Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-05/WikiProject report

With the start of the 2010 Major League Baseball season last Sunday, we thought it would be appropriate to focus on WikiProject Baseball this week. The project started on December 13, 2004 as a subproject of WikiProject Sports. It has grown into an independent project with 200 active members. WikiProject Baseball has spawned a Baseball portal and subprojects on players, teams and leagues, college baseball, Negro league baseball, Little League baseball, and "old-time" baseball. There are over 33,000 articles covered by WikiProject Baseball, including 23 featured articles and a whopping 117 featured lists. This week, we interviewed Wizardman, Killervogel5, and Staxringold.

'''What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Baseball? What kind of baseball-related articles do you like to work on?'''


 * Wizardman: What motivated me was having a general interest growing up in the game. I got lucky and got to watch a good baseball team, so my enjoyment of the game moved into here, where I could learn about the different players of the game. Each baseball player has their own unique story which ends up being quite fascinating. I typically like working with biographies of retired players. No preference on who they played for or when, though most frequently they've been American League players from the World War II era.


 * Killervogel5: I've been editing baseball articles ever since I started using Wikipedia (my first edit was creating Chase Utley). I grew up watching the game, though I didn't really understand all of its intricacies, and watched Harry Kalas and the Phillies most of my adolescent and adult life. I started out doing mostly list work, as my first major project here took me weeks to complete. Since then, I've branched out from Phillies-only work into baseball in general, and from lists to biographies as well. Generally, my bio focus has been on Philadelphia players, but I tend to prefer more obscure players who don't get a lot of focus (Paul Bako), or creating new non-stub articles for players who don't have one (Putsy Caballero, Jocko Thompson).

'''Most projects we've previously highlighted had a larger number of featured articles than featured lists. WikiProject Baseball has 23 featured articles and a surprising 117 featured lists. Why are there so many excellent lists in baseball?'''


 * Killervogel5: Baseball is a sport that is heavily dependent on its statistics and, as such, lends itself very well to the creation of high-quality lists. Part of the reason behind the large number of featured lists that we have is the project's informal featured topic drives, which are usually just collaborated and coordinated at the project talk page. Recently, we completed and promoted the MLB awards featured topic, a featured topic with two fully featured subtopics; in sum, this topic encompasses 1 good article and 36 featured lists, which I believe is the second-largest complete featured topic on the English Wikipedia. In addition, we have an informal topic drive going for lists of managers, some of which has already been completed and which will increase our featured content even further.

Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?


 * Killervogel5: I have joined the Awards and prizes WikiProject mainly based on my work with the MLB awards FT. Additionally, we have several subtopics that are dependent on WP:MLB members for support.

'''What are WikiProject Baseball's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?'''


 * Wizardman: Aside from the redlinks in all-time rosters, while current baseball players and seasons are generally well-handled, former baseball players do not follow suit, even those with particularly illustrious careers. You would think Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley would have nicer articles than Jason Hirsh and Ryan Garko, for example. Hall of Famers having great articles would be a top priority in my opinion, as the casual person is gonna associate baseball not with someone who played a few years, but the greats of the game, the Ruths, DiMaggios, etc.


 * Killervogel5: Take a look at some of the all-time team rosters, and create articles for redlinked players. Fill in a season page for an old team season, including the game log and month-by-month summaries. Any contributor who wants to help out would be welcomed at the project talk page.


 * Staxringold: I would definitely agree with Wizardman on Hall of Fame biographies. Take Walter Johnson, arguably the greatest pitcher in the history of the game. There is plenty of source material out there, it's just a daunting task for an editor to consider starting (probably why so many "big" players have lesser articles). Beyond that I would say maybe work on notable events/moments/teams like the Shot Heard 'Round the World, 1927 New York Yankees season, or the 1978 American League East tie-breaker game (aka "The Greatest Game"). There are seminal figures and moments in the history of baseball, and the improvement of their articles would be a massive coup for the project.

Anything else you'd like to add?


 * Wizardman: We're always looking for new members and new areas to grow upon.


 * Killervogel5: We're gearing up for the start of the season, so let's play ball!

Next week we'll fire up the hog. Until then, cruise over to the archive for more WikiProject interviews.