Template talk:Infobox shogi professional/Archive 1

Untitled
This came up as stale and eligible for G13 deletion. Is it needed or wanted? Legacypac (talk) 18:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Courtesy ping to . Primefac (talk) 18:51, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping . It is something I was working on as a alternative to Template:Infobox chess player for shogi professionals kind of modeled after ja:Template:Infobox 将棋棋士. I'm not very good with templates, so I had asked someone else to look at it but perhaps we both just forgot about this. Would you mind taking a look? Do you notice any errors or things which could be improved? -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:35, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
 * , I notice that you've just copied over the "example" syntax - what are the actual labels that will be used (i.e. will Ryuh-Oh sen class be a wikilink somewhere)? Happy to code the whole thing, but I'm not familiar with the subject material so I have no idea what to actually put in some places. Primefac (talk) 17:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking a look. "Ryuh-Oh sen class" and "Jun'i sen" can probably be linked to articles such as Ryu-oh and Meijin (shogi). The names of the parameters probably can be tweaked so make them a bit easier to understand as well. As you say, I just tried to transcribe the Japanese template onto English Wikipedia, and then was going to tweak it a bit at a time. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:33, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * , the barebones version has been created. Feel free to tweak or modify as you see fit. Primefac (talk) 13:31, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:09, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

suggestions here?
hmm, it looks good to me. I cant think of anything to add at the moment. (and actually it includes things i wouldnt have thought of by myself!)

Does the JSA include info on how many years as xx class? I dont know if that's important. It's kind of like bragging rights.

What about a birth date to age converter? Doesnt wikipedia use something like that elsewhere? – ishwar  (speak)  18:52, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * birth date and age does the age calculations, but it's user-side (not template side). Primefac (talk) 19:01, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think what your referring to is something like "X級(#)期". The data can be fairly easily found for all current pros from looking at their JSA profile pages; for example, Habu's JSA profile shows he's been in Class A for 25 years, and the other classes can be somewhat figured out from looking at his promotion dates. For Yoshikazu Minami (shogi), his profile shows he's currently in C2, but belonged to A for 9 years. Classes other than A may not be as clear, especially for players who move between classes a lot, but it can be probably figured out.
 * You usually see this thing mentioned, however, (especially for those who participated in Class A) when (1) someone retires, (2) someone dies, (3) some kind of record is set, or (4) someone decides to move themselves to the "free class". For example, Toshiyuki Moriuchi decided earlier this year that he wanted to switch to free class. He's a lifetime Meijin and still quite young, so this surprised lots of shogi professionals/fans, etc. Anyway, Moriuchi was in Class A for 22 consecutive years, and obviously he was in the other classes before that. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:52, 10 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's my motivation: since the JSA reports it, it might be worth reporting. However, unlike an Elo score (as in western chess), being in the A class doesnt cleanly connect to player strength because of its restrictive nature. (So, the interpretative question: is X years in A class have a clear meaning that's informative?) Nonetheless, it's an accomplishment to be in the A class. And, the A class players tend to have the top Elo scores. So, maybe it's worth noting? – ishwar  (speak)  15:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Re the date > age converter: I see. Thanks. I guess we can build into the template if with want. But maybe that's overkill. (template is code is rather unreadable...) Unfortunately, that template adds the word 'age' but without any customization – so, i cant use it just to generate a number. Just thinking to use a template to generate the player's age as well as number of years as professional. Maybe there's another template for that? – ishwar  (speak)  15:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not quite sure what you're looking for re: age. If someone was born on 1 Jan 1965, birth date and age would return January 1, 1965. I mean, there is age, but why add an extra "Age" label if we already have it included in the "Born" display? Primefac (talk) 15:13, 11 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, it's fine for their age. But, not for f(date) = years as professional as that's not their age. – ishwar  (speak)  15:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, to be fair "Age" doesn't necessarily mean "birthdays" - the "Iron Age" or the "Age of Empires" basically means "how old something is". So yeah, you could do {{Age in years and months|2010|1|1}} which would show.
 * Again, though, this would be user-side. We could mandate that a specific format be used, but generally it's best to make it as idiot-proof as possible. It's just as easy to input 2 January 2000 as it is to use the bday template. Primefac (talk) 15:28, 11 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Ah, Age in years and months – that's what i'm looking for. Thanks.


 * Yes, i think age can mean that. However, i would find it used here as a little weird? But, more importantly, i think in this context it could be ambiguous as whether it referred to the number of years as pro or referred to the age (counting from birth) of the player when they became a pro. (The Japanese template mentions the latter in the same format as the birthday/age [from birth].) Depends on how it's worded, of course. But, for this reason, maybe something like years as professional is the most clear?


 * re user side: makes sense. – ishwar  (speak)  15:34, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Test cases
Here is how the infobox syntax looks when used for Yoshiharu Habu, Karolina Styczyńska, and Yasuharu Ōyama.







FWIW, I've picked these three representive articles for the following reasons: Habu is male, a lifetime title holder, and has lots of titles/tournament victories so almost all of the parameters can be used; Styczyńskais female; and Oyama is deceased. All three also have freely licensed images which can be used. If the template can be made to work for these three articles, it can be most likely used for any player's article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:40, 12 September 2017 (UTC)


 * looks fine to me.


 * is slightly wider better? or would be too wide? (i dont know if the size is already optimized for things for cell phones) – ishwar  (speak)  18:27, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The width is pretty much automatic based on the contents. The only way to really make it wider would be to put a nowrap around Achieved professional status, since that's the only label (or even content) that's wider than standard. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * A few things I noticed.
 * Would it be possible to incorporate Winning percentage or something similar? Can the win loss record be tweaked to add the words "wins" and "losses" or is this not commonly done?
 * "Teacher" might not be the best way to translate wikt:師匠. Way back in the day, most players might have actually been a live-in student of a pro and his family to learn about the game; this is what players from Oyama's era typically did. These days, however, most young kids are already quite strong by time they decide to enter the Shoreikai and many have actually had other "teachers" so to speak before even making contact with a pro. Usually these kids show lots of promise so they are noticed by a pro himself or by others who know of a pro looking for students. A professional typically needs to serve as "sponsor" for someone to test for the Shoreikai, but at that point they may actually do more polishing of talent than actual teaching per se. The kids also tend to live at home or with a relative and commute to the pro's home or sites where Shoreikai games are played.
 * It might be a good idea to add a parameter for "official website", "JSA profile page" or both. All official players who are members of the JSA will have a profile page, and many also have their own official blogs.
 * Japanese names can get quite long (characterwise) when translated into English. For example, 羽生 (はぶ) is two characters when written in kanji or kana, but "Habu" is four characters when written in English. This is probably not a problem for name, but may create an undesirable line break for teacher, especially if ill is used. Is there a way to work around this?
 * I think the rank of the teacher should be added to the teacher since they would be referred to as such in any discussion involving them and is bit of interesting info as well. It's sort of a post-nominal that would always be used in Japanese when talking about them in lieu of "san".
 * That's what I noticed. I can easily do numbers 2 and 5, but not sure how to do the rest. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:19, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ items 1, 3, 4, 5; I changed the win/loss to actually use win-loss record, added websites, nowrapped all of the names, and added a param for teacher rank. As far as the websites go, I wasn't sure if the JSA profiles used a standard base name, so for the moment it just takes the input with no modification (such as prefixing it with the URL and all you have to add is the ID or something). Primefac (talk) 23:26, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing all of that and especially for doing it all so quickly . As fo of the teacher's rank, I think my comment was a bit confusing. I don't necessarily feel a new parameter was needed; I just think the info and link could be added after the teacher's name. For example,  which would look like "Teacher = Tatsuya Futakami 9 dan" in the infobox. The wikilink to "dan" might not even be needed since it is already in rank.
 * As for the JSA profiles, the can all be found at https://www.shogi.or.jp/player/. The urls are pretty simple since they are all  with the XXX being the player's badge number. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:23, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Updated JSA profiles. While I can appreciate how you've phrased the teacher thing, I have found it's best to offer more parameters so that there's more uniformity between articles; I've worked with some template mergers that were heavily convoluted by one parameter being potentially input six different ways. Best to add a parameter and allow for easier modification later on if something needs updating. Primefac (talk) 00:42, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No worries. I don't much experience with templates (this is just the second one I've tried to create), so I'm happy to defer to those who are more experienced in working them. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:15, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

New syntax
This is what the template looks like now with the tweaks made by.



It looks pretty good, but I am wondering if there's a way to add the winning percentage and add the actual date (not only the year) the player turned professional. Also, maybe JSA profile could be tweaked so that it read as "JSA profile page" instead of as a number. -- Marchjuly (talk) 11:42, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, you formatted the date parameter wrong, which is why it was only showing the year. I also tweaked the win/loss so it shows up properly. Primefac (talk) 13:40, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing that. I think I figured out the JSA profile page part. One thing about these pages is that if you scroll down to very bottom there's a way to switch from Japanese to English and vice versa. If possible it might be best to try and link to the English page, but I can seem to find the url to do that. It could just be some kind of translation software that just translates whatever shows up on the Japanese page since the translation is not very good. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:45, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Parameter tweaking
I tried tweaking some of the parameters, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly. Could someone take a peek and fix anything I might have broken? -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:45, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I did one last tweak by adding ja icon to the Jsa profile parameter. I cannot find any urls which directly link to Engish verision of the JSA profile pages. The JSA appears to be using some kind of software to translate both their main and mobile pages, but the urls are the same as for the Japanese pages. So, I thought adding "(in Japanese)" in the same manner which is often done in ciations templates and in external link sections might be helpful. If this is a bit of overkill or if it somehow mucks up the rest of the template, then feel free to revert. Other than that, I think the draft seems ready to go live. If anything further needs to be done to prepare for the move, list them somewhere on this talk page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * i think they are using google to auto-translate (which explains the poor quality in many cases). I think they had the google mark on their page around half a year ago (whenever it was when they first revamped their page). I'm not sure the language notice is necessary, but it doesnt hurt so it's fine with me. I guess folks that already know shogi a bit have already realized most everything written will be in Japanese only especially current events/topics. But, someone who just decided to learn shogi today won't know that and the notice may save these people a click to a foreign language page (which is i guess is the reason these notices were created). [Incidentally, the Shogi Hub site does have pages on the current players (such as http://shogihub.com/players/7). However, it's derivative of the JSA site anyway, I think. Probably not needed for a template, but if someone insists on an english link, then that's the only one there's gonna be.] – ishwar  (speak)  05:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * one thing that occurred to me later: if you are worried about some readers' reaction like 'hey, I can't read that!', then that suggests you shouldnt put the links in the template at all instead of merely warning them about Japanese language links. – ishwar  (speak)  06:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * third thought: what is the wikipedia precedent for this kind for thing? It's probably best to consistent across wikipedia topics. (but maybe there's no precedent...) – ishwar  (speak)  06:46, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * External links to non-English websites are permitted just as citations to non-English sources are permitted respectively per WP:NONENGEL and WP:NONENG. As long as the external link otherwise is not a problem per WP:ELNEVER or WP:ELNO, there should be no problem adding it to the "External links" section, esepcially if there is no English equivalent. The infobox link might be simply a matter for local consensus to decide. Most infoboxes have a parameter for an official website, but maybe the language icon is not needed there if the same link is going to be provided as an external link. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:27, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Something makes me think that if someone is interested enough to visit the profile page of a shogi player, they already know (or at least would expect) the page to be in Japanese. infobox go player doesn't have such a link, but then again I don't know if they do have a centralized dbase. I say leave the link in, remove the ja (for brevity). Primefac (talk) 12:06, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think go might actually be a little more internationalized than shogi since they seem to be a number of non-Japanese professional players (male and female), but there is currently only one non-Japanese professional shogi player (female). The Nihon Ki-in also has a dedicated English website. The go site also uses translation software, but, unlike the shogi site, it seems to create a new page which can be directly linked to. Anyway, not a big deal and I have no problem dropping the language icon from the infobox. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Going live
I think we're good to go, barring minor tweaks. Primefac (talk) 12:38, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Good deal. 39! (39 is pronounced san kyu in Japanese which is how Japanese pronounce the English word thank you. So, it's a jokey sillish way [at least to me] say thanks) – ishwar  (speak)  17:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for all your help and suggestions. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:30, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Notable for more than shogi?
So, here:

Naoko Hayashiba

is another test case. She's a retired professional shogi player. However, she also is a writer and has an infobox noting that.

What to do? – ishwar  (speak)  01:21, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Added a child param, so if yes or yes then it will set the infobox as an embedded child. So set module equal to this IB and set the child and we'll be good to go. See Template:Infobox. example:


 * Primefac (talk) 01:37, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Oh, that's kinda neat. Thanks – ishwar  (speak)  01:49, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Good point about Hayashiba. She's probably better known these days for other things besides shogi, and really only became known for that because of her relationship with Makoto Nakahara despite her being one of the strongest female pros of her era. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:05, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Seems that she was popular before that though. She was on the front cover of magazines and reportedly folks lined up to get her signature. According to the old UK Shogi magazine. But, yeah, notoriety will diminish all else.... – ishwar  (speak)  03:07, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Nothing wrong with adding a subinfobox/module for the shogi. Primefac (talk) 11:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, she was quite popular for a female professional, but I think it was primarily among shogi fans. The scandal made her an everyday name among a more general segment of the population because it received quite a bit of coverage in the media at the time and there were some answering machine messages Nakahara left for her that were played over and over and over and over again. The audio can still be found on YouTube and the calls still sound as creepy today as they did back then. As for sub-infoboxes, I think this would be a good thing if possible. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Argument/parameter conventions
Just to be clear, we are using


 * 'Nst/nd/st Class' for the Ryu-oh class parameter
 * 'Class ' for the Meijin class parameter (and 'free class' is not mentioned or...?)
 * wins/losses parameters when the player is retired or deceased

? I'm trying to be consistent.

Also, in case, i've forgotten something relevant to consistency, please let me know. – ishwar  (speak)  22:58, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I'd suggest leaving the word class out of the arguments for Ryu-oh class and Meijin class since it's redundantly mentioned in the parameter name. – ishwar  (speak)  23:52, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The Jun'isen are referred to in Japanese as A級, etc., while the Ryu-oh classes are referred to as 1組, etc., so I guess it depends on how it is felt they should be translated. For me, "Class A" or "A Class" are essentially the same, so I guess it depends upon which one is more commonly used. I think "Group 1" or "Class !", however, are better than "1st Group" or "1st Class" for the Ryu-oh leagues, but that's just my preference; I'm not sure how they are commonly referred to in reliable English shogi sources. Regardless, I think how they are being translated by the JSA's official website should be avoided, unless it's clear that it's not something done the site's translation software because mechanical translations are still not very good in my opinion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:00, 9 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, i think class is fine as a translation. I just mean it doesnt need to read Meijin class: A class when it can read Meijin class: A. I like class better than group and class 1 better than 1st class. Machine translation is terrible: the connectionist networks can give all kinds of strange stuff (such as Google translation poetry).


 * So, i'll use (unless there's an objection)


 * 'N' for the Ryu-oh class parameter
 * '' for the Meijin class parameter
 * wins/losses parameters iff the player is retired/deceased


 * But what about the free class players? Keep that out of the infobox or what? – ishwar  (speak)  03:13, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * "Free class" is an official class of players, so I don't think their's any reason to keep it out of the infobox. Maybe it doesn't technically belong in Meijin since such players are not eligible to complete for the title, but perhaps an other or something could be added. Since you've created Professional shogi player, there's probably eventually going to be content added about the various classes/ranks to that article, which means a link to more detailed content about "free class" will be possible making it easier to understand. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:11, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Ok. I see. Hmm, well, i'm not sure what's best. The JSA puts free in the same row as the others on the profile pages. So, that's one argument to do the same. Another is simplicity of presentation: less parameters, the better. The argument against it is that it's sort of incorrect in that it's not a subset of the Meijin leaguers but the complement set of Meijin leaguers (& subset of the universe of players). But, i guess we need a little bit more descriptive name than other.


 * Also, i thought of something else: what to do about the LPSA (日本女子プロ将棋協会) folks? I guess the JSA may not consider them true professional players, but that's obviously their perspective. I would personally consider them the same as JSA female pros since the difference was caused by politics, which has nothing to do the game really. Anyway, eventually, we need to figure out what the fields of the LPSA folks should be. I also just realized that Hiroe Nakai is ex-JSA and ex-LPSA and now a sort of free agent type of shogi player. I really dont know much about female shogi yet. Seems more complicated. And, it doesnt help that the JSA removes info (including their badge number) about folks who leave the JSA. However, i'm going to mostly be working on the male players for now (as biased as that may be...) – ishwar  (speak)  01:15, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The LPSA and JSA seem to be on much better terms these days than in the beginning. LSPA players no longer have JSA profile pages (if you look closely there are lots of gaps in the badge numbers), but I believe the JSA represents their legitimacy. For a while there, there seem to be an unofficial freezing out of the LPSA, and its members suddenly stopped appearing on TV as much as they had when they were in the JSA. Recently, however, ja:渡部愛 served as a co-host for Shogi Focus and also seems to participate in quite a number of official promotion events, so the relationship seems to be much better. I think there were lots of hard feelings on both sides when the split from the JSA, but they've realized that coexisting is better for both sides. This JSA post is from 2007 and sort of gives their side of things. In addition, for quite a long time, there was a permanent link on the JSA main page for the "LPSA response" (or something similar) which is no longer there. This agreement was reached in 2014 so things after Tanigawa become president. If you search for this "日本女子プロ将棋協会", you'll find more article. Anyway, I think they sould be treated the same for Wikipedia purposes. Maybe LPSA should be added before their badge numbers and links to http://joshi-shogi.com/lpsa/prof/ can be added for their profiles.
 * I think Nakai just wanted to do her own thing. She pretty much reached the top of her profession and was instrumental in getting the LPSA going, so maybe she just felt it was time to step aside. http://joshi-shogi.com/lpsa/news/news_20140124_nakai.html
 * Perhaps abbreviating "free class" as "FC" and then linking to a relevant section in the article would be OK for the infobox. Also, the "meijin class" should probably be fine since too many parameters does probably increase the chance for errors to be made. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:29, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Female professional profile pages
Is there a way to tweak the "jsa" parameter to allow links to JSA female professional profile pages to be added to the infobox. For example, the profile pages for Rieko Yauchi and Karolina Styczyńska are https://www.shogi.or.jp/player/lady/16.html and https://www.shogi.or.jp/player/lady/59.html respecitively. The only difference between the male pro and female pro links seems to be the "lady" part.

Another thing which might be worth considering is that not all female professionals belong to the JSA and longer; some of them split off and formed the Ladies Professional Shogi-players' Association of Japan (LPSA). These players no longer have profiles shown on the JSA website, there may be archived versions out there somewhere, but do have profiles on the LPSA website. For example, http://joshi-shogi.com/lpsa/prof/ so adding something which covers this to the infobox might be worth considering as well. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:30, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * First part - we could add in a jsalady param, that when set to "yes" adds in /lady/ to the URL.
 * Second part - if the URLs are consistent, then sure, we can add an LPSA param. Primefac (talk) 02:40, 5 January 2018 (UTC)


 * sounds good to me. Although i'd prefer that we not use lady in the name of the parameter, it has unnecessary social connotations. – ishwar  (speak)  03:41, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair enough; just trying to match input to output. Other than forcing users to copy the entire URL, I can't think of a suitable name for a "switch" parameter to add in the /lady/. Primefac (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your suggestion. FWIW, I don't think the lady will be visible in the article per se, only in the editing syntax, right? If it needs to be visible than maybe "female" would be better. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:12, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅. LPSA profile can be added as lpsa, and the switch for the female profiles on JSA is yes. While I was down there, I also added an othersite for the random usage I found of twitter as an "official" site; this was also because the website is now a bare URL (see these edits for new syntax examples). Primefac (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for doing this. The JSA profile links are working fine as can be seen in Kana Satomi. The LPSA and JSA links, however, are not exactly the same, so the LPSA ones are not working as intended. For example, the LPSA link for Hiroe Nakai is http://joshi-shogi.com/lpsa/prof/nakai.html and it doesn't contain her LPSA badge number (#7); so, adding 7 for lpsa leads to http://joshi-shogi.com/lpsa/prof/7.html, which does not exist. Is there any way to fix this? If it's too complicated because all of the LPSA profile pages use the either the players' first or last names in the link, then may the best that can be done is simply adding a number with a supporting reference added somewhere in the article body. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:55, 9 January 2018 (UTC)


 * if the LPSA website isnt predictable for when it uses first or last name in the URL, then maybe it's simplest to just use the bare URL as the argument? Well, it's also not very complicated and since there only 2–3 people who are making these pages, maybe it doesnt matter. But, for posterity and simplicity of explaining to a new person, the whole URL is transparent as an argument as the new editor doesnt even have to read the documentation of the template to understand it? – ishwar  (speak)  07:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not totally sure as to what you mean by bare argument, but I'm all for anything which makes the template easier for other editors (even those you know very little about shogi per se) to use. FWIW, the LPSA seems to be using last names except in the case of sisters like the Oba sisters and the Nakakura sisters. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:21, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For Nakai, you would use nakai because "nakai" is the unique part of the URL. I will update the /doc to reflect this. Primefac (talk) 14:13, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying. That should take care of all the name issues regarding the links. Also, thanks for adding that to the documentation. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:17, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Retirement date/age
I've tweaked the "retirementdate" parameter a bit because the date was for some reason only show the "year". A work-around appears to have been made by manually inputting the date followed by "XX years" in paranthesis, but this seemed a bit confusing since it refers to "years active as a professional" and not "age at time of retirement". I've replaced the "date" template with event date and age since it makes it easier to to add the relevant info and also will give the "age at time of retirement". While it's interesting to know how long a player was active as a professional, I think age at retirement might be a little more relevant. Also, calculating how long a player was active professionally does not seem to be too difficult. I was bold when I did this, but happy to revert back if others feel differently. Perhaps a new parameter such as "Years active" could be added if this information is considered essential for the infobox. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:15, 28 February 2018 (UTC)