Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Self-assessment

This subpage is created to facilitate self-evaluation by members of WikiProject Football. The purpose is to identify what works and does not work for community groups on Wikimedia Foundation projects, to help promote good practices across projects. It is also intended to help brainstorm ways for community groups to reach out to new users interested in their areas, to help encourage growth for Wikipedia. I will be presenting information gathered from this conversation to the Wikimedia Foundation, both to help provide guidelines to other projects and to see if there is anything the Foundation can do to better facilitate your work. Your contribution here is very much appreciated. There is certainly overlap in some of the questions and some of your responses may seem redundant; please don't worry about this. Brainstorming is very welcome here, as it may help other responders to consider different aspects. Conversation can be helpful to generate a kind of consensus view of the issues as well as to note individual opinions. Please feel free to add your answers below and to discuss the answers others have left. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Self-assessment

How "healthy" is your project?
"Would you say that your project is thriving, declining, effectual, struggling, etc.? Do the members of the project interact well with one another? Do members typically feel welcome and included? This space is to share your opinion of the overall current status of your project."

Thriving, although more members could participate in the discussion page. We generally work well together and there is a lot of willing, hard-working members always wanting to help each other. Adam4267 (talk) 14:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed, it's thriving - there are many editors who consider themselves members of the Project. As Adam says, however, there are only a handful of members who are active on the Project's talk page; but those that are passionate + intelligent + work hard together as a community. GiantSnowman 14:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thriving. One shining example was the effort to eliminate the backlog of Project-related uBLPs. There are some difficult issues (ususally related to notability guidelines) that the group has been unable to resolve, but the group is pulling in the same direction and there is a lot of collaboration on most issues. Jogurney (talk) 15:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * There's always a heavy influx of new editors to the domain, and there are a lot of (incredibly) active regulars including multiple active admins. The project talk page is one of the most active on the entire encyclopedia and generally it has a productive and collegial tone. There is an occasional problem with biting newcomers, but all in all it's one of the healthiest WikiProjects I know of. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 17:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Generally agree with this. Eldumpo (talk) 19:55, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

This is one of the most active WikiProjects there is. According to Database_reports/Pages_with_the_most_revisions, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football is the most edited WikiProject talk page on Wikipedia (though that's not the whole story, projects like WP:MILHIST make judicious use of taskforces for subtopics, for example). As a project old-timer I'm not so well-placed to judge what newcomers think, but I'd definitely describe the project as being in good health. Oldelpaso (talk) 20:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * As a relative newcomer (nearly a year) I think that we do make it quite hard for new users. You can't just "become" a new user. It takes a lot of work to learn all the rules and guidlines for our project, and there are quite a few. I stated below that a manual or tutorial could be quite effective. Still I think everyone interacts really well even when we are disagreeing about something and also there are lots of people willing to answer questions. I think it is very rare that a thread on our page goes unanswered. Adam4267 (talk) 20:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Adam4267 that new users will pushed into conformation and if they don't abide with the task force and their wisdom then there is a state of continual tension. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 01:10, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: Health
Thank you very much for your feedback. :) This is what I'm reading:

Please let me know if I've missed anything, and if you would like to add or expand or if this inspires further thoughts, you're certainly welcome to add them, whether you have already responded to the question or not. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

What does this project do well?
"What are some of the best examples of this project's successes? This space is for exploring what your project does well--whether those successes are innovative (coming up with new ideas or approaches) or simply examples of successfully following through on established practices."


 * Collaborative editing - Glossary of association football terms springs to mind - as well as discussion + consensus. There is also a strong understanding among the members about notability and MOS etc. GiantSnowman 14:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree with GS about collaborative editing (I disagree on other issues which I'll tackle elsewhere). The thing that makes WP:FOOTY stand out is that editors who vehemently disagree over one or more issues are generally very happy to work together in areas not affected by that issue, sometimes even when those disagreements have been decidedly hostile. —WFC— 16:54, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Consistency. For a project with a global purview a great deal of central discussion is required to keep articles regarding different nationalities consistent with one another and a great deal of conversation (occasionally robust but always on-topic) takes place here to settle differences of that sort. The project is also an absolute exemplar in its use, deployment and discussion of templates: infobox football biography has been collaboratively rewritten over the space of several years and it's never needed to be fully protected it is normally editable even by autoconfirmed users (I've just noticed it's protected now and have requested that be undone) and it's one of the most highly used infoboxes on the encyclopedia. The rest of the project's template system has been rewritten multiple times by different editors, always in the open and discussed here. Lastly, as much as possible the project has always sought outreach to the wider community and accepted community norms over its own (mostly in style issues) rather than acting as a walled garden. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 17:13, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Lists, given that there's currently 129 football-related featured lists. Less flippantly, most types of football article have at least one example that has reached GA/FA/FL, including the article association football itself. So there's usually a good example available to follow when developing an article, and plenty of knowledgeable people to ask for advice. Oldelpaso (talk) 21:39, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: strengths
In this area, I see:

Remembering that the complete answers will be linked, is that about the long and short of it? New thoughts? Disagreements with the nutshell? And congratulations on all those featured lists. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

What challenges face your project?
"In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges that your project faces or has faced in succeeding on Wikipedia? These challenges can be issues that you have overcome or issues that you are still facing."


 * The vast, vast number of unreferenced and/or non-notable articles; it's a full-time job just trying to rectify them, and this has led some other editors to view the Project with slight negativity. GiantSnowman 14:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I think there are too many stub (or "sub-stub") class articles for the number of editors involved. Part of the problem is that many of these stubs are non-notable or unreferenced articles, but we also have so many (nearly 100,000) stub articles that the notable and referenced/verifiable information is not being watched by a sufficient number of editors. We would be much better served if most of these articles are improved to be more than stubs or simply remove many of them that are marginally or non-notable. Jogurney (talk) 15:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I've just looked up the numbers. Of assessed articles, 77% of articles tagged with Football are stubs, compared to about 65% for Wikipedia as a whole. We have comparatively few unassessed articles (which tend to be stubs) so the numbers might actually be closer than this, but even so its well above the Wikipedia average. Oldelpaso (talk) 20:51, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the reason for this is WP:NFOOTY, it lends itself to the creation of many non-notable people. For example players from the Thai Premier League, S.League (Singapore) and other such leagues are considered to meet WP:GNG. Seriously players from the Thai Premier League are considered by US to meet WP:GNG. Because of this rule lots of articles are created for non-notable people who happen to have played in a certain league which does but shouldn't confer notability. There is no interest from Wikipedia editors or the media for many articles that are created and they just end up being stubs. I strongly beleive we need to change WP:NFOOTY to a different system. Although I have tried to bring it up on many occasions I have only ever met the inertia that WFC was talking about below. Adam4267 (talk) 22:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Another possible reason for the amount of stubs is assessement lag. This wont count for as much as borderline notable articles, but just today I was looking through my task force's assessement lists and I saw 7 articles (out of 178 total stubs) which I knew were not stubs. I had contributed to a few of them but had just forgot to reassess, others were assessed wrongly or just hadn't been updated by someone else. This must contribute a little bit to our overall stub percentage. Adam4267 (talk) 22:22, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps more surprisingly, the proportion of our articles which are good or featured lags behind other areas. Roughly 1 in 323 football articles/lists is good or featured, compared with a sitewide average of about 1 in 205. —WFC— 21:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes that is a surprise, possibly a consequence of the number of permastubs? In absolute numbers I expect that we have more FA/GAs than any other sport project, but projects like WP:HOCKEY and WP:CRICKET have a far higher number in percentage terms. If a football article has no connection to the British Isles, it is a lot less likely to become well developed. Oldelpaso (talk) 22:01, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Also not helpful in this area is the amount of time it takes to get an article reviewed and the amount of new articles created. Adam4267 (talk) 22:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Inertia. A strength of WP:FOOTY is that it got a lot of things right very early on. It was organised from an early stage, and the basic template for certain kinds of articles was so good in the early days that they continue to be followed to this day. The flip-side is that it is almost impossible to get change through, even in cases where a clear case for change has been made and a solution provided. —WFC— 17:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Out of interest, is this mainly the flags thing, the notability requirements, or something else in your opinion? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 17:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Those are far and away the two most prominent examples, but the "it ain't broke" attitude does manifest itself in other areas. While I'm as guilty of this as anybody, I would cite our near-universal use of Soccerbase for British players despite its known flaws as another example. —WFC— 17:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Notability. There are two issues here, and inertia is part of the reason that these issues have still not been tackled. Firstly, as can be seen here, for many leagues our notability criteria depend on whether or not a league describes itself as "professional". If it does, all players who have ever competed in that league are considered notable. There is also the issue that members of this project consider the wording of WP:NFOOTY to be above everything else. Low profile individuals who quite clearly do not meet the GNG should not have biographies created because they meet the letter of NFOOTY, yet this routinely happens. —WFC— 17:12, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with the first part of your post, but the issue about low profile individuals is more an NSPORT issue. The NSPORT guidance says that if a player passes the project-specific guidance they are deemed to meet GNG and thus be notable. Eldumpo (talk) 19:53, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * When I made a relatively concerted effort to deal with this last year, NSPORT editors made very clear that they would defer to WP:FOOTY when it came to changing the football notability criteria from what in effect is still the old WP:ATHLETE. There have been many discussions at the WikiProject since; all have come to nought. Without wishing to apportion "blame", WP:FOOTY unquestionably has the ability to do something about this, and thus far has failed to do so. —WFC— 11:41, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Tens or hundreds of thousands of BLPs and articles which deal heavily with BLPs (such as team or season articles). It is testament to the incredible effort put in by members of the project that WP:FOOTY is typically ahead of the curve in dealing with these issues even though it's one of the hardest-hit WikiProjects. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 17:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I would question the assertion that we are typically ahead of the curve on BLPs. Over the last year we've quite possibly had the best rate of improvement of any WikiProject, and that is testament to the work rate of editors who have specialised in the area. But in terms of BLP sourcing we were starting from a very low base. —WFC— 21:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * As a project we epitomise the issue of systematic bias on Wikipedia. We have an impressive depth of coverage for the Anglophone world, particularly England and Scotland, where a large proportion of our editors are based. Pretty much any footballer active in the last couple of decades who is British and passes WP:ATHLETE will have an article. But as one goes further afield and further back in time coverage gets patchier, and the article are more poorly maintained. Western Europe does fine, as it has plenty of editors and lots of high-profile football teams, but considering its strength in football terms our coverage of South America is weak, largely due to a lack of Spanish speakers. Our coverage of South African teams illustrates the issue well. South Africa is an Anglophone country. Its most popular football teams have huge fanbases. But the average South African football fan is from the segment of South African society least likely to have internet access. The article on South Africa's captain, Siphiwe Tshabalala, is a stub, and only the European-based Bafana Bafana tend to have developed articles. Oldelpaso (talk) 21:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * While I only have anecdotal data, I am sure the gender imbalance within the WikiProject is even greater than that of Wikipedia as a whole, given the male-dominated nature of the sport. Of the project regulars I know the gender of, off the top of my head I can only think of one female editor. This has a knock-on effect on our coverage of the women's game. Only today there was a topic on WT:WPF about four-time World Player of the Year Marta, in which a number of project regulars confessed to having never heard of her. Oldelpaso (talk) 21:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Without keeping an accurate track on what i'm about to say, i'd bet that association football articles must be one of the (if not THE MOST) most vandalized fields in Wikipedia, there's a challenge folks! --Vasco Amaral (talk) 03:03, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not as active as the other editors here, but I want to point out that there are too many non-neutral statements in the articles, both referenced and unreferenced, that needs to be toned down. — NKRI1945 (talk) 05:18, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: challenges
Wow. I'm really impressed with your input here. Quite a depth and breadth there. Let's see if I can do it justice in a nutshell:

That's a pretty long nutshell, but I don't see anything there I would trim. I'm glad that the full discussions will be viewable by the Foundation, because, again, your discussion is impressive here.

Have I overlooked anything major? Misrepresented anything in my nutshell? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

What could make this project fail?
"In a 'worst case' scenario, what circumstances could make this project fail?"
 * I cannot envisage any circumstances under which WP:FOOTY would cease being an active WikiProject. —WFC— 17:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree, the amount of dedicated editors, large interest in the topic area, currentness (i.e. there is no way in which we could "complete" WikiProject Football) and size of it means that it will always keep going. Adam4267 (talk) 19:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Factionalism: there are cultural differences in the way the sport is run and portrayed and they've caused schisms in the past. Nevertheless I think the worst of those (mainly a split in the way North American articles were handled) are in the past now. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 17:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Picking up on what is said above, i do not envisage the project going under, lots of well-intended well-informed users from several countries (not necessarily part of the project) updating and/or sourcing the articles on their countries' respective teams/players. --Vasco Amaral (talk) 03:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I cannot envisage this WikiProject fail. The amount of people who reference the articles surely is testament to the drive and dedication of those who want to have this information updated and on hand available. The failure I see is the inability to have the not all the historical articles not have the quality that the recent articles have (WP:Recentism), but those articles will get updated and improved when more editors see the benefit. Brudder Andrusha (talk) 01:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: Failure
This makes an interesting change for me. The other projects that I've been talking to by and large worry about an impact if membership declines. I can see why your situation would be different. Any changes? Additions? Mistakes? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Where could this project improve?
"In your opinion, what steps could the members of this WikiProject take to help reach its goals (however your project's goals are defined)?"
 * The effort to eradicate completely unreferenced BLPs over the last year or so has been tremendous, but even now a high proportion of our biographies feature little or nothing beyond statistical sourcing. If we can figure out a way of turning this around over the next year or two, we will have turned ourselves from one of the worst projects for BLPs into one of the best. —WFC— 17:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Personally, I believe the problem there to be our current notability criteria. It allows the creation of players that no-one is really intersted in and who haven't had much coverage just because they play in a certain league. Adam4267 (talk) 19:11, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the notability guideline are certainly an issue, but the amount of interest in this topic tends to result in creation of huge amounts of BLPs that fails the notability guideline, yet slip through our efforts to root them out. If you check the Article Alerts section regularly, you may be surprised by the sheer number of new articles in the PROD and AfD queue which clearly fail any notability guideline. Plus, many others are created and not noticed right away. I agree with WFC about the need to improve (or delete) these articles, but it looks like a very daunting task. Jogurney (talk) 19:42, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe a bot that PRODs every article created that starts with a stock Football player heading "So-in-so(born) plays for" and also any new articles created with the Template:Football player infobox but this isn't generally used by people not familiar with the process. This might be overkill, but maybe a semi-auto bot that can be used by everyone to AfD articles quicker. Surely a bot couldd create the appropriate pages and list them in the appropriate areas. The User:GA bot does a similar job. Adam4267 (talk) 20:37, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the project needs to be more welcoming to new editors, including IP addresses. I think there is a tendency for some of them to be shouted at, or bombarded with a long list of "this is how we do it here" comments, and indeed some posters then say things like "this is a clique". Eldumpo (talk) 19:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with Adam's point on notability. Too much of a good thing... --Vasco Amaral (talk) 03:01, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: Improvement
This is the major trend Isee:

Is this about right? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

How can this project expand?
"How can this project reach out to and nurture newcomers to Wikipedia who share an interest in the project's goals?"

There are many IP's who contribute positively, a lot of legwork like updating stats is done by them. Maybe encouraging them to make accounts? There are also a lot of accounts created which never really take off. I have seen quite a few people make 3 or 4 edits over a few months then never really come back on again. Not sure why? I tried to reach out to a few of them but never really got a response. There are also a lot of rules and regulations to be known when editing in this area. Maybe some sort of tutorial detailing the basics, like MOS:FLAG, WP:BLP and WP:RS and a guide on how/when to use them. Adam4267 (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, sport by its nature attracts a lot of drive-by editors, few of whom are converted to regular contributors. Updating the article on a guy who just scored an important goal is a far smaller barrier to entry than taking the plunge by editing, say, an article on economics. Oldelpaso (talk) 21:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell: Expansion
This is what I see:

It seems that in the case of your specific project, attracting contributors is not really a major issue. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Conclusion
Hi. This has been dormant long enough that I think I can probably wrap it up. I tremendously appreciate the time you've taken to give feedback. :)

Since nothing has been added since the nutshells above, I am not reproducing those here; they will go into my report as written. In addition, I have the following to say: Project members self-assess project as healthy, feel good about collegial interaction and the willingness of group members to work with others, including in their willingness to critique work and to praise effort. They are very well organized and ambitious in outreach.

Responders show a healthy mix of newer and older contributors, most of whom are primarily focused on writing articles. Conclusions: Nutshell: Asked to weigh in on six questions related to the health of the project, its challenges and its growth points, the project arrives at the following:
 * Unlike many, this project has no shortage of potential new members, whom they generally welcome.
 * It is a thriving, healthy project with collaborative membership.
 * Members are good at focusing on tasks at hand and not harboring ill-will for past disagreements.
 * Challenges include poor sourcing and bias introduced by fans or detractors.
 * The project also attracts a good many stubs relative to other projects, probably due to its general public and cross-language appeal.
 * Factionalism has been an issue but seems under control.
 * Improving notability guidelines might help reduce articles on non-notables.

In my report, this is followed by the questions and the nutshell above as well as an analysis of your contributions. You guys do an impressive amount of article work, by the way. (If you want to see what I saw, check out X!'s Edit Counter: .)

Please let me know if you think I've mistaken anything, and, again, thank you so much for your time. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)