Template talk:Infobox NFL biography/Archive 2

Recent edits, stats alignment
Is it just me, or did the recent edits by User:Frietjes mess up the alignments of the stat labels and values at the bottom of the template? --bender235 (talk) 01:10, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that several "headings" are now bolded for some reason.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  01:11, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * if you provide me with an actual example, I will fix it. I put the old version in the sandbox, so you can preview what it used to look like using infobox NFL player/sandbox.  thank you. Frietjes (talk) 14:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Frietjes, thank you for your most recent edits to the template. There are a lot of us who use this infobox on a daily basis; we just ask that you keep us in the loop before you make any changes to how the template actually displays.  Also, can you see if you can cure this eccentricity of the template (see, e.g., John Symank), where the height of players who are 5'11" or 6'11" displays in two lines of text rather than a single line?  It does not affect players of other heights, and it appears that there is plenty of horizontal line space in the infobox to display the complete height and weight information on a single line of text . . . .  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:32, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * the intent in this first iteration was to keep the appearance nearly identical to how it was before, just update the backend to use infobox. I can certainly make the height and weight display on a single line.  Although, it should be noted that it least in my browser, it was on two lines before I made the changes.  I kept a copy of the old template in the sandbox, so you can preview that article after changing 'Infobox NFL player' to 'Infobox NFL player/sandbox' and see if there are differences.  If there is a significant change between the two versions in your browser, please tell me which browser, and I can work on it.  If you want to force the height and weight to appear on a single line, we just need to do this, but there was nothing forcing this before. Frietjes (talk) 17:59, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Help me understand, Freijtes, I have no talent for wiki code beyond the basics. I thought infoboxes were set widths, not scalable, and should display the same width in pixels regardless of what size of monitor on which they are rendered . . . is that not the case?  Also, I'm just one vote among many who use this template; I would be interested to hear how the test case appears on the monitors of Eagles247 and other editors who regularly work with it.  BTW, as of this time (2:55 p.m. EDT), all NFL player infoboxes are now displaying height on two lines, not one, on my monitor, whereas previously only players whose height was 5'11" or or 6'11" was displaying on two lines.  If you force the code to display a single line for height in all cases, is there any downside?  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:58, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * the only potential downside to forcing the height to display on a single line would be that it will stretch the width of the infobox to make this possible. the amount of stretching would almost certainly be very very slight since it's very close to fitting on one line.  unfortunately, the exact appearance will always be browser dependent for various reasons.  the folks who write the web browser code either purposely or accidentally interpret the HTML specifications in different ways.  as far as the width of the infobox, it is set in 'em' units, not 'px' units (see for example, http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.en.html).  the reasoning for using em units is that I can resize the font on the screen, and the box will resize in the same way.  however, images won't resize in the same way, which are set in px units.  so, for an infobox which is purely text, the em units are the best choice.  for an infobox which is a mix of text and images, then there is really no way to make it scale uniformly.  I will go ahead and add the 'nowrap' to the height and weight line and if there is a big problem, we can just revert it.  alternatively, we can just slightly increase the size of the infobox, or slightly decrease the padding inside the box, which would make it sometimes wrap.  however, when it wraps is going to be browser dependent. Frietjes (talk) 20:30, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Three years into my Wikipedia experience, and I still learn something new every day. I never want to be a coder, but I do want to be able to communicate semi-intelligently with those of you who are. I guess we will see if anyone complains about the infobox's display on their particular monitor. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:37, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have added some notes in the section below concerning the functional and appearance changes. I would like to make some more simplifications and improvements to the robustness of the code (e.g., what happens if you set both 'number' and 'currentnumber' and why do we have three different ways to specify the position), but I plan to proceed slowly. let me know what else I need to do to make the appearance as desired. Frietjes (talk) 20:53, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I did not experience the problem that Bender mentioned. So I logged out to see if that could be due to my settings, but neither saw a difference. Since I'm using Firefox, I tried the IE and there I could see the misalignment as well. Here are two screenshots 1 (Firefox) and 2 (IE). Also, as you can see on the screenshots, if the "highlights" parameter is unused, the "Career highlights and awards" header doesn't show up. Previously "N/A" was filled in automatically (see here).  Armchair QB  ( talk ) 00:19, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * that's good to hear, and I will work on the IE alignment issue. I did purposely have the highlights section not appear if there were no highlights.  I can easily change this, but thought it was better to just omit the header.  It seems a bit harsh to point out that someone has "no highlights".  let me know if you want me to add it back with the NA. Frietjes (talk) 00:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * My personal opinion, and it's only my opinion, is that keeping the "NA" simply for the sake of maintaining the "highlights" section is a bad idea. It is obnoxious to state that a player had no significant highlights; if true, it does not need to be said.  It's also a waste of infobox space.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:19, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, that's a noble thought, Frietjes. ;-) I have been used to it the last couple of years, so when I saw the infobox on the Richard Marshall article I immediately noticed that, especially since the last two headers had the same color. That's why I pointed it out, thought it was something to fix. Quite obviously I missed your point 4. below yesterday. Your explanation makes sense, so no complaints here. Armchair QB  ( talk ) 17:17, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
 * can you check the alignment issue in Internet Explorer again? I made some changes, but was not able to reproduce the problem on my laptop (IE 8.0, Windows 7).  thank you. Frietjes (talk) 19:02, 16 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The alignment issue seems to be fixed now. Since you mentioned the operating system, I've tested it on XP, Vista and Windows 7. No problems with Firefox and IE on XP and Vista. But on Windows 7 I've the problem that two headers show up double bolded (looks like Arial Black) on both Firefox and IE. I guess this is what Eagles247 meant. Armchair QB  ( talk ) 18:18, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I was referring to.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  18:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * very interesting. I was able to see the additional bolding in the HTML source, so it should now be fixed.  it appears this was being added by infobox for some reason, but I figured out how to circumvent it and still use infobox.  let me know if there are any remaining issues, and thank you for your help and patience.  Frietjes (talk) 14:46, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

High school
Should the parameter  be in Career information instead of Personnel information? Baseball  Watcher  03:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Usually in media bios, a player's high school information is listed with other personal information. I'm thinking that's the reasoning behind the placement, but I could be wrong.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  03:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I think we should move the "High school" parameter from the "Personal information" section to the "Career Information" section. It's pretty much self-explanatory. --bender235 (talk) 18:43, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

birth_place vs. hometown
The template should probably include a field for "hometown" in addition to "birth_place". The actual birthplaces of most players aren't known or easily verifiable, whereas all or most have designated "hometowns." fat man rolling (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hometown can be subjective, birth place is not. Say a player lived in Los Angeles for five years, moved to Oakland for another seven, and then moved to San Francisco for another five years. Which would his hometown be? Furthermore, NFL.com and pro-football-reference do a good job with birthplaces and usually do not list hometowns.  Eagles   24/7  (C)  19:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I second what Eagles said: what any person calls his "hometown" tends to be very subjective. The proper place to discuss the player's "hometown" is in the "early years" section of the player's biography.  It generally blends very nicely with a discussion of the the player's birthplace, family, and high school sports record.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, fair enough, I forgot there's a difference between the NFL.com player profile and the NFL.com/draft profile for the player as a prospect. Draft profiles from various previous years seem to list hometown instead. fat man rolling (talk) 20:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with  Eagles  here, but we might think about adding a "Residence" parameter. I could see that being useful in particular for retired players. --bender235 (talk) 18:47, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Former player, current coach
I just thought about implenting this template on the Jim Harbaugh article (since he's the new 49ers coach), but as you can see, the "Career history" section looks just ugly. Why are there parameters for both  and   if those values are just thrown together? —bender235 (talk) 21:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly what I said when this went on. Apparently there was a discussion about this (see this), but I think there was a lot of confusion regarding what was actually the concern. This looks terrible, and all you can do (unless you change the infobox) is add  and   to the infobox.  Eagles   24/7   (C)  00:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks better. That should be implemented on the template, in the way that it is only displayed when you have both a playing career and a coaching career. —bender235 (talk) 01:13, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, what about in the case of Matt Millen, who was an executive, not a coach?  Eagles   24/7  (C)  04:33, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So it should be an "if  or   or  " loop. That's all? —bender235 (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I updated the example infobox to reflect current template names, coding, and formatting practices. It is now consistent with the formatting examples shown on the infobox documentation page.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Recent code change notes
the recent code changes were not intended (in this first iteration) to have any large impact on the rendering of the infobox. however, there are some things that you may notice: I will add more notes here as I make them (or think of them). thank you. Frietjes (talk) 20:50, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) The height/weight information is now forced to occupy a single line, where before it was allowed to wrap to two lines
 * 2) The "Career NFL statistics" heading will now appear whenever there are statistics.  Before, this heading would only appear if 'statseason' was set (see for example Bill Walsh).
 * 3) There is a horizontal rule between the image caption and the position if there is an image caption, and if there is no 'currentteam'/'currentnumber'/'number' set.  It used to be that when there was no 'currentteam'/'currentnumber'/'number' set, a colored blank row would appear, even if there was nothing above it to be separated (see for example Vince Lombardi for the horizontal rule vs. the blank row, and see for example Keith Lincoln for where there is no 'currentteam'/'currentnumber'/'number' set and no image or image caption).
 * 4) The highlights section is now omitted if there are no highlights.
 * 5) It is no longer necessary to set 'aflstats' to have the aflstats appear, instead you just specify 'aflstatlabel1'/'aflstatdata1' and this section will be enabled
 * 6) It is no longer necessary to use &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt; or &lt;nowiki/&gt; on lines with bulleted lists.  Bulleted lists will work without this hack.
 * 7) The stats section is now middle aligned, rather than free floating to try to align the various stats sections.

I can perform a bot run to remove obsolete 'aflstats' and lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt; or &lt;nowiki/&gt;. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Great improvements, especially fixing the nowiki thing. 71.197.246.210 (talk) 04:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

currentposition
I think it would be better to have "currentposition" default to being unlinked, and have something like "currentpositionlinked" if linkage from the infobox template is desired, to make it easier to convert from template:infobox college football player (especially for players with multiple positions). A bot could easily make the updates the change would require. 71.197.246.210 (talk) 03:55, 29 April 2012 (UTC)


 * No need to add a new field to the template for unlinked "position" text. The alternate fields "position=" and "currentpositionplain=" already render the result you're seeking.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:24, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Medal templates
Could someone please add a parameter to include, similar to Template:Infobox basketball biography. I'd do it myself, but after some tries in the sandbox I realized I don't know how. It's only needed for a few cases, like Renaldo Nehemiah, Earl McCullouch, or Jonathan Wade, but it's better than having two infoboxes. --bender235 (talk) 12:48, 5 May 2012 (UTC)


 * See the current sandbox and test case for a two-minute attempt at this. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:34, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Seems to work fine, doesn't it? --bender235 (talk) 10:51, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Do you mind giving the tyres a kick by adding a few more examples at the test cases page? After that I'll push the code live. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:41, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Just tested Earl McCullouch and Jamaal Charles. The template needs to include colors from NFLPrimaryColor and NFLSecondaryColor. --bender235 (talk) 21:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, remember that the colors sometimes switch, see that Jonathan Wade infobox I just added. --bender235 (talk) 21:42, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * this should make the colors switch. Frietjes (talk) 23:33, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Wait wait wait. It's just occurred to me that American football isn't actually an event in which one competes in Olympic-style events (unlike basketball, association football and so on). It is plainly not appropriate to include hurdling medals et cetera in an NFL infobox. If that's the use case here then this probably shouldn't go live. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * But it increases usability if there is only a single infobox instead of two. Regardless of the sport. --bender235 (talk) 14:02, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * we could have it appear as a second infobox attached to the bottom of the first one. For example, what has been done with Template:Infobox clan. Frietjes (talk) 14:50, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be something. At least I'd like to see the NFL infobox and the medal infobox somewhat knit, so they have the same width etc. --bender235 (talk) 20:38, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * That's trivial: just remove the override this template uses to set width to 25em instead of 22em. I'm all for that change, but in the past it's been strongly opposed by other editors. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:43, 17 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see anyone opposing. I'd say we do the WP:BRD approach and wait until someone opposes. --bender235 (talk) 14:33, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Other league stats?
I'm wondering why this template doesn't have stats sections for the American Football League, the All-America Football Conference and others. It seems strange to have an AFL draft year variable while not including AFL stats. Are we doing this because the NFL recognizes AFL stats as its own? I suppose that makes sense. And another question: would it make sense to have a new set of stats options that does not have the name of a league in its heading (i.e. "Career statistics" or some such)? In some cases it might be more useful for the reader to have a full career's worth of stats rather than a breakdown of stats by separate leagues; if we had this, it would at least give editors some additional flexibility in deciding whether to present career stats broken down into separate leagues or all together. So for a guy like Otto Graham, for example, who played in the AAFC and NFL, we could have career totals followed by an AAFC and NFL total.--Batard0 (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League
Please see the NFL wikiproject talk page linked above for a discussion related to this template. --Batard0 (talk) 05:39, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Residence parameter, II
Every other person related infobox on Wikipedia has one, so should there be a parameter residence added to this infobox, too? In my opinion it would be useful particularly for retired players who don't reside in their respective hometown. --bender235 (talk) 12:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I just don't see the relevance...► Chris Nelson Holla! 16:12, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Bender235, a residence field seems unnecessary to me. Where a player resides in retirement does not strike me as a particularly core piece of data.  It can be noted sufficiently in the body of the article. Jweiss11 (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2013 (UTC) [preceding was cut and pasted from Dirtlawyer1's talk page]


 * Bender, it would be appropriate to raise the issue on both the template talk page and the WP:NFL talk page. Template:Infobox NFL player is already a very large template when all options are used, and can become ridiculously large when the subject player has numerous career honors.  A "current residence" parameter is also problematic because good sources don't exist for a majority of players, and it requires constant update.  It's also not terribly relevant.  Most current players live in the metropolitan where the team is located, but many also split time elsewhere including their home towns.  NFL.com is a reliable source for birth places and high schools (a good proxy for home towns).  Tracking the current residence of retired players is difficult, again, because few reliable sources exist that are regularly updated for players after they retire.  If there is some reason for including a player's current residence, and a reliable source exists, then it may always be included in the body text.  Not every factoid about a player needs to be included in the article infobox.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 13:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC) [preceding was cut and pasted from Dirtlawyer1's talk page]


 * Like I told you, I raised the question some ten months ago, but no reactions. This time, I was just being bold. It seems now, there's no big support for the idea. I'm okay with that. Then we'll leave it out. --bender235 (talk) 10:03, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Infobox football biography doesn't include a residence parameter. I would argue that for sportspersons (who are more prone than most to moving across countries or indeed continents as they transfer between teams, on what are often short contracts) this is mostly trivia for active players, and a more compelling argument than "some other infoboxes have one" would be needed to include it for ex-players. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 10:04, 4 April 2013 (UTC)