Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 21

New Article

I'm thinking of creating an article that will show the pitchers with the most walks allowed. The problem is, I don't know how to name it. There already is an article dealing with the hitters with the most walks. I don't want people to get confused with the article above. Can you help me name the article? Thanks. Jonathansuh (talk) 23:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

• I don't love those top 100 articles. But why not just "walks issued"? Staxringold _talk^contribs 22:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree that they should not be titled as "Top 100" or "player with more than XX statistic". That should all be commonly titled, preferably with "MLB career leaders in XX" and not with an arbitrary cutoff. - Masonpatriot (talk) 17:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Australian Baseball League

For those interested, (probably just myself and Afaber012) the new Australian Baseball League has been starting a marketing push within the last week and a website is now up www.theabl.com.au. Couple of good advertisements featuring Travis Blackley, Ryan Rowland-Smith and one completely featuring Peter Moylan. The league starts in November. JRA_WestyQld2 ^Talk 10:48, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

TfD

Hi all. Just wanted to notify the project that we've got an active TfD discussion: {{MLB hitting coaches by team}}. A prior discussion in January determined that these templates aren't necessary unless there's a lead article that links them together (like we have at {{MLB managers by team}}). Just thought you ought to be aware. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 12:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Montreal and Quebec

I started a discussion at Talk:List of Major League Baseball managers on the names for Montreal and Quebec, and would welcome additional input. The discussion has wider implications than just this article, so I believe discussing it on this page would be appropriate. As there is a long history of these places having English names in common use, with a multitude of reliable sources, which is acknowledged by Wikipedia's use of these names for their articles, I believe it would be appropriate to use the English names with the text of baseball articles, in accordance with Wikipedia's guidance on geographical items. I realize some editors feel that the English names are a corruption of the French names. Regardless of whether both names arose simultaneously (in the case of Quebec, from an Algonquin word) or one came from another, the names have been in use for hundreds of years now, and I believe the general consensus is that these internationally-known places have multiple names in different languages. Isaac Lin (talk) 15:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a sidenote, this issue doesn't relate only to the spellings of Montréal and Québec, but also to the spellings of the names of hundreds of Latin-American players in today's game and throughout history. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 15:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The discussion thread I am starting relates specifically to entities with established names in different languages. In order to keep the scope of this thread limited, I ask that discussion of player names be held in a different thread. Isaac Lin (talk) 15:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Players do have established names in different languages. It's the same issue. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 15:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I would like to keep this discussion to entities (places or persons) where their names in multiple languages have long, historic precedence in innumerable reliable sources. Current-day players are difficult to compare to places that have existed for hundreds of years, so I would prefer to keep this discussion separate from cases where historic precedence does not exist. Isaac Lin (talk) 15:52, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The historicity is not under debate here. The issue is one and the same, regardless of whether you would prefer that the discussions be separate. KV5 (Talk • Phils) 15:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

In many cases with player names, it is unclear if the player has chosen a name in another language, and if there is a general consensus on the player's name. In the case of places that have existed for a long time, there is a general consensus that can be observed. Because this topic can expand to cover many different cases, I would like to focus on the one where a general consensus is apparent. Isaac Lin (talk) 16:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Place names keep or lose them based on if there is an established english version. Wikipedia has long established that Montreal and Quebec lose them for example which is why those pages don't have them. Person names however, I have always been of the opinion that they always keep them. I have been through far to many wars at the hockey project to fight about this one again because its clear wikipedia as a whole has never been able to and will never be able to come to a clear consensus on this. As such I just suggest using the "engvar" method of dealing with it. If you see it leave it, if you don't see it leave it. In otherwords never change it from one version to the other as long as its consistent on the page. -DJSasso (talk) 17:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Player photos

It seems like people are taking the policy of using pictures of players on their current team in the player infobox a little too far. Take for example, Jeff Baker. Yeah, the current picture of him is in a Cubs uniform, but all we can see is his back and rear end, while there is a perfectly good picture of him in a Rockies' uniform that actually shows his face. I think the WikiProject needs to put some guidelines about photo usage, because the amount of pictures of players' backs is getting ridiculous. They're okay when absolutely no free alternative is available, but should a "back shot" really replace a picture of someone's face just because the picture is of them on their current team? CFIF ☎ ⋐ 19:30, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

The infobox image should always be the image that shows the player best. That's the point of the infobox. If there are several good images that show the player well and they span multiple teams, then the current team would be preferred in the infobox. — KV5 • Talk • 20:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think that even needs a guideline - that's just common sense. Between this and me catching people removing pictures altogether for no reason, it's high-time we had a bot to make sure the best available pictures are attached to each article. Wknight94 ^talk 20:39, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I brought this up because I had noticed, like Wknight94 said, people removing or moving perfectly good pictures in favor of lower-quality pictures (usually of players' backs, which are pretty worthless for the infobox) just because said picture was of the player on the current team. Maybe it's time for us to develop some type of official policy on pictures so we can avoid having these type of pictures from pervading player articles. CFIF ☎ ⋐ 18:54, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a need for a policy. Its pretty common sense. If you see someone doing it just leave them a note saying its good to leave the image that best shows the player in the infobox and then place their image in a portion of the article talking about their time with the current team. Or better yet go to flickr and look for any pictures someone took of that player with the new team and ask the person who took the photo if they will release it under creative commons. That is generally what we do in the hockey project and find that a very large number of people are willing to do that.-DJSasso (talk) 19:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Fielding percentage question

Does anyone know the way fielding percentage leaders are calculated? For instance, this article (http://books.google.com/books?id=LSsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA86&dq=july+2001+fielding+leaders+baseball+digest&cd=4#v=onepage&q=july%202001%20fielding%20leaders%20baseball%20digest&f=false) in Baseball digest shows Frankie Hayes led all catchers in 1945, while Baseball Reference lists Paul Richards as the leader.Orsoni (talk) 05:39, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Have you looked at Fielding percentage? Eagle4000 (talk) 20:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

According to Fielding percentage, the catcher must appear in 2/3 of his team's games. According to baseball-reference, the two catchers ahead of Hayes each played less than 85 games at catcher. Maybe baseball-reference is using some other standard for minimum games played. Wknight94 ^talk 23:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

• Ran into this problem occasionally working on batting champs. B-Ref's FAQ page. At the bottom they list at least their offensive playing time requirements. Staxringold _talk^contribs 01:14, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

The Fielding percentage actually says the requirements for catchers is only 1/2 their team's games, although it doesn't cite a source. Baseball Reference and the Baseball Digest article also state that the requirement is half their team's games, so on the surface, it appears the Baseball Digest article might be in error when it listed Frankie Hayes as the 1945 leader, but still no definite proof.Orsoni (talk) 06:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

According to the Official Rules on the MLB site, 10.22(c)(1) also says that a catcher needs to have been a catcher in half the scheduled games to qualify. 10.22(c)(3) makes an allowance for a pitcher that doesn't meet the standard of game time, but has a better average and fielded more chances than the pitcher who would otherwise be the fielding champion, to actually be the champ, but no such allowance is explicitly stated in the rules for any position players.

At the Baseball Reference FAQ that Staxringold pointed out above, they do mention changes in minimum standards over time, though there's no mention of changes or processes used for fielding, only batting. Two thirds of games might have been a requirement at the time for catchers as well as other position players.  Afaber012  (talk)  11:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion - Full count --> Count (baseball)

Please contribute at Talk:Count (baseball). Thank you.  – ukexpat (talk) 14:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion - Baseball players by state

FYI, there's a discussion of a proposed renaming of these categories at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 May 22#Baseball players by state. BRMo (talk) 13:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

The outcome is yes, rename all from "Major League Baseball players from ------" to "Baseball players from ------". --P64 (talk) 18:58, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

AAGPBL Infoboxes - Are HOF tags appropriate?

I was looking at the article for John Kloza and noticed that there is a HOF tag (though not the standard one, as it seems to be a generic template and calls it the "American" BHOF) on his infobox. The HOF tag stats that he is a member due to the induction of the entire AAGPBL in 1988. Now aside from the other issues in the article (needs a general MLB infobox since he played for the Browns for two season), has there been any discussion on this issue that anyone is aware of? I see it as two issues - 1) was the AAGPBL "inducted" into the HOF? I know that an exhibit was installed in the Museum in the late 1980's, but that does not equate induction in my mind... and 2) even if it is considered "induction" does the induction of the league confer that honor on every person who worked for that league throughout it's whole operation? Again, IMO, it doesn't, and seems like a huge overreach. I've seen similar HOF tags on other pages - Beverly Armstrong, Bill Allington, Dottie Green, Dorothy Kamenshek, and Margaret Wigiser just to name a few. Also, almost all of these pages include the AAGPBL navbox on the bottom, even though they are not linked in those navboxes.

Before I moved ahead I just wanted to touch base and see if there were any other thoughts about the issue. Thanks. - Masonpatriot (talk) 17:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you; I don't recall a formal induction ever occurring. There are a lot of things on exhibit at the Hall of Fame; that doesn't mean that all of their owners were inducted into the Hall. I think the HoF notation should be removed. — KV5 • Talk • 18:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The baseball Hall of Fame, which is part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (NBHOFM), inducts only individuals and no more than once each. Contrast the basketball hall of fame which has inducted teams such as the New York Renaissance and has inducted individuals such as John Wooden in more than one category.

Group induction should not be considered induction of every group member so it would be inappropriate to call or list so-and-so a member of the hall of fame, even if the AAGPBL had been inducted as an institution or as a group of people.

Negro Leagues baseball player Fats "Jenkins was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the Rens, one of the five teams to be inducted as a group." (See Fats Jenkins.) That sentence is clear enough as a whole and may be considered true, but it opens with a misleading clause, if i recall the correct term. It doesn't and shouldn't call him a member of the basketball HOF.

Some articles on Negro Leagues players include infoboxes at top right (see Buck Leonard). This one doesn't yet have such a box at the head, nor any templates at the foot. It's a poor article, even for its size, in relegating Jenkins's basketball career to two closing lines, one being the reference to team hall of fame status that I have quoted. --P64 (talk) 19:37, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Similar Articles

There are seperate pages titled List of Baseball Nicknames and List of baseball player nicknames. I think these pages have very similar information and I thought that maybe something should be done about this. NBA Fan7 (talk) 00:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

question on article notability

Can a baseball fan or three take a look at Ross Wicks? I'm not sure if Wicks passes the WP:BIO threshold. If nothing else, it needs a cursory improvement. Thanks. (I'm not watching this page- tb me if necessary) tedder (talk) 00:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Baseball-Reference has no record. Doesn't seem to be real. — KV5 • Talk • 00:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

He's real.. a google search comes up with his own website that has some quotes from luminaries about him... If anything he barely played in the low low levels... though the lack of BR page on him may imply some exageration on his part. In any event, not notable.Spanneraol (talk) 00:43, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I meant real in Wikipedia terms, of course... I'm not real either. :-D — KV5 • Talk • 00:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

And I stand corrected: The search didn't find him because he's listed as Roscoe Wicks. The stats on hit site helped me find him. That said, totally doesn't meet WP:GNG. — KV5 • Talk • 00:47, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. I can name about 4 baseball players in total, so I know not to trust WP:IKNOWIT. tedder (talk) 00:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Stat updates

Hey, I just found out that you guys agreed that stats should only be updated at the all star break and the end of the season. That doesn't make any sense to me because if we had to wait that long, some of us would just forget to update the stats. I'm thinking we should update the stats like, once every 2-3 weeks while the season is in progress because I don't like the idea of waiting till the end of the season. – Michael (talk) 16:34, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that was "officially" decided. There was discussion on the topic though. Seems to me there should be no restrictions on when the stats are updated. — X96lee15 (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think all stat updates should wait to the end of the season (or atleast the allstar break). Wikipedia is not a sports almanac and we aren't expected to be nor should we be an up to the minute statistics database. There are other sites that fill that role better than we ever could. But one thing we should have is every article updated to the same spot. This is why people don't like people updating whenever they feel like it because inevitably they only update a handful of pages which then means the pages are out of sync making comparisons difficult if not impossible, defeating one of the purposes of an encyclopedia. -DJSasso (talk) 16:44, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with DJSasso. It would be easier and more consistent across the project if there was a single consensus. — KV5 • Talk • 16:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with doing it once every 2-3 weeks? – Michael (talk) 19:45, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Because who's to say what "once every 2-3 weeks" is? It's easier to follow a guideline that's not arbitrarily dated. The All-Star Break happens every year at approximately the same time, and the regular season ends every year at approximately the same time. It makes life a whole lot less complicated. — KV5 • Talk • 19:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the issue with different articles having different "as of" dates. As long as the "as of" date is correct and all the stats in the infobox are updating at the same time, I see no issue. It's too much regulation if WP:Baseball imposes a "rule" about this. — X96lee15 (talk) 20:29, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer that stat updates happen after the season, but as long as they update the date I dont feel like reverting all the people who edit them at other intervals. Spanneraol (talk) 20:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I really don't think it is something that needs to have a guideline. I saw no problem before. It seems like a bit much to make a consensus on updating stats in an infobox. If they get updated, which typically comes from IPs, they get updated. Not a big deal. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 20:48, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

If we are talking about making a policy for it there must be a problem. What is it? --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 22:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracy, often people update only one stat on a page, or don't update totals. And for people making comparisons between people's stats they can't make a valid comparison because one goes to game 13 while another goes to game 67, however if you have all articles as of the end of last season people are able to compare up to a specific point in time. Basically it causes more problems than it solves updating stats real time. Its not all that hard to do, a number of other sports follow this method. Regular editors soon get used to not doing it and IPs don't do it because you word the infobox to make it clear its as of the end of the last season. -DJSasso (talk) 22:25, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I see your point. However, I don't think it's that biggest problem facing our project. I think that we should allow user to continue to edit the stats because it is constructive. Inaccuracy comes with the turf, it's a collaborative. We minimize it by allowing editors like Mikemor92 (talk · contribs), and Blahblah32blahblah (talk · contribs) (and others like them), who are known to edit stats, to continue doing so. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 22:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Brian Halvorsen. First, the stats being updated from time to time doesn't really hurt anything that I am aware of. What's the problem? They'll be inaccurate? They would be inaccurate anyway. Second, any policy about not updating stats every day would be 100% unenforceable. You would end up having to permanently semi-protect every baseball bio we have. And when other people asked why every baseball bio was protected, we'd have to say, "because they were keeping the stats too accurate". That would go over like a cement cloud..... Wknight94 ^talk 02:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Not at all, all you have to do is put in the header in the infobox for stats (as of the end of x season). That alone stops 99% of people editing stats. And for pages where people keep doing it you put in a html comment to not update until the end of season. This has worked for a number of other sports. I have never once heard of having to protect a page over it. I rarely even see people have to revert it once they put in as of the end of last season. -DJSasso (talk) 11:44, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

While I understand that it would be nice to have updates that are equal as to the same date for all players, until someone figures out how to get an mlb.com feed to update them, that won't happen. As to, then, whether I would prefer that all bios be stale by the same extent, or some be more updated .... I'll go with some being more updated. The benefit to me outweighs the lack of conformity across bios. My two cents, for what its worth. (Oh yeah -- and enforceability would be a bitch...I have better things to do w my time than revert well-intentioned editors).--Epeefleche (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Generally agree with, Brian Halvorsen, Wizardman and Epeefleche. The only thing I think gets hairy is the real-time updating while a game is in progress, especially on the leaders lists. However, some of this can be addressed with how parameters are set up at the start of the list. Regarding infoboxes, so long as the stats are accurate to the date listed in the infobox, I don't see what the problem is. - Masonpatriot (talk) 03:41, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

In an ideal world, every article in Wikipedia - not just relating to baseball but everything - would be up to date all the time: as soon as an event is over (and in our context I would consider an event at the level of a game, not a pitch) the relevant details would be updated on here. Unfortunately, unless several someones are paid to keep every baseball article's statistics up to date, that's unlikely to happen. I think that wherever stats are listed and there is the potential for ambiguity as to their accuracy - so I'm talking about stats for a current/ongoing season and career stats - there should already be some sort of date stamp identifying when it covers. As a few people have said, as long as the stats in question are correct as of the date stamp then there should be no issue.

I accept that if different players' or teams' articles are updated at different intervals, direct comparisons may not be possible, eg Alex Rodriguez is correct to 16 May but Albert Pujols is correct to 3 June, but we already have (or at least should already have) links to a number of different stats sites that can be used for just those sorts of comparisons. And as much as I don't mind being accommodating for people at varying levels of interest and understanding, using a "people might be confused or misinformed" argument here suggests that readers don't understand the concept of dates and time. If they can't work out what's happening, I'm not sure we should be dragging every one else down to their level.

Encouraging accurate participation, however piecemeal it might be, towards making Wikipedia more complete, is surely better than the alternative.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Well I would have to disagree with your first statement. You make a valid point, however, the only way we can maximize participation is if we let IPs and inexperienced editors edit. By rolling back their edits and telling them it's against "consensus" and "policy at WP:WPBB" (something they might not understand) then we desourage editing, pushing these participants away. My point is, this is a good thing that people want to update stats. It is a good start for new or unexperienced editors and a good way to get them into the swing of things. As I stated before, the only way we can limit inaccuracy is allow editors to edit, not refrain from editing. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 19:39, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Boil all that down and you get: Let's not make policy to make policy. How about we continue to let editing continue and stop giving the middle finger who aren't as experienced as some of us? That's the only way Wikipedia will be accurate. Not by telling people that they can't edit something because a project came up with a policy. Basically, there's no good point and it becomes more harmful to make a rule. I am in no way challenging the validity of anyone's point. I'm just saying, there may be another side of this coin. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 19:43, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

• On this subject, a bunch of IPs keep trying to do batter by batter updates on Stephen Strasburg during his debut game.. Fought them off so far.. Cant they just wait till the games over? Spanneraol (talk) 00:34, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess I don't see the point of fighting them off (although minute-by-minute updates in a case like that could be a problem, esp. if every 4th edit is vandalism). Like Brian Halvorsen says, fighting off IPs and new users is a WP:BITE concern. I just saw an IP make this edit to Mike Pelfrey. Is it ridiculously ephemeral? Of course it is. But who cares? Whoever that was may have gotten a little thrill out of making their first ever Wikipedia edit, and they get to show their friends and family and all that...... What is the point of immediately squashing their harmless little edit like a bug? The risk is that we offend a brand new user and maybe lose a good contributor forever. The reward is what? That our watchlists light up less often? I don't get it. Let other people have some fun too. Wknight94 ^talk 21:27, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

You stated my point perfectly. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 22:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Agree w/Wknight. Well said. This isn't a game of asteroids. Anyone who derives their pleasure from deleting, can start watchlisting the vandal pages; that's a way to delete, and help the project at the same time by deterring harmful editors.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Minor league articles

Hey, recently I came across an article (Baltimore Orioles minor league players) that had no minor leaguers on it. I looked at the edit history and saw that a user, Ositadinma (talk · contribs), had deleted the information from the page with no explanation. I always thought that the articles were for minor leaguers who aren't notable enough for their own articles, but have enough sources to establish some notability (per WP:WPBB/N). If you look at an article like Seattle Mariners minor league players, an article I have worked on a bit, there are players and rosters. It seemed like the user interprets the page as a roster guide, not a minor league player page. What's the deal? Am I wrong? Should the articles be for players and rosters or just rosters? --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 22:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I believe they should be a list of the current minor leaguers...because well currently anyone professional passes wp:athlete and should have their own page. (I know I know...the whole fully professional debate). Especially if you are saying you found sources which establish notability because they then pass GNG. But I don't know if it was ever spelled out exactly what they should look like. -DJSasso (talk) 22:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Good point, let's not make this about the interpretation of "fully professional". Please, just concerning this specific point. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 22:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Bell was removed because an article was created for him. I'd say those kinda of articles should stay on the page until they become major leaguers or become notable elsewhere; why else would we have the pages? Just having them to slap the templates on makes it useless. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 22:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Originally I had put more minor leaguers on that page but Ositadinma (talk · contribs) was pretty clear that these were roster only pages and that the mini bios looked bad.... In my opinion they look just fine on all the other team pages, but I got tired or arguing with him about it and just let it go in the case of the Orioles (and Rangers which he also controls). Spanneraol (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The original purpose of these pages was to provide information (i.e. mini bios) on minor leaguers who where not notable enough for their own articles. NatureBoyMD (talk) 01:48, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I feel like these pages can be great for the "keep an eye out for..." sort of prospect who probably won't make it, but very well could. Just housing templates is pointless. --Muboshgu (talk) 20:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

A roster-only page doesn't really serve any purpose. The bios should be there. These articles are basically incubators for players who don't yet meet WP:GNG. — KV5 • Talk • 00:47, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

For me if you are not notable to have a a wiki article then you are not notable to have a minor league article on that page and sorry for the long delay for responding. Ositadinma 18:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

These pages are for minor league players who are not notable enough to have their own article. Spanneraol (talk) 18:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Ositadinma, WP:N governs article creation, not article content. A player may be notable enough to be mentioned without meeting WP:GNG. If you view the original discussion in the WT:MLB archives, that was part of the whole point of creating this series of lists: to avoid having stubs of minor leaguers and so forth that do not meet the notability guidelines for their own articles. — KV5 • Talk • 18:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know but it is not my fault people create players articles that don't meet notability guidelines. If they are just deleted and not made into minor articles on the pages. Also pretty much any players with no notability can have a minor league article as long as they have a source. This is why people argue over players that are notable and are not. Notability has been a huge topic of discussion on Wiki anyway. Ositadinma 18:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and Whittleman, he got demoted to Single-A, and even notable to have a minor league article on him. Ositadinma 18:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I didn't blame you or assign fault to anyone on this. These list articles were not created to be sinks for the roster templates. They were created as article incubators for prospects who do not yet meet WP:GNG. It makes it easier to move content around if a player changes teams and it is easier if a player retires as a minor leaguer or leaves the game than having to go through an AfD because of a lack of notability to begin with. — KV5 • Talk • 18:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

No, not saying you are blaming me and you are right it is easier than AfD, but if there were no minor league articles to begin with, look how easy that would be. Simply if an article is created and is not notable then it is deleted as in any project on Wiki, except for this one. Ositadinma 18:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem with the AfDs is that, although many minor league players do not meet WP:GNG, plenty of arguments have been made that those players meet WP:ATHLETE. Since there is no general consensus on this issue, the articles were created as a compromise between the two positions. To summarily delete the information doesn't work towards that spirit of compromise. If we want to re-open that issue, I wouldn't be opposed to that, but discussion in this case, especially when such a lengthy one happened before, would be much preferred over undiscussed deletion. — KV5 • Talk • 19:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, with the way baseball is written about in the US. I am surpised you can't find a couple references for almost every minor league player out there. (at the very least AA & AAA) This is why it always shocks me the drive y'all have to get rid of minor league player articles. Cause I doubt you could find an example that can't be sourced. -DJSasso (talk) 19:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Trust me, not all of us want to get rid of them. If a player has sources to pass WP:GNG, there's no reason he shouldn't have an article. — KV5 • Talk • 19:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

KV5 stated it perfectly. The fact that they play at a certain level is not directly related to WP:GNG. If they meet the general notability guidelines, which many minor league articles do, they should be allowed to stay. I don't see why we should have a minor league article witch hunt if the subject is notable. There shouldn't be a one-size fits all guideline saying minor leaguers aren't notable. We should take it case-by-case. --Brian Halvorsen (talk) 00:57, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

• Agree w/Brian and Killervogel.--Epeefleche (talk) 22:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Help, please?

If any of you have a few moments, the Cleveland Indians article suddenly needs a good deal of help. Over the past couple days, User:DrewD887 has made quite a few changes to the article, many of which don't appear to be productive. I don't have time to review all of the edits, but I was hoping that a few of you might be able to lend a hand. - Eureka Lott 00:45, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

His edits seem in good faith, but from the looks of it he's causing more harm than good. The fact that he's reverted several editors (whose specific undoings were correct) makes me question what he's doing. I feel like a complete revert might be too harsh, but that may have to be done if he doesn't seem to want to work with others. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 01:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

He did make some edits to the team infobox as well, which I did reverse. — KV5 • Talk • 01:16, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Now he's edit warring and accusing others of acting in bad faith. I left him a note on his talk page. - Eureka Lott 02:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I semi-protected the page for a week. Template:MLB infobox may also need protection if this continues. - Eureka Lott 02:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

NSPORT guideline

A RFC is ongoing to promote WP:NSPORT to an official guideline. If you are interested you might consider contributing at the Discussion page. -Spanneraol (talk) 02:48, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

California Collegiate League members incorrect

The list of teams in the California Collegiate League is incorrect. The San Luis Obispo Rattlers are NOT formerly the Blues. The San Luis Blues are still in existence. Please correct the error. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adam stowe (talk • contribs) 22:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

1965 Major League Baseball Draft

I've been working on the 1965 Major League Baseball Draft to see if I can start getting those to FL status, and I came across something odd. The first seven rounds were no problem to add. Once I got to round 8 though, the numbers dramatically change and are listed very oddly. The picks at Baseball-Reference and The Baseball Cube are both very different, with the numbers no longer going in order for B-R. As such I don't know how to proceed. Which numbers are right, and how would I then cite them? Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:05, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that teams used to pick until they didn't want to pick any more players, so their pick numbers are skipped if they stopped selecting after the 7th round. — KV5 • Talk • 16:20, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

And apparently that's still the case. "Each Club continues to select until it makes its selection in the 50th round, unless the Club chooses to "pass" instead of making a selection in a round. Once a Club chooses to pass, it is precluded from making any further selections." Hope that helps you out. — KV5 • Talk • 16:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

That's how it seems at least. Though what confuses me is that the 8th round goes "141, 142, 144.." then the 9th round has 143, so I can't figure out why the numbers are jumbled the way they are. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Ummm wow. You're definitely onto something here. What it is... I have no clue! — KV5 • Talk • 16:38, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I think I kinda figured it out. [1] Based on that, it seems as the lower level farm teams could take however many they wanted, and they were ordered by their own records. Granted that just makes this even more confusing. Looks like I'll be adding a section on the draft rules so others aren't as confused as I am. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

In looking around a bit, it seems that from 1965 to 1986, there was a January regular, January secondary, June regular, June secondary, and an August Legion draft. Since 1987, there has only been one June draft. Draft results from MLB.com have pull down menus for all the different draft types. According to the June Regular draft for 1965 it appears that selection 143 was Edward Lupton for the Senators. Hope any of this helps.Neonblak ^talk - 16:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

It does, I'll use the MLB one for finishing the list. The way B-R has that year is too confusing, though it looks like other years don't have that problem. There were too many drafts in the old days I think. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 17:41, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

• Be warned, this can also be confusing when checking player pages. It may say "Drafted in the first round", but be sure (on older players) to click through to see WHICH DRAFT'S first round (if you're doing one of the first-round draft pick lists). Staxringold _talk^contribs 18:09, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I had thought about getting some of those up to FL status as well. I added info about compensation picks to some of the drafts from the aughts (and I think some from the nineties). Do you really intend to add all picks made? That's a lot of work, and so many of those players will never have Wikipedia articles. --Muboshgu (talk) 18:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

• Given the format it looks like Wizardman is only including those (after the first round) who ever appeared in an ML game. Seems like a reasonable inclusion standard to me, given that full listing of all those rounds would destroy WP:ACCESS. Staxringold _talk^contribs 18:18, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

  Mhm, I'm limiting it to just major league appearances. I'm not sure whether or not to include those who did play in the majors but didn't sign (I am currently) since that could end up making the list large. We'll see what happens when it's done. Luckily, this is going to be the worst one; once I make this look good the other years will be much easier. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 18:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

  In that case, it sounds like a great idea and I'm happy to help out as my schedule allows, which it might in the latter part of June. We can do this for all drafts (eventually; it'll be a big project). --Muboshgu (talk) 18:32, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Southbridge Little League

Having little interest and knowledge in Baseball - are individual little league teams considered notable? Exxolon (talk) 16:48, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd say no. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:52, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I can't be sure just to look at it. Three sources are self-published, and two others are just statistical sources, which don't establish notability for the players, much less this league that isn't even listed. Without any way to confirm the offline sources, there's no way to tell. They are not inherently notable though. — KV5 • Talk • 16:54, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I've prodded it - we'll see what happens next. Exxolon (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

• I would almost always agree no. The only exception is in an extreme case, like a Little League version of Oak Hill Academy that draws significant coverage. Staxringold _talk^contribs 18:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Near-perfect games

Members of this WikiProject may wish to participate in an ongoing discussion on the criteria for inclusion of near-perfect games. Ma^t_chups 02:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

No-hitter succession box

It looks like this is finally complete, each pitcher who has thrown a no-hitter has had this succ. box added to their page, but I have a question for the Project members. How do we deal with these combined no-hitters; my way of dealing with them was to skip them entirely, however when I ran into the 70s, someone has been including them. Certainly Rollie Fingers cannot be a "no-hitter pitcher" since he did not "throw a no-hitter", and neither has Blue Moon Odom. Maybe there is a compromise to be made regarding these games? On each of the combined no-hitter pitchers, maybe make the succession box read "no-hit game" instead of "no-hitter pitcher"?Neonblak ^talk - 18:17, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

That sounds eminently reasonable and fair. — KV5 • Talk • 18:24, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I have corrected and re-corrected all of the combined no-hitter pitchers, thus completing the no-hitter succession box task I began long.... long ago.Neonblak ^talk - 19:35, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers! — KV5 • Talk • 19:37, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

• Could take formatting from what I did on Presidents pro tempore of the United States Senate, 1911–1913 ages ago with that succ box. Staxringold _talk^contribs 19:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Notability of proposed trades/trade rumors?

I'm maintaining the article for Mariano Rivera and I've occasionally come across articles on proposed trades for Rivera early in his career before he became an elite closer. I've inserted them into the article (e.g. Felix Fermin pre-1996 and Big Unit/Pedro post-1997), but I'm wondering if they are notable or not. Are they inherently worth mentioning, or is it dependent on the players involved? Do they really not matter in the grand scheme of things? What's everyone's take? Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 20:52, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Did the proposals or rumours have a notable effect on Rivera's life? If not, then I do not believe they are sufficiently notable for his article. Isaac Lin (talk) 21:21, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure the rumors affected Rivera - he's a pretty composed person and never seems to let any adversity get to him. Even if it did, he would never let on. The potential trades mentioned in the article are used to frame the doubt that hung over Rivera's position with the Yankees. And in each case, he followed the rumors with very strong performances. I'm still unsure about keeping or removing. I didn't know if the Baseball project had any standards about information like this, but it seems like this is left to our judgment. Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 03:47, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I would say get rid of the rumors... He wasn't traded and most of the rumors are just media speculations rather than facts... We really shouldn't include trade rumors for that reason.Spanneraol (talk) 04:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, as just about everyone has transaction rumours about them at some point, unless they play some specific role within the person's life/career, I don't believe they should be included. There's just too many things that didn't happen in someone's life to include them. Isaac Lin (talk) 18:37, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

There is a big difference between trade rumors and what's in Mariano's article. This isn't about media speculation. This is about facts that Marino was almost traded at one point. And it is an interesting note to how his career played out. Blahblah32blahblah (talk) 18:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

>>The potential trades mentioned in the article are used to frame[show?] the doubt that hung over Rivera's position with the Yankees. And in each case, he followed the rumors with very strong performances.<<

The stated purpose in covering early trade rumours must allay any general point against covering them. This doesn't fall under the general case, whoever's doubt is supposedly demonstrated --doubt on the part of Steinbrenner, Rivera, New York writers, or fans. --P64 (talk) 19:09, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

The only potential trade I am wedded to is the for David Wells in 1995. It is a very widely reported story and GM Gene Michaels called off negotiations after hearing of Rivera's large increase in velocity. The Fermin proposed deal was actually initiated by the Mariners, so it was more than a rumor, per se. The post-1997 proposed deals were more along the lines of rumors and speculation. Don't know if that puts things in better perspective. Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 19:25, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• I usually just add in trade rumors when 1. They're widespread, and/or 2. If there's not much info on the player and that little bit helps expand the article. Obviously 2 doesn't apply, but 1 could. In Rivera's specific case after reading the diff that was just removed, I would lean towards no. (The Wells one that remains I'm fine with) I'm sure if one looks hard enough they could find hundreds of trade rumors for Rivera, and unless it was really close to happening there's not much point. There's enough for us to talk about with him anyway. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 19:28, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in on this, everyone. Y2kcrazyjoker4 (talk) 20:13, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Need Help on Baltimore Terrapins

I added some information to the info box, but it is not showing up correctly. Can a more experienced user of the Defunct Independent Baseball infobox assist? Thanks. --dashiellx (talk) 16:11, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I fixed some of what I could; if you can be more clear about where the problem is, I can try to assist further. — KV5 • Talk • 16:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

You fixed it perfectly. I don't understand why the Owner and Manager Names I entered would show. --dashiellx (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the parameters defined by the template are wrong. I will correct the template itself. — KV5 • Talk • 18:25, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Special projects page

Just checking, would there be interest if I were to set up a projects page? It'd be mainly used to set up possible Featured Topics, though it can be expanded for other things as well. I have a draft at User:Wizardman/a. Let me know if this is of any interest/if this is pointless. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 01:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

• I'm good with that. At very least makes it a nice central location to keep track of things. Staxringold _talk^contribs 02:04, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Yerp. Would have a talk page specifically for projects too. — KV5 • Talk • 02:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
• We've gotta figure out a lead article for opening day starters. Staxringold _talk^contribs 02:09, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

  I went and created/added it; second row on the navbox. Do as you will with it. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:25, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

  Great. I'll involve myself as time allows. Out of personal interest, maybe I can get the Bucky Fucking Dent game up to GA. --Muboshgu (talk) 20:12, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Minor League Categories

If we have the Arizona League team categories and the Gulf Coast League team categories which are both rookie leagues, then how come we don't have the Venezuelan League team categories and the Dominican League team categories? That doesn't make sense. I think we should create those. – Michael (talk) 21:31, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, by all means go ahead and create them. I think the GCL categories are a recent addition, maybe the AZL categories are too. --Muboshgu (talk) 21:45, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually I don't think I should. Unlike the AZL and GCL, the foriegn rookie leagues are like, Major League Baseball's academy leagues. So I was trying to figure out why we didn't have the cats, so I would just lay off on creating them. – Michael (talk) 22:06, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Infobox subheadings (and headings)

Where subheadings are used in the Infobox, the hardspace " " --that is, "nbsp" between & and ;-- makes a big improvement at the left margin, and colons at the ends of subheadings are useless. See Satchel Paige for example, where I just inserted spaces and erased colons.

(At the same time I cut the hyphen from "* - MLB statistics" and call the list of teams "incomplete" instead of "partial". These points pertain to careers where we cover more than MLB.) --P64 (talk) 22:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Better yet, the three cells which focus on Major League Baseball may be titled simply "MLB Debut", "MLB Finale", and "MLB Career". Beyond the general value of parallel structure and similar length, there will be no need for the asterisks and note now used at Satchel Paige. Those should be used for many other Infoboxes, but the suggested change will make that unnecessary. The list of "Teams" can be augmented as people make time for it, using subheadings as at Paige. --P64 (talk) 19:54, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Not a fan of using the abbreviation MLB in a heading. While I like brevity, we want this to be accessible to the common reader. "Minor League career" or "Minors", and "Major League career" or "Majors", are in my opinion more user-friendly/appropriate for sub-headers.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:46, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Majors is not trivial to look up even at wikipedia but Major league is OK. Major league debut, Major league finale, and Major league career have the parallel structure and the clear contrast with unqualified Teams that I have recommended. (That recommendation concerns the titles of Infobox cells, not subheadings within them, so I have modified the name of this section. The cell titles seem to be standardized now.) --P64 (talk) 04:42, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Article for deletion

I don't know how to go about recommending an article for deletion. I did my best to update Daniel Berg (baseball)'s article, but couldn't even find 2010 info on the guy. I couldn't find him on any independent league rosters, and I don't even think he is playing with Australia anymore. I'd originally written his article years ago; it was deleted for lack of notability, then someone rewrote it.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 13:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Beside the main point: Australian minor league baseball player seems to mean Australian native (or national, or citizen*) who plays or played American minor league baseball. This usage is common here at wikipedia but I don't believe it is universal; overall usage is ambiguous. Wikipedia does prescribe identification of nativity (or some relation of persons with states). Granted that relation and its emphasis—Berg is "Australian" and we should say so at the start—why not do it by writing "an Australian baseball player in the American minor leagues"? --P64 (talk) 15:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey Johnny, thanks for updating the 2009 season for the article, it was probably me who rewrote it. He still passes WP:ATHLETE and baseball specific notability guidelines due to his international representation. He was selected on the 2009 Baseball World Cup roster, which was the last international tournament, so probably still in the scheme of things internationally. If he is not with a club currently, he will probably be playing in the Australian Baseball League which starts in November. JRA_WestyQld2 ^Talk 15:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

P64, it seems slightly redundant? In this case anyway, I believe Berg is currently a free agent (according to the Flintoff and Dunn website). JRA_WestyQld2 ^Talk 15:26, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Redundant? Any reader may suppose there are major and minor leagues in Australia?

However, if representing Australia in the world cup makes him notable, then "Australian minor league baseball player" is a poor lead regardless of how we combine with the "Australian" with the "minor league baseball"! This is a point for general attention. He should not be a minor league baseball player in the lead sentence, no more than Satchel Paige should be primarily identified with MLB.

BTW, how commonly do world cup and world classic players have pages here? If we will cover them generally, or even commonly, then a standard approach will be useful. Perhaps in the lead sentence identify nationality and professional status, where applicable: Australian professional baseball player. No later than the second sentence, mention the cup or the classic, if that is the notability. --P64 (talk) 15:38, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The article mentions he was DFA'd at one point. That would mean he was on the Twins' 40 man roster at one point. That, by our definitions, makes him notable regardless of his international play, which also makes him notable regardless of being on a 40 man roster. --Muboshgu (talk) 15:56, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't recall him ever being on the Twins' 40 man roster.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 16:24, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

He is also notable simply because he has played Claxton Shield, the highest level of baseball in Australia. Also P64, sorry if I offended you. Perhaps the term "an Australian born player who plays within Major League Baseball's minor league baseball system" would be more appropriate? I just don't see many readers supposing there are minor and major leagues in Australia. Or Hungary. Or wherever. Maybe I've completely missed your point. All my articles follow the basic structure of WP:MOS and WP:LEAD. JRA_WestyQld2 ^Talk 16:36, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I take it you are Australian? I did my best to organize that article; it did a lot of jumping around, back and forth from Australia to the U.S. (then again, so did Berg). It would help if someone who knows something about Australian baseball added to the article.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Many players do and it's quite hard to write a cohesive article sometimes with patchy information from each summer they play in each country. Although I'm from a different state to Berg, I know he was quite successful over here and on the international scene, but he did not play in the 2010 Claxton Shield and can't seem to find him playing baseball professionally at the moment. I'm sure he'll pop up here in November. JRA_WestyQld2 ^Talk 16:57, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

If he wasn't on the 40 man, then it's an error that should be corrected. --Muboshgu (talk) 20:10, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree w/JRA that he is notable, and with Muboshgu that if there is an error it should be corrected.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:47, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

What's the error? I don't see anywhere in the article it claims he was ever a member of the 40 man roster.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 09:49, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't say he was on a 40 man roster, but it says he was designated for assignment, which only happens to players on 40 man rosters. --Muboshgu (talk) 04:48, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

John Rogers

Hey, folks, I'm back (for now, anyway). I've just completed a substantial expansion of John Rogers's article. Rogers was the original co-owner of the Phillies (with Al Reach) and was a really interesting fellow. Anyway, I was wondering if someone who's better at doing book references (a lot of the stuff I added came from Google Books) might fix up my ham-fisted attempts at them, and perhaps do some more work on the article. I'd like to submit it for a DYK, but I know it needs some cleaning up first. Thanks! -Dewelar (talk) 03:58, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

References done. I'll take a look at it for a possible expansion. — KV5 • Talk • 11:55, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

RIP Bob Sheppard

As a Yankee fan, it was always a pleasure to hear his voice throughout a home game. It was a big part of the Yankee Stadium experience. Even Yankee haters couldn't think of a bad word to say about the Voice of God. With his passing this morning, I think we should make this page a project, make it top notch. --Muboshgu (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Generations-long impact.--Epeefleche (talk) 17:47, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, he did the exact same job that every other PA announcer in professional baseball has done since the invention of PA systems - he read players names and positions. The only difference with him is that he did it for a very long time and he did it in Yankee Stadium. As with everything associated with the Yankees, the fans inflate the importance of everything associated with the team. The article itself states that he didn't hold his PA job in high regard: "Sheppard maintains that his work as a professor of speech is far more important than his work as an announcer" Kinston eagle (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Well said--Johnny Spasm (talk) 19:04, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I can only assume you never attended a game at Yankee Stadium during Sheppard's career. --Muboshgu (talk) 19:16, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

And of course he held his work as a PA announcer in high regard. People can do more than one thing in life, and really this is just a game, while his work as a speech professor was more applicable to real life. --Muboshgu (talk) 19:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Many years ago the Cubs had a P.A. guy, Pat Pieper (pronounced Piper), who was as much an institution at Wrigley Field as Sheppard was at Yankee Stadium. These are not just guys reading names; they have a distinctive style that adds to the character of the venue. Sheppard, in particular, was a connection to the "Old Yankees" and the old Stadium. With the old Stadium now in the Heavenly Hall of Fame, it seems that they needed its P.A. announcer. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:03, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

"Attention! Attention please! Have your pencil... and scorecard ready... and I'll give you... the correct lineup for today's ball game... The batt'ries: Warneke... and Harnett... Jenkins... and Hundley..." [or whoever] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Baseball PA announcers are not notable by the standards of this WikiProject's notability guidelines. Despite this, the Baseball WikiProject considers Bob Sheppard to be of mid-importance. There are hundreds of actual major league players, some with over ten years of experience, who are considered low-importance. How does someone who announced names and positions at games rate higher than the men who participated in those games? Kinston eagle (talk) 21:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

From WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." Gee, I think Sheppard has achieved this. And I think he's more important than some players, based on their comparable impact. --Muboshgu (talk) 21:38, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Kinston eagle didn't say that Sheppard doesn't meet the guidelines. He's questioning why a PA announcer, who this project does not consider inherently notable, though this one is because he meets GNG, is rated at a higher importance than many MLB players. I agree with his concern in that I don't see Sheppard's impact on the game as a whole as being as important as players with 10+-year career. — KV5 • Talk • 21:40, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay. I misinterpreted his comment. I'd say that it depends on the player. Those guys who get a cup of coffee and nothing else? Less important. A player with 10+ years and low importance rating? That doesn't sound right. --Muboshgu (talk) 21:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. I'd kind of like to see some corroboration for that statement, if he can provide it. I agree with you on the cup of coffee, FWIW. — KV5 • Talk • 22:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Supposedly, Derek Jeter liked to have a replay of Bob Sheppard's voice announcing his plate appearance, on days when Sheppard was not working. With the Twins, Kirby Puckett was so fond of his standard introduction by Metrodome P.A. announcer Bob Casey that he had him come to his Hall of Fame induction and do his call. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:12, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not supposed. Jeter said he felt weird hearing anyone else, and he arranged it so that a recording of Sheppard announcing him plays every time he comes up to bat, while the new announcer does everyone else. The YES network broadcasters said that in honor of Sheppard, Jeter will come up to that recording at the All-Star game. I didn't know that about Puckett, though. --Muboshgu (talk) 22:26, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if Jeter will continue with it, or if that would be too weird. Here's a writeup about Bob Casey, preceding his visit to Cooperstown. Both Puckett and Casey have since gone to the Heavenly Hall of Fame.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:34, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think he'll stop using the clip. He's said he wants to use it for the rest of his Yankee career, and surely he figured Sheppard wouldn't outlive his days in pinstripes. --Muboshgu (talk) 23:03, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

"I'd kind of like to see some corroboration for that statement, if he can provide it": A few examples of guys with 10+ years of service who are considered Low importance Talk:Dave Magadan, Talk:Paul Bako, Talk:Stan Lopata, Talk:Gabe Kapler, Talk:Bill Pulsipher. There are many more. I switched Rick Ankiel to mid from low earlier today. Some notable non-10 year players that probably should be reassessed are Talk:Bob Addy (the first slider), and all star Talk:Jon Lester. Kinston eagle (talk) 00:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Lester and Lopata are definitely mid-importance, as is Magadan. Bako and Pulsipher were only backup/relief players who didn't play that much, so low-importance is right. The others (Kapler and Addy) I'll defer to another opinion. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 00:26, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I concur with Bako being Low-importance, since I wrote the vast majority of that article. I agree with Wizardman's reassessment's above. Kinston eagle, if you think these articles are wrongly/poorly assessed, there's nothing to stop you from raising or lowering them and leaving comments on the talk as to why. — KV5 • Talk • 00:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the way the players are assessed. I have a problem with someone who isn't even notable by the WikiProject's own standards being graded higher. Even guys who only played a few games did more to directly affect the game on the field than a guy who read names into a microphone regardless of how long he did it or where he did it. Kinston eagle (talk) 01:56, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

So you're telling me that you believe, using the Phillies as an example, Paul Hoover is more important than Harry Kalas? That's just flat-out disrespectful to the team who utilized the man's skills. Keep in mind that our notability "guidelines" are just an essay at this point and are not binding in any respect. The general notability guideline still overrides anything that WP:BASE/N or WP:NSPORT might say. — KV5 • Talk • 02:00, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Strawman! A radio announcer in the Hall of Fame is infinitely more important than a PA announcer. — X96lee15 (talk) 02:08, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Sheppard didn't have an impact on the outcomes of games he announced, but he had a bigger impact in the culture of baseball than even some 10+ year players. --Muboshgu (talk) 02:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Not a straw man; it's the same principle. Assuming Kalas is not in the Hall of Fame (because Frick Award winners are not HOF inductees), sportscasters are also not considered inherently notable under the guidelines of BASE/N or NSPORT. — KV5 • Talk • 02:13, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I was about to ask, what influence does a radio announcer have vs. a public address announcer? The players hear the P.A. guy all the time. They seldom hear the radio or TV guys, at least not "live". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:18, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

That is something legit. A lot of the former players who are current broadcasters of games I tuned into today were talking about it. John Flaherty talked about it. Ron Darling said he stopped warming up to listen to Sheppard say his name in the introductions. --Muboshgu (talk) 02:27, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

"Sheppard didn't have an impact on the outcomes of games he announced, but he had a bigger impact in the culture of baseball than even some 10+ year players." There's nothing about people who have impacted the culture of baseball in the notability guidelines. By establishing the guidelines, the project established who the most important people in baseball were in its eyes. "These people, these people, these people and these people are inherently notable to us." The implication is that people not mentioned (PA announcers, play-by-play guys, batboys, clubhouse guys, etc...) are not as important and not inherently notable. If you disagree, change the guidelines to include such people. Of course, many members would like to have "These people, these people, these people and these people are inherently notable to us, and, of course, everyone remotely connected to the New York Yankees." Kinston eagle (talk) 03:12, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

• Seriously, what is with the arbitrary harshness on this? Bob Uecker is unrated, but would anyone be surprised if he earned mid importance? Staxringold _talk^contribs 03:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

• Agree with Stax, and here's a more realistic challenge. Find me another PA announcer who's microphone is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and maybe we can see changing it to low importance. But yeah, this is a really random thing to be complaining about when push comes to shove. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 03:32, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Bob Uecker actually played the game and was not a PA announcer. Great comparison. Having something "enshrined" in Cooperstown makes you mid importance? The Hall has an enormous collection which includes items from even little league players. Should they be given articles and be made more important than guys who made it to the majors? Kinston eagle (talk) 10:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

• You're welcome. Since the comparison went to your claim that guys who play are always more important than those who just read names. I don't think anyone on Earth can legitimately claim Uecker's notability or fame or importance comes from his playing days. He read names (over the radio/TV, not the PA), did so well and famously, and with a unique style, and he came to be famous for that. Just like Sheppard. Staxringold _talk^contribs 10:58, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

"I don't think anyone on Earth can legitimately claim Uecker's notability or fame or importance comes from his playing days." actually, this wikiproject thinks he is inherently notable due to his playing days and most members of this wikiproject are on Earth. This wikiproject does not consider Sheppard to be inherently notable at all meaning he is less important than Uecker for its purposes. Don't you think it's about time to rethink the notability guidelines. It would also be very useful to have some guidelines concerning importance. What exactly makes one player low and another mid? Kinston eagle (talk) 00:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a link handy I will have to look for it, but there is a wiki wide guideline for what falls into each importance category. That being said I suppose there is still room for debate as to what player/person falls into which category. -DJSasso (talk) 00:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

• WP:ATH is merely a sub-guideline. WP:GNG is, ultimately, the only notability line that matters. And again, notability and importance are two wildly different things. Bob Uecker as a player was a nothing young player who hung around for a few years and was gone. What gave him greatness was a voice that drew attention. And I don't think it's that crazy why the man called the Voice of God who was the announcer for 50 years at one of the (and you can claim Yankee bias or whatever) heavy hitter franchises in MLB history might maybe warrant mid importance. Staxringold _talk^contribs 00:30, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

• WP:ATH and WP:GNG are not what I am addressing. I am talking about the notability guidelines of the baseball wikiproject. Kinston eagle (talk) 00:48, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Kinston eagle makes a valid, if pedantic, point. This is a flaw in the project notability guidelines, in that there are no exceptions carved out for baseball personnel that do not fit any of the categories specifically mentioned, as Mr. Sheppard does not. -Dewelar (talk) 01:20, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The baseball notability page is just an essay anyways, and has no official status since it is trumped by WP:ATH and WP:GNG anyways. These people fall under GNG so there really isn't an issue here. -DJSasso (talk) 10:42, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

For something that is just an essay with no official status, it sure gets used a lot in afd discussions and used successfully. If it really is something that is superfluous, can we just get rid of it? I'd be all for that. Kinston eagle (talk) 10:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be used in afd discussions to be honest. But unfortunately it does get used there. People often lose sight of the fact that its just an essay about what this project feels is notable and that members of this project should confine their article building to topics that meet it. However, its not binding at all on anyone inside or outside the project. -DJSasso (talk) 11:27, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

• The idea of any argument about notability is simply stupid. He satisfies WP:GNG with such absolute flying colors it's not even a question. As for our own WP importance rating I could see a case for either one, but we rather clearly have not set out a strict and binding standard that some like the MilHist project have, so why so much vitriol? It's fighting a battle in a war that doesn't even exist. Staxringold _talk^contribs 02:24, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Obituary reprints – broken links to thedeadballera

I have corrected one two-year-old link to "The Obit for Jimmy Hallinan", which is actually a reprint of two newspaper obituaries for him. The correction was to specify in the URL the directory "Obits/Obits_H/" rather than simply "Obits/".

Simple search returns 550 hits for "thedeadballera" and 446 hits for "thedeadballera.com/Obits". A spot check suggests that wikipedia may need about 446 corrections such as mine. For the first 20 hits as displayed for me now, the filename begins with the lastname of the obituary subject, and the last initial is the only variable part of what's needed in the new URL. So replacement may be automated, or semi-automated with a manual check to follow. --P64 (talk) 21:41, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

C. B. White

I was looking through the Baseball-Reference bullpen, and decided to look up one of the players i've made, C. B. White. Now, the bullpen says that C. B. White was the same player as Bill White (shortstop). Is the bullpen a reliable source? Or should these two Whites just be merged. Link: Bullpen Adam Penale (talk) 21:42, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

BR Bullpen is not a reliable source as determined by the project some time ago. I highly suggest checking out Retrosheet before proceeding with any action. -Dewelar (talk) 22:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Bullepn may not be considered a reliable source, but it's not like the claim was uncited. Official Source from the Society for American Baseball Research. Vodello (talk) 22:43, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like Retrosheet has updated this information, Bill White, and these two pages may need merging: C. B. White and Bill White (shortstop).Neonblak ^talk - 22:45, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I answered the question posed without following through on checking things myself. -Dewelar (talk) 23:03, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree w/Dew and Vod.--Epeefleche (talk) 04:59, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Without any objections, I'll go ahead and clean that up, maybe expand it if I can.Neonblak ^talk - 16:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

1 year, 2,000 article assessment backlog.

Hi all, I'm a new member to Wikiproject Baseball. I noticed that we have over 2,000 unassessed articles. The backlog dates back to June 2009. I noticed this after requests from Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Assessment#Requesting an assessment or reassessment had requests for reassessment that were almost a year old and not addressed. I don't intend to fix this problem all by myself, but I have rated 200 baseball articles today just to get the ball rolling.

My main goal with the project is to expand articles of players from the 1950s and 1960s. (ex. Stan Lopata from 3KB to 33KB just last week) It's 99% likely I won't fix all 2,000+ articles, so I'd greatly appreciate help from any other reviewer rights users with expertise on this subject. Thanks! Vodello (talk) 23:26, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Almost 10000 articles have been classified and assessed as low-importance stubs. Can anyone characterize the unclassified and unassessed simply? For example, are they primarily minor player articles where the 10000 are primarily the short major league careers? The vast majority of both must be player articles, right? --P64 (talk) 15:05, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

There are a good deal of articles in the 2000 who are players who played 2-3 years where the articles are 2 sentences long. Those are easy to assess, and I could probably do a chunk today. Others are more difficult, and I would leave the 2010 season articles alone for now. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:33, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I've been avoiding all 2010 team season articles for now. I thought almost all of the unassessed articles would be stubs as well, but since it's a yearlong backlog, it's more like 60/40 Stub/Start articles with a few C's. Vodello (talk) 16:42, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

We're down to under 2,000 now, so let's see if we can get the rest assessed by month's end, or at least bring it to 1,000 by then. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:44, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Good luck. ;) These categories never remain cleared for long. We went through this at the hockey project a year or two ago and wiped them all out and within a few months the categories were full again. Every so often I try to give a go at them. But its just such boring work no one ever wants to do it. -DJSasso (talk) 16:54, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

600 down, 1700 to go.. :( Vodello (talk) 02:39, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, we're under 1500 now, another couple weeks and we may be done at this rate. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 03:20, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Danny Valencia

I have a feeling I am on the verge of an edit war on Danny Valencia. I wrote the article back when he was a prospect with the Fort Myers Miracle; I don't have any "ownership" issues or anything like that, so please, no such accusations. The article had been edited several times since I first wrote it, and it was turned into an absolute mess. I basically reverted it back to an early edit I did and updated it. The person responsible for these edits reverted it back. I leave Danny Valencia's fate in the hands of the baseball gods.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 16:25, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

From just a quick precursory look (I haven't had my morning coffee yet), I imagine there's probably a middle ground. There is sourcing in what you removed, so assuming at least some of it is worthwhile, it could stay. It seems very long though and probably needs to be tightened up, if anything you removed goes back in. --Muboshgu (talk) 16:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Muboshgu. Some of what Epeefleche has added to the article (and, yes, I know why that particular editor is particularly interested in this page, and will likely fight tooth-and-claw for everything to stay in) is useful, but a good portion of it is unnecessary. I mean, seriously, is information on Valencia's T-ball career notable in any way at all? -Dewelar (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

• Spasm removed RS-supported material. He did so without any coherent explanation. And just left me a note that it was crap, and I should be thankful. I see from his talk page history that he has a history of contentious baseball edits and reactions thereto, so would have thought he would not be so cavalier in massive deletions of RS-supported material. I've had my morning coffee, and reverted him.--Epeefleche (talk) 17:36, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Besides his T-ball "career," there was unnecessary information about his Jewish ancestry and family anecdotes. I didn't really feel like going through it all and seeing how much, if any, of this information was useful. However, I'm not opposed to anything useful being readded.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 17:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

To avoid having to decide if Spasm's POV is one others are required to follow, we look to whether material is covered in RSs. If it is, Spasm's IDONTLIKEIT per my POV is not reason for massive, edit-commmentary-less, deletions. That's precisely why we have a vandal warning geared towards deletion of RS-supported material. If there is any non-RS supported material that Spasm wishes to discuss, I'm eager to hear what it is. Otherwise, I'm happy to follow wiki policy and let the fact that an RS thought it noteworthy sufficient to trump his personal viewpoint.--Epeefleche (talk) 17:42, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Could someone please put Epeefleche over their knee. I'm not interested in fighting with him, or anyone else for that matter. I'm stunned by the "I will block you" thread I just received on my talk page from him. He has the power to do that? Really? Who gave him this power, and if he is so willing to haphazardly use it with little or no provocation, do you think maybe this power should be taken away from him? This is ridiculous.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 17:48, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I hate to get in the middle of it, but I think the use of the vandalism templates is a little overboard. Johnny Spasm isn't an anonymous IP screwing around for the fun of it. Agree or disagree with his edits, he's doing it in good faith. This should be talked out here or on the article's talk page. Can't we all just get along? --Muboshgu (talk) 17:52, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Spasm continues to edit war, deleting the bulk (over 83%) of the article, RS-supported material, in a manner wholly consistent with what wikipedia's guidelines without question construe as vandalism. Note: the guidelines focus on the editor's actions, not on whether he is an anonymous IP (or, as in Spasm's case, a non-IP who was blocked four times this past year). This isn't the string in which to discuss his behavior, however, so I suggest that we leave this aspect of the discussion for other fora. Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:20, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, without getting too specific on the details yet, some of the stuff being removed should remain. I don't know if it's important that he played T-ball, hell I played T-ball. But some of the other early life stuff, like the MLB player who was a family friend and the Babe Ruth League should stay. The rest I haven't gone through yet. --Muboshgu (talk) 18:14, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Epeefleche is acting like a spoiled child. I'm trying to phrase my opinion of his work on Danny Valencia's article as politely as possible. Wanna know what I really think of it? If I wrote it, I would be accused of incivility. The fact of the matter is that uncivil words best describe it.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 18:26, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I took a crack at it (with Dewelar cleaning up some of the mess I left in my wake). Johnny, can you give a reason for why you want to cut so much more than this out? I don't think I've seen a reasoning from you. My apologies if you have and I just didn't see it or don't remember seeing it. --Muboshgu (talk) 18:42, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I think there's probably still too much fluff in there (especially generic prospect-y quotes from various Twins personnel), but it will probably be further weeded in due course. -Dewelar (talk) 18:44, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Epeefleche made a good point on my talk page about reviewers liking human interest info that breaks up the text. I'm more of a "just the facts, ma'am" sort of editor myself, so maybe it should stay? But then again, scouts usually say positive things about players who continue to climb the ranks, so is it so much more useful for this player than others? It's a discussion to have. --Muboshgu (talk) 18:49, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

A little of that is fine, but this article was going a bit overboard. When I think about what "weeding" will take place, I picture one of two things happening: either Valencia will have a long career and such details will be naturally scaled back to reflect their importance to that career, or he will have a short career and people will wonder why so much trivia is needed for an insignificant article. Either way, I'm fine with leaving it as is -- I left the intricate details of his hazing in, didn't I :-D ? -Dewelar (talk) 18:55, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I did my best to reedit it to something that includes a reasonable amount of the nonsense he added.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

• Spasm has continued to gut the article (I believe five or six times today, at this point), without appropriate explanation. Just now -- yet again, reverting a sysop most recently.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Again, I did my best to compromise. As long as Epeefleche wants to discuss my character flaws, I feel this whole debate has raised serious question as to whether or not Epeefleche should have editor powers. It is my opinion that he shouldn't and they should be taken away from him.--Johnny Spasm (talk) 19:30, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

As the sysop mentioned above, I feel that I should point out that anybody - and that means absolutely anybody - can edit here. And the question as to what should remain in the article is not as yet resolved. Personal coments as from one editor to the other are not going to be helpful.--Anthony.bradbury^"talk" 19:39, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

• All of the editors in this string have edited this article today. Yet Spasm is the only one who continue to insist on gutting it, as he did in his most recent revert of Anthony.Bradbury, from a version that all of the rest of us had touched but which only he feels need by mostly deleted. Without any coherent rationale as to why.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:54, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

This seems to shed some light on why a certain editor is interested in keeping quotes in the article. It's hard to get credit for a DYK when your DYK quote has been deleted. "if you know what I mean" Kinston eagle (talk) 19:52, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

You're making this out as if it's some sort of conspiracy. The article is worthy of a DYK, as long as worthy information isn't removed for reasons unknown to the rest of us. --Muboshgu (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

@Kinston. No --- I'm happy to have you receive the credit on the DYK, in my stead. Please feel free to link to DYK page, to receive your credit in lieu of mine. It is additionally disruptive, however, for the DYK page for Spasm to gut the page without adequate rationale during as it is being promoted. Improvements to the article would not in any case of course adversely affect the DYK process. It is only disruptive improper deletions of 83% of the article that will do so. But please -- I mean it -- kindly accept my offer to get credit for the DYK. --Epeefleche (talk) 20:01, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

No thanks. I'm not really into self-aggrandizement. Kinston eagle (talk) 20:07, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

I apologize if my offer to forego the DYK credit, and give it to you, struck you as evidencing that my goal here is self-aggrandizement.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:16, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Johnny has been blocked for 3 months as a result of this. What I'd like to know is, why is there nothing on the article talk page? This is essentially a content dispute, and the first place to discuss content disputes is supposed to be the article talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:27, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Wow, three months. Then again, removing 75-80% of an article over and over again was very disruptive. Blank edit summary to start the mess in the first place. Simply put, no article writer that spends hours expanding an article with reliable sources likes being shit on by someone that takes 2 seconds to chop it up. Removal of early career achievements and reliable sources to back up statements while constantly using baiting edit summaries was unjustified. He's been blocked several times in the past for edit warring, so I support the three month block which is sure to be overturned. Vodello (talk) 23:46, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

As I suspected, Epeefleche has gone into "tooth-and-claw" mode with this article and re-inserted several bits of fluff that were reasonably deleted by other uninvested editors (i.e., not Johnny Spasm) as unencyclopedic. Since I really don't have time to keep fighting with him/her, I have tagged the article as containing fancruft and am moving on. -Dewelar (talk) 04:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I made some edits to improve conciseness and to remove some information I believe is not notable, but the changes were reverted. I would appreciate any comments on these edits – edit 1, edit 2 – to try to achieve a consensus on them; please comment on the talk page. Isaac Lin (talk) 15:20, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It appears to me that there are two editors with ownership issues. Both Spasm and Epeefleche seem equally intolerant of anyone's edits but their own. It seems unbelievable to me that such a ruckus could come from an article about a player with 3 career RBIs. There are plenty of other baseball articles to edit.Orsoni (talk) 07:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

If anyone would like to constructively contribute to discussion at the talk page, please do. Isaac Lin has assembled a nice list at Talk:Danny Valencia#Do you know information... which we are using as a starting point. Wknight94 ^talk 14:17, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Players subproject

I've been thinking of late about this group, and looking through everything, I'm struggling to find the exact purpose of it. Here we have a task force which encompasses a good 80% of our articles, using importance ratings identical in pretty much every case to what the player has for the main project. I'm not trying to attack anything, I'm just thinking that perhaps we should close that group and focus that attention elsewhere. If it was focused on a smaller amount of articles like other task forces are then I would be alright with it, but the sheer number to me defeats the purpose. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:30, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I would have to agree. Personally I look at players to be the main focus of any sport project (since they usually make up the vast majority of articles). If there were going to be task forces it would make more sense for them to be things like for teams or stadiums etc etc. -DJSasso (talk) 15:35, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps another answer might be to refocus the subproject on some particular player-related purpose, like ensuring there are pages for every former MLB player. -Dewelar (talk) 15:43, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Based on the task force page, that is one of the task force's goals (and indeed one of the tasks you have signed up for on this page). The goals seem reasonable, and don't include categorizing each player with a "player"-specific importance, so perhaps the task force can just concentrate on evaluating the importance from an overall baseball perspective. Isaac Lin (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

@Isaacl: Yes, I know (and you can see the work I've done in that regard on my user page). It was just an example. Other examples of possible player-centric projects might be the completion of the MLB player list tables, or ensuring that all existing player pages have infoboxes. However, if the task force gets dissolved, that's fine as well. There is plenty of other work that needs doing. -Dewelar (talk) 17:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The other four tasks have been handled though, which goes back to my point. The creation of the other articles can be a project-wide thing rather than having a task force just for that. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:49, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, not sure why that isn't just a project wide goal. Usually task forces are for a very specific subset of articles. "Players" isn't all that specific since it encompases the majority of articles. -DJSasso (talk) 16:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't actually work directly with the taskforce either, indirectly I do of course due to the reasons stated above. Players are the default, however everything else could fall into their own taskforce, like managers, umpires, executives, etc. I would support just removing the taskforce entirely.Neonblak ^talk - 16:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

At some point this week I'll remove the player tags from the assessments, since that at least has consensus of not being useful. As for the future of it, I still think and player-based tasks would be project-wide tasks anyway. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 02:45, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with suspending/disbanding the players subproject. Everything they do is covered by Wikiproject Baseball, and we need to focus resources on WP:Baseball. Monowi (talk) 03:31, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Pittsburgh Pirates owners

Hello folks, Masonpatriot pointed me over here.

I've been handling correspondence with family of Bill Benswanger about an issue we have with our information on Pittsburg Pirates owners. According to the family, who provided credible background, Benswanger was not the owner of the Pirates from '32-'46. He ran the club and the front of the house, but Dreyfess's widow, Florence, remained the principle owner with Benswanger never having a stake in the club, merely serving as its president.

Now, MLB's website does not verify this and names Benswanger. However, we have evidence that they are wrong, This interview with Benswanger, from January of '47, identifies that he was not the owner but Mrs. Dreyfess was. Additionally, just typing in "Florence Dreyfess" into google will turn up other links identifying her as the owner. Thoughts? Keegan (talk) 20:16, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Eventually Major League Baseball should include a good section on ownership which explains the sense in which MLB requires one personal owner of each club, and thereby how the term "owner" is used regarding the major leagues. Articles on clubs and people would say less and refer to that section.

Research suggestions: Read the constitutional documents (beginning with the contemporary NL constitution re Benswanger and Dreyfuss). Visit the Business of Baseball Committee at sabr.org (select "Research", then BoB) and check whether they have covered this, perhaps in preface to a list of owners.

John Harrington was the Boston "owner" for almost ten years as trustee for JRY, the Yawkey trust. (Example news coverage, Harrington now BoSox only owner (AP) He was personally a small minority owner IIRC but he was the newsworthy "owner" as the person invited to closed-door ownership meetings, empowered to vote, expected to serve on ownership committees, things like that. --P64 (talk) 21:59, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Stan Musial currently at FAC

I recently nominated Stan Musial's article as a Featured Article Candidate, and would welcome any additional comments or suggestions by WP:Baseball members about the article as it undergoes the nomination process. Cheers, Monowi (talk) 21:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:NSPORTS

Just thought those of you involved might like to know the RFC on WP:NSPORTS was officially closed with it being promoted to guideline replacing WP:ATH. WP:NSPORTS includes your essay on baseball notability standards. -DJSasso (talk) 14:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I saw that... I was actually surprised it passed considering how much opposition there was. Spanneraol (talk) 15:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Nationality of Players

Example

Detroit Tigers roster
Active roster				Inactive roster		Coaches/Other
Pitchers Starting rotation 38 Jeremy Bonderman 58 Armando Galarraga 48 Rick Porcello 37 Max Scherzer 35 Justin Verlander Bullpen 49 Eddie Bonine 40 Phil Coke 21 Enrique González 45 Ryan Perry 36 Brad Thomas 34 Robbie Weinhardt Closer(s) 46 José Valverde		Catchers 13 Alex Avila 12 Gerald Laird Infielders 24 Miguel Cabrera  9 Carlos Guillén 39 Ramón Santiago 20 Scott Sizemore 29 Danny Worth Outfielders 26 Brennan Boesch 14 Austin Jackson 32 Don Kelly 30 Magglio Ordóñez 25 Ryan Raburn Designated hitters 18 Johnny Damon		Pitchers -- Billy Buckner 53 Casey Fien 43 Alfredo Fígaro 59 Fu-Te Ni 41 Andrew Oliver 56 Jay Sborz 55 Daniel Schlereth : 50 Jacob Turner Infielders -- Audy Ciriaco 27 Brent Dlugach 15 Brandon Inge † 33 Ryan Strieby Outfielders 60 Wilkin Ramírez 34 Clete Thomas 57 Casper Wells		Manager 10 Jim Leyland Coaches 17 Rafael Belliard (coach) 61 Tom Brookens (first base) 51 Jeff Jones (bullpen) 52 Rick Knapp (pitching) 22 Gene Lamont (third base) 19 Lloyd McClendon (hitting) 7-, 10-, or 15-day injured list # Personal leave Roster and coaches updated July 21, 2010 Transactions • Depth chart → All MLB rosters

NOTE: I have restored the textual representation of the flags of the respective countries. Whether it was part of the proposal or not, such text is required due to issues beyond the scope of the Manual of Style. If you wish the proposal to be considered, you will have to find a way to keep that text in place. -Dewelar (talk) 04:46, 25 July 2010 (UTC) AMENDED: I have removed the textual representation which I previously restored in the spirit of fairness due to the legitimate dispute over the requirements mentioned. All those voting should, however, keep in mind that we may wind up needing such text in the end anyway, but let's keep away from that particular sidetrack for now. -Dewelar (talk) 19:23, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

With the textual representation, it frustrates the purpose of the proposal and makes the page unduly cluttered (which is why it is never included on any other sports pages [people could easily scroll over the icon if they couldn't identify the flag]). I believe that this change would be a detriment to the page. Note that this edit was made by someone who has been in opposition to the proposal, and that it undermines the effort of an otherwise good faith effort to improve the content on Wikipedia. I cannot support such an effort and I cannot support the change under these conditions. If this is your way of killing the proposal, then you count your first victim here. I withdraw my support of the change under these circumstances, as it makes the information on the page so cluttered that its burden outweighs its beneficial impact on the article. If we are forced to have textual representation, than it should be in a less cumbersome fashion such as a legend. Otherwise, it hurts the article. yuristache —Preceding undated comment added 05:07, 25 July 2010 (UTC).

I have no objection to changing how the text is handled. If it's been determined that a legend fulfills the purpose, then by all means present it in such a manner. I just ask that you ensure that such identification is available. Again, if other sports pages do not have such textual identification, then they are committing a more serious violation than simply one of MOS:FLAG. -Dewelar (talk) 05:11, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

As I am not an expert, could you post link to the violation? yuristache (talk) 05:13, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I will do some digging to find exact citations, but I do know that it is a violation of accessibility standards due to the lack of alt text. There may be other issues, but I am about to go to bed, so they will have to wait until tomorrow. -Dewelar (talk) 05:23, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It's a potential issue for users who have difficulty using a mouse; I was not able to make the popup information appear using the keyboard in my browser. Browsers typically also have limitations in allowing users to specify the appearance of the popup info (for example, the page zoom function in my browser doesn't zoom the popup info). Isaac Lin (talk) 05:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

You make a valid point that there may be other violations by other sports including these icons. Therefore, I am awaiting your linked response of the violation so that I may take it to Wikiproject Sports for review. If this is a violation for all other sports pages, then it should be addressed and potentially removed for all other pages. However, if they have found a loophole by which it is not a violation, then I will bring that response back here to settle the matter. My goal has been to maintain consistency and to include beneficial encyclopedic information; if this is a violation for baseball, it is undoubtedly a violation for other sports. If your reasoning is unsound in defeating the practice by other sports, it should also be unsound for defeating the practice for baseball. yuristache (talk) 14:50, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

As I have said previously, I was remembering mostly from previous discussions. The violation of accessibility mentioned above and the issues raised by IsaacL may indeed be the only ones beyond the obvious MOS:FLAG issue. I would not sell the accessibility standards short in regard to their seriousness, as Wikipedia prides itself on being globally accessible. I myself am legally blind, and really can't tell one flag from another on the example template just by looking because of the size of the icons.

When I have some time to take away from my other projects here and IRL, I can try to dig more, but the most recent discussion on the matter of flags on rosters in general appears to be this one. An earlier discussion is here. -Dewelar (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

That was very helpful, as I was unaware that this has been a repetitive topic on this board. Thank you. However, it reaffirms my contention that its all or nothing on this topic, which really means that this is a topic for debate on the WikiProject Sports page. Hopefully, that will provide some sort of clarity on the topic once and for all. yuristache (talk) 14:50, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

This topic has been beaten to death in other forums too. Just take a look at the discussion on the soccer board. I am still of the opinion that if the policy precludes the inclusion of beneficial encyclopedic information, then it isn't a valid policy for that use. Furthermore, I don't think its an appropriate response to say some people cannot access the information so let's not include the information at all; this simply results in no one having access to it, which I would assert is worse than letting the majority have access to it. I know that I am not a decisive opinion on the matter and I do yield to any consensus decision. I just thought I would give my final thoughts before abandoning this effort. The bureaucracy of the process makes fruitful change hard to come by. I, for one, don't have the time to sit by and lobby for it on such a forum. I hope whatever decision is reach is one that is ultimately beneficial to Wikipedia, as it is a wonderful resource. --Yuristache (talk) 22:34, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you're new to this consensus-building thing. This is how Wikipedia has worked for as long as I've been contributing (nearly 4 years now), and presumably for a good deal longer than that. Considering this topic hasn't even been under discussion for 48 hours -- all of it over a weekend -- it cannot be particularly important to you if you're willing to abandon it so quickly. The vast majority of interested editors probably hasn't even become aware that there's a discussion happening yet. -Dewelar (talk) 22:42, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I am stepping back not because of this particular debate, but rather because I read the previous forums and the debates have been ongoing for 6 months plus. I will check back later in time and take a less significant role. --Yuristache (talk) 22:52, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I'd like to add that you should apologize to the community that requires accessibility in order to view Wikipedia. My response to your insulting comment is this: If it's not important enough to include in such a way as to make it accessible to everyone, then its encyclopedic value likely isn't worth the effort to include it. -Dewelar (talk) 22:49, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I am NOT saying that the community requiring accessibility is insignificant or should be ignored in making changes. I am saying that if we cannot make accommodations in every instance, it doesn't mean that content is not relevant. I know that sound clips are often placed on pages without corresponding closed captioning or lyrics or sheet music; that doesn't mean the clip should be pulled. Not every picture diagram placed on Wikipedia has a corresponding textual explanation of the detail of the diagram -- most only indicate what the diagram is representing and not the fullness of its detail. I am not slighting those who need assistance to access the full content of Wikipedia. I am simply stating that it is not unreasonable to craft additional content that benefits those who do not have difficulty accessing it if it is of no detriment to those who cannot access it. I think its shameful that you would implicate that I was doing anything otherwise.--Yuristache (talk) 22:59, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I'm not going to get into a "more-offended-than-thou" competition with you. However, I do think that perhaps you didn't think through the implications of your comment, which are (especially when joined with your other comment regarding you giving up on your proposal) that it's not worth the time to find a way to present context in an accessible manner if the particular manner that's been chosen is inaccessible. Perhaps it's the case that you simply have a tendency to put your virtual foot in your virtual mouth from time to time. It happens to the best of us. If so, I apologize for misreading your intentions. -Dewelar (talk) 23:12, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Willing to call truce and move past this. As I said, I am less experienced at this and am willing to watch and see how it plays out. Never looking for a personal grudge and I'm not looking to win an argument; just looking to improve content. I'll check in from time to time, but I think that dialing back my involvement is a good idea at the moment.--Yuristache (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I know you didn't realize you were stepping into a hornet's nest with this, and I can sympathize with that. I, too, am interested to see what happens if and when WP:SPORTS takes this up. -Dewelar (talk) 23:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

In this particular instance, there is no issue with being able to display nationality in a way that is accessible to a greater population; the stumbling block is finding an esthetically pleasing layout. All of this however presumes that the guideline on avoiding nationalistic pride should not be followed. As you may have seen in the soccer discussion, there are specific reasons why nationality is deemed important by that community, which do not apply to MLB. Isaac Lin (talk) 23:07, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Which brings the entire discussion full circle. At this point, I think we all understand all the parts at play in making this decision. And I think it is pretty clear that the consensus at this time is to maintain a status quo and to watch as the issue develops in other forums (such as other sports and on the MOS page). --Yuristache (talk) 23:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It is always a delicate balance of including new information, making it visually aesthetic, and making it generally accessible -- and each person has there opinion on how that balance is necessarily done. For instance, there could be the insertion of an entire section in an article whenever a diagram is used, as to detail in text what is being depicted. This is not the modus operandi because somewhere a balance was struck between usefulness, aesthetics and accessibility. Just don't want anyone to insinuate that I am being a closed-minded editor. --Yuristache (talk) 23:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

See item number 4 in Wikipedia:ACCESS#Text. WCAG 2.0 has a section discussing using the title attribute for links. Isaac Lin (talk) 22:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

(Fixed, because Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion)

All baseball team-season pages should include flag icons for all entries in their respective roster infoboxes.

Support for consistency across all international sports pages and for general inclusion of beneficial encyclopedic content -yuristache

Oppose per MOS:FLAG among other reasons -Dewelar (talk) 02:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Support Per Kingjeff (talk) 02:37, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per MOS:FLAG and the many arguments below. Spanneraol (talk) 03:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per MOS:FLAG. It's pretty straightforward I think. — X96lee15 (talk) 03:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per MOS:FLAG and other reasons discussed below. BRMo (talk) 13:32, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose, though my rationale is different. Many of the earlier seasons are almost exclusively American players, probably up until 1950 or so, as a result putting it on every page doesn't seem to make sense. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:22, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose, I don't think it is necessary since a baseball player's nationality is almost never relevant to his baseball career, and the flags just slow down page loads. Rlendog (talk) 16:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Support due to the increase of international players in MLB. It would be consistent with many other sports: soccer (international and MLS), NBA, racing (IndyCar), tennis (ATP tour) - all currently uses nationality flags. Miles Blues (talk · contribs) 22:51, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Given the fact that baseball is becoming an increasingly more international sport (i.e., more non-U.S. leagues in existence, more non-U.S. players in the MLB), the roster formatting on Wikipedia should probably be updated to reflect that. If you look at the formatting for other international sports (such as soccer), the player nationalities are indicated using flag icons. I think this would be a beneficial update to each of the major league rosters in the MLB, it would not be too difficult to implement and it would not clutter the information on the page. However, before such change a change is implemented, I thought it would be healthy to achieve at least some form of consensus. yuristache (talk) 01:10, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

It's a good idea. There are several countries just within the same region as the United States that play baseball. The only issue is which country to place next to the player. Kingjeff (talk) 06:00, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

That is a rather uncommon issue. Most players have one nationality, which was typically the country in which they were born. Difficult scenarios arise with players like Alex Rodriguez, who was born in the United States but claims Dominican ancestry, or Manny Ramirez, who was born in the Dominican Republic but was raised his entire life in the United States. However, these exceptions should not swallow the project. yuristache (talk) 02:05, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

As baseball becomes more international, it will become more of an issue. The choices are either country of birth or go with what the International Baseball Federation. Kingjeff (talk) 06:11, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed before several times. The decision has been repeatedly that the flags dont belong on our roster pages. The MLB teams arent playing in international competition. Spanneraol (talk) 14:34, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

This came to my attention at List of members of the Baseball Hall of Fame‎. I could see some usefulness to adding flags to that page, though I'm currently leaning against it. I am completely opposed to adding flags to MLB roster pages and templates per Spanneraol. --Muboshgu (talk) 15:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with both Spanneraol and Muboshgu. Use of flags in such a manner would be a clear violation of the Sportspersons subsection of MOS:FLAG. -Dewelar (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Spanneraol, Muboshgu and Dewelar. Nationality is best left to the text of the player's article, where special situations, such as a player born in one country but a citizen of another, can be explained. Flag icons should be limited to articles on international competitions. BRMo (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I don't think there is a violation. Several football clubs use flags. Just look at Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Werder Bremen, Celtic F.C. Rangers F.C. and Schalke as examples. Secondly, if this is brought up several times before, doesn't this mean that there is some merit behind the idea? Spanneraol, it's the International rosters that wouldn't need flags. They would already be listed by the country they are representing. Kingjeff (talk) 16:52, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

If I recall correctly from the last time this came up, it's a violation because MLB does not recognize the IBF as an international governing body. Also, because MLB is the highest level of the sport, all the players would de facto have to use flags of either the US or Canada, because that would be their "representative nationality". -Dewelar (talk) 17:16, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't that be tantamount to saying that every player on Manchester United is de facto English because the Premiership is the highest level of the sport? I don't think that logic is dispositive at all. Like soccer, haven't there been international competitions in baseball? The World Baseball Classic has occurred in 2006 and 2009, with MLB players having representative nationalities other than the US or Canada. Also, baseball was an Olympic sport for 16 years. And MLB teams have played countless exhibitions in Japan, Cuba, etc., against non-U.S. teams (much like a soccer friendly) and also have played regular season games outside the United States/Canada. I will admit that I am not an expert on formatting etiquette on Wikipedia, as most of my edits are substantive, but it seems to me that formatting for baseball shouldn't be behind the times of other sports with diverse rosters. yuristache (talk) 14:00, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

Again, recalling previous discussions...

There is a significant difference in status between the WBC and the soccer World Cup. Nearly every fan of soccer accepts (or at least it is my impression that they do) that the World Cup is the signature event of the soccer universe. To most fans of MLB, it is the World Series that holds that position rather than the WBC. Therefore that particular comparison is inapt. For better or worse, international competition is considered below MLB (and probably even below the Japan Series) -- if anything, the WBC ranks as an afterthought to most baseball fans.

Also, there is a difference in that the Premiership is viewed (outside the UK, at any rate) pretty much only as the equal to the championships of other soccer-playing nations, serving only as a qualifier to the UEFA Championship. The same is not true of the World Series, which is considered a step (or more) above the Japan Series and other national championships. -Dewelar (talk) 19:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

(ETA) Also, note that Olympic baseball was played almost exclusively by amateurs or low-level professionals (which is part of what led to its removal as an Olympic sport) because it interfered with the MLB season. That should serve as sufficient proof of which is primary. -Dewelar (talk) 19:05, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they belong on ANY sports related list/template unless the player actually represents that country in that competition. It looks ridiculous over at basketball related award lists showing just player names and their nationality.... what does that have to do with the award? And nobody seems to agree over there whether the nationality should represent country of birth or country the player represents in international play..... of course many players don't represent a country in international play, making the flags even more useless.... Blahblah32blahblah (talk) 17:36, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Let's not be distracted from the key issue, which is the MOS guidelines themselves, and how they relate to the Baseball Project and the use of flag icons. Whether or not the soccer pages are in violation of the guidelines, their use of flags is not relevant here. For those who support using the flag icons, you need to address the relevant MOS guidelines, and show how your proposals don't violte them. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but what's important here is how the project views the guidelines, and how we implement them. - BilCat (talk) 19:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

BilCat, I disagree about soccer club articles not being relevant. In a bigger scope, soccer club articles and baseball club articles are the same thing. The only difference is the sports. Both soccer club and baseball club articles will show a history section, a template about te club, aroster section and so on. If it is a violation for baseball club articles then it would be a violation for soccer club articles and a violation for any other sports club article. Kingjeff (talk) 19:52, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• That's ny point: The soccer pages do appear to be in violation of the MOS, but since these are guidelines, not policies, local consensus, at either the project or page level, can override guideliens. But this is the baseball project, and if the consensus is, as it has been, to follow the guidelienes, than that is the standard. There are those editors who don't think local consensus can override global guidelins, in which case the soccer club article are in violation of the guidelines. I don't edit those pages, so making an issue out if it is not really something I'm interested in. But that is no reason not to follow the guidelines here, and so far that is the consensus here. - BilCat (talk) 20:11, 24 July 2010 (UTC) As Blahblah points out below. - BilCat (talk) 20:25, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

What about basketball or ice hockey as comparisons? The international competitions in those sports are better established than the World Baseball Classic, admittedly, but are still secondary to the NBA and NHL. And we do list nationalities on NBA and NHL team pages. I don't see why baseball is so overwhelmingly different from these. At any rate, I think it's a useful piece of information that can be imparted very concisely. The only issue would be the question of how you determine nationality, which is indeed a serious problem. I think you'd have to go with the team represented in international competition when applicable, and if not, the country of birth. That being said, that still leaves problems with, say, A Rod, who played for the USA in the 2006 WBC, but then was going to play for the DR in the 2009 one. john k (talk) 19:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

john k, maybe country of birth might be the better option. Kingjeff (talk) 20:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

But that would be a clear violation of MOS:FLAG - flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or representative nationality. Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that the flags represent representative nationality, not legal nationality, if any confusion might arise. Also, Flags should generally illustrate the highest level the sportsperson is associated with. For example, if a sportsperson has represented a nation or has declared for a nation, then the national flag as determined by the sport governing body should be used (these can differ from countries' political national flags). If a sportsperson has not competed at the international level, then the eligibility rules of the international sport governing body (such as IRB, FIFA, IAAF, etc.) should be used. If these rules allow a player to represent two or more nations, then a reliable source should be used to show who the sportsperson has chosen to represent.

Also, from earlier in the section: Accompany flags with country names - The name of a flag's country (or province, etc.) should appear adjacent to the first use of the flag icon, as not all readers are familiar with all flags. Nearby uses of the flag need not repeat the name, although first appearances in different sections, tables or lists in a long article may warrant a repetition of the name, especially if the occurrences are likely to be independently reached by in-article links rather than read sequentially. Use of flag templates without country names is also an accessibility issue, as it can render information difficult for color blind readers to understand. In addition, flags can be hard to distinguish when reduced to icon size. That isn't happening in the roster templates, and clearly wouldn't. Blahblah32blahblah (talk) 20:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Is that an actual rule or is it a guideline? If it is a rule, where is it listed? Who are you to say this isn't happening? Last time I checked, consensus requires a collective decision. And again, this topic has been brought up numerous times. It obviously an issue if it's ben brought up numerous times. Kingjeff (talk) 20:45, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Huh?? It doesn't matter to consesnus how many times an issue is brought up if the consensus doens't support the issue. Consensus is not unanimous, so it follows that people can still disagree with it, thus it remins an issue. - BilCat (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Is this what you are going to say the next time this is brought up? Every time that this topic is brought up, adding flags to the rosters becomes more valid. Kingjeff (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• It only means it's still an issue, but as long as the consunsus is against adding flags in baseball articles as suggested, they aren't going to be added. - BilCat (talk) 21:51, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. All it means is that there continues to be a small subset of the group that disagree. It could even mean that the same people are bringing it up over and over again in the hope that they're the squeaky wheel that will get greased. Obviously, the people in favor of the status quo aren't going to be talking about it, right?

In any case, if you want to see if consensus has changed, we can do that. So far, of those who've chimed in on the discussion, there are two in favor of adding flags (three if we count john k) and six against. Anyone else care to contribute? -Dewelar (talk) 21:28, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I believe that country of birth would not be in direct violation. The guidelines prohibit using the flag in an inappropriate manner, such as in an info box on the player's personal page when simply to indicate place of birth (like the Bruce Willis example); not in a list format (as is seen on other team pages). While it is true that not every MLB player is involved in international competition, it is also true that not every player in the Premiership or the NBA or the NHL is a participant in international competition; nonetheless, we indicate their nationality because it conveys (in a simplistic manner) a noteworthy piece of encyclopedic information about the team, its roster and the sport at large (namely, that it involves players from diverse nationalistic backgrounds and in what capacity they are represented in the sport at large).

In response to the squeaky wheel comment, this is the first time I have made this an issue. If people have raised it before me, that I was unaware. If they are individuals separate and distinct from those raising the argument here, then their votes should be counted, as it is presumed their intent has not changed. In fact, it may be the majority of those who closely monitor this board that are consistently voting it down despite a majority from those that don't check the Wikiproject regularly. This is a counterargument that is equally plausible, even if not necessarily a statement of absolute accuracy.

As it stands, I am still firmly of the opinion that it imparts a piece of noteworthy encyclopedic information to include on the page, and this format (tried and true for other sports) does not unduly clutter the page in doing so. It also maintains uniformity across sports, which is a benefit, especially on a website that maintains uniform formatting across other pages with comparable content. yuristache (talk) 18:51, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

I'll see about responding to those who commented below at a later time, unless someone beats me to it...

1) Birth country directly violates the first section of the sportspeople subsection, namely: "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense."

2) I am not going to argue your "diversity" point, as that would be self-defeating. However, note the implication of the argument, given that it could apply to any endeavor, which limits its usefulness as an argument.

3) Regarding your consensus counter-argument, I do not disagree with you. Rather, I was simply responding to Kingjeff's claim that the fact of it being brought up repeatedly in and of itself gives it more weight. Your counter-argument does nothing to refute what I said, it simply supports the potential for seeing if consensus has changed.

4) I am generally in favor of consistency, and so am sympathetic to your argument regarding uniformity among all sports. However, I also believe that, of all sports, the baseball pages are the only ones following MOS:FLAG, and quite frankly the fact that we're drawing heat for doing so seems to fall more under WP:IDONTLIKEIT than anything else. -Dewelar (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I'm for having the flags shown, and I'm going to try to argue the points made against. User:Spanneraol said MLB teams aren't in international competition... It might be a technicality, but aren't the Blue Jays in a different country to the other 29 teams? User:Dewelar said it would be a "clear violation" of the sports people section of WP:MOSFLAG#Use of flags for sportspeople... I honestly don't see how, as it only discourages their use in personal infoboxes, and talks about the flag being for sporting nationality rather than legal. (And as far as I'm aware, no country has a special baseball-style national flag.) The only issue I can see from this section is the one-off cases like Alex Rodriguez where dual representation is possible, but that's something that can be worked out and even have a specific guideline to handle those cases while (hopefully) avoiding big arguments.

Which leads me to User:BRMo's comment about those situations. The rosters all have - or should have - player's names wiki-linked to their articles. If a reader comes to Alex Rodriguez in a roster and wonders "Why does he have the DOM/USA flag next to his name? Shouldn't he have the USA/DOM flag?" then the link to find out about the situation is right there, because the player's article should have that sort of info somewhere. And if they don't wonder about that, I think it would be reasonable to assume that they wouldn't have noticed any difference between the two (or potentially more for other players) possible flags.

I've run out of time before I have to go, but Dewelar said a couple other things here I wanted to address. I'm not sure how true "MLB doesn't recognise IBAF" is, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to this discussion either. The IBAF is the international governing body of baseball, and MLB is a baseball competition, and both MLB and IBAF were involved/sanctioned/approved of the World Baseball Classic.

I'd have a tough time arguing that MLB doesn't showcase the highest standard of baseball played in the world on average, but I don't think that it's the highest level of the sport, at least not as viewed everywhere around the world. The impression I get - and though I'm fully prepared to be proven wrong on this, and I don't think I will be - is that except in the US, the World Baseball Classic is seen as the top level. I won't pretend about the World Cup or the Olympics as it was held previously, though if it ever is reintroduced some of the changes to the process might bring it more into line with the WBC. There's a similar thing in Rugby League, in that the State of Origin in Australia (roughly equivalent to the All Star Game in MLB), contested between two states, is generally considered a higher standard of play than of international play. But international selection is the highest level of representation, as is the case with baseball. Until alien, baseball-playing life is discovered (or more likely we colonise other moons and planets) and we come up with an Earth flag, events like the WBC, and various international junior tournaments are the top level of representation in baseball.

The last part is that using the flags based on the MLB teams, so USA for all except players for the Blue Jays who'd get CAN, doesn't fit the guideline. It talks about representative nationality. If a player is selected from the minor leagues to move up to the big league ball club (or is signed directly to the majors from say the Japanese, Korean, or leagues from elsewhere round the world) they aren't ever considered to be "representing" that last team they played for.

I think the flags should be used.  Afaber012  (talk)  23:11, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion continued

(Two edit cnflicts later) I'll weigh in on this. I am in favor of including flags.

Firstly, because, while competitions featuring national teams aren't as important as in basketball, hockey and (especially) soccer, baseball does have them, and what national team a player has played for or is eligible to play for is an important piece of information that can easily be represented. Where there's potential conflict, such as A-Rod, we can figure it out on a case-by-case discussion.

Secondly, I find the arguement that such competitions are secondary to MLB unpersuasive. Because it is an apples-and-oranges comparison when dealing with national teams and domestic league clubs, and the WBC has been co-organized with the IBF. And because the same is true of most international competitions and the NBA and NHL, for which team pages include flags.

Which brings me to my third point. I do not believe the sportsperson portion of MOSFLAG is valid. I know what it says, but if just about every article (such as basketball, hockey and soccer) to which it should apply ignores it, it's pretty obvious it does not have a community-wide consensus.

In short, the guideline sits on a subpage of the MOS, where it likely has few eyes on it (and even fewer hands writing it). Meanwhile, these sports articles have many more editors watching them. To me, the actual practice on these thousands of articles far outweighs what might be said on an obscure subpage. It is not the sports articles that need to change to reflect the guideline, it's MOSFLAG that needs to change to reflect the reality of what editors really do. oknazevad (talk) 23:43, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps what you really should be doing, then, is propose a clarification (or removal) of the offending MOS:FLAG section in question, and see what the feeling is more globally. That would probably be more productive than simply arguing about it here. -Dewelar (talk) 00:08, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If the majority of sports pages don't follow the guideline, then it does need to be changed, or at least addressed/qualified, on the relevant MOS talk page. ZDo that, get it changed, then come back here and discuss what to do then. For now, the consensus here is still for following the MOS as it is currently written. - BilCat (talk) 00:09, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it's really two seperate but related discussions. The first is whether the guideline truly reflects broad consensus, the second whether this project should adhere closely to that guideline or engage in a project-wide case of WP:IAR. Still, I left a note linking to this discussion at WT:MOSICON.oknazevad (talk) 01:51, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

It appears that it's getting closer to an even split on this whole issue. Creating a procedural obstacle course is just a means of avoiding the issue at hand, and it is becoming more and more apparent through the discussion on this board that the status quo is clinging to either: 1) it violates the MOS policy, of which there is evidence to the contrary in other sports (and which might not be entirely true in the first place, since MOS rationale is to avoid use in infoboxes and overuse such in a body of text), or 2) that baseball is just special from all other sports (for various reasons) and that's why we treat it differently, which is kinda like WP:IDONTLIKEIT.

I think its a valid point that the MOS policy is infrequently revised and that it has not been adjusted to reflect this specific purpose. I also think its unnecessary to engage in a second bout of verbal warfare to change the policy in MOS just to come back and seek consensus on this board when we can simply seek consensus now. The MOS is a set of guidelines which are helpful when seeking general edits; with consensus, I think we can override a set of guidelines which have not been crafted for this specific usage (and which have been overridden by numerous other pages with substantially similar content), as per WP:IAR. yuristache (talk) 21:44, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

I have no objection to continuing to seek consensus here while still pursuing changes at WP:MOSICON. I'd like to see more of the people who are active within WP:BASEBALL weigh in with their opinions as well. There's no need to forum-shop on the issue. The reason I suggested it is that if MOS:FLAG does get changed, it will render a lot of the arguing here is moot, and thus it's kind of redundant to discuss things twice. We can certainly override the guidelines if that's what consensus determines we should do, but we're far from making a determination one way or the other on that count.

Part of my problem is that you and Kingjeff came in here aggressively and essentially tried to railroad us into accepting your point of view. You obviously discount any and all arguments against you, as demonstrated by your post immediately above. Wikipedia is not about winning, it's about building consensus. That's what we're trying to do, and your insistence that things must be your way just because other projects do it that way and you think it's wrong is counter-productive. -Dewelar (talk) 02:14, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a substantive element and a procedural element to this. The "go away and come back when this is different" statement by BilCat only addressed the procedural element. Procedurally, I can see proceeding with the change if the policy is changed and it is adopted in MOS as the standard formatting. However, substantively, the MOS are guidelines and not absolutely binding, and if consensus finds against MOS, then we can also proceed with the change. We didn't come in here intending to "railroad" anyone; just trying to improve the content through the appropriate channels by which the content is routinely improved. yuristache (talk) 22:25, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

This is what I have been saying all along (well, except the railroading bit, of course). I think some of the folks here are simply tired of rehashing this every 6-12 months, with the same result every time -- things stay the same because either consensus is to remain as it is or there is no consensus for change, which amounts to the same result. Perhaps you are right and the consensus will be to make the change, but if it is not you need to abide by it just as I will abide if consensus supports adding flags. -Dewelar (talk) 02:35, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Doing this to improve content; not to win a contest. yuristache (talk) 21:44, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

I prefer to not include flags, in accordance with the sentence at the start of MOS:FLAG stating that Wikipedia is not a place for nationalistic pride. In addition, MOS:FLAG states that the use of a flag should be accompanied with the country's name for accessibility, and this would make roster lists less compact. Isaac Lin (talk) 02:00, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

100% agree with the "text accompanying flag" point. IMO, the rosters would look even more ridiculous than they do with the flags next to the names. — X96lee15 (talk) 04:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

You don't need the text accompanying the flag; simply roll your mouse over the flag. The proposal has not been to quasi-comply with MOS in some ways and not in others. It has been to update the baseball rosters to be consistent with that of other international sports. The other sports pages have made the conscious decision to include such information in a clear and concise manner without cluttering the page. I agree that the text would clutter the page; however, it is not part of the proposal. yuristache (talk) 00:47, July 25, 2010 (UTC)

Current best practices for accessibility don't rely on hovering over a symbol to gain information (some users may have difficulty with hovering). Isaac Lin (talk) 05:28, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

As to organize a consensus opinion, I am adding a vote section (not for discussion; simply for tallying) below the "Example" header. We can see how it develops and proceed from there. yuristache (talk) 21:44, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

I don't apreciate my suggestions being discribed as "go away . . ." As noted above, it's better to focus your efforts on getting the guidelines changed or clarified first. You don't seem inclined to do that, and that's why some have expressed the sentiment that they feel they are being "railroaded" into accepting something they don't want. ANyway, I'm moving on - I'm tired of having my comments miscontrued to say what I didn't mean - I've have enough of that already today. - BilCat (talk) 02:43, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Wasn't trying to misconstrue. If I did, I apologize. To give context, I was referring to "Do that, get it changed, then come back here and discuss what to do then." I had flippantly summarized as "go away and come back when its different." Didn't mean to misconstrue, but it was sarcastic -- I apologize. yuristache (talk) 21:44, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

Apology acepted, and I apologize for my hair-trigger repsonse. It's probably best I stay out of this one for the duration. - BilCat (talk) 06:12, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per WP:MOSFLAG, specifically "Do not emphasize nationality without good reason", "Do not use flags to indicate locations of birth and death" (which I read above was a way to disambiguate citizenship) and "Accompany flags with country names". There is absolutely no reason to include the flags since MLB players are not representing their countries, they are representing their teams. — X96lee15 (talk) 04:00, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with X96lee15. I don't think it is necessary since a baseball player's nationality is almost never relevant to his baseball career. Soccer is a little different, since players play for their countries in major competitions. Even hockey has major international competitions that could argue for including flags. International baseball doesn't have nearly the same relevance. And even though I think soocer and hockey have a valid argument for including flags, I think the opposing argument is stronger even for those sports - it adds clutter and loading time, which in my opinion more than offsets any benefits. Rlendog (talk) 16:07, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Someone above mentioned that hockey puts nationality on player pages. That isn't quite true, we stopped doing it quite awhile ago. What we do now is only place the flags for people who have actually played on national teams and the parameter is called National team and not Nationality. Maybe its nitpicking but thought I would mention it since I noticed hockey being used as an example. (doesn't apply to team rosters though) -DJSasso (talk) 22:41, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Evidently that National team parameter is for player infoboxes. The Detroit Red Wings#Current_roster seems to display a Nativity flag at left of each player name but also to name the birthplace in the far right column. If the flag does show nativity then it is redundant; alternative text is provided. Right? --P64 (talk) 01:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes and no, it gives quick visual clues in the same way that highlighting rows in columns etc do. The use of the flag necessitates the use of the birthplace for those users who cannot use the visual clues. No different than how we require non-colour based legends on lists where colour is used to denote something. We use both colour and *'s next to the name for example. -DJSasso (talk) 01:35, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

That is the flipside to the whole alternative text argument. If there is alternative text, then the flag has no real value -- just additional clutter.--Yuristache (talk) 01:13, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The flags may be garish but some people like that, and they are easy to scan, conveniently located. Relegation of the birthplaces to the far right in a "one player, one row" format is not clutter as birthplaces would be in the Detroit Tigers roster above. --P64 (talk) 01:33, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. But the accessibility requirements and MOS:FLAG requirements are for both. So you would need the accompanying text in addition to the flags. The flags are easy to scan which is why they have been implemented on the other sports pages. However, those pages are likely in violation of the Wikipedia rules. But by implementing both the flags and text, it becomes redundant in our format, which makes the whole issue circular. Its a mess at the moment; I pray that some sense will be made of it on the WikiProject Sports discussion page. --Yuristache (talk) 02:41, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Readers who scan was challenged by me and no one could add a supporting reference. As such it's no long part of the MOS Gnevin (talk) 18:06, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed completely. I wish this article was the MOS itself.--Yuristache (talk) 23:59, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

To be honest looking at that talk page section, I had no idea what you were asking which is probably why you got no comments. -DJSasso (talk) 00:11, 28 July 2010 (UTC)