Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Players

Some Wikipedians have formed a task force to better organize information in biographical articles of baseball players. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions; it is hoped that this task force will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page.

''Note: This task is still at a very early stage. Contributions and suggestions in any area are more than welcome.''

Article Improvement Drive
We now have a new Article Improvement Drive to improve all baseball articles to featured status. Click here to participate.

Scope
This task force aims to increase the quality and quantity of Wikipedia's coverage of professional baseball players, focusing primarily on Major League Baseball. If there is interest, the scope may be widened to include, for example, Nippon Professional Baseball players.

Goals

 * 1) To define a set of useful infobox templates
 * 2) To define a set of style guidelines for biographical, professional, and statistical information included in main article text
 * 3) To apply the style guidelines and appropriate template to all existing biographical articles of baseball players
 * 4) To create biographical articles for ballplayers who don't yet have them
 * 5) If deemed necessary, to develop a set of inclusion criteria for Major League Baseball players

Tools
You can find articles on Baseball Players here:


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

Active

 * A-C
 * Alexsautographs writes lots of articles.
 * AmazinVenezuelan
 * Aranda56 occasionally creates an article on a retired baseball player.
 * AtomicXYC is writing articles on the forgotten players, especially Boston Red Sox. Newsletter editor.
 * Bookworm1 is working on current NL East players, beginning with the Washington Nationals and the Atlanta Braves.
 * Branson03
 * BRMo is mostly working on Negro League and pre-1960 Latin American players and teams.
 * Caknuck has started plugging away at the Texas Rangers pitching staff (new articles where necessary, adding infoboxes, fleshing out stubs, etc...)
 * Camanda is adding WP:BOSOX banners to Boston Red Sox player talk pages and creating articles for players who don't have them.
 * has created many baseball player related articles (eg. Cory Lidle, Javier Valentin, Dewon Brazelton, Todd Wellemeyer, etc.) and will try to create any redlinked pages.
 * cjosefy will help with the Houston Astros, starting with Brad Ausmus
 * Coasttocoast adding templates to players
 * Cookiecutter43 is working on adding InfoBoxes
 * Couillaud is working on adding and updating Negro League players, teams, and related subjects. Primary expertise is in Negro League players from the 1920s.
 * Cs-wolves will help with career statistics, and on players & teams.
 * D-F
 * User:Dan027 Australian players(MLB and ABL
 * Dewelar Creating player articles and adding player information to team-season articles as part of overall team-season article standardization project
 * Disneyfreak96 is working on bring Barry Bonds up to GA status
 * Djrobgordon finished Detroit, Florida, Minnesota, Kansas City.
 * User:Duckblazer will improve stub class articles
 * User:Ekillian Has started making pages for retired players who have fallen through the cracks. You should go make those pages even better.
 * User:Evergladephish11 Started copy editing all pages, looking for small grammar, spelling and factual errors. For example, I came across an article stating there are nine players on a team, and I changed it to say there are 25 players per team, with only nine players from each side participating in a game at any given time.
 * False Prophet will help with the Minnesota Twins
 * User:Fozart720 is updating Houston Astros players (Jimmy Barthmaier and Hunter Pence.
 * FPAtl is working on Cincinnati Reds players.
 * G-I
 * gavindow is helping out sporadically.
 * Geopipp is helping out with what needs doing
 * Googie Man is working on uploading pictures of current MLB stars, and will work in the future on retired players.
 * Goatenthal is adding images/infoboxes and updating articles after transactions.
 * Brian Halvorsen is working on everything.
 * Iceberg584 is working on past and present Atlanta Braves.
 * J-L
 * User:Jackson070792 is looking through his baseball cards and searching if people have pages, and, if not, creating them.
 * jj137 is working on adding infoboxes to all retired MLB player articles.
 * Jake Z. will work on present day baseball or anything Cubs. I like to write articles (though they aren't top notch) and find information on the web, whether it be a picture, video, etc!
 * Kathy A. is working on pre-1920 baseball players. Also stub sorting and categorizing players in general, and vandalism patrol. (I'd love help on this!)
 * Kingturtle is working on standardization, World Series history, All-star game history, and milestones.
 * Kithira is adding in-line citations to baseball player articles.
 * kjbopp is working on World Series pages - adding Offical Program images, statistics, and main text where needed. Also attempting to secure uniformity down throughout all pages.
 * M-O
 * main man1999 I will work on anything in present day major league baseball.
 * Maple Leaf joined the project after working on the Hank Aaron article. Currently, he is adding transactions such as free agent signings and trades to the various season articles of the 80's and 90's.
 * Masonpatriot is currently working on retired player infoboxes and league leaders (lists, stubs and succession boxes).
 * Matt91486 will continue to create short articles on former Twins player, but at his usual leisurely pace.
 * Meegs is working, but lacks focus.
 * Michael Greiner has just joined the project after creating Andy Cannizaro article.
 * Mickcullen is working on creating at least a stub entry for every former Chicago Cub who does not already have a Wikipedia entry.
 * Mattingly23 is working assessing baseball articles.
 * Neonblak works mainly with 19th century ballplayers and teams.
 * Nish kid 64 will help with adding MLB player infoboxes to currently active players, going from team to team. He also will help with add infoboxes for retired MLB players, and also getting images for current players.
 * P-R
 * Party29 will help make infoboxes and help the Red Sox and Pirates and help with new players.
 * Ψν Psinu is sporadically adding or substantially upgrading bios for the obscure and long (or not-so-long) forgotten. Also anything and everything Red Sox.  First player added: fellow Peabodyite Steve Lomasney.  Last players added/upgraded: William Russell Johnson and William Russell Johnson (unrelated!).
 * Penale52: making players pages, working on talk pages
 * Rlendog mostly working on New York players
 * is working on retired players/managers
 * – Working on getting baseball stubs to WP:DYK. Working on some WP:GAs, WP:FAs and WP:FLs also.
 * S-U
 * SanFranMan59 - Working on Cleveland Indians player articles
 * SERSeanCrane - Images, New York Mets
 * ςפקι Д Иτς ☺ ☻ is working on adding templates to retired players is working on current NL West players, starting with (of course) the Giants.
 * Sholom works on players from Washington Nationals (in particular, those making big league debuts), and also occasionally adds/updates bios for obscure and/or retired players, trying to give them their due.
 * Work on making all articles consistent to so some extent, along with doing everything else on my laundry list
 * STORMTRACKER  94  Any player. I'll help with expansion and sources also.
 * San Francisco Giants player pages
 * Street20 is working on adding templates and creating articles.
 * Tigersfan1992 has created the all-time rosters for the Braves, Tigers, Phillies and Giants, and has also made the page for Rod Allen, Brent Clevlen, Román Colón, Sean Douglass, Alexis Gomez, Jack Hannahan, Kevin Hooper, Josh Phelps, Humberto Sánchez and Jordan Tata
 * TrafficBenBoy is currently writing articles about significant retired players and managers.
 * V-Z
 * Wizardman- I'll concentrate on infoboxes, article creation, stuff of that nature.
 * Wxthewx99 is expanding bios, creating new player pages, and is helping where he can.

Inactive
User:Mtrash
 * android
 * Colin Kimbrell
 * Kingturtle
 *  Mikedk9109  (talk)  working on Cleveland Indians players finished Cleveland Indians players
 * &mdash; siro χ  o
 * - banned user
 * Varitek
 * Xalfor
 * Yardcock

Structure
See the project's talk page for more information.

Resources
Here are some resources that can be referenced (or directly used, if in public domain) when creating or improving the quality of baseball players' articles:

Statistical information

 * Baseball-Reference.com
 * Retrosheet.org
 * Baseball-Almanac.com
 * The Baseball Cube

Biographical information

 * BaseballLibrary.com
 * SABR, or more particularly, The Baseball Biography Project at SABR
 * TheDeadBallEra.com - obituaries, causes of death on dead ball era players

Images
Preferably, photographs of players should be either public domain or released under a free license. The source of the photograph must be displayed.

Public Domain Images
In the United States, works are public domain if they were created prior to 1923. If an image is in the public domain, it should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons rather than Wikipedia.

Freely licensed images
If a person photographs a baseball player, that person can offer the image under a free license.

Fair use
Wikipedia has a fair use policy. The Wikipedia fair use policy does not necessarily parallel the actual law with respect to fair use due to policy considerations as to the goals of Wikipedia.

The Wikimedia policy discourages use of photographs of living people under the rationale that the preference is to have a freely licensed image of the person, and it should be relatively easy to obtain a photograph of that person. However, if a person is deceased, then, since it is no longer possible to obtain a picture of that person, then it is acceptable fair use to use a photograph of a person.

For deceased baseball players, there are a variety of sources for photographs, included the MLB Hall of Fame. For active baseball players, it is possible to obtain photographs of that player. For those players that are no longer active in baseball but are living, then it is difficult under the current Wikipedia policy to obtain an acceptable image of that person.

Other

 * The Library of Congress - Spalding Baseball Guides, 1889-1939 (guides published before 1923 should be in public domain in US)
 * Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles - has back issues of The Baseball Magazine, issues published before 1923 should be in public domain in US

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