Template talk:Infobox NFL biography/Archive 17

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Two dashes

what's the point of If number is not currently known, fill in as two dashes (--)? this is the equivalent of |highlights=n/a or other non-statements. if there is nothing to say, then say nothing and leave it blank. Frietjes (talk) 13:48, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

My thought would be that it is there to explicitly state that the number is unknown, and thus a more visible indication that it should be filled in. However, I agree that such practices are unnecessary. Primefac (talk) 15:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes and Primefac: The dash for an unknown jersey number has been traditionally used as a temporary placeholder when "current_team=Free agent". I'm not sure how or why this convention evolved among WP:NFL editors; it was in place when I started editing Wikipedia in mid-2009, or nearly 7 years ago. At any given time, the affected universe are 250+ free agents who are either in transition waiting to be signed by another team, or approaching de facto retirement. A player may linger in free agent status for a year or more before we treat their failure to sign with a new team as a de facto retirement. The other circumstance where we use the dash as a temporary placeholder for an unknown jersey number is for newly drafted or newly signed players; this status typically lasts for a few days to a handful of weeks until jersey number assignments become publicly known for all 32 teams. This second group may include ~256 new draftees, plus another couple hundred undrafted free agent signees for a period of a few weeks following the annual NFL Draft.

Personally, I am not in love with the practice, but it is well established, and we have a large number of peripheral editors -- i.e. those who edit NFL-related articles heavily at certain times a year, but are not actively involved in discussions at WP:NFL -- who maintain these conventions with minimal supervision from WP:NFL. Retraining those peripheral editors and overcoming any resistance might take some effort. That said, if you have better ideas how the "unknown jersey number" scenarios might be better handled, I'm all ears. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

we can certainly make the template output whatever we want when |currentteam=free agent and |currentnumber= is blank. or, when |currentnumber=--. note that there is a difference between something being "unknown" and when something being "not applicable". for example, the value of |birth_place= may be unknown, but that doesn't mean it can never be known. however, the value of |college= for LeBron James is rightfully omitted. we wouldn't set |college=--- for LeBron James. a free agent is not on a team, and hence, has no team number. thus a free agent should have no number. Frietjes (talk) 21:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it can be removed from documentation. We don't need to encourage the practice, even if some people will continue to do it.—Bagumba (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, if we're going to deprecate the practice of using the dash for unknown jersey numbers, then I suggest we program the field to ignore any character that's not a number. Problem solved. No edit-warring, no corrections, no long-winded explanations to newbies and peripherals. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I would say, start by ignoring |currentteam=-- and |currentteam=-. all non-numeric may work as well, but I would like to see a list of all non-numeric values currently in use. I can have this done by a bot-op. Frietjes (talk) 22:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Tracking categories for rarely used parameters

@Bagumba: Can you set up tracking categories for all instances of Infobox NFL player or Infobox NFL biography that use any of the following three parameters:

• | coachSB =
• | coachAB =
• | coachchamps =

I want to see how many, if any, existing transclusions of the NFL player/biography actually use any of these. The only times I've ever encountered any of these parameters is as part of Infobox NFL coach. FYI, there are now fewer than 60 transclusions of Infobox NFL coach which remain to be replaced, and that process should be completed within the next few days. After that, I anticipate returning to the outstanding questions about parameters for player positions vs. current coach titles, college alma mater vs. college team, etc., which were not previously resolved. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

FYI: Ping only works with a new signature, not by changing an existing one like you did. Try https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatetiger/ mentioned by Bgwhite at #alma_mater error?. I'm not entirely familiar with the tracking category method, plus AFAIK it takes a while to fully populate.—Bagumba (talk) 21:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: Can you accomplish the above request in the simplest, least intrusive manner possible? I am trying to identify all of the transclusions of Infobox NFL player and Infobox NFL biography which use any of the three parameters above. These tracking categories will not need to be permanent. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

It's good to go already. For example, for coachSB on Infobox NFL player: 1) click "enwiki", 2) click "Parameter" on the "Infobox NFL player" row, 3) click "link" on the "with" column of the "coachSB" row, 4) scroll to right to the "coachSB" column to see the values that are populated.—Bagumba (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Thanks, Bags. That's a handy little tool once I figured it out. The results were exactly what I expected. Out of 17,000+ transclusions of Infobox NFL player/biography, there were a grand total of 17 that included any or all of these three parameters. Of those 17, only six were actually using any of the three. Of those six, four included the identical information in the "highlights" section. I moved the non-duplicate information to the highlights section for the two remaining articles, and I have removed all three parameters from all 17 articles that included any of them. I'm now going to remove these parameters from the template documentation. One more issue resolved; three more unneeded parameters removed, and the coding will be simplified. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, see "Category:NFL player with coaching championship parameters", will take some time to populate. Frietjes (talk) 22:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Thanks, F. After the category populates, hopefully it will still be empty! Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Dirtlawyer1: Provided articles show up in the tracking category (Ahhh, an empty tracking category is the best category), I can run AWB with a custom module to delete the parameters. For future reference, Magioladitis or I can do this for any Infobox/parameter combination. Bgwhite (talk) 00:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: Thanks. You, sir, were already on my to-do list. This one was easy -- these three parameters only appeared in a total of 17 articles, so I've already deleted them manually. We are going to have a substantial amount of AWB and possible bot work to clean up other previously deprecated parameters that were in widespread use, many of which were simply left in place after the parameters were made inoperative. There's going to be plenty of work for everyone to make this a model template. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Would you like to do the honors and remove the coding for these three parameters from the template? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

now removed, any new ones will show up in Category:Pages using infobox NFL player with unsupported parameters under "C". Frietjes (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Thank you. Interestingly, your tracking category picked up another 8 or 9 articles that were using these parameters which were missed by TemplateTiger. Not sure what to make of that -- you would hope they would yield identical results -- but in the future I will check both when looking for parameter-specific issues. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:29, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, one reason could be that templatetiger scans the database dump, which is going to be older information. however, adding tracking categories has disadvantages as well: (1) adds to the job queue and (2) you have to wait for the job queue to reprocess all the transclusions before the category fills up. there are ways to speed up the process, but those ways are not recommended for templates with large numbers of transclusions. Frietjes (talk) 00:03, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Improved parameter names to be added as aliases

@Frietjes: In November and December, DeeJayK spent considerable time and effort selecting the most semantically intuitive parameter names and then systematically adding them to Infobox NFL coach and the current sandbox version of Infobox NFL biography. These improved parameter names include the following:

• | regular_record =
• | playoff_record =
• | overall_record =

These are the direct counterparts of the following parameters of the currently operative version of Infobox NFL biography:

• | coachregrecord = >>>> | regular_record =
• | coachplayoffrecord = >>>> | playoff_record =
• | coachrecord = >>>> | overall_record =

These three particular new and improved parameter names have not been added to the currently live version of Template:Infobox NFL player yet, but everyone agreed they represented improvements -- more semantically intuitive names. Could you please add these as parameter aliases to the live version of the template? The plan is that all 17,000 transclusions of the template will be updated to a common standard by BG and his AWB boys once we settle on the remaining changes. In the mean time, I would like to be able to use these new parameter names while we're cleaning up and replacing existing uses of Infobox NFL coach and Infobox NFL player. At the end of this process -- say 60 to 90 days from now -- I would like to see every template transclusion with a uniform set of parameters, and all old aliases removed entirely by AWB edits. We've got the personnel for both manual clean-up and AWB replacements, and the groundwork has already been laid in large part. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 05:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Will there be a tag for only coaches to have this show up? People are going to add this for players, but I don't think that's the intention, right? ~ Dissident93 (talk) 06:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Dissident93: Sure, people can add these three parameters for players, but it will look kinda silly under a section header labeled "Head coaching record," don't you think? Generally speaking, I am in favor of programming certain parameters that are prone to misuse to prevent such misuse. It's one of several related issues yet to be resolved in completing the template's architecture. Keep in mind that these three parameters already exist within Infobox NFL player; we're just renaming them per DeeJayK's improvements as part of the post-merge clean-up. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:42, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Got it. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 22:56, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Hey. Do you have time to deal with the addition of the three parameter aliases described above? The merge of Infobox NFL coach into Infobox NFL biography/player is now complete, and adding these new and improved parameter names is the beginning of the clean-up work to come. Please let me know -- we're going to need two or more knowledgeable and experienced coders actively involved in the clean-up process, and you know the history as well as anyone who is still active. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:26, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, added. Frietjes (talk) 20:42, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Thank you. You're a gentlewoman and a scholar. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:16, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Net worth

I suggest that the parameters salary and net_worth be added to this template. It should be similar to the parameters in Template:Infobox person.--130.65.109.103 (talk) 16:21, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit template-protected}} template. Bazj (talk) 18:31, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion on the above proposed changes

• Oppose both. Not only are these values likely to change on a semi-regular basis (making maintenance rather difficult), but I'm not sure they're particularly relevant. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, though. Primefac (talk) 18:49, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

• Well, we can add a date to any figure, just as we do with businesspeople, so that the information does not require such regular maintenance.--130.65.109.103 (talk) 20:20, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Per WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE, infoboxes are "to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance." Salary net worth are rarely the key points of notability for a football player. Do we see it prominently in the lead for any FA/GA? No. Is it discussed much in articles even? Hardly. Infoboxes should not be a vehicle to easily collect trivia that would not otherwise be prose in an article.—Bagumba (talk) 23:31, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Basic positions

In the instructions on the template page, it clearly states "do not specify positions beyond the basics." Yet people constantly go in and change linebacker to outside/middle linebacker, safety to free/strong safety, tackle to right/left tackle, etc. Should we just do away with this rule? If we don't, I think there should be some sort of prompt in the template itself, whether it be a <!--comment--> or changing the parameter label to "basic_position" or something. This is a really minor thing that we shouldn't have to commit so much effort to enforcing. Lizard (talk) 22:22, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Is it easily verifiable? In WP:NBA we allow "point guard" instead of just "guard" because it's easy to verify at basketball-reference.com, and it's a waste of time constantly reverting. Not sure what is an easy way to verify for NFL.—Bagumba (talk) 02:33, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I suppose we could change it to be a switch statement where it wouldn't matter what someone input, if it had "linebacker" in the name it would show "linebacker." Would take some creative coding, but at the end of the day you'd end up with only the basic positions available. Primefac (talk) 04:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Sorry for the late reply. See Dont'a Hightower. If you go to his NFL.com bio you can see it lists him as OLB (outside linebacker). The rationale in the instructions is that "these positions are susceptible to change and therefore may cause inaccuracies in the infobox." Is it common is basketball for a point guard to switch to shooting guard, making it unnecessary to list which type of guard? Other than that, I'd imagine positions in basketball don't change very often, and if they do they're both listed, e.g. Tim Duncan. In the NFL minor position changes, especially from OLB to ILB or left tackle to right tackle are fairly common, so it would make sense on the basis that we wouldn't have to constantly change them. Which is ironic. The thing that's trying to be avoided is what's causing issues. TL;DR Yes, it's easily verifiable. I think we should do away with the rule. Lizard (talk) 01:41, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

In NBA, we would list "Point guard / Shooting guard" for someone who plays both over generic "Guard", to make it more succinct and less ambiguous. What isn't done is to limit it to their "current" position; not accurate in some ways, but the issue has never come up where somebody wanted to remove an "old" position, aside from say retired players like Magic Johnson, known primarily for one position, even though they might have spent time at others (PF in his last season).—Bagumba (talk) 08:08, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

@Bagumba: I think that makes sense. We normally do that too (Jason Taylor, Charles Woodson). The issue isn't really about changing to completely different positions, but changing sub-positions. I dunno, I'll continue to keep trying to stick to the instructions here unless there's consensus to change it. Lizard (talk) 18:54, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Family info

Can you please add a section for spouses and children? Thanks Mmgs69 (talk) 15:12, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

No. Lizard (talk) 19:05, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Remove nonsensical merge warning?

Can the following line be removed from this template? \{\{being deleted|30 October 2012|merge=Template:Infobox NFL biography/sandbox\}\} I don't know where it came from, but clearly it has no basis in the current state of the infobox, which is that it should not be indicated as in a holding cell, has had numerous recent edits made to the main template that aren't even reflected in the sandbox, and is the preferred destination for numerous other infoboxes. Skybunny (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Y Removed. It's been outstanding since I asked the same at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League#What_on_earth_is_going_on_with_the_infobox.3F.—Bagumba (talk) 22:52, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Championships listed first

I think this was the intention of whoever wrote the instructions section; to have championships (Super Bowls, NFL Championships, etc) listed first in the highlights section. But it's pretty vague as it is. At the moment the instructions just read Achievements go in reverse chronological order, from most recent to earliest, and we're left with interpreting the example for ourselves. Can someone write it in that "Championships should be listed first, regardless of chronological order"? Lizard (talk) 17:59, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually, is this something I can just do myself, since it isn't directly part of the template? Lizard (talk) 18:00, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Not done: You are correct: documentation subpages are freely editable by anyone (unless the doc itself is being vandalised and protected, but this isn't the case here). I think it's a good suggestion, but I think having the specific wording laid out here for comment would be best (rather than just changing it outright). Primefac (talk) 18:08, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Well then I may as well take the opportunity to suggest a more solid ordering. I propose we order this way:

• Pro championships
• Pro Bowls
• First-team All-Pros
• Second-team All-Pros
• League MVPs
• Other honors (Offensive POY, etc.)
• Season statistical leaders (NFL passing yards leader, etc.)
• Pro career honors (retired number, etc.)
• College national championships
• College awards
• All-Americas and All-Conferences
• College career honors

And we keep the descending chronological order for highlights in the same category. Lizard (talk) 15:34, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

• Shouldn't League MVPs go above Pro Bowls and All-Pros? That award is more exclusive/meaningful. I'm fine with everything else. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 06:01, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Actualy, yeh you're probably right. My rationale was that Pro Bowls are more recognized by the general public, so they'll be looking for them first. But since so few players have won MVPs that shouldn't be a big issue. Lizard (talk) 07:14, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd leave Pro Bowl and All-Pro before MVP; a lot of MVP winners won it only once, and their Pro Bowls are a better indicator of their long-term impact.—Bagumba (talk) 01:15, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

And then there's the conundrum of multiple MVP selectors and which ones to include, and whether or not "player of the year" is synonymous, which throws another few selectors into the mix. An MVP in football just isn't as revered as in baseball and basketball, and perhaps that has something to do with why. Plus having MVP after all-pros groups it in with other "one winner per year" awards like offensive POY, etc. Lizard (talk) 01:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Yh, the MVPs and All-Pros are more confusing since there's different selectors and stuff. At least the Pro Bowls are straightforward. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:09, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Don't have any issue with this, but it might be hard to remember what goes where on bigger articles. But that only needs to happen once, so it's not that big of an issue. ~ Dissident93 (talk) 04:01, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

If it's ever done consistently across the board, people will follow the pattern. Works fairly smoothly w/ NBA bios.—Bagumba (talk) 04:59, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeh, start with current players and hall of famers, then knock out the remainders over time. Lizard (talk) 05:10, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I can live with the MVP being below Pro Bowls/All-Pros. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 08:11, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

• This seems like a good order to me.--Yankees10 06:38, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
• That ordering looks good. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:09, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent if Super Bowl MVP should be listed after Super Bowls, like WP:NBA does with NBA Finals MVP. I'm not sure if it's as defining as in the NBA, where the best overall player typically captures the Finals MVP as well.—Bagumba (talk) 22:59, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I think it should be. It's definitely a big deal, even with its small sample size causing some weird ones (Desmond Howard, Dexter Jackson). I've more than once heard Howard introduced as "Heisman winner and Super Bowl MVP." And our Super Bowl MVP article is featured, oddly enough. Lizard (talk) 18:30, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 23 February 2016

Hello friends,

The CFL recently messed up all of their links, so I am proposing to fix the wikipedia links to the player's bio pages. Changes are as follows:

Current:

 | data3 = {{#if:{{{cfl|}}}
  |<!--Player stats at '''[http://cfl.ca/roster/show/id/{{{cfl}}} CFL.ca]''' *NOTE* these links are broken and so commenting them out until the issues can be addressed-->}}

Fix:

 | data3 = {{#if:{{{cfl|}}}
  | Player stats at '''[http://www.cfl.ca/players/{{{cfl}}} CFL.ca]'''}}
<!-- End request -->

Cmm3 (talk) 04:08, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Please can you add your proposed code to Template:Infobox NFL player/sandbox and test it works correctly? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:42, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Please reactivate when testing is complete. Regards — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:45, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Done. I think. Cmm3 (talk) 22:44, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

When I clicked [1] which is at the bottom of /testcases it said "page not found". — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:20, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

• @BU Rob13: Can you fix the CFL link. Like on the gridiron infobox. I would do an edit request but looks like your admin now. Thanks WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:54, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
  • Could you clarify what you mean by "fix"? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:03, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
    • @WikiOriginal-9: Ah, I see what you mean. I'll change the URL, but I'm not adding the archive option without consensus to do so. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:05, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
      • @WikiOriginal-9:  Done If the {{{cfl}}} parameter is purely numeric, the CFL stats will still be hidden, since the purely numeric IDs are the old broken links. Anything non-numeric is supported. If you decide you'd like archives included, please seek consensus; I doubt it will be hard to come by and I'd certainly support it, but it is adding a new parameter to a template-protected template, so... ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:32, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
        • Nice. Also, cfl.ca needs to keep historical stats or something because with the current way the links are, every player that isn't on a team gets their profile removed. See: Tyree Hollins. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 23:42, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
          • The CFL is notoriously bad at keeping track of statistics. I have a book that records all player statistics before 2012 to the best of the CFL's knowledge, which helps, but they do need to keep permanent records. They're actually remarkably willing to work with the community because they can always use the publicity. Reaching out to Steve Daniel, their head statistician, might not be a terrible idea. Hell, they might be interested in hiring a Wikipedian in residence if you have the inclination. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:12, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
            • @WikiOriginal-9: I've reached out to the CFL. If there's anything you want me to get on the docket if I can get in touch with the people I've asked to be put in touch with (IT Coordinator/sole web developer and their Head Statistician), let me know. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:35, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
              • Yeah, it probably would be useful if the CFL had historical stats on CFL.ca. Also, the NBA doesn't seem to have very many stat profiles for old players on NBA.com but the NBA has basketball reference which pretty much is the official NBA stats site so they don't really need their own profiles on NBA.com. But the CFL doesn't really have an official site like that. There are sites that list historical CFL stats like profootballarchives, just sports stats, cflapedia and a few others and they seem to be accurate but it would still probably be worthwhile if the CFL uploaded their own if they can. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:23, 12 July 2016 (UTC)