Talk:2015 National Women's Soccer League season

Positions by gameweek is misleading
It might make sense to a North American reader, but a in European and South American leagues, where each team plays the same number of games every week, you will see tables such as that at 2014–15 Bundesliga and 2014–15 La Liga, which is meaningful. Here, just because a team is in fifth place at the end of a week seven does not mean that they're in fifth place after seven matches played. The table in the positions by games played is accurate and will not confuse readers. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:32, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It may be misleading to readers familiar with other leagues, but this is an article about an American league and should follow (or at least include) American conventions. In fact, the positions by games played, if shown alone, will be confusing to the North American readers since "games played" is never how North American sports fans discuss their leagues, as ALL of their major sports leagues play unbalanced schedules.  You'll sometimes here win percentage or points per game, but you never hear talk of standings when you ignore games that have already been played, even if it means some teams have played more games.  To be fair to all readers, both tables should be shown. CyMoahk2 (talk) 05:56, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, if we're talking about other leagues, showing live positions (ignoring differences in games played) is used outside of the US as well, e.g. 2014-15_A-League where teams had "games in hand" over other teams depending on round. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:01, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you mean like 2015 Major League Soccer season? How about other North American leagues? 2014–15 NBA season, 2014–15 NHL season not even in 2014 NFL season, where they have balanced play. So which North American league are you trying to emulate? None. You're left comparing to Europe, South America and Australia. The latter can be fixed.
 * It looks like you're trying to emulate the tables I linked to above and as such it's misleading at best.
 * I suggest you self-revert or I will be forced to take it to a larger community. Cheers. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:05, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The tables were created to emulate, yes - and there were two created to try to account for the difference in league structure. You're correct in that none of the other Wiki pages for US leagues have week-by-week OR game-by-game tables, but these were an attempt to start them in a sensible way.  The week-by-week table in particular was, as I said, meant to emulate the normal discussion you see/hear in most US sports media, where people always talk about a team's current position, no matter how many games the other teams have played.  And none of those league are "balanced" in terms of games played at any given time because in none of those league do you have every team playing every day.  And yes, even the NFL regular sees teams with bye weeks.  As such, the two versions of the position tables were created since it's impossible to directly emulate the tables shown in European leagues - one table that shows the temporal evolution of standing for American readers to understand, and one that shows the game-equal evolution of standings for non-American readers to understand. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * So what are you emulating? Not anything in North American leagues? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * As I said, I was trying to emulate the Euro league tables. However, since American leagues don't have the nice, balanced schedule that Euro leagues do, you can't do a straight emulation either way.  If you choose the temporal path, then you're hiding the games in hand some teams hand.  But likewise, if you use the game-equal path, then you're hiding the real-time standings that N.American viewers will be used to talking about, and most viewers to a N.American league page will be N.American.  That's why I created both versions, since you can't accurately describe the evolution of the standings if you eliminate one of the two interpretations.  I'm fine with having both or having neither, but if you only include one you're covering up important information either way. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:32, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * So as I said, it was clear that you were trying to emulate the European league tables, which the premier league doesn't use because it doesn't have a balanced schedule. That's why you're being intentionally misleading by having both tables. Let me state this again, it's intentionally misleading to have the Positions by gameweek table since the teams do not play the same number of games. The other table is fine since it's closer to the way the European leagues run things, but it too, requires WP:OR, although I could see an argument for WP:CALC. Anyhow, you won't take my advice and that of the MLS season articles, so you may have to listen to others. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:37, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess I have trouble seeing how it's "misleading" when I'm casting a given concept in a light that would make more sense to the people that are more likely to read the article. A N.American reader would view the temporally-evolving pattern as being a normal, everyday track of how the teams are progressing through the league that would follow everyday spots discussions. (And, again, it's not WP:OR because NWSL publishes articles weekly with the each team's end-of-week points! The game-equal is unequivocally WP:CALC, though.) CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:45, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, if you're so against a temporally-evolving view of positions in an unbalanced league, you'll need to go through and weed out any positions table in MLS and NWSL team-by-season articles (e.g. 2014_Real_Salt_Lake_season. They're pretty common. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Show me where they are. We've removed most for MLS because, just like this, they're misleading. Since you refuse to remove, I've notified the football project. If they ignore, you're safe. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, it's somewhere between 50/50 and 67/33 in all of the MLS season-by-team articles I've quickly glanced at so far this past hour or so. 4/9 of the 2015 NWSL season-by-team articles also have it; haven't checked the rest yet. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:40, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, it's also still present on 2011 Major League Soccer season (and quite a messy, oversize table at that) - the season overall was balanced, but you still had teams with bye weeks and midweek games and such. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:55, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * (fix link) CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:56, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * At least www.ultimatealeague.com was used as a source in A League. You have none. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:06, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * As was said in the edit summaries earlier, the weekly power rankings posts by NWSL include the points for each team, so there most definitely is a permanent, non-updating source for each week's standings. CyMoahk2 (talk) 06:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with Walter, this table is incredibly misleading. FC Kansas City (for example) could be in a completely different position in the table if all the teams had played the same number of games, so to assign them a position after a certain number of games when not all teams have played that many games makes no sense. Fortunately, this league doesn't have as much of a stagger to its fixtures as some others do, but this is still misleading. – PeeJay 13:55, 12 July 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see what's misleading about the position-by-gameweek table. It's capturing real-time snapshots of where teams are.  MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, et al., rarely have everyone playing the exact same number of games after the same number of days, due to byes, rainouts, and just the travel schedule.
 * If you go to MLB.com today, the standings will show the placement of teams though all the games completed. They won't hold any result back because teams have played an unequal number of games.
 * Jjwyatt (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:58, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The question is not about current standings but about representing them on a weekly basis. It attempts to replicate the style of European leagues (see two examples linked above, and CyMoahk2 admits that's what this table is trying to represent) where the statistic is both accurate and meaningful. Walter Görlitz (talk) 03:36, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Minor clarification: while I said I was trying to emulate the tables on the Euro league pages, I didn't say I was trying to directly emulate the exact same information they were - because that's simply not possible due to the different league structures. Essentially, I was looking for some way to show the week-by-week standings because that's what is accurate and meaningful to N.American readers.  Basically, my thought is that it's a bit of a double standard to say that the way N.American sports leagues are normally viewed and discussed means you can't come up with a way to show that structure here on Wikipedia. CyMoahk2 (talk) 04:34, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I understand, and I didn't say you were trying to emulate them, but that was the same type of representation. I showed that North American leagues do not keep a record of week-by-week standings. The only context was the European League articles. The rules for creating those cannot be followed here. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:50, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand what's deceptive about recording the standings for each week?  For 1951 National League tie-breaker series people say the Dodgers "By August 10, ... were $12 1/2$ games ahead of the Giants and $14 1/2$ games ahead of the Phillies."  The half-game clearly shows that they had not played the same number of games.  However, I can't imagine anyone saying, "Talking about August 10 is misleading; tell me the standings after the Dodgers, Phillies, and Giants have played the same number of games."    People understand that, mid-season, teams haven't played the same number of games, and it will be evened out by the end of the season, if necessary.  Jjwyatt (talk) 05:26, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * It also states that "Throughout the first half of the season, the Dodgers stayed in first place by a large margin". In baseball, games ahead is a common statistic, and aren't games-in-hand dealt with using half games? No such thing in association football. And we're not talking games ahead, we're talking about an absolute position. Very, very different concept. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:44, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. If you have an even number of games in hand, the standings will not show any half-games and look similar to standings with team playing an equal number of games. Half-games only tell you  that one team has played an even number of games and the other has played an odd number.  In recent years MLB occasionally has sent two teams to play a series overseas (Japan, Australia) before the rest of the teams have finished their spring training.  Even though 28 teams were 0-0, they were shown in the standings relative to the games played early.
 * If you look at www.nwslsoccer.com, the standings show the number of games played by each team, and the teams are ranked by the number of points accumulated. Teams have played 10,11,or 12 games.  The Red Stars have played the fewest games, but have the most points.  I don't think you'll ever see 2015 NWSL standings based on team records after ten games completed by each team.  CyMoahk2's table was simply capturing the standings at a certain point in time based on how everyone viewed them.  Maybe you would prefer it to also show the number of games played, but that seems extraneous to me, as NWSL fans understand that teams play a different number of games.Jjwyatt (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2015 (UTC)
 * If the US sports use gameweeks, we probably should cover that. The table with even matches is pretty made up. -Koppapa (talk) 06:16, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 7 external links on 2015 National Women's Soccer League season. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to https://ussoccer.app.box.com/9-10-15-NWSL-Stats
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150107064658/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/index_E.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/index_E.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140903083814/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/2013/index_E.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/2013/index_E.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150107064658/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/index_E.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/Stats/index_E.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150827032251/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/home/891102.html to http://nwslsoccer.com/home/891102.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150925113022/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/892855.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/892855.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150925101713/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/893728.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/893728.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20151003033229/http://nwslsoccer.com/home/896018.html to http://nwslsoccer.com/home/896018.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 09:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 10 external links on 2015 National Women's Soccer League season. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150710051859/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/873151.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/873151.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150710062159/http://nwslsoccer.com/home/879423.html to http://nwslsoccer.com/home/879423.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150715102707/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/886159.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/886159.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150723221149/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/886992.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/886992.html
 * Added tag to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/887871.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150814010355/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/889335.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/889335.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150822000807/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/home/890185.html to http://nwslsoccer.com/home/890185.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150905053233/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/home/892170.html to http://nwslsoccer.com/home/892170.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20151006233808/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/893289.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/893289.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150924022332/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/894750.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/894750.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150922135750/http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/894545.html to http://www.nwslsoccer.com/News/894545.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 01:34, 7 August 2017 (UTC)