy and either delete the template or replace it with "NFL", so I put a standard picture of a football. Anthony 15:21, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

NFL Europe...

I went through Category:NFL Europe players, and cleared all the players from the broad category to some individual team cats (much as we've been doing with the NFL and AFL player cats). Zellin has now created Category:NFL Europe alumni, and I wasn't sure if we should CfD it or what the consensus was, because I created the team cats for uniformity. I've asked him to join the project, since we want to encourage activity and improvement in all the NFL player pages, and not discourage people who are trying to help (even though I took offense to someone objecting to my edits when I was a mere n00b myself). Thoughts? Anthony 20:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

From Anthony's talk page, it looks like Zellin just didn't know about the team categories. There's another issue, though, that some people seem to interpret the team categories as being exclusively for the team's current players. I can't think of anything we can do about it though — it's not worth renaming the categories to something wordy and awkward. ×Meegs 02:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

NFL, AFL, AAFC categories

I've added the last few categories to

so that we now have one for every franchise×city×name that's existed since 1940. Actually, there are two exceptions:

  1. There's no category for the "Brooklyn-New York Yankees" that played in AAFC in 1949 because I'm trying to figure out if they're really distinct from the New York Yankees (AAFC)
  2. Category:Baltimore Colts (1940s) players is currently serving both the NFL and the AAFC. I ruthlessly split the Boston Patriots category for the one season they played in the NFL, but I haven't had the heart to do the same for the Baltimore Colts (1947-50), who were in the NFL during their final year.

I've speedied a few obsolete categories, but I'm so confused by all of the Texans and Dodgers and Bills and Colts and Yanks (Oh My!), that I want to make-sure I'm not forgetting anything. As far as I know, these are the remaining issues:

Have I forgotten anything? ×Meegs 01:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

KFFL

Does anybody in this project have a membership at KFFL.com? I've found it extremely valuable in finding information about players. -Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 20:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for game format

I have made a rough possible format for all games that we have on the site, such as in the NFL playoffs articles, posted at User:KramarDanIkabu/Sandbox#Football game for all to see. Please make suggestions here. I think it is imperative that we have an official game format for consistency between articles. KramarDanIkabu 21:56, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

There was a brief review on this page a few weeks ago, this project's ultimate goal, about whether we should have articles for non-Super Bowl games and the few games that have entered NFL Lore. Playoff games would be the next step if we were to expand coverage, but I personally don't think we need to split-up articles like NFL playoffs, 2003-04 into individual games. At least, not unless we were going to be adding a substantial about of prose about each game, and in that case, the articles should probably closely resemble our Super Bowl model. In any case, I don't think covering games in-progress is appropriate. WP:NOT says, "Wikipedia should not offer first-hand news reports on breaking stories". ×Meegs 22:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree. This is an encyclopedia after all. And any covering games in-progress is somewhat futile because it is going to be radically changed once the game ends. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 01:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

New format for team articles

Now that the NFL season is winding down, I think it is time to field ideas for a new layout for the team articles. As stated in other discussions, there seems to a consensus to split up the history sections and reduce the game-by-game summaries. The discussion on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/New England Patriots also brought to light other ideas and problems. My suggestion (I have said this already) is to try to model them after Arsenal F.C., the only sports team so far that has been named as a featured article. In fact, it looks like someone has already begun the process with the Chicago Bears article. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 02:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

You forgot IFK Göteborg ... the other sports-team featured article. Daniel Case 06:52, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Whatever. Actually, New England Patriots was recently named as an FA a few days ago, and thus, of course, I suggest that all of the NFL team articles be modeled after that one... Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:56, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

NFL Draft results

There seems to be three different styles of NFL Draft articles going:

1989, 2003-2005 style (wiki syntax table)

Pick # NFL Team Player Position College
1 San Francisco 49ers Alex Smith Quarterback Utah


1983, 1990 - 2001 style (HTML syntax table)

1 Atlanta Falcons Michael Vick QB Virginia Tech


1986, 2002 style (HTML syntax table)

Pick Player NFL Team College
1 David Carr (QB) Houston Texans Fresno State University

I think it would be best to settle on one format ASAP before any more articles are started. As far as I can tell, the choices to make are

  1. Wiki or HTML table syntax
  2. the order of columns (team or player first)
  3. the treatment of positions (parenthetical or in a separate column), (full name or 2-letter abbreviation)
  4. Short or Long Schools names, e.g. Fresno State or Fresno State University.

×Meegs 07:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

  • the top one looks the best and makes the most sense to me. i don't believe long school names are necessary.--Alhutch 08:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Alhutch... it has all the info, and I don't think we need to type out stuff like "Fresno State University" when a simple "Fresno State" will suffice. Now, once a consensus is established, are we going to re-do all the draft articles so they're all uniform? Anthony 16:49, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Yep, the top one looks good to me. I'll start on this project now; you all are welcome to help J Train 20:16, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Good, I like the top one too ×Meegs 21:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I've brought all the tables up through 2002 into rough compliance with the discussion above. I have two more issue for discussion:

  1. User:KramarDanIkabu has started unlinking all positions and colleges after their first occurrence in the tables (see 2005 NFL Draft). Should we do this? I personally don't feel bound by overlinking guidelines in tables like these, and think linking everything is better-looking and more useful.
  2. Navigation needs to be eased. Does anyone have a preference between a simple succession box (like the Oscars) and a template with a full listing of years (like the Grammys).

×Meegs 10:05, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I prefer the succession box, since it's more in line with many of the football articles... the only templates with a full listing are the NFL itself and the Super Bowl. The Heisman and a few others use the succession box, and it takes up less space. That's my personal preference, don't know what anyone else thinks. As far as the individual draft articles, I say we link everything, even if it's repeated, because if you're looking in the 5th round for a person, and you want to look up the school, it's a hassle to have to find the original wikilink in the article to find it. I've got nothing against overlinking in a situation like this. Again, that's IMHO. Anthony 14:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

2 things that I think are important:

  1. 2004 only has the first two rounds in the new format. We need to continue to fix that page.
  2. I've noticed in the older draft pages we don't say who the pick originally belonged to, and who it went through. While the tables look neater without that information, I think it's important and should be in there. agree/disagree?
  3. I think that as long as we use the same abbreviation for colleges (eg Southern Cal, USC) in every round, we should avoid overlinking. control-f isn't that hard. We should also not overlink the teams and positions. That helps with seeing the first player of each position, as a bonus
  4. I like the succession box, I think it just looks neater.

-J Train 14:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Just to chime in again, with respect to the older drafts, it's going to be hard to find out who had the original draft pick... when I worked on some of the older ones, all I could find was who made the pick, now how they obtained it. Obviously with the more recent drafts that won't be a problem, but I don't think we'll be able to find out who Chicago obtained their second-round pick from in 1963... just saying. As far as the overlinking goes, it seems to be the majority opinion that once a position/school is linked, that's it. Fine with me, although I disagree with Kramar about USC... I don't think people are going to confuse the Gamecocks with the Trojans. We could use USC for Southern Cal and South Carolina for the Gamecocks. Also, when we say Maryland, it almost always refers to College Park, not any other campus, so I think putting "Maryland-College Park" is unnecessary. I've got more questions, but they're unrelated to this topic, so I'll save them for after the season when we go through our overhaul of the team articles. Anthony 19:10, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Have you ever lived in the South? When I was in Georgia, USC=South Carolina. Agreed on Maryland, though. J1729 19:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with ignoring the overlinking guidelines. they don't apply here.--Alhutch 16:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I just wanted to get my position in on this. I got rid of excessive linkage because the 2005 draft page was, IIRC, 37 kb, and by getting rid of the excess linkage I got it under the preferred article limit. Tables definitely need to be wiki-syntax. Long names for schools are not needed but I removed all acronyms (save UCLA) because USC could theoretically because SoCal or South Carolina, even if most people are referring to the former. Additionally, I expanded those that just said State when they meant Uof State-City, because there is more than one Uof State. Additionally, position links did not follow capitilization guidelines in the MoS and created unnecessary redirects. I think that's all I did to the 2005 page, which took me hours IIRC. Just my input. KramarDanIkabu 16:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

  1. i went and fixed up the third round of the 2004 draft. I'll make it my goal to fix that draft up as much as I can, as that one's REALLY a mess right now (missing picks, different formats, no 7th round) --Wizardman 04:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Okay, so an admin went and changed the colors of the draft. Not a big deal I guess, we'll just have to change all the other drafts to that color. I'm slowly but surely takign care of the 2004 NFL Draft, though I think we also have to decide what will be internally linked (with the [[]]'s and what won't be. --Wizardman 00:26, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I nominated 2006 NFL Draft for a featured list and it succeded a while back. I made everything as uniform as possible with 2005 NFL Draft, I think our ultimate goal should be to get all the draft pages up to the standard of these 2...If we see something we like from an old one make sure it is implemented into the 2 FL's and we can start doing that for every one. VegaDark 22:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Talk:List of NFL Draft busts

There is now a discussion going on over there about what counts as a draft bust and what doesn't. Check it out and chip in your two cents. Youngamerican 04:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Glossary of American football

Earlier today I happened to come upon our Glossary of American football page. I was surprised at how many definitions and clarifications I could add, just off the top of my head. With the help of 3 or 4 other knowledgable editors (much less everyone on this project!), we could make this page very comprehensive. I thought I'd post on here to bring this page to everyone's attention, since I think the lack of publication is the only reason this page isn't already great. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 21:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I have noticed that the articles on American football in general have been a little neglected. But keep in mind that this WikiProject you are looking at here is primarily only concentrated on NFL articles—that was the original intent when I created it. But feel free to work on the American football articles too. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:52, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I wasn't suggesting that the Glossary become part of the WikiProject, I just figured I'd use this talk page as a good way of contacting editors interested in American football and bring the Glossary to their attention. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 05:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Coach categories

Should Category:National Football League coaches and all of the team subcategories (and Category:College football coaches, I guess) be renamed to reflect that they're only for head coaches? The categories look like they're basically free of coordinators and position coaches already, so maybe it's not worth fixing what isn't broken. I have no real opinion, but this kind of change is better made sooner than later. ×Meegs 01:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Good luck categorizing Monte Kiffin then. Never was a head coach, likely never wants to be. What's wrong with position coaches in those categories, anyway? It's not like we have Category:American football starting quarterbacks.--Mike Selinker 01:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Nothing, I guess, only no one has so far put any assistants in the team-specific categories. I'd be fine with leaving them inclusive too. ×Meegs 02:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Update: Mike and I have expanded Category:National Football League coaches by team and Category:College football coaches by about a factor of ten and allowed all kinds of assistants to be members. Question: Should there be separate categories for AFL coaches as there now are for AFL players? Membership would be extremely low in Jets (AFL) and NY Titans, but having matching player and coaching categories is kind of elegant (compare the subcat sections of Category:Arizona Cardinals and Category:New York Jets). ×Meegs 01:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

For a few days, I've been working on improving the Patriots article to featured status. Here is the peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/New England Patriots/archive1. Deckiller 19:54, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Pats are up for FA nomination. Deckiller 21:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
It's a good article, and good luck with getting it as a feature. One minor point that I don't like: In the roster, some links head back to the article. They should be red links if there's no articles on those players, not redirects. Seems like cheating.--Mike Selinker 21:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
-=nods=- thanks for pointing that out; I believe I took care of all of them by creating stubs with the appropriate tags and style. Deckiller 21:38, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Neat. The players should have college and position categories too. If you can get to those, great. If not, I'll do them later.--Mike Selinker 00:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I'll try to look up some more info on a few of the players after dinner. Deckiller 00:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

"Not to be forgotten"

I recommend this header be changed to "Notable Alumni" per the New England Patriots page. Deckiller 01:02, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Not to be forgotten is a little hokey, but I've always kind of liked it. If there's to be a change across all of the articles, I suggest Other notable alumni, since the section should omit players from the lists that preceed it (retired numbers, HOFers, etc.). ×Meegs 01:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
-=nods=- Good point. Deckiller 01:54, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I've always liked "Not to be forgotten" as well. One problem with using "Notable alumni" or "Other notable alumni" might be that it would likely direct someone who is unfamiliar with the term to our alumnus/a page, which talks almost entirely about schools and says nothing about professional sports teams (and rightfully so- I'm not sure I've ever heard a professional athlete called an "alumnus" of their team). Not to say I'm completely against it, just that it might be a little confusing to some. EWS23 | (Leave me a message!) 01:56, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Good point, it might be better to keep creative language out of headlines. I recommend the Patriots return to "Not to be forgotten" until a third option comes around. ×Meegs 02:34, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with not to be forgotten, but Notable alumni sounds good too. What if we used notable alumni and didn't link to the alumnus/a page? People could probably figure out what the term meant from context.--Alhutch 02:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

or perhaps something like 'notable former players'?--Alhutch 02:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Player disambiguation

Can we get some consistency in how we disambiguate player names? Here are some examples:

And that's just quarterbacks.

I'm willing to do the grunt work to rename articles if we can decide on what the standard should be.

I prefer (American football) I think.

  • (NFL) ignores notable college players or those in leagues beside the NFL
  • (football) and (football player) would lend many to think Association Football
  • (athlete) is too broad, and Mr. Young really only played football
  • (American football player) is out of place on someone who becomes a coach, broadcaster, etc.
  • (college footballer) is awkward, and ignores a pro career

—Wrathchild (talk) 18:18, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

(American football) seems the right answer to me. Even if we do nothing else, though, we should change any with (athlete), since the predominant wikipedia usage of that term is "track and field athlete."--Mike Selinker 18:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
How about those rare instances with two players with the same name (e.g., Ricky Williams). Disambiguate by position? Might not help. By team? They move around a lot. (Too bad the NFL doesn't have a policy like the Screen Actors Guild. —Wrathchild (talk) 19:37, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
How about this issue I saw earlier in the day: A user moved Jason Taylor to Jason Taylor (American footballer) so a dab page could be created to also list Jason Taylor (rugby league footballer) and Jason Taylor (Australian rules footballer). Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:14, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
In fact, I moved Jason Taylor (American footballer) to Jason Taylor (American football player) because we normally do not use the term "footballer" in the States. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I prefer (football player) or (American football player) to (American football) as they state the person's profession and not simply their field. I can't find any guidelines to backup my feeling, but it is consistent with the examples at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation_pages)#People (e.g. (Chemist), not (Chemistry)). For multiple football players, I'd recommend positions (like Tyrone Williams x3) or dates of some kind. ×Meegs 20:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that breaks with someone like John Madden. You'd want to disambig him from the hockey player of the same name, but he's currently a broadcaster and was a coach. John Madden (American football broadaster) pigeonholes him. We're also left with a hodgepodge of (American football player), (American football coach), (American football executive) and so on. For brevity I think (American football) is better. (And goodness forfend we start seeing (American football player/coach) and other such abominations.) Anyway, I think sports is different enough to buck the trend. —Wrathchild (talk) 20:32, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Madden aside, there are relatively few people with more than one football career ∈ {player, coach, analyst} where one doesn't completely overshadowed the others, and fewer yet of those with name-collisions that need disambiguation. I say that only because I don't want want to make a policy based on a couple of individuals. The "profession convention" seems quite dominant browsing through Category:Human name disambiguation, and it would be nice to use a manner of speech parallel to the non-football articles we're disambiguating from. That is, to not have Tom (football) next to Tom (chemist) and Tom (politician). The weak de facto convention aside, I also have a very slight personal preference for Ken Anderson (football player) since it doesn't require any extra words or thought to be read as prose: "Ken Anderson, football player". It's not a big deal to me really, so long as we can agree not to use footballer ;) ×Meegs 09:36, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Ick. No footballer is right out. I'm not really married to any one term, but rather more to the idea of having consistency. I was hoping to have a single term that we could use on all (American) football people and topics that need disambiguation, but I'll take football player as a start. I am concerned about confusion with the sport us Merkins call "soccer". —Wrathchild (talk) 13:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
I just had to create a disambiguation for B.J. Sams (there were two people in one article -- weird) and I have him listed as B.J. Sams (football player). Has this been agreed upon as the proper way to denote football players as of yet? Thanks! Panchitavilletalk 05:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I noticed New England Patriots is a FA, are there any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Besides WP:GA and featured content, I cannot think of any at this time. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Patriots FA

Many thanks to all who helped out! More info in the talkpage. Deckiller 03:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations. I've been watching the work and am very impressed. Keep up the good work.--Alhutch 04:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks! There are still a few minor ideas and things I want to fix up in the article. Perhaps we can get it on the front page someday. Deckiller 20:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Player Bios

Each player has an official page through nfl.com (Tedi Bruschi's, just as an example)...they do a pretty good job of rounding up the stats in a table form, include a picture, have game logs, have situational stats...all in all a fairly useful source. Would people be in favor of regularly linking to these sites in player pages? And secondly, would the pictures on these sites qualify as fair use, as they are publicity photos? --jfg284 you were saying? 15:00, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

We could link the nfl.com bios in the players page, but clearly not get the images as they are still copyright and not fair use. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 20:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

More AFL spam

Seems that User 24.48.96.44 was pretty busy inserting spam links for the AFL "Hall of Fame" website in a lot of player bios today. A lot of them were removed by myself and someone else, but a few might still remain. Keep on the lookout. Whoever 24.48.96.44 is, they are simply inserting a link to the AFL Hall of Fame, which is nothing more than a fan-created site. They are also inserting a sentence linking to what used to be a Wiki article about the site. --Cholmes75 04:50, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

  • So 24.48.96.44 (aka RemembertheAFL (talk • contribs), aka the owner of the Remember the AFL web site) is doing it again? When will he learn. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Probably when he is booted. I appreciate his zeal for the AFL, but this childish behavior needs to stop. --Cholmes75 14:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The talk page on WikiProject AFL

You should probably take a look at The talk page on WikiProject AFL (see the bottom discussion re Rudy Gay), as well as Rudy Gay's deletion entry. Rogerthat Talk 10:21, 2 March 2006 (UTC)