Template talk:MLB Farm System

Expansion
Note that I plan on expanding this template to account for up to 30 levels. (26 seems to be the most, to date, but a few extra certainly couldn't hurt.)

If anyone has any ideas for additions, changes, or just thoughts, feel free to either start making changes or post something here on the talk page. — V = I * R  (talk) 01:19, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To add more levels to this, is it just a matter of duplicating the section and changing the level #? -Spanneraol (talk) 01:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

LEAGUE CHAMPION et al.: Notes or in-line?
I brought this up at McGill1974's talk page, but the discussion is better suited here.

When Ohms law originally added this template all over the place, he inadvertently wiped out a bunch of secondary information about teams, including teams that were league champions, teams with shared affiliations, teams that folded mid-season, and so forth. When I began working on restoring that information, I was restoring it in-line within the template in an appropriate field. However, when McGill1974 started doing similar work, he added the information as notes at the bottom of the box. A third option, which he also raised at Jj137's talk page (archived here), would be to insert an additional column for this information.

Since I feel these would all be viable ways of including the information, I wanted to bring it up here and get some input so that we can all be doing it the same way going forward. Any thoughts? -Dewelar (talk) 17:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been following your approach of adding the information within the template, but I could go either way... a new optional column would probably be my preferred way.. Is Ohms no longer working on this? Maybe he can fix it. Also note 1995 Cleveland Indians season to see a similar format that Nick22aku used that has additional info.. I don't particularly like his approach re:season articles for minor league teams.. but I didn't want to change it. Spanneraol (talk) 18:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree the extra column fix is probably the best all-around, but I didn't want to touch the template because I, like you, was under the impression that it was still "under construction" by Ohms. Given the way it had been set up, I figured putting them in-line looked better than just the footnotes. Anyway, I know Ohms has a lot of projects going on, so this definitely seems to be on his back burner. Hopefully he'll pop in with some thoughts.
 * I looked at the 1995 Canton-Akron Indians season article, and...well, it's pretty bare bones. I'm not certain minor league team-seasons meet notability standards in the first place, but if they exist, might as well link 'em. -Dewelar (talk) 20:24, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Would like to figure out how to fix the column size bug at least... I was going to add more levels but I don't want to mess up the work that McGill is doing. Spanneraol (talk) 21:40, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Spanneraol. I have enjoyed collaborating with everyone and know that together we can add this information in the best way possible. I have noticed that numbering the levels from the bottom up gets rid of the column size bug. So the top farm club of a team with 12 farm teams would be Level 9, and the lowest level, as it is for all teams, is Level 20. The 20-columns deep format is workable for almost every team except the Cardinals and Dodgers of the 1940s and early 1950s, who had over 20 teams. One solution I have tried is using a 2-column format (see 1939 St. Louis Cardinals season.) I realize that aesthetically this may not please everyone; also, I don't know if Wikipedia shuns multi-column formatting because of problems with mobile users with small displays. In terms of where to put the"extra info," - league championships, franchise shifts and foldings, league foldings - I experimented with footnotes and also thought about adding an extra column. In the latter case, there doesn't seem to be enough extra info to merit an extra column. I can see a really dedicated user adding columns with won/loss records and standings - but I have no plans to do that. McGill1974 (talk) 00:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)