Talk:Belgium national football team results

Match number?
I have my doubts about that first column. What is the authority on it? It's not synchronized (anymore) with http://www.rsssf.com/tablesb/belg-intres.html either, has a gap between 715 and 717, and in my opinion, the non-official (but public) matches should simply be included on this page too. Those matches did happen, so why not record them (even if they don't go in the FIFA records). I would personally do away with that first column, and move the date to the first column. Or alternatively completely follow http://www.rsssf.com/tablesb/belg-intres.html (which includes the non-official matches). Sygmoral (talk) 22:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
 * ... you can argue about that. None of the ways you number is "wrong", as long as it is clear that these two matches did not follow the FA Rules of the Game (either omitting, either a note). Anyway, adding the dates is a great improvement. Kareldorado (talk) 07:31, 13 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll add the FIFA-unofficial matches then, along with a clear note. I think that's more "complete", as people may wonder about them. Sygmoral (talk) 02:08, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * On second thought, after rediscovering the Belgium national football team results – unofficial matches page, let's just put more visible links to that page (whereever relevant)! Then it's not in the overview tables, but people can still find those matches easily enough. Sygmoral (talk) 02:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Collapsible tables
Should the tables per decade be auto-collapsed? I would personally just leave them 'open': they are the main content of this article, after all. Makes it easier to scroll through all of them, or to search for appearances of a certain country on the page. (I would personally leave the Record per opponent table collapsed, but perhaps that's inconsistent then) Sygmoral (talk) 20:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As you wish. If they stand open, that is over 700 matches, but indeed, with the scrollbar at the right hand side you can navigate quickly. Kareldorado (talk) 21:24, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Featured list
When we finish all those subpages, and I have included dates and scores on this one, I think we will have quite an impressive result. With relatively little changes (most importantly a "more engaging" lead section), I believe this article could probably achieve Featured List status. Not for tomorrow, but something fun to think about :) (mostly because until recently, I didn't even know there was such as thing)

But something related I've been thinking about - although it might sound crazy - is that perhaps, at that point, we should merge everything. Once we have all those subpages, just merge them all together into this page, and do away with the summarized version. After all, those collapsed rows already present themselves as summarizations. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether 750 matches would be an issue performance-wise ... —Sygmoral (talk) 00:10, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I have also been thinking aloud of promoting one of the Belgium NFT-related list articles towards FL status. :) Yes, this might be a candidate, but there is still some work to do. You should check FL articles, and usually there was a lot of work on it. Well, not just a lot, but a humongous lot: engaging prose, loads of references, most professional layout you could think of... But, why not go for it? At least the layout issue is something you could manage, Joris. About putting everything on one page: I think users of smartphones and slow computers would not be too pleased. Kareldorado (talk) 17:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Score
The scores I have added so far, I've copied in the exact format that they were presented in the statistics. Meaning that sometimes Belgium is the second number, and sometimes it is the first. I have seen some other pages that have changed the scores so that the 'own team' always appears first. This makes it a lot easier to compare scores - but on the other hand then there's no indication at all on whether the match may have been held on home soil or away. So I'm conflicted about whether this should change!

Of course, this would become an irrelevant point if we would decide to merge all the subpages, as suggested in my wild idea above. :) —Sygmoral (talk) 00:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I would try to be consistent and show the home team first in the score, just like in the main article - to do this correctly for tournaments you should check what the highest authority source states as home team. The advantage is that you do not have to write down the venues but people still know that it was home or away. This can put things into context: usually teams achieve better results at home. To avoid confusion, I would write on top "score shows home team first" or something like that. Kareldorado (talk) 17:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Something you could do, is emphasizing the worst and best result of the decade in bold or a stronger colour - it is just a thought. Kareldorado (talk) 17:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Honestly I don't get what the suggestion is. If the "home" team is first and the venue is neutral (like Euro 2016) then how are you supposed to know who won if the name of the home  team is not specified? So the match against Wales in Euro 2016 is shown as 1–3, but the correct order should be 🇧🇪 belgium. Hg03u (talk) 20:53, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Venue
Can we add the venue as a column for each match? It is quite an important aspect of the match, much more important than whether the match is formally home or away (which is discussed above). Hg03u (talk) 19:48, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * You have a point. I guess it's about finding a balance between having a light-weight list of ALL matches ever, and showing enough information when you're scrolling over the list. More detailed information is available on the subpages (per decade). A little over a year ago (see here), this list didn't even include the dates or scores - those were only added last summer. So the question is how detailed this list should be, keeping into account that we already have the subpages ... (I think most other teams -only- have the subpages, with a navigation box linking between the decades) –Sygmoral (talk) 03:33, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Legend for encounters
What is the purpose of the "Legend for encounters". Are those acronyms supposed to be added to the tables? Hg03u (talk) 19:52, 24 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That legend is indeed more extensive than needed, but you'll see some of them used in the Event column, e.g. "2014 W.C. Q" where "W.C" and "Q" are explained in that legend. Many of the legend values aren't actually used on this page though (1/8, GS, ...), so those should probably be removed (and then the table could be uncollapsed too). Those other acryonyms are actually only used on the subpages, where each event has its own dedicated section. Of course, we could argue whether they should be used here too. –Sygmoral (talk) 03:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

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