Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 13

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Draft order for teams eliminated from the playoffs

This is in reference to a dispute over listing potential draft pick numbers on the 2016 Kansas City Chiefs season article. In the past, when a team is eliminated from the playoffs but their exact pick number is not known, we've listed the possible picks that team could earn on the relevant season pages. Current and past examples of this are: 2015 Arizona Cardinals season, 2015 Baltimore Ravens season, and 2016 Green Bay Packers season. We've done something similar on the main NFL draft articles as well (see 2016 NFL draft, for example). Another user (@Rockchalk717:) has suggested that this should be left as TBD until there are only a "couple (of) potential picks", while I don't see an issue with including 3 or 4 potential picks (4 is the maximum, since no more than 4 teams can be eliminated in a single round of the playoffs). It seems to me that this information is something worth including in an article. And if the issue is verbosity, then why can't we just rewrite "26, 27 or 28" as "26–28" (for example)? Why remove it altogether?

This dispute will be irrelevant once this afternoon's Divisional Round games are finished, but I'd like to resolve it in case it comes up again in the future. Bmf 051 (talk) 20:07, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

This individual dispute is over, but I do agree a consensus should be made to avoid future disputes. My argument is I think just simply listing every possible pick is a little ridiculous if there is 3 or more. If there is a couple possibilities, its a little more reasonable.--Rockchalk717 21:44, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
But why is it not reasonable? You haven't explained your reasoning yet. Every reason you've given has amounted to "I don't like it". That's not a good enough. The way it has been done in the past (on all season articles, not just Kansas City's) is to list possible picks once a team is eliminated from the playoffs (which can be anywhere between 1 and 4 possibilities). Why is limiting it to only 1 or 2 possible picks better? If verbosity is the problem, what is the problem with writing it as a range using an endash, as I've suggested above? Bmf 051 (talk) 00:25, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
Goes without saying that it needs to be verifiable. My advice for info that is TBD or variable is to consider spending your effort on information that is missing on Wikipedia that is unlikely to change. There's so much missing on WP, I'd just assume we add relatively stable information instead of "throwaway" edits that will just need to be replaced. But that's your decision to make, as it's your time.—Bagumba (talk) 00:37, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
You're kind of talking around the issue. Yes, of course it needs to be verifiable, as anything else does. In this case, the procedure for determining draft order is verifiable (whether for potential picks or picks that are set in stone). Also, the 2016 draft article references the NFL's official draft order list, which is updated after each team is eliminated from the playoffs (here). We certainly could reference that in each individual team's season article, however no one is actually disputing the information being presented, just the way it is being presented. So the question at hand isn't whether the information presented is verifiable, but whether it is worth including. One editor says it is only worth including if there are two or fewer possibilities, while historically other editors have included up to 4 potential picks.
The rest of what you're saying seems to be aimed more at my editing habits then at the issue at hand. Note that just because information is variable doesn't mean it's not notable, not verifiable, or doesn't improve an article (if that were the case, we wouldn't include individual statistics in articles about athletes, something that changes daily in some cases). Yes, I'm sure there are lots of other things missing from Wikipedia, but I am under no obligation to fix that. Bmf 051 (talk) 02:29, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
Giving you a third option is not "talking around the issue", but whatever. As I already said, it's your prerogative what you do with your time.—Bagumba (talk) 04:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
It is my prerogative, which is exactly why your solution is evading the question. "You could just edit something else." Yes, I could, and we could pussyfoot around any content dispute by following that advice. But that doesn't really resolve anything, does it? Bmf 051 (talk) 01:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Pop Warner article needs attention

Pop Warner Little Scholars, the redirect target of Pop Warner football, has been a blank page since February 2015 due to a copyvio. Could use some attention if anyone needs a break from SB talking heads. I'm surprised the NFL hasn't spruced up the article if they want to convince parents to let their kids play football.—Bagumba (talk) 21:49, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikimedia blog interview with project for Super Bowl

Hi all,

I'm looking to write up a post for the Wikimedia blog on you all to run on Thursday or Friday of this week. I'm The ed17 in my volunteer life, so I know how the place works, but I'd like to bring some of your stories to the wider world. With that in mind:

  • Tell me about yourself: nationality, line of work, how much time you spend editing Wikipedia each week, and what you do with NFL-related articles on Wikipedia.
    • Bagumba: No comment on personal details. I edit (not limited to NFL) at least 10 hours, and undoubtedly more than I care to calculate. Mostly edit Chargers related articles.
    • Rockchalk717: American, wireless industry (refuse to elaborate), probably 15-20 hours after work, for the most part I edit Chiefs related pages as a die hard Chiefs fan, such as the team page, season page, and former player pages.
    • Dirtlawyer1: American of the Southern variety. I edit a variety of topic areas, including college sports, NFL football and MLB baseball, and Olympic swimming, as well as articles related to my primary alma mater.
    • Giants2008: American accountant of the Northeastern variety. I edit numerous sports-related articles and spend more time on Wikipedia than I really want to think about. I've created some articles on former NFL players, improved/created three NFL-related featured lists and one good article, and helped build the suite of New York Giants season articles.
    • Crash Underride: American of the mountain variety. I tend to edit whenever I come here and see something wrong, grammar, NPOV, incorrect information, spelling, vandalism or things that just shouldn't be there. So hours vary. I edit more than just NFL articles so that tends to take up some of my time also.
    • Dissident93: American. No idea how many hours I spend editing Wikipedia, but I'd say at least 4 hours a week, with a primary focus on video games and the NFL. For the NFL articles, it's mainly stuff like keeping things consistent from one article to the next (formatting, image captioning styles, etc) and smaller, but important things like having a players correct jersey number and height/weight in the infobox.
  • Editors spend quite a bit of time updating player biographies each week to reflect their most recent on-field statistics. How much effort is involved? Is this coordinated?
    • Bagumba: I don't generally update stats tables, but might mention stats from a notable performance in prose. AFAIK, the stats updates are not coordinated, nor is their format consistent. With the popularity of the NFL in the States and the regular season limited to 16 weeks, the stats updates seem to bring out more in-season, stats-only editors than other American sports.
    • Rockchalk717: Me personally, by the time I get to the articles, they are updated but I mainly just fact check and check for errors and see if there are any irrelevant stats that most major sports websites don't recognize.
    • Dirtlawyer1: What Bagumba said.
    • Giants2008: I'm not heavily involved with articles on current players, but I'm sure that articles on high-profile players receive more effort than those about the average offensive lineman.
    • Crash Underride: Usually things aren't too coordinated unless it's brought up on the project talk page. There are rare occasions when some of us get together and make sure something is take care of properly; scandals, deaths, controversial things.
    • dissident93: What Crash said.
  • Do any of you work directly on the articles related to the Super Bowl? What challenges do you face in keeping the content neutral and accurate?
    • Bagumba: I generally try to limit my time on current events, as there's more edits on minutia than I care to deal with. It's less chaotic for me to copyedit for due weight and accuracy after the fact, once the fanboy element dies down.
    • Rockchalk717 I rarely edit on Super Bowl articles if I do, its fixing punctuation or grammatical errors, and the occasional factual error.
    • Dirtlawyer1: I actually try to avoid current events articles because: (a) good summary references are not yet available, (b) article text changes by the hour, and (c) I think of myself as an amateur historian, not an amateur journalist.
    • Giants2008: One of the NFL featured lists I edit is Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Award. While it's the kind of article that typically needs to be updated only once per year, it does face a lot of vandalism that has to be cleaned up. It requires a careful eye to ensure that the information remains accurate.
    • Crash Underride: I, like Dirtlawyer1 tend to avoid current events. However, I will go back and see what may be incorrect and do what I can to fix it.
    • dissident93: Nope, the high traffic, mainstream NFL articles are usually handled by others, so I don't see a need to be right on top of it, unlike rosters and jersey numbers.
  • Is there anything else you'd like to add?
    • Bagumba: ... did you know that Super Bowl articles like last year's XLIX offer trivial infobox details like the game's sideline reporter, honorary coin toss captains, and city-by-city Nielsen ratings?
    • Rockchalk717 Nope not really.
    • Giants2008 – Of the 49 articles on the Super Bowl games, only Super Bowl XLI is currently listed as a good article, and none are at featured article status. These articles require some research to improve, but one interested editor can substantially improve Wikipedia's Super Bowl coverage.
    • Crash Underride: Did you know, that bird is, in fact, the word?

Thank you! Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi all, the post is up! Thank you all for your answers! I included as much as I could without going into too much detail (it's aimed at a general audience that doesn't know about Wikipedia minutia ... that can be a challenge at times). Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Dick Stanfel

Dick Stanfel was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame this week. The image currently used in his bio is from a 1955 Bowman card that is in the public domain. A much crisper version of the identical image is available on the NFL web site here. If the crisper version is likewise public domain, it would make sense to use it instead. Given that one image is derivative of the other, it seems unlikely that one could be PD and the other copyright protected. If anyone has an answer to this query, it would be appreciated. Cbl62 (talk) 03:07, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Um, are we sure that the crisper image is even the same guy? lol CrashUnderride 13:30, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Not sure I understand your comment. It's not only the same guy, it's the same image. It has simply been cropped and colorized for the Bowman card. Cbl62 (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
BTW, I am aware that a derivative work can have independent protection under copyright law, where independent creative elements have been added to the original work. Here, the Bowman card appears to be such a derivative work. The uncropped B&W photo is the original work. I assume Bowman hired a photographer to take the photographs used on its cards and did so under a typical photographer's release granting rights to Bowman. It is established that Bowman cards have lost copyright protection due to non-renewal. What I am unsure of is whether the loss of copyright protection for the derivative work also applies to the original work. If there is an IP specialist who knows the answer, that would be great. Cbl62 (talk) 15:08, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I know it is. I was being a smartass. :D CrashUnderride 06:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

iVote - Super Bowl 50 TV ratings

Input is welcome in the poll on the Super Bowl 50 talk page, which stemmed from this discussion above it. Rowssusan (talk) 05:13, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Peyton Manning

Input is welcome on discussions at Talk:Peyton Manning regarding how to present the HGH and sexual assault allegations.—Bagumba (talk) 21:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

New navbox

See Template:NFL indoor venues. Do we really need this one? - BilCat (talk) 16:55, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Note that this was also created by User:BornonJune8, who created Template:Super Bowl television announcers discussed above. - BilCat (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Please nominate both templates for TfD and then link to the discussions from here. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
While beyond the scope of this project, the user has also created Template:Outdoor NHL locations. I'm not proficient at doing TfDs, especially multiple ones, so someone else should probably nominate these. - BilCat (talk) 17:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
No time like the present to learn, Bill. If you can draft proposed TfD nominations for the two NFL templates on your talk page, I'll take a look at them and tweak them, and we can treat it as a joint nomination. You probably should leave a message about the NFL venues navbox on the WP:NHL talk page. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:29, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the offer to do a joint nomination. I'm going out soon, so I'll have to do this later tonight or tomorrow. - BilCat (talk) 18:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Infobox format

Is there a consensus on NFL infoboxes? It seems that most of them could use a little cleaning up or reorganizing. I do like the format on Cam Newton or Drew Brees where it's just official NFL and collegiate awards in the infobox and all other awards or NFL/franchise records get a section in the article. Opinions? (MisterJay123 (talk) 22:35, 8 February 2016 (UTC))

Any "consensus" is certainly not reflected in the articles themselves. If you're interested, you can come up with a list of items the you believe belong in an infobox, and we can see if there is a general consensus. This project definitely lacks infobox guidance like other projects, e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject National Basketball Association/Style advice, Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Player style advice.—Bagumba (talk) 22:50, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm all for a consensus on this like the basketball and baseball ones that Bagumba posted above. Some of these infoboxes are just a mess.--Yankees10 23:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree, that's why I would recommend using official college and league honors (super bowl, pro bowl, all-pro, defensive player, offensive player, MVP, rookie of the year, comeback player, heisman) in the infobox while records (single game, franchise, NFL) and other awards that are not handed out by the NFL (Bert Bell, NFL Alumni, etc.) to be placed in a separate section in the article like it is for Cam Newton and Drew Brees as I mentioned before. I also don't see a problem with having season yards or touchdown leaders on but wouldn't mind leaving it off as well. However, things like "top 100 player of 20__" or "___ of the week" should most definitely be left off, in my opinion. (MisterJay123 (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2016 (UTC))
Re: Top 100, there was previous consensus to not have them per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_12#NFL_Top_100_Rankings_in_Player_Infoboxes. However, due to lack of critical mass to enforce it, I've run across articles like Richard Sherman where it was re-added even after the aforementioned discussion and after I had already removed it. Unless we get regulars here willing to enforce any "consensus", improvement will be difficult.—Bagumba (talk) 23:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
Which agencies' All-Pros should be listed? I asked this a few years back at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_9#All-Pro_in_infobox and got zero responses. AP for sure, are there others that are widely cited?—Bagumba (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2016 (UTC)
I think we should only include stuff AP does, since that's what's awarded at the NFL Honors event. All the PFWA stuff should not belong in the infobox, because it's not officially endorsed by the league, and it's just the same exact winners as what the AP awards, making it redundant. The infobox should only contain the main, but basic, info on the subject. Having it list every single award ever awarded to a player, both major and minor, defeats the purpose. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:12, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
All-Pro is not named at NFL Honors though. Is there evidence AP All-Pro is "official"? FWIW, pro-football-reference for Peyton Manning lists Pro Football Weekly, Associated Press, Sporting News, and Pro Football Focus.[1]—Bagumba (talk) 00:26, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Well, I'd say it belongs, even though it wasn't at the NFL Honors, since players are sometimes officially called a "five time All-Pro" and such. No such honor belongs to anybody who won a PFW, SN, PFF, or PFWA award only. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:48, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't doubt that AP All-Pro is major. I'm just not entirely sure whether reliable sources generally limit the "All-Pro" description to AP only. The 2015 San Diego Chargers Media Guide at p. 277 generically lists All-NFL honors, and AP is just one of them.—Bagumba (talk) 01:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Ahh, then yeah, not sure either. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:00, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I've improve All-Pro with some references that back up AP as being the more popular selector. However, I haven't found anything that says how popular the other ones. I wouldn't have a big problem if we only listed AP, esp. nobody makes a convincing argument to list others in the infobox. The other minor ones can always be listed in prose.—Bagumba (talk) 05:30, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Also, we should be listing the full name of the team in the image captions, right? It may seem redundant to us NFL fans, but there might be readers who see a player's picture, but don't know the uniform/team he's playing for. Having it with just the team name (etc, Cowboys) could be confusing to some readers, as there are three major American football teams (NFL and NCAA) with the Cowboys name, Dallas, Oklahoma State, and Wyoming. Adding a year to the caption has been standard for a while, even if it's not needed, but I don't see any reason to not continue to have it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 05:17, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Or just use the city name if it's not ambiguous. Year is always good in the infobox caption, I don't think it's as important in the body in some cases, but most have it because we're not more creative with the captions besides something like "Manning in 2010".—Bagumba (talk) 05:34, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
So "Manning in Denver in 2010" over "Manning with the Denver Broncos in 2010" or "Manning with the Broncos in 2010" is preferred? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 06:35, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
I'd lean towards "Manning with Denver in 2010" in the infobox. I think we can presume in the body that the reader has somewhat read the article, and Broncos might be OK it there are a bunch of Broncos pictures in the same section. Repeating "Denver" would get redundant.—Bagumba (talk) 06:43, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

How about the format on how the Pro Bowls and All-Pros are listed? Would anyone be opposed to the "2012–2015" format instead of "2012, 2013, 2014, 2015"? It's how the MLB and NBA ones are formatted and it saves space.--Yankees10 21:48, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I noticed most of the popular articles (Drew Brees, Jerry Rice) are already using that format. I came here to see if there was already an agreement to do it that way, or if it was just a random thing that someone started doing. I'm fine with formatting it that way. And then going around changing the imminent hyphens to en dashes. Lizard (talk) 23:03, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

20/20 Club

This article was deleted before in 2008, but it was created again just a few months ago. I think the previous discussion is still pertinent today; a google search brings up very little on this "club." I see it often in player infoboxes, so it's likely a Wikipedia creation that others picked up on. It just seems like an arbitrary number that could easily be the "25/25" club and get the same amount of attention. Lizard (talk) 00:41, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I deleted and salted.—Bagumba (talk) 04:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Cool beans with salt. Lizard (talk) 04:12, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge kick returner and punt returner into return specialist

Talk:Return specialist for discussion. Lizard (talk) 00:54, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Dan Hellie vandalism

The Dan Hellie page has been hit hard by IP vandals in the last 8 hours, which odd considering the article has been edited once in the last 6 months! If an admin is available, semi-protection for a few days would be most welcome! - BilCat (talk) 05:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

It's been protected for 24 hours. - BilCat (talk) 05:45, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
WP:RFPP is pretty handy. I've had to request Odell Beckham Jr. be protected twice (you can probably imagine why that page is a popular target) and another page I can't remember, but each time they were quick in handling it. Lizard (talk) 06:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
I actually did use RFPP via Twinkle, but it was the first time I've used it. I came here mainly to let other NFL Project editors know what was going on, and I know there a few admins in the project too. Yes, I agree Beckham would be a popular target, but Hellie? That one's odd, especially after having no edits for so long. - BilCat (talk)
Yeh, it is odd. Just did a Google search to see if he did anything newsworthy lately and it doesn't appear so. Maybe it was planned attack or something. Or someone has a vendetta. Lizard (talk) 16:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

List of career achievements by Peyton Manning

If anyone is interested, List of career achievements by Peyton Manning is largely incomplete. Seeing as the article is linked in Peyton's infobox, it'll likely get a good bit of views. Especially now that he'll be in the news for the next week or so. Lizard (talk) 18:41, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

SB announcer navbox recreated: Do we want to keep this?

We recently deleted a bunch of these, and I thought we were exterminating them on sight, as trivia that does not rise to the level of being worthy of a navbox . . . so, what about this newly created navbox: Template:Super Bowl television announcers? If not, let's re-affirm our project consensus here, and then have someone nominate this template for deletion at TfD. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:38, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

The $64,000 question: Does List of Super Bowl broadcasters even meet WP:LISTN?—Bagumba (talk) 21:49, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Not sure it matters. Virtually all of the listed persons are big-time former players and big-time ESPN announcers, all of whom have more important navboxes already. I say we make it a clean sweep, and do away with all broadcaster navboxes for bowl games and other specific games. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:01, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
If the list was not notable, it would be deleted, then the navbox would clearly fail WP:NAVBOX #4: "There should be a Wikipedia article on the subject of the template." As it is, some fanboy will always create a navox for any list that exists.—Bagumba (talk) 01:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
I agree with their the navbox removal. First the info is WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The announcers have nothing to do with the outcome of a game. At the moment the navboxes are US centric but heaven help us if editors from other countries (Mexico would be a prime example) want to start including their announcers as well. The fact that the four networks that have broadcast SB's are listed twice shows how link happy the template creator is. I guess a TFD could be started and we can let the chips fall where they may. MarnetteD|Talk 01:33, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Followup on LISTN: There's some ELs at the end of the list the suggest LISTN could probably be met for the list article. So the discussion can continue on the merits of the navbox itself.—Bagumba (talk) 01:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I agree exterminate the navbox. Or navboxes, seeing as the user has moved onto other sports. See Template:World Series television announcers. Lizard (talk) 00:07, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

New subproject

I'm trying to put together a new subproject. It would be on the New Orleans Saints. Thoughts? Leggomygreggo8 (talk) 13:51, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

If the intent here would be to create a brand new project devoted to the Saints, please keep in mind that there is already an existing WikiProject New Orleans, and that just about anything that could conceivably be covered under a Saints-specific project would more than likely already be covered under that project. Rather than going through the malarkey of trying to set up and start a brand new project with a rather limited scope (It's actually more difficult than it would appear to be on the surface to create the project banner, assessments, and article alerts; especially for someone who's relatively new to Wikipedia), it might be more beneficial to try to recruit more members to the New Orleans project and just try to use/restart that already existing project as a logical point for collaboration on Saints-related articles. Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:51, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm interested in a subproject, not a WikiProject. It'd be a subproject of WP:NFL Leggomygreggo8 (talk) 17:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Broken templates?

Is it just my end, or are the NFL player infobox and roster navboxes broken currently? They both lack color, and the infobox has some broken formatting. I can take a screenshot if needed. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:15, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Yep. Only current players. Former players and coaches are fine. Lizard (talk) 00:29, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Odd, somebody looking into this? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:33, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
My first thought it that there's a common element somewhere that's been changed recently which is causing the issue. The retired players don't use current team colors, so their not affected. From comparing the two templates, both use Template:NFLPrimaryStyle, which has several template elements to it. My hunch is that a change has been made to one of those templates that has affected the infobox and navbox. The retired players don't use current team colors, so their not affected. Unfortunately, that's beyond my ability to troubleshoot. - BilCat (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
This is what happens when our lord and savior leaves us for a month. Lizard (talk) 01:43, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I think Template:Infobox NFL season is off too. ~ Richmond96 T • C 05:49, 11 March 2016 (UTC)'
Yeah, a lot of them are currently broken. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 05:53, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  • So far after tinkering with Template:NFLTertiaryColorRaw and Template:NFLPrimaryStyle, it appears that there was a change in how the MediaWiki software is passing through the nowiki tags through the templates. I first removed them,[2] but then it affected those templates that used NFLTertiaryColorRaw directly -- there was a reason why those nowiki tags are there originally because it prevents the software from thinking they are to create numbered lists. So then I commented NFLTertiaryColorRaw out of NFLPrimaryStyle and made all borders default to black.[3]. Now everything looks normal (except of course, as I stated, all borders are now black for all those using NFLPrimaryStyle). So it looks like that when the nowiki tags are being passed through NFLPrimaryStyle, the software is now being told to ignore the '#' contained within the tags. Zzyzx11 (talk) 13:40, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Zzyzx11, I fixed template:infobox television, template:infobox television episode, template:infobox song, and template:california. the general strategy is to to remove the nowiki tags, as you suggested. examples of fixes include the recent changes to template:california/color and template:infobox television/colour. if we could move the # outside the parser functions, we could probably fix this one as well, but we need a fix for the 'none' case, as far as I can tell. Frietjes (talk) 16:45, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
@Zzyzx11: I noticed this too. I tried reverting Template:NFLPrimaryStyle, but that just made it look worse, so I reverted it back. The issue is definitely Template:NFLTertiaryColorRaw. I'm not smart enough to try to tackle it (so I'll leave it to other editors who are smarter at technical issues like this one). I won't try to mess with it so as not to be blocked from editing, but there's definitely something wrong with the templates here. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 16:54, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Charlesaaronthompson, I hacked a fix for Template:NFLTertiaryColorRaw. when I have some time I plan to merge that entire set of templates into a single module (e.g., see module:baseball color, module:basketball color, module:college color, ...). Frietjes (talk) 17:38, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
@Frietjes: Thank you so much! That certainly helps! Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 19:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Stat week parameter in Infobox

I want to revisit this discussion because the previous one went off into other discussions and didn't really give a clear consensus. Now that the 2015 NFL season is over, should we or should we not include stat week at the conclusion of the season? I have had an ungoing battle since the season ended with editors removing the stat week at the end of the season. Most people gave input, but honestly I want a simple yes or no to the question "Should the stat week parameter in NFL infobox say Week 17 at the conclusion of a season?" because I'm getting frustrated with my battle and I want a clear consensus to refer to for future battles as well as inclusion in the infobox page where it explains the usage of each parameter.--Rockchalk717 23:26, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Lizard (talk) 23:38, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I've always removed it since it was sort of redundant, but if consensus says to keep it that way, I would. I'll let others decide though. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:53, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary but I don't have a strong feeling about it. It's seeing it on retired players that is rather annoying--Yankees10 23:58, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
I say yes. If its a retired player it shouldn't say a week or year. It should say "Career statistics" or something. ~ Richmond96 T • C 05:08, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Bennie Fowler

Users keep adding that he caught Peyton Manning's last pass. While that may be so, I don't feel that it's that noteworthy, being that it was in the post season. I feel the one that would be more noteworthy would be his last regular season pass. We also have a user that stated in this edit summary that they are pretty much more than willing to blatantly violate 3RR. Can we settle this b.s. once and for all?? CrashUnderride 05:11, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

  • Not notable, as every QB has a last pass caught by a receiver, but I don't think we put that info into articles. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 06:49, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93: Then please add your voice to the conversation here. They don't seem to care that it's not. CrashUnderride 06:52, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
I think people blew it out of proportion because he gave the ball back to Peyton (and made a spectacle out of it). If it weren't for that gesture no one would be the wiser or even care. Give it about another week before the Twitter crowd moves on to the next big thing, like which basketball players the kardashians are dating that week or whatever. Lizard (talk) 07:02, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • @Lizard the Wizard: another week? The game was the better part, if not over a month ago and it's been added numerous times. CrashUnderride 07:29, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Well, it was reported by a reliable source, which makes it "notable" in the eyes of the project, doesn't it? More trivial things have been added to player articles, and it's only a single sentence, so I don't think it's worth edit warring over. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 07:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, most of those trivial things end up getting removed. But did you mistype? Or do you think it is worth edit warring over? lol CrashUnderride 07:51, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, typo. And I'm fine with whatever the final decision is, I can see it both being removed and remaining. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 08:46, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Super Bowl 50

Why is Super Bowl 50 not at Super Bowl L? It seems that all other Super Bowl pages are named with roman numerals.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:01, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Because it's official name is Super Bowl 50. The graphic designer the NFL hired couldn't come up with a good looking logo for it using the 'L' so they went with 50 instead. If I'm not mistaken it's mentioned on the article itself. CrashUnderride 15:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • Note: read the last full sentence of the opening paragraph of the article also. I do know that I read my first reason on an ESPN.com article though. CrashUnderride 15:06, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I thought it was because it's a special number/occasion? The NFL is returning to Super Bowl LI next season. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:27, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

NFL player articles vandal/sockpuppeteer to watch out for

There is a vandal/sockpuppeteer messing with NFL player articles lately, whom we need to watch out for. This user's (presumably) original account was Footballwwerocks, and they edited some NFL players' articles to falsely change players' current teams or falsely claim that players have retired. Since having their original account blocked, this vandal has created sock accounts with similar names, such as Awesomnessrocks and Footballandwwe, and continued to make the same type of edits. They have also made edits of this sort with IPs (some examples: [4], [5], [6]). Please be on the lookout for this vandal. If you see an IP or new user making false changes to NFL players' teams, or falsely claiming that NFL players have retired, they are very likely a sock of this vandal and should promptly be reported to WP:AIV without warning. --A guy saved by Jesus (talk) 22:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. What possesses someone to do things like this, I'll never know. It's fascinating, really. Lizard (talk) 22:51, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

The Buffalo Bills NFL Infobox

The Buffalo Bill's Infobox for each individual season seems to be formatted wrong. All other NFL teams have the "uniform" section centered with the teams colors as a back drop...anyone know why this is? Or knows how to fix it?

Coalman767 (talk) 23:57, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

@Coalman767: Can you link to an example? Lizard (talk) 05:53, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

revisit fixes to the team nav boxes

@Charlesaaronthompson, Levdr1lp, Bagumba, Jweiss11, and Dissident93:

Per earlier discussion, we have general agreement that the season-year render within Category:National Football League team navigational boxes isn't working in all cases (desktop/mobile) from all perspectives (including teams w/o exactly 10 playing years in their inaugural decade). Is this something we can revisit this offseason? UW Dawgs (talk) 22:15, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd think so. I don't remember a problem with the original format, unless it had to do with mobile viewing. (I use a PC for Wikipedia). ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:11, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Render issues aside, I'm in favor of overhauling these navboxes to bring them more in line with the college football and college basketball team navboxes; cf. Category:NCAA Division I FBS team navigational boxes. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:51, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. Broadly, the two three options seem to be:
1) Narrow UI markup changes to get the initial decade group to align and be WP:HLIST-compliant. I don't think this is possible based on the prior discussion, but defer to those with more markup expertise.
2) Entirely remove the markup related to non-played seasons in the initial decade group, ala 1900s in Template:New York Yankees. This option is by far the easiest.
3) Refactor. Flatten the multiple decades group into a single "Seasons" group (ala the space-efficient design used in college sports w/100+ years of history), remove the collapse option, and/or merge with the redundant Category:National Football League team season templates.
I'm keen on all of 3). Given a viable and consensus design, I'm entirely willing to roll this out on all ~32 NFL team articles to rid us of the current design and associated problems. UW Dawgs (talk) 03:00, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I vote yes. As long as consensus is reached, I don't have a problem with it. @UW Dawgs: If you're willing to do the work to make the season templates consistent for all 32 NFL teams, I'll support it. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 05:28, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
As a next step to correct our current layout issues without precluding a larger change, I am proposing one, uncollapsed Seasons group with all article links, in contrast with the current NFL layout of a collapsed Seasons subgroup and article links grouped by decade. This is a hybrid of the easiest and best parts of 2) and 3). Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 23:08, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
Oppose eliminating decades & grayed-out years. Listing seasons by decade provides greater organization and clarity, especially for a wider readership unfamiliar w/ specific team histories. And If we're considering moving the collapsed seasons group to the standard part of the template, we might as well consider doing away with the seasons group altogether -- most if not all NFL teams already have dedicated season templates, and this would only further emphasize the redundancy. Levdr1lp / talk 18:00, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
What is the viable design to retain the decades grouping? Right now we hide season article links for no obvious reason or benefit, it is extraordinarily horizontally space-inefficient (left-aligned links, consuming only ~50% of page width), and has HLIST and mobile-render-of-desktop issues. This discussion is occurring because the status-quo does not work. And yes, explicitly showing the years does allow us to remove the redundant Category:National Football League team season templates as noted in 3). Generalized examples of this can be seen at the bottom of team and season article, such as Detroit Lions#External links and 1960 Detroit Lions season#References. UW Dawgs (talk) 18:19, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
Collapsing the season group alleviates any minor aesthetic concern over L-R spacing while preserving organization & clarity for a wider readership. And if I had to choose which to eliminate, I'd get rid of the season group in the team templates over a fully populated category and its corresponding 30+ dedicated season templates. Levdr1lp / talk 19:52, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think continuing to hide the layout issue by default is a valid resolution. If not by flattening, how would you propose to correct the existing layout problems in the decade groups? UW Dawgs (talk) 01:54, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
It's perfectly "valid" to collapse the season section. If your concern is aesthetic (decades aligning to the left), then an aesthetic solution (collapsing the group) is perfectly reasonable. If we're going to list seasons in the team template (however redundant to the season-only templates), why wouldn't you want to list them in a more comprehensive manner? The fact is many teams have had periods in their histories when they have gone w/o play. By graying-out those years, more communication is communicated to readers (i.e., not that that year's season page link is missing, but rather that no such season of play even took place). For the purposes of organization, graying-out years also allows for WP:HLIST compliance while keeping decades vertically aligned -- which, I believe, is what led to revisting these team templates in the first place. Levdr1lp / talk 02:32, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, your issue remains padding the initial 1940~1945 links text in Template:Cleveland Browns and maintaining the gray text for non-played 1996~1998 seasons. This proposal, and 3) in full, explicitly does all of that. Hiding links (via the collapsed section) for no reason is bad design, as is stacking redundant links in consecutive templates on NFL team and season-year articles. The decade groups serve no meaningful purpose -college users (Template:Michigan Wolverines football navbox navigate 100+ season links without difficultly and in a more space-efficient layout. So what is your solution to this layout issue, for mobile and desktop, and WP:HLIST compliance? Right now the attempt to vertically-align each set of ten links is causing these problems. What's the design resolution? UW Dawgs (talk) 03:21, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I think you may be confusing links w/ text. Grayed-out years are text, not links. I favor breaking down seasons by decade -- if we're even going to bother w/ seasons in the team template -- both for organization & clarity. By that I mean vertcally-aligned seasons ending in the same number (e.g., 1939, 1949, 1959, etc.). As far as I can tell, option 3) merely orders seasons (represented by links, not text) chronologically. But how are off years (no play, no season) treated? In the case of the {{Cleveland Browns}} template specifically, I prefer grayed-out text for the three years of inactivity, as well as years 1940–45 to allow for vertical alignment. That said, if option 3) orders years similar to {{Notre Dame Fighting Irish football navbox}} template using links for in-play seasons & grayed-out text for off years (note years 1890 & 1891), then I could potentially support that. Levdr1lp / talk 05:12, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
  • I'll throw in my 2 cents. I favor the college method as well. I think what Dawgs means by "hiding links" is that for most teams, seasons where there was no play actually DO have articles. See 1918 LSU Tigers football team. Yet in the navbox that year is grayed-out. Lizard (talk) 05:33, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I had no idea there was such a thing as an article for a season which never occurred (FWIW, the 1918 LSU page is completely unsourced). Notability issues aside, can you point to any other such articles? Note that there are no such links/articles for 1890 & 1891 in the Notre Dame template above, nor are there dedicated articles for the Browns in 1996, 1997, & 1998. Levdr1lp / talk 05:47, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
1943 Alabama Crimson Tide football team is a GA for a season that never occurred. Lizard (talk) 05:52, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm still curious just how common this is -- any pro examples? Regardless, any off year should be listed, whether or not the off year has its own dedicated article, in order to communicate the absence of play for that year. Levdr1lp / talk 06:31, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think there are any pro examples. When I said "most" I meant college, my bad. I'll admit a detailed one like the '43 Bama article is rare and I'd be fine with nuking the stubs, but that's a different topic for a different WikiProject. I do agree that off-years should be listed, but should only be grayed-out if there is no corresponding article. That shouldn't be an issue with pro templates since there aren't any articles for no-play seasons that I know of. Lizard (talk) 07:03, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Nice callout re 1943 Alabama, I hadn't seen a CFB article around a non-played season. Generally, CFB teams can have gaps after their first few played years in 1880s~1900s (temporarily cancelled programs, lack of opponents) and WWII in partcular. We display those gaps in non-played seasons as grey text for obvious reasons as called out above as a benefit to the viewer. NFL intent is to continue this practice and account for these gaps, such as Browns 1996~98. UW Dawgs (talk) 07:17, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Edited to remove ambiguity. Proposoal is to 1) merge the multiple decade groups into a single "Seasons" group to avoid the alignment problems within the intial decade (the root of this dicussion), 2) have this new "Seasons" group render by default as a peer to the existing groups (not be collapsed by default), 3) start "Seasons" with a link to the first played year, end with the last played or current year as appropriate, and 4) show any years in between first and last which lack an associated aricle (such as 1996~98 non-played for the Browns) as grey text.
Additionally, and optionally, the season article links within Category:National Football League team navigational boxes (above) are currently redundant and stacked with Category:National Football League team season templates (below). Category:National Football League team season templates appears to be unnecessary and redundant in every usage I've seen. Surely they were created for a reason, but that is unclear to me at this point. If shown to be actualy redundant in every case, Category:National Football League team season templates can be deprecated. I'm content to table this existing redundancy issue, to focus on resolving the decade groups layout problem. UW Dawgs (talk) 07:08, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
I am willing set aside the issue of decades and support the revised proposal so long as off-years are included & grayed-out (whether or not there's a link to an article for that year). Levdr1lp / talk 07:53, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
Excellent. While I'm not ready to characterize this as broad consensus, I am rolling out this change via WP:bold to Category:National Football League team navigational boxes with a link to this Talk, which might draw in more participants and perspectives. UW Dawgs (talk) 19:21, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
This has been completed on all 32 templates. Note, league championship are already noted in bold, but there is no supporting text to explain this treatment. CFB has implemented help text as seen here Template:Notre Dame Fighting Irish football navbox. Perhaps that treatment should be added to the NFL templates. Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 20:09, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Need help

Ok, so user 98.230.189.67 (talk · contribs) has moved non-permanent type of navboxes on QB articles (Starting QB, and the roster one) inside of collapse templates, including the ones that clearly state "Awards and Honors". I've begun to revert his edits, but realized he had done a lot of them today, and has ignored me in the past saying to not do it. I ask because I thought listing navboxes that players will eventually be removed from should be clearly viable, as this was the standard? Can anybody help me either explain to him (already left him a talk page notice), or help revert all the edits from today? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

I noticed that as well, he's been in cruise control. My issue with it is the grouping of navboxes when there's only a few of them. I typically group them when there's ~10 or more. I don't think EVERY navbox section needs to be collapsible like this IP is doing. It adds an extra click where it isn't needed. And yeh, they shouldn't be named "awards and honors" if it includes such navboxes as "Panthers 2011 draft picks." Lizard (talk) 02:01, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. I don't mind him making groups of navboxes if it's under 10 as much, but we need clear documentation somewhere that states what should and shouldn't be put in there. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:13, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Clear documentation? On NFL-related subjects? What is this you speak of? Lizard (talk) 03:10, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Pft, yeah. I always forget not every Wikiproject has pages like this that explain the best way to write an article for the related project. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 22:37, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League#Article Formats

Is there any specific reason for the redlinks in this section, or has no one gotten to those yet? Because if they're fair game I think the "Player Pages" subpage should be a TOP priority. As I cynically hinted to in the section above, American football related pages are severely neglected. Compared to MLB and NBA articles, there's a lack of any structure or guidelines for football pages. Maybe it's a consequence of football's popularity, and thus pages see more IP editing, but then that's all the more reason to come up with some sort of guidelines for users to follow. I'll start up the Player Pages subpage and try to get the basics down. Lizard (talk) 16:19, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

The reasons for the differences is that there are way more football players than MLB, NBA and NHL players. 20 man rosters vs 55 man rosters. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:30, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
That is true. There's former players who don't even have articles. But we should at least have presentable articles for players who one would think are the most notable. Mean Joe Greene's article gets 400+ page views a day and needs a lot of work. George Connor is in both the college and pro HOFs and until just recently his article consisted of 3 lines of text. Now 4. Lizard (talk) 19:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
And we allowed this to stay for over 10 days in the LEAD of the most viewed NFL-related article on this site, which is also a GA, and is "watched" by over 300 editors... Lizard (talk) 03:20, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Kansas City Chiefs staff changes for 2016

Ryan Reynolds was named to the teams Sports Science/Conditioning. I'm not sure if it's Ryan Reynolds or someone else. However, I know it's not Ryan Reynolds, the actor, who is linked in the teams staff navbox. CrashUnderride 01:54, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

None of the sources I can find, such as here, specify anything past "new conditioning coach Ryan Reynolds." Deadpool grossed $750m so yeh, Ryan Reynolds most likely isn't out looking for a football coaching position. Lizard (talk) 02:27, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

New Dolphins OC Clyde Christensen

If someone is looking for an important article to build out from scratch, the article for Clyde Christensen, the Miami Dolphins' new offensive coordinator and long-time Indianapolis Colts assistant, is presently a two-sentence stub. It's a good project for someone to jump on while his Colts bio and all of the Florida news articles about his hiring are still available. I've confirmed all of the teams, dates and coaching titles used in the infobox, so it offers a road map for any would-be writers. Cheers. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:57, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll go for it. Leggomygreggo8 (talk) 15:58, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Tremain Mack

So, I recently updated and expanded the article for Tremain Mack. I would like for someone else to rate the article as Start, stub, etc. because it's in that weird limbo area between stub and the next level. lol. CrashUnderride 10:26, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Infobox guideline

Mister Accolade
Career highlights and awards
NFL records

An attempt to bring uniformity to the highlights section of NFL player infoboxes, instead of just throwing whatever we want in them. Based mainly on Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Player style advice and Wikipedia:WikiProject National Basketball Association/Style advice. Items that are greyed-out are parts I'm not confident should be done that way, so any feedback is welcome to try to get a permanent guideline down.

To the right is an unrealistically successful player's infobox following this guideline.

Miscellaneous notes:

  • "Champion" (as in Super Bowl champion) is not a proper noun, so should not be capitalized. "Championship" is typically capitalized if it is part of the name of the game, e.g. BCS National Championship.
  • Hall of fame inductions do not need to be stated in the "highlights" section if they're already displayed with banners, e.g. Pro Football Hall of Fame.
  • Wire services should not be italicized. Typically only magazines and newspapers are.
Typical wire services (not italicized): Associated Press, United Press International, Newspaper Enterprise Association, Pro Football Writers Association
Typical magazines, newspapers, etc. (italicized): USA Today, Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Pro Football Weekly
  • Awards and highlights should be in descending chronological order, with the most recent listed first. The exception is post-playing honors (e.g. retired jersey, halls of fame, etc.), which should be listed last.
  • Retired jerseys should be displayed with "No." per MOS:POUND.
  • When listing All-American and All-Pro selections, there is no need to list the selector. If one selector has a player on its first team, and another has that player on its second team, the player is a first-team selection. List them as "First-team All-XXXX (19XX)".
  • Also, in the case of All-Americans, do not specify consensus and unanimous selections. For simplicity, since it could create an unnecessary bullet if a player was consensus one year and and not another.

Highlights to include:

  • League championships (Super Bowl champion, NFL champion, AFL champion, AAFC champion, etc.)
  • League MVPs + selectors (NFL MVP, AFL MVP, AAFC MVP, etc.)
listed as year-league-selector(s), e.g. 1995 NFL MVP (AP, NEA, UPI, SN)
OR
league-year;-selector(s), e.g. NFL MVP (1995; AP, NEA, SN)
NFL records
  • 539 passing touchdowns
  • 55 passing touchdowns, season
  • 71,940 passing yards
  • 5,477 passing yards, season


What not to include:

  • Pre-season watch-lists, e.g. pre-season All-American
  • Honorable mentions/third teams
  • "Clubs," e.g. 20/20 Club, 50 Interceptions Club, 10,000 Rushing Yards Club. This a baseball term and even they don't include them in infoboxes.
  • Divisional championships, e.g. NFC West champion
  • AFC/NFC championships if the player's team won the Super Bowl that season
  • exception: from 1966–1969 when the NFL/AFL championships were basically NFC/AFC championships, but were still separate
  • High school state championships (except for coaches)
  • Monthly/weekly awards, e.g. NFC offensive rookie of the month, FedEx Ground player of the week
  • Minor team awards, e.g. Rams rookie of the year, Jets teammate of the year
  • All-conference selections, e.g. All-AFC, All-NFC (which are defunct, to my understanding)
  • Franchise records, e.g. "Jacksonville Jaguars all-time leader in wins (3)"
  • "Jersey no longer issued" There could be several reasons a player's jersey hasn't been worn since his retirement
  • Arbitrary milestones, especially if the player was not the first to achieve it, e.g. "third player to rush for 800 yards and 13 touchdowns in a season taking place during a leap year"
  • Arbitrary records, e.g. "most seasons with 1,200+ receiving yards and 12.5+ touchdowns in NFL history"
  • A section link to a highlights and awards section of the article, e.g. "other awards and honors" in Drew Brees' infobox. The table of contents already serves this purpose.

I'm torn on what to do with "Top 100" selections. Do we even know exactly who selects them?

Lemme know what you guys think below. Lizard (talk) 04:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks and sounds good to me. I personally have no complaints. Except maybe one. Can we make it mandatory that everyone include me being the greatest at all things in the list??? :D CrashUnderride 08:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
I remember players in the Top 100 are selected by "their peers". I have a feeling that maybe the player with the most "votes" by the aforementioned peers get higher scores, since that's why Peyton Manning was still ranked for 2011 despite not even playing a down that year. NFLisAwesome (ZappaOMati) 16:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Consensus at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_12#NFL_Top_100_Rankings_in_Player_Infoboxes was not to list Top 100.—Bagumba (talk) 08:29, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Please, I can't handle all this feedback at one time. Lizard (talk) 00:07, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
I'm going to assume WP:SILENCE and put the above up at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Player pages format. If anyone has any suggestions we can discuss them on the talk page there. Lizard (talk) 18:30, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the recent NFL draftees

Just a reminder for anybody who is following the draft and updating the pages for the players, please don't forget to add in the roster navbox after the draft ones. I've just had to add in all 32 to the 1st rounders, and won't be able to do this for every player from 2nd round to the 7th. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 04:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

draft is not capitalized

I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, but just a reminder that "draft" in NFL draft is not a proper noun. Lizard (talk) 01:18, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure where and when the discussion for this was held, but the NFL Draft as a proper noun exists. It's also WP:COMMONNAME and should have never been changed. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
    • Pretty sure it was a non-sports MOS person. I'd say it leans towards capitalization, but it's going to be hell to get anything but a "no consensus" now at WP:RM to switch it back. The MOS guys show up to more of those discussions than the indiv sports projects, and anyone else not involved could probably care less.—Bagumba (talk) 01:50, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
      • Huh. Wasn't aware of that. I'm just going along with how the draft articles are titled, for consistency's sake if nothing else. Lizard (talk) 01:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Yh, someone went through and changed these one time. I don't think there was a discussion or anything. NFL Draft seems to be more common. Some of the new sources with the "NFL draft" might be copying Wikipedia though. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:37, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Well then what's stopping us from changing it back now? If one person did it without any discussion. We've got at least four right here in favor of changing it back. Lizard (talk) 02:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Everyone is encouraged to be bold, but my money is on it creating an edit war, and it's just going to end up at WP:RM. You can find the editor in the diff. Be less drama to just go to RM, where it'll take more than 4 !votes for an MOS issue.—Bagumba (talk) 03:06, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
Oh. That guy. Lizard (talk) 03:11, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
  • See here for the RM. ~ RobTalk 03:28, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Bot tasks discussion

Auto-Assessment of Unassessed Articles

Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there appears to be consensus for a bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

Articles will only be auto-assessed to the "standard" classes (FA, FL, GA, B, C, Start, and Stub), and articles which have conflicting classes listed on different WikiProject templates will be skipped. In other words, this task is intentionally conservative to ensure that it doesn't make any problematic assessments.

This bot task will operate on an opt-in basis. If you're involved in this WikiProject and think auto-assessment would be beneficial, please discuss the possibility here. If there's consensus among WikiProject members to opt-in to auto-assessment (or a reasonable period of time goes by with no dissent), please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess and list the project.

If you have any questions, feel free to ping me here or message me on my talk page. Cheers! ~ RobTalk 05:57, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm starting here because I happen to be a member. I would support this task, as it would more accurately assess where we are in terms of article quality. Basically, it carries with it all the benefits of normal quality assessments, but expands those benefits to more articles. ~ RobTalk 05:57, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
Hello WP NFL, please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 12 - it includes a link to the trial run - if you have any concerns please post at the bot approval page. — xaosflux Talk 17:56, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
The trial run has completed, there are about 3000 pages to go - baring any objections placed here: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BU RoBOT 12 in the next couple of days this will be going live. — xaosflux Talk 11:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 Done ~ RobTalk 02:15, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of importance of single season articles

Would anyone object to using a one-time bot run to assess single-season articles of NFL teams (former and current) as mid-importance, as per the instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Assessment? I've been trying to make a drive lately to better classify the importance of articles in this project, and this is a very easy category to knock out with a one-time run. All single-season articles are in Category:National Football League teams seasons, so it's easy to identify which articles need the tagging. I've looked through the category tree and there doesn't seem to be any miscategorization. ~ RobTalk 16:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

I say go ahead, Rob. Personally I welcome anything that automates the maintenance of articles so we can allocate more focus on the actual content. And thanks for looking into re-assessing article importance. But I feel like for the most part everyone just works on whatever articles they feel like, and importance is an afterthought. After you're done the assessments I think we should commit to mass improving the high- and top-importance articles. Not just maintenance; we have plenty of people working on that. But content as well. Lizard (talk) 17:26, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
That's kind of the point, yeah. The classifying articles is way more important than importance, but I think it's worthwhile to know what articles are the "high" and "top" articles so we can try to convince editors to devote more time to them. ~ RobTalk 17:34, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

More tasks?

While I'm working on tagging stuff for this project, is there anything else that needs doing? Auto-tagging everything in Category:Players of American football by position seems like a good idea. ~ RobTalk 00:30, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

NFL team categories

Hey, when do you guys apply NFL team categories? I ask because they seem to be applied to many recent draftees (example). Those team categories are subcategories of Category:National Football League players but, as of now, none of them is actually an NFL player yet - and some may never be. At WP:NBA, we only apply team categories after a player appears in a regular-season or playoff game because the NBA doesn't recognize them as players until then. But before I deleted any I wanted to check and not assume you use the same standard. Rikster2 (talk) 00:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

The player gets the category as soon as they are on the roster. The player doesn't have to appear in a game to get the category.--Yankees10 00:29, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
What Yankees10 said. They are all guaranteed to have a contract with a team (that's what the draft means), so these categories belong (as do team roster navboxes). The only time I've ever had to remove one of these categories was when Jon Baldwin failed his entry physical with the Detroit Lions a few years ago, meaning he was never officially a member of the team. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
So should I add Category:Detroit Lions players to Abe Mickal? How about all the players who were drafted by NFL teams and ended up playing in the American Football League? Seems silly. Lizard (talk) 00:57, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Did he sign a contract with the team? If so, then yes. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:39, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I think all of the recent draftees just get the category added because there is pretty much an 100% that they're going to sign with their respective teams. If they don't sign a contact after getting drafted, then you don't have to add the category. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
There's obviously some exceptions. Especially for players from back then.--Yankees10 01:44, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

If a player never ends up playing a game for a team (e.g. training camp cut, practice squad only, permanent IR), does the category remain? —Bagumba (talk) 01:21, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Yep, as long as they signed a contract to play for the team, it gets added. At least, that's how it's been handled here for years. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:39, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
OK. Seems like WP:CRYSTAL to me, but that's why I asked. Rikster2 (talk) 01:42, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
It's not CRYSTAL per se, if the criteria is just to have signed a contract, and it never get removed after that. It's different than NBA and Baseball projects, but it wouldn't be the first inconsistency between the major US sports.—Bagumba (talk) 01:48, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Sure. But how many of this year's NFL draft picks have signed contracts as of now? And if Rico Gathers fails to make the Cowboys this year, I doubt they count him as a player for their franchise in five years, which is kind of what the category would imply. But no skin off my nose. Rikster2 (talk) 01:51, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I was only thinking of off-season signees, not the fact that these draftees may not have signed yet. I'll leave it to the category gnomes.—Bagumba (talk) 02:39, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Can you even name one draftee in recent memory who never signed their contract with the team? You are thinking of guys who are released in late summer and never take the field for the team, most likely. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
What if he signed a contract with the team but a court ruled the contract invalid? Lizard (talk) 03:02, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
In that case, I'd have said it would make sense to leave Billy Cannon in the Rams category, since his contract there (invalid or not) was notable (for this exact reason). – PeeJay 11:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
But would common sense say that Billy Cannon was a Rams player in that case? I'll give you an NBA example - Len Bias. Rikster2 (talk) 13:14, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
Normally, the guideline would mean that he would still be considered a Rams player, despite the contract later being voided. Even still, that's iffy and up for debate. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 14:32, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I wasn't asking about the guideline, I get that I was asking about common sense. But it's you guys' guideline so you can do as you like. Rikster2 (talk) 14:47, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
@Dissident93: It begs the question of why do we have infobox as "Roster status: Unsigned draft pick"? If we're going to bother to update that later, why not just couple it with the category. I can see if we didn't want to bother w/ details for the cat, but we already are with the infobox. I dont really care either way, it would just seem that it would be consistent between cat and infobox.—Bagumba (talk) 03:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree. They should have all been set to "Roster status: Active" from the start, since really, all of the players will be signed within a few weeks anyway (OTAs start for most teams in May; and with the new CBA rules governing non-negotiable rookie contracts, none of them are able to hold out into late summer like they used to do). So whenever the players do sign (soon), somebody has to go in and change them all to Active, which just creates unnecessary and tedious work that could have been avoided. I can even recall a player or two still having "Unsigned" as their status well into the season, which was clearly not true. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 14:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Uniform numbers?

Where are all these IPs getting uniform numbers for the newly drafted players? I've even seen some players go through 3 or 4 different numbers from IPs since the draft. I'm not sure whether to revert them or just leave them, since that's not usually something we require a source for. Lizard (talk) 22:41, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Either from the team's twitter feed or their roster page. If you can't find the number yourself, then remove it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 23:42, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Stuff only needs to be sourced if it's WP:CHALLENGED. So if you don't think its correct, just revert as "unsourced". The best recourse if it's rampant IPs is to get the page protected at WP:RPP.—Bagumba (talk) 00:07, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

NFL top 100

Looks like the NFL Network has started releasing their "top 100" players for 2016. Just a reminder that we no longer include those in infoboxes per consensus at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_12#NFL_Top_100_Rankings_in_Player_Infoboxes. Lizard (talk) 01:54, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Weekly/monthly awards in infoboxes

Things like "Diet Sprite special teams player of the week," FedEx AFC player of the month," etc are way too minor to be included as highlights in player infoboxes. Yea / nay. Lizard (talk) 00:16, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Definite yea in almost all cases (editing to clarify that I mean yea to Lizard's suggestion of these being too minor for inclusion; don't include). If the player has no awards other than a single player of the week, I could see listing it. But if he has literally anything of more weight, no way. ~ RobTalk 01:46, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Yeh, a while back I saw it in Favre's infobox. Someone had put "12× FedEx Air player of the week" and listed every single week in parentheses. Took up about 4 lines in the infobox. But anyway, it'd be nice if we followed the guideline that I suggested about a month ago that 2 and a half people commented on. Would be a lot simpler than just guessing on what's appropriate. Lizard (talk) 02:03, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
here's the one. It was NFC offensive player of the week, not even league-wide. Lizard (talk) 02:08, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, that's completely absurd. Those definitely shouldn't be there. ~ RobTalk 02:14, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I'd say no, even in cases where that's the player's only award. Generally speaking, if there isn't an article about the award and there shouldn't be, it shouldn't be in the infobox. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:49, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Definitely a no to those.--Yankees10 01:54, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
  • What about the Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week article? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 02:23, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
I'd still say it's too minor. There's already 800 yearly awards given out in football that we try to cram into the infobox. Lizard (talk) 02:38, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
Honestly, that could probably be taken to AfD unless there's some reliable secondary coverage not cited in the article. Every single source is primary, unreliable, or routine coverage. There's no significant coverage in reliable secondary sources about the award itself, rather than routine "X player won Y award" in small local publications. ~ RobTalk 02:49, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Infobox NFL player or biography?

Why are the new draftees using Infobox NFL player? Isn't it deprecated/will be depracated soon in favor of Infobox NFL biography? Lizard (talk) 17:59, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Probably because the editors in question don't know that and just copied over the shell of another preexisting article that used Infobox NFL player. You may want to alert any editors using Infobox NFL player about the deprecation. Jweiss11 (talk) 00:18, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Well, the damage is already done for about 80% of the players since someone went around last year and added the infoboxes in commented-out. Not sure if it was deprecated at the time. Lizard (talk) 01:15, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
I did that. I had no idea there was a new infobox in the making. --bender235 (talk) 00:08, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea where this is at. Template:Infobox NFL biography currently redirects to Template:Infobox NFL player, so there is technically no difference. But it's confusing, since Template talk:Infobox NFL player redirects to Template talk:Infobox NFL biography. Dirtlawyer1 can comment. The template merge at Template_talk:Infobox_NFL_biography#Convenience_break_no._1 was aborted when he insisted on a manual merge. I hadn't followed it much since.—Bagumba (talk) 01:45, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

DL was abducted by Martians about two months ago, so I'm sure his absence has something to do with the unfinishedness of it. Lizard (talk) 01:53, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
As did his presence :-) Commandeer the spaceship DL, you know we love you.—Bagumba (talk) 02:07, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Do we need NFL Combine measurements?

Am I the only one who sees {{NFL predraft}} in bios (with combine measurements like Three-cone drill ) that thinks the whole template is WP:FANCRUFT and should just be WP:TFDed?—Bagumba (talk) 03:36, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

@Bagumba: I see it as having value because the performance at the combines are a key component of when the player is drafted. It's similar in value to information on projections of draft performance. ~ RobTalk 04:28, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree, it would also be hell trying to remove them all from 100s of pages, unless it was automated. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 04:31, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
To be fair, that's extraordinarily easy to automate. ~ RobTalk 04:32, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Also, templates get placed in Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Holding cell, where they can't be deleted until all references are removed. People on that page are diligent about helping with cleanup.—Bagumba (talk) 07:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Rob. It's valuable information, should be kept. --bender235 (talk) 19:09, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: I dont doubt that they are used by pro scouts. I just dont think anyone but the most rabid NFL fan reading WP would know what to make of the measurements, hence my belief that it is cruft. There's also WP:NOTSTATS: "... articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader." I wound't have a problem with a specific measurement in prose if lots of mainstream sources used it in analyzing the players draft position.—Bagumba (talk) 05:23, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Yeh, as a general reader the only one of those that means anything to me is the 40 time. And the height and weight are already listed in the infobox. Lizard (talk) 07:17, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
The height/weight in the box are the height/weight from the combine. This can easily change in later years in the infobox. I agree more prose would be helpful. One of the challenges here is that it will be difficult to locate sources for players from more than a couple years ago. Sports news on the web decays quickly, and many sources likely exist but are no longer easy to locate for players from before 2013 or so. I do see analysts talk about combine performance quite a bit, so reliable sources are "out there" for all years. It's just a challenge to find them due to our bias toward modern times and modern sources. ~ RobTalk 19:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
I definitely don't think they would be worth the trouble of looking for for players from the 80s, 90s, and before whenever it was that combine measurements started becoming widely available. Way too much hassle for a bit of info that the average reader doesn't really care about. Lizard (talk) 20:49, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
Personally, I find these tables very useful. I've often come to a particular player's page looking for his combine measurables. – PeeJay 09:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

 Surrendered I still don't think it should be here, but I'll concede that "no consensus" is the best I could hope for. Thanks all for the input.—Bagumba (talk) 01:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

@Bagumba: I actually wouldn't be opposed to marking the template as deprecated with a note that prose is preferred. Perhaps slowly, over time, we could convert the tables to prose. I'm just a bit concerned that the older articles where its in use can't be converted to prose supported by currently-available sources and/or it will take a lot of editor time if we take this to TfD and initiate a manual review of every article. ~ RobTalk 01:48, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
In practice, I don't think a "deprecated" tag would change anything here. Also, I wouldn't want a sentence that just rattles off the measurements either. IMO, a sentence or two would be warranted for someone who was had a measurement that was best in the draft, or top in their position, or some heralded college player who fell and mainstream sources regularly attributed it to a particular measured. For example, people analyzed the hell out of Michael Sam (personal life aside), but it rarely got down to specific measurements.—Bagumba (talk) 01:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

nesting NFL Championship navboxes

@Charlesaaronthompson: has WP:BOLDly nested championship navbox(es) on NFL team articles. I presume this is under the general banner of grouping similar content and/or collapsing space. Do we like this solution which hides the content somewhat arbitrarily? This has an outsized impact on teams with multiple championships (Dallas Cowboys and 4 championships). For teams with exactly one championship (NY Jets), hiding the lone navbox creates an extra layer of navigation and neither saves space nor groups like content. UW Dawgs (talk) 00:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs: I nested the other championship navboxes for the other teams that have won championships, so as to save space, group like content, and avoid template creep. However, I will remove the nested championship navboxes for each team that has won exactly one (1) championship. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 00:51, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@UW Dawgs: I have now removed the nested championship navbox(es) for the following NFL teams: New York Jets, San Diego Chargers, New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Seattle Seahawks. How many championships should a team have won before there needs to be nested championship navbox(es)? Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 00:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I personally disagree with any inclusion of this treatment for the NFL. Pittsburgh Steelers are our upper bound at six. I support this for the 27 of the New York Yankees and conceptually for the 24 of the Montreal Canadiens (currently implemented a succession box), but disagree with this new implementation as a new NFL standard. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:10, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
It is true that the Pittsburgh Steelers have won the most Super Bowl champions of any NFL team at 6. However, the Green Bay Packers have won the most combined NFL/AFL/Super Bowl championships, with 13 (9 NFL titles prior to the AFL–NFL merger, and 4 Super Bowl titles). As it currently stands, the Packers' championship templates are already nested, because they've won 13 (presumably to avoid template creep). So my opinion is that every team that has won more than one championship should have its championship templates nested, so as to group like content, collapse space, and avoid template creep. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 01:57, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Yikes with these championship boxes. Does Green Bay Packers really need all 13 of those? The central subject of Template:1929 Green Bay Packers is 1929 Green Bay Packers season, not Green Bay Packers. I'd be in favor of deleting all of these from the main team articles. For a point of comparison, we don't put championship navboxes on the main team articles in college sports, e.g. Alabama Crimson Tide football. Keeps things much cleaner. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I second the deletion of them. Not worth the space they take up. Lizard (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I will support and respect whatever the decision reached by consensus is, so long as another editor (not me) is willing to do the work to bring each NFL team's articles and corresponding championship navboxes in line with the decision reached by consensus. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 03:24, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

That's fine, it's not like we have anything else to do and not enough people to do it. Lizard (talk) 04:21, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Piling on both Jweiss11's comment and the recent Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League#revisit fixes to the team nav boxes discussion about removing redundancy, we could:
  1. Remove the seasons navbox (ala Template:Green Bay Packers seasons) from the team articles as redundant -these season links are already present in team navbox (Template:Green Bay Packers)
  2. Remove the Super Bowl/NFL champion navboxes (Template:1936 Green Bay Packers) from the team articles entirely, regardless of count
  3. Update the team navboxes (Template:Green Bay Packers) with bold and italics formatting and the two "Bold indicates NFL Championship or Super Bowl victory" and "Italics indicates NFL Championship or Super Bowl appearance" callouts to restore the content removed in #2, done in the style shown in college equivalents (Template:Notre Dame Fighting Irish football navbox), (Template:Miami Hurricanes football navbox)
This removes ~32 season templates and (up-to) ~100 championship navboxes from ~32 team articles, with no loss of functionality to the user. UW Dawgs (talk) 05:04, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I was just about to ask about the season templates... How long have we had them doubled-up that way? Lizard (talk) 05:16, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, those season navboxes should be eliminated. The main team navboxes could use some cleaning up as well. Perhaps, we should mock up a new version of Template:Green Bay Packers as a test case?
The three changes to streamline the display and remove the redundancy as discussed are now visible at Green Bay Packers#External links and Template:Green Bay Packers (which is also visible from team article). UW Dawgs (talk) 17:33, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Do we really need to italicize championship appearances? I would be satisfied w/ simply using boldface for championship-winning seasons; it's simple enough, and cramming more info in the template borders on puffery, not to mention that it may encourage additional notations (division titles, playoff appearances, etc.), to the point it becomes less useful to readers & more of a mess. Support other proposals, particularly eliminating the redundant standalone season templates. Levdr1lp / talk 17:56, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
No opinion here, but that is parity. My goal isn't narrowly about improvements to the team navboxes (Template:Green Bay Packers). And parity doesn't preclude new consensus around improvements to those as Jweiss11 mentioned in both this and the prior discussion. UW Dawgs (talk) 18:21, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I believe it's the norm for NCAA team templates. And if by parity you mean retaining all pre-existing info from the standalone season templates, that's well enough on its own, but as you point out, this isn't the first discussion on NFL templates in recent months. Why not expand the scope here ever so slightly? There does not appear to be an italicized-championship-appearance equivalent in the college team templates (nor do I think there should be). Levdr1lp / talk 18:48, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I like the suggestions here, but I have a couple of suggestions of my own: Could we use the HTML color code for a team's primary color (in the Packers case, green or HTML color code #203731) in the bolded championship season wikilink? Other than that, I suggest italicizing the championship or Super Bowl appearance season wikilinks. I do, however, agree with Levdr1lp (talk) that there's no need for special formatting for division titles or playoff appearances. I just think only Super Bowl appearances/championships (and for that matter, NFL/AFL titles prior to the Super Bowl) should be distinguished by special formatting in a team's template. Isn't the whole point of this conversation about finding ways to collapse space and reduce template creep? Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 19:16, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

For example, this diff is what I'm proposing be done for the templates that link to articles for all 32 NFL teams. All I did here was bold the wikilink linking to the article discussing a season in which the Packers won a championship with the HTML color value for the Green Bay Packers' primary color (#203731) and italicize the wikilink linking to the article discussing a season in which the Packers played for, but did not win, a championship with the HTML color value for the Packers' secondary color (#FFB612). Feel free to discuss or revert what I've done. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 19:28, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Strongly oppose breaching the dam by introducing color-styling to the text links within list area of navboxes. Within Template:Navbox#Parameter list, color is already supported in title, above, group, and below to provide team context. We don't need to pivot to include color applied to text links within list. UW Dawgs (talk) 20:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
OK, I've reverted that diff. I still think wikilinks to a team's championship victories should be bolded within the main template, and that wikilinks to a team's championship game losses should be italicized. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 20:07, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Support UW Dawgs- no need for text color change. Oppose Charlesaaronthompson- bolding championship-winning seasons is sufficient, while italicizing championship appearances (losses) is excessive and puffy. Championship appearances (losses) are less noteworthy, and the clear standard for other pro sports team templates is *only* noting championship-winning seasons. Same for NCAA team templates. And, again, it would inevitably encourage other editors to highlight other less noteworthy achievements (division titles, etc.). Levdr1lp / talk 21:42, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@Levdr1lp: OK, if the consensus reached by other editors is to only list the championships and not the championship appearance, then I can and will respect that decision by not continually reverting the edits made in good faith. I see your point: there is no reason to list championship game or series appearances. Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 23:15, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

UW Dawgs- What about AFL & AAFC league titles? Either we need to clarify that boldface also includes AFL (or AAFC) league championship seasons (depending on the team), OR we need to simply use a generic footnote such as "League Championship seasons in bold", similar to the general NCAA football team templates which have several different types of historical national championships and use the common footnote "National championship seasons in bold". See UND & UMiami team templates linked above for examples. Levdr1lp / talk 00:35, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Striking out "League" in my proposed footnote above. Simpler wording can suffice. Levdr1lp / talk 00:41, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
I think this issue is the lang needs to work for all cases, see List of NFL champions (1920–69). UW Dawgs (talk)

This change has been implemented on the 32 current NFL teams. The defunct franchises will be covered in a second pass. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:27, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

@UW Dawgs: Is it overkill to add a wikilink to an NFL team's season article (for example, List of Green Bay Packers seasons in the main Green Bay Packers template) in the main template? Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 05:52, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
Here's what I think you should do. Audit all 32 current and select defunct teams. Quantify every row listed (Culture, Lore, Facilities, Seasons, Div Champ., Conf Champ., League Champ, SB app, SB wins, Seasons, etc). Then propose a standard order for all content, what if any you want to remove, what if any you want to add (such as linking "Seasons" to the "List of ..." article), and then open a new dicussion about that cleanup and standarization. Having reviewed each of these multiple times, there is obvious room for improvement. The effort in this current discussion is more about cleanup of the duplicative navboxes, and less about cleanup/standardization within the team navboxes. UW Dawgs (talk) 06:40, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Player measurements, positions

In case there is discrepancy between the values listed on NFL.com versus the respective team site, which one do we prefer? I remember we discussed this a couple of years ago when Haloti Ngata was listed NT by NFL.com but DE by the Ravens' website, but I can't find the discussion right now.

(The specific case that triggered this issue now: Laremy Tunsil, 6-5 305 T, or 6-5 315 G/T?) --bender235 (talk) 00:02, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Articles were written recently about Tunsil's (potential) shift to guard for the season, and the Dolphins roster now lists him as one too. NFL.com gets delayed info from the team's site, as you can currently see with no numbers existing on the Dolphins roster on NFL.com. So in short, we should make it official policy to consider the official team's website roster as the primary source regarding jersey numbers, height/weight, and positions. And regarding Ngata, he should have been listed as the starting NT on the team's depth chart page, so that could have been excused. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 00:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Just to cast my vote, I'm in favor of using NFL.com rather than the individual team websites, for pragmatic reasons. The NFL.com profile is linked from each player's infobox, making it much easier to check for an editor. --bender235 (talk) 00:15, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
    • Which normally NFL.com will update sometime later. They still don't list Tunsil's (or any other rookie's) jersey number yet. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 09:08, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Obviously, the team knows best about what the player's position is. We should go with that. ~ RobTalk 00:35, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Pro Football Hall of Fame article improvement campaign

Picking up on the discussion above regarding "vital articles", one of the groups that clearly ought to rank highest in terms of priorities for improvement is inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I prepared a chart listing the first 123 inductees: Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Pro Football Hall of Fame article improvement campaign. The list identifies the current rating and provides a column to note improvements to the article. To my surprise, the vast majority of these articles are at a very low level of development. The vast majority of the articles (roughly 70%) are rated at the "Start" level, and another group (roughly 10%) are still at the "Stub" level. Only 10 of 123 have been developed to the GA or FA level. Perhaps each member of this project would consider adopting one or two of the undeveloped PFHOF articles and try to improve at least to "C" level, if not higher. I have left a column on the chart to denote improvement in the article's rating so we can track progress. Cbl62 (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Completely agree 102%. I went on a rant about this in early April. You'd be hard pressed to find a stub or even a start class article for a player in the Baseball HOF, or any NBA player in the Basketball HOF. Lizard (talk) 17:18, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Seasonal passer rating leaders in infobox

This is to resolve a dispute at Russell Wilson. Are seasonal passer rating leaders major enough to be included in player infoboxes? Lizard (talk) 04:23, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

  • I'm a bit on the fence, but I'm leaning toward yes if it's covered in reliable sources. ~ RobTalk 05:15, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Just to add my vote, I'd say no, since they never have been in the infobox before and it doesn't receive nearly as much coverage or recognition as passing yards leaders and passing touchdowns leaders. There's so many things we already try to cram into the infobox as "achievements." I think season leaders should be limited to: passing touchdowns, passing yards, rushing touchdowns, rushing yards, receiving touchdowns, receiving yards, sacks, interceptions. Lizard (talk) 05:29, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
    • What about tackles? ~ RobTalk 05:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
      • If only for the sake of convenience, let's limit it to the seasonal leaders that currently, as of May 19/20, 2016 have a template. E.g. Template:NFL sack leaders. I say currently because someone will undoubtedly make one for every stat in the book. Plus, I don't think I've ever once seen "NFL tackles leader" in an infobox before. Lizard (talk) 07:09, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
        • Existence of a template is an arbitrary cutoff. Why not just !vote as to which stats are or aren't notable enough. I'd say most don't understand rating enough, and there's a general bias against game managers that might lead in rating. Leave it out.—Bagumba (talk) 09:22, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
See, I think that would be an excellent idea and I have thought about it. To list seasonal leaders and let people !vote on each one. But judging from previous discussions I'm not confident we'd ever get enough votes for consensus. Lizard (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes - Passer rating is the official stat used by the NFL to determine the league passing leader. It is a major statistical category. Passing yardage hasn't been used to determine the league passing leader since 1937. aqwfyj Talk/Contribs 11:40, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
This is interesting. I wasn't aware of this, but are there any other sources confirming this? A google search of "NFL passing champions" doesn't turn up much except the mention of Favre thinking it's overrated, and "NFL passing leaders" doesn't turn up anything on the first page, but on the second page there's this site. But there's also this from the NFL's Facebook page that's echoed by their Twitter (and they even come with bonus obnoxious comments!). Lizard (talk) 16:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
See this from GQ in 2001. Cbl62 (talk) 16:40, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
In my own mind, the only stat "champion" I think is universal is rushing champion, based on total yards rushing. Nobody understands QB rating, passing yards don't account for efficiency, and TDs are more for fantasy junkies. Football just isn't as into stat leaders as baseball. Is a receiving leader/champion based on number of receptions, or number of yards? But Americans are obsessed with the NFL, and this is a crowd-sourced encyclopedia ...—Bagumba (talk) 18:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Agree on the passer rating point. It's a pretty complex system and it can easily be fluked. But more importantly, I don't think as many people even pay mind to it or care about it as much as touchdowns and yards. They're much simpler to follow; "this guy threw for more touchdowns/yards than everyone else this year" means something to way more people than "this guy had the highest quarterback rating this year." Lizard (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes because it's a notable on the field award/accomplishment, which that part of the infobox is meant to showcase, unlike something like the Top 100 players list which are voted in and opinionated. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 21:52, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Is is notable enough, though? We've never included it before, and I'd argue it's just as notable as leading the league in rushing average or pass completion percentage. And is there a minimum requirement? What if a player played in one game all season and had a 120 passer rating, do we include him? I don't see anything about a minimum requirement on the HOF page. Lizard (talk) 22:09, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I say No. Keep it to the basics. TD's and yards only.--Yankees10 01:29, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Phonetics??

Anybody know how to do IPA pronunciations on here? I'm tryng to add it to KeiVarae Russell's page and I tried to do it myself but failed miserably. Its pronounced Key-var-a. The "var" part is like jar except with a v pronounced like in victory and the "a" is pronounced like the letter "a" if any of that makes any sense.--Rockchalk717 03:50, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

"Vital articles"

According to Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/People, "Vital articles is a list of subjects for which Wikipedia should have corresponding high-quality articles." I'm not sure how much credence these "vital article" lists are given, but just to put it out there Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown, and Jerry Rice are "level-4 vital articles" for American football. Hard to argue with any of those. Unitas' article is pretty decent at the moment, Brown's article could use a bit more info (his acting career takes up more page space than his NFL career), and Rice's page is a shame, straight up. Paragraphs of uncited info. Could use a few more images too, if possible. Lizard (talk) 14:54, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. I might take a run at getting Jerry Rice up to GA status one of these days. There's obviously sources out there, and most of the content is already written. It's just a matter of matching sources to content and making sure there's no big gaps. On the other hand, if anyone here needs access to any sources to improve the Jerry Rice article, let me know. I can get pretty much anything from a national or regional periodical through my university. ~ RobTalk 16:49, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
The main reason I brought this up here is because I believe we should work from the top down. The most popular bio articles should serve as an example for other bios. People shouldn't go to Rice's page, see entire uncited sections and think that's OK. Peyton Manning's page being a GA (however dubious it is) is hugely important for us. I think Unitas, Brown, and Rice should all be at least viable GA nominees by the end of this year. I'll put that as a goal in the to-do list that no one ever looks at, if there's no objection. Lizard (talk) 19:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Go nuts, I support that goal. Could someone knowledgeable in the GA review process look through Rice and give me a guesstimate of whether the actual content needs improvement? Obviously, the cites need to be added, but that's pretty easy with access to appropriate databases. ~ RobTalk 19:32, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Only one thing for now stands out: the stickum claim. Sure, the sources (although they're reliable: LA Times, CBS, etc) all say he admitted to using stickum, but in his quote he doesn't explicitly say he used it. It's just implied. So I would either find a source for a quote where he explicitly admits to using it, or describe the implicative nature of it in the article. Lizard (talk) 20:11, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I bought Rice, the autobiographical novel, to source some of the early life claims. Should be arriving shortly, if anyone needs access to anything in there. ~ RobTalk 14:50, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Somewhat NFL related discussion at College Football Project

There is a current discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football#Debate on Kansas Jayhawks football needing help from other editors that I started that I wouldn't mind some help from NFL page editors on.--Rockchalk717 09:04, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

List of major cities in the United States lacking an NFL franchise

Does this really pass GNG as-is? I definitely agree that there might be a list-worthy group of cities that are routinely discussed as possible locations for an NFL team, but listing every metropolitan area above a certain arbitrary cutoff, even those that have never been discussed in the sorts of articles that cover this topic, seems sketchy. WP:LSC seems relevant. ~ RobTalk 23:53, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Burn it I don't see any sources cited describing the list as a whole per WP:LISTN, and the arbitrary cutoff is silly. Find a reliable source using that cutoff and maybe this is worth keeping. Lizard (talk) 01:01, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
    • There is some information here worth saving, possibly. In particular, it's worth noting the few cities that pop up time and time again in discussions about expansion teams and team moves. Possibly a very selective merge to History of the National Football League? Is there a better location for that information that you can think of? ~ RobTalk 01:10, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
      • I'd say delete it. These kind of lists don't work well on Wikipedia, as it's subjective which cities come up "time and time again." It'll just end up being a crufty collection. My point of reference is Flop (basketball), where the list of floppers was scrapped after if became a joke who warranted being on the list and who didnt'
  • Delete Doesn't seem like a worthy list. Would be better if this information was included in National Football League under a section titled Future Expansion that included cities that have a source. Some of the information could be included in List of defunct National Football League franchises. Also, recommend moving this to WP:AFD to have the formal deletion conversation. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:43, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

AfD is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of major cities in the United States lacking an NFL franchise.—Bagumba (talk) 03:05, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Welp, looks like this one's going swimmingly. It also came to my attention there's a List of major cities in U.S. lacking Amtrak service. Perhaps this was the inspiration? I feel like any "list of x lacking y" is completely unnecessary, but that's another debate for another place. Lizard (talk) 18:38, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
I went ahead and nominated that one too. It's downright silly. ~ RobTalk 22:20, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Pro Football HoF Articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Archived discussion and moved discussion to its own subpage at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Pro Football HoF Articles to create a permalink that can be left on the relevant talk pages of each article. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:28, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure if this has been discussed before, so please let me know if it has, but I would like to bring up the following pages for discussion:

List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees is the basic list of football players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (HoF). Many years ago, I created List of Green Bay Packers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a natural fork of the main article, based on the main way that the HoF categorizes players (see here). The HoF categorizes players by other categories (college, year of enshrinement, etc.), but this is the most obvious and natural way to organize players (see here for the Packers.com list). I also brought the Packers list up to Featured List status (see here for nomination). A few years ago, User:Halophile, with no consensus, created these previous 8 forks based on NFL's divisions, and redirected the two team based lists (Packers and Bears) to their respective division. Since the Packers list was now a redirect, it was nominated for Featured List Removal. Based on the consensus in that discussion (see here), the Packers list was restored and general consensus was formed that forking the Pro Football HoF list by division did not make sense, and if any forks were necessary, they would be done by team (albeit greater consensus on a more noticed page is needed to make this conclusion).

One major issue I have with organizing this list by division is that the NFL's current division breakdown is relatively new and subject to future changes. As such, these lists will not stay the same, whereas if a player enters the HoF as a Packers player, that will never change, even if the team ceases to exist (see older players who played for now defunct teams, players who played for teams that moved or changed names). Also, I doubt that anyone would search to find out which players are in the HoF in each division. The Pro Football HoF doesn't even list the division a player played for on their page.

As such, I propose the following and would like to see if there is consensus to:

Any comments or input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

*Notified User:Halophile as the original creator of the lists, User:Happyman22 as the nominator of the failed Bears featured list and WP:FLC as the venue that the original discussion occurred at. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 03:07, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

*Also placed a notice on the talk page of each article listed here for any editors who are following those articles. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 17:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

  • Support your proposal. This is common sense, in my opinion. Readers who are fans of a particular team are likely to seek out a list of all players from their team of choice in the hall of fame. They are highly unlikely to seek out a list of all players from a particular division. There are certainly other arguments for or against divisional lists, but the first criteria for forking content should always be based on what our readers will find most useful. ~ RobTalk 11:06, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Support option 1 or 2. Perhaps they could be combined into AFC/NFC lists if divisions are a bad split and the full details are too long for a single list, but because the main list is sortable by team, there should not be 32 separate articles for this. Reywas92Talk 17:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Support Gonzo's proposal. I said at one of the FLRCs for the Packers list that I didn't know of anyone who splits Hall of Famers by division. Well, I still don't know anyone who does that. Most people either call a person a Hall of Famer in general or connect the person to a team. If there aren't enough Hall of Famers for a given team to support a stand-alone list, we have sortability in List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees to help guide readers. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Support your proposal creating page for each team. It would be easy to do 32 different pages by taking each team section from the 8 forks (actually 9 when you count the defunct teams list) to start the pages. Of course a couple of pages would be stubs (Jacksonville, Houston). The Template:NFL Hall of Famers by team could be reconfigured and added to each page. The links on the main article teams for each player would have to be redone also. Spparky (talk) 02:06, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Support deleting the 8 forks. I had no idea these existed until now. That's just silly and unnecessary. Lizard (talk) 02:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I redesigned the NFL Hall of Famers by team template that is in the Hall of Famers by team section of the main List. The list by division is linked at top of column. The Green Bay link sends you directly to the team list. As each team page is written, the template can be updated easily to direct you to the team list (whether an article or a section within an article). This is going to be convenient for users no matter which way is decided.Spparky (talk) 03:08, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment Something we have to consider if we go the "one list for each team" route is if each list meets WP:LISTN – Something that is often blatantly ignored when it comes to sports lists. Which can be seen with the current lists by division. Has each list by division been "discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources"? I seriously doubt it. We'll need to be sure to keep this in mind for each team. But for the record, I'm not in favor of a separate list article for each team. Seems like unnecessary cruft in most cases. Lizard (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
    • @Lizard the Wizard: Every time someone new is inducted into the HOF from any given team, every reporter and their cousin from around the regional area writes an article of the formula: "WWWWW was inducted into the Hall of Fame today. He joins the likes of XXXX and YYYY, some of the best ZZZZs to ever play football with INSERT_TEAM_NAME_HERE". In researching biographies, I see that type of coverage for every single team in the CFL, and I would certainly expect all NFL teams to get greater than or equal coverage to the most well-covered CFL team. ~ RobTalk 23:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
      • Fair enough eh. Lizard (talk) 00:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Comment Thanks everyone for your input so far. There seems to be strong consensus to no longer divide HoF'ers by division. It also seems that there is no prejudice in creating a list for each team, with it becoming less clear for teams that do not have many HoF'ers, and thus would lead to a small standalone list (i.e. the Carolina Panthers, who only have three). It would seem that List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees from defunct NFL franchises is an ok way of organizing players who are from teams that do not exist anymore.
Now comes the big question, what to do next? Unfortunately, I do not have the time or energy to create standalone lists for each team. So I will do the following steps to better organize everything and set it up so other editors can establish these pages at their leisure:
This seems to be a happy medium that removes the current division breakdown, which no one likes, and creates a page for each team that can be a redirect until someone wants to expand it. That way our readers can find the info they want in the List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees article and our editors can easily expand each redirect to a standalone list (when notable). Lastly, all of the relevant page histories will be maintained and linked for any editor to use as a basis to establish each team page. I will work on this as time permits, but anyone else can assist. I added a link to each page here: User:Gonzo_fan2007/HoF to help organize it. I will create each team redirect before I make any changes to the division articles. Please feel free to propose other ideas, nothing I will be doing will the redirects can;t be undone. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:05, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
  • I marked the tasks I completed tonight with  Done. I will work on the others in a few days to give everyone a chance to see what's going to happen and comment if necessary. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Just a reminder it's important to add references to reliable sources that discuss each team's players in the HOF as a group or set, per WP:LISTN. When people see a bunch of lists like these pop up all of a sudden they start wanting to know if they're all necessary. Then next thing you know they're all getting sent to AfD. Just save us the trouble now, and make sure they're well cited so we don't have to go cite them later to justify their creation. Lizard (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Past stadium names

A discussion has started at Talk:Cleveland Browns#FirstEnergy Stadium naming history that may be of interest to editors here. It is basically in regards to including former names of a stadium in Template:Infobox NFL team where current and former home stadiums are listed ("stadium_years" parameter). --JonRidinger (talk) 16:11, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Auto-tagging of articles

As a project, we have 22,551 pages tagged as under our umbrella (according to the stats on the project page). I just ran a PetScan to see how many pages within the category tree of Category:National Football League players by team aren't tagged. The total was 8,083 untagged pages in that category tree, which blew my mind a little bit. Some miscategorization is always possible, of course, but every one of the 40 or so I checked played in the NFL and should presumably be tagged as such. Would y'all support a bot task to get that done? This would expand our article total by 25% and go a long way toward checking off the third bullet point on our to-do list. ~ RobTalk 23:10, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

There's been no dissent here, so I'm going ahead with a BRFA. If anyone objects to this automatic tagging, please speak up! (Alternatively, it's also helpful to hear from those who silently agree.) ~ RobTalk 05:12, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Dating inconsistency with players not born in the US

I've noticed some major inconsistency on dating styles with NFL players that were not born in the United States. I know typically on BLP's the article dating syle is based on the subject's home country. But there are some cases of both sides.

None of the above players were born in the United States but the dating is inconsistent. Now a case could be made for the MDY examples that most of them of spent more of their life in the US now then in their home country, but that's only a theory and that can be hard understand for inexperienced editors. So I think consensus should be made on this for which style of dating NFL players not born in the US should have.--Rockchalk717 07:45, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

This has to be solved on a case-by-case basis, in my opinion. A player who played one season in the NFL and then nine in the CFL should have DMY, probably. A player who lived two years in Nigeria before immigrating to the US and living the rest of his life here should have MDY, probably. Not to mention the areas of gray where either style is appropriate, but it should be consistent within the article. It's too subjective to make hard-and-fast rules. ~ RobTalk 05:10, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
Makes sense. I like to focus on consistency on here and it drives me nuts. Majority of the time foreign born athletes in any sport, honestly, typically take up permanent residency once they start playing in the US.--Rockchalk717 23:17, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

New parameter on team infobox

I have started a discussion at Template talk:Infobox NFL team#New parameter request to propose a new parameter addition to the team infobox.--Rockchalk717 23:19, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Cleaning up the infoboxes

Let's actually get this done for once. There's a good deal of maintenance work that hasn't been done on {{Infobox NFL player}} in years. For instance, the debut/final parameters have been sitting around for god knows how long. Can you folks put together a list of changes/fixes you would optimally want done to the infobox? Even if they're cosmetic changes, throw them in here. I'd like to go through once with an AWB run and clean this stuff up. Dirtlawyer1 was working on such a list prior to his sabbatical, but it never was put together while we were both here. I'll get started below. ~ RobTalk 22:24, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

  1. Remove debut/final parameters. ~ RobTalk 22:24, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  2. Remove use of small text in the teams parameter to indicate leagues (as per WP:FONTSIZE). ~ RobTalk 22:24, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  3. Replace deprecated weight parameters with the appropriate new parameters (see Category:NFL player with deprecated height or weight parameter. ~ RobTalk 22:30, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  4. Change hyphens to endashes between years in the "teams" parameter, as per MOS:DASH (been working on this already). ~ RobTalk 22:30, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  5. Remove unsupported dbf parameter. ~ RobTalk 22:41, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
  6. Convert any infoboxes that say "Undrafted" in draftround to use undraftedyear. ~ RobTalk 18:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Would it be possible for a bot to automatically correct any future violations of No. 4? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:32, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
    • Probably. The only tricky thing is trying to adjust for users placing unexpected values in the teams parameter. ~ RobTalk 16:24, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
  • Any interest on anything other than what's already on the list? Ideally, I'd have a couple more non-cosmetic changes so I can piggyback the cosmetic ones off of the non-cosmetic and still hit almost all pages. ~ RobTalk 16:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
    • How about this, actually; what are your thoughts on team lists formatted like at Gene Grabosky? Do we want those "(AFL)"-type entries in there? I've never been a fan. ~ RobTalk 16:28, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
      • They shouldn't exist, look at a player like Kurt Warner who has played in other leagues and they are never written like that. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 01:53, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
        • Yes, what Dissident said. That formatting is prevalent in hundreds of old AFL players' infoboxes. It was started over a decade ago by a user who had a clear pro-AFL agenda. His mess can still be seen strewn around AFL era players. A few months ago I planned on going through the List of American Football League players and cleaning them up but I gave up after finishing the C's. Lizard (talk) 15:18, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Added one above that should be uncontroversial. ~ RobTalk 18:26, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Considering creating this page, need input

I am considering creating a page that lists the Top 5, considering potentially top 10, active players in several major statistical categories but only career statistics. I know it might be hard to manage and I could see IP address wrecking havoc on it during the season but if well managed and kept up to date, I think it could be a useful addition. The categories I'm considering are passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, total touchdowns (not including passing), receiving yards, sacks, and interceptions.--Rockchalk717 08:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

  • I don't think this is a good idea, as it would be just something else we'd have to maintain. Just look how bad and bloated the List of NFL starting quarterbacks article was before I edited it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 09:29, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
  • Agree with Dissident. While it seems like a good idea in theory, "top 5" or "top 10" lists are usually arbitrary and discouraged. It'd be difficult to find sources to support creation of such a list. Lizard (talk) 16:10, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I'm with Lizard. I couldn't say it any better. CrashUnderride 16:20, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Yeah the maintenance aspect is what I was concerned about and why I didn't just create first. It is easy to source though, NFL.com's milestone tracker lists it all off.--Rockchalk717 17:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
  • I generally think Wikipedia's value is on articles whose content is generally enduring, not on "current" lists whose membership is constantly churning.—Bagumba (talk) 19:38, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
  • WP:NOTSTATSBOOK, basically. ~ RobTalk 20:04, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Understood and noted. I will not create this page. Thanks for the input. I didn't wanna create it then turn around and have work be for waste for because it get AFD'ed.--Rockchalk717 06:33, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Do we need to standardize highlights?

I've been encountering resistance when cleaning up current players' infoboxes and it got me wondering two things: (1) Do we need to have a standard for highlights in the infobox and (2) if so, can it be done? My rationale for the current one was to follow suit with the other leagues: Wikipedia:WikiProject National Basketball Association/Style advice and Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Player style advice. But awards in the NFL and football in general are not so cut-and-dried. It isn't as simple as saying "let's include this and exclude this." The NBA and MLB has an MVP award chosen by an official selector. In the NFL, there's about 10 different MVP awards. Same with All-Pros; the All-NBA teams are chosen by a single selector, while there's several All-Pro teams. And then there's the multitude of other named awards that are given out like candy that we've always just slapped in the infobox. So, the simple solution would be to just let highlights be fair game. Otherwise, we could take a look at each award/achievement individually and decide if they're worth including. I can come up with a list we can deliberate on, like what was done at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 32, but we'd need input from multiple editors to give it any credence. One of the problems I'm facing now is the lack of a reference for support of the current guideline, except for the suggestion I made here a few months ago that got exactly one approval. Lizard (talk) 21:16, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

@Lizard the Wizard: Hmm. I'd support standardization generally, based mostly on what you linked, but only if we adjust the ordering and make some tweaks. Highlights should be in order of significance, not in chronological order. See, for instance, the basketball style advice. It makes little sense to put a Pro Bowl appearance over a Super Bowl championship (or even Super Bowl MVP) as is done at Tom Brady currently. Further, we should break out what is/isn't acceptable in the highlights section further. I'd like to see the following:
  1. A list of highlights that should always be included. These would probably include everything you have in the "Highlights to include" section as of now, with the exception of "Notable sports-related awards" (too broad if we're just going by the award passing WP:GNG), "Seasons leading league in any of the following major statistical categories", and "College highlights".
  2. A list of highlights that should never be included, which would be almost everything you have in "What NOT to include" right now. The only exception I see would be "Franchise records".
  3. A list of highlights that might be included, which would include everything I just listed as exceptions above. Whether they should be included would mainly depend on the length of the infobox. If you have 20 highlights in the "always included" category, maybe leave out that one season where they led in rushing yards or some of the college highlights that they aren't known for (like, say, second-team all-American). On the other hand, if you have one highlight, maybe a franchise record makes sense.
Thoughts? ~ RobTalk 21:34, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
@Lizard: AP is currently the most recognized selector for All-Pro. Are there others that get significant coverage that are also worth mentioning? It probably differs by era. Which article(s) did you encounter resistance at, and is there an existing discussion with those editor(s).—Bagumba (talk) 21:37, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
@BU Rob13: I don't necessarily agree with the chronological order either, but it's in the instructions at Template:Infobox NFL player so I just went along with that. Bagumba, my talk page is decorated with some recent conflicts with editors. Also, All-Pros have been chosen since the league was founded in 1920, but none of the current selectors were around before the 1940s. Lizard (talk) 22:05, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
It'd be best not to water down All-Pro by listing just any selector. What are the major ones you would want to include?—Bagumba (talk) 23:19, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Well, per the lead of 2015 All-Pro Team, "Any player selected to the first-team of any of the teams can be described as an "All-Pro."" That's what I've been following. It's also how we do it for All-Americans. So if that criteria is to be believed, technically any selector is fair game. Although again I don't necessarily agree with this way. Lizard (talk) 23:55, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Per WP:CIRCULAR, we don't use WP as a source. On the other hand, All-Pro mentions that AP is currently the most recognized with citations. I'm not implying that AP should be the only ones mentioned, but due weight needs to be applied for any others that are to be considered for the infobox. Remember, all the other selectors can be mentioned in the body.—Bagumba (talk) 00:18, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
I was just pointing that out since it seemed to be our own guideline on the matter. And see, I'd be fine with giving the AP the nod and excluding the others. I don't think there's any doubt that as of now the AP is the most recognized. My only question then would be what to do with the pre-AP (pre-1940) All-Pros. And if we do go the AP route, should we list as "AP All-Pro" or continue listing as just "All-Pro"? Lizard (talk) 00:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
From 1931–42, the NFL made it's own official All-Pro selections, so we could use those and then AP thereafter. Alternatively, Pro-Football-Reference.com uses UPI from 1931–39 and AP after.[7]—Bagumba (talk) 01:34, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
On the other hand, the Pro Football Hall of Fame says Junior Seau was an All-Pro from 1991–1996,[8] but only NEA named him an All-Pro in 1991.[9] Maybe we limit it to selectors that PFR lists, list just "All-Pro" in the infobox, and leave the details to a detailed list in the body.—Bagumba (talk) 06:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
I'd rather not get into the nitty-gritty on this. Why not just throw AP All-Pro in the "always" section and other All-Pros in the "maybe" section? We also have to consider instruction creep on this. If omitting every potential highlight results in no highlights in an article for a significant player, that's not great. Consistency is good, but we should allow some room for editorial judgement. ~ RobTalk 23:23, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't think I'd be in favor of a "maybe" section. If we're gonna have a maybe section then there's no point in having a guideline. If a player is "significant" then he ought to have at least one highlight. Lizard (talk) 23:55, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
I hope you're not implying that we should list high school awards in the infobox for players with no higher honor.—Bagumba (talk) 00:18, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, I worded that weirdly. I'm actually implying the opposite. What I mean is a player who doesn't have an award listed in the "always include" section wouldn't normally be considered "significant." Lizard (talk) 00:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Our notability standards for football are quite low, though. A single game played in the NFL makes one notable, and those players obviously won't have any highlights. I'm more concerned with the players somewhere in the middle who are significant in one small burst (i.e. one amazing game or amazing month, but little other activity). I wouldn't think the one game/month should be a highlight, but the proposed guidelines don't allow that editorial judgement. As for IAR, you're correct in theory, but in practice, guidelines like these are cited to back up one particular version. My opinion on IAR is basically that you should only ignore rules when doing so is unambiguously in the best interests of the project, and that will never be the case when making a layout decision like what to include in an infobox. It's all a matter of judgement and judgement varies. You can't cite IAR over the dissent of other editors citing a guideline blindly. On the other hand, if the guideline specifically says "this is an area for editor discretion", then a more worthwhile discussion is likely. ~ RobTalk 06:59, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
There's always wiggle room for "editorial judgement" per WP:IAR. So that shouldn't preclude having a general recommendation.—Bagumba (talk) 23:31, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Then there's the question of what to do about MVPs; Offensive, Defensive, and Comeback POY; and Rookie and Coach OTY. I think we can use the existence of NFL Honors as rationale that the AP has been the "official" selector of all of these (with the exception of Pepsi ROTY) since 2011. Prior to that, it gets complicated the further back in time you go. See Y. A. Tittle. His PFHOF profile states he won "MVP/Player of the Year" in '61, '62, and '63. His "official site" says he won MVP in '61 and '63. This article and this SB Nation blog counts all 4 of his MVPs. He won the AP MVP only once, in '63 (in addition to the NEA MVP). Yet you'd be hard-pressed to find even a modern source stating he was only a 1-time MVP. Again, at some point the AP became the most recognized MVP selector. Most likely it happened gradually over time, so pinpointing a cutoff year might be impossible. I'm really not sure what we should do, but I think these are our most viable options:

  1. Treat each selector as a separate award. This method would cause a lot of clutter for players like Tittle or Jim Brown, taking up 4 or more lines in the infobox.
  2. List the years separately with selectors listed after each, e.g. on Steve Young. This would also cause clutter for the same reason as the above method.
  3. List only the "most recognized" selector. This would probably be the simplest to enforce, but most difficult to determine. And I wouldn't be comfortable with us retroactively declaring that a certain selector was more recognized than another in a given year.
  4. List as "NFL MVP" without specifying selector, e.g. on Jim Brown and Peyton Manning. I'd say use the ones on PFR.

Again, none of these seem like good options to me. I just can't think of any better ways. Lizard (talk) 04:10, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I'd hate to see an alphabet soup of selectors clutter up the infobox. I'd suggest #4 (listing the award in the infobox w/o the selector) and leave the details for a list in the body.—Bagumba (talk) 06:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
That's the one I've been favoring as well. Of course, it would end up with multiple players being listed as MVP for certain years. But like you said we can leave the splaining for the article. Lizard (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Do we have articles on these selectors (with relation to the awards, not just Associated Press)? If so, we could include those as a wikilink and avoid the alphabet soup problem. If not, too bad. ~ RobTalk 07:01, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Currently, National Football League Most Valuable Player Award has the whole kit and caboodle, not just AP.—Bagumba (talk) 08:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Although that page has a clear bias toward the AP award, what with having a list of players who've won the most MVPs, etc. Most likely a result of recentism. Lizard (talk) 14:20, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

At the very least, "of the week" and "of the month" awards need to go. We had a discussion about them a few months ago and the consensus seemed to be that they shouldn't be in the infobox. Even if they're the only awards a player has. If we allow them in "some" cases it'll only be a matter of time before they creep back into infoboxes of more successful players, and we end up with stuff like this. Lizard (talk) 23:45, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Also NFC/AFC champions, which are redundant in cases where the player won the Super Bowl (which was Yankees10's rationale), and a runner-up award in cases where they lost. That'd be like "NL pennant" for MLB players and "Eastern Conference Finals champion" for NBA players, neither of which are included in infoboxes. Lizard (talk) 15:47, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Long snappers template

I thought it was a joke when I saw someone mention it, but no, Template:Current NFL long snappers is an actual thing we have. Does anyone know the rationale behind it? Lizard (talk) 01:14, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

  • I don't see the harm in it, but I wouldn't care if it got removed either (I'm the only one who maintains it really.) ~ Dissident93 (talk) 03:29, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
    • That's harm enough if you ask me. We should be using our limited manpower for more important tasks. Lizard (talk) 03:43, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
      • It's now at TfD. ~ RobTalk 03:57, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Infobox pro football player

Template:Infobox pro football player has been deprecated for nearly a year and a half, but there's still around 328 instances of it in player articles. We should try to eliminate this infobox in favor of the current Template:Infobox NFL biography. Lizard (talk) 15:12, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! Jweiss11 (talk) 21:55, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm on it. The holding cell is depressing enough that I've been avoiding it lately. ~ RobTalk 21:59, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
There are a bunch of parameters that need to be collapsed into "highlights", which is a bit too complicated to make an easy wrapper. These will need manual conversion, which I'll work on. ~ RobTalk 23:18, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Aye, that'd be why no one has gotten to them yet. You lazy bums. Lizard (talk) 23:30, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
I'm not a lazy bum - I just have an endurance deficiency! :) - BilCat (talk) 23:39, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
I did like 10 and nearly lost the will to live, so I'll circle back to it when I feel like I need to repent for something. ~ RobTalk 23:41, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, systematic editing is known to cause heimerdingers. It's been an uphill battle trying to standardize the highlights section. Lizard (talk) 02:30, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
In an attempt to make this a little less time-consuming, I created an AWB script that does most of the work for you. I say most because it definitely doesn't do everything. For instance, it will convert the list of teams and years that include line breaks into a bulleted list that's easier to work with, but you still have to manually match years to teams. It will also convert most of the various parameters that need to be consolidated into "highlights" and I think I've got it working to throw them all into one parameter, but it requires a once-over to clean them up (there might be an extra bullet point, etc. based on how past editors formatted the infobox). If anyone cares to take a stab at it, feel free to email me at Special:EmailUser and I'll send back the file as an attachment.
If you've never used AWB before, all you have to do is download the program, open the file I send you, and then click Start. There will be an edit box in the lower right corner where you can manually edit the article to clean-up whatever my program misses, and then you hit Save. Easy stuff, and it makes this go a lot faster. ~ RobTalk 08:06, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Down to 170ish, I believe. ~ RobTalk 05:07, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
  •  Done and redirected. ~ RobTalk 16:16, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Excellent work comrade. Now we just need to knock out all the NFL players using Template:infobox gridiron football person. Lizard (talk) 16:38, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Aints as a nickname for the Saints

There's a discussion at Talk:New Orleans Saints#"Aints" as a nickname on whether or not "Aints" is a legitimate nickname to include in the infobox for the Saints. Lizard (talk) 00:54, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Notability of Practice Squad/Offseason Players

Has there been any consensus on the notability of a player who only was part of an NFL's team's practice squad or off-season roster and never played in a preseason, regular season or postseason game? I have run into a few of these types of players and the ones who did not have a notable college career seem to be lacking the type of "significant coverage" needed to meet WP:NOTABILITY. The only sources seem to be press releases from the team that they were added/cut or brief mentions in articles about team moves during the season or offseason. Just curious if this has been discussed before, or if there is a consensus on this? Thanks « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 17:23, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

A player's status as a member of an NFL practice squad member does not confer automatic notability. In such situations, notability needs to be demonstrated under WP:GNG (significant coverage in multiple independent sources) or WP:NCOLLATH (major award, Hall of Fame, or national media attention as an individual). Cbl62 (talk) 19:32, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

What on earth is going on with the infobox?

Currently, {{Infobox NFL player}} is the only main infobox template for NFL players. {{Infobox NFL biography}} redirects there. But Template talk:Infobox NFL player redirects to Template talk:Infobox NFL biography and the documentation subpage is similarly redirected from player to biography. On the other hand, both pages have sandboxes and testcases, and there's currently a template on {{Infobox NFL player}} saying it's being merged with {{Infobox NFL biography}}. The original TfD discussion concluded that the final name for the template should be Template:Infobox NFL biography, if I recall correctly, although I'm now struggling to find that discussion because no-one put {{Old TfD}} on the talk page.

And all that leads me to this question ... what on earth is going on with the infobox? Are we ready to move everything over to Template:Infobox NFL biography? ~ RobTalk 01:15, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I guess, Dirtlawyer was going to check them or something. See: User talk:WikiOriginal-9#Infobox NFL biography. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:20, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
I believe that was part Dirtlawyer's master plan for an infobox overhaul, but since his disappearance it's been put on an indefinite standby. Efforts to contact DL have been fruitless, so it's difficult to say whether we should scrap the plan or not. Lizard (talk) 01:22, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
Note: if we are going to declare DL dead in absentia, I'd be in favor of reworking his method of listing coaching positions. See Mike Heimerdinger. That infobox is way longer than it needs to be. Certainly there's a better way. Lizard (talk) 01:30, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

This merge couldn't finish soon enough. On November 23, 2015, "Infobox NFL player" was redirected to "Infobox NFL biography". [10]. However, there were initial issues, which you can see starting at Template talk:Infobox NFL biography/Archive 12. DL didn't agree with a template merge, and when he got the mergers to bow out, he led an effort to do a manual replacement instead. I can't say I followed it much at that point. Looks like he redirected Template:NFL Coach to NFL Biography on Feb 27, 2016.[11] He removed the entry at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Holding cell on February 9.[12] Looking at those holding cell instructions, the consensus was for the final template to be "Infobox NFL biography".—Bagumba (talk) 01:53, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

  • I was one of the editors (I think?) who merged the coaches into the players infobox, and DL was right to want the final merge to wait until we were sure that was done. One merge at a time is a good rule to prevent headaches. Right now, everything's located at {{Infobox NFL player}} and that template's working fine. I'd recommend deleting {{Infobox NFL biography}} and moving {{Infobox NFL player}} there to complete the rename that was agreed upon ages ago. We should also redirect all subpages of Infobox NFL player instead of deleting to preserve attribution; I'm fairly certain the sandbox, for instance, contains attribution information that we need to retain. Anyone against this plan? ~ RobTalk 02:30, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
    • I'd be wary of deleting Infobox NFL biography, as it already has an edit history and content on it's talk page. Just copy the code over and provide attribution per WP:ATTREQ.—Bagumba (talk) 02:41, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
      • @Bagumba: It's currently just a redirect and its only content was merging from {{Infobox NFL player}} twice (which was reverted). ~ RobTalk 02:53, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
        • Template talk:Infobox NFL biography has content and is not a redirect, and Template talk:Infobox NFL player already redirects to it. It just makes it more confusing if we delete the template, but not its talk page. Looking at how convoluted this thread already is, I don't recommend deleting the template only but having the talk page stay. It just makes it even more confusing if someone happens to need to look back months from now.—Bagumba (talk) 04:48, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

If only DL were here... Quick, someone put Template:University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame up for deletion and see if he takes the bait. Lizard (talk) 07:00, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox NFL biography was originally Template talk:Infobox NFL player; it was moved prematurely to the new location but the template remained behind. So if we delete just Template:Infobox NFL biography and move Template:Infobox NFL player there, we're actually correcting the separation of template and talk page, not creating new problems. This whole thing is a bit of a mess. ~ RobTalk 19:55, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 Done. This shouldn't cause any problems or objections I don't think, but just in case I will be around for the next 8-10 hours and can reverse things if necessary. I'm sure DL would be OK with this. Jenks24 (talk) 06:31, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Is that merge notice at the top of Template:Infobox NFL biography still relevant, or is this merge finally completed after 4 years?—Bagumba (talk) 07:31, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Buddy Ryan

His article is deserving of a listing as a "recent death" on the main page by WP:ITN, but the article contains too much puffery to be posted at present. Please help improve the article. I don't have the time to focus on it. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Green Bay Packers

Hi all! As some of you may know, I have been working for a while on restarting the Green Bay Packers WikiProject, a subproject of this project. After doing a lot of administrative work, such as cleaning up and reorganizing the project's main page and tagging and assessing all Green Bay Packers-related articles, I think the project is ready for some collaborative work. Over the next few days I will be contacting specific users who were on the project's old member list or who regularly edit Packers articles to see if they are interested in becoming an active member. I wanted to leave a note here to let anyone know who is interested that they can come check out the project and add their username to the active member list. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thanks! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 03:59, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Poorly referenced awards pages extravaganza

There's numerous awards given out in football, probably more than any other American sport. It can be difficult to know the notability of some of them, compounded by how poorly many of our articles on them are sourced. If you notice, most NBA and MLB awards are heavily sourced to clearly establish notability and many of them are GA/FA. See Wikipedia:Featured topics/Major League Baseball awards & Wikipedia:Featured topics/National Basketball Association awards. Hell, even the articles listing the awards are featured. Now look at some NFL award pages:

By "non-independent" I mean first party, and so unsuitable to establish notability. I'm obviously cherry picking the worst ones, but there should't be this many that are sourced this poorly. Which of these are notable, legitimate awards? Going by our article on it, if I didn't already know the AP Offensive POY award was a real award, I could just assume it was completely fabricated by some schmuck in his mom's basement. Note all of these are NFL awards; I haven't looked that much into the college awards but I'm not optimistic they're much better. Lizard (talk) 02:07, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

On the bright side, USA Today All-Joe Team doesn't exist anymore.—Bagumba (talk) 05:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Sticky disambiguation situation

I need a little help disambiguating Mike Sullivan (American football) from Mike Sullivan (offensive lineman). If you have an opinion on the matter, I've opened an RM at Talk:Mike Sullivan (American football). Thanks, -- Tavix (talk) 14:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

How about on Mike Sullivan (American football) have it say something like "For the offensive lineman see Mike Sullivan (offensive lineman). It's really not complicated. (Not trying to sound condescending. CrashUnderride 15:52, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Team records in infobox

Do we include team records in the highlights section of infoboxes or not? There's been some discussion in the past on this, and I know a few editors have strong feeling one way or another. Let's get some actual consensus and uniformity on this issue. ~ Rob13Talk 05:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion in infoboxes

Removal from infoboxes

  1. Support removal. Most team records aren't defining characteristics of a person's career, and many of the reported "records" can be very arbitrary (first Seattle Seahawk to play ## consecutive games, etc). They're usually only reported once when a record is reached and then never mentioned again. Including team records in infoboxes inflates them to unrealistic sizes in many cases. ~ Rob13Talk 05:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
  2. Remove League awards are more notable, and it can get pretty unwieldy as to which team records to include. I'd even favor removing most league records. Per WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE: "The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance."—Bagumba (talk) 05:37, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
  3. Remove. Unless they're the 2007 New England Patriots or the 1972 Miami Dolphins, regular season records aren't notable enough to be in the box. CrashUnderride 05:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
    Just to be clear, by "team records", I mean records of an individual player that are the most/fastest/best on a single team. I would consider your example to be league records (i.e. a team with the most regular season wins).
    Ah, well yeah, then delete that crap. lol. CrashUnderride 05:48, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
  4. Remove. To support I'll link my favorite all-purpose poster child for infobox clutter. Lizard (talk) 18:45, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

List of NFL General Managers

Not sure if anyone is interested in expanding this. I tagged it and proposed for deletion, as its current state isn't good enough for the article namespace. Leaving a message here to notify the project. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 21:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

List of lowest-seeded teams to win a championship in North American professional sports

Does anyone have an opinion on this article? Seems like an obscure topic that may not justify one large comprehensive list. Not sure if it is notable enough to be a standalone list... « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 21:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I was gonna point out how it was well sourced, then I noticed most of the references were to Wikipedia. Lizard (talk) 21:31, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
It does have a lot of sources, I am just not sure that there are any that talk about this group as a whole. There are probably sources for each league, but I feel like the leagues aren't usually grouped together. I.e. a list for MLB, NFL, NBA, etc may be justified, but one huge list with all of the leagues? Not sure. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, maybe if it was titled "major North American professional sports". Those are the big four according to the Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada article. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:09, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

NPOV issue on David Carr

User:Manning954 insists that David Carr's lead should be as follows:

David Duke Carr (born July 21, 1979) is a former American football quarterback. He was drafted by the Houston Texans first overall in the 2002 NFL Draft. He played college football at Fresno State. Carr has also played professionally for the Carolina Panthers, New York Giants, and San Francisco 49ers. Carr is considered to be one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history.[1][2][3] He was ranked the 10th worst No. 1 overall pick in NFL Draft history by Foxsports.com.[4] NESN ranked Carr as the 8th worst No. 1 overall pick in NFL Draft history.[5]

Not only is "bust" subjective, but Ryan Leaf's lead commits only one sentence to him being a "bust" and the lead of JaMarcus Russell doesn't mention him being a "bust" at all. These QBs were both also No. 1 overall, and are both much more frequently brought up when talking about draft busts. Let's ignore the stats, however tempting it may be to point out that Carr had one season that nearly equaled Russell's career, and just look at the cited sources. On Sporting News he's not even listed in the top 10. He's an "honorable mention" bust. The NY Daily News has him 6th worst, in 2011. USA Today has him tied at 21st worst in 2011. And then as the article says, Fox Sports puts him 10th worst and NESN at 8th worst. So if we go by the worst rating of him (NYDN), there should be at least five other players in whose lead it would be appropriate to mention their bustitude. Does the (at worst) sixth biggest draft bust deserve to have half their lead dedicated to it? I don't think so. It shouldn't be mentioned at all. Lizard (talk) 22:27, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

They shouldn't mention being bust at all. Now, in the Draft sub-section of their professional career section, sure talk about it all you want. But not in the lead. CrashUnderride 22:54, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "NFL Draft 2013: Meet Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell and the biggest busts ever". Sporting News. Retrieved December 22, 2015.
  2. ^ "NFL's Biggest Draft Busts". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 22, 2015. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  3. ^ Leahy, Sean (April 26, 2011). "Huge mistakes: The 25 biggest NFL draft busts of past 15 years". USA Today. Archived from the original on March 12, 2015. Retrieved December 22, 2015. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  4. ^ "10 worst No. 1 picks in NFL draft history". msn.foxsports.com. April 19, 2011. Retrieved 2011-10-29. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  5. ^ "David Carr, Ki-Jana Carter Among Eight Worst No. 1 NFL Draft Picks". NESN. Archived from the original on October 22, 2015. Retrieved December 22, 2015. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)

Can we get some more input here please? The editor continues to re-add this to the page. At the very least it's undue in a lead of just a couple sentences. Lizard (talk) 21:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Regardless of it being mentioned or not, dedicating three sentences to it is probably too much. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:23, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

College conference championships in player infobox

Since we're removing NFC and AFC championships from player infoboxes, it seems a little odd to leave in college conference championships. Since the player infobox is for individual accomplishments, team accomplishments should be limited to the national level. It gets silly when players from Florida State have "3× ACC champion". It screams WP:CRUFT, and recently a user was going around adding college division championships. Lizard (talk) 17:46, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Keep conference championships in player infobox

  • Not dogmatic about this. I can be convinced otherwise. Still, it makes sense to me with people like e. g. Buck Flowers or Bo McMillin, but divisions are too much, and am skeptical of conference championships for more contemporary players. For past years when the sport is "regional", however, it only makes sense. Cake (talk) 19:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't really know why you are eliminating the NFC/AFC championships from the infoboxes but (despite my work on college football, of which I am a serious fan of I HATE pro-football) so I'll leave that to y'all. But College championships should be kept IMO. They are an accomplishment that a player took part in. And are an accomplishment that is noteworthy for players such as Jason White who never played pro-football, (eliminate non-major bowl victories though).UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:30, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
We're removing AFC/NFC championships because they're runner-up awards for the loser and redundant for the winner, and neither the NBA nor MLB includes their equivalent (NL/AL pennant & Western/Eastern Conference finals). Lizard (talk) 21:01, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Also, the fact that Jason White's infobox currently doesn't even include his BCS national championship, much less the conference championship, doesn't help your point. Lizard (talk) 21:11, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Keep Stating "2x Super Bowl champion" or "3x Grey Cup champion" within the Infobox is an entirely non-controversial representation about a player's professional career. Stating "2x ACC champion" is an equivalent representation of that phase of the player's collegiate career, especially in historical context to eras without bowl games, non-confernce games being somewhat equivalent to a preseason, obscure bowl selection procedures of actual champions vs the conference's designated bowl representative, exclusion of smaller schools from bowls, and player bowl stats and bowl results not being counting -all of which meant the conference championship meant everything. And continuing to support the existing content does not require it for any given player. Please re-read the first sentence of the rationale presented in this proposal, as there is a huge logical gap in comparing the AFC/NFC CG ("semi-finals") to actual college conference championships. UW Dawgs (talk) 18:05, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
What I'm saying is that the NFL and college are not equal competition. Most high school accolades aren't included because they're obviously not in the same realm of competition as college and pros. The NFL is the highest level. The ACC is 12 schools out of ~128 in the country. And I agree with your historical context point, but the majority of these only starting popping up in infoboxes when more conferences started adopting championship games about 5 years ago. Lizard (talk) 18:38, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Remove conference championships from player infobox

  • Remove per reasons above. Lizard (talk) 17:46, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Remove I tend to think that items that would generally not be mentioned in a lead if the article were to become an FA should not be in the infobox, which is often a dumping ground for facts which editors don't get around to writing more appropriate prose. Bio leads are mostly about individual achievements and grand team milestones—conference championships do not fir that class.—Bagumba (talk) 17:18, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

On the fence

  • I had to create a new section just for my own "special snowflake" position here. I can see both sides. On one hand, a conference championship is the highest level of success for many teams. On the other hand, if that team were better, they might be in national championship contention, which is more comparable to the Super Bowl which we're leaving in. It's tricky because of how the NCAA structures their "national championship". A not-usually-great team could field the best college football team the world has ever seen, but they wouldn't get an invite to the national championship if they weren't scheduled against top teams. I could go either way here. Divisions should be removed with prejudice. ~ Rob13Talk 20:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Remember this is about the player infobox. A conference championship may very well be highest level of success for a team, but the player is just one of usually over a hundred on that team. What if a player went to Florida State and rode the bench for their 3 ACC Championships? Lizard (talk) 20:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
What does one expect but a conference championship in the infobox of say a member of Sewanee's iron men? Perhaps there should be some cutoff, e. g. WW2, or the AFL/NFL merger. Cake (talk) 21:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
I've honestly been staying out of your domain because the sport and accolades were so much different back then. It's unlikely that someone will see a player's infobox from the 1920s and say "hey, his infobox includes this, so why doesn't [insert name of player from the 1990s or 2000s]'s infobox include it too?" Lizard (talk) 21:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
That's a fair point. For purposes of standardization, it seems to support that there should be some cut off. I can understand saying Ingle Martin's infobox needn't mention the 2004 SoCon championship, but then what else to put in Phil Connell's infobox but his conference championship? Cake (talk) 21:26, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Can we all agree to eliminate the division championships without prejudice

Just making this one clear, per Rob.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 20:30, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't even like those on the team pages. Cake (talk) 21:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, this is extremely uncontroversial. ~ Rob13Talk 03:04, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Remove UW Dawgs (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Conference or division season leader in highlights

I've seen a bunch of highlights sections that have things like "NFC season leader in interceptions (2008)" recently. I can fully get behind putting in season leaders for the whole league for major statistics, but do we want to keep in season leaders for conferences or divisions? ~ Rob13Talk 03:07, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Keep in infobox

Remove from infobox

  • Personally, I don't think this is necessary, although I'm open to being convinced. I'm more interested in getting a solid consensus on this one way or the other as part of the ongoing process of standardizing the infoboxes. ~ Rob13Talk 03:07, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Scratch them. NFL-wide leaders are enough. Unlike the AL and NL in MLB, which have historical, traditional, and rules differences, there's little to no difference between the AFC and NFC. Thus the half-split is arbitrary. Passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, sacks, and interceptions. Also the "All-NFC" and "All-AFC" selections have very little recognition these days; they were more recognized shortly after the AFL-NFL merger. I'd scratch those as well. Lizard (talk) 03:21, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Only of importance to fantasy league players who limit drafts to a single conference.—Bagumba (talk) 17:20, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Is that a thing? I've never done fantasy football, despite being a huge stats nerd. Not big on the whole gambling thing. Lizard (talk) 17:40, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
Haven't played in years. It was among a group of friends, before these daily leagues, and any $ was only a token amount for bragging rights.—Bagumba (talk) 22:19, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Auto-tagging

Thanks for your input, folks. I'll do this shortly. Feel free to message me on my talk page with any concerns, of course. ~ Rob13Talk 19:37, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Would anyone object to me auto-tagging everything in Category:National Football League personnel with this project's banner? I looked at the entire category tree and it's all unambiguously part of the NFL and its history. There's around 535 talk pages (including the category talk pages) which would receive tagging from that sort of automatic task. ~ Rob13Talk 13:25, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't see why anyone would. CrashUnderride 13:45, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Do the thing. Lizard (talk) 19:01, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
Go for it. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:05, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame navigational boxes nominated for deletion

I have nominated the 13 Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame navigational boxes for deletion. Please see the discussion here. Thanks, Jweiss11 (talk) 16:40, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Good golly Miss Molly. Lizard (talk) 03:33, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Non-football achievements in infobox

I've encountered this a few times. My view is if a player has notable accolades in multiple sports their page should have separate infoboxes for each. See Bo Jackson, Jim Thorpe, James Jett. The issue is when a player earns an accolade that normally wouldn't be placed in the respective infobox, but is thrown into the NFL player infobox since our "highlights" standards are lax compared to other sports, to say the least. An editor insists on this revision of Artie Burns. Note, those are high school track and field All-America selections. So, should we limit the NFL player infobox to football achievements? Lizard (talk) 18:02, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

inclusion of jersey numbers in football navboxes

Hello, there is a discussion on inclusion of player jersey numbers with team-season navboxes in which you may be interested.

Please see: Category talk:NCAA Division I FBS championship team navigational boxes#inclusion of player numbers in NCAA/NFL player navboxes

Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Infobox highlight section consensus?

Is there an accepted list of highlights that are approprite for the NFL player infobox? I noticed Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Player pages format#Infobox exists, but I couldn't find any discussion on it and it appears to have been created/edited by a single user. aqwfyj Talk/Contribs 11:53, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Aqwfyj: If you look above, you'll see numerous discussions on what should and shouldn't belong in the infobox. Several items on the player pages format page also include notes that link to the discussions that were had. The original guideline was proposed on this page here nearly 4 months ago, with the only input being in support. Every change to it since then has been reached by consensus. Lizard (talk) 15:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
I obviously have strong objections to many of the things that have been left off your list, which is why I'm hoping there was more significant discussion than the one you linked.aqwfyj Talk/Contribs
Well then you should consider joining the WikiProject and contributing to the discussions. This infobox overhaul is something that's been going on for quite a few months now, with the aim of limiting highlights to the most notable. So it's pretty widespread at this point. Lizard (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

London NFL franchise

What does everyone here think about this article? Seems awfully WP:CRYSTAL-ey to me. Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:25, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

I dunno, looks like it's covered in multiple reliable sources. It's not really predicting anything, just discussing the possibilities that have been covered in the sources. Could probably use a renaming to something like National Football League in London, like National Football League in Toronto. And then a slight rework. Lizard (talk) 03:23, 5 August 2016 (UTC)
I was referring specifically to statements like "The NFL is aiming to establish a London franchise by around 2021." The entire article is filled with statements like that, and the whole thing just comes across as a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors. Keep in mind that the NFL's current game series in London is already covered under the NFL International Series article. At the very least, I think we should change the title to "Possible London NFL franchise" or "Proposed London NFL franchise." The bottom line is that there is no London NFL franchise, and, in spite of the best attempts of lazy, click-batey sports "journalism" headlines to convince us otherwise, it is very unlikely that there will ever be one. And, that's where I think WP:CRYSTAL truly ought to come into play. Ejgreen77 (talk) 23:01, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Receptions leaders

Are there any lists for annual and career reception leaders?—Bagumba (talk) 06:49, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Nah broski. Lizard (talk) 07:42, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Of course not. "Whoo whoo whoo, You know it...bro...ski". CrashUnderride 07:45, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
You should go ahead and create those articles so we have one more thing people can toss into the infobox. Lizard (talk) 07:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
In that case, do YAC leaders first.—Bagumba (talk) 07:51, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Rught now I'm busy with List of NFL players with the most rushing yards on third down on Thanksgiving Day so I'm a little tied up. Lizard (talk) 07:54, 6 August 2016 (UTC)
Bring back List of NFL on Thanksgiving Day broadcasters too.—Bagumba (talk) 08:24, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Infobox HOF URL

Discussion started here. CrashUnderride 14:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Request for assessment

I just did a crap ton of work on the Seth DeValve article. I need someone to go and assess and rate it for me. CrashUnderride 09:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Additionally, I created articles for William Carr and Andre Purvis that needs assessment by a third party. CrashUnderride 16:33, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Previous team

At 2016 Minnesota Vikings season, we have a table listing the team's additions during this season. One of the columns in this table is "Previous team". As you may notice, Terrance Plummer left the Vikings in April and was re-signed by the team in August without signing for another team in between. Should the "Previous team" column therefore read "Minnesota Vikings", or should it say something else? – PeeJay 16:10, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Usually, in this case, it would say Minnesota Vikings or n/a. CrashUnderride 16:21, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
I think we should stick with Minnesota Vikings then. "n/a" would almost imply he'd never actually left, whereas he did leave, but then re-signed in the same contract year. – PeeJay 18:04, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
Sort of unrelated, but I've never noticed these tables since I don't often deal with current teams. But, shouldn't the "Contract terms" be listed $$$$ / year(s)? So it would read, say, "16 million dollars over 4 years". Right now it reads "4 years over 16 million dollars". Maybe I'm just being petty. Or if that's how it is in sources then whatever. Lizard (talk) 16:31, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't think the slash is supposed to indicate division here, it's just a separator between the amount of money and the duration of the contract. But if we could stick to the current question, that'd be great... – PeeJay 18:04, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts

If ya'll could take a look at Chigbo Anunoby and see the reason it was deleted, and then look here and see what I did in recreating the article, better solving the problem of why the article was PRODed in the first place. I need to know if ya'll think he would qualify for an article and if so, let me know and I'll post that into the article space. CrashUnderride 06:51, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: just thought I'd get your attention. lol CrashUnderride 07:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I don't see much besides WP:ROUTINE coverage in a quick Google search, which doesn't bode well. I think your best bet is to wait a few weeks and see if he gets playing time in a regular season game for the Browns, in which case he'd pass WP:NGRIDIRON. Lizard (talk) 15:25, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
That's what I was thinking. That's why I didn't create it, instead plugged it into one of my many sandboxes. CrashUnderride 16:31, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

NFL.com/Gameday recap links

Hi WP:NFL. I was looking at 2016 Chicago Bears season#Preseason as was wondering why it is necessary to embed external links to NFL.com and Gameday into the result tables. Generally, external links are not allowed to be embedded into article content like this as explained in WP:CS#Avoid embedded links and WP:ELLIST. These links seem to be being used more as embedded citations than external links per se, and embedding citations is something that has been deprecated and no longer recommended. Is there a policy/guideline reason these cannot simply be converted to the more standard inline citations being used throughout the rest of the article. The same citation style could be used per WP:CITEVAR. This would help with any link rot if the webpages are eventually overwritten or archived because it allow more inforamtion to be provided about the source per WP:CITEHOW. I noticed that this style is pretty standard for similar team season articles, so just wondering why. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:38, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: I'm almost positive there's no specific reason. This WikiProject has very few (if any) actual policies, so stuff like that is most likely a result of rogue editing that may or may not be fixed eventually. Lizard (talk) 23:03, 12 August 2016 (UTC)
Ive noticed there seems to be no uniform style of creating player articles. It seems everyone has their own style.--Church Talk 03:16, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I made an attempt at standardization a few months ago, which can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Player pages format. But it received so little feedback that I kind of got disheartened and gave up on it. It may be too little too late I guess. All we can do is improve the articles that are there so they can be used as a model for the future. Lizard (talk) 03:44, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for all the replies. The embedding of links seems to be common in results tables for various sports. Not sure why since it seem contrary to WP:CS and WP:EL, but perhaps it was just done that way back in the day and others just copied over the years because nobody offered another alternative. Converting the links to inline citations seems to be nothing more than a formatting fix and tweaking of the tables (moving the references to the "Result" column and deleting the "Game Book" and "NFL recap" columns. Personally, there seems to be some close to WP:NOTSTATS issues when it comes to season pages like this. It seems that the citations used in the game summaries and perhaps one citation each for the "Preseason", "Regular" and "Postseason" tables showing all the results are more than adequate for sourcing purposes. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:00, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

The practice of embedding links in various sports article pre-dates the current guidelines, and are probably as old as Wikipedia itself. There really has been no push to change it. There is also WP:NSEASONS, which basically says that articles should also consist mainly of well-sourced prose, not just statistics and lists of players -- that is the consensus to deal with the WP:NOTSTATS issues. Zzyzx11 (talk) 08:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
I saw you removed your previous post, but I'm not sure why because it is relevant to the discussion. I think what ELLIST means by "This section does not apply if the external link is serving as a citation for a stand-alone list entry that otherwise meets that list's inclusion criteria." is that when used as an (inline) citation, the link can be used just like would for any other reference. The markup Example, however, is not an embedded citation; it's an embedded link. Example[13] is an embedded citation and the information about the relevant source would've ideally be listed in the references section per WP:ECITE#In references. Embedded citations were quite common back in the day, but their use is no longer recommended for articles. In an NFL team season article, replacing the embedded links with inline citations would not change the overall number of links cited; it will just rearrange how they appear in the article. For example, instead of Gamebook and Recap, you could have "0-22"[1][2] and the following:

References

  1. ^ "Gamebook: Denver Broncos at Chicago Bears" (PDF). NFL. August 12, 2016.
  2. ^ "Mark Sanchez puts in argument for starting job". NFL.com. Associated Press. Retrieved August 13, 2016.
The embedded link may save the reader a click, but it tells the reader pretty much nothing about the source in question. If the link is overwritten or dies, there would be no information about the source for the reader to use other than the bare url, which is the main reason why citing only a bare url is discouraged. -- Marchjuly (talk) 08:44, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
OK, I probably originally misunderstood your concern: your issue is the separate "GameBook" and "NFL.com recap" columns. The thing is that my initial thought was that those tables were originally designed to be like {{footballbox collapsible}} (including the external link to the report), but that the original editor who designed them thought it was just easier to just do tables for American football instead of using a template like that. Zzyzx11 (talk) 09:06, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

It might be more elegant to source all the season's stats to one general citation like to http://www.chicagobears.com/gameday/game/2015/regular1 or http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/chi/2015.htm instead of the overhead of weekly links. Otherwise, I'm not too worried about the stats ELs rotting, as they are easily replaceable by a plethora of stats sites; these aren't secondary sources with unique information that will be lost.—Bagumba (talk) 00:37, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks like User:DPH1110 has been setting them up, or at least following an already established thing. Maybe he can shed some light, and/or we can let him know there's better ways of doing it. Lizard (talk) 00:57, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

49ers–Giants rivalry?

49ers–Giants rivalry. Is this a thing? The article has three references and none of them give any indication that the teams have an actual rivalry. Also looks laced with original research. Lizard (talk) 01:13, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Maybe it is a rivalry. Giants And 49ers: Return Of The Rivalry - Simmering Giants-49ers playoff rivalry adds another chapter - What were the greatest moments in Giants-49ers rivalry? - The greatest moments in the 49ers-Giants rivalry - Giants-49ers playoff rivalry began with Joe Montana leading San Francisco to victory in 1982 - Giants vs. 49ers: History of a playoff rivalry - "It's been a while but when the Giants and Niners clash for the NFC Championship Sunday, it will be the renewal of one of the greatest rivalries in football" WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:21, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Seems promising. But nearly all of those were written around the same time (January 2012). Which leads me to believe something must have happened or was about to happen that brought that about. And here it is. Lizard (talk) 01:28, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Of course, as far as "coverage in independent reliable sources" goes it would seem to pass it with those sources you listed. But in a hypothetical deletion discussion I'd argue that the then-upcoming playoff game between the two teams caused sportswriters to frantically dig up some past matchups and declare the teams "rivals." And let's not pretend sportswriters don't use Wikipedia. This article's been around for quite some time, certainly long enough to help perpetuate this "rivalry." Conspiracies, man. And while we're at it: the Illuminati did 9/11, the Rothschilds control the world's banks, and Tupac is living with Elvis and Princess Diana in Columbia. Lizard (talk) 07:17, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, many people are bad about just copying Wikipedia. Also, those sources are from January 2012 and the article was created in September 2013. Perhaps we could look for some earlier sources talking about a rivalry so it doesn't just look like people are trying to promote the NFC championship game. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:29, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Dadi Nicolas

Evening Ladies and Gentleman, I just finished a pretty heavy expansion on Kansas City Linebacker Dadi Nicolas. Would someone mind reevaluating it on the projects scale as well as take a look at my work? There were some parts in the article mentioning his arrest freshman year and suspension senior year. With BLP issues like that, I always appreciate a second set of eyes. Thanks----Church Talk 20:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Records succession boxes

As seen on e.g. Walter Payton, Corey Dillon, Fran Tarkenton. Do we want these succession boxes? I don't have an opinion either way but they're wildly inconsistent. See Jerry Rice; I'm 99.4% certain he's held a few more records than that. Which records do we include? Do we group them with navboxes? Should we have them at all? Lizard (talk) 21:52, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

OK I'm gonna go ahead and remove them. They're needless clutter and apparently not important. Lizard (talk) 23:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Reassessment request

I've got two articles that I've greatly expanded that need to be reassessed, Justin Simmons (American football) and Brandon Marshall (linebacker), thanks. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 05:50, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Nice, also I don't think you need to say "talk page stalker" for this lol. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 12:08, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
That's part of my sig. lol. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 12:12, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
Got another one for ya, Bennie Fowler. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 03:35, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
Note, personal details for WP:BLPs, such as family members, NEED to be cited with footnotes to reliable third party sources. Otherwise they shouldn't be included at all. Lizard (talk) 04:04, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I would think the university produced bio would be just fine seeing as they should know the persons parents. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 04:19, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine. Just use inline citations, that way we don't have to go looking for the info. Lizard (talk) 04:25, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

NFL draft scout

What do people think about NFLDraftScout.com. Do you think it's okay to list something like "Williams was rated the 92nd best cornerback in the 2014 NFL Draft by NFLDraftScout.com" (from K'Waun Williams). I've added that phrasing to a few articles. Also, I added it to Tom Brady's article and someone removed it, as I somewhat suspected. Do you think it's worth including. Also, that statement about Williams is true. It's not like I just said "Williams was not considered a top prospect by analysts" with the only reference being nfl draft scout. I actually saw an article or two that did that. From Charles Sims (American football): "Sims was considered one of the top running back prospects for the 2014 NFL Draft." with the only reference being NFL Draft Scout. Perhaps that should be reworded to the "rated by NFLDraftScout" version until other sources are added. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I can't say I've ever heard of that site. The only draft analysts I know of are Mel Kiper and Todd McShay. I find it funny that your addition was removed as "trivia" when there's an entire "NFL records" section on that article with such ridiculousness as "Fewest pass attempts to reach 400 passing touchdowns: 7,282". Mind you, five quarterbacks have ever passed for 400 touchdowns. Lizard (talk) 00:54, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Personally, I use it for combine and pro day results for the pre-draft subsection and that's about it. I personally don't know about the rating of a player as used in the example above. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 00:56, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I use it for that too but I was wondering if it's appropriate as a stand alone sentence. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:02, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
(in reply to Lizard) Yh, at the very least, they should source things that like. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:56, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
  • I can understand why it was removed from Brady because there are probably a decent amount of sources talking, atleast in retrospect, about his pro prospects. But for a lesser known player like Williams, where there may not be many sources talking about their pro prospects, is it okay to list NFLDraftScout.com, or is it better having nothing? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:58, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Manning954

User Manning954 is back to their disruptive editing on the David Carr article. CrashUnderride 02:57, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Back at it again, first removed the Super Bowl winning stuff and then re-added the bust stuff. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 23:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
I wouldn't exactly call it disruptive editing. We're likely inciting him at this point, and I can see why. From his point of view we unjustly ganged up on him, called his edits "disruptive," and even blocked him from editing, without really getting into a fair discussion. Although we tried, there was never a consensus on it. We strong-armed him, plain and simple. I'd be pissed off too. Lizard (talk) 01:02, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Notice how they didn't even try to join the discussion, just ignored it and continued. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but last I checked there was a guideline on content like this where you discuss it before you add, remove, etc. As I see it, Manning failed to do any of that, instead just inserted it repeatedly. Hey @Manning654: maybe you'll actually wanna weigh in and have a proper discussion this time before edit warring, again? (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 01:10, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
If a backup QB that didn't play a single snap who gets a super bowl ring based on only the fact that he's on a roster is included in the intro, then his status as one of the biggest draft busts is certainly far more relevant and should be included in the intro. This is absolutely undeniable if that is the case. If you agree that David Carr's draft bust legacy is more relevant than the fact that he won a Super Bowl ring as a back up QB where he literally did not play a single snap the entire year, then you agree that his draft bust legacy belongs in the intro. Otherwise neither belongs in the intro which is what I'm fine with, which is why I removed it and User:Crash Underride and several other users have continuously reverted my edits and call it "disruptive editing". Otherwise, if you insist on keeping it there, then I should be allowed to place his draft bust legacy in the intro as well. Crash, you will be banned if you continue your disruptive editing
Posted this same thing in David Carr's talk page and my own talk page. Nobody except Lizard has replied to this on my talk page and for the most part, we seem to be in agreement. Crash, you have not responded to this and have continuously claimed I am engaging in "disruptive" editing without giving any input as to why it is "disruptive." I've given my reasoning for it on my talk page, and you have not replied to any of it, instead you continue to revert my edits and claim my editing is "disruptive." How is it that you have not been banned yet? It's pretty simple. Carr is far more widely known as a draft bust than he is as a super bowl winning backup QB. If you are going to include the latter, than the former must be included in the intro as well as it is far more relevant to David Carr the football player. This is not even up for discussion. This is absolutely indisputable. In my view, there are three options here: 1)remove both from intro 2) include both in intro 3) Crash continues to engage in disruptive editing and gets banned. I'm fine with any of those three options.
And Crash, here you go on about not edit warring and discussing it before adding or removing information. What? Were supposed to create a discussion before adding any edits? Jesus christ, what the hell are you talking about? Here you are removing information that is relevant enough for the intro and you deleted it without any discussion whatsoever. Were supposed to create a discussion before anything is added? Yeah that would be the end of wikipedia. Manning954 (talk) 10:52, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
I was talking about major or "controversial" BLP edits. You know exactly what I meant! (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 11:01, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Comment: Honestly, I'm to the point now, I don't give a damn. Hell, delete the damn article for all I care. I'm done dealing with an POV violating agenda pusher like Manning954. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 11:06, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
fantastic, you finally realize how wrong you are and now you don't give a damn. Oh hell, just shutdown wikipedia while were at it. Get a grip dude. Somebody get a pacifier for this baby. Only controversial edits? Adding the fact that David Carr is one of the biggest draft busts to the intro is controversial? No man, that is only controversial to you, not to anyone that actually follows the NFL. Manning954 (talk) 11:13, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
No, I'm not wrong, I'm just sick and tired of dealing with an immature editor who thinks they're always right and everyone else is always wrong. Also my "delete the article" comment was in reference to the fact that's how little I care anymore. Also, I said the draft bust entry is fine to include, so long as it doesn't make up a majority of the lede. Oh right, you didn't bother to participate in the previous discussion about it. I'm perfectly fine with it being a paragraph or more in the draft subsection, but I know that's not good enough so, boo hoo for you. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 11:33, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
lmao, cut your losses bud. Take the L and move on. You continuously removed my non-disruptive edits then and your main argument was "everyone gets rings." Uh what? You clearly never bothered to look at my position when you repeatedly kept saying "everyone gets rings." My position has always been keep both or remove both. And you continuously removed the draft legacy when that was far more relevant than a backup QB winning a super bowl ring. There are starting players that don't have super bowl ring information in their intro. I still maintain that it is not relevant enough for the intro, but I was willing to let that go AS LONG as the draft legacy was included as well. If not, remove both. The draft bust legacy is far more relevant and you continued to remove it because of your agenda. Take the L and go watch more wrestling. Yup, I'm the immature one here. Go watch your fake wrestling
BTW where have you mentioned that it shouldn't take up most of the lead? All I see is "They shouldn't mention being bust at all. Now, in the Draft sub-section of their professional career section, sure talk about it all you want. But not in the lead. CrashUnderride 22:54, 22 May 2016 (UTC)" in the NFL discussion and "everyone gets rings" and threats of me getting banned for "disruptive editing" on my talk page. Stop bullshitting and backtracking. Manning954 (talk) 11:44, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
If you care to weigh in on the substance of the edits in question, there is a discussion at Talk:David Carr (American football)#inclusion of bust legacy to intro where consensus can be achieved. UW Dawgs (talk) 18:14, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Dawgs, yeah were aware. Crash gave his "everyone gets rings" argument in David Carr's, which has nothing to do with the dispute at all. My response addressed that and then he gave up. Looks like we came to a consensus and then you came and reverted my edit. Manning954 (talk) 18:19, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Edday1051 resulted in indef sockpuppet blocks for User:Manning954, User:Edday1051, and User:Bassman1010 with extensive ongoing dicussion for improvements occuring at Talk:David Carr (American football). Cheers to User:Lizard the Wizard and User:Crash Underride for pursuing! UW Dawgs (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Incredible. He's been at this for over five years. I had noticed this but I would've never imagined he was the same guy. Lizard (talk) 21:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
LOL, busted from the great beyond, how could we have seen this coming? UW Dawgs (talk)
Thank baby Jebus!!! I didn't even know about an on going SPI. lol (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 23:54, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
Hmm, indefinite block. This was a little harsh. He did made a lot of good edits and he didn't use multiple accounts in the same discussion. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:33, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Not really. Per WP:GHBH, users aren't allowed to use "one account for constructive contributions and the other one for disruptive editing or vandalism." Continual edit warring is disruptive, which Edday1051 clearly admitted to doing. It may not have been his intention when creating his second accounts, but it clearly is the result. - BilCat (talk) 19:51, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Also, indefinite doesn't mean permanent. But now that he has resorted to obvious socking as User:Budden30 to avoid a block, it's not likely to get lifted anytime soon. - BilCat (talk) 19:58, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeh, silly move on his part. It's a shame. I would've been willing to vouche for him if it looked like he was serious about straightening up. He did some pretty good work on his good hand accounts. Work that will now have to be picked up by other editors. And we don't exactly have NFL editors growing on trees here. Lizard (talk) 20:38, 2 September 2016 (UTC)
I don't think he's been beyond redemption yet, but he has to own up to his mistakes. Clearly the edit warring is unacceptable, and grounds for blocking on it's own. If he'd agree not to do that anymore, and perhaps accept a topic ban on the David Carr article, there's a chance he could come back soon, or at get the standard offer. - BilCat (talk) 20:43, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

2016 Buffalo Bills draft navbox

Doesn't list all the previous Bills drafts, shouldn't it? The Dallas Cowboys ones do. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 03:17, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, so it would appear that none of the Bills draft navboxes do. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 03:20, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Template:Buffalo Bills Draft template list? It's white on white text (click to edit, or drag cursor over the text to highlight). Works as expected when embedded in Template:Bills2016DraftPicks. UW Dawgs (talk) 03:32, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
The other years used to show when a draft template was embedded in article space but someone made them hidden. See [14] WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, that list, but like the edit W-O9 linked. It should (in my opinion) be listed in the navbox. The Cowboys, the Rams do and tons of other teams. It makes it easier for navigating draft classes. (talk page stalker) CrashUnderride 10:15, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
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