Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Minnesota Vikings head coaches/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Dabomb87 02:57, 8 December 2009.

List of Minnesota Vikings head coaches

 * Nominator(s): – PeeJay 09:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list as a follow-up to my nomination of List of Minnesota Vikings starting quarterbacks. I believe that the list meets all of the criteria for a featured list as the general structure has been copied from List of Kansas City Chiefs head coaches (another featured list). The only major difference is that I have removed the colour from the table as I believe that it presents accessibility issues and does not add anything more to the table than the symbols that are already next to each name. As I am not particularly well-versed in matters of American football, I would appreciate any comments that anyone may have about the facts in the "History" section. – PeeJay 09:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose from KV5

Normally I don't offer an oppose right off the bat unless I see a huge amount of mistakes to be fixed. In this case, however, it's two main things:
 * No sortability (this, however is easily fixed)
 * You are right that it is easy to add sortability to a table, but with the colspan in effect in the column titles, this would make sortability technically unimplementable (is that a word?). I'm not sure how to get around this without creating separate tables for regular season and post season games, but I would welcome suggestions. That said, I'm not even sure that sortability is necessary in this instance, seeing as the entire table is currently visible on even the lowest monitor resolution.
 * As to the sortability v. colspans: Many lists have been brought to FL with colspans in their headers, which was later removed in favor of sortability, which is part of the criteria. The format of the list you copied isn't that old of an FLC, but requirements have tightened in the last 17 months since it passed. It's easy to talk about postseason play and regular season play in the same table; a good example of a recently promoted list that does so is List of Oklahoma Sooners head football coaches. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 12:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, I can sort that out. The Oklahoma Sooners list is actually a pretty good template for other lists of football head coaches! – PeeJay 22:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This list has only seven items; ten is the arbitrary minimum. Other reviewers should view and comment on this list, because there is a great amount of prose here which gives background on the coaches themselves. At this time, though, I don't think this passes muster.
 * I don't see anywhere in WP:WIAFL that says that a list must have at least 10 items. Furthermore, I don't believe that it is fair for a list to be denied Featured status just because it doesn't have "enough" items, whatever the definition of "enough" may be. Without wanting to violate WP:CRYSTAL, it is almost certain that the Vikings will - one day - have had 10 head coaches in their history, but I can't imagine any reason why the basic structure of the list would differ just because of the addition of three extra rows to the table.
 * See my reply below. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 12:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Awaiting input from other reviewers. KV5 ( Talk  •  Phils ) 16:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comments, mate. Sorry if my replies above sounded a little bitey. Must be my inner lawyer coming out to play! – PeeJay 02:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose - This is unfortunate because this looks good. But had to oppose because the number of item is below 10.— Chris! c / t 02:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As I said above, I don't see anywhere in WP:WIAFL that says a Featured List must have at least 10 items. If I'm missing something, please point the relevant policies out to me. – PeeJay 02:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it is not on WP:WIAFL because it is an unwritten rule. Please look at the archive of the talk page.— Chris! c / t 03:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * With all due respect to the guys who run WP:FLC, the reason why it's an unwritten rule is that it's complete BS! I assume that this "rule" only exists in order to provide some sort of definition to the term "list", which I could understand if the list was limited in some way, but since this list is completely delimited (i.e. it's a complete list of every head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, with no exceptions) the whole reason for the "rule" falls apart. Anyway, if that's the rule, that's the rule, I just don't believe it applies in this case. – PeeJay 08:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's truly not BS. Yes, the rule is fairly arbitrary, and there have been lists promoted with less than ten items (like List of Philadelphia Phillies no-hitters, a list that I wrote). It's not a bright-line rule, but it is generally adhered to. In this case, there is more prose than list, making this more appropriate as an article at this point. Sometimes, as unfortunate as it is, we have to say WP:NOTNOW. For another example, the baseball project has been working on promoting its lists of awards in a featured topic push. When trying to determine the format for the Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year Award, it was determined during the 2009 season, while it was being worked on, that we needed to wait until the 2009 season was completed, and the 2009 award was presented, before attempting to have that list promoted, simply because of this unwritten rule. The main issue is that a list with less than 10 items can easily qualify as a content fork, which is expressly forbidden by the criteria. Thus, I must unfortunately still concur with Chrishomingtang, and oppose the promotion of this list based on length. It disappoints me because the list has great prose, but that's the way things work at the moment. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 12:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, as an extension of FL criterion 3b and WP:CFORK, I can see why a list with less than *insert arbitrary number* items could be disqualified from Featured status. However, if you consider the scenario that the Vikings disestablished tomorrow, meaning that the list would never grow beyond seven items, would it still be ineligible under the aforementioned criteria? If so, I find it absurd that a list, regardless of its quality, would be denied Featured status purely because of its length. As I said earlier, every single Vikings coach is listed here, so there should be no reason to deny promotion based on the scope of the list. – PeeJay 22:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Only after nominating List of Oklahoma Sooners head baseball coaches for FL did I notice this discussion which would affect my nomination as well. It is hard to argue that my list and this one violate 3b when lists such as List of Oklahoma Sooners head football coaches and List of Detroit Lions head coaches are FLs. Otherwise they would all fail under the same criteria.—NMajdan &bull;talk 19:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Not true. The length of those lists precludes them from being reasonably included as part of another article. A list of eight baseball coaches can be included within an article as an embedded list much more easily than a list of 25 football coaches, etc. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 19:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not commenting on whether this article meets or does not meet a standard, but the applicable FL criterion would be 3b: "in length and/or topic, [the article] meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists; it is not a content fork, does not largely recreate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article." (emphasis mine) Dabomb87 (talk) 13:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, I kind of forget about 3b. This is applicable here.— Chris! c / t 20:09, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * See my reply above. – PeeJay 22:41, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Oppose – Hate to pile on here, but the other reviewers have it exactly right. For a list of less than 10 items to have a chance at gaining an exception to the unspoken limit (which has been around for a long time; I'm surprised you haven't seen a similar case before), it needs to be a unique case. A simple coaches list isn't unique, especially not when it has the same format as similar, longer lists. Why don't you try making a Notes column in the table and including facts about the coaches in it (think a more extensive Achievements column); for example, you could say how many times a coach reached the NFL playoffs and his best playoff finish. That might give the list some added value, in a similar fashion to the no-hitters list KV5 linked above, which has an example of a Notes column. Not sure that would do it, but the list might at least have a better shot than it doesn now.  Giants2008  ( 27 and counting ) 03:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Note to reviewers Please elaborate as to how the article fails an FL criterion (I believe 3b is the one everyone is concerned about). Dabomb87 (talk) 00:25, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I know no one has commented on this review for a while, but I did want to make it known that a table listing the records of the head coaches is already included in the team's main article. I don't see any reason why this table couldn't be copied into the main article, along with a very condensed lead paragraph incorporating the information in this article. Then the information in the history section can be merged into the team's actual history (some of it's already duplicated), and we'd have a clean and tidy little merge on our hands. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 02:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Can't we keep this list and just not promote it to FL status. It's pretty obvious to me now that it doesn't meet the criteria, but I don't think it's entirely necessary to merge it back into the Vikings main article. – PeeJay 09:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the main point of identifying a content fork, as far as I'm aware, is to merge it into a more general article. Most of the delisted FLs that were removed as a result of the tightening of criterion 3b were merged, though I know that some were merely delisted. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 12:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * PeeJay, should I withdraw this? Dabomb87 (talk) 22:34, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Thanks for all the comments everyone! – PeeJay 02:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.