User talk:Dirtlawyer1/Archives/2011/July

What are you doing?
These cuts are official. Stop reverting now.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  00:19, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

"Official?" No such thing. I kept your free agency related changes, everything else is subject to being edited by every Wikipedia editor. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:36, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yea, mixed it up, but still, the "See also" section is unnecessary. There is no such thing as a "defensive guard", so "guard" is fine. Most articles have the unfilled "finalyear=" parameters there. The difference between writing out ndash or not is trivial, so no reason to revert over that. The lead is standard for NFL articles and to avoid clutter, the professional career section should be split into two sections. Nothing I did is unreasonable.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  00:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Giants27, the "see also" and "bibliography" sections are standard per WikiProject University of Florida, and appear on over 700 athletes' articles. In fact, these sections appear on 230+ NFL player articles who are former Gator football players.  As for guard vs. offensive guard, I agree.  However, one-sentence paragraphs, in the absence of dramatic effect, are bad form and should be avoided.  Passive tense should also be avoided whenever possible, especially when the proper subject noun (i.e. the team in these updates) is omitted; properly phrased, these updates should read "The Steelers released Starks on July 28, 2011."  That's proper writing and preferred style&mdash;subject noun, active verb, object noun, adverbial phrase.  As for the so-called WP:NFL "standard" lede, it often sounds stilted and illiterate, and I'm ready to have that out (if anyone wants to bring it to the talk page).  WP:NFL shares these articles with WP:CFB, WP:BIO, and, in these particular cases, with WP:UF.  No phrasing is official, but changes should be determined by consensus when projects overlap.


 * Another small point: no one played football "at Florida." Theses players played football "for Florida."  "At" is simply the wrong preposition.  They were student-athletes who attended the university; let's not make it sound like it was a football stadium.  "At Florida" sounds like they played "in the state of Florida," whatever that might mean.  The problem with a lot of these so-called standard phrases is that they were originated by a small coterie of WP:NFL editors who aren't particularly good at writing.  Frankly, the "standard" WP:NFL way of listing transaction dates and damned little else of substance makes for horrible articles.  Where are the game stats, awards, memorable moments, etc.?  The fact that a player was signed and released three times tells the reader very little.  Splitting these sections into one-sentence paragraphs tells the reader nothing more while taking up more space on the page.


 * BTW, you do know that all of your changes are subject to being reverted or deleted per WP:BLP for failure to provide verifiable and reliable sources in accordance with WP:V and WP:RS? As a courtesy to the editors who work on these articles regularly, please provide at least a naked URL footnote that we can properly format when you're updating their free agency and trade status.  It ain't official until there's a footnote in the article.  Thanks.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:19, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I updated like 30 articles with releases today, so please forgive me for not adding a reference to each and every one them. However, I know about WP:V and all that, so this isn't my first rodeo here.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  01:26, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, I do agree with some of what you said, so I'm not a total bad guy here, haha.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  01:27, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Also again. If you want, you can go through my contributions and add a ref to them. I got the majority of them from here, so it shouldn't be too hard. Otherwise, a quick google search should give you what you want.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  01:29, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I know you know. I already checked out your profile on X!'s edit counter.  As a rollbacker and autoreviewer (and probable future administrator), you know the importance of WP policy in building good bios.  Good let's see where we agree:


 * 1. sourced footnote, even a bare URL for all BLP facts;
 * 2. passive tense bad; active tense good;
 * 3. one-sentence paragraphs bad;
 * 4. "played for Wyoming State" good; "played at Wyoming State" goofy;
 * 5. ain't no such animal as a "defensive guard";
 * 6. standard WPUF "see also" and "bibliography" sections stay; and
 * 7. "standard" lede should include full name, birth date parenthetical (with birthplace in the main body text, not lede), position, college team, NFL draft position, NFL team(s), present roster status if free agent, major awards and/or achievements if applicable and otherwise sourced in the body text (i.e. Heisman Trophy, Super Bowl MVP; not third-team All-SEC).

We've both written good articles, so we know what's supposed to go into a proper lede (and WP:NFL's "standard" is a model of mediocre writing). Not to be an even bigger pain in the ass, but the BLP footnote burden rests on the editor who makes the change. That having been said, if we can agree on the rest, I'll scare up the roster status footnotes. Sound like a good working compromise? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:49, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Agree on all points, minus the one-sentence paragraph. In the case of Starks, the last piece of information is from 2009, so to me at least, it doesn't make sense to have a move from 2011 come right after that. Also, I've been going through the ones I found on that link I posted and adding the ref (felt bad, haha) and will then go through the others, so I've got it. Cheers and sorry if I came off poorly at the start. All of this reverting of pre-mature edits has really gotten to me, haha.-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  01:59, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Giants. Now that we're acquainted, please let me know if there's anything I can do to help you in the future.  I tend to focus on articles related to the University of Florida and its Florida Gators sports teams, and, by extension, to a lot of WP:CFB and WP:NFL issues.  I have a lot of harp-copy references and other resources for Gators, SEC and CFB topics.  Please let me know when I can help you when you need it.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I think that you may be interested in weighing in on this discussion about the "offensive guards". Cheers,-- Giants27 ( T  |  C )  01:27, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Beisel
Oh my bad! I meant to add that to her 400 IM time! thanks for the catch! 70.129.187.240 (talk) 13:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)