Template talk:Infobox NFL biography/Archive 5

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Discussion of stats parameters

@Frietjes: Can you add statistics options for USFL player history? The USFL was a significant, but short-lived interval in American professional football and played a critical role in the careers of a number of high-profile players, including Herschel Walker and Jim Kelly. I suggest the following be added to the template:

| usflstatlabel1 =
| usflstatvalue1 =
| usflstatlabel2 =
| usflstatvalue2 =
| usflstatlabel3 =
| usflstatvalue3 =
| usflstatlabel4 =
| usflstatvalue4 =
| usflstatlabel5 =
| usflstatvalue5 =

Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:04, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

An infobox should summarize key points of a players career, without being exhaustive. The USFL would be trumped by the NFL for most players. Also, I don't think even the most die-hard football fan, let alone the average non-football reader, has a baseline to put career stats from the short-lived USFL into context. I wouldn't advocate adding college stats, but those would arguably be more notable than USFL stats.—Bagumba (talk) 22:23, 27 December 2014 (UTC)
@Bagumba: We have dozens of pro football players whose best three years of their pro career were played in the USFL. Yes, this particular template is too damn long, but we already not only have stats parameters for the NFL, but the Canadian Football League, Arena Football, the United Football League (!). The American Football League (1960-69) stats, once separate, have been subsumed within the NFL stats parameters. The USFL is the third most important pro league in American football history, following the NFL and AFL; if we can have optional CFL, Arena and UFL stats parameters, too. And, no, we should not add college stats to the infoboxes of pro players; mixing college and pro stats in the same infobox is a generally bad idea. That's one of the several reasons we need separate infobox templates for college and pro players. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:49, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I would guess that most NFL players would have NFL stats displayed. There might be a few that wouldn't. I would think that any player should have stats for only one league, their most notable league, displayed. What I would propose is to allow one set of league stats to be displayed, and have it be parameterized which league that is. There could be a parameter like "statleague" that would display "Career {{{statleague}}} statistics as of Week {{{statweek}}}, {{{statseason}}}" The default would be "NFL" for "statleague" to make it backwards compatible. All the other CFL, Arena, and UFL parameters could be removed from documentation; its use could be grandfathered for any existing articles.—Bagumba (talk) 07:22, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
@Bagumba: And I think you would be right: the overwhelming majority of NFL players (i.e., those who played the best years of their pro career in the NFL) should have their NFL stats displayed to the exclusions of other league stats. As I indicated above, the NFL stats parameters include stats from the All-America Football Conference/AAFC (1946-49) and American Football League/AFL (1960-69) because those leagues are treated as NFL predecessors. We do need to be conscious of another subclass of players, those who played briefly in the NFL, but played the bulk of their career in the USFL, CFL or Arena Football; in those cases I think they should only use the USFL, CFL or arena stats. A good example of a perennial NFL journeyman quarterback who had an outstanding USFL career would be John Reaves. And there are numerous others for whom the three USFL seasons were the best of their pro careers.
Arena Football players were granted a presumption of notability per WP:NGRIDIRON, so we kinda need to keep Arena Football stats parameters because Arena Football players use this template. On the other hand, the United Football League has always been treated as a minor league and those UFL parameters probably could and should be deleted.
A potential solution? The template could be coded so that only one set of league stats parameters could be invoked per infobox transclusion. I assume this could be programmed into the template by Frietjes or another experienced template editor. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
I would agree with your proposal for only one league's stats to be displayed per transclusion. That was what the new "statleague" parameter that I proposed would accomplish, without needing a new customization by a template editor each time we realize there is another league missing.—Bagumba (talk) 05:38, 29 December 2014 (UTC)
Okay. Then let's ping Frietjes and ask if she can help us. If not, we need to seek another template editor; it's time to take care of this and some other house-keeping regarding this template. I am curious to hear from a knowledgeable template editor how we might grandfather existing uses in existing code. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 10:46, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

added |statleague= Frietjes (talk) 17:50, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Frietjes. I've updated the documentation to remove mention of the other league-specific stats params. They still work, we just want new instance to leverage "statsleague", which seems more user-friendly also.—Bagumba (talk) 20:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick assist, Frietjes.
Bagumba, I just test-drove it on the John Reaves article: [1]. Appears to work as intended. Does the use of this option exclude the use of the pre-existing Arena, CFL, NFL and UFL parameters? If so, I think that's a good thing -- we need to find ways to get the length of these NFL infoboxes under control. When the player also has coaching history and a lot of awards and honors, and there's a photo, the filled-out infoboxes are often longer than the main body text of the article. We need to discuss other ways to limit the data that can be included. Infoboxes are supposed to be "at a glance" career data highlights, not a detailed career history, or a substitute for well-written text. When I see high school awards and other minor awards in the infobox for an NFL player who was a multi-year All-Pro or Pro Bowl selection, it tells me that we have editors who do no understand the concept of "highlights." Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:48, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
The old parameters still work; they are just not advertised anymore. If we truly wanted to deprecate them, they would need to be converted in the articles (manually or by bot) to use the generic statlabel/statvalue parms. Once that was completed, the logic in the template could be removed.—Bagumba (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
"Highlights" being subjective is one plausible reason for the range of highlights added. Another reason is that it's easier to dump it in the infobox than taking time to form prose. Finally, exhaustive lists are fine, but they should be in a list in the body, but most people are either unaware or don't want to spend the time to form that new list. Not sure if this will ever be solved with us all being volunteers here.—Bagumba (talk) 20:08, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
@Bagumba: I saw your updates to the template documentation, and I approve. As for the highlights-related issues, trust me, I understand the problem: "highlights" will always be relative to the other awards and honors a given player has received. The simple solution I am considering would be to limit the number of lines of text the highlights parameter will accept, say 12 or 15 lines, and the field would simply disregard any lines of text added to the field in excess of the limit and not display them. That would force editors to prioritize the most significant honors and awards to be included in the infobox. I also think it may be time to remove the high school, debut year and final year parameters from the template as career details better covered in the text. Another space-saving measure would be to limit infobox photos to head-and-shoulders shots (as was intended for all infoboxes), and not the strong vertical action or full uniform sidelines shots that seem to be proliferating. Personally, I think every one of the present infobox parameters should be carefully re-considered, reviewed and prioritized. I think we're both in agreement that an overly long, overly detailed infobox is not a proper substitute for well-written prose, and my own anecdotal observations substantiate the fact that many casual editors will edit and add trivia to an infobox and never attempt to write any substantial prose. It's one of the reasons we have 100s of articles for mid-tier and lower-tier NFL players that are nothing more than a listing of signing and release transactions. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:13, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
Think you should have just made a |usflstat. Now the nfl link is paired with the USFL stats. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:34, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
@WikiOriginal-9: Could you provide a link to an example? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:39, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
John Reaves WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:44, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that template logic assumes NFL is always king and listed first. The existing logic before the recent changes was not without flaws. If we look at an example where a player has an NFL stat link but lists Arena Football stats e.g. Steve Bellisari, we have a relatively empty section for NFL with nothing more than an NFL stat link. That's less than ideal as well. And having dedicated league stat parameters like "usflstat" only encourages cluttering the infobox with stats for multiple leagues e.g. Milton Barney w/ nfl and arena stats:

Relevant questions are

  1. Do we need multiple league stats links in the infobox? Are the links there for verifiability, or merely for convenience for the reader to save going to "External links"?
  2. If League X stats are displayed, how should link for League Y stats be placed (e.g. is it order of links important for X and Y?)—Bagumba (talk) 19:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Could it really be argued that only having one set of stats in the infobox is good for certain people, ex. Warren Moon? Wikipedia is about the reader and the reader will be looking for Moon's CFL and NFL stats. Clutter is subjective too, some people might think certain information is crucial and others may think it is trivial. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:57, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
  • WO-9, Warren Moon is an exceptional case, and both NFL and CFL stats should probably be displayed. Please keep in mind, we can still accomplish this in exceptional cases by using the legacy coding that is still built into the template. On the other hand, let's recognize that Warren Moon is the exception, not the rule. More than 95% of all uses of this template should probably have a single league's stats displayed.
In your other examples, if the athlete played predominantly Arena ball (e.g., Steve Bellisari), then I question whether we should even include the NFL.com stats link in the infobox, and there is certainly no reason to have a "Career NFL statistics" section header for the NFL.com link. Your second example presents a closer case (e.g., Milton Barney), a player who actually played several games in the NFL, but had better stats in the Arena league. In that particular instance, I would recommend including the Arena stats and excluding the lesser NFL stats. Frankly, if I had my way, we would exclude all stats from the infobox (it's already too damn long), and create a standard form of career stats table to be included in the main body text of the article. Template:Infobox NFL player is a prime example of an infobox that tries to do too much. It's only going to get worse, too, when we complete the merge of Infobox NFL coach into the template, and I think now is the time to address these issues, rather than compounding past template design errors. It's time to decide what is really core information, and what is not. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Hockey is a sport that doesn't include stats, it has tables at the bottom, ex. Sidney Crosby. Short articles might just link stats as external links, ex. Bill Benson (table would probably look weird if it was all there was lol). Also, as long as the old stat values are kept for cases like Warren Moon, then it is okay. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 23:17, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Stats in the infobox are generally trivial. Nobody but the ultimate NFL fan and stat geek would be able to put career stats of NFL players into context. There's not many "magic numbers" in football; even if there were, only those players that reach them should even have their stats in the infobox. As few feature articles would have their leads cluttered with these stats, there is no credible reason to trash the infobox with them; they can be placed in the body. —Bagumba (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
Re: "Also, as long as the old stat values are kept ..." There has been no changes to date regarding formatting of infoboxes encoded with the older parameters.—Bagumba (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
  • @WikiOriginal-9: Agree that clutter is subjective. Like other matters in WP, there is no reason why consensus can't be reached on what is generally acceptable.—Bagumba (talk) 23:38, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
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