Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Collegiate sports (USA)

Description
The purpose of this WikiProject is to bring a level of standardization of format to Wikipedia articles concerning college sports in the USA. This would include any articles about specific college sports (such as List of NCAA Division I men's soccer programs, List of NCAA Division I softball programs, etc.); those sports' seasons (such as 2014 NCAA Division I men's soccer season) and their championships (such as 2014 NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Championship). It would include articles about the several collegiate sports governing associations (National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, National Christian College Athletic Association, United States Collegiate Athletic Association, National Junior College Athletic Association) and the various college conferences/leagues (i.e. Big Ten Conference, Ivy League, etc.). It would also include the articles concerning the sports programs of the member institutions of the associations (such as SIU Edwardsville Cougars), any specific single-sport article for said institution (such as SIU Edwardsville Cougars baseball or SIU Edwardsville Cougars softball), and any single-season article for said sports (such as 2014 SIU Edwardsville Cougars softball team). There is currently no standard format for creating and/or maintaining these pages. The major areas of concern have been and continue to be articles describing collegiate conferences and member institutions' athletic programs. Two articles describing two very similar schools or leagues can be a different as night and day, and when efforts have been made to standardize, those changes have often been met with resistance.The use of standard formats developed through consultation should eliminate problems and make for better Wikipedia articles. GWFrog (talk) 20:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC) Edited to remove what seems to be the major objection... GWFrog (talk) 01:25, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Partial list of important pages and categories for this proposed group
 * Examples: 1116 NCAA member institutions, 436 NJCAA member institutions, 252 NAIA member institutions, 103 NCCAA member institutions, 81 USCAA member institutions
 * sports governing bodies in the united states (number of pages in the category:129 )
 * national collegiate athletic association (number of pages in the category:15 )
 * national association of intercollegiate athletics (number of pages in the category: 6 )
 * national junior college athletic association (number of pages in the category:14 )
 * ncaa division i (number of pages in the category:7 )
 * Examples: 1116 NCAA member institutions, 436 NJCAA member institutions, 252 NAIA member institutions, 103 NCCAA member institutions, 81 USCAA member institutions
 * sports governing bodies in the united states (number of pages in the category:129 )
 * national collegiate athletic association (number of pages in the category:15 )
 * national association of intercollegiate athletics (number of pages in the category: 6 )
 * national junior college athletic association (number of pages in the category:14 )
 * ncaa division i (number of pages in the category:7 )
 * national collegiate athletic association (number of pages in the category:15 )
 * national association of intercollegiate athletics (number of pages in the category: 6 )
 * national junior college athletic association (number of pages in the category:14 )
 * ncaa division i (number of pages in the category:7 )


 * List of WikiProjects currently on the talk pages of those articles
 * Please invite these and any other similar groups to join the discussion about this proposal. See WikiProject_Council/Directory to find similar WikiProjects.


 * Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
 * I am already a member of two of them, and the items enumerated in the above description are not being covered by any of those WikiProjects.
 * Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
 * I am already a member of two of them, and the items enumerated in the above description are not being covered by any of those WikiProjects.
 * Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
 * I am already a member of two of them, and the items enumerated in the above description are not being covered by any of those WikiProjects.
 * Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
 * I am already a member of two of them, and the items enumerated in the above description are not being covered by any of those WikiProjects.

Support
Also, specify whether or not you would join the project.
 * 1) GWFrog (talk) 20:11, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) JonRidinger (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) Sphilbrick (talk) 22:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 4) Dale Arnett (talk) 23:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 5) Corkythehornetfan (talk) 00:47, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 6) Quidster4040 (talk) 17:20, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 7) Jweiss11 (talk) 01:52, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 8) Dafoeberezin3494 (talk) 02:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 9) SCMatt33 (talk) 15:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 10) Ejgreen77 (talk) 09:37, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) Please see my extended comments below. I cannot support the creation of this new WikiProject in the form proposed.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) As much as I would love to support this project, due to conflicts with summer classes and other life events I do not have the time to be able to complete this to the best of my ability. I have all the confidence this project will fare well without my assistance. --NJ Jurrjens (talk) 02:13, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) Per Dirtlawyer's explanation below. It seems reasonable and he is a very trustworthy editor. With that being said, I withdraw my support, and now oppose this idea. Corkythe   hornetfan  02:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 4) Objections similar to DirtLawyer's, but I'll elaborate below. Kithira (talk) 17:38, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * 5) Oppose. Each sport is different and needs a different set of standards to oversee it. Outside of applying a basic beginning, which is already done, there is no need to have a standard. This is already done with football, men's & women's basketball, soccer, and baseball. You could combine specific sports to work with each other, like softball and baseball, but that is as far as it needs to go. I also think you are overreaching in saying each conference and team page doesn't use the same format. They DO use the same format. The only difference is the amount of detail an editor is willing to put into the said pages. So I oppose it because they are already done in the same format. Finally, I'll oppose it because while you are trying to use it to focus on colleges, it doesn't take into account collegiate sports that aren't sponsored by the main collegiate groups. For example BYU sponsors men's hockey, rugby, men's soccer, women's rugby and other collegiate sports. However they don't participate in the NCAA for these events. Your focus wouldn't include them. Bigddan11 (talk) 12:58, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments in response to opposition
NJ Jurrjens, this doesn't sounds like you actually oppose this project, just that you don't have time to support is in the foreseeable future. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

You're talking apples and oranges there, Bigddan11... BYU's non-NCAA sports are not truly collegiate sports, even though they are sponsored by the university... They are essentially semi-pro teams owned and operated by BYU... So, no they would not be covered, just as summer baseball and soccer leagues sponsored by the professional major leagues are not covered under any umbrella of collegiate sports, although the players are college athletes... which is just peaches and lemons to go along with the apples and oranges... And, no, there is no standard for conference and team pages, the differences between the quality of pages for two very similar programs are not so much the result of the the efforts of the editors as they are caused by the lack of standards as to what should be included or excluded and how the included factors should be presented... GWFrog (talk) 06:25, 3 July 2015 (UTC)


 * You and I are going to have to agree to disagree, because from what I've seen a standard is always included. That standard includes the university, when the university started playing, and their records over the years, if they are available. It also includes a list of sports they play/compete in and, f they have an individual page for that event, it links to it. It also includes a list of coaches, again if available. For a conference it always includes when it started, what schools are in the conference, and historical runs by teams to events like the NCAA Baseball World Series or the Final Four. Many times it also includes a list of famous alums from that conference. If those aren't included, they are being done correctly in the first place and are oftentimes nominated for deletion. I'll also point out a standard that is widely ignored, and that is that non-first hand sources should be used if at all possible. Don't ask me why Wiki doesn't use firsthand sources as the primary source, but they ask for us to use other sources.Bigddan11 (talk) 13:56, 3 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Contrary to the certainty of folks like Dirtlawyer1 and Bigddan11 that further standardization is not needed, not only are there NO STANDARDS currently existent, but there is still at least one Division I team that does not even have an athletics page... I put forward this proposal in June & it has gone nowhere, because some people have preconceived notions that are actually totally false, and the idea is spinning its wheels because of wrong-headed notions... GWFrog (talk) 21:55, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

 * I am more than a little wary of starting a new WikiProject that purports to exercise overall authority over American college sports, including the standardization of formatting, etc. That function has already been largely accomplished over the past 6 years by active cooperation and coordination by and among WikiProject College football, WikiProject College basketball, and WikiProject College baseball.  This same idea of a college sports WikiProject was floated on my user talk page as recently as two months ago, and the idea was ultimately rejected because of the potential to create conflicts with the existing college sports WikiProjects -- especially for a super project that was outside the existing organizational structure, with a separate membership, guidelines, precedents, etc.  What was proposed as an alternative was a "subproject" that would function as a discussion page and clearing house for cooperation and coordination on issues of common concern.  I would suggest that is the sensible alternative: rather than a new separate and independent project, every member of the existing college sports projects would automatically be considered a member of the new college sports coordinating committee/subproject, and the existing standardized formatting, guidelines, precedents, etc., would be accepted.  Many, if not most, of these issues have already been addressed over the years.  Please consider this carefully.  Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I do not, at the moment, have a strong opinion on whether this entity should be an umbrella organization, a so-called "super project", a subproject, or some other animal. However, I am strongly in support of the notion that this entity should issue recommendations, as opposed to assuming the authority to override the existing projects. I'd like to see more consistency in format, but if a sensible idea is floated and it is good enough it should be accepted by the participating organizations. If it is not accepted that may be assigned that it wasn't good enough. If that approach fails, that may be a need for a mandated approach but that's an extremely big deal, and won't happen simply because Ia handful of editors create a new project. Recommendations – yes, authority to mandate – no.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  15:20, 19 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I need to know more about the goals of the project. The write-up talks about schools and governing bodies, which is fine, but does it also include consistent formatting (beyond what we have today) of players and coaches?  Does it include consistent standards of types of templates (like program templates across sports)?  Will it take into account the news coverage differences between sports? Rikster2 (talk) 02:20, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not voting "no" yet, but after hearing Dirtlawyer1 I am about half way to that point. I would have to know how discrepencies between athletes/coaches of football/olympic sports like gymnastics will need to be addressed in regards to their pages categories and infoboxes in order to make a coherent standardized practice. I would also need to know in what regards standings templates and things of the like need to match each other and their parent sport. I am in favor of a standardization project for categories, conferences, NCAA Divisions and to a lesser extent Sport championship pages. But I agree with DL1's apprehension about rocking the boat.UCO2009bluejay (talk) 02:45, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I put this out as a proposal (a plan or suggestion put forward for consideration or discussion by others) in search of support and suggestions, and the goals can easily be modified... As stated, the primary concern was, and continues to be. "... articles describing collegiate conferences and member institutions' athletic programs." GWFrog (talk) 19:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm generally supportive of what's proposed here. It would be good to have one central place to discuss articles that span more than one college sport, like Big Ten Conference or Michigan Wolverines, and to discuss issues of formatting, standardization, and coordination that impact sport-specific articles across multiple sports.  It would also be a good idea to formalize the standardization of formatting that Dirtlawer1 mentioned above.  This has generally been done through the aforementioned loose confederation of related WikiProjects, and the results of that cooperation, in many cases, have never been formally written up, but, rather, reside in the heads of the regular contributors to those projects.  The only objection that's been raised thus far to this proposal seems to concern the form this effort will take (i.e. new WikiProject or sub-project/taskforce) and the authority it will carry.  I think those issues can be hashed out, and they should since what GWFrog has proposed is a worthwhile endeavor. Jweiss11 (talk) 20:09, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm definitely behind a unified message board/directory/membership roll, but that's about it. A basic set of standard policies and templates could be helpful, but otherwise, I think a super-project would get in the way of each sport's project best meeting its own needs. In particular, the mid-level sports like baseball/softball, hockey, and soccer (which I tend to focus on) would see their editors' voices get drowned out in favor of what works best for football and basketball. Take a specific case from my editing for an example: when I use the yearly record templates on coach and program pages, I reap the benefits of all-sport collaboration, but run into a wall when we try to standardize across sports. On the one hand, the large, devoted, and often quite brilliant football and basketball editorship got this type of template off the ground. It's just one of the many areas I'd be completely lost in, and having this large base of college sports brainpower allows me to add something valuable to baseball pages. On the other hand, a mindset driven by the major sports can trample on the smaller ones. When those templates are used for basketball, it makes little sense to list conference tournament berths in the postseason column, since almost every Division I team makes them. With baseball, however, it's rare to find a conference that lets everyone into its postseason, so including that information tells the readers something quite meaningful about what kind of season a team had. Here, it hurts no one for baseball to use a solution that better informs its reader, but standardization driven by what's best for basketball would make the pages worse. This, I'll admit, is an extremely specific case from my own editing, but it's the type of dynamic I'd imagine would play out a lot in a super-project. A common message board where we can trade ideas, form consensus, and (in my case) piggyback off the great work that's done in larger projects would be awesome. But in the end, we're better off leaving sport-specific authority to the project that knows that sport's particular coverage needs the best. Kithira (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Guys, I really think we're probably being a little bit paranoid here. With that said, I do think that some additional clarification would indeed be helpful. If the purpose of this project is to take the already existing standard formatting used almost exclusively across the college football, basketball, baseball, and softball projects and cascade them down, so to speak, across the other NCAA sports that do not have their own specific individual projects (golf, tennis, volleyball, wrestling, track & field, soccer, lacrosse, etc.), then I would wholeheartedly support that effort. Frankly, I can't really think of any reason why not to. If, on the other hand, the purpose of this project is to institute completely different formatting techniques, and relegate the existing college sports projects to little more than task forces of this new project, then that would raise some serious alarm bells, and I would probably have to oppose this project's creation (for the record, I don't think this second option was GWFrog's intention in this proposal). There's also the question of what to do with the somewhat-oddball College Ice Hockey task force (which is not listed above, and ought to be). In certain things, it follows the other college sports project's lead, while in others, it follows the lead of it's parent project, WikiProject Ice Hockey and does things a bit differently. To sum it up, I will support this project, if it is expressly understood & stated that it's main goal is to concentrate on general articles (like Michigan Wolverines and Big Ten Conference), and on college sports that do not have their own specific individual projects, not to dictate to the college sports projects that already exist, and have been operating effectively for years. Ejgreen77 (talk) 19:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I edited out dealing with specific sports, which is what seems to be the main stumbling block for some people... GWFrog (talk)
 * I don't know enough about the details of WikiProjects versus subprojects as described in the concerns above, but I am generally supportive of what is proposed here. I would specifically like to help with updating/creating maps.  I'm learning about how to edit SVG maps in Inkscape at I'm finding it quite enjoyable!  I also have a few other ideas for linking some of these college sports pages, once this project gets going. Dafoeberezin3494 (talk) 02:11, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I certainly support the general idea of this project, and would participate, but would actually like to see some of the specific sports added back. While some of the most popular sports like basketball and football have their own projects and some smaller collegiate sports, like ice hockey and lacrosse are adequately taken care of by the overall sport wikiproject, some sports either don't have a project at all, or the collegiate sport is so insignificant compared to the sport at large, that the collegiate level is inadequately taken care of (I'm thinking sports like soccer and golf here). I would think that this could be one of the first tasks of the project to determine which sports can be left alone, and which ones should be picked up by this project, and could be a central place to discuss which teams determine their own page and which should stay merge with the overall program page. For example, during a quick search, I found few golf programs that were broken off onto their own page, but Alabama has a combined page for both men's and women's golf. I'm not sure whether the standard convention needs to be that several more teams have their own page, or if Alabama should be merged back, but I doubt that the Tide stand out enough with the collegiate golf world to be one of the only programs with a separate team page. SCMatt33 (talk) 15:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)