Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/List of English football champions/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list removal 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 kept by The Rambling Man 10:34, 27 June 2009.

List of English football champions

 * Notified: WikiProject England, WikiProject Football, WikiProject Football/England task force, Oldelpaso, Peanut4, Xenomorph1984

I am nominating this for featured list removal because it doesn't adhere to the following standards for FLs:
 * Lead. The lead is much to short and I don't think it is very engaging.
 * Structure. The article does not include any table sort.
 * Style. The article has only one picture. It does not make sufficient use of colour and layout is not too professional either.
 * References. The article is totally devoid of inline citations. The references are also probably not the best ones out there (the one for the top scorers is even a Danish; without noting that it links to a Danish page actually)

Regards, OdinFK (talk) 12:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, can you notify relevant WikiProjects and primary contributors about this FLRC using FLRCMessage, as described in the FLRC instructions? Also, don't forget to list the notifications here. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. OdinFK (talk) 20:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This was promoted in early 2006, which makes it prehistoric in Wikipedia terms. That said, while the prose needs a facelift in terms of referencing, I don't see much wrong with the list part. The exception here is the "winner by decade" section which has appeared since I last looked at the article. This is an arbitrary distinction which adds little extra information, and I will remove it.

I fail to see how colour is required, or how it would improve the list. If anything it would make the list less accessible. The columns in the list would not obviously benefit from sortability. Sorting by club would group a club's wins, but this is already done in a more appropriate manner by the separate Total titles won section. I'll get to work on referencing. Oldelpaso (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree with that. Take a look at German football champions for example (just for comparison). Colour can be used in a useful way as demonstrated there and many other newer FLs: You can gray out the suspended seasons and distinguish the Double/Treble winners. Also as far as I know keys should go to the top of the list, no the bottom. As for sortability: It makes sense with this specific list and it is a feature required for FLs. I don't see why the List of English football champions should be an exception to that rule. Sure, you can find the information for first places later in the article, but maybe I want to group for second place or top scorer. If you add another column for the number of goals of the top scorer you could even sort for that. While some might say this is pretty useless it is information many people like to access (granted this is my personal experience).


 * I also think that each of those sections should have an introduction. You differentiate between "Football League", "Football League First Division", and "Premier League". Why? As a reader this is information which makes me get the bigger picture. More generally the arcticle leaves me totally in the dark on the development of the English football championship. I don't want to point at German football champions so much, but that is the article I'm most familiar with in this area: Read the intros to the various sections. You are not just presented with random data, but you get to know the background, too, making the data useful in the first place.


 * As a kind of disclaimer: I was involved a lot in the article German football champions and even nominated it for FL once. It got not promoted. This is not some kind of revenge crusade. Actually I used other FLs of football champions (including England) as a blueprint to improve the original German football champions. With all the comments people gave about why GFC should not be promoted yet it occurred to me that FAs are hold to extremely high standards these days and most of the other FLs in this area probably don't adhere to these standards any more either. Actually articles getting promoted to FL are a lot more than just a bunch of referenced data with a short intro. No offense, but I feel this describes the List of English football champions too well right now. The same is also true for the FLs Danish football champions, Italian football champions, and Swedish football champions, but I'll probably get to that later, depending on the outcome of this discussion. OdinFK (talk)


 * Individual responses to some of your criticisms (from Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC))
 * "Colour can be used in a useful way as demonstrated there and many other newer FLs: You can gray out the suspended seasons and distinguish the Double/Treble winners." I don't think we should just add colour for the sake of adding colour. Colour should not be used as the sole indicator of important information per our accessibility guidelines. I don't see colour adding anything in this list. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "Also as far as I know keys should go to the top of the list, no the bottom." Personal preference isn't it, I have produced lists with them at the top and the bottom? I don't believe there is a set guideline anywhere. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "As for sortability: It makes sense with this specific list and it is a feature required for FLs. I don't see why the List of English football champions should be an exception to that rule. Sure, you can find the information for first places later in the article, but maybe I want to group for second place or top scorer." FL criteria 4: Structure. It is easy to navigate through and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities. It is not mandatory to have the sortable function, it should be used where it is helpful: I don't see it being particularly helpful here, especially because the list is fractured into separate parts. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "I also think that each of those sections should have an introduction. You differentiate between "Football League", "Football League First Division", and "Premier League". Why? As a reader this is information which makes me get the bigger picture." The lead does the job of explaining why this is, I don't see the need to repeat this for each section. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * "More generally the arcticle leaves me totally in the dark on the development of the English football championship" This isn't the history of English football article, that is what the wikilinks are for. This list introduces some of the history but invites the reader to explore different articles if they want the comprehensive history of English football. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments – On a quick look, I see a lot of short paragraphs in the lead. A few of these could be easily combined to improve the flow of the writing. Also, the photo should be moved to the top of the article. In the references, I'd question whether foot.dk is a reliable source, not knowing who's behind it. Overall it needs work, but I do believe this list can be fixed during this FLRC.  Giants2008  ( 17-14 ) 22:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've replaced the foot.dk ref with one from RSSSF, for which reliability has beeen discussed in football FACs passim. Oldelpaso (talk) 11:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have also merged some of the paragraphs. Woody (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.