Template talk:Sabrbio

A new template!
This template is for use in referencing baseball players' (or other baseball-related people's) biographies at the Society for American Baseball Research's biography project. I've never written a template before at Wikipedia, so this may or may not fulfill all the wiki-requirements. Please feel free to make helpful criticisms.

Its first use
I plugged the template into Jimmie Reese's article, which had a whole bunch of references to his SABR biography. I've seen refs to other players' SABR bios all over Wikipedia and will try to convert them whenever I get around to it.

How to use it
The template takes just 3 parameters, in this order: Take a look at its use in Jimmie's article to see what I mean. DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 23:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The little code at the end of the player's bioproject URL,
 * The author's name, and
 * An access date.

A possible improvement
I've added this template to a number of articles over the past week, and have seen a need for at least one change. The template assumes that its link is to an article about the person in whose article it appears. But, what if there's a link to Player A's SABR biography in Player B's article, or in Team X's article? For instance, the article 1982 Montreal Expos season includes a link to the SABR bio of Bill Lee. I'm not sure how to handle this. It's obviously going to require some redesign of the template. Does anybody have any ideas? DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 01:15, 13 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, I finally made this improvement. After a few months of distractions with other odds and ends, I produced a variation on this template, called Template:Sabrbio1, with an extra parameter for the name of the player who is being referenced in somebody else's article. Now, the 1982 Montreal Expos season article's link to Bill Lee's SABR biography includes the new template. DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 17:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Why use it?
The answers should be obvious. Use of a template such as this one makes it possible to present the basic information required in a footnote with a minimal amount of typing and cutting and pasting.

The template's use also contributes to a basic uniformity of appearance of these footnotes. I've seen several hundred references to the SABR biographical project and almost as many different ways of presenting them. There's no particular reason for a cite in Joe Schmoe's article to look completely different from the one in José Jiménez' article.

I felt that it was desirable to include a place for the name of the biographer in the template. Whoever did the research that we wikipedians are taking advantage of deserves to be recognized. Some of the articles are written by persons who are well known within the baseball research community.

Your helpful suggestions are welcome! DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 15:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Another improvement?
Today I added a wiki-link to SABR and an external link to Bio Project, for the benefit of those who don't know what they are. DutchmanInDisguise (talk) 14:00, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Merge idea
Template:Sabrbio1 is set to be merged with this template. I've tested in the sandbox code that will use the current system with 3 parameters or less. If a fourth parameter is present, it will render as Sabrbio1. At a glance, Sabrbio1 appears to accept 2 or 3 parameters, but I don't see any usage of this in article space. Rjjiii (talk) 04:02, 28 March 2024 (UTC) Courtesy ping for merge nominator:, 04:10, 28 March 2024 (UTC)