The standing, IMO, is proper sourcing. Wiki editors deciding what is and isn't official will never be agreed upon. The key is to be bold, and use proper sourced available information. Forced fumbles, tackles, PD are all relevent stats, since they have been kept for 40 years or more. [1] and there is sourcing, like ESPN Stats and Information, STATS, LLC, NFL GSIS, Elias Sports Bureau who track these stats. [2], [3]74.211.64.54 (talk) 22:46, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
1. Which, if any, unofficial stats to list in the article in the:
Wiki requires sourcing. The ESPN stats begin after Seau's career began. If you contact the San Diego Chargers or get a copy of any San Diego Charger Media Guide from 1993-2003 or so, they have Seau's stats in total. I have reworked the table to make it thinner, and read the missing years. It is more confusing for a casual reader if there are missing years. There is no definition of what an "official" stat is. Elias Sports Bureau is one source, as is NFLGSIS, and STATS, LLC, is yet another source and the individual teams and their media guides are all good sources, as is ESPN Sports and Information. The stats are souced, via San Diego Chargers media guides74.211.64.54 (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. With an eye towards WP:NOTSTATS, I'd suggest having fewer stats, with less prominent ones like FF and PD, which conflict based on chosen source, being omitted. Understand I am not saying all unofficial stats should be removed. For example, sacks were not official until 1982, but they are frequently mentioned, and should stay.—Bagumba (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I would think FF and PD are popular enough to be used. File:Seau-1.jpgSeau stats[4][5][6][7]. If they are used by teams (Chaerger media guide) and ESPN, Elias, STATS, LLC. and are frequently mentioned in articles about players, who are we discriminate based on what we think is or is not popular? 74.211.64.54 (talk) 23:04, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure we don't want to include every stat that has been generated. Ultimately, consensus determines what is notable to mention. I've stated my main points about these stats being unofficial, conflicting, and not as often mentioned outside of stats sites. Some unofficial stats, like tackles and sacks, are oft-mentioned in prose and should stay. I'll wait for others' opinions at this point. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 23:31, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
I am pretty sure we are not including every stat that has been generated. No one is talking third down conversions or defensive passer rating or Goaline stops, or tackle made on third down. For this to be WP:CIVIL try and avoid hyperbole. You main point was, and I quote "FF and PD not that popular. The standard for Wiki is not unoffical, the standard is if it is sourced. And I know what "waiting for other's opinions is". For this to be civil, you have to at least admit that the standard for information is sourcing. And bold is not taking matters into your own hands, it's being daring. I've already compromised with you, the stats you don't like are not in the infobox, they are in a table in the article, which is how. But I suspect you will go out and get a few of your wiki buddies like DL or TtT or others to create a consensus of a few people, then you will revert what you, yourself has chosen. If you desire to have a good article, then you should reconsider your own position. You've formed an opinion about NFL stats for which you (or I) are qualified to make. You are not a statistician, and are making WP:Arbitray because you offer no evidence to make your point (that I have seen anyway). I've posted links that you can go to that refute your opinion. Those sources are mainstream. Please, don'tand as wiki says, "This does require some amount of politeness, but it works. You'll see. Of course, others here will edit what you write. Do not take it personally! They, like all of us, just wish to make Wikipedia as good an encyclopedia as it can possibly be". I am doing just that. A few days before Seau got in I saw his page was lacking. The chart, by the way, was already there, I just used a proper source to fill in the missing years, it wasn't "conflicting" it was incomplete. File:Seau-1.jpgSeau stats Completes it
So, let's work together and not go recruit friends to come here and enforce how you want it done. Fairness requires some honesty. Now, if you can give me some sources that the Chargers stats information is not accurate, then let's talk. So far, I see your personal opinion, which you are entitled to, but my views are backed up by my links so my view is based on the views of others websites and stats sites that think those stats are important enough to post on their pages, mainstram, like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, STATS, LLC, etc.
And as far as not much used outside of stats sites, consider this: [8] just google forced fumbles and see how often it is used on high school, college, and NFL levels, and you can do the same with PD 74.211.64.54 (talk) 23:53, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
Given that they are unofficial, it's not surprising the disparity between each source. I'm not sure how it was determined which values to use on Wikipedia, but the end result in this case resulted in the largest value for each of those stats.—Bagumba (talk) 00:43, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
And the so-called "disparity" is a result of what? Missing seasons. NFL.com begins at one point (and it is not used to source the table by the way)and ESPN begins earlier. The Chargers begins when Seau's career begins. And the Source is the 2002 San Diego Chargers media Guide, page 128. That fills in the missing. So, the totals you cite are not conflicted when you consider the circomstance. If you desire, I will remove the ESPN reference and use only the Chargers media guide 1990-93 or so and ESPN for the rest. NFL.com.
Now, you seem like a smart guy, do you really think Seau had no tackles before NFL.com began posting stats? Really?
So, to be clear, the values used on Wikipedia are from the 2002 San Diego Chargers Media Guide for 1990-93 and ESPN.com for the remainder. If you don't like that I can cite the 2009 New England Patriots Media Guide for the years post-San Diego. So, not you can be sure where the data came from. And here is screenshot for you. Please, when you get a chance look at it.
Now you're just grasping at straws and wikilawyering. The data is properly sourced. And you cannot get around that. You started at one position and said, and I quote, "PD and FF are not that popular". Then, you moved your argument to another area, now yet another. The truth is this, you are taking this personally, and you are doing whatever it takes to try and force your will onto the article. I suggest a cool down period of a month, then revisit it. You have not yet addressed the FACT that the data is properly sourced and it is NOT original research. You misrepresented bold and WP:NOTSTATS and now original research to right the great wrong.Please use those things as they are written, not as you selectively interpret them.
Again, let's cool off. Let's work together. Don't keeping pulling stuff from a hat like a wiki lawyer . . . just look at the facts, and the facts are that the infobox has none of the stats you hate in it. The table is proper in terms of WP:NOTSTATS and bold.
So, until you can show that the data is not properly sourced, it, by wiki rules is allowable and should stay. That is until you get a DL ot TtT or others to impose your Admin power on good faith people who want to make Wiki a better place. Please Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Back off and Do not take the reverts I made of your stuff personally, it's not about you or me.74.211.64.54 (talk) 02:31, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
With the of participation so far, there is no consensus for the edits to add FF or PD. Per WP:NOCONSENSUS, "a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit."—Bagumba (talk) 19:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm sorry that I'm late to the discussion, but I think it is way, way past time that WP:NFL and WP:CFB settle on standard forms of statistical tables for passers, kickers, offensive skill positions, linemen, and linebackers/defensive backs. The stats tables should be compact, the column headers should be no more than two-character abbreviations (perhaps with a mouseover effect), and the design and formatting should be uniform for all American college and pro players. I have seen no fewer than 8 or 10 different stats table designs in NFL player articles in the last year. It's time to find the creators of these tables, ask for input for a common WP:CFB/WP:NFL design, and start the discussion before we eventually move on to an RfC and !vote. Has anyone seen particularly good examples you would like to cut and past below for discussion? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
Navbox inside another navbox
What is the motivation for including the bottom navbox in Template:2014 NFL Draft, which allows navigation to other draft navboxes, not articles? If it is for maintenance purposes only for editors, I propose to use <includeonly>, so that it is only visible on the template page, not in articles.—Bagumba (talk) 07:09, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
I have never thought that navbox-to-navbox linking was appropriate. Navboxes are supposed to link to a well-defined set of closely related articles, not a daisy chain of linked navboxes. The fact that it takes 78 or 79 linked navboxes to accomplish this (ambiguously abbreviated to two-numeral abbreviations) should indicate that we have done something quite odd here. In my opinion, this is a link too far. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:34, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
I've seen these before (and even maintained some of them) and it never really struck me until now just how odd this practice is. I agree that linking from one template to another is strange and this practice should be avoided. I was trying to figure out what article one would link instead, but upon reflection, I don't really see the value of having any other pages included in the bottom nav of these types of templates. Can someone point up a use-case where a typical user would be likely to find value in these links? As Dirt points out, these types of navboxes exist in a similar form for most (if not all) teams. I'm of the opinion that these template-to-template links should be removed from all such templates. — DeeJayK (talk) 16:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
Dispute over schedule layout
There's a dispute over schedule layouts; compare this to this, and, through this discussion, I hope to draw a consensus. I believe the latter represents the better format, as its sortable and easier on the eyes, with a more concise use of color. Please comment; thanks. Seattle (talk) 20:42, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
I prefer the former format as well. I do not really mind the colors. The sort is a useful feature for tables, but I'm not sure how it would really help improve a schedule table. -- StarScream1007 ►Talk 23:27, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
The former format is easily better. The sortability is pointless in such a table. Not sure what benefit the colour change has either. – PeeJay23:34, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Latter color scheme is better, as less color is better. Per MOS:COLOR, "Even for readers with unimpaired color vision, excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks." Shading the whole row is "excessive". Sorting is not needed, though.—Bagumba (talk) 23:39, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
OK. So, to summate:
We restrict color use to that of the latter
We remove sortability
We include the table's information from the former
I would also change "Game Site" to the more succinct "Stadium". I don't see the television station that aired the game listed in either the "Recap" link or the reference provided. Otherwise, that seems good. Possibly RaysRates can help here? Seattle (talk) 03:14, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
I'll work one that incorporates the suggestions. Bagumba makes some good points and I respect his opinions. I'll post a mock-up here for comment before posting live. I can't guarantee it will become a new standard for all team sites, but maybe the Seahawks can set a new standard here as they have on the field. RaysRates (talk) 15:46, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
For ease of comparison, and based on the discussion above, I have posted in my sandbox four schedule tables. The first reduces the color to two columns, the second to one column, the third removes all color, and the fourth uses maximum color. I then added a full season box using reduced color. Comments? RaysRates (talk) 16:39, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
I agree with several points regarding the proposed changes to the standardized NFL season record, and remain strongly unconvinced regarding another:
1. do not include the sortability function -- it has little or no benefit for the reader in a 16-game schedule, is practically meaningless for scores where the winning score is stated first, completely unnecessarily complicates the column headers;
2. preserve existing datapoints, order and presentation -- time tested, and should not be changed without far wider input from active WP:NFL members than the small number participating in this discussion;
3. preserve existing shaded pale green for wins and shaded pale pink for losses as the background for entire lines -- I am not convinced that the use of these background shades violates MOS:COLOR because the percentage shades chosen are so pale as not to impede readability/legibility for anyone -- and to date I have not ever seen anyone complain that it does. Please note that the same pale shades of pink and green for losses and wins are are used for over a thousand college football articles, and thousands more MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL articles, and we should not depart from a standard, uniform graphical practice without very good reason and strong consensus of a much wider and representative spectrum of active WP:NFL members.
If you are determined to implement color changes of the background shading (or limitation to specific columns) as proposed in item no. 3 above, I urge you to start pinging active WP:NFL members on their user talk page with a neutrally-worded invitation to participate in this discussion. Otherwise, attempting to implement a wide-ranging change across hundreds of NFL articles, with so little input, is likely to be met with reverts and strong resistance to the established standard formatting. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
There's much more mix within our articles than you allude; see our featured lists on college football seasons, NFL seasons, college head coaches, and NFL first-round draft picks at Wikipedia:Featured lists § Sports and recreation, a significant majority of which restrict color use to individual entries, a practice corroborated in all MLB featured lists of awards, draft picks, seasons, and rosters, in all NBA featured lists of awards, head coaches, seasons, and draft picks, and in all NHL featured lists on seasons and head coaches passed recently. There may well be "over a thousand college football articles, and thousands more MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL articles" that implement color gratuitously, but anything of recognized quality restricts its use. Seattle (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
@Seattle: You overstate the case considerably. I have just reviewed every NFL and CFB featured list (as linked above by you); not one of them is a single-season article/list for a particular team, as would be a direct precedent for the topic under discussion. Among those Featured Lists of seasons for particular NFL teams, yes, there are multiple background colors employed in wiki-tables on a column-by-column basis to signify various different meanings, including division, conference, league and Super Bowl championships, non-NFL league affiliation, etc. To be clear, not one of the Featured Lists is a single-season article for a particular NFL or CFB team that includes a table of all games played during the season. I also checked Featured Articles: again, there is not one that is a single-season article. Frankly, I found that rather odd that none of the individual season articles (for Super Bowl champion teams, etc.), were listed FAs. So, I also checked the Wikipedia:Good articles/Sports and recreation, and here's what I found there:
1. There are 28 Good Articles for CFB single-season topics for individual teams; 27 of 28 use the standard shading in season schedule tables -- the 28th has no table.
2. There are 19 Good Articlles for NFL single-season topics for individual teams; 17 of 19 use the standard shading in season schedule tables -- the other 2 shade two columns 10% green and pink for wins and losses.
3. There are 3 Good Articles for professional baseball single-season topics for individual teams; all 3 use the standard shading in season schedule tables.
4. There are 3 Good Articles for NBA single-season topics for individual teams, and another 12 for individual NCAA teams, for a total of 15 basketball season GAs. Of those 15, 13 use the standard shading in season schedule tables, and the other two (one men's, one women's) NCAA articles use no shading at all.
5. There are 8 Good Articles for NHL single-season topics for individual teams, and all 8 of them use the standard shading for season schedule tables.
As you can see, there is no MOS:COLOR precedent against the existing use of color in either FAs (there are no single-season FA articles) or GAs (the overwhelming majority use the standard shading, and among those that don't, there is no mention of such in the GA reviews).
6. I also reviewed all 49 single-season articles in Category:Super Bowl champion seasons, and all 49 of them use the established shading for season schedule tables.
7. I also spot-checked a dozen each of NBA, NHL and World series championship single-season articles, and all of those spot-checked use the established shading for season schedule tables. (There may be examples that do not, but I did not find them by sampling the articles in the relevant categories.)
Bottom line: I can find no mention of MOS:COLOR, or table shading generally, in any of the GA reviews and all of the single-season articles reviewed (except four) use the standard shading, including all major league and NCAA football and basketball championship season articles I spot-checked. Frankly, that is remarkable consistency across at least five different sports WikiProjects and represents a strongly established consensus by actual practice across literally thousands of single-season sports articles, involving years of work by dozens if not hundreds of editors. Before you begin to make wide-ranging changes to these articles based on the mixed input of only five WP:NFL editors over a period of less than 24 hours, I strongly urge you to formulate a proper RfC on the WP:NFL talk page and notify all active members with a neutrally worded invitation on their user talk pages. I am not opposed to change, but there is a much better way to implement such proposed changes. Please consider carefully. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
I, too, feel that there is no compelling and/or legitimate reason to stray what has been the practiced standard, spanning thousands of articles, 6 or 7 WikiProjects, and many dozens of experienced sports editors who have been applying this coloring since day one. The only outcome this proposed change will be is countless headaches, edit wars, and wasted time. Considering the scope of Wikipedia as a whole, which is to create and improve upon encyclopedia-worthy content, this proposal seems trivial in nature and an ever-lasting boulder to push uphill. Adamantly oppose new shading proposal.Jrcla2 (talk) 18:19, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
There are a lot of links to proposed tables, and waves to an existing "standard" format. For my clarification, can someone point to a specific article or style guide which is considered the existing standard. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 19:00, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
There likely isn't one. Atleast I have never seen one. Generally FAs are considered style guides for future articles of the same type for this sort of thing. -DJSasso (talk) 20:05, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
Limit color to a few cells I have to side with @Seattle's rationale: limit color to a few strategic cells (say, opponent and score). I haven't heard what makes a schedule table so unique that color needs to be applied to the entire row. FLs generally limit their coloring to select cells, and do not gratuitously highlighting an entire row. While an analogy was made to other GA articles, there is nothing in Wikipedia:Good article criteria that reviews style; that is in Wikipedia:Featured list criteria under 4a: "Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting, tables, and colour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked." It's not enough for me to stick with status quo unless there is a compelling rationale that supports why it has been done that way.—Bagumba (talk) 06:27, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Bags, if we're going to have a serious discussion about changing the formatting of every NFL schedule table since 1921, let's open another thread, properly titled regarding the schedule shading issue, structured in the form of an RfC with a yes/no question regarding the shading, provide one or more examples of what we would like to suggest as the new standard format, and then notify all active WP:NFL members with a neutrally worded invitation to participate on their user talk pages. We can keep this thread open for a while if you think it is providing useful feedback to prepare for an RfC. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
I dont see the advantage to procedurally mandating an RfC for this—seems to me like more bureaucracy than is needed at this point. Obviously, no objection if you deem it necessary. I'm not sure what additional invites are needed; I would assume project members interested already watchlist this page. If one were to send out individual invites, is the M.O. in this project to send a talk page notice to everyone at Wikipedia:WikiProject_National_Football_League#Participants? Anything less could be construed as canvassing, unless there is a specific schedule task force that already exists for this topic.—Bagumba (talk) 21:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
No, not really. Calling it an "RfC" makes it sound like a bigger deal than it really is. But if you want to change basic WP:NFL formatting, and then use that as a reason to get other sports WikiProjects to change their basic formatting, too, then you want to solicit the input of as many active WP:NFL editors as possible. Individual invitations to opine under WP:CANVASS are not a problem, either, provided the notices/invitations are neutrally worded and the editors are not selected because you know what their opinion is, or in some other fashion to stack the vote. In my experience, fewer than 10% of actives are regular talk page participants. As for determining who gets a notice, invite any listed member who has made an edit in the last 90 days. Like, I said, it's not a CANVASS problem, you get maximum input, and if there is an !majority for change no one has a right to complain because everyone who wanted to have a say got to speak their peace. Again, if you want wide-ranging change, get wide-ranging input. Regardless of the outcome, there's peace in the valley, and you have a valid determination of current consensus. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Didn't see anyone mention anyone was seeking widespread change outside of WP:NFL. As for "active" members, your method sounds equitable enough. I just imagine those 90% that you estimate have, for various reasons, consciously avoided the project talk page. If people express interest to formalize this, I dont mind helping out with talk page logistics. However, I honestly dont anticipate I'll break trend and spend much time editing these tables.—Bagumba (talk) 00:00, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia is WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, so no pressure on anyone to commit anything. However, if Seattle or RaysRates or anyone else thinks they might implement changes to shade only a few cells as opposed to an entire row for the schedule, I'll be glad to offer assistance on opening RfC.—Bagumba (talk) 00:27, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
In addition to Bagumba, I would like to offer my help, too. I've helped prepare mini-RfCs for sports projects in the past, and I have some idea how to structure them and keep them organized, so long comment threads don't overwhelm !votes, etc., so definitive conclusions regarding present consensus can be drawn at the end of the process. Set it up in a user sandbox somewhere that we can comment and make suggestions. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:10, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
I am at my wits end...everything I try to fix the Los Angeles Rams colors fails. I got the colors to be correct for 1964-1972 and 1973-1994, but then it kills 1946-1963. When I try to fix 1946-1963, it has ranged from killing the entire color template to killing 1964-1994 for the Rams. So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, if someone could fix the colors for me it could be greatly appreciated.
I'll be happy to help you, but before we make such a change, I'd like to understand where your information comes from. Where are these documented as the correct colors for the Rams? Please share your source. Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
I'm basing the changes on the historical uniforms of the Los Angeles Rams. From 1964 to 1972, the Rams colors were blue and white seen here: File:NFC-Throwback2-Uniform-STL 1972.png. The blue was essentially the same during that time as it was from the 70s on, just without the yellow. I also have media guides from that era to back it up. The 1963 and before colors are a bit harder to find concrete colors, but I do know that the current bright blue is incorrect. The royal blue that is used in both the blue and white uniforms from 1964-1972 and the blue and yellow uniforms from 1973-1994 remained essentially the same during their entire tenure in Los Angeles. I base the yellow as being the primary instead of the blue, as opposed to the 1973-1994 colors, based on this image: . Both the blue and yellow uniforms before 1963 were used interchangeably according to my guides, but the home uniform was generally the yellow one. The yellow one was also used at the primary throwback uniform in the lat 1980s and early 1990s. You can also see the yellow being used as the primary here, here, and here. It's impossible to know the exact color pre-1963, but using the 1973-1994 colors (just switched) seems reasonable. --CASportsFan (talk) 20:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
TV, kickoff, and attendance in schedule
Here's an idea that I would like to propose: removing the networks and kickoff times from the schedule boxes for ALL past NFL team season articles — once a team's season ends. I think it's redundant to display the network and time if the game/season has passed. Once the NFL schedule is released (in April), then I think it would be better to still keep the network and times for upcoming games, then remove them once a team's season ends.
I haven't started anything yet, but as an example, this is the preseason schedule table from the 2014 Denver Broncos season (with the networks and kickoff times removed):
One more thing: I really don't think adding the attendance is relevant to a schedule box — that's what the week-by-week game capsules are for. DPH1110 (talk) 01:55, 24 February 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
Support - Kickoff time, network TV coverage and attendance are not core information from a historical vantage, and can be easily shifted to the individual game summaries. Kickoff time and network coverage are obviously useful information to readers during the current season. I also question whether the running total win-loss record is core information in a space-limited schedule table -- with only 16 games, it's easy to count wins and losses in a second or two.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dirtlawyer1 (talk • contribs) 12:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
Comment Networks are usually not sourced, though I suppose they are verifiable for the current season, but harder(?) as more years pass. Frankly, I'd say remove it even for current season per WP:NOTTVGUIDE. I personally never understood time spent for throwaway edits <siderant>Player bio stat undates after every game</siderant>—Bagumba (talk) 06:36, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Comment It is a possibility that I might undergo this project of removing the networks, kickoff and attendance on all team schedule boxes for the previous seasons, as well as those network simulcast footnotes. It would be a lot of time-consuming work, though removing content is faster than adding content. @Bagumba: The networks would be sourced during the season, with a link to the schedule on the NFL's official site. For example: Source for this section: NFL.com (with citation). @Dirtlawyer1: I don't think the running total win-loss records in schedule tables should be removed — they are displayed on NFL teams' season articles on Pro Football Reference. DPH1110 (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
Oppose - With all due respect, this is a terrible idea. Inboxes are used to summarize and not having kickoff time makes it impossible to tell many important things:
Whether or not the game was a prime-time game (as in night game)
Whether or not the game was flexed into a later time or prime-time
Whether or not kickoff time was delayed due to rain
Whether or not the game was moved to another network
Believe it or not those things (especially those related to prime time games) are very important. Including the network and times allows the viewer to very quickly understand the basic circumstances of the game. ToaNidhiki0513:03, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
This is how the paperback 2014 Official NFL Record and Fact Book prints a team's schedule:
Sep. 7 at Miami .....................1:00
Sep. 14 at Minnesota .................1:00
Sep. 21 Oakland ......................1:00
Sep. 29 at Kansas City (Mon)..........8:30
Oct. 5 Cincinnati ..................*8:30
Oct. 12 at Buffalo ...................1:00
Oct. 16 New York Jets (Thu) ..........8:25
Oct. 26 Chicago ......................1:00
Nov. 2 Denver .......................4:25
Nov. 9 BYE
Nov. 16 at Indianapolis .............*8:30
Nov. 23 Detroit ......................1:00
Nov. 30 at Green Bay .................4:25
Dec. 7 at San Diego ................*8:30
Dec. 14 Miami ........................1:00
Dec. 21 at New York Jets .............1:00
Dec. 28 Buffalo ......................1:00
* All times ET; Sunday night games in
Weeks 5-16 subject to change
Monday and Thursday night games are in parentheses, and Sunday night games are marked with an asterisk. We could do something similar. Games that are flexed or postponed could also be marked with a footnote. A "network" column could be easily replaced by a boilerplate message basically stating "Unless otherwise noted, all Sunday Night games are on NBC; Monday night games are on ESPN; Thursday Night games are on CBS/NFL Network; and Sunday afternoon AFC away games and NFC away games are on CBS and Fox, respectively." Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:01, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm a little late to the party here, but I disagree with these changes, especially the removal of the kickoff time column. In the NFL game times are notable due to nationally televised primetime games. Plus there are only 16 games, compared with baseball or basketball where the game time is hardly as significant. (With the logic that others used above, why would we even include the date if we are also including the NFL week? Couldn't you just use the game summaries? I don't agree with this, just using for argument)
My question is how are we going to handle kickoff times before the season begins, which others mentioned above as being notable. Are we going to add the kickoff time column, keep it through the season, and delete it when the season ends? I just don't see any harm in keeping it there, while I do see potential benefits. ~ Richmond96 T • C03:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
@Richmond96: When the NFL schedule is released next month, I think it will just be easier to input the schedule in the same fashion as last season, and use tooltip commands for games that occur on dates other than Sunday. I'm guessing that flexible scheduling will once again begin with Week 5. On a side note, last year's NFL schedule was released on April 23 (2014); my guess is that the 2015 schedule will be released on or around the same date (circa April 21–23), one week before the draft DPH1110 (talk) 03:45, 17 March 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
ESPN / Fox Sports 1?
A string of edits to Monday Night Football-related topics around 03:09, 19 March 2015 by Bogger1 changed the whole branding of Monday Night Football from ESPN to Fox Sports 1. Is this true? I was going to revert, then saw the extent of the modifications. J♯m (talk | contribs) 03:47, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Due to accessibility concerns, there were some recent tweaks to Infobox NFL player. One of them was to the display of the first and last career appearance for a player. Basically, all infobox entries need to have a label and a data field, to allow for automated retrieval of data. Use Dan Marino as an example. Before it had "Debuted in 1983 for the Miami Dolphins". However, it was changed to have a label of "Debuted in", and its data value is "1983 for the Miami Dolphins". Thus, the infobox now displays: "Debuted in: 1983 for the Miami Dolphins". Marino now also has a corresponding "Last played in" field.
First of all, I think the labels ending with "in" sound a bit clumsy. Is there a more elegant name? More importantly, are the first/last appearance even necessary, and can it just be removed? There is already "Career history" which list all the teams played and their respective years, which has this same information. I think this infobox was mimicking baseball's where the callup from the minors is a bigger deal.—Bagumba (talk) 23:31, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
Delete - The "debut" is a pro baseball concept imported into a pro football template. It it is typical for MLB players to have played several years in the minors before making their debut in the "Show." Most pro football players usually either play their first season after signing with an NFL team, or they never do. The start and end years of NFL player's career is already covered by "career history" section; this debut/last played are a waste of two lines of text in the infobox, sometimes more when long team names cause line-wraps. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
We as a Wikiproject need to set new standards for these roster navbox templates. If you look at the Atlanta Falcons one, it's run by a single anonymous user who reverts anything that goes against his way, even though he doesn't follow how the other infoboxes are. (the user separates injured reserve and PUP lists into separate groups, when every other team template as them as simply a single "Reserved lists")
Because of this, I say we all agree on a common way every team template should be handled. Here are my suggestions based on how they've been in the past:
| group1 = Active roster
| list1 =
| group2 = Reserved lists
| list2 =
| group3 = Practice squad
| list3 =
There is also no need for a "Free agent" and "Unsigned draft picks" group, since it's cleaner and easier to maintain if we just removed all the free agents from the template. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:57, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Greater Los Angeles Sports by year navboxes
A recent IP edit broke the height in the infobox for the above (if the value is correct, the wikitext should be height_in=6+1/2). There are no references, and the NFL.com link is broken. I seem to recall that WP:BLP articles must have a reference to be kept these days. Is it worth trying to save this, or should it be deleted? Johnuniq (talk) 05:16, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Persondata has been officially deprecated
Persondata has been deprecated and the template and input data are subject to removal from all bio articles in the near future. For those editors who entered accurate data into the persondata templates of NFL players and other bio subjects, you are advised to manually transfer that data to Wikidata before the impending mass deletion occurs. Here are two examples of Wikidata for football players: Dan Marino] and Tim Tebow. If you have any more questions about the persondata removal, Wikidata, etc., please ping me. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:45, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
Steve Weatherford's weight
An editor has repeatedly changed Steve Weatherford's weight from the weight stated by NFL.com and the Giants' official roster, claiming personal knowledge based on a Snapchat photo. [13][14][15] As far as I can see, this violates WP:BLP as well as our consensus of following the official information for player infoboxes. Scrutiny and opinions by other NFL-experienced editors would be helpful. --Arxiloxos (talk) 19:39, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Normally, the weight listed on the team's roster is more up to date that the one on NFL.com. That being said, sometimes an article will focus on how a player has lost/gained weight, and features the player themselves making the statement. In that case, I think it's fine to update the weight (with a source.) This case seems to be "original research" though, which of course, should be reverted. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 20:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project
A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:46, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
Please contribute to a discussion on amending MOS language with respect to date formats
Hello - there is currently a discussion underway at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Date range redux to come to a final resolution the way dates for club tenure in infoboxs are displayed (e.g. - with a club from 2001–2007 or 2001–07). If you have an opinion one way or the other, please take part. The value in coming to a final resolution (either having language added to allow 8 digit date spans for this purpose or expressly forbidding it) is that it would provide certainty to these cases and stop needless reverting of this format one way or the other. If you do take part, please be sure to ground your arguments/opinions in fact, Wikipedia precedent and real world examples as opposed to preference only as this will help the project make the right call. There are thousands of articles (touched by thousands of editors) that use summary club tenure information in infoboxes, so there is clearly an advantage to settling it in a clear manner so all can comply. Thanks! Rikster2 (talk) 04:25, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Error with the 2015 NFL divisional standings templates
There is something weird going on with the 2015 NFC East and 2015 NFC West standings templates — when you click on the Talk Page on the 2015 NFC East template (via the 2015 NFC West and NFC East season articles), it re-directs you to the NFC West Talk page, and vice versa. For example, when you click on the View link on the NFC East Standings template on the 2015 Dallas Cowboys season article, it re-directs you to the NFC West standings template. Is there a way this could be fixed? Thank you. DPH1110 (talk) 17:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
There has recently been a discussion at the talk page of the WikiProject on Accessibility regarding Template:Infobox gridiron football person. In the past, the template only had a single set of parameters for playing_years and playing_teams. This caused editors to create lists using <br>. This violates Wikipedia's policies regarding accessibility (see WP:VLIST). To correct this issue, the template has been edited to include numbered parameters playing_years1/playing_team1 through playing_years20/playing_year20 (and similar for coaching, administrating, etc). Eventually, the parameters playing_years and playing_teams will likely be removed from the template and all articles will need to use the new parameters, in order to prevent future issues with accessibility. This template should generally not be in use in articles primarily related to this project, but in practice, many articles that this project will be interested in use it.
There is further discussion ongoing about whether these changes should be done manually or with a bot. You can read and contribute to the discussion at the talk page. ~ RobTalk21:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Opinions regarding new edits
The new editor Filipo Sooa(talk·contribs·deleted contribs·logs·filter log·block user·block log) has been busy creating templates and redirects regarding the 1997 Green Bay Packers. I am not familiar enough with them to tell if they are useful or not. I can say that I am finding what is being done to be confusing so if any of the members of this project can take a look at things it would be appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk03:53, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Niceguyedc and Dissident93 thanks for the replies. It looks like it might take some untangling to deal with this persons edits. If you (or anyone else) have any suggestions as to how to proceed from here I an sure they would be helpful. MarnetteD|Talk04:02, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
The header on this navbox ("Green Bay Packers Super Bowl XXXII Champions") gives false/misleading information. Again it was the Broncos that won Super Bowl XXXII, not the Packers. I also noticed that someone else just blocked Filipo Sooa as a vandalism-only account. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:08, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Bagumba, Thanks. I support your decision to block that user, as the deletion logs show that he had created similar hoax templates within the past few days. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
My thanks to everyone for dealing with this. Something seemed "not quite right" but I had to go and watch some of my Sunday night shows - what - a life away from WikiP - how could such a thing be :-) - so I appreciate everyone's efforts in looking into this and cleaning up as needed. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk04:58, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Banners in "List of [team] seasons"
Is the coloured banner at the top of the table in List of Minnesota Vikings seasons actually necessary? User:Charlesaaronthompson has attempted to explain it as a matter of consistency between the Vikings list and other teams' lists, but since the Vikings have never been known by another name, is it necessary at all? I can understand it for teams that have moved around a lot (or even just once), but not teams like the Vikings and the Packers... – PeeJay09:46, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
That wasn't actually my goal. I'm just trying to gauge community opinion. I don't think they're necessary, but if you do, clearly there's the possibility that others do too. – PeeJay22:07, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
Accessibility issue in Infobox NFL player
There exists a prevalent accessibility issue in Template:Infobox NFL player caused by the use of small text to denote whether a player was on a team during the regular season or just during the offseason or on the practice roster. WP:FONTSIZE disallows the use of text smaller than 11px, and specifically states to avoid use of small text in infoboxes. Please see the relevant discussion at the template's talk page regarding the possible removal of the small tags from this text. ~ RobTalk06:15, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Merge of Infobox NFL coach
This might be overly cautious, but since it's been so long since this was last discussed, it's probably best to gauge opinions.
There was a TfD discussion way back in 2012 to merge Template:Infobox NFL coach with Template:Infobox NFL player to create Infobox NFL biography. There was later a request to delay that merge pending a discussion here. The merge was never actually carried out, and it was rediscussed in the second half of 2013, where there appeared to be consensus to carry it out as per the TfD. The template still exists today, and we're approaching three years after the TfD. Among our current AFC head coaches (which I used for spot-checking purposes), half of them are already using the Infobox NFL player template, so I assume that the functionality of Infobox NFL player works for coaches at this point in time. Is there any reason not to finish carrying out this merge? ~ RobTalk12:02, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Without looking at past discussions, it seems like a merge should be desirable, since most coaches today are ex-players. FWIW, WP:BASEBALL, and WP:NBA each have a single bio infobox, not separate ones for coaches and players.—Bagumba (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
Very careful use of AWB could handle it, possibly. There's only 335 articles still using the deprecated template. ~ RobTalk00:58, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Parent template for roster navboxes
Can there be a parent template for the NFL roster navboxes, in the same way that Template:NFL roster exists? Some users have added in non-standard groups\info, and it would be nice to prevent that all together. If you want to see what I mean, look at the discussions I had on the talk page on the Falcons one. A parent template would prevent edit warring, like it does on the normal roster one. I can work on a sandbox prototype if the community agrees it should be done. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 22:17, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
NFL Top 100 Rankings in Player Infoboxes
A while back, in a discussion which can be seen here, we discussed whether or not the rankings of the NFL Top 100 of each year should be listed in a player's infobox. In players that are listed regularly, it can really cloud up the infoboxes. There is no official guide to do this in the template which leads to some players having it and others not having it. It seems in this past discussion which was left alone, we were close to a consensus to remove it. Would you guys support or oppose this change? Chambr (talk) 03:15, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Just to get my opinion on record, I would support the removal of these rankings because it clouds up infoboxes especially in players nominated repeatedly. Also, it is not an officially sanctioned award, in other words it has no set rules or guidelines in regards to how NFL Network sets these rankings up, all we know is they get the input of some players. As an example of this, we don't list Spike TV Rookie of the Year (2012) in Andrew Luck's infobox because it is not an officially sanctioned award. Chambr (talk) 03:22, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
WP:WEIGHT is the guiding principle here. AFAIK, it's only mentioned as WP:ROUTINE coverage when it comes out. I don't think it's often mentioned what past years' rank is, or even largely associated with a player in general article during the year. Compared to NBA or MLB bios, infoboxes for NFL are a mess. Anyone interested in cleaning them up?—Bagumba (talk) 04:09, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Remove these meaningless rankings from the infobox; if a player attained one of those annual rankings, there are usually far more important honors, awards and championships to include in the infobox. Rule of thumb: if it's not important enough to mention in the mainbody text with a sourced footnote, it's probably not important enough to include in the infobox. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:19, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
Discussion re inclusion of "all colleges attended" within the pro football Infobox
There's been some ongoing vandalism over Rob Gronkowski and his middle. An editor (correctly) added a {{cn}} tag to the middle name, because it became unclear what his middle name is (the two candidates appear to be James and Paxton). I removed the middle name altogether, because I'd rather not have the CN in the lead like that. If anyone can help determine what his middle name is, it would be really helpful. Calidum03:49, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
His NFL.com profile lists neither of his supposed middle names, nor his full first name of "Robert": [18]. In the absence of a reliable source per WP:RS, you should omit any middle name per WP:V and WP:BLP. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:38, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Adding team wordmarks to Infobox NFL team
For some time, I have been thinking about a suitable replacement for the helmet images on Infobox NFL team, ever since all of them were deleted on grounds of replaceable fair use back in 2012 (see archived discussion). I think that having the team wordmarks on there would be a good idea. Over the past few years, all of them have been eventually uploaded onto Commons under {{PD-logo}}. I have just made test edits to this effect on {{Infobox NFL team/sandbox}} and Template:Infobox NFL team/testcases (putting the wordmark image next to the team logo in the same space where the helmet image use to be), and if there are no objections, I would like implement this before the Kickoff Game next week. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
Bolding division opponents in schedule tables
I'm starting to think that there is really no useful purpose to bold division opponents in the regular season schedule tables. I'm contemplating de-bolding division opponents for each team's season articles. DPH1110 (talk) 00:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
(edit conflict)The people that care to that level probably already know who is in the division anyways. I was also going to say the division standings also have that information, but I just realized that WP:NFL hasn't usually created templates like Template:2015 NL West standings, which team articles can transclude for the division standings.—Bagumba (talk) 00:41, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
Strike some of above (not sure what I was looking at). The division standings template can be positioned to complement the schedule for this info, if it is pertinent.—Bagumba (talk) 17:38, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
Infobox NFL player soon to replace Infobox NFL coach -- we need a template name
Hey, sports fans. In the next few weeks, Template:Infobox NFL player will replace the remaining 300 or so uses of Template:Infobox NFL coach. Infobox NFL player will support the current functionality of Infobox NFL coach, but will maintain the formatting of Infobox NFL player. We need a new name that everyone can live with for the infobox template. Here are the leading candidates for the resulting "merged" template:
Infobox NFL biography;
Infobox NFL football biography;
Infobox NFL career;
Infobox NFL football career;
Infobox NFL person;
Infobox NFL football person;
Infobox NFL personnel;
Infobox NFL football personnel;
Infobox NFL player (leave as is); or
Infobox NFL football player.
As a frequent editor of CFB and NFL articles, I have no particularly strong favorite in this hunt. All are reasonably descriptive, and all are reasonably concise. Since the editors of WikiProject National Football League (WP:NFL) are the principal users of this template, I have posted a notice to ask you what your preferred template name would be for the merged functionality. Please post your !votes (and brief rationale, if you want) immediately below. This discussion will close no later than September 7, 2015 @ 6:00 p.m. EDT (10:00 p.m. UDT). If you have an opinion, now is the time to speak up. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:07, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
Consistent, and accurately captures the scope and purpose of the template. Template names matter, particularly for editors unfamiliar with project norms. Mackensen(talk)02:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Question: Is this infobox only to be used for NFL players & coaches, or is it for other NFL personnel, as well (GM's, owners, presidents, etc.)? Ejgreen77 (talk) 02:19, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Hello all. I have been working on List of Washington Redskins players for quite awhile (currently going through each player and updating their pages). I was wondering if their has been any consensus regarding how these pages should be set up. Back when I was maintaining this page, I tried to limit the size of the article (currently still huge at 153kb) by making the list exclusive to players who have played at least five games with the franchise (per the recommendation of a peer review). However, it didn't seem to help too much. So I was thinking about doing what the List of Green Bay Packers players article does, and split the page into several articles by a grouping of letters. I ask because all of the other franchise players list articles seem to have EVERY player who played at least one game. Thoughts? Also, I think it would be a great idea to get some continuity going with these pages so that they all look at least somewhat similar, but I realize that's a monumental undertaking. Jwalte04 (talk) 21:27, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
WP:NGRIDIRON says that a player who has played at least one game in the NFL is generally considered notable. Therefore, having the list include every player that has played a game would meet WP:CSC that "Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia". Also, WP:NCLONGLIST supports splitting long lists into alphabetical groupings to make the pages more manageable.—Bagumba (talk) 21:58, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
What he said ^. They are placed onto waivers for 24 hours (but sometimes it seems longer?), and if no other team claims them, the team has an option to place them on IR. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
Discussion regarding appropriateness of mention of Kam Chancellor's holdout in 2015 NFL season article
Hey fellow NFL-heads. I'd like to solicit your opinions on a recent discussion regarding whether it's appropriate to include a paragraph related to Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor's recent holdout in the article on the 2015 season. The pro and con arguments have both been advanced in the discussion, so I won't attempt to rehash them here. It would be great if we could get some additional opinions. Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 18:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
Even beyond the concerns about the lack of references, I'm not sure I see the value of this list. The subject seems a bit trivial. At the very least it seems like it would have more utility if it were organized differently. Perhaps it could be done in a table which could be sortable by player, team, number of years, etc. Short of that, I just don't see how this list is useful. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:28, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
DeeJayK, I tend to agree with you. Once upon a time, it was the norm, not an exception, for an NFL player to spend his entire career with the same team. Obviously, that is no longer the norm in the era of modern free agency. That said, an accurately sourced list of NFL players who spent their entire career with a single NFL team is likely to run into the thousands, not the hundreds. It may be noteworthy to mention in a given player's bio article, but I don't see how a list of this size will be manageable (separate and apart from the sourcing issues). There is also a definitional problem: do we include off-season signings, practice squads, and pre-season squads? The current article arbitrarily implements as cut-off of 10 seasons with the same team -- is there any evidence of such a list being generally notable per WP:GNG? If not, at some point, the whole exercise starts to smell like original research per WP:OR. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:00, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
For newer WP:NFL editors, this would be an excellent opportunity for you to get a better sense of the Templates for Discussion process, and increase your understanding of the WP:NAVBOX criteria, as well as the sports- and football-specific things we look at in evaluating NFL navboxes. Please join this TfD discussion linked above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:06, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
I understand this could be kind of contentious seeing as it's a violent sport and certain parties involved in it would want to keep such things quiet. But should the infobox have a field for cause of death? Most articles infoboxes have that field. It would only make sense to add it to the infobox here. Crash Underride05:42, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Crash Underride, which infobox specifically are you talking about? Cause of death does not seem to be listed in the vast majority of bio infoboxes I have come across. Jweiss11 (talk) 07:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Crash, Template:Infobox NFL player is already too damn big when it is fully filled out for many players, and I'm not sure that including a "cause of death" parameter would be generally helpful. That said, I don't think anyone is suggesting that a well-written article should not discuss a player's health conditions or cause of death when it is documented that they are sports-related. The key being the use of reliable sources and proper footnotes when we discuss such sensitive subjects per WP:BLP, WP:V and WP:RS. If anyone ever says that reliably sourced information about cause of death should not be included in the article text, send them to me. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 08:07, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
I didn't mean people on here. I meant the NFL would rather us forget what can lead to player deaths. Personally, I think it should be since the sport they play(ed) could have a direct impact on their cause of death. But hey, that's just me. And Jweiss, I mean go and look at all the celebrities on here that are dead, most have a COD and politicians also. Not every single one is filled out though. Also, Dirtlawyer, be honest, how many players will have an infobox that completely filled, every. single. field? It's not like I'm saying, "Lets add spouses, children, etc."....although, children...just kidding. lol. Crash Underride14:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Anyone else have an opinion? I mean, think about it, players like Junior Seau, etc. that kill themselves and have it linked back to the most probably cause, brain damage. That brain damage most likely wouldn't have been there had it not been for football. I think it would be a relevant field to have in there. Crash Underride00:20, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Crash Underride, Mirroring what Dirtlawyer1 has already said, my feeling is that we should not add this field. Cause of death, when reported, should be included in the body of the article. Where the cause of death is particularly interesting or related to football (which will be the case for very small percentage of football biographies), then that should be well detailed in the body. I'm not aware of any campaign by any party to whitewash coverage here on Wikipedia about deaths related to football injuries. I am aware that our infobox situation for NFL biographies is something of a mess. New fields will not help resolve that mess. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:30, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
IMHO, no, it's not relevant at all to their NFL playing careers. If there is something out of the ordinary about the death that can be brought out through reliable sources (i.e., not speculation), it can be addressed in the article text. In reality, even in inboxes that have this parameter included in them, it really shouldn't be used unless there was something truly unusual or noteworthy about the death. Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:18, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
Given that there is a general article on betting pools, I'm not sure I see a tremendous value in adding an article specific to American football pools. That said, if you care to create the page, go ahead and be bold and do it. — DeeJayK (talk) 18:43, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
It has recently come to my attention that some WP:NFL editors are using British/international style dates (e.g., 21 October 2014) in articles about American football players, written in American English. When Wikipedia article subjects are American in character, and the article text is written in American English, the articles should uniformly use the American-style MDY date format (e.g., October 21, 2014). This applies to birth dates and death dates in the lead, main body text and infobox; contract signing and game dates; and reference publication dates, as well as online reference retrieval dates in the article footnotes. Please do not use British-style DMY dates in articles about NFL teams and players -- it looks goofy. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:49, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
D93, I certainly don't blame the association football/soccer guys; heck, very few of them edit American football articles, and then only rarely. The WP::FOOTY guys generally respect our language differences and related formatting conventions, and they have been good to work with whenever we have had sports-specific issues with the MOS and other concerns with project-wide guidelines. No the non-American dates in American football articles are usually a function of American editors who like the goofy computer date formats like 2015-10-02 and such. These non-standard dates need to be purged from American football articles, and newer WP:NFL editors need to be gently reminded to write in standard American English, and use standard American dates. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:19, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
There are situations where they would be correct however, players born in countries where that is the date format for example. Granted not alot of players in the NFL fall into that category but there are some. Canadians can go either way because in numerical format they tend to use British ordering but when writing it out in words usually use American ordering. -DJSasso (talk) 03:55, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
DJ Sasso, he stated above about the subject of the article being American. Non American players of American football tend to have the dates in their articles as DDMMYY, should that be the format their country uses. Crash Underride05:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
FYI, I looked at the issue of Canadian date formats as part of an MOS talk page discussion several months ago. A strong majority of English language newspapers and magazines in Canada -- including virtually all of the major English language dailies -- use American style MDY dates in print. Only in French language newspapers and magazines do you see a significant portion using DMY format dates in print. The idea that date format usage in Canada is "mixed" appears to be an overstatement; DMY seems to be a minority practice north of the border, too. That said, Crash is right: we're talking about articles about American football players, written in American English. Only a very small percentage of CFB and NFL players were born in Canada or other foreign countries, and even then most of those players are naturalized U.S. citizens. Moreover, there is never a good reason to use computer-format dates like 2015-10-03. Please spread the word. Thanks, guys. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 08:01, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Take Tim Biakabutuka as an example. He was born in Zaire and moved as a child to Canada, where he remained through high school. I assume he is a Canadian citizen, but perhaps he has become in an American citizen in his adulthood. But regardless of the particulars of his citizenship, everything he his notable for has taken place in the United States, so on that fact alone, shouldn't the article carry American English styles? Jweiss11 (talk) 18:41, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, JW, I would say so. He grew up in Canada (where majority usage is American style dates), attended an American university, played American college football, and played professionally for an American NFL team. Citing his Congo birth place as a justification for English language style choices is, in my opinion, a bit of a red herring; they don't even speak a variety of English in Congo, and Biakabutuka lived in Canada from the age of 4 until he enrolled in the University of Michigan at 18. Given that there is no real conflict between American and Canadian dates, I don't see a problem in that regard, but I suppose there is a a question of whether we should use British/Canadian spellings like honours, etc. It's a judgment call. I've seen editors argue, for example, that an Australian birth place should determine the variety of English used in a Wikipedia article even when the subject is a naturalized U.S. citizen who became a U.S. federal judge; to my way of thinking, that's kind of odd. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes, spelling typically follows the location of birth. He is a bit of an odd one due to the Congo angle which isn't a majority English country. However, being he grew up in Canada I would probably tilt towards en-ca for spelling. -DJSasso (talk) 02:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
DJ, WP:DATETIES is the operative MOS guideline for date format selection. It suggests that the date format associated with the country to which the subject has the most significant ties should govern. That may or may not be the subject's birthplace. For someone who was born in Australia, moved to the United States at a young age, became a U.S. citizen, was educated in the United States, and plays American professional sports, I think the ties are obviously stronger to America than Australia. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 07:03, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
Yup it says "Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the date format most commonly used in that nation." In a biography there is no stronger tie than the place the person was born. -DJSasso (talk) 19:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it makes sense that place of birth or even citizenship should trump all other variables. If the person's notability is due exclusively (or even primarily) to his association with the NFL, then I think it would be appropriate to use the American date format for that person's WP bio regardless of citizenship or place of birth. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:54, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
DJ, birthplace is one of several criteria to consider in determining the country to which a particular subject has the strongest ties. Otherwise, the biographies of Alexander Hamilton, John Paul Jones, Robert Morris, James Wilson and John Witherspoon would all be written in British English with British dates. And I can provide many more examples of persons who were born in one country, but are primarily known for their lives, work and accomplishments in another. A subject's citizenship (and parents' citizenship), naturalization, education, military or government service, location of career and accomplishments, representation of a country in international sports . . . all might be stronger (and better) indications of national ties than birth place. Of course, your take also overlooks natural-born citizens of one country who were born in a different country; e.g., the subject's parents were Americans living abroad. There a number of current and former NFL players who were born in Germany, where their fathers were serving in the U.S. military. Bottom line: birth place is where we start, not necessarily where we finish the exercise. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:14, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
Yes I realize that, I was just making sure it was clear that it doesn't apply to every NFL player. I have seen people rush to do the opposite where they change them to American format just because they are playing in the NFL. -DJSasso (talk) 01:56, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
Not sure we have a consensus here. DJSasso seems to favor style based on country of birth, while Dirtlawyer1 and I favor country of notable accomplishments. Here's another interesting example: Neil O'Donoghue, who played association football (soccer) in Ireland before moving to the US and becoming an American football placekicker for Auburn and then in the NFL. This article was a bit of a mess. I just spent some time editing it. There were British variant spellings describing his exploits in America ("honours", "programme"). I changed these to American spellings. Jweiss11 (talk) 05:54, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
JW, for the small minority of CFB/NFL players who are not U.S. or Canadian citizens, it's going to be a judgment call whether we use American-style MDY or British/Commonwealth style DMY dates. For your example of O'Donoghue -- an Irish citizen with a prior Irish soccer career, but now playing in the NFL -- I think there's a strong case to use British/Commonwealth style DMY dates and British/Irish spelling. For your other example of Tim Biakabutuka -- who moved to the United States at the age of 4, played American college football and is probably a naturalized U.S. citizen -- I think you should use American style MDY dates and American English. Here's an even closer call: what about the small class of CFB/NFL players who were born overseas, were/are citizens of a non-English-speaking countries, but now play in the NFL? My take: if the article is written in American English (and obviously not French, German, Spanish, etc.), then the article should use American dates for consistency. Anyway, I want to emphasize that these hard cases are a very small minority of all CFB and NFL players -- 99.9% should be using American style dates, not British/Commonwealth dates, and not ISO computer format funky dates in the infobox, text or footnotes. If anyone ever has a judgment call, just ask here on the WP:NFL talk page, and I'm sure we can thrash it through to a logical outcome together. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 06:58, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
In my judgement it makes sense to stay consistent and use the American date format for ALL articles related to the NFL. This includes the player pages even of those who are non-Americans. My reasoning is that the notability stems from American football, which is a primarily American game. The only exceptions I would make would be in cases where a person's notability in his native country exists separately from his accomplishments on the gridiron. For example, if a former football player were to enter politics or show business in his home country after his career or if he were notable at home for another endeavor prior to his association with the NFL. I don't have a decent example of the former case at hand, but Jarryd Hayne might be an example of the latter. It seems appropriate in Hayne's case in particular that the date formats for his article conform to the Australian standards. I would expect there would be a fairly small number of similar exceptions. — DeeJayK (talk) 14:56, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
DeejayK, I'm the one who started this thread, but even I can't say that 100% of all NFL biographies should use American-style MDY dates or even American English. There are the odd examples, like Neil O'Donoghue, that should use DMY dates per WP:DATETIES and another variety of English per MOS:ENGVAR. But again, those odd exceptions and hard cases are a very small minority of all CFB and NFL players -- 99.9% should be using American style dates, not British/Commonwealth dates, and not ISO computer format funky dates in the infobox, text or footnotes. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:36, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1, I agree with you that there should be limited exceptions. Upon re-reading my post above, I was certainly too strident, particularly in stressing "ALL" in the first sentence. However, I did note further in that exceptions should be made in cases like O'Donoghue's (and Hayne's) where the person's notability doesn't hinge solely or primarily on their American football career. The approach I would suggest is (I think) what you are proposing as well: the American date format should be acknowledged as the default for pages related to the NFL except in those outlier cases where a non-American player has established notability in another area in which a different date format is customary. I would expect that such exceptions would be quite a small minority (probably less than 1%?) of the articles encompassed by this WikiProject. — DeeJayK (talk) 14:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
Okay, so how do we wrap this discussion up and move forward? It seems we have a motion and a second that the project should follow the approach that you laid out in your initial post which was amended a bit to allow some limited exceptions. To wit: NFL articles should use the American date norms (e.g., October 21, 2014) except in the limited case of biographical articles for those who have gained notability outside of an American football context in another country where a different date format is the norm. In either case, the chosen date format should be applied consistently within a given article (i.e. in birth and death dates wherever they occur, in game or other dates mentioned in the article body and in all references). Is that statement something that we can build consensus around? — DeeJayK (talk) 15:19, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Whenever I find an America-related article with DMY or multiple date formats, I use this script to fix it. I suggest those of you who don't have it, go set it up. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:18, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
You're a good man, Muboshgu. I look forward to you unleashing OC's script on all those ISO computer dates (e.g., 2015-10-07) in our NFL footnotes! Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:17, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
In light of this discussion, would it be appropriate/useful to add the {{Use mdy dates}} template to the articles covered by this project (except for the limited exceptions called out previously)? If so, does anyone know of a bot that might be put to that task? — DeeJayK (talk) 14:58, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. I always insert the "mf=y" (i.e. "month first, yes") coding into the Birth date and Death date templates in the infobox, but it would not hurt to add the "Use MDY dates" template to the 99% of all NFL articles that should be using American-style dates, too. Unfortunately, the footnote date-gnomers often just ignore them anyway. It should be common-sense to use American-style MDY dates in an article about an American subject written in American English, but some folks didn't get the memo. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:44, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
UX: Team templates decade treatment when fewer than ten played seasons
@Charlesaaronthompson: has been updating NFL team templates in an (apparent) attempt to horizontally align the ten season-year links of xx00, xx02, ... xx09 which are typically grouped by decade.
The end result is bullets are now rendering unpaired to associated year articles in the team's first decade row. There has to be a better way to achieve the desired result. UW Dawgs (talk) 00:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Here's my reasoning as to why I made these changes: I did so, because it was an attempt to horizontally align the season links of each NFL team's template. The reason why the bullets are listed is because the seasons need to line up when accessing the templates on the Wikipedia mobile application for phones, iPods and other devices. Also, I refer this discussion and anyone anyone wondering why I made these changes to discuss it with User:Levdr1lostpassword (talk • contributions), and to visit Template talk:Cleveland Browns. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 00:52, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
@UW Dawgs: When viewing on a mobile device, decades with fewer than ten seasons are misaligned vertically. More importantly, I am concerned that the old formatting may not comply w/ WP:HLIST; blind users may have difficulty bouncing back & forth between manually inserted dots and the bullet-form generated by the "hlist" format. That said, Charlesaaronthompson has decided to make these changes to other NFL templates all on his own. I am perfectly willing to let this discussion play out before making wholesale changes. Levdr1lp / talk08:39, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
@Bagumba: Re: mobile applications, I don't know about whether navboxes are shown on other browsers on other mobile devices. The only web browsers on my T-MobileLG Optimus L90 phone are the default web browser and Chrome. I only know that navboxes are never shown on the Wikipedia mobile application on my phone, which uses an Android operating system. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 23:16, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
I think this effort should probably be tabled, at least for now. I'm planning on addressing a cleanup and restructuring of the the NFL team navboxes. One problem that we have is that for every team navbox, e.g. Template:Arizona Cardinals, there is a team season navbox Template:Arizona Cardinals seasons. But the team navbox also contains links to all the seasons in a collapsed group. Both navboxes are transcluded on every team season article, e.g 2015 Arizona Cardinals season, leading to redundancy and unnecessary clutter. I prose that we eliminate the team season navboxes and streamline the team navboxes along the lines of what has been done for college football and college basketball, e.g. Template:Michigan Wolverines football navbox. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:26, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
And would we group the seasons by decades like currently at Template:Cleveland_Browns? Frankly, that leaves for a lot of wasted white space, though its balanced by being conveniently grouped. Also, would we uncollapse the seasons, since they are currently collapsed at the main team navbox?—Bagumba (talk) 22:27, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. This thread is the direct result of the attempt to horizontally align the year links within the decade groupings. CFB has standardized to flatten these season year links (plenty of CFB teams have 100+, similar to historical NFL teams), ala Template:Notre Dame Fighting Irish football navbox. Again note season-year gaps in grey text and championships in bold, which is space efficient and removes (new) spacing and placeholders issues seen in their NFL equivalents. UW Dawgs (talk) 22:37, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
Okay, so I'm not sure what should be done or if there's already been a discussion about this. Josh Gordon's NFL.com profile page lists his college as Utah, so should his infobox say the same? I know he never played a game for them, but I just thought I'd ask. Crash Underride00:26, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
To me it makes sense to continue to list Baylor in the infobox, since that is the last (only) school at which Gordon played college football. This seems appropriate since his notability stems from his football career. His attendance at Utah is noted in the article, which strikes me as appropriate coverage. Another similar case is Dorial Green-Beckham, where he attended but didn't play for Oklahoma after leaving Missouri. NFL.com lists his school as OK, but his WP page lists Missouri. Consider a scenario where a player goes back to school after his playing career is over (or during his career for that matter) at a school he hadn't attend previously. If we were to use the standard that the infobox should list the most recent school attended, we'd want to update it in a case like this, which I don't think you'd find much editorial support for. I'm not sure why we should consider an NFL.com profile to be definitive in a cases like these. It seems that WP editors have set the standard that the infobox should list the college(s) for whom the player actually played college football. As long as that standard is applied consistently, and as long as any subsequent college transfers are covered in the article, I don't see a discrepancy with NFL.com (or any other single source, for that matter) to be an issue. — DeeJayK (talk) 15:28, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Update 2015 NFC Standings Template
Can someone update Template:2015 NFC standings? I added a few things but the team rankings are out of order. I've never worked on standings templates before so I don't want to make any incorrect edits. I'm not sure if all of the schedules are up to date, but either way, the team standings are currently out of order after this week. -Newyorkadam (talk) 15:37, 10 November 2015 (UTC)Newyorkadam
For anyone who is interested in the discussion, there is a proposal being discussed to rename the captioned page, possibly to either List of Super Bowls or List of Super Bowl games (both of which currently redirect to that page).
He posted in here because the LA Rams and Raiders were also "football clubs" in LA, as he mentions in his post in the move discussion. - BilCat (talk) 19:10, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I uberred an individual who seemed to be Hayden Epstein last week. As a Michigan alum, I have decided to beef up his article as a result. In researching his career, I see that NFL.com credits him with 72 career kickoffs 10 of which were touchbacks and 59 of which were returned. This means that on 3 of the kickoff somethings other than a touchback or return happened. What could those other things be?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:48, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
I'm playing in the sandbox with some tweaks to Template:Infobox NFL season which is used for the individual season articles for individual teams (e.g. 2015 Chicago Bears season). Specifically, I've implemented a change to the navigation at the bottom of the infobox that allows the user to jump to the previous and next season articles. This change is primarily aesthetic and brings this infobox in line with Template:Infobox NFL which is used for the league season articles (e.g. 2015 NFL season). There are several samples in the testcases page to allow you to see the change. As I know this template is widely used I've tried to find a number of diverse examples. I'd love to get some input on this change before I implement it. Feel free to comment here or on the template talk page. Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 16:32, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Strong conceptual support, but prefer a more minimalistic execution as seen on CFB articles. The proposed [[List of <City> <Team> seasons|City Team seasons]] centered link takes away from the Prev/Next links, and possibly wraps on some teams. UW Dawgs (talk) 15:53, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the input. I see your point with regard to potential wrapping with long team names. However, the way the template is coded it appears that the infobox stretches horizontally to accommodate longer content rather than wrapping. To see this impact I've added a test case for the Buccaneers (which is the longest NFL name I could come up with) to the testcase page. I don't think the slight increase in width of the infobox should be an issue for many. With regard to minimalism, I feel like retaining the [[List of <City> <Team> seasons|City Team seasons]] link allows one to do away with the "Seasons" line from the CFB article example and thus my proposal is more efficient vertically. One alternate proposal would be to simply change the middle link to be like [[List of <City> <Team> seasons|Seasons]]. — DeeJayK (talk) 18:32, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
In light of @UW Dawgs:' suggestion, I've added a parameter (shortnavlink) that would allow the user to override the default behavior. This has been implemented in the sandbox and a sample is provided in the testcases page. Please take a look and provide feedback. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
I don't know if this would be a helpful suggestion, but I recommend finding a way to add a color frame around the team rectangles within the infoboxes. For example, the Denver Broncos' primary color frame is orange and the secondary color frame is navy blue. I'm wondering if a navy blue secondary color frame could be added around the orange primary rectangle, and vice versa. Since the Indianapolis Colts and New York Jets only have one team color (other than white), this would not apply to them. I noticed that NBA team articles (the primary articles, not the season articles) have secondary color frames in their infoboxes, for the exception of the Brooklyn Nets. DPH1110 (talk) 21:24, 3 November 2015 (UTC)DPH1110
Thanks again for the feedback, @UW Dawgs:. The reason that > symbol is missing from the Jets example you cite is that someone has unnecessarily overridden the natural behavior of the infobox by populating the next parameter. There's no need to populate that parameter except in cases where the previous or next article in the series doesn't follow the same naming conventions (e.g. in the case of franchise moves or name changes). If the next parameter were simply removed from that Jets infobox, it would solve that issue. — DeeJayK (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
Yep, a quick spot check shows newer team season years frequently have the override parameters, whereas older season years generally do not.
2) However, is there a use case around non-playing years being manually overridden? CFB has similar gaps and believe we generally redirect 19xx to 19xx+1 at the article level, when the team didn't participate in 19xx, or the articles says "no team - WWI", etc.
3) It feels like there is a large audit and update for the ~2000 articles Category:National Football League seasons by team. Understood that this doesn't break anything, it just doesn't leverage the template. If that sounds correct, I can create a new Talk section with audit links to encourage collaboration and review signoff. UW Dawgs (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
The usage of the next and previous parameters is already documented in Template:Infobox NFL season/doc. If you have a good way to draw additional attention to the "correct" usage, I would encourage you to edit the documentation. Bear in mind that they're not truly deprecated as they can still be used in cases of team name changes and the like. In my experience the far more difficult issue is getting editors to actually read the documentation. As for chronology gaps, name changes, etc., thankfully these are relatively unusual in the NFL (compared to CFB). However, my changes DO allow the user to completely override the default presentation. An extreme example is Card-Pitt and I've added this to the testcases along with a way to handle it. There is a bit of cleanup that may need to occur in these instances, but I wouldn't expect it to be necessary on more than a small handful of pages. In any event the changes shouldn't completely break the functionality of any page. — DeeJayK (talk) 20:15, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
Cleanup The above change has been implemented. Many NFL team season articles have defined inline prev/next links. In some cases (override) links are necessary for naming or linking reasons, but in most cases explicit prev/next links are no longer required and often create inconsistencies with global UI defined above. Stipulated, nothing is broken, but cleanup needs to occur for this change to be consistently adopted. I don't think selective removal of prev/next links changes can be scripted. If not, there is manual cleanup in Category:National Football League teams seasons required. Here is the target list:
@UW Dawgs:, what change has been implemented? I don't see any change made to the Template:Infobox NFL season. Was there some other change you made? By the way, as long as we're going through these articles and cleaning up the templates, it would be a good idea to remove instances of the "teamcolor" parameter which has been completely deprecated in a previous effort. — DeeJayK (talk) 15:56, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Removal of explcit next and/or previous parameters where they are unnecessary, keeping them when required to support non-consecutive years and/or team name differences. "teamcolor" callout, noted. UW Dawgs (talk) 16:09, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. It seems that if we're going to go ahead with the proposed changes to the infobox template (and I've heard no strong opposition to doing so), it might make more sense to implement those changes prior to taking the time to do through the cleanup process on all the pages that use the template. No? — DeeJayK (talk) 16:51, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
I was under the impression you had already implemented these changes. (The Cardinals/Falcons edits resulted in "< 19xx" and "19xx >" style links, which are identical to the prior explicit inline links in almost every case). Where can your proposed changes be viewed? UW Dawgs (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
As I've stated more than once in this discussion, my proposed changes can be seen in the Template:Infobox NFL season/sandbox. You can see the difference from the production version of the Infobox here. You can see/test the impact of these changes on the testcases page. The changes that I think you are thinking of which obviate the need for the next/previous parameters in the vast majority of cases have been in place for a number of years (since maybe 2012). — DeeJayK (talk) 18:29, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
I understand now, having looked at the markup rather than the render of the examples. I'm also withdrawing support, pending removal of the previous/next layout changes entirely.
1. There are a significant number of articles (sample, above) which contain Prev/Next links via explicit parameters. These would need to be removed (where unnecessary) to ensure consistent navigation visuals, prior to any changes to the Prev/Next parameters.
Can you help me understand what made you withdraw your support. Absoulutely nothing has changed in the proposal as far as how the template handles alternate next/previous links since you provided "strong conceptual support" previously. There is nothing that the current infobox does with these links that the proposed refresh doesn't also support in at least as thorough a way. I've already noted that a small handful of articles will require touching to incorporate the new look. Probably the worst example of this is Card-Pitt and I've already proposed a solution for that implementation that I think looks and functions better than the current implementation (again, I'd point you to the Template:Infobox NFL season/testcases). There are probably fewer than 20 articles that have similarly convoluted chronologies due to consolidations during WWII and it will be simple to identify those articles and one can even implement fixes prior to introducing the template changes. I'm very willing to do just that. Can you point me to an example that you feel will be made worse (functionally or aesthically) by this proposed change? As far as your consistency argument, in my mind it's much more important that we maintain consistency within the NFL pages than consistency with what other sports/league projects have implemented. I agree we should look at the other similar examples in existence, but I feel that we shouldn't be afraid to break from the pack if we have a design that is better. I feel that the arrows (← and →) are more aesthetically pleasing than the less than and greater than symbols (< and >) and I also feel that they convey the sense of "forward" or "back" in a clearer way — the < and > can appear to be stray markup/code. Also, I feel like the examples from the other leagues/sports you cited have enough differences that they don't provide a standard blueprint to follow. Anyone else care to weigh in? — DeeJayK (talk) 03:40, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
Template:Infobox NFL diverged from the general "< previous" "next >" conventions in July 2015, with no apparent discussion. Similarly, Template:Infobox NFL Draft diverged in October 2015. There are 2000+ articles which use this template vs ~200 which use the two updated templates. So this proposed change does conform to very recent changes to two minority NFL templates (which should be narrowly reverted, imo), and remain at odds with the convention seen in the other major North American sports. UW Dawgs (talk) 05:12, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the response @UW Dawgs:. However, I'm not sure I yet fully understand your reluctance to support this change. It seems as though your primary objection rests on the use of the arrows (← and →) rather than the "less than" and "greater than" symbols (< and >) to signal the links to the next and previous seasons.
Digging into the symbols, your primary (sole?) stated argument against them is that of "convention". I understand this to a point — it's nice to maintain some consistency among articles in the encyclopedia when it makes sense. However, I don't quite understand why you insist on maintaining this particular "convention". Maybe you can help me understand why this is so important to you. First off, looking at the other templates you've cited, I don't see a clear "convention" — three of them do use the < and > symbols but the NCAA example uses the "left angle quotation mark" and "right angle quotation mark" (« and »). In addition to this, I don't see a lot of other agreement within these templates with the implementation of the entirety of the next/previous navigation portion at the bottom of the infobox. To wit, the MLB template produces the links spelled out as < Previous season Next season >, the NBA template produces < 2005–06 2007–08 >, the NHL template produces <2004–05 2006–07> (with alignment that differs from that of the NBA) and as noted the NCAA template produces « 1898 1900 » (within a grey background with the word "Seasons" centered above). That's not strong evidence that a single standard exists; only two of these actually agree in a substantive way, and even among those two differences with regard to positioning remain. If anything, the NCAA example shows that other projects have taken it upon themselves to take a different tack. In fact, I would argue that (with the exception of the introduction of the arrow symbols), my proposal brings this NFL template more in line with the examples that have been cited.
As to your contention that the adoption of the arrows on the other NFL templates should be reverted, while you're certainly free to hold that opinion and that discussion can surely be had if you wish to raise it, I've seen absolutely no discussion (pro or con) regarding the arrows since those changes were introduced. I tend to think that this means that most editors either were completely ambivalent about the change or had a positive opinion of it. Certainly I've seen no one who was sufficiently incensed/annoyed by the change to raise any concerns.
Were we to set all concerns about "convention" and matching other templates/projects aside, I'd like to get your opinion on the aesthetics of the change. In other words, if we were designing this on a clean sheet of paper, which look would you prefer? I happen to feel strongly that the < and > are a poor choice given that those symbols are used in HTML markup and as such seeing them on a page makes me wonder if they are just stray markup artifacts or cruft. The arrows (← and →) read to me as more intentional while conveying similar information.
Sorry for the diatribe. I feel the need to let you know that my intention is not to be didactic or to dismiss your opinions. On the contrary, I think this discussion has already led to positive tweaks and I'd like to get/build consensus for these changes which (I think) improve the template, which is the entire point of this exercise. Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 16:36, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi, understood and no hard feelings. Cheers for doing the sandbox work and initiating the Talk. I'm happy to restate 1) there is prerequisite cleanup work requirded (documented above) before any changes to previous/next could be introduced, without introducing inconsistency with the ~30%(?) of articles which inline one or both links. Perhaps that is a good project while others can review and comment. 2) I continue to support your non-previous / next changes, which can be implemented right now, it appears. 3) the other proposed changes move us further away from consistency from the similar North American sports templates, which we have both cited. This is a bad thing and deal-breaker, in my view. Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 05:26, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Re: cleanup - I see nothing in the changes being proposed that will increase the imperative to clean up the pages that use this template. The changes that obviated the need for explicit use of the "next" and "previous" parameters have been in place for years. The proposed changes don't incorporate anything which increase the need or urgency for such a cleanup. I have already stated that there are a small handful of articles (certainly no where near your 30% figure, I would put it at less than 30 articles) in cases where there was a break in the chronology as in the example I've already cited of Card-Pitt where some cleanup may be needed. I've already identified a couple of these cases and remediated the impact in advance of the implementation of the proposed changes. Unless you can point out how the proposed changes make such a cleanup MORE necessary than they are today (as I've asked you to do previously), I'm prepared to dismiss this argument as a complete red herring. But even if that weren't the case, why wouldn't we settle on the changes and THEN do the cleanup so that we don't have to go back and re-validate every article a second time. Update (11/16): in hopes of eliminating this argument I've begun systematically going through with a cleanup/pre-cleaning process with every article that uses this Infobox. This cleanup consists of:
a) Moving any articles that were still using the old {{NFL season}} template to {{Infobox NFL season}}. This effort is now Task complete. . This cleanup task is not related in any way to the proposed changes.
b) Removing all instances of "teamcolor" parameter which has been completely deprecated. This cleanup task is not related in any way to the proposed changes.
c) Removing "next" and "previous" parameters in all cases except as needed for a discontinuity in the chronology or in cases of team name changes or franchise moves. This cleanup task is not related in any way to the proposed changes.
d) For pre-1932 articles comment out any content in "playoffs" parameter since no playoffs were held. Again, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the proposed changes.
e) For pre-1933 articles change use of "division_place" to "league-place" since the NFL had no divisions.
f) Adding "no_prevseason" and "no_nextseason" parameters on articles on inaugural and final seasons respectively. This has no impact unless/until the proposed changes are deployed, but as per my earlier point, I don't relish going through ALL of these articles a second time, so think of this as pre-cleanup.
g) Adding a "shortnavlink" parameter to most articles which specifies the middle link in the navigation at the bottom of the infobox (which is generally a link to the [[List of <City> <Team> seasons]] article) to be simply "<Team> seasons" (e.g. "Jets seasons") rather than the default "<City> <Team> seasons" or "<City> <Team>" (in cases where the [[List of <City> <Team> seasons]] article doesn't exist). This is done to address concerns about the length of this link impacting the overall width of the infobox. As with (f) above there is no immediate impact of this change.
h) Adding an "alternatenav" in cases where the continuity is particularly thorny (e.g. 1947 Baltimore Colts season). As with (f) above there is no immediate impact of this change.
Re: implementing "non-previous/next changes" - making these changes in bits and pieces simply increases the post-change validation/clean-up work that should be done. I'd love to get consensus/compromise on the entirety of the changes before moving forward.
Re: your "consensus" argument - This is where I disagree with you most vehemently. I've spelled out my counters to your arguments above, but you have so far refused to address my counter-arguments, to wit:
a) I dispute your claim that consensus even exists amongst the various templates you have cited. In lining up all these templates I simply don't see a consensus. Again, I've asked explicitly for you to explain what this "consensus" consists of, but you have chosen to ignore my request for clarification.
b) Even if there were consensus (which, again, I don't see), I wholeheartedly reject your assertion that this project needs to be slavishly beholden to an approach that is implemented by other projects. Apparently according to you the only way a change could ever be implemented to a template such as this is if we get the entire community of WP editors on board to agree to a single approach. While that might be the Platonic ideal, I can't imagine a way that would be workable in the real world. If we lived in your world we might as well just encase WP in amber today and walk away; in my world, WP is an evolving entity. To me, this sort of question is part of the reason why WP has projects: each project can make their own way forward based on consensus within that project. To this point, intra-project consistency (which is part of what I am trying to achieve with these changes) should be valued above inter-project consistency.
c) Other than "consistency" (if we were to set that entire argument aside for a moment), is there anything about the chronological navigation of the proposed infobox that you object with? Is is simply the arrows? Is is the link to the list of seasons in the middle? I feel that the center link not only expands the reader's options for navigating to different seasons, but it also infers the information that the left and right year links will take the reader to the next and previous season. This obviates the need for the existing "Timeline" header in the existing infobox. These changes combine to make the infobox both more useful and more compact. What changes would you suggest? So far, your approach is merely to veto; I'd like to see if there exists something that we can agree on.
I have nothing new to add, but am happy to repeat. 1/c) Remains a callout that some articles have unnecessary inline next and/or previous links. Those should be removed before any change, to avoid having two navigational experiences of new and old across all articles. A more pronounced version of this involves rendering two different styles of links on the same article, due to a single inline next or previous link , but this is a subset of the first callout. So yes, all articles should be audited and unnecessary next/previous inline links removed. 2) Is a misstatement of my position, nor have I ascribed this as consensus. It is demonstrable that the proposed next/previous navigation does not exist in any similiar North American sports template, as I have shown. NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL team articles universally use < and >, and differ at the margin re link text. College team articles use stylized double arrows. This aspect of the proposed change would move us further away from consistency with sibling articles. Hence, that portion remains narrowly opposed. UW Dawgs (talk) 04:13, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Re: "Those (next/previous links) should be removed before any change, to avoid having two navigational experiences of new and old across all articles." — this does not happen now, nor would it happen with my proposed changes. While these (next/previous) parameters are superfluous for the bulk of articles, their presence does NOT impact the presentation in a major way. In fact, to the degree there is ANY difference with their use (which consists of a missing < and > symbol), those differences are resolved in my proposed changes. If you contend otherwise, I'd love to see an example. This goes to my point that it's much more appropriate to settle on the changes and then do the clean-up. However, given your insistence on reversing that order, I've undertaken a "pre"-clean effort as I've described above.
Re: your "consistency" argument, that's simply something where it seems we're not going to reach consensus between the two of us. It seems we simply don't see eye-to-eye on what consistency means and how strictly it needs be applied. And since you refuse to discuss the substance of the design vis-a-vis that used in the other projects (setting aside your consistency crutch), I'm not sure what more I can say. — DeeJayK (talk) 15:45, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I've completed the cleanup (pre-cleaning?) process as prescribed above by UW Dawgs. I've also addressed every concern raised with regard to the impact of these proposed changes. We seem to have reached an impasse in our dialog w/r/t maintaining "consistency" with the similar Infoboxes in terms of the navigation links. In light of that, I'm going to move forward with the implementation of the changes. This should draw attention to the topic and inspire other editors to share their opinions. Thanks. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:20, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
User:AoorwHead has unilaterally moved Mercedes-Benz Stadium to another name for the second time, as he/she doesn't think two stadiums should have "the same name", meaning the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Both moves were done without discussion. Unfortunately, the user vandalized the original title, thus the page can't be moved back except by an admin. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 17:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Crash, Infobox NFL player is already fully encoded for Canadian players. The Canadian football project prefers to continue using Infobox gridiron football player. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:07, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
So, I created a new article. Could someone give it a rating, I'm biased so I shouldn't. Also, before anyone asks, he's played in two games this season for Dallas. Crash Underride05:51, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
I may have uberred Randy Moss this weekend. Subsequently, I looked up his wikipedia page to determine that a skilled editor needs to attend to this article. I am hoping someone else wants to do this. There are may uncited paragraphs of facts. There are citation needed tags. The article is in bad shape in terms of WP:V. Someone needs to attend to this page.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 19:18, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
So, wait. Now every Hail Mary pass that winds a game ends up getting it's own article? Really? It's not like we haven't seen it before. The first one I can understand because it had never before been seen and also that's how the pass got it's name. But come on. I personally can't support the articles existence. I know that's not the topic here but just my opinion. CrashUnderride14:49, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
I don't have a large enough sample size, but the few non-Americans I have ever talked to while outside of the U.S who also didn't really follow "football" have each called it "gridiron football". "American football", aside from chasing a link, makes it unclear if it is referring to soccer in America or to what Americans call football. Even the bios could start mentioning a player's nationality, as we presumably don't already because "American American football player" would look too weird. However, "American gridiron football player" would work just fine. It's confusing how we sometimes use "gridiron football", e.g. Conversion (gridiron football), but other times use "American football".—Bagumba (talk) 19:21, 3 December 2015 (UTC) The "gridiron football" disambiguations probably should say "American and Canadian football" instead (and some do), but it's twice as long. This has been a Wikipedia naming argument any time we an article or template that is common to both American and Canadian football -- brevity vs. use of the real world common names. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:01, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
Although it's clear as mud, I took the OP to be referring to the title of the project, and I responded accordingly. - BilCat (talk) 19:25, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
If a non-American didn't know the NFL and just looked at the name as English words, it probably would not. But then again, we American declare all of our teams as "World Champions".—Bagumba (talk) 19:29, 3 December 2015 (UTC) Perhaps they can call them "world champions" because no one in their right mind thinks an all-star team from Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia is going to beat the New England Patriots or Kansas City Royals? Just sayin'. An international all-star team probably could beat the NBA champions several times in a 7-game series, if not win it outright. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:53, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
The problem with using "gridiron football" in articles written in American English, primarily for an American audience, is that most Americans have no clue what "gridiron football" is. "Gridiron" is an archaic nickname for the American sport, and is not widely used here anymore. When it is used, it is typically employed by American sports writers as a colorful metaphor for the playing field -- which is, of course, the actual origin of the term. Most British and Commonwealth sports fans know American football is not soccer or a rugby variant, although we have the occasional weird soccer partisans on Wikipedia who don't think American football should be called "football" because football players don't move the ball with their feet (well, other than punters and placekickers. If you want a sample of silliness, you only have to look at the talk page of the American football and History of American football articles, as well as the periodic outbreaks of edit-warring at those articles over the name of the sport. The irony is that virtually no one in the United States refers to the sport as "American football"; here, it's just "football" and most of the literate English-speaking world knows that. Linking to the articles for the sport, the player's position, the player's team, and the National Football League in the opening sentence of a player's bio is more than sufficient (to anyone who does not have some axe to grind) to identify the sport of American football.
And for the record, the "gridiron" sport name is mostly used in places like Australia, where they play soccer, two variants of rugby, Gaelic football, and their own homegrown Australian rules football, and where American football is a very minor sport. On Wikipedia, "American football" is more than sufficient to disambiguate the sport from soccer, the two rugby variants, and Gaelic and Australian rule football. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:53, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
"The irony is that virtually no one in the United States refers to the sport as "American football". True, but it's also easily understandable by most Americans, especially in a context of discussing other football codes, particularly Canadian football. - BilCat (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
I suppose there's a lot of other things to clean up in WP:NFL, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. In the meantime, non-American's like Nate Burleson have their lead as "... is a Canadian-born former American football wide receiver", which doesn't exactly say what his nationality is, but avoids the clumsy "is a Canadian American football wide receiver".—Bagumba (talk) 21:49, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
I've been there, and done that drill, Bags. Try ". . . is a Canadian former player of American football who was a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL) for seven seasons . . ." There is more than one way to skin that cat. This is an argument I had with several formerly active sports editors five or six years ago -- the so-called standard lead sentence for NFL player articles was awkward, poorly written and did not provide a clear meaning in a variety of situations, including the one you noted above. Good writers need flexibility to describe various circumstances, and sometimes more than a single sentence is needed to clearly and concisely describe those circumstances. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
BTW, with regard to the "Canadian-born" construction, I would only use that if he was a natural-born Canadian who became a U.S. citizen. Otherwise, if he was and remains a Canadian citizen, he only needs to be described as a "Canadian". I usually save the "-born" construction for someone who was born and perhaps grew up, and perhaps educated elsewhere. One could easily describe Henry Kissinger as "a German-born American diplomat and foreign policy scholar . . ." and that would go a long way to explaining his accent. He clearly was not born and raised in Alabama. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:14, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
So we should start adding "American players of American football" to be consistent with other bios and MOS:BLPLEAD, or we assume the world knows that Americans are the only ones that typically bash their brains in this sport. The latter may or may not be true, but the former definitely sucks.—Bagumba (talk) 19:46, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
I would do "American players of [[American football|football]]." It would be a little easter eggy but I think that would be acceptable in this case. -DJSasso (talk) 21:27, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Well, if eggs weren't a problem, why not go with the conventional "American [[American football|football]] player"? Of course a non-American would take even "American players of football" to mean someone like Tim Howard. Oh well, I'm sure it's unpatriotic of me to even be caring about this.—Bagumba (talk) 21:54, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
That example would be easier to be confused as to be meaning American football I would think as opposed to indicating nationality and sport. But I don't overly care. Just thought I would mention it as an option. -DJSasso (talk) 14:50, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
An IP is currently adding All-Pro's selections to the infobox from a website called "Spreadapedia". Clearly these are not notable and should not be in the infobox. I was told "You don't have any right to determine what All-Pro teams are valid and which are not" and "I will keep adding them, thank you very much". I don't want to violate 3RR so can I get some help reverting these?--Yankees1023:55, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
In what may come as no surprise, this IP editor is also the creator of the Spreadapedia All-Pro selections, and he is now complaining about his Wikipedia editing experience on Twitter: https://twitter.com/spreadapedia. Is there grounds yet to block this IP? Jweiss11 (talk) 02:03, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
The tweet "I figure I'm probably just as qualified as at least half of, if not all of the AP voters." pretty much sums up what we are dealing with. I would think that WP:NOTFORUM, WP:NOTWEBHOST and WP:NOTDIRECTORY apply in this situation. I don't know whether this discussion is enough for you to go to AN/I. I doubt the site would qualify as a WP:RS but you might ask for more input at the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard and proceed from there but that is just one editor's suggestion. MarnetteD|Talk02:22, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Logos on season articles
Can I appeal to the sensibility of this WikiProject and ask that we remove all of the generic team logos from individual season articles? By my understanding, the "logo" parameter in {{Infobox NFL season}} is supposed to be only for logos specific to that season (see 2010 Minnesota Vikings season), and therefore adding the generic franchise wordmarks to articles is inappropriate. Even though the wordmarks are copyright-free, it seems like unnecessary decoration to add them to the season articles. – PeeJay16:52, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Nomination for deletion of Template:Los Angeles-St. Louis Rams Annual Sack Leaders
Just a heads up, I've created this article by splitting the NFL related content from Uniform number (American football) as it appeared to be dominating that article. I've also tried to improve it by moving the text around, changing the sections etc, but I haven't changed what any of it actually says, or at least I don't think I have. I'd like someone who knows more about the subject than me to give it a once over (and the NFL summary in the uniform article), to ensure I haven't introduced any glaring errors. Brown 72 DF (talk) 19:52, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Off-topic digression re jersey numbers
@Brown 72 DF: Completely by coincidence, I was looking at the uniform number articles today -- and I had a question. For American college and professional football, are numbers not more commonly referred to as "jersey numbers," not "uniform numbers"? We called them jersey numbers when I played high school ball in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but that might just be a regionalism of limited application . . . . Most commonly, I think most players and fans just refer to them as a player's "number," but that's obviously ambiguous for purposes of titling an article. I am curious to hear the opinion of other knowledgeable editors. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I've wondered the same thing. A quick-and-dirty Google search count reveals: "NFL jersey number" → 327,000 hits; "NFL uniform number" → 13,100 hits. That's only a single data point, but it's pretty definitive in favor of jersey. BTW, sorry to bring this further off-topic, Brown 72 DF. — DeeJayK (talk) 20:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, DJK. That's a pretty good indicator for me -- especially when a goodly percentage of the "NFL uniform number" hits are probably related to Wikipedia mirror articles that use the "uniform number" language. As Wikipedia becomes web-dominant, we often find that such "Google hits" tests are significantly affected/biased by whatever word choices and articles have already been made on Wikipedia. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 06:23, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
Inclusion of the word "present" in coach navbox templates
According to Yankees10 (talk·contribs), we should be using the "2016–" style instead of the same way we do in the infobox, which is "2016–present". Don't see why we are being inconsistent here, and I don't think what the NBA or NHL navboxes have should matter for the NFL. Comments? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:19, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
You asked "why do we always omit "present" from these, but not infoboxes?" I answered " because no other coaching templates including other sports does? No reason for this one to be randomly different" What I meant was you just randomly changed the Buccaneers one without bothering to change the other 31 teams. There should have been an "NFL" before the "coaching" part. That was the main reason why I reverted it. I only brought up the other sports in response to your question to why "present" has never been used. It's possible people haven't added it because other sports don't. I didn't mean we should exclude "present" just because other sports don't have it. Anyways it doesn't make a huge difference either way honestly, but I don't find it necessary to have.--Yankees1003:46, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
I was going to do the other ones later (pretty sure I've done most of them already, but seems like they all get reverted without me noticing). I just think it matters for consistency sake, but it's not big enough to war over. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:12, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Never knew why navs deserved the special format either, but never bothered me enough to pursue it. Agree that NFL navs should either all have present or not, but not a mix.—Bagumba (talk) 07:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
Rightly or wrongly, we have consistently omitted "present" since all of the coach succession boxes for baseball, basketball, football, and the random college sports were deleted and replaced with navboxes for each team's coach succession history in 2010–11. I don't care whether "present" is included or not, but they should all be done in a single way to maintain the style consistency across all American sports. Start a mini-RFC on this page, place invitations on the talk pages for the NFL, college football, NBA, college basketball projects, MLB, and college baseball projects, and let's settle this. It should not be controversial: maintain a single style for all, regardless. Let's take 10 days or two weeks, educate everyone, and take the time to do this right and establish a hard consensus that can be referenced in the future. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:17, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
The prevailing standard for these navboxes across all these sports projects was birthed in WikiProject College football, when we standardized the format there in late 2010. I think the decision to omit "present" was done so as a space-saving measure, although the amount of space at stake here is rather small. At any rate, perhaps the infobox and navboxes should be brought in line. As Dirtlawyer1 suggested above, an RFC would be the way to go. For time being, let's keep things consistent and as they are. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
The cynical side of me says move on to something else that adds missing content to Wikipedia, as opposed to a time sucker like this which probably will only get reverted even with a discussion. For a similar example, WP:NBA had a consensus at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Basketball_Association/Archive_17#Format_for_interim_coaches on how to list interim coaches in the coaches navbox, namely with a superscripted #, e.g. #. At some point they were all reverted without discussion, presumably in the name of "consistency". Moreover efforts to remove the word "pound" when referring to # in the key were overridden, again for consistency, even though £ is "pound" to a lot of the English-speaking world, and keys generally refer to *, †, ‡, §, etc visually without needing to explicitly write the words asterisk, dagger, double-dagger, or section sign.—Bagumba (talk) 01:55, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Trust me: Weiss, Rikster, Jrcla and several others patrol these navboxes like hungry sharks. Whatever the consensus is, it will stick. They are remarkably uniform, and they've been kept that way for four or five years. Tee it up. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Team navbox format
An IP was mass changing the piping of articles in the navboxes. See their edits. My main objection was to a rivalry like Chargers–Chiefs rivalry being shown instead of the previous format Kansas City Chiefs on Template:San Diego Chargers. It's implied the Chargers are involved, and it's repetitive to see "rivalry" over and over. Moreover, some might know not who the Chiefs are. I've blocked the user because they wouldn't acknowledge their talk page, but will unblock once I know they are at least seeing the message. Other changes they made, which I have no opinion either way, are changing the division from West to AFC West, when the conference is already listed above.—Bagumba (talk) 00:38, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
As the IP has not commented, and there is no input here, I'm going to boldly revert the mass changes. Feel free to discuss if there are objections.—Bagumba (talk) 02:44, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. I just saw that. For the record in response to your edit summary, they weren't blocked for the edits per se. They were blocked (3 hours only) for continuing to make the edits even though I tried to discuss with them, and the block was merely because it's conceivable an editor wouldn't know to look at the talk notification (though it's an intelligent newbie who edits templates). They would be unblocked unconditionally if they just acknowledged receiving their talk page, and it'll soon expire anyways.—Bagumba (talk) 02:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I want to gently remind everyone: per MOS:CAPS, we use "sentence case" capitalization, which means we only capitalize the first word of a sentence, article title, section header, or a phrase or fragment that appears in an infobox data field -- unless individual words are proper nouns like the name of a person, place or organization. As applied to American football articles, that means we capitalize player and team names such as "Doug Pederson" and "Philadelphia Eagles," but we do not capitalize player positions such as "quarterback," coaching titles like "defensive coordinator," or statistics descriptions such as "rushing yards" and "return yards". If phrases that are non-proper nouns appear in infobox data fields or field labels, then only the first word of the phrase is capitalized.
If you are uncertain whether certain words or phrases should be capitalized, please refer to MOS:CAPS or ask for advice from your fellow editors here. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:00, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
Hmm. then I think we should settle on one of these styles, seen below. I think the latter option looks better, doesn't violate any known guideline, and is better formatted for showing on mobile devices. Disagree? EDIT: Check the Khalil Mack article again to see what it looks like.
True, but now that it isn't a true "list", does it still need the second position to be capitalized? Check the article again to see if it looks fine. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:32, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Players who routinely play two positions are problematic. You cannot use {{nowrap}} for multiple player positions in the infobox "position" field, because it forces the artificial widening of the box, and distorts the width and other layout and design elements of the template. The best solution is to push the second (or third) positions to separate lines if they cannot both be displayed on the same line and separated by an ampersand, comma or slash. If the individual positions display on separate lines of text, the first word of each position should be capitalized; if two positions are displayed on the same line of text, then only the first word of the first position should be capitalized. Barring that, just ask. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:43, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
In infobox data fields, we capitalize the first word of the input data using sentence case per MOS:CAPS. If we're specifically discussing what gets capitalized in the player "position" field, here are some common examples:
In the main body text of an article, none of the foregoing should be capitalized at all -- unless they are the first word of a sentence. Hypothetical examples:
"After being chosen by Cleveland Browns in the 1971 NFL draft, Biff Jones was converted from playing wide receiver on offense to free safety on defense. Jones is best remembered for returning an interception for 85 yards and a touchdown in the final moments of the Browns' final regular season game – a defensive score that clinched the victory and a division title, and propelled the Browns into the 1973 NFL playoffs."
Bottom line: there are two basic rules of capitalization at work here:
Non-proper nouns are generally not capitalized, unless
They are the first word of a sentence, section header, infobox field label, or infobox data field.
So unless I'm misunderstanding, the current way the Mack article has the positions listed is fine? (second one is not capitalized, since it's not the "first word". ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
No, sir, D93, your understanding is perfect. I would say, however, that is probably the maximum amount of text you will ever be able to force onto a single line of the infobox. One or two characters more, and that puppy will start line-wrapping, at which point it is better to place the second position on a second line of text. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:47, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that NBA and MLB bios typically capitalize multiple positions separated by spaced slash in the bio's infobox. I'm at a loss to think of many multi position NFL players. Finally thought of Kordell Stewart, who has "Quarterback / Wide receiver". Not sure if there is a MOS specific for slashes, or if there is a defacto standard for WP:NFL. I would have though caps all, but it could be skewed by the other sports.—Bagumba (talk) 04:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Bags, the listing of multiple positions for football players is more of a challenge for (a) historical players in eras when it was common, if not typical, to play on both offense and defense, (b) retired players who may have played more than one predominant position at different times during their pro careers, and (c) coaches, for whom it is increasingly common to hold two or even three different titles at the same time -- and each of those titles are usually two or three words long. Most often, because of their relative length, multiple coaching titles are usually better presented on separate lines of text within the infobox "position" field. It's challenging to balance all of these considerations, especially when we are relying on volunteer editors and not on a professional typesetter to make the refinements. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
TBH, I lost hope on getting much concerted organization on NFL articles a while ago. Was probably after some effort at Ben Roethlisberger to remove undue comparison to Elway in the lead, and the constant game-by-game stat logs in prose. Then there's the plethora of "honors" and obscure records in the infoboxes, and classic navs like {{Current NFL long snappers}}.—Bagumba (talk) 04:53, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
You get no argument from me on that score. WP:NFL generates way too much bottom-of-the-page navbox cruft, too many listings of infobox garbage awards (e.g., Pepsi Special Teams Player of the Week!), trivial honors (e.g., 87th-ranked NFL player of 2007!), and the like. More than half of the navboxes should be scraped off like s@#$ off my shoe, and we should force prioritization of infobox honors by limiting the number of lines of text available within the "Career highlights" section of the infobox. When a former pro player has been inducted into the Pro Football HOF and College Football HOF, won two Super Bowls, was a consensus All-American, received multiple Pro Bowl selections and multiple first-team All-Pro honors, then we really don't need to also list the f------ Columbus Rotary Award for Best NFL Back (1998), Pepsi Offensive Player of the Week (Weeks 3, 4, 7, 1994; Weeks 5, 6 and 12, 1997), the Pensacola Sports Hall of Fame, or the NFL record for most rushing touchdowns on fourth down by a rookie quarterback. We have too many peripheral editors who have no sense of perspective, no editorial judgment, and no ability to prioritize anything listed in the infobox, so we wind up with infoboxes that sometimes have more than 50 lines of text -- and that's just goofy. There are many equally silly aspects of our NFL articles that need to be addressed, but you have to start somewhere -- and I would suggest we need shorter infoboxes, far fewer navboxes, and a much greater emphasis on well-written text over bottom-of-the-page cruft. Of course, that's part of the problem with our volunteer labor pool -- it's easier and apparently more fun to create more navboxes or add meaningless minor awards to infoboxes than it is two write three coherent paragraphs, with footnotes, about a HOF quarterback's pro career. But I digress. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:28, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
We sidetracked from Dissident93's issue. If multiple positions on a single line, ""Quarterback / Wide receiver" or "Quarterback / wide receiver"? NBA and Baseball choose the former (caps).—Bagumba (talk) 06:03, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, guys. The answer clearly got lost in my rambling. Asked and answered @ 03:47 above. If multiple positions on a single line, then "Quarterback / wide receiver", or, if you prefer, "Quarterback & wide receiver". Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 06:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
To add a few more wrinkles to this issue, let me add my perspective. Much of my editing centers on college football coaches, most of who played at least college football, and many of who played multiple sports, particularly those that played in the early 1900s. In the player_positions field of Template:Infobox college coach, my practice has been to only capitalize the first word of the first listed position and to separate positions with commas, e.g. "End, tackle" as found at Harry J. Robertson. But then things get complicated for a guy like Bennie Oosterbaan! Jweiss11 (talk) 07:56, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
What is this project's stance on succession boxes? I could have sworn the NFL was following suit with the college sports' projects to eliminate all of them (this edit caught my attention). Jrcla2 (talk) 21:48, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I've recently started adding some for the sake of a complete chain. Readers of the encyclopedia may wish to follow a chain of coordinators and, as they are rather hit and miss, I've been filling them in. I think a better idea would be more navboxes for coordinators, or even position coaches. Perhaps even categories for coordinators/position coaches by team. I do think that we should have consensus before that change takes place, or before a change takes place to remove the succession boxes. I do, however, think it's important to have something there, for the sake of the reader. schetm (talk) 22:08, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
We need to have boundaries on what is notable to show succession (whether it be w/ a succession box or a navbox) vs what is not. Otherwise, every assistant coach position will soon have navboxes (and invariably full of redlinks). Starting players would be fair game too.—Bagumba (talk) 22:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
Five years ago, we eliminated all the kludgey succession boxes for NFL head coaches in favor of a single uniform navbox template for the full succession of head coaches of every NFL team. It was a good move. Since then, we have had a small number of editors add succession boxes for coordinators and other assistant coaches with no consensus to do so. It was a bad move, and partially defeated the original idea of doing away with succession boxes in our coaches bio articles. Our NFL articles do not need more bottom-of-the-page clutter.
A lot of editors hate succession boxes because they take up an ordinate amount of space relative to the marginal navigational aide they provide to our readers, because every one of them looks differently because their dimensions change based on the length of the included names and titles, and because they're butt ugly. Moreover, there is no screaming demand among our readers for a convenient graphic tool to navigate the succession of position coaches for every NFL team from the beginning of time through 2016. We have annual season articles for every season of every NFL team; for the occasional reader who really wants to know, for example, who every Indianapolis Colts assistant coach was, we should finish building out the coaches rosters for all of the individual team season articles -- most of them already exist. And as Schetm suggested above, creating lists of NFL coordinators would be a good idea, too. Both of those ideas would be meaningful content that would actually help our readers; succession boxes are just cruft. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:46, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
With regards to taking up space at the bottom of articles, we could always put these succession boxes/navboxes into a collapsable template, as is common with the events/tennants succession boxes at the bottom of stadiums/arenas. It is important to save space and minimalize clutter at the bottom of articles, but it's also important to have something there. There's no reason why both can't be done. schetm (talk) 02:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
The questions is not if we could do it, but why should we do it. I'm not a big fan of collapsing marginally useful stuff.—Bagumba (talk) 03:33, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
In the absence of a WP:NFL consensus to keep any NFL succession boxes, I am going to start deleting them on sight. For the record, I am in favor of the creation of lists of NFL coordinators by team, but not in favor of creating navboxes for the same. Many of our head coaches are already overwhelmed with too many navboxes. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:39, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I also don't think there's consensus to delete them all. The status quo should prevail until there is consensus. schetm (talk) 03:43, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
A bold edit is one way to gauge consensus within reason, and I'd support DL testing the waters, as most are saying here (so far) that they'd prefer navs anyway. If we waited for discussion on everything nothing would get done. Shouldn't be a problem as long as WP:BRD is followed.—Bagumba (talk) 03:59, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
On the Washington Redskins article, there has been a bit of controversy with how to rank them in regards to Super Bowl wins. (Are they ranked fourth all time with three wins, or seventh?) The discussion for it is here. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
NFL Unsung Hero Award (?)
Does anyone know anything about the "NFL Unsung Hero Award"? We do not appear to have an article on this award, and I am struggling to believe that it is anything approaching notable per WP:GNG, or even worth noting in player or coach infoboxes. If anyone can shed some light on this, I would be grateful. I've encountered it in a couple of infobox "highlights" sections, and my first impulse was just to delete it, but I thought I should inquire here first. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I looked at the Chiefs article's history, and it seems the larger problem lies with this edit: should the team colors mentioned in the article be their primary colors, or also their minor colors? Reliability of the source aside, it's pretty easy to eyeball and see that there is black (or some shade of it) used as an outline in the Chiefs uniforms and logos. Does that warrant it being a team color worth putting in the infobox? I would lean towards listing what RS's generally call the team's colors, and not blindly listing all colors found on a stylesheet, which is a form of original research.—Bagumba (talk) 01:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I don't agree that sourcing from a stylesheet is OR, assuming they are official, but it should only be primary colors anyway. Every team has white in their overall color pallet (for away uniforms), and most have black (outline/shading in the logos). Only three teams (Colts, Jets, and Cardinals) consider white to be a primary color for them, so any other team that features white as a team color should have it removed. The same thing should be done with black, as only the Falcons, Steelers, Saints, Panthers, Raiders, Bengals, Ravens, and Jaguars feature black as a primary/secondary color. Any alternate uniform that features black should not be included (49ers, Cardinals, and Eagles, although the Eagles feature black as a tertiary color in their normal uniforms, so that's a tricky one) ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:52, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
I meant OR in the sense if we just pull colors off a stylesheet (assume it's reliable for sake of argument) even though sources never call them their primary colors and an eye test confirms that they are minor colors.—Bagumba (talk) 00:01, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Team colors are kinda tricky. I agree with Dissident93 on this. The overwhelming majority of the teams in the league use white somewhere in their logo, but the tricky part is most official sources still list white as an official team color. The real question is, should we include white if it is an official team color? Like the Chiefs official colors are red, gold, and white, but when looking at their uniforms most people would think red and gold only. The Bengals, another prime example, white is an official team color, but most people would only think orange and black between their helmets and all the logos they use from the "B" that is their official logo now, to the actual tiger logo they still use from time to time.--Rockchalk71706:01, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I think that's where the real OR issues come in. Do we just list all of what the official media/style guide states, or do we limit it to two or three. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 08:12, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Yeah that is part of the dispute about the reliable source issue I had the other day. A second source isn't really needed because its already pretty well sourced with a reliable source.--Rockchalk71707:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Missing topic: Quality control coach
We really need a well-researched, well-sourced, and well-written article about the concept of the "quality control coach" in the NFL. This might be an excellent joint research project for some of our newer WP:NFL members as they get to know each other and how to build a properly written encyclopedia article. This is real topic that needs a proper article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
This is the best description I could find but I think the website would be probably be considered a blog. Just doing a simple google search, that's only thing I could find. I do agree though that an article should be created. I think a good balance of experience would be best. Maybe a couple experienced editors like the both of you, a couple with medium experience like myself, and some newbies.--Rockchalk71706:06, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Guys, here's a Google search for "offensive quality control" and "defensive quality control." There's some stuff out there, but we're going to have to work for the good sources. This concept has been around for 25+ years, but has not received a lot of high-profile attention. As I work through our current NFL head coach articles, I can see that it has become an increasingly common stepping stone on the way to major position coach, coordinator and head coach. Apparently, the job description usually includes the ability to perform statistical analysis (not typical of most coaches). In building a good encyclopedia article, I think we should rely primarily on newspaper feature articles, trade publications like Pro Football Weekly, and published books on coaching. We need to avoid relying on newspaper passing mentions, blogs and fansites as cited sources, but we can certainly use them for guidance in where to look for the better sources.
I would have to agree with you on that. It should be pretty easy to build if we can find plenty of reliable sources.--Rockchalk71703:45, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93 and Rockchalk717: If either or both of you -- or anyone else -- would like to start a new stub for "quality control coach," I would be happy to join in and do a substantial part of the research and writing in cooperation with you and others. I suggest we start the stub and start collecting all linked sources we can find on the talk page, including those that may not be "reliable" per WP:RS, but have something substantial to say on the topic. Sometimes blogs and fansites, although unreliable, may provide valuable clues as to where else we should look for sources and particular subtopics we should be searching. I would think we could easily write a substantive three to four paragraph article that explains the typical job description and the evolving nature of the job title and substantive role on professional football teams. We would then have an article to which we could link when writing and building out our NFL coach biographies. Let me know what you think. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:52, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I will try to track down some reliable sources tonight and try to get the page started. I've created a couple of stubs before, but they were player pages. I might start it in my sandbox and play with it until I get a decent stub going. If I have trouble identifying if a source that is reliable I will run them by the both of you and see if we can get a consensus.--Rockchalk71703:21, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93 and Dirtlawyer1: Thinking of including a not about Kathryn Smith being the first female coach as the Bills Special Teams Quality control coach in the article. What do you guys think?--Rockchalk71718:04, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
You give good stub. Who is this Kathryn Smith person? Was she that preseason intern they were trying to bill as the first woman coach in the NFL? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:24, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
No. The Bills hired her a couple weeks ago and made her the first female full-time head coach. The only reason I mentioned her is she is the Bills special teams quality control coach.--Rockchalk71719:08, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
No more than a single sentence. Discussion of women coaches in the NFL, and of a relatively minor figure like Smith, could quickly overwhelm a brief article. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:17, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
I think something could be said about his stand-up comedy on the page. There's some videos of his shows on YouTube (and he's not bad actually). Lizard (talk) 17:33, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but is that notable? Just redirecting to a video on YouTube isn't allowed, and I can't imagine there are many third party sources on the personal life of NFL punters. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Nevermind, I just searched and found an article on his shows, so I guess I'll re-add it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) ~ Dissident93 (talk)
Does someone need a little project to occupy them for the next week or two?
Our navboxes for current NFL coaches below the head coach level are a mess (see Category:National Football League coach navigational boxes), and need some loving care from an interested WP:NFL editor who is willing to follow all of the 2016 coaching changes and update the navboxes with the newly hired position coaches until the music stops in this 2016 round of NFL musical chairs. Any volunteers? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I know for sure a lot of the position coach ones are outdated. I don't think they are many more openings left, so it could be updated in one sitting. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:51, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd be willing to do a few. One of my personal goals with my edits is to keep things like that up to date as hires are made. I'll start on a few tonight and try to make a goal to have one updated each day.--Rockchalk71702:06, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Question though. For cases of like the Bills for example who have a main defensive backs coach in Tim McDonald then Ed Reed is the assistant, the Chiefs are similar with Emmitt Thomas and Al Harris.--Rockchalk71702:10, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Hmmm. We don't list "assistant" head coaches in the head coach navbox, so maybe we shouldn't list assistant position coaches either. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
These should be gone. Head coaches, Off. and Def. coordinators are fine but the rest are silly and unnecessary in my opinion. God knows how many are still on pages where the person hasn't been a coach in a few years.--Yankees1002:47, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
If were going to try to get a consensus on this I won't waste my time lol. I think we should only have offensive coordinator defensive and special teams as far as assistants are concerned.--Rockchalk71703:13, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
I would love to put it to head count to get rid of these NFL current position coach navboxes. Really. I've always hated them as part of the bottom-of-the-page NFL cruft that exploded about 5 or 6 years ago. If we do get rid of them, however, my only concern is that half of the position coach articles will never get updated without these navboxes to prompt the updates. Even if we get rid of the navboxes we really need to keep WP:NFL lists to track the articles -- or some other reliable system to do so. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:09, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
Stats update wording on infobox
The 2015 regular season ended in Jan 2016 this year. I saw someone changed the year on Philip Rivers' infobox because of this, so it now says "Career NFL statistics as of Week 17, 2016". If we don't fill in |statsweek= and change it to 2015, it would say "Career NFL statistics as of 2015". Neither of which is technically correct. What do we prefer it to say?—Bagumba (talk) 01:58, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Which displays "Career NFL statistics as of Week 17, 2015". We are supposed to delete the "statseason" and "statweek" parameters for retired players, which then displays "Career NFL statistics". The problem you raise, of the non-intuitive problem of players who are active after December 31, 2015, and how to accurately reflect their statistics, could easily be resolved with the following:
Well, then you have no obvious solution to the problem you've raised. The game was played in January 2016, but it's not the "2016 season." The alternative is to leave it as "Career NFL statistics as of Week 17, 2015". That said, I don't think we're bound by the article naming convention when we're trying to accurately reflect the as-of dates of statistics tables. I also note that we already pipelink the 2016 Pro Bowl (i.e. the Pro Bowl that follows the 2015 NFL season) to 2015 in our infoboxes, and have for years. I don't see that we're bound by the article naming convention in these circumstances. My 2 cents. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:24, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm OK with "Week 17, 2015", was just seeing if there was an existing consensus. Alternative would be to just list the exact date e.g. January 3, 2016.—Bagumba (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
WP naming conventions for Pro Bowl and playoffs are polar opposites of common usage. AFAIK, most sources would refer to this year as "2015 NFL playoffs" and "2015 Pro Bowl", not our chosen convention of "2015–16 NFL playoffs" and "2016 Pro Bowl". Seems we got too anal with calendar years as opposed to common usage.—Bagumba (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93: how is "Career NFL statistics as of 2015" not correct: Depends how 2015 is interpreted. If interpreted as 2015 NFL season, it's fine. If a reader sees it as 2015 the calendar year, then it's seen as inaccurate. Rant: Yet another hassle with weekly stats updates—Bagumba (talk) 19:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
The fact that it's encoded with |statsseason= is unknown to the reader. 2015–16 is awkward. I'm fine with just 2015.—Bagumba (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
Bagumba, as you know, I've always hated the infobox stats table. When we're done with the current infobox merge and post-merge clean-up, I'm going to propose a compact, standard format stats table for quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, lineman, and defensive backs and linebackers, to replace the infobox stats table. The new standard format stats table would live in the main body text, and incorporate both season and career totals. It's long overdue. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:16, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93: You could be a BIG HELP in moving that little project for standardized stats tables forward. My wiki-time is going to be completely spoken for by the merge/replacement of Infobox NFL coach for another week or so, and then probably another two weeks after that dealing with the aftermath of the merge as we tweak the surviving template, Infobox NFL biography, to better accommodate a handful of coach-specific parameters, as well as related clean-up issues. In a sandbox in your userspace, if you could start lists of standard player stats for each of the player categories identified above it would be extremely helpful. I would suggest that you check Pro-Football-Reference.com, NFL.com, and the individual team websites for specific stats and the order of their listing; I suspect for each position category that there is a relatively standard set of metrics (with some variation). You may also want to give some thought to a standard -- and hopefully semantically intuitive -- two or three-character abbreviation for each stat. Those abbreviations will be the bolded column headers, which we can encode for a mouse-over reveal function, as well as providing a compact abbreviation key at the bottom of each table. Once we've done that leg work, we can recruit one or two of our clever template coders to help with template coding. You're one of the guys I would trust to do the legwork on this; if you're willing to take it on, consider recruiting Wiki-Original9 to help review outside stats tables for ideas about which stats, abbreviation and order to include. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:12, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Yes, sir. Pull together what you consider to be good working lists for the positions. Then we can ask for feedback on the lists. After that, we get a template coder involved to help create a standard template that can be used. That way, every NFL quarterbacks stats table, for example, will have the same standard layout and design. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
On it, but should we only list the main stats per position (So defensive end would only have tackles and sacks, like how most infoboxes handle it), or list the same ones NFL.com uses (full listing of stats, even minor ones like safeties)? Having only two stats listed seems way too little, but do we really need a to basically copypaste what NFL.com lists? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:42, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
D93, I think we list the same stats that the NFL and PFR do, and, yes, Bags, I concur: that means we avoid hybrid stats that we or the new table calculate from other stats. I've watched the vandalism that some of the custom basketball stats attract, and there is often no reference linked to confirm their accuracy after some jerk starts screwing with them. Our new standardized stats table should link directly to the player profiles on NFL.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, or any equal or better stats sites (there aren't many of that caliber that I am aware of). Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:35, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
K - Field goals attempted (FG Att), Field goals made (FGM), Longest (Long), Extra points attempted (XP Att), Extra points made (XPM) (Extra points being missed is now something that matters, with the recent rule change. The NE-DEN game last week would have likely went to OT if NE's kicker didn't miss an XP early in the game, as they had to go for 2 at the end and failed.)
P - Punts, Punt yardage (Yards), Punting average (Avg), Inside 20 (In 20)
Return specialist (Would be combined for both punt and kickoffs) - Returns (Ret), Return yardage (Ret yards), Return touchdowns (Ret TDs)
Is what I currently have. The stats in bold are the ones that should be uncontroversially accepted, with the other ones as a maybe. Thoughts? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:20, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
The stats tables for all positions should include games played and games started. Also, in order to have a nice, elegantly compact stats table, we need to keep the column header abbreviations to 2 or 3 characters, maybe 4 characters at the max. Remember, we will code the mouse-over reveal function for each abbreviation, as well as providing a nice, compact, and uniform abbreviation key at the bottom of each stats table. No more of these freelance wikitable monstrosities that include four or five times as much white space as substance because the column headers are too wide. They should also be coded so that the main body text wraps around them like our image files, rather than stopping at the beginning of the table, and then picking up afterward, often leaving a huge, gaping white space to the right of many stats tables. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
All players should have G (maybe GS too?). Running QBs (most modern ones) should have rushing stats. I'd suggest defensive players all having the same stats shown, as that's what most source do. I'd add receiving stats for RBs, FG% (and PAT%?) for kickers, net avg and TBs for punters (but nobody seems to add punter stats). Return specialist should have itemized punt and KO stats.—Bagumba (talk) 23:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
NFL players born in England
Just a question. Do players such as Osi Umenyiora really need their place of birth in their infbox to read "London, England, UK"? I mean, there's only one England, duh, we know it's in the UK. Just a thought. CrashUnderride08:05, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
We virtually always omit "United States" from the birth and death places of American football players because, well, about 95% of them are Americans, most U.S. state names are commonly recognized internationally, and infobox space is precious. Adding "U.S." or "United States" inevitably causes line-wrapping problems most of the time, too. That said, I think we can do without adding "United Kingdom" to the infobox for the rare NFL player who was born in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Ditto for any NFL players born in a Canadian province. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:14, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
It's more that the NFL is very American-centric, and any fan not in the States is probably an expat, married to an expat, lived in the States, or just interested in the US. That and any non-American is better at geography. Pop quiz: how many Americans would know where is Geelong, Victoria, without the country (see Ben Graham (football player))?. And I'm sure Australian fans of Darren Bennet wonder why New South Wales isn't mentioned in his birthplace. Are Americans from Seattle listed anywhere as being born simply in "Seattle, United States" as opposed to "Seattle, Washington, United States?—Bagumba (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
That's different @Bagumba:. Players from England don't need to say UK. That's not a country, England is. The infobox says London, England (UK). The UK part being redundant and not needed. I'm fine with it listing London, England. It doesn't need (UK) in it. Besides, birthplaces are wikilinked (99% of the time), people can click the link to find out about it. Sometimes acting like they don't is kinda patronizing, not saying you are, but that's how it sounds when we "assume the reader's stupid" so to speak. CrashUnderride08:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Oh, I was more referring to more how other non-US states/provinces aren't listed with a city name, like Sydney, New South Wales, instead of Sydney, Australia. I wasn't advocating for UK.—Bagumba (talk) 09:10, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
@Bagumba: Well I'm fine with that. If they're foreign and play in the NFL (city, providence etc., country) are fine. The point of the whole section was the removal of "UK" from English NFL players. I would also like to remove "US" or "USA" because, that's would go without saying unless noted by including the name of a foreign country. CrashUnderride09:21, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
. Both the blue and yellow uniforms before 1963 were used interchangeably according to my guides, but the home uniform was generally the yellow one. The yellow one was also used at the primary throwback uniform in the lat 1980s and early 1990s. You can also see the yellow being used as the primary here, here, and here. It's impossible to know the exact color pre-1963, but using the 1973-1994 colors (just switched) seems reasonable. --CASportsFan (talk) 20:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Template:Central Texas Sports and several similar navbox templates have been nominated for deletion. Given that the subjects of these navboxes are within the scope of WikiProject NFL, you are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:54, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Done I fixed the view/talk/edit links in {{2015 NFC East standings}} and removed the incorrect redirect from Template talk:2015 NFC West standings. I'll leave it to you to add appropriate project templates to that page. ~ RobTalk 17:58, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
