User:Mattingly23/Guide to Writing Baseball Player Articles

In an effort to bring about a discussion for standards for baseball player articles for WikiProject Baseball players, this guide will present my opinions on how a good baseball article is written.

Please leave any comments or suggestions on the guide's talk page.

Finding players
If you just want to work on baseball player articles in general and don't have a specific focus in mind, the first step is to determine what player you want to write an article on. Here are some places you can find red links pointing to articles that need to be created:


 * Requested Major Leage People (and all baseball categories below it)
 * Hit for the cycle
 * List of Major League Baseball no-hitters
 * Players with over 1,000 career hits

If you want to work on improving existing baseball player articles, look here:


 * List of major league baseball players
 * List of Negro League baseball players
 * Category:19th-century baseball players
 * Category:Baseball players

Infobox
After knowing what article you're going to create, the next step is to fill out the player's infobox.

The standard templates now in use are Template:Infobox MLB player for current players and Template:Mlbretired for retired players.

Note the Greg Maddux infobox on the right hand side of this page (click on 'Edit this page' to view its source). The colors are set based on what the player's current team is, using the table on Template:Infobox MLB player as a guide. Statistical terms, position, and date are all linked. Years link to their corresponding 'baseball year', such as linking to 1986 in baseball instead of 1986.

For retired players, use the info box on Gavvy Cravath's page as an example. Use team colors listed at Template:Infobox MLB player as a guide only if the player spent a significant amount of his career with one team; otherwise, do not use colors at all. As with the other template, any team names, dates, position, and baseball terms should be linked. The Career Highlights and Awards section currently does not have any standards associated with it, as this section's contents will vary greatly with each player.

The easiest way to find all the information you need to fill out a player's infobox is to search for the player's name on Baseball-Reference.com.

Images
A great place to find images for late 19th and early 20th century baseball players is searching the Library of Congress because of their collection of tobacco cards.

For other players, be sure to find images that are compatible with the GFDL. Do not upload copyrighted photos. For more information on what images are acceptable on Wikipedia, see the Image use policy. For tips on finding images, see the Finding images tutorial.

For an image in an infobox, it is best to place an image that is a headshot or close up of a player. Other images may be added to the page using the following syntax:



For example:

generates the photo seen on the left.

For more information on the syntax used for inserting images, see Image markup and Picture tutorial

For more information on using images in Wikipedia articles, see Images.

Adding external links
The external links section should include links to relevant web sites that have not been included as references.

It has become standard to include a link to Baseball-Reference.com in the External links section. For example, to include a link to Jake Daubert's Baseball-Reference.com page (link http://www.baseball-reference.com/d/daubeja01.shtml), use the baseball-reference template like this:

which results in:



Note that an asterisk (*) is placed in front of each external link.

Remember, don't include links in the External links section if you have included them in the references section.

For more information on External links sections, see External links.

Adding categories
These categories should go on every major leaguer's page (if applicable):


 * Major League Baseball players by team
 * Major League Baseball players by position
 * Baseball players by nationality
 * American Major League Baseball players by home state

Here are more categories may be included if necessary:


 * List categories here*

For example, here are the categories Jake Daubert is in: [[Category:Brooklyn Dodgers players|Daubert, Jake] ]

For more information on using categories in Wikipedia, see Categories.

Adding stub messages
Below is a partial listing of stub messages that can be included in a baseball player's article. For all of them see Category:Baseball biography stubs.

For more information on what constitutes a stub, see Stubs.