Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/2013 review

What are our aims?

If a call has been made to veteran football editors for this review thing, then I’m certainly one of those, having been part of the project more or less since it started in 2005. Things were very different then. During that phase where Wikipedia was expanding exponentially, attitudes to policy were more carefree, possibly even naïve. Things like the Siegenthaler and Essjay scandals hadn’t happened. {{cite web}} didn’t even exist, never mind WP:BLP. High profile international players had substubs. Few club articles had history sections. Manchester City were about to go half a season without scoring a goal at home. Spain were perennial underachievers who could always be relied upon to bottle it in a major tournament.

Why am I bothering you with this nostalgia? Because all that meant the barrier to entry for new editors was much lower. Why do we get so many edits adding or incrementing statistics? Because it is not difficult to do, and is unlikely to encounter resistance. An editor taking the plunge by making a change to a high profile article stands a greater chance of being reverted. If a new editor’s changes are undone and they get issued with a template telling them to read several pages of WP:ALPHABETSOUP, it will surely put them off doing it again. Updating some statistics that change every week? Far less worrisome for a newbie. I look back at my own first tentative edits. After a few pecks at some of my favourite club’s higher profile players from the preceding decade, I tagged a bunch of articles with {{footy-stub}}, and added infoboxes to the Football League club articles that lacked them (yes, articles like Hull City A.F.C. didn’t even have an infobox then). Simple tasks that kept me going until I gained enough confidence to do more. Until WikiProject Football was created I’d never made a single projectspace edit. Today, making that step must be intimidating. How many people read pages like this one, see a bunch of established regular editors, and don’t feel brave enough to contribute? If that applies to anyone reading this, please say hello! Your perspective would be valuable.

So we want to get a firmer grip on what we as a project regard as good practice and bad practice. Adding reams and reams of stats is not necessarily what we want. But we don’t want to drive people away. We do want to recruit and retain editors, and for them to have good examples they can follow. To me, the big question is: What can we do to help convert editors from being tentative stats-adders to being productive article writers? We need a carrot as well as a stick. I don’t claim to have the answers, but before we go hitting people with a notability-stick, we ought to have a plan for giving them a helpful alternative. They’re doing something they clearly like doing, what can we do to channel that enthusiasm?

In short: we probably want to think about our aims for this review before we get bogged down by specifics. Oldelpaso (talk) 17:57, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Some good points there and I agree there is a tendency for rules to become bureaucratic and for new editors to be intimidated. However, there are a large number of football-related articles that are simply poor, and which have no real substance and no proper claim of notability, just a load of stats - sometimes from dubious sources. Eldumpo (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I think establishing consistency in what is expected / approved / and expanding on what already exists we can become not only more inclusive to the stat hoarders out there, but also become more internally consistent when reverting / correcting and/or knowing where to seek out answers.

Does anyone by any chance have a list of good sites to utilise, or reputable statistic "books"? Koncorde (talk) 13:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts - we need to have one page detailing notability (for players, managers, coaches, referees, chairman, directors, ball boys, clubs, seasons, templates, anything and everything etc.), one page detailing MOS (again for anything and everything, i.e. how we want our articles to look, what they should and should not contain), and one page on guidelines/consensus (again for everything and anything, almost like an A-Z which includes links to all relevant/recent discussions at XFD and WPFOOTY). GiantSnowman 09:10, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Q&A

Just to kick us off, and feeding from Oldelpaso's start, I'd like to start us off by posing some points that we can hopefully draw some immediate answers / clarification.

I think if we pose ourselves questions, gather views, and discuss we can try and find each core element that irks us all inside.

Statistics, which are notable, is there a reputable / consistent source that can be used and what can we verify?

For many other sports that exist on wikipedia there are 3rd party encyclopedic sources that already exist for the purpose of providing statistics for each player (I point at the obvious examples like pro-football-reference.com, NFL.com, NHL.com, basketball-reference.com etc amongst others). Because of the lack of a single central resource for every single national league any attempt to try and clarify statistics depends therefore on relying on first party sources (such as the clubs themselves) or collections by independent sources such as the news media.

I think people want to collect statistics, they are a fascinating subject, and in that respect the "soccer" pages fall far behind those well organised US Sports who only have to organise one (densely reported and recorded) central league structure.

The throwing these out there, they may or may not reflect my opinions (devils advocate oh wey oh) - I just want to get the ball rolling with some common bones of contention. Please add to the list if you need, or reply below in the Responses section.:

• Just because we have incomplete data, doesn't mean we shouldn't use data if it is available. For a case in point; in the NFL many statistics are recent creations (in much the same way as are OPTA stats in football). Many players do not appear at the top of "sack" lists because the statistic was not tracked, in much the same way that clean sheets were not really tracked by any central source for the likes of Ray Clemence. However - if a reputable source (such as the National League, club or association) can be shown to be tracking consistently a statistic - I see no harm in it being included in a table.
• Just because statistics exist we don't necessarily want to be tracking / mirroring them all - rather than simply providing a link to that resource (which may or may not have copyright over such statistics). Obvious examples are the lack of season by season, blow by blow, statistics presented in infoboxes for the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Joe Montana who all instead direct users to the reliable source of our information (although tables later introduced in the article also end up presenting much of that same information...which is not ideal, although Oldelpaso points out that it does keep people interested).
• Even though a statistic exists - they are not universally notable nor warrant tracking outside of the current season (i.e. tracking every yellow card).
• It's not clear if international appearances, goals etc are uniquely notable (and thus worth having separate tables entirely for them) etc.
• The current football infoboxes are inadequate when compared to the detail and content of infoboxes provided for other sports. This contributes towards the need to add further tables later in articles. Wouldn't a Career Highlights section be nice for a player? Wouldn't club achievements be nice for teams to have in their infoboxes (particularly those that are fairly static and reliable - i.e. championship wins, trophy wins, biggest win, heaviest defeat, highest scoring game etc).
• The current football infoboxes lead to bad habits by utilising incorrect criteria when referring to a player (position, management / coaching role).

Koncorde (talk) 13:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

MoS

It might be worth coming up with some articles that we agree are exemplary for their type, and including them as examples on the relevant MoS page (linking to an oldid to ensure stability). Oldelpaso (talk) 19:55, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Pin the tail on the donkey? GiantSnowman 15:13, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Bert Trautmann and Steve Bruce are probably two good examples of player articles, in terms of WP:WEIGHT and meeting the MoS. From looking at various articles, my brief two cents:

• The lead section should contain no references, unless one is using direct quotes. Footnotes are fine, if it serves the purpose to clarify someone's name – it could also be placed in the infobox. The first paragraph must contain the player's recent club, position, national team and anything noteworthy (longest-serving player/top goalscorer at such and such club, richest player in the world, made a big contribution to football in some way) and read chronologically thereafter.

If this is to be included, we should make explicit that this element is in relation to good and featured articles, as well as articles which are on their way to that level. In a typical stub, start-class or C-Class article, the important bits might only be included in the lead, and it would only take one well-meaning editor to misinterpret this as "anything in the lead does not need to be sourced" for this to be a net-negative. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 20:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

• Early life is not the same as playing career. If said-person made his debut at 15 years for Manchester United or won the FA Youth Cup, then that should be included in the latter section, where appropriate.

One thing that has always bemused me is the instance of many editors that place of birth, school life and pre football info should be included in 'playing career' and more often in a club specific section of that. Being born eighteen years before you're paid to kick a football does not amount to part of your 'playing career'. That sort of info should be separated into an 'early life' or 'personal life' section. If the place of birth is the only notable element then it can go in the intro paragraph and infobox.Bladeboy1889 (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

• I'm not for the playing career section being broken down into season by season; this is a common trend I've found in most articles.

Agreed - unless a player has been at a single club for a significant period of time, in which case it could be subdivided into 'phases'. Bladeboy1889 (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

• A playing style or style of play section is a must for articles aiming for GA or FA standard. For managers, management style or philosophy. Lemonade51 (talk) 20:32, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I'd take issue with a requirement for 'playing style' sections. There's no requirement for inclusion for GA (plenty exist without one) and it would be a magnet for POV. Who decides what a players 'style of play' is? Is Roy Keane a hard tackling box to box midfielder or a cynical hatchet man of limited creative ability? Management 'style' is even more subjective as it's purely based on media image and a bit of touchline posturing. Bladeboy1889 (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

• Bladeboy has put it perfectly. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 12:55, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
• I agree with Bladeboy. --MicroX (talk) 01:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
• Other than my comment above, I also agree with Bladeboy. —WFC— _{FL wishlist} 20:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

That Trautmann article wouldn't come close to passing FAC these days; bad prose, some paragraphs only one sentence long, others completely unreferenced, too many short sections. We shouldn't be using that as an example.BigDom (talk) 21:08, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Guideline proposals

I wrote some ideas here for some of the potential changes, if anyone is interested. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 14:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here i.e. I'm gonna say stuff and don't want you to hate me ;)

Good work, but I don't like the idea of attributing a 'number of games' to become notable i.e. why 10? Why not 5? 50? etc. The beauty of the current 1 appearance is that you've either player or you haven't.

I also don't like the idea of "The player has made 5 or more appearances in a top division within a national league structure" - so if a player has made 5 appearances in the Guamian Premier League they are notable, but a player making 9 appearances in the Championship isn't? Same with "The player has made 25 or more appearances in a national-level league, but one that is neither a top division, or listed in the above FPL list" - we'll be inundated with articles on players in the Andorran 3rd division! I think your guidelines are too complicated, what we need to do is simplify them. GiantSnowman 14:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

My guidelines are indeed complicated, and the numbers were arbitrary figures anyway, but the problem with the current guidelines is that a player who plays a match in League 2 is immediately considered notable (in some AfDs - others will see the player deleted for failing GNG), and yet an Irish Premier League player isn't notable. I would agree my ideas are probably too complicated, but I think the current ones are too simple and/or are highly unbalanced. There's also a couple of SOPs for dealing with transfers in there as well, and that's something we really do need to establish. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:01, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The reason players who play in League Two are automatically considered notable is because they have played in a fully-professional league which means they are presumed to meet GNG. I wholly agree with the "presumed to meet GNG" element of our notability guidelines, as it makes sense, and one appearance should be sufficient - as you say, any other figure is surely arbitrary. My issue is with the FPL element, but that's not something we can change here, we need to change that at WP:ATHLETE talk page. I also think we need to introduce guidelines for playing in a Cup competition, as there is currently no proper guidelines which state "playing in a Cup match between two teams from FPLs = notable", which is our Project's general consensus/feeling on the matter. GiantSnowman 15:11, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

In which case we need to enforce that passing NFOOTY means that a player doesn't need to meet GNG, as some editors will vote "delete" based on GNG, not NFOOTY. I don't have an issue with League Two players being notable; I'm just stating that there are some major leagues, like the Irish Premier League, that are clearly notable leagues. Maybe we should replace FPL with a notable league list? I agree with the cup competition notion. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 15:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying; a player is presumed to meet GNG if he passes NFOOTBALL. If, after a reasonable period of time, the article doesn't meet GNG, and is deemed unable to ever meet GNG, then it would be considered non-notable. There is existing consensus at AFD to this effect, including international players. I'm sure User:Jogurney has a better memory than me and can provide some examples...?

Furthermore, what makes playing in the Irish league "clearly notable"? In my experience Irish player articles are some of the worst for GNG around! GiantSnowman 15:43, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

(ec) In most cases, GNG and NFOOTY come to the same conclusion. The troublesome part is when one is met and the other is not. Giving a free pass to anyone who made one professional appearance and never played again is not something I'm comfortable with. Sometimes such a player can pass GNG, but often, the only sources merely list their name with no further information or context. Oldelpaso (talk) 15:44, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

GS, here are several AfDs where an article technically, but narrowly, pass NFOOTBALL, but were deleted because they failed GNG: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oscar Otazu, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vyacheslav Seletskiy, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aleksandr Salimov, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrei Semenchuk, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Artyom Dubovsky, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cosmos Munegabe and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marios Antoniades. Jogurney (talk) 02:03, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Seeing as this is a proposals section........It seems that the wording of WP:NFOOTY causes much disagreement producing discussions like the one above where various leagues and numbers of games are proposed so as to confer notability. Question - Why do we need WP:NFOOTY? Clearly an article should pass WP:GNG. if it does, it does. If it doesn't it has no place. The playing of so many games etc should not be an issue so why don't we just lose the concept of assumed notability?--Egghead06 (talk) 20:59, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• Because every single WikiProject has their own specific notability guidelines. GNG is a very vague (although very good) definition of notability - that's because it's a general guideline. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 21:04, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Your very only guidelines start with GNG. Many articles with so-called conferred notability do not pass this. If they don't there should be no question of assumed notability. A match report saying you entered the pitch for two minutes should not make you notable. For the record I too am uncomfortable with the arbitrary numbers of appearances (5 in this league etc) which would confer notability. No amount of games would do this without passing GNG.--Egghead06 (talk) 21:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

• My guidelines contain GNG as a form of notability, but they're not the only way of showing notability. It's been a long-running consensus that a game in an FPL (or a full international match) is enough for notability, and completely scrapping that clause is not going to help. As I stated before, every other Wikiproject has its own equivalent of NFOOTY, and GNG shouldn't be used for everything, as it's deliberately very vague and generic. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 07:09, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

NFOOTY is the cause of much of the disagreement between editors so I'm not sure that scrapping it would not clear the path towards much simpler criteria for notability for a footballer; i.e that the article passes GNG. As long as we have these 'must have played so many games' or 'at a certain level' requirements there will be contention. We have created many articles which do not pass GNG but pass NFOOTY. We shouldn't be doing this in future.--Egghead06 (talk) 07:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Scrapping NFOOTBALL would not work. GiantSnowman 08:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Guess we just don't want to lose control of the project? If that is the general view, guess we have to agree (or arrive at a consensus) where to set the bar for footballing notability then!--Egghead06 (talk) 17:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

What general view? You're the only editor I've ever encountered who wants to scrap it rather than make it fit for purpose. GiantSnowman 18:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Saw the heading Guideline proposals, so I made one! You say my suggestion would not work (without actually saying why). You seem to suggest I'm in a group of one and that's fine. If so the general view must be different to mine. OK lets make NFOOTBAll work but if you ask for suggestions on how to change the project, don't be surprised if you get them!--Egghead06 (talk) 19:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)