Template talk:Infobox athletic conference

Template routes to redirect and ultimately to disambig
As you can see here, this template winds up linking to the divisions page, which unfortunately routes it to a disambig page for division. This link SHOULD point to division (sport). How can this be done? Thanks, NightFalcon90909 (talk) 20:02, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Template broken?
Somewhere in these four edits, something got screwed up in the display of the number of mens and womens sports fielded. See Atlantic Hockey, where it should be displaying "Members 12 (men: yes; women: no)" but is just displaying "Members 12". Powers T 20:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think what you meant is that it should display “Sports fielded Ice hockey (men's: yes; women's: no)”, like it did before the changes and like it does now. I think what User:TheBigJagielka was trying to accomplish is to not show that line when the parameters were not given, so I added code that detects this, and shows it properly. See examples on the right. Svick (talk) 01:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I meant; sorry for the confusion, and thanks for the fix. =)  Powers T 15:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, come to think of it, that's a big improvement. The reason I had it as "men's yes; women's: no" is because those fields were required previously.  If they're now optional, I could change the sports= parameter to "men's ice hockey" or something like that and leave the mens and womens fields blank.  (That's still a kludge on the intended purpose of the parameter, but "Sports fielded: 1 (men's: 1; women's: 0)" is just silly IMO.)  That said, I think "sports fielded" ought to be required; I can think of no reason we would want it optional.  Powers T 15:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, that makes sense. I made the  parameter required. (See the example on the right titled “No parameter”.) Svick (talk) 23:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Required fields
While we're at it, let's discuss which fields are 'required' and which ones should be.

As of this version, every parameter is hidden if absent with the exception of sports, hq_city, and hq_state (and of course name, which takes the PAGENAME if absent). But the documentation (as of this version) lists several other parameters as required: established, logo, division, members, mens, womens, region, commissioner, and website. ("mens" and "womens" were just recently made optional; see above.)

Off the top of my head, I would say that division, members, and region ought to be required, as there's really no point in having an article without that basic information. The others ought to be optional, as that information may not be available at the time of article creation.

Of the parameters listed as "optional" in the documentation, we should note that "association" defaults to "NCAA" and that it actually provides the label for the "Division" field rather than appearing as a field value itself. The rest are fine as "optional".

Now, of course, "required" can have two meanings; we can say that a field is required without coding the template that way. But it would be nice to have the two line up, I think.

Thoughts?

-- Powers T 12:52, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Dissolved parameter
I just added a "Dissolved" parameter.--GrapedApe (talk) 03:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Extra field needed for coeducational sports
There needs to be a new field for coeducational sports. The NCAA has three such sports: fencing, rifle, and skiing, and awards only a single national team title (for all divisions) in each sport. In fencing and skiing, schools have separate men's and women's squads; in rifle, the NCAA allows schools to field any combination of men's, women's, and coed teams (only one of each type). — Dale Arnett (talk) 06:03, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * , should work now. Frietjes (talk) 13:56, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yup. Works for Southern Conference (which sponsors rifle). — Dale Arnett (talk) 00:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Needs fixing
This change works fine for the two conferences that sponsor rifle (the Ohio Valley Conference and Southern Conference). However, the parentheses in "Sports fielded" now don't close if the "coed" field is missing. Think someone could fix the template so that the parentheses fully close regardless of which fields in "mens", "womens", and "coed" are filled? — Dale Arnett (talk) 01:37, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Adding additional optional parameters
I believe we should add additional optional parameters as they apply to championships; "Recent champions" and "Most overall championships" / "Most successful team."

These would be highly beneficial for both single sport and multi-sport athletic conferences. This would follow the style guide set forth by sports leagues and other sports overall. For single sport conferences, they would be able to list the most recent champions and most successful programs immediately and link to the related season if available. For multi-sport conferences, the most successful program overall including multiple sports could be listed and the most recent champion parameter ignored. — ColeTrain4EVER (talk) 16:30, 4 February 2019 (UTC)