Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/Archive 4

WP:FLAG issues
The projects style in articles do not correspond with Wikipedia's guideline on Manual of Style with flags. Martial Arts record boxes and results pages like for UFC 87 do not need flags next to each competitors name, it is emphasizing the nationality of them without a good reason and and unnessecarily clutters articles and the boxes. The main reasons flagicons are legitametly used are: aiding in navigation in long lists or tables of countries, putting single flags in infoboxes and in sporting articles where the country the flag represents and the players nationalities may differ. None of the appropriate uses are applied here and the style guides here should be changed to reflect this. — M o e   ε  05:34, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There's clearly an expectation in WP:FLAGS that flags can be used in the context of sport, as in "sporting nationality", see WP:FLAGS. I'd like to see some sort of argument that there is no "good reason" at all. hateless 00:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually there is no reason under FLAGS that supports flags in these contexts:
 * Reason #1 under FLAGS for sportspersons says:
 * "Flags should not be used on sportspeople's individual infoboxes."
 * This doesn't have anything to do with a infobox, since the infoboxes are at the beginning of articles and what I'm talking about are results pages and MMA record boxes, so this reason is moot.::*Reason #2 under FLAGS for sportspersons says:
 * "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's players national squad or sporting nationality."
 * Actually, reason #2 is a reason against having these flags, the flag icons in the results and MMA records boxes are purely for indicating the players nationality in a non-sporting sense. The nationality of the MMA fights are of no relevance on what country they come from, mostly, the only time flagicons are used in these contexts are for when countries are competing against eachother like in the Olympics.
 * Reason #3 under FLAGS for sportspersons says:
 * "Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that the flag represents sporting nationality, not nationality."
 * If you don't know, nationality in the latter part of this reason for using flags is refering to the place they were born, as opposed to sporting nationality which is defined as the place the athlete chooses to be represented from. This is all irrlevant of course, because this reason is nulled from the lack of country names within the table or the results.
 * Reason #4 under Flags for sportspersons says:
 * "Flags should illustrate the highest level the sportsperson is associated with. For example, if a sportsperson has represented their nation or has declared for a nation, then the national sport governing body's flag should be used (this can differ from the countries national flag) . If a sportsperson has not played at the international level, then the international sport governing body's (such as IRB, FIFA) eligibility rules should be used. If these rules allow a player to represent two or more nations, then the eligibility rule that is most apt should be applied; most often it is the place of birth."
 * Again, this isn't for this sport, since this is used for when countries are competing against one another for a title and the nationality of the MMA fighters have no affect on that. Adding flags in this context is like adding flags next to every NFL player, there is no competition between countries, just within a league of players.


 * So, if you actually want to make an argument, then read the rules under the header. Just because it says it is allowed in "sportspersons articles", doesn't mean we can go willy nilly and add them wherever we want. Oh, and I forgot to meantion this: FLAGS. That is rule #1 under 'Inappropriate uses' and the results pages are a example of it being used in prose, it is just sloppy, cluttering and distracting to a reader. — M o e   ε  02:08, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

"They are useful in articles about international sporting events to show the representative nationality of players (which may differ from their legal nationalities)." That's under WP:FLAGS. Sorry I missed that before, but it clearly states flags are permissible in sporting articles—with no distinction between individual and team sports. Now, in WP:MMA, we have flags in bio infoboxes (which are rightfully being removed), fight records, event pages and various events and champion lists. You seem to have the most problem with fight records and event pages. So lets start from there: Fight records are not prose. They are also not merely decorative and are useful in showing the scope and reach of a fighter's experience. The only issue that I see is whether the usage of the flags is considered overuse and cluttered, and frankly, that's a subjective opinion and you need a consensus for that judgement.

As for event pages, I don't see flags in prose. What I do see them being used is in list items: "Welterweight bout: (flag) Fighter A vs. (flag) Fighter B." To me, that is not "writing that resembles everyday speech", as Wikipedia defines it. There's no sentence there—no subject or predicate. Again, whether it looks cluttered or not is up to the judgement of the consensus but for whether this is prose or not, it doesn't look much different than something like 2006 FIFA World Cup with an added preface. In short, I don't see where by fiat WP:FLAGS states that flags are being used inappropriately. I think you need a consensus before you can say authoritatively anything like that. hateless 20:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hateless pretty much covered it. There is nothing wrong with them being used in the way they are used. I say they all STAY on the perspective pages. Swampfire (talk) 01:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Hateless, you said:
 * "They are useful in articles about international sporting events to show the representative nationality of players (which may differ from their legal nationalities)." That's under WP:FLAGS.

Yes, it is, but the only problem with that is MMA fights like UFC, are not international sporting events. A international sporting event is two nations competing against eachother, like FIFA and the Olympics. You seem to be ignoring the fact that sporting events your citing for using flagicons are also having the country name listed in the tables beforehand, i.e. a correct way to use flagicons in sporting event articles. All you need to do to correct the problem is add the name of the country the flag represents in the results and everything will be alright with it. The way it is, is not in compliance with WP:FLAG, no matter what angle you swing it, because all correct uses are also with the countries name listed in the article somewhere. — M o e   ε  13:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I only swing one angle, Moe, and that's consensus, which is the currency Wikipedia runs on. And really, you have done nothing to show any consensus backs what you say--not even your definition of international sporting events, which excludes such international sporting events like the Tour de France and UEFA Champions League. (And yes, there are little flags on those pages.) Lets also remember that WP:FLAGS is by self-definition a guideline, not a policy, which gives the consensus some leeway into not implementing every rule on the page, including the country name accompanying flag rule. hateless 19:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely Stay. Flags are necessary information on results tables and they save space, instead of spelling out the name of the country each time.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 05:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally I think they look better with the flags, but they are not essential information, and I would not support having 'from country' instead. --Nate1481(t/c) 07:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

There's an ANI thread you might want to look at...
An editor has been creating quite a few articles about mixed martial artists which consist of just a MMAstatsbox and sometimes an infobox. This project's input would be appreciated at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Cheers. lifebaka++ 13:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've deleted most of these articles, as they didn't contain a single word of prose. east718 //  talk  //  email  // 00:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Project watchlist
I've put this project under the care of my bot to generate a watchlist that encompasses all MMA articles which will be updated daily. Hopefully, this'll help us catch subtle vandalism and nasty BLP violations a little sooner; the list is located here. east718 //  talk  //  email  // 00:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This will be useful, I have alot of these watch listed but this will also list any newly added ones. --Nate1481 07:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Lee Hasdell
I would appreciate any help with the current issues at the Lee Hasdell article. The short version is I removed and rewrote major parts of the article removing non-NPOV and two instances of copyvio (text copied from pbp-reports etc). who appears to have written major parts of the article took issue with my edits and reverted all of them. I have explained my edits on his talk page, but he still don't agree and his last message to me contained "stop undoing my work. Are you determind to ruin it or something ?. Im going to keep changing it back so give up now".

The article was basically full of statements like "Hasdell was very impressive, winning by KO", "In a memorable match", "Hasdell won the prestigious Oktagon Challenge", "Hasdell lossed [..] in a very tough fight", "a spectacular flying knee", "he floored Kasteel twice in the first round [...] in a very short but action packed match", "he fought in the Absolute Fighting Challenge, which was the worlds toughest no holds barred mixed martial arts event in the world", "Hasdell was very unfortunate", "Hasdell's final fight for RINGS was against the No.1 Heavyweight in the world Fedor Emelianenko" (he wasn't at the time, and who decides who is #1 anyway?) aswell as unsourced statements about him being "the Godfather of UK MMA, as he is the first and most experienced mixed martial artist in the country".

ClaudioProductions is abviously a fan of Hasdell and doesn't want me to change an article he has worked hard on even though much of it is against WP policy related to WP:NPOV and WP:V. -- aktsu (t / c) 17:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * i don't know much about Lee Hasdell but it's the fact that there's no "black belts" in thaiboxing. theres no belt system in muay thai. statement like this is wrong "AMA (Thai) kickboxing Blackbelt". i think Aktsu's edits were good and improved the overall quality and neutrality of the article. Marty Rockatansky (talk) 04:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like that is taked from the ssj website. The article really needs some reliable third party sources... Anyway, I don't like edit-warring but I just reverted to my revision except for not changig his mma-record (as that was the only thing he complained to me about). -- aktsu (t / c) 16:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * No problems anymore, everything is good. The article still needs some work, but atleast we're not fighting over it anymore. -- aktsu (t / c) 14:44, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Featured Lists
Hey all...I'm not a member of this project, but I do check in every now and then because I'm a member of WP:PW and we have quite a bit of article overlap. Anyway, on this visit I noticed you had a featured list so I added the FL option to Template:WikiProject Mixed martial arts. Now, FLs will be sorted into Category:FL-Class mixed martial arts articles instead of Category:FA-Class mixed martial arts articles. This makes assessment clearer and is more accurate. Just wanted to make everyone aware of the new option. Enjoy. :) Nikki  311  20:00, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Event pages format
There is a discussion going on about (surprisingly enough :D) the format of the event pages at WT:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/Event pages format. Input would be appreciated. --Aktsu (t / c) 02:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Mixed martial arts
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Joe Son BLP
So, a note was recently added to the Joe Son article about him being charged with rape. I rewrote it because the version I saw was a copyvio of the source, but I'm concerned that with a single source, TMZ, there might be some WP:BLP issues. Since I don't have much experience with that, I wanted to bring it to other editor's attention, so someone could maybe take a look at it. gnfnrf (talk) 01:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * TMZ is not a reliable source; I'll get rid of this. Good looking out on catching this. east718 //  talk  //  email  // 03:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Multiple other news sources are now reporting this story.    How good does the sourcing have to be to warrant re-inclusion in the article? gnfnrf (talk) 16:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Mixed martial arts clothing
New article, needs lot of work. --Nate1481 13:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * My knee-jerk reaction is that it should be merged into Mixed martial arts until it can expand to a suitable size for forking. hateless 19:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree, it should be merged.Marty Rockatansky (talk)

List of male mixed martial artists
Some time ago Wikiproject Boxing deleted their list. Ours is getting long as well but I don't think we should delete it yet, my suggestion is to keep blue links only and add a new names after the articles are being created. Marty Rockatansky (talk)

"Notes" columns
What do you guys think about the "notes" sections in record tables? My feeling is that that they just add clutter and are more appropriate in the prose anyway. I've been seeing numerous edit wars breaking out recently over the most useless information in these little sidebars (sample: "Fighter A was cut by Fighter B in this match!"). It's also POV to determine what merits mentioning in the condensed sections. Perhaps we should remove them entirely if we can't exactly determine what to do with them. east718 //  talk  //  email  // 22:20, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think notes section should be included in record tables. Here's something i've been working on, check it out User:Marty Rockatansky/Sandbox. I used Mark Hunt's record as an example. Let me know what you guys think.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 09:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice. However, I think that, for accessibility reasons, win/loss/draw/nc should be represented in text, not just by color. gnfnrf (talk) 20:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think notes such as "won xxx championship" and possibly "début at middleweight" etc are useful but things like cuts just arn't, serious injuries should be mentioned in the text so arn't needed. May be a colum just for titles of somthing? --Nate1481 11:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

List of Mixed Martial Artists with Professional Boxing Records
i stumbled across List of Mixed Martial Artists with Professional Boxing Records quite by accident this morning (checking past vandalism by a random ip, of all things), and have cleaned it up a bit. it's practically orphaned, and i'm not sure what to do with it. it IS the sort of thing that i've looked for once or twice in the past, so if it's fleshed out it could prove useful. pauli133 (talk) 13:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

FieLDS Dynamite!! correct name
I think we should rename the article to "Dynamite!! 2008". Fields is just a main sponsor. The full name of the event on the official japanese poster translates "Dynamite!! - Power of Courage 2008 - Marty Rockatansky (talk) 15:20, November 20, 2008

Daniel Cramer Article(s)
There is currently some issues over two articles that have been created for Daniel Cramer. Daniel Cramer(fighter) was first created and matches what is used in the TUF article & template. Dan Cramer was created afterwards which was a copy/paste from the original article. Daniel Cramer(figher) was blanked and then a request for deletion was posted in favor of Dan Cramer. There are currently a couple questions that need to be answered, and hopefully people here will chime in. There are discussion pages at Talk:Dan Cramer and Articles for deletion/Daniel Cramer(fighter) on this issue. Thanks for stopping by either place and providing your input. --TreyGeek (talk) 19:57, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Is Daniel Cramer(fighter) or Dan Cramer the appropriate title for the article?
 * Does Daniel Cramer meet the requirements for an article as per WP:NOTABLE. (It appears he has no professional MMA matches as of yet.)

Karl James Noons
I ran into this article that had been brutally vandalized. I reverted it back to what I think was the last clean version, but if anyone knows about this guy and wants to double check my work i'd appreciate it.--Cube lurker (talk) 01:20, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Inclusion of exhibition bouts to record tables
(for the most part, TUF)

I feel that by the terms outlined by the Wikimedia Foundation ("... the sum of all knowledge..."?), we should include exhibition bouts to record tables. Obviously with a denotation to them. Just tonight I added bouts to all of the light heavyweights on TUF 8, and marked the record frame with "EXH" and if applicable, added a subsequent note. --Piranesi2007 (talk) 02:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks interesting initially. As I posted in the TUF talk page, my questions are: Do we list exhibition matches for all fighters? If so, how do we verify the matches occurred, as not all exhibition matches can be found easily. If not, what determines whose exhibition matches get listed? Finally, for those fighters who have a lot of exhibition matches, would they clutter up the fight record too much? --TreyGeek (talk) 02:48, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Basically, if it happened and be confirmed, it goes in the record page. Clutter would only be an issue so much as smaller-name fighters clutter up a record in contrast to larger names.  Just my vision, though. --Piranesi2007 (talk) 03:22, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Griffin / Evans title fight
There seems to be some confusion about how the Forrest Griffin vs. Rashad Evans title fight ended at UFC 92. Because Griffin said he did not submit, and because the UFC lists the fight as a TKO, I added that it was a TKO in the articles. Another editor, user:2008Olympian, and an IP address have been quoting Sherdog, saying that the fight ended in submission. Any thoughts on what to do? Chicken Wing (talk) 16:05, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It is clearly a TKO for three reasons. The first is that UFC.com lists it as a TKO. The second is that Rashad Evans was announced as winner by TKO. The third is that there was no submission of the night honors given because there were no submissions at UFC 92. If Forrest had submitted, it would have been the submission of the night (since it would have been the only one). I don't know why this person keeps trying to put submission. I have changed it to TKO twice now (one time someone changed it to submission w/o even changing the reference, isn't that vandalism?) --Xander756 (talk) 20:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's probably one of those things where submitting to being punched sounds more humiliating, so people are trying to inject that into the article. Either that, they thought Griffin submitted the first time they watched it, so now that they've found one source that says it, they're sticking by it.  I agree with you that removing the sourced decision with an unsourced edit should be considered vandalism, but I'd be careful.  Not assuming good faith (which I probably didn't do in my first two sentences here) can come back to bite you.  Chicken Wing (talk) 22:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't want to violate WP:3RR, so I thought I'd mention again that IP addresses continue to change the Forrest Griffin and Rashad Evans pages to say that the fight ended by submission. I'm a bit embarrassed to have to bring up such a trivial point, but the incorrect information on the page just isn't proper.  Chicken Wing (talk) 10:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is irrefutable evidence that it was a TKO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrLECui2xOg&feature=related If you can get past the obnoxious laughing, you can hear Bruce Buffer announce the winner by TKO near the end of the video. I think that in light of this, if it is changed again, it should be reported as it is clearly vandalism at that point. --Xander756 (talk) 20:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * They said they'd be changing the Fight Finder record to a TKO on the Sherdog Radio Network just now. Think that seals it. -- aktsu (t / c) 21:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The commission has it as a TKO. That's enough for me --Piranesi2007 (talk) 10:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion to List Fighter's Purses
I would like to see each fighters base pay listed in the fight history table. I think it provides some insight into the future of the fighters. For example, Cheick Kongo was paid $45k for his fight in UFC 92. This is a fighter that has been scheduled for un-aired fights in the past. I think his $45k salary tells you that the UFC has plans for him to move up to a title shot.

There are other benefits of listing purses like showing the progression and increasing popularity of the sport, providing some information on the business side of fighting etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.48.34.47 (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should have it in the tables, but no argument against adding sourced fighter's purses to the main prose of their articles. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:45, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I am informing this project that I have suggested merging supercard, undercard, and main event into card (sports) because some/all of those articles may be used by you all. The conversation is taking place at Talk:Card (sports). Nikki ♥  311  01:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Input needed at Lee Hasdell
If anyone is interested, some input on the issues at the Lee Hasdell article would be very much appreciated. At the moment it's pretty much only me and ClaudioProductions, who have a COI being Hasdell's son, discussing them. Thanks in advance. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:16, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

MMA Record Tables: NEED TEMPLATE
Is there an official format for the MMA Record table? I was looking at them hoping to standardize them, but I couldn't find any real official format that would help with the ordering, whether or not to include the location and/or record, and the title of the section. jhanCRUSH (talk) 23:20, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I would use the one on the main project page. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * A template needs to be made for the standard table. It should be based off of the table included on the MMA project page, so that it will be easy to adopt it into all the project pages. If I get some time I'll do this myself Floodo1 (talk) 00:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Purse vs Salary
There's a discussion about whether to use 'purse' or 'salary' to describe the reported payout to fighters on Talk:UFC 94 is anyone if interested. -- aktsu (t / c) 19:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have posted my final, thoroughly sourced, arguments on the matter over at the talk page. Please read them and comment. RonaldW123 (talk) 07:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Reach, we need it
Guys, we need to add 'reach' to the fighter info column. Before EVERY UFC fight they do "the tale of the tape" which measures height, weight, age, and reach. Reach is a pretty important stat anyway, so I'm going to modify the template for fighters info box to include it. Then I'm going to edit a few fighter by hand and hopefully others can do the rest. Floodo1 (talk) 19:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC) Please discuss any objections:
 * I believe it was already added a month or so ago? -- aktsu (t / c) 19:35, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, it's already added only edited so that it doesn't show up as default (if not every infobox missing the reach-argument would just show ).  Just add |reach=*something* to the infobox and it'll show up. -- aktsu  (t / c) 19:39, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll fix the examples of the template to that it's clear what's included. -- aktsu (t / c) 19:45, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, anyone remember Fedor's reach so I can add it to the example :P -- aktsu (t / c) 19:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem I have run into is that we don't have any way of verifying the stat. Editors seeing it on the video before the fight isn't going to work.  Does anyone have a source?-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 05:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't it? It would work exactly the same as when we're citing magazines and the like. We even have a "cite video" and "cite episode" template. If there ever was a dispute, there's lots of people able to "aquire" the fights in question. -- aktsu (t / c) 12:23, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I love this idea. How cool would it be for readers to open up the article and see the fighter's reach? Not even Sherdog.com has that stat readily available. Maybe if the reach is disputed, and we're lucky, we can link the disputer directly to a youtube video. Bad intentionz (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Added for Fedor and Andrei with Affliction: Day of Reckoning as the source. -- aktsu (t / c) 16:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * All right, I added Shogun, Rampage, Forrest, Anderson Silva, Dan Henderson, Lyoto Machida, and Tito Ortiz. I opted for a cite video approach though, and not sure if it's appropriate. Also, Dan Henderson, Anderson Silva, and Forrest Griffin's numbers weren't based on their latest PPV's. If someone could verify that would be awesome. Bad intentionz (talk) 20:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I might be showing my ignorance here, but is it legal to take screenshots from UFC broadcasts and post them on a personal webpage outside of Wikipedia? I was just thinking that if somebody (or a group of somebodies) were willing to screenshot the 'Tale of the Tape' from UFC and other broadcasts, we could use it as a source for not only reach, but the flag issue as well. -- jhan  CRUSH  23:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * As a self-published source, that website would not be a reliable source per WP:RS, i.e. not something we could use. I wouldn't worry about it, we're unlikely to have disputes about the reach. I'm sure lots of people here are able to verify the numbers from tale of the tapes without much problem. Also, as I noted above the UFC use country of birth-flags so we've had to scrap that idea :\ -- aktsu (t / c) 23:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

MMABay.co.uk
I was pretty sure some of us agreed that MMABay isn't a reliable source somewhere, but I can't find it! Can we just quickly form a consensus that it isn't so and be done with it? As "evidence" I'd like to point to this article from January 11 where it was "exclusively revealed" that Rampage would face Evans at UFC 100, which were to take place on July 4 (it's actually scheduled to take place on July 11). While it's funny that Rampage-Evans actually might take place should Rampage beat Jardine, MMABay claimed the UFC have already pencilled the pair in to headline the celebrations on the UFC 100 card, which was of course not the case. Thing like that, and the fact that everything is written by Michael  Pepper, and the fact that the website probably is made in Frontpage should be enough to establish that it's not a reliable source per WP:RS. Thought? -- aktsu (t / c) 22:54, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I just noticed that Peppers doesn't write everything. Someone named Rory Logan apparently do writeups summarizing interviews and such other sites have published. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah MMABay is definitely not reliable. I remember somebody was spamming those links over at Sherdog and all the stories turned out untrue (or the majority of them). We should not use that site. Bad intentionz (talk) 22:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Lyoto Machida
Hello everyone. I recently put some work into expanding the Lyoto Machida article. In the process, however, I've been butting heads with an anonymous editor. I don't want to wage a one-man edit war with this individual, so I was wondering if some third parties from this project could swing by the article and take a look. -Captain Crawdad (talk) 23:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

FA for Fedor Emelianenko
I am going to bite the bullet and nominate Fedor for Feature-article status. I am sure it will need a ton of work, so please pitch in and let's see if we can get our first FA!-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 08:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Go for GA 1st as it will help draw the extra eyes needed improve the article ready for the FA screening. --Nate1481 08:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it is already posted and has some critiques. It looks like a big hurdle will be to have everything sourced by reliable sources.  What we pass as reliable here might not cut it in the review.  I think that we can make a claim for Sherdog.com and MMAWeekly.com, but any others I don't know.  Please help replace refs to other sites with refs to one of those two sites.  Or if you know of any arguments that would support other MMA sites as reliable sources, please ass your thoughts on the candidacy page.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 19:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * MMAJunkie.com should probably be good as well since they have a partnership with Yahoo! Sports. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:17, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And Inside MMA... -- aktsu (t / c) 20:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Question about abbreviated UFC x in the prose
I've seen some articles italicize the events (eg UFC 92) in the prose. Is this part of a MOS guideline I'm unaware of? Thanks. Bad intentionz (talk) 23:36, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The titles of works are generally italicized or placed in quotes in most manuals of style, italics for major works and quotes for minor works. Mixed martial arts events are not specifically stated in WP:MOST, but as a name of a televised program, I've generally italicized an event name, whether it's just UFC 94 or UFC 94: St-Pierre vs. Penn 2. hateless 00:23, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll give my Silva/Jackson article a fix when I have the time. Bad intentionz (talk) 07:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

WP:CRYSTAL and fight records
seem to disagree with me that we should not list scheduled/upcoming fights in the fight record as he uncommented my commenting of the Silva-Franklin-fight. WP:CRYSTAL is one reason for not listing, and that it is a major source for vandalism is another. Can we get a consensus for one or the other? -- aktsu (t / c) 23:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you mean not posting it on a fight record until officially announced by the promotion, or not posting until the actual event takes place? -- jhan  CRUSH  00:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * After taking place. Adding it before would be saying it will take place which is never the case. -- aktsu (t / c) 00:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright, I took a good look at WP:CRYSTAL and I think I can make a good argument to include information about future UFC events, especially events with an officially announced card. It seems like you can write about a future event as long as the information is notable, verifiable and sufficiently referenced.  This puts information for UFC 99 in a bit of a gray area because there hasn't been an official announcement or bout agreement.  From MMAWeekly.com: "...sources have indicated that Franklin and Silva have agreed to face each other at a catch weight somewhere in the neighborhood of 195 pounds."  From MMAJunkie.com: "A source close to one of the competitors told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) the fight has been agreed upon, but not signed, and both competitors are open to doing it at a catch-weight between 185 and 205 pounds."  In my opinion, this is not solid enough for verifiability and is probably still speculation.  WP:CRYSTAL says: "Individual scheduled or expected future events should only be included if the event is notable and almost certain to take place."  I think any officially announced bout is almost certain to take place.  Not certain, but almost certain.  Any other thoughts?  -- jhan  CRUSH  01:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just checking we're on the same page here; I'm talking of the fight records only. Any mention in the prose on fighter's articles and on even pages because I have no problems with because then it's made clear the bout "is scheduled" and "announced" or similar. A listing in the fight record does not similarly convey that. -- aktsu (t / c) 01:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was thinking more generally... -- jhan  CRUSH  03:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that fight records should remain unaltered until after the fight is over. After all, fights are never guaranteed to happen until both fighters are in the cage and the ref tells them to start.  At anytime before then the match can be called off.
 * Discussing the impending match-up in the prose is alright with me as long as we mention that it is scheduled to happen and should it change the article be updated to reflect that. --TreyGeek (talk) 02:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How would we feel about a third option in addition to Win and Loss such as Future in the Result column with a color other than red or green to signify that the event is yet to take place? -- jhan  CRUSH  03:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, a person's fight record is exactly that: a record of their fights. You cannot record a fight that has not happened yet.  Therefore, by my reasoning, only completed fights should appear in a fight record.  As I said above, I have no problems with a future fight being discussed in the prose as part of their MMA profession, especially if the upcoming fight is of some kind of significance.  Again, this is only my opinion and I will accept whatever the consensus is.  --TreyGeek (talk) 03:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * TreyGeek nailed exactly my thinking. hateless 04:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you guys are probably right, but I'm just trying to find some middle ground because there are so many Wikipedia users who have never seen a talk page and will just redo any edits we undo. Is there any way we can avoid these trivial edit wars? -- jhan  CRUSH  04:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand the sentiment, but it would be easy enough to consider that an entry that only has an opponent, future date, and site is just an entry that the fighter is scheduled to appear, so to speak, especially when the fighter is listed on the event page as an announced matchup. The reason I am hesitant to get into whether to permit inclusion of future fights in the record box is that it will result in never-ending edit wars, usually with anonymous ip users, who so commonly add this information.  Since it is not obviously wrong to include the info, I just don't think we need to essentially create a category of vandalism out of whole cloth.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 04:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * In my experience, the "problem" of anons adding future fights to record tables is far inferior to the resulting vandalism when other anons are tempted to add a result to that record... I think having consensus not to include future fights will save us a lot of reverting as we'll avoid a lot of of unnecessary vandalism, though it's true it's less of a problem on low-traffic pages. Putting up anything on BJ's or GSP's article is begging for vandalism though... -- aktsu (t / c) 05:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol, that is true! "St-Pierre's next fight was a TKO over Anderson Silva by Vaseline in the eye..."  Thank you, I'm here all night!  But seriously, I'm down with nothing in the record box until the fight is over. I will get to Fedor's article to address the FAC issues, but I won't be able to do much significantly until Monday.  Sorry to nominate then disappear right after, but I am sucked into the real world for a few days. Thanks for the help on it so far.  I would love to have the best fighter in the world become the first MMA Feature article.  (Upcoming pure personal bias alert) Since he is not a UFC fighter, it seems in some way to be  more educational to showcase him first.  As opposed to it being mr.good-article-pro-wrestler that we all know.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 06:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I wish there were a better option, but I can agree with nothing in the fight record box until the fight takes place. -- jhan  CRUSH  07:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

<-Just a thought but hwy not use the comments to make a note saying 'Please leave scheduled fight hidden till after the event' or some such --Nate1481 11:14, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that is an even less desirable solution as it is not apparent from scanning the article that something needs to be removed or edited. For example, with Amir Sadollah's next match rescheduled multiple times, it wouldn't be apparent that there's a mostly blank record entry that needs adjusting or deleting.  At the same time, after the match people may add a new entry for the fight, not paying attention that there is a commented out record stub in the table already; resulting in a mess.  Reverting anyone's (user or anon ip) edits of a future fight record with a comment on the talk page directing them here seems the best solution, to me.  --TreyGeek (talk) 14:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I've been doing, but I've been reverted promptly by people who cite the "current standard" for fighter bio pages. hateless 18:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

James Irvin
Diff. This guy have been changing it to that for months now, and I have been reverting him. Can somebody help out? -- aktsu (t / c) 19:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Is there anything I can do other than join your side of the edit war? -- jhan  CRUSH  02:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not really, though my thinking was that he'd be further discouraged if it wasn't the same user reverting all the time. Seems like east718 blocked him for 'warring though, so guess it won't be a problem for the next three months :D -- aktsu (t / c) 02:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * He's doing it on Houston Alexander, too. I got your back. Gromlakh (talk) 07:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You sure you're looking at the right user..? Also he's back using a residential ISP as opposed to the college IP he used previously. Reverted and gave NPOV warning. -- aktsu (t / c) 01:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Flags
The result of this discussion was no consensus one way or the other. Please read the section below to furthur discuss the topic and come to a consensus. — Moe   ε  06:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking we should address how we handle flags for people with multiple nationalities/dual citizenship etc. I'm getting a bit tired of seeing people edit war over the flag for say Brandon Vera, or having to revert good faith edits changing to subnational flags. Those are not huge problems or anything, but I was thinking I might as well bring it up.

I would be in favor of getting rid of them altogether as per MOS:FLAG etc., but going by the previous discussion people find them too pretty (I did as well for a while) as well as helpful in showing the scope and reach of a fighter's experience (quoting hateless), which I can see the point in - though it's not as relevant today as it was a few years ago.

Anyway, besides getting rid of them - is there anything we can do/decide on? If anything, I thing a consensus to use the flag the promotion use would be helpful. (That would make Vera American for those wondering). -- aktsu (t / c) 19:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Those would be the flags on fight records and event pages btw, the infobox-flags is another issue altogether which I don't believe there's even complete consensus on project wide atm. -- aktsu (t / c) 19:59, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How do you verify what flag a promotion uses? For example, Efrain Escudero on his UFC.com profile shows as born in Mexico and is fighting out of Arizona.  If we're depending on the promotion to tell us which flag to use, which do we use in this case?
 * I'm all for enforcing MOS:FLAG and removing them from the MMA records. Alas, that doesn't appear to be the current consensus.  --TreyGeek (talk) 20:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Most promotions include a single flag for each fighter on the "tale of the tape", so I'd propose we use that. Would probably be the closes to any "official" flag they fight under. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:20, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I hope others will chime in on this discussion. My question earlier on verifiability, I've decided, is important only in rare cases.  In these rare situations, like Brandon Vera and Efrain Escudero, being able to slap a tag on the issue would be helpful in stopping revert wars.  Using information from television/PPV broadcasts will make  doing this difficult. I think the idea of using "tale of the tape" information is a good one.  I just wonder if there is something more definitive that could be used to cite a source and end arguments. --TreyGeek (talk) 01:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * For the UFC fighter profiles will (probably) match tape flags so all the sourcing we will need should be here --Nate1481 11:50, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Explain how that link is useful for sourcing which flag should be shown for Efrain Escudero. --TreyGeek (talk) 15:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Because you can Search for Efrain Escudero and get this: Born San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora,  Mexico. All useful infomation, now unless he's become an American citizen, I assume you would use Mexico.--Nate1481 11:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * For Vera this is Born Norfolk, Virginia,  USA. If its more complicated it will needs explaining in the text not trying to put it all in the infobox. --Nate1481 12:00, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * (undent) Thing is, Escudero is an American citizen and have lived most of his live there. See Talk:Ultimate Fighting Championship. Also, we can't automatically use the flag from where they're born. Bisping, for example, was born in Cyprus etc. I think the most logical (save the best solution which would be getting rid of them all) would be to use whatever the promotion uses, i.e. the closes thing to a flag they have chosen to fight under. To use anything else does not make any sens to me; who are we do decide what country they should represent? But more importantly, MMA is NOT a international competition, and fighters DO NOT actually represent their country - which is why having the flags at all is wrong imo.
 * Anyway, what about we start a vote/rfc or something to decide 1) whether to use flags at all, and 2) if so - whether to use the promotions listed flag or not? -- aktsu (t / c) 12:36, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree flags are not needed, unless it is billed as an international event, the born thing was just looking for an easy answer. --Nate1481 14:02, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: enforcing MOS:FLAG by removing the flags from event pages and fight records

 * Support - Per fighters not representing countries in most MMA events; "emphasize[es] nationality without good reason". Stereotypes like Brazilians all being submission experts/BBJ black belts are not valid anymore. -- aktsu (t / c) 14:37, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that it "emphasizes nationality without good reason". However, stereotypes are simply an example of one out of many potential reasons that someone may want to know the nationality (at a glance) of the fighters listed. I think these reasons are probably trumped by my agree with you that nationality is not notable enough to include in such a prominent location. After all if anyone actually clicks on the fighters name, they're going to be able to see his nationality at the top of his own wiki page. In conclusion, I maybe have to move to the support section :)Floodo1 (talk) 00:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose, MOS:ICONS makes allowances for sports and appears to support the idea that sports is a valid "good" reason for its usage. These flag icons were afterall created for sports articles. I don't see why the MMA project should be the one exception to every other sport project in banning its use. Cases like Escudero calls for refinement in guidelines, outright banning seems like lazy solution. As for stereotypes, sorry, I don't see how "stereotypes" are eliminated since we can deduce one's nationality from the fighter's name. hateless 18:40, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The "stereotype"-comment was meant in response your comment that the flags "are useful in showing the scope and reach of a fighter's experience" in the discussion at the top of the page. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but that was how I interpreted it. -- aktsu (t / c) 19:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Support If I personally see the abuse of flag icons in MMA articles again, I am going to report it to the appropriate noticeboard instead of reporting it to the project that continues to abuse the guideline. Fighters do not fight for countries, they compete for a MMA promotion whereas in the Olympics you are fighting for the country you represent. In addition, the line blurs when some editors fail to use the correct flag for these articles. Just FYI, when they are fighting out of a country, that means that is where they live, where someone was born is irrelevant to MMA articles or any other sport. But regardless, the flag usage like in the Efrain Escudero is disgusting. The flags in his infobox directly violate Manual of Style (icons). — Moe   ε  18:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been the norm in WP:FLAGS/MOS:ICONS for long time that a flag next to a stated (written out) nationality adds nothing and should be removed. As such, flags shouldn't be in MMAStatBox at all. That BTW is not what this proposal is about. hateless 19:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose, I agree with hateless. I also add that I like how you can look at a fighter's page and get a general snapshot of how traveled they are by looking at the flags in their record.  I also like how the flags can show how world-wide and diverse MMA is getting.  I would support removing flags from the infobox in Escudero's article, but not from event pages and fight records. -- jhan  CRUSH  19:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Removed — Moe   ε  19:10, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose I think its ok to use flags next to the fighters name only, indicating his nationality. I dont agree using them with locations where the fight took place. the format i use Remy Bonjasky.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 20:10, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I also agree that, regardless of what the consensus is regarding using flags for the fighters, the flagicons being used for fight locations is excessive and needs to be stopped. Gromlakh (talk) 07:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Abstain I've been watching this discussion all day as have read over MOS:FLAG several times. I can see the potential value of having a flag next to a fighter's name in the records box.  However, based on this discussion and the contents of some of the articles, I do not believe people know how the guidelines suggest they be used (and yes, guidelines like MOS:FLAG are different than Wikipedia policy):
 * Flags should not be placed in infoboxes; yet, I know of two articles that break this guideline.
 * Flags should not be used to represent a person's nationality, but rather should be used to signify the country the person is representing. If Efrain Escudero want to represent Mexico in his fights, there should be a Mexican flag next to his name regardless of if he is an American citizen.  Also, the flag should be for the nation the person is representing at the point in time of the event.  So if Escudero represents Mexico at the TUF finale and the US at some future UFC event, the Mexican flag should remain on the record boxes for the TUF finale.
 * The important thing, IMO, is that we are able to come to a consensus on how we will use the flags and stick with it. We'd also have to refer editors who are not part of this discussion here if they make any changes made to articles after the consensus is made.  --TreyGeek (talk) 00:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Abstain While I dont see that having flags is bothersome, I'm mixed. On one hand I think that they have almost zero significance within the context of MMA itself, because it's not a nation based sport. Flags for things like the olympics matter because it's based on athletes representing countries. However in MMA where you come from is just a minor statistic. However, on the other hand, I personally value knowing roughly where each fighter came from, because I have stereotypes about say being from brazil probably mans you have excellent BJJ. I also don't think it's very bothersome to have a little flag denoting the country of origin for a fighter. Finally, there is the issue of which flag do you use for someone that is from Brazil and fought fights from there, but then moves to the US and according to the ufc pre-fight footage "is fighting out of _____, USA"? Which flag do you use? his country of origin and early carreer, or do you give him an american flag just because he moved here now?
 * I think this means we should not use flags and let people click on fighters names to discover where they are from / reside, but I can't make up my mind :) Floodo1 (talk) 19:53, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Where do you gonna click if theres no article created on specific fighter. Gegard Mousasi, has fought an international crowd and flags help to show that. I think majority of you guys miss the simple point here, it's not us to decide what flag to use - we gotta go by every fighters' personal preference. if theres a dispute, add a reference and matter solved. bottom line, we are dealing with a worldwide sport here, with fighters from all kinda different countries, might not be as diverse as soccer or boxing yet but sure as hell moving that direction.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 02:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Oppose The flags do not belong in any infobox (fighter or event) per MOS:FLAG, but on the event pages I support their use in the matchup sections. -- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 04:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Strong Support We're actually dealing with a few different problems here. Problem #1 is that, as I read it, flag usage to indicate nationality of fighters (for records, event matchups, etc.) is a clear contradiction of MOS:FLAG. MOS:FLAG does reference the usage of flags in sports-related articles, and I think that's fine. But the references are about people who compete in sports that have teams representing particular nations, not for individuals who fight on teams that have nothing to do with a nation. For example, take this quote from the section dealing with sportspersons:


 * Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense; flags should only indicate the sportsperson's national squad/team or sporting nationality. Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that the flags represent sporting nationality, not nationality, if any confusion might arise.

The qualifier "sporting nationality" is critical here. We're talking about someone who represents a particular national team. For example, what if we have a person with dual French-US citizenship competing in the Olympics for France's official national team? In that case, a US flag icon would be inappropriate, because the competitor's "sporting nationality" for that event is French, not US. A flag icon may be appropriate for that; not because it's a "sport" and flags should be used for anyone who competes in a sport, but because the person is representing a nation-state and the flag icon can help to highlight that.

This reasoning has no application in MMA, and in fact the usage of flags in our record tables does just what MOS:FLAG says not to do: it emphasizes "nationality", but not "sporting nationality." MMA fighters do not fight to represent countries/nations, they represent themselves (or, arguably, their camps). They have no "sporting nationality" because there's no official national teams in MMA. Take Marcus Aurelio for example. He is Brazilian, but fights for American Top Team out of Coconut Creek, FL, USA. He's not fighting for a Brazilian team, yet fight records for his opponents have 🇧🇷 next to his name. Why? He's not representing Brazil in MMA, so why are we emphasizing that?

The important point is that flag icons are for emphasis, not simply to convey some information about a person. You put a flag icons in there, and you're saying: "Representing Brazil: Marcus Aurelio. Representing the USA: Tyson Griffin." The emphasis is not only not needed in the article, it's also not even accurate, since those people aren't representing those countries in combat. Marcus Aurelio is a Brazilian-born mixed martial artist; he is not a mixed martial artist who represents the country of Brazil.

Problem #2 is the overuse of flag icons pair with the location of fights. What information does "Location: 🇺🇸 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA" convey that "Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA" does not? What is the purpose of the flag icon in these records? It needlessly emphasizes the country the fight took place in. The country is irrelevant. Really, who cares that the fight was in the US? I'm not saying that the "location" column should be removed from the record box, but the country itself is not so important to the fight or event that it must be emphasized. "🇺🇸 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA" is really saying "Las Vegas, Nevada, UNITED FRIGGIN' STATES OF FRIGGIN' AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

hateless commented earlier that the flag icons were created for sports, and MMA should not be the single exception that bans flags. Well, we're not. Most baseball articles do not flag the nationality of their players. Neither do basketball, football, or hockey articles. In the instances where they do, I would argue that they suffer from the same problem we're addressing here: needless emphasis of nationality. These fighters are not acting as national representatives of their sports, and their nationality does not play an important role in describing the fight between two parties. MOS:FLAG is there for a reason, and the current usage of flags in MMA articles is squarely against the MOS without good reason for doing so. Enforce the policy; remove the flags. Gromlakh (talk) 06:46, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Majority of international promotions use flags on fighter introductions, on K-1 title fights a national anthem is played for the country each fighter represents. Can you show me in MOS:FLAG where does it say that the flags next to the athletes are squarely against.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 07:20, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * There is no section that says "Do not use flags next to athlete names." What I was referring to is what I quoted; flags are supposed to be used to identify the "sportsperson's national team/squad" and not their nationality in a "non-sporting sense." Mixed martial artists do not have a "sporting nationality" because they do not represent national teams. In this sense, "🇺🇸 Matt Lindland" would be appropriate in an article discussing Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1996 Olympics because he represented the US Olympic Team. It would not be appropriate for an MMA fight because Lindland isn't fighting for/representing the US. Gromlakh (talk) 07:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * yeah a "non-sporting sense" like putting a flag next to John Lennon or Jackie Chan. but i strongly disagree your non team/squad sports argument and I'll bet most of the brothers from the Boxing project would say the same. You don't have to be in the Olympics to represent your country. For example, Joe Blow, on all his fights in U.S. on local shows where everyone else is from U.S. he doesn't have to carry a flag to show where he's from but all of a sudden when he gets the call from Japan things change, Japan is a foreign country, you fight on a foreign land, you represent your country.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 08:11, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm just not seeing your logic. If that's how we're breaking it down, then we would only use flags when people are fighting on foreign soil and/or are fighting someone from another country. After all, I'd suppose that we can agree that when Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir fight again in Las Vegas, there's not going to be any kind of national pride going on there where either guy is fighting on behalf of the US. That would lead to inconsistent usage where we have "Brock Lesnar v. Frank Mir" next to "🇨🇦 Georges St. Pierre v. 🇨🇦 Jonathan Goulet" because one is an international fight and one is not. At least, that would be correct if the fight was in Vegas, but if it was in Toronto that would have to be reversed and Mir/Lesnar would get the flag icons.


 * Now, I know full well that's not what you're advocating, because that would look dumb. But if we don't do it like that, then what we're emphasizing is not the country they represent (because they're not representing a country), but instead just what nationality they are by birth. Going back to my Marcus Aurelio example, the flag flying in his corner during fights isn't Brazilian, it's a giant American Top Team logo. Plus, during interviews, they don't find others from Brazil who come out and say "This Brazilian Marcus Aurelio will defeat his American opponent and defend the pride of Brazil." They interview his training partners who emphasize the teamwork and dedication of ATT and talk about how nobody can beat ATT. Since ATT is a team based in the US, shouldn't we then be doing "🇺🇸 Marcus Aurelio", since the team he represents is in the US? And we haven't even broken the surface of why we need to EMPHASIZE this in the first place. Gromlakh (talk) 22:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would probably be in support of a proposal to remove flags from the location column of an MMA record. -- jhan  CRUSH  18:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Alternative proposal
So that everyone wins, I would prefer if the WP:FLAG issues were resolved with the flags remaining intact. Please see: This way the core issues with WP:FLAG is resolved and the flags are still there. — Moe   ε  19:45, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * MMA Records section for Efrain Escudero
 * UFC 1 results section
 * The match-result-box looks to unwieldy and hard to get an overview over IMO. You might be on to something with the "fighting out of" column on the fight record though. That would in any case clarify exactly what the flags mean, i.e. what they have told the organization to put up as their flag - what they are fighting under as opposed to how we have them now, where they could mean either birthplace, citizenship or nationality. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:04, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Putting flags in a different column removes its context and makes it confusing as to what the flag belongs to. hateless 20:28, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * True enough :\ How would you feel about it if one completely removed the flag-column though, only leaving the "fighting out of"? Also on another note does UFC's "fighting out of" even coinside with the flag they use? Or, looking past that, would a "fighting out of" be sufficient in covering what the flag currently represents - i.e. we completly ignore UFC's flags? Will check what's on Escudero's tape now... -- aktsu  (t / c) 20:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Escudereo's "fighting out of" is Arizona. How does people feel about using that to avoid fighting over flags? -- aktsu (t / c) 20:40, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I edited it, now there is no flag column, only a fighting out of column on UFC 1. I also edited the MMA stats box on Efrain Escudero. Please tell me what you think so I can improve on it. — Moe   ε  20:39, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * i kinda like the concept what you working on, i have not been a huge fan of the current various styles of result records. i think you should move the fighter names and flags together. "fighting out of" is unnecessary, if you have the flag and the name together its obvious where the guy is fighting out of.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 21:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Meh, not to spread the discussion all over the place but we should try to find a way where we either avoids the flags or makes it clear what the flags actually represent. Escudero fights out of Arizona, but fight under a Mexican flag for example, so without any explanation of what the flag represents it's impossible to know. -- aktsu (t / c) 21:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If Escudero is using the flag just to represent that he is from Mexico, its not really as important as where he is fighting out of. Place of birth should really have no effect on MMA results/records boxes. — Moe   ε  22:26, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * still a work in progress but i think much improved look on results table. to Aktsu: those kinda details should be mentioned on his infobox not in results table. believe me there are tons of fighters like that. Nicholas Pettas for example, born in Greece to Danish-American parents, grew up in United States, currently lives and fights out of Tokyo, Japan. On all of his fights still represents Denmark.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 22:25, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I give up trying to help if editors keep reverting obvious violations of manual of style of these icons. And just FYI Marty Rockatansky, just because there are other violations of it widespread across Wikipedia doesn't mean it is widely accepted to violate the guideline when it explicitly says to do otherwise. Goodbye. — Moe   ε  22:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Moe use a sandbox, clearly this is a controversial decision for this project and using living ammo isn't going to stay like you want it for very long . If your sandbox version is agreed then a while scale roll out can be implemented Gnevin (talk) 08:52, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: use promotion's listed flag
If we're going to continue to use the flags as we currently do, I say we decide to use the flag the promotion list for the fighter i.e. "what they fight under" as opposed to wherever they're born/live or similar. What do we think? -- aktsu (t / c) 10:14, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree I believe it is a fair assumption that the promotion will verify with the fighter as to what country the fighter wishes to represent for that match. (Now, if only we could verify and source that information, this would be perfect.) --TreyGeek (talk) 15:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

According to the administrator I spoke to, we shouldn't be using flags on any article regarding MMA unless we have a reliable reference that tells us that this is a international sporting event, where fighters are representing a country and that the reliable source has to actually use flags. He took a quick look at the UFC website and from what he saw, he did not see anything that remotely looks like a international sporting event. Most international sporting events have a list of people by what country they represent; he only found lists of fighters by weight class. Without references for what flags they represent, then they should all be removed. However, if you actually find a reliable reference with flags next to their names that proves that the flags mean anything it could be a different story. Flags just added by Wikipedia editors without a reference violates several guidelines outside of WP:FLAG. If this issue is not corrected, I will take further steps to remove them. — Moe   ε  18:36, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone is claiming we are talking about international sporting events here (we're clearly not), but the dispute is that some prefers the flags anyway. Wouldn't the actual broadcast of the event be a reliable source for the flags used (that it's the flag they are listed with, not that it means anything significant)? -- aktsu (t / c) 18:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Erm, flags here should only supposed to be used for these articles if it is a international sporting event, and since MMA doesn't seem to be one, I don't see how flags are appropriate. If they bring a flag to the ring, it is most likely a symbol of nationalistic pride rather than them actually representing a country. — Moe   ε  18:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course, that's what I'm saying as well. But it's a fact that the UFC lists a flag on the fighters "tale of the tape", which is the one I would argue we should use as well were we to continue to use the flags as we do now. Remember, the argument on whether to use the flags at all is a content/style dispute and not something were the rules are written in stone (guidelines are not policy and all that). -- aktsu (t / c) 19:18, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, that would be one place to find the flags, but are the use of the flags consistent? Meaning, since the beginning of UFC, for example, do they use the flags? I'm not sure about this. If the tale of the tape added random flags in there just for show, I'm not sure this would be considered a reliable source. And if there are other UFC programs that don't have a tale of the tape with flags, then what? This is why an online source for fighters listed by country or a concrete source for the representation of a flag icon is needed, we can not assume a particular flag. —  Moe   ε  19:30, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia works on consensus. Looking at the vote that started this (above), removing all flags from articles was opposed (3-2, admittedly not a clear cut consensus).  Another thing to keep in mind is that WP:FLAG is a guideline, it is advisory in nature and not a mandatory policy.  I don't think anything is served by making veiled threats above.  Rather we need to come to a consensus on the best way to handle the issue.  --TreyGeek (talk) 19:13, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The quality of MMA articles are suffering. Consensus is needed, but not when violation of policy is involved. What Wikipedia is not, no original research and verifiability is involved in this, not just the manual of style for icons. The there isn't a source for these flags usage, this is a problem. —  Moe   ε  19:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree on the need to verify & provide a source for what country a fighter represents during their matches. If you look at my comments, that has been something I have tried to draw attention to.  As for the quality of MMA articles, I think the lack of quality has to do with a lot more than the addition of flags in the records boxes.  --TreyGeek (talk) 19:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, but it has a lot to do with it. A page like UFC 93 wouldn't get more than a B-class rating because of the results section and how it is (even if there was a fairly good written article prose). Good/featured article content raters are pretty strict, so a new formatting (along with the consensus of what flag to use) for that has to be done. — Moe   ε  20:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't really see what's the big deal here. We are talking about maybe 5% off all fighters with different nationality issues. If there's a dispute, provide a source - first should be fighters own personal website, if available, then promotions profile and third sherdog or boxrec. To all the guys who keep removing flags from the infoboxes, if these former featured articles can have one Wayne Gretzky, Manchester United F.C. there are no rules against it.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 20:38, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right it's not really a big deal but I still think it's something we should get it out of the way to avoid edit wars etc. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)


 * We have to go by what each individual fighter represents. For example if Mr. X is puertorican-japanese-american but walks to the ring with a Norwegian flag, and the information is sourced and referenced, fine if thats what the fighter represents or wants to fight under thats how we gonna go by. simple as that. I had this whole issue with Malaipet, a thai-american, on mma fights he represents thailand and in muay thai he fights under u.s. flag. in mma he uses his birth name mongkhon wiwasuk, in muay thai he fights according to the thai customs under his fighters name, Malaipet Team Diamond. confused yet? Muay Thai fighters change their names each time they change camp, before that he was known as Malaipet Sasiprapa and Malaipet Sitprapom. Disputes like this we gotta by each individual case. Marty Rockatansky (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I just realized something when getting the reach for GSP and BJ; the above proposal won't work. The flag they use on the tale of the tape is birthcountry. :| -- aktsu (t / c) 17:43, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we need some sort of tier system... ie, we go by 1.) fighter's stated preference (verbally or by carrying one flag to the arena; Tito might be Mexican American but he's no Mexican), 2.) actual citizenship or legal nationality, 3.) promoter's representation of which flag they are from. If 1 is unavailable, we use 2, and so forth. (I'm putting promoters last since, well, promoters tend to lie. If we believe Pride, for instance, Sokoudjou really trains with giraffes and lions.) In the end, if neither 1 or 2 are available, we might as well use UFC's birth country. Or, since this is an issue that is not unique to MMA, we should consult other projects and see where they stand on these issues. hateless 18:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

What we need to do is to use a reliable source to determine which flag to use. Also, flags are prohibited in all infoboxes, so the discussion is about what to use on the matchup portions of event pages only. If anyone has a reliable source for which country each fighter "fights out of," then wonderful. I am unsure if such a source exists. Sherdog is a possibility, but I think it uses nationality. No matter what it is to be, it needs to work for every fighter to prevent edit wars. -- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 05:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Aren't you forgetting the record tables as well? Sadly no such source exist. UFC use birthplace (though not consequently, Bisping is incorrectly listed as born in the UK instead of Cyprus as I just discovered), so if we're going to decide on anything it would have to be something along the lines of Hateless's suggestion above (country of birth if no preference stated). Doesn't look like we're getting anywhere as that's basically what we're doing right now... -- aktsu (t / c) 05:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Merge with WP:PW
Why not merge this Project into WP:PW and create a new bigger project that can officially be considered the most active WikiProject in all of Wikipedia and one with most of the accomplishments.  Raaggio  10:45, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Would most definitely be a sweet deal for us seeing as the number of people keeping an eye of this page can (almost) be counted on one hand it seems :\ -- aktsu (t / c) 11:46, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a question we have to consider though: can the non-PW fans of MMA get along with the non-MMA fans of PW? There might be a potential there for needless disputes.  If others don't see that as a problem, then maybe I'm just overreacting.  Chicken Wing (talk) 15:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm all for having WP:MMA be active and have people contributing to discussions (like the Flag issue above). If the reason to merge the two projects is simply to create one that "can officially be ... the most active WikiProject" that is not a good enough reason to me.  I've enjoyed both at various times of my life.  However, I'm afraid they are too different.  --TreyGeek (talk) 15:45, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to say this seems alike a really bad idea, there are critical differences and making one big project would be unwieldy and just need to be split into work groups. You could suggest a merging in Boxing or create WP:Combat sports but a merge with pro wrestling seems wrong. --Nate1481 15:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Nate. The crossover between MMA and Pro Wrestling seem to end after Ken Shamrock and Brock Lesnar.  (although I hear there is more crossover in Japan...)  Are there more than a handful of articles that are currently in the scope of both projects?  I think we're probably better off with distinct projects. -- jhan  CRUSH  02:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please no fake stuff! I don't see the MMA articles being neglected.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 05:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Fake stuff? That is why i disagree with merging the two projects together, the ignorance and negative stigma that some MMA editors have towards professional wrestling. Lest we forget someone who is fake knocking the tar out of someone who was real. Whatever your opinion is 2008Olympion, professional wrestlers suffer injuries just as much as MMA fighters. And how many times do MMA fighters compete a year, once or twice? Professional wrestlers compete one to three times a week, 52 weeks a year.. And who says the line of who competes in MMA ends at Ken Shamrock and Brock Lesnar. Apparently you forget Dan Severn in addition to other professional wrestlers who just recently entered MMA like Bobby Lashley, Brian Mailhot and Vito LoGrasso Oh, and just so you know, those supposed fakes are a combined 3-0 to my knowledge. — Moe   ε  18:32, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, I am not saying that pro-wrestling matches aren't feats of athleticism. But that doesn't change the fact that they are worked, i.e. fake.  The fact that they can get hurt doesn't mean it's not fake.  If you think that PW isn't acting, I feel for you.  I don't consider the guys like Severn or Tank Abbott to have been in real matches when they wrestled either.  And Lesnar lost his first real fight, so I don't know from where you get 3-0.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 08:06, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the point is that from an article-writing standpoint (which is really what we should be concerned about) they are pretty similar :) -- aktsu (t / c) 12:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If you payed attention to the context which i was speaking, I named 3 professional wrestlers turned MMA fighters you probably never heard of, and then said 3-0; I know Brock Lesnar is 2-1 himself. I was naming guys like Severn and Abbott because someone stated the line between MMA and professional wrestling ended at Shamrock and Lesnar, which is false. Next, I know that professional wrestling is scripted so that there is a particular winner in the end instead of a legitimate fight, but professional wrestling is not fake by any stretch of your imagination. You yourself even said they are feats of athleticism and whether you want to admit it or not, wrestlers require just as much training as MMA fighters and on top of that they have to be actors. Ignorance of professional wrestling by MMA editors is the reason I am against a merge, and you're only proving it.. — Moe   ε  09:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * When someone nicks his own forehead to make it seem as if his opponent caused a massive, bleeding injury, that's fake. When the outcome is decided before the event takes place but the fighters act as if it has not been, that's fake.  But at least we finally agree on something; I have no interest in working on pro-wrestling articles as part of the MMA project.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 08:19, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The term your looking for is blading. Blading isn't done in WWE events anymore for the most part (after a event where someone with hepatitis bladed). If there is bleeding that occurs in WWE nowadays, it is done hardway usually. Anyways, I don't really feel like arguing whether self-induced bleeding or bleeding after a legitimate fight is more real, but my personal opinion on that is if blood is coming out of somebody (no matter how it appears to have been brought upon), it's real. Indeed, the outcomes are decided before the match, what they do inside the ring (except the finish) is not preplanned and usually the wrestlers decide that themselves. And yes, I know some moves are not done fully so that injury does not occur to the person, but there are some moves, punches, kicks, etc. that are fully executed for a more realistic effect for the ones that are not. Like I said, unless you follow professional wrestling, how a professional wrestler trains, terminology, happenings and the like, your not going to know what is real, what is fake and or what the big deal is. I don't expect someone who likes mixed martial arts to be turned on to professional wrestling. And yet again we can not agree unfortunately, because I am interested in editing mixed martial arts articles as well as professional wrestling articles. I am only against it because there are uneducated people who come to Wikipedia, would look at a WikiProject like the suggested name combat sports and see professional wrestling listed there and state "none of that is real" and I think I can speak for any professional wrestler when I say that everything done in a ring is not fake, and that it can take an incredible toll on someones body, just like other combat sports (even though it is just sports entertainment). Like I said, I would like to see the projects under one parent WikiProject if the two groups can operate without name calling or labeling one another. There are many articles that share both mixed martial arts and professional wrestling content, and our infoboxes are practically the same. Personally though, I think the two sides will never see eye-to-eye because of failure to learn about one another. — Moe   ε  06:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Come on now, Brock's success does not come from performing clotheslines all day but rather his extreme athletic ability and college wrestling experience :P Not trying to hate on PW here (I actually follow Raw and Smackdown each week, though mostly for the storylines (Chris Jericho is awesome)), both have amazing athletes but that argument just won't work to show it. The fact that they do what they do, and as often as they do it, should though. Anyway, from a business-perspective MMA and PW is practically identical in the way they are promoted and managed, so besides the in-ring actions PW and MMA have more in common than not imo. More importantly, the writing of articles about them should also be pretty similar so I can't really see how merging would be a bad thing. -- aktsu (t / c) 19:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, I would love to see the two projects merged together and combine into one project like WikiProject combat sports. However, the fact the majority of MMA lovers will poo poo all over professional wrestling for being scripted and it will make both groups of editors conflict and attention will shift to the editors and not the articles themselves. That wouldn't be good. If MMA editors can refrain from name calling professional wrestling, I think the two will work just fine together. — Moe   ε  20:04, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think Nate has a great idea merging all the combat sports under one banner. I would absolutely support that. I think everybody will benefit.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 20:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The advantage of Comabat sports would be adding in Judo, TKD etc that are only covered by the general Martial Arts project currently. On the Pro Wresting thing, one of the reasons that I think it would for the worse is exactly the "Fake stuff" vs "ahh but look how they do good" argument that just happened, it will cause a running feud (irony intended) between the two groups. A cross over workgroup could be a good idea for those interested in both, that could look at articles relevent to both, but sharing a project would generate more heat then light.--Nate1481 11:41, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

No these shouldnt be merged together. Is Professional wrestling MMA? NO. keep the projects seperate. Further is Judo, BJJ, or tawkwando MMA? NO! each deserves their own project, as each are seperate fields with equal stature. However creating a combat sports project wouldnt violate this argument as it's broader than any of these other projects (mma, judo, bjj etc) but it's OVERLY broad. Specifically the issue is that within each project you should be able to have templates and consistency in formatting and (hopefully) style across the ENTIRE project. I dont think you can do this if you merge anything else with MMA. Finally, professional wrestlying IS NOT A SPORT. There are no true referees, and there is generally a predetermined outcome. While it MAY be the case that professional wrestlers are more or less athletic than MMA fighters, that bears no relevance on this distinction between sport and entertainment.....name one other sport that specifically refers to itself as "(world wide) ENTERTAINMENT" Floodo1 (talk) 19:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Marcus LeVesseur
I'm trying to compile an article for current MMA fighter and former college wrestler standout Marcus LeVesseur. I have created an article on my namespace User:Calebrw/Marcus LeVesseur. My opinion is that he is notable based solely on his wrestling career, but as there is no College Wrestling Wikiproject, I'm asking here.

Could someone tell me if he is indeed notable. If so I'll proceed with the article, but if not I'll keep it on my namespace until I can flesh out the article.

He's been covered in USA Today as well as local newspapers/TV stations and college wrestling websites. There are plenty of sources out there. Googling "Marcus LeVesseur" brings 2,710 results.

As far as wrestling goes, he's the only Division III to win 4 national championships. He was undefeated and untied in his college career, going 155-0, second only to Cael Sanderson at 159-0. He won four Minnesota state championships. Since he last loss, he went 296-0 in high school and college. He also competed at the international level and won at least one national juniors title.

He was a highly recruited player in high school. He originally went to the University of Minnesota before transferring to Augsburg College. Teams at Augsburg won two team national titles: 2005 and 2007.

Thanks and your thoughts are appreciated. Calebrw (talk) 15:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Definitely notable. Article looks like it's coming along nicely, though you should use inline citations for the references. Mind if I do some edits? -- aktsu (t / c) 15:41, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just took a look at your contribs and it seems my advice was unnecessary, you definitely know what you're doing :) -- aktsu (t / c) 15:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input. The inline citations are all on their way. I am just compiling the information. It won't be hard to get details on his college and pro career. Augsburg's athletics website is very detailed and archived, so I'm sure I could find details on each of him dual meet matches and probably at least a good portion of the tournaments/opens he was in.


 * Also, as far as notability is concerned. In one week he beat two no. 1 wrestlers in Division II. Nate Baker at St. Could State. Then Ross Taplin of the University of Nebraska-Omaha later in the week, who was named no. 1 after LeVesseur's defeat of Baker. I believe one of the two was the reigning DII national champion at 165. Calebrw (talk) 20:30, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've done quite a bit of work. Still quite a bit more information to be added from LeVesseur's Junior and Senior seasons at Augsburg. Will also add as much as I can find about the his background, etc. Calebrw (talk) 20:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Good news to report
It seems that after about a month of waiting, the Wanderlei Silva vs. Quinton Jackson has been officially listed as Wikipedia Good Article! I am very happy to report this information because it was my first article, and I really didn't know what to expect going into the review process. Perhaps more importantly though, in the process of the review we were able to establish a list of MMA reliable sources. Here are the MMA sources used in the article, and were given OKs:

Probably "top tiered", or guaranteed reliable sources:
 * Sherdog.com (partnership with ESPN)
 * MMAWeekly.com (partnership with Yahoo Sports)
 * MMAjunkie.com (partnership with Yahoo Sports)

Not sure, but have very credible partnerships:
 * bleacherreport.com is an official partner with CBS Sports.
 * thefightnetwork.com is a content partner with yahoo.com, and Foxsports.com
 * FiveOuncesofPain.com is a content partner with CBS Sports.
 * mma.fanhouse.com seems to be an entity of AOL sports

Beyond that, there are the obvious that will of course be reliable, like Yahoo! Sports, CBSSports, NBCSports, etc. I'll add more to the list as I come across them. Bad intentionz (talk) 00:40, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * With the blogs such as fanhouse.aol.com and bleacherreport.com, you have to be very careful (bleacherreport.com is essentially self-published). Try to stick to articles by accredited sportswriters, such as Sam Caplan or Steve Sievert, or less well known sportswriters who have a large body of knowledge of the sports, like Dann Stupp or Michael David Smith. — east718  &#124;  talk  &#124; 14:54, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:02, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Flag use debate
There is a current debate at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (icons) whether to permit the use of flag icons in the MMA record box in the articles of fighters; namely, whether MMA competitions are "international sporting events" under the guideline, and if so, what source should be used to verify the nationality. Please feel free to express your opinion on the issue.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 04:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's pretty definitive it is not a international sporting event. The "tale of the tape" was the last hope the flags had for any legitimacy and it that was pretty much shattered after watching UFC 95, as their tale of the tape including flags was for their place of birth indicated with the word "Born" next to the flags, and according to Manual of Style (icons) we should never use flags to indicate place of birth. With no reliable sources for the use of flag icons to associate a fighter with a country, the use of these flags is looking worse. — Moe   ε  05:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I would like other members of the project to chime in on this development, for the lack of a better term, so that consensus can be reached or so that discussion can continue. — Moe   ε  06:09, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

We have a viable source for actual nationality, per Sherdog fighter databases. Why can't we assume the actual nationality is the sporting nationality in the absence of a stated preference for sporting nationality, as what the general practice of the world media appears to be? Otherwise, the majority of the flags used on baseball, cycling, boxing, etc. articles where most of their athletes do not play under an explicitly stated sporting nationality are in violation. Also, there is no new development. The UFC is very clear the flag represents the birthcountry for a long time, and the discussion on WT:ICONS didn't go anywhere. hateless 01:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The nationality/birthplace of a fighter is not an accurate representation of what country a fighter represents and Sherdog does not use flags so your point about flags being added because of a reference without flags is moot. Flag usage for a sports persons article is only acceptable in the context of a international sporting event, which it has been definitively proven that mixed martial arts is not. There is no website to my knowledge that has been mentioned that uses flags for mixed martial artists. We cannot assume a flag, it would be against Wikipedia's policy of verifiability. And other abuse of flag icons at the baseball and cycling projects existing isn't an excuse to continue abusing flags. They will get removed eventually as well. Current flag usage in mixed martial arts articles are currently by the 'tale of the tape' primarily and it is proven that the tale of the tape is not a accurate source for flags because they are for place of birth.
 * The discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (icons) actually did provide results: The first administrator that spoke on it said they were inappropriate, a second user said they were unproductive and a third user said nothing about the record boxes, but said the ones for the locations were misused. The only one defending the flags usage was 2008Olympian and he conceded that the flags as used should probably go. So unless you have a reliable reference that has flags so that verifiability can be satisfied, then the flags are going to be removed. — Moe   ε  21:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll need to list out my objections, excuse the numbering but my head is starting to hurt from keeping track of all these threads: 1. Admins do not have any special editorial prominence that regular editors do not have. Chances are very likely they are familiar with the policies of the encyclopedia and will contribute greatly to a discussion. But they are not judges, they don't have special authority, and a regular editor can be just as insightful. Being an administrator is no big deal. 2. The discussion at WP:MOSICONS is scattershot at best regarding MMA, and was dominated 90% by two people, one of them were you, who also frequent WT:MMA. I don't see a special consensus that is any more authoritative than what was discussed here. And as you said, the three non-project voices were not in agreement and went their own tangents. 3. I dispute your definition of what an international sporting event, which would eliminate several events that are considered international by general (outside of Wikipedia) consensus. 4. We are not assuming a flag. We have sourced information (could be Sherdog, but it can also be Prideofficial.com, which is still alive but not updated, or could be news articles) as to a person's nationality. In such cases, that flag should be able to be used in the absence of a stated exception. The idea that a flag is separate from nationality is novel, flags are used to symbolize nationality. Also, I want to point out that we do not abide strictly to one canonical authority at WP, per WP:NPOV, especially for non-fiction topics. If one sourcing authority is unacceptable, ie. the UFC, that's perfectly fine, we have others. 5. I do not believe that WP:MMA is a special publication that has its own rules that deviate from the standard set (written or unwritten) by the encyclopedia as a whole. But your proposal will. You are saying all flags should be removed, regardless of whether sourcing is available or not. That is not what people expect out of Wikipedia, and it's going to cause headaches down the line with editors (who have as much authority as all of us) start putting flags back in in ways acceptable to the rest of the encyclopedia. hateless 03:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * First, I never said administrators had more say then the rest of us, did I? I said he was one, stating fact. That is all I am going to say about that..
 * Second, The discussion there did provide something, outside of the one voice that stated they supported flag usage eventually decided to concede and said they should be removed. Everyone else decided they shouldn't be there, one way or the other. The first voice said they should be removed pretty blatantly, the second said they were WP:USELESS (with another person commentating on how it wasn't useless per se as the use hasn't been defined). The third didn't comment on the use in one area, but said they should have been removed in another area of the project. If anything, it was an agreement that the flags either should just be removed or that they were useless.
 * Third, how can you have a different definition of what a international sporting event is? There is only one definition, you can't just go make them up. An international sporting event is a sport where multiple nations compete against one another representing their country. Mixed martial arts do not have national teams that compete against each other. It is fact, especially since two people from the same country fight each other all the time in mixed martial arts.
 * Fourth, you don't seem to understand. Sherdog doesn't use flags and I haven't checked yet but if Prideofficial.com doesn't use flags like Sherdog, it's about as useless. Nationality is not a country representation, you cannot go claiming that nationality is somehow an equal exception in absence of something, it just doesn't work like that. Flags are not used to symbolize nationality, but used to represent what country they are fighting for, which mixed martial arts doesn't have to begin with. You have still failed to provide a reliable source of information of where flags are used in a reliable secondary source. All flags should have a verifiable secondary reference which is irrefutable, which these flags do not. Olympics, golf, cycling all have sources of information where flags are used by a athlete because they are in a international sporting event. The only time I have ever seen mixed martial arts use a flag is the "born" section of 'tale of the tape's, which isn't anything we should be using ever. And by the way, that is what mixed martial arts articles are doing despite the guideline.
 * Fifth, what are you talking about: "You are saying all flags should be removed, regardless of whether sourcing is available or not" is pure crap, because I never said that at all. The Olympics, and sports like them do have a source and they should remain in the article, unlike mixed martial arts, which doesn't have a source that uses flags. — Moe   ε  04:49, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Having a flag next to Jackie Chan is useless but not by a professional athlete. The world doesn't go around sherdog. What about fighters who fight under more than one discipline, K-1, Muay Thai, Boxing, olympic wrestlers etc. I don't understand you wanna remove the flags from the infoboxes, results tabels or what? BTW you watch any Dream (mixed martial arts) events? I don't really understand what you are trying to accomplish here. "MMA is not a international sporting event" kinda thing starts to sound like a broken record.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 05:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * We're talking event pages and fight records only. The point is that MMA isn't an international sporting event. Fighters fight only for themselves and the flags are "emphasizing nationality for no good reason". While flags are used other places (e.g. by Dream), on Wikipedia the guideline is that we should be mindful of what we use them for.-- aktsu (t / c) 06:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So what is your definition of international sporting event then, besides olympics? Just wannna see where we at - do you agree that professional boxing, K-1 and Muay thai are an international sporting events?Marty Rockatansky (talk) 06:47, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Events where countries compete, like the FIFA World Cup and events like the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 where the countries picks who should represent them are the first that comes to mind. Neither boxing, K-1 or Muay Thai consist of international competition IMO because competitors have no ties to their country beside what they self-identifies as. -- aktsu (t / c) 06:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * UFC, K-1, Muay Thai, etc. are not international sporting events. FIFA, some golf and tennis events, cycling, the olympics are all international sporting events. If they are in competition with a different country and they were selected as a represenative for a country, then its an international sporting event. Mixed martial artists fight for heavyweight (or other weight class) championships, and most importantly, they fight for themselves, not a country. Nationality, place of birth and where they train is irrelevant if there is no team they are on. — Moe   ε  08:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You don't have to be in a team to represent your country. are you guys crazy or what?Marty Rockatansky (talk)
 * If people want to see it like they represent anything that's fine, but Wikipedia is no place for nationalistic pride where we should emphasize nationality for no good reason. -- aktsu (t / c) 08:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that Sherdog is a viable source for flags and that most Mixed Martial Arts fans understand that flags represent the country of birth. I like to have flags to see which fighters were born in Brazil or other countries that have a rich fighting history.Mmafan420(Talk). 06:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)→
 * How it is a source for flags when it only list "Country" which apparently can mean anything (Kultar Gill and Krzysztof Soszynski is both listed as "Canada" when they represent India and Poland respectively. Bisping is born in Cyprus but is listed as "England")? We can't use country of birth for the flags as that would make Bisping a Cypriot and Fedor an Ukrainian. The solution would be to use what they self-identifies (i.e. in most cases country of birth but with exceptions handeled individually). The discussion about what flags to use is not really the main issue though and should really be handeled separatly, but it's brought up as another problem with using flags. My argument is that using flags at all is "emphasizing nationality for no good reason" in violation of the WP:MOSICON-guideline. See my post above. -- aktsu (t / c) 06:59, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just because a country has a "rich history" or some irrelevant factor, doesn't mean icons should be used. Read WP:MOSICON, specifically the sections that specifically say not to emphasize nationality or the place of where they were born by adding icons. — Moe   ε  08:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And you keep ignoring the fact that the guideline is a reflection of current practice and not a source of policy. Again, MOS:ICONS make allowances for sports, flag icons were created for sports. The original WP:FLAGS (the essay) was response to flags being used outside of sporting contexts. You realize you're arguing right now that these flags have no place in sporting articles? hateless 08:21, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Blatantly ignoring the good advice of a guideline is just as bad as violating policy. So it just because its a guideline do you choose to ignore it? If it was policy would you start removing them then? Guidelines are there for a reason, not to be ignored.. Second, the current revision of MOSICON is all that matters, because somewhere down the line it was decided that not all sporting events should have flag icons, only international sporting events. These flags certainly do not have a place in this article if it is not a international sporting event, which has been definitely proven.. unless you have the magic reference that no one else can seem to find that says different by using flags.. — Moe   ε  08:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That's right, flags emphasizing nationality without good reason (such as being picked to represent a country) has no place on event pages or in the fight records. -- aktsu (t / c) 08:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Blatantly ignoring your fellow editors for what you call "good advice" is not consensus, and consensus trumps guidelines. There's a word for what it sounds like however. Secondly, your definition of what an international sporting event is right now does not even fit your examples. Do you really think UEFA Championships are playing for their country? Lance Armstrong did not run the Tour de France for the United States, he ran it for Team Discovery. hateless 08:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Whats that about the Tour de France not being a international sporting event? . You see, it is that easy to provide a reference that it was a international sporting event. Can you do that for MMA? Unless you can, your advice, fellow editor, is not very good.. — Moe   ε  08:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe there's a difference in definition here, but IMO Tour de France is not an international sporting event in the sense that representatives from various countries compete. I would be in favor of removing the flags from those articles as well (though I could be persuaded to let them stay if say the official TdF-website used flags so there was doubt about which flags to use). The definition your source use seem to be that people from various countries compete, making it "international" in the sense what it's not just competitors from the same country. -- aktsu (t / c) 08:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Violation of what? We are talking about professional athletes involved in a sport practiced in almost 100 countries, not John Lennon or Paul McCartney . Stop reading between the lines there's no violation of WP:MOSICON. Marty Rockatansky (talk) 08:23, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Violation of emphasizing nationality without good reason. -- aktsu (t / c) 08:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * "Good reason" is the judgement of the consensus. I don't see any such judgement.hateless 08:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Joe Calzaghe has a Welsh flag on his page, last time i checked Wales is not even an independent country, I'm not touching it, it's about the respect to the fighter coz thats what he represents. Good enough reason for me.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 08:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has no place for nationalistic pride, if thats what your saying, read WP:NOT. — Moe   ε  08:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * What Moe said + that's not the flags we're talking about, we're talking about the fight record, which coincidentally has no flags on his page (though other boxers' articles does). -- aktsu (t / c) 09:02, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Alright, i'm looking at all these names on Joe's record, most of them red links or no links at all, if those names would have flags next to them I'd say it would be an additional information about the opponents he beat. Lets say I'd like to know where's Luciano Torres from? There's no nationalistic pride, just wud like to know where the guy is from, Can you tell me?Marty Rockatansky (talk) 09:16, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * First off you don't need flags to tell you where someone is from. 	Luciano Torres is from Brazil apparently . *looks at Joe's article* Oh look, a nice British flag in his column, how accurate *rolls eyes*. — Moe   ε  09:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You don't have to provide me any links man, you know what i ment.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 09:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * To have flags on that basis is an opinion you're entitled to have, but my opinion is that using visually striking flags emphasize nationality (or birthplace, or where he fights out of or citizenship or whatever one would assume such a flag means) without good reason goes against WP:MOSICON and subsequently violates WP:NOT. A column with "Fighting out of", "Born" or similar would be a valid solution IMO if it was decided that such info was appropriate for the table (which I don't think it is anyway on the basis of emphasizing without good reason, but flags are especially bad). -- aktsu (t / c) 09:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just tell me, without giving any WP:MOSICON, WP:NOT bs, what is the problem you have against "emphasizing" nationality? it's not bogus it's just whrere's the guys from..,.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 09:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not a problem I have per se, it's about following Wikipedia's policies. I don't care how many flags FEG use on their Dream and K-1 broadcasts, but WP have certain rules we must adhere to. -- aktsu (t / c) 09:53, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Any I'm not saying "remove all information about where people are born and their nationalities from Wikipedia" either, I'm saying conveying that information by simplifying it into a flag in every record table brings certain problems with it. -- aktsu (t / c) 10:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Want definitive proof? Below someone listed bleacherreport.com as a reliable source: see what they got to say? 
 * We may be years away from MMA being considered an Olympic or Nationally unified sports event, but with the sport's growing popularity and widespread appeal to audiences in Europe, Asia, and the Americas one can only hope that a team tournament based on nationality will be dreamed up by the international sports powers that be.

That good enough for you? Written in black and white: it is not a international sporting event and international sporting events are based on teams of peoples by nationality. — Moe   ε  08:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not that the article really has any impact on what we're discussing (we all know MMA is not country vs. country, but some want flags anyway), but such competition would be a case where flags are warranted because the fighters actually represents countries. -- aktsu (t / c) 09:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it says that MMA is not an international sporting event and we may be years away from it ever being considered one. If it was an international sporting event, of course, flags would be warranted, but it isn't. In not so many words, it directly affects this discussion since some are arguing the definition of international sporting events. — Moe   ε  09:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It says it's not an international sporting event as how you would define it. What I'm saying is no one agrees with your definition of what an international sporting event is. hateless 09:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * While we've digressed significantly from the topic at hand, your novel interpretation of what an international sporting event is pretty divorced from reality. Reaching like this isn't doing your salient, and more meritorious points any service. — east718  &#124;  talk  &#124; 14:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Break
(Reply to hateless' comment above, was moved so might as well move it here) What is this good reason for using the flags then? Sorry, but I really don't see it... What is it the reason to specifically emphasize that this fighter is from this country beside nationalistic pride which the guideline suggest has no place on WP per the policy WP:NOT. -- aktsu (t / c) 08:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll address the issue as something with sports in general because you're not singling out MMA here. To simply put it, geography has implications on the quality or traits of an athlete. Now this may be stereotypical, but it is notable that certain countries produce better athletes in certain sports: Brazil with soccer, China with table tennis, etc. Sometimes, it can means they produce athletes with a certain perspective or style. Japanese baseball players view the game in the frame of their own culture, and it is quite different than how American players see it. Secondly (and more important to me), by examining the breadth of experience of an athlete (ie, the flags in record tables), we can get a sense for the level of ability. For instance, a runner who only competes at Pac-10 conference college meets we can assume is not the level of a runner who has competed in the Olympics. Competing against others from greater geographical distances tends to mean they can compete against increasingly larger talent pools. We can also assume some things based on the size of population: California state HS champs would probably outclass New Hampshire HS champs just because California's population and this the talent pool is greater. Combine all of these factors and we can develop a general sense for the quality and kind of athlete. Now, the idea that nationality alone can reliably predict such quality is ludicrous, and there will always be plenty of exceptions and other factors to consider. But it is still one factor that has meaningful implications, and as such, is useful information. hateless 09:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * How does that fit in with say Badr Hari wanting to fight under a Moroccan flag even though he lived basically all his life in Holland? I guess we just have a difference in opinion, because to me the "emphasizing without good reason"-part (man I'm tired of typing that, though probably not as tired as you're reading it :P) of the flags outweighs the (lack of) usefulness and troubles having them bring - especially when the relevant info presented in a proper way is in most cases only a click away. -- aktsu (t / c) 09:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Flags allow enough information for patterns to emerge. As with any other statistical analysis, there are outliers that don't fit the pattern. Bari's flag is one of those things that would cause statistical noise. hateless 21:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense". Isn't that exactly what we're doing currently? MMA fighters have no "sporting nationality", they only have their own nationality. "Where flags are used in a table, it should clearly indicate that the flags represent sporting nationality, not nationality, if any confusion might arise" (emphasis mine). Sorry if this was already brought up (or rather, it has been but I can't remember anyone commenting on that specific line), but I just re-read MOS:FLAG. -- aktsu (t / c) 10:09, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * What is the difference between sporting nationality and nationality when a nationality is not specified? Athletes do not just pick flags out of the atlas and say that's theirs, and those that pick a flag other than their own citizenship is still rare. As for the idea that MMA has no sporting nationality, you've seen the old Pride roster page? UFC, Pride, HERO's and Dream thinks flags are quite appropriate on their graphics. I don't see how MMA is that one special sport that is nationality-free. hateless 21:18, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And I have no problem with UFC's/Pride's/Dream's use of flags because they are not writing an encyclopedia. MOS:FLAG specifically interprets the usage of flags as violating WP:NOT and WP:NPOV because of the emphasize they bring - a view I agree with. "Emphasizing the importance of a person's citizenship or nationality above their other qualities risks violating Wikipedia's "Neutral point of view" policy" and "Wikipedia is not a place for nationalistic pride". As I said, in my opinion enforcing those policies beats your arguments for keeping them. The exceptions made for sports in MOS:FLAG is for sports where nations compete and the flags indicate the persons sporting nationality, i.e. not violating any policies because it's a fact that they are representing that country - hence the "it should clearly indicate that the flags represent sporting nationality, not nationality, if any confusion might arise". In MMA countries does not compete, fighters have no sporting nationality and there is hence no good reason (when keeping WP's policies in mind) for using the flags. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * MOS:FLAGS does not define what to do in the absence of a non-governing body, nor does it really define the "sporting nationality" concept. However, in the case of PRIDE, DREAM, and other Japanese promotions, the promoter is the governing body–They set rules, run the officiating, and are the final arbiters of the outcomes of their matches. If we follow the letter of the guideline, then do these fighters have a nationality while those that only fought in state-sanctioned fights don't? As for "Wikipedia is not a place for nationalistic pride", what about the flags on articles where nationality doesn't matter much? Why put it on the LA Lakers roster when it is of no relevance to NBA play? If such inflammation of nationalism is an issue, then shouldn't flags be removed from all pro team pages? hateless 23:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah you're right, a case can definitely be made in regards to the Japanese promotions (with the flags being verifiable during Dream broadcasts etc), but for MMA as a whole I think the flags are problematic. I would probably have no problem with a "Representing"-column or similar on Dream-event-pages as it would only be indicating their sporting nationality as reported by the governing body. As for the NBA roster lists I personally think the flags should be removed on the same basis as I'm arguing for their removal on MMA-pages. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:44, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if this makes a difference but what about situations where promotions do one country vs. another country theme. For example, UFC 58 or The Ultimate Fighter: U.S.A. vs. U.K.? Clearly in a case like this a fighter is representing a specific country even though they technically it's not one country vs. another country.Mmafan420 22"25. 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Those would IMO be cases where flags are OK because they are/would be used to indicate sporting nationality only (the participant are representing a team which in this case is a country). As such, Yves Edwards's flags should be American because we're not talking about nationality, only sporting nationality and his was American. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

As for the new US v. UK show, that one is pretty clearly use of sporting nationality. If we want to hold that the actual nationality is the sporting nationality, I have no problem with that. There is definitely a use of nationality in MMA by the athletes. This is not the same as editors using Wikipedia to promote a point of view or push nationalistic pride. That is what I view the guideline as prohibiting. Do the articles on Muhammad Ali or Troy Aikman need to have American flags in them? Of course not. But the use of flags as we are using them in the MMA articles is not the same, it is a reflection of what is happening in the sport itself, and is therefore fair grounds for inclusion. What I am concerned with, and what prompted my earlier, now redacted, concession was the problems of verification of what hateless terms "a stated preference for sporting nationality" that would be other than the actual nationality. All I seek in this is that, if we use the flags, we have a reliable, verifiable source on which to base our country selection.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 02:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC) Small (get it?) admission: in my heart of hearts, I like the flags. I know WP:ILIKEIT is no bueno, but I can fail to edit based on it however I like ;-) -- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 05:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, it's only the FEG-based promotions (K-1, Dream) that seem to promote the nationality of the fighters in any capacity. If you watch any Dream-events you'll see they have flags for each competitor and as it's the governing body that use them I can agree with listing them as such (i.e. the fighters have a sporting nationality in the same way competitors in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 have a sporting nationality). In the US the various states are the governing bodies and they do not use the nationality of the fighters in any way and neither do the promotions, i.e. there is no sporting nationality - and flags are not OK. So what I'm saying is that, per MOS:FLAG, flags should only indicate sporting nationality. Sporting nationality is given by the governing body (i.e. FIFA, FIS, and I would say FEG as well). With the governing body not "giving out" sporting nationalities to the competitors, the competition is not international and as such there is no sporting nationality in US MMA and we shouldn't use flags for them. Of course, using flags for some fighters only in a record table would not be enforceable (somebody will come along and add them all eventually) but using them them on the FEG-events-pages only with the line "Flags represents sporting nationality" or similar per MOS:FLAG I have no problem with. Getting rid of all the flags would be the easiest solution but I have no "counter" to the argument that FEG is a governing body similar to FIFA and FIS. -- aktsu (t / c) 04:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Absolutley dead on, aktsu. To have the flags only on Dream and K-1 but not UFC or Strikeforce might be unworkable.  I understand the difference in theory, but do we really want to edit war over this?  I'm not going to screw with it, I promise you that.

Uploading promotional posters
Can somebody explain how we are suppose to upload poster images for MMA events? I see them uploaded all the time for UFC events but I tried to upload one for Strikeforce: At The Mansion II and it was deleted. Any information would be helpful. I know Strikeforce doesn't care if their posters are used on wikipedia, they give these posters away for free.Mmafan420 (talk) 02:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't try to upload fair-use images at the Commons, just put them on Wikipedia instead. Use a good fair-use rationale (look at other examples from other MMA poster images), and rock on.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 02:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Template:UFC Events
Currently there are three groups under the template: Pay-per-view, Fight Nights, and The Ultimate Fighter finales. This isn't entirely accurate as there have been a number of PPV events that were free on Spike and never sold as a PPV.

Drr-darkomen (talk) 15:15, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, true.. How about "Numbered events" or "Main events"? Template:Pride Events use "Main events". -- aktsu (t / c) 01:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree changing PPV to Main Events is more suitable. I think that solves the issue at hand. Mmafan420 (talk) 02:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm on board with Main Events as opposed to Pay-per-view. Drr-darkomen (talk) 05:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Howabout "Main series"? Main Events are something else entirely. hateless 19:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * What about "Major Events"? Drr-darkomen (talk) 19:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I could get behind that. hateless 21:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Rumored Bouts
What's the procedure for rumored bouts for upcoming events if they have references. I recently put a rumored bout for Strikeforce in Seattle but it was removed. Are rumored bouts not allowed for upcoming cards even when there are legitmate references? I might be mistaken but I think I've seen a few Japanese events like Dream where rumored particpants are added to the article leading up to the event. Any clarity would be appreciated. Thanks! Mmafan420 (talk) 18:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Bouts need to be definitive from a reliable source. If you watch that Werdum video that you used as a reference, he states he will MAYBE be fighting in May and when ask who he would LIKE to fight he said "might maybe Kimbo".  That's not even close to reliable, IMO.  Drr-darkomen (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * My edit guideline is as follows. If there is no source, there is no fight. If there is a source that says the fight is rumored, there is no fight. If there is a source that says the bout is agreed to by both sides (signed, agreed to by both but awaiting receipt of the written contract, and/or officially announced by the relevant promotion as a part of the fight card), then and only then should you add the fight with a citation to the source. Although I haven't been too active lately, when I see "X is rumored to fight Y" in any article, I kill on sight. Gromlakh (talk) 23:42, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree all the rumors belong to the forums but not here. Only official line-ups with references.Marty Rockatansky (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback guys. Makes perfect sense. Mmafan420 (talk) 02:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Publisher and work categories in refs and Feature Articles
I realize that I have been in error in placing the source of many references in the "work=" field instead of the "publisher=" field. They can both be used, for example "publisher=New York Times" and "work=nytimes.com", but the publisher field is required for a feature article.

I found this out during the Fedor FAC, which just had too much work to do in the allotted week or so a candidacy receives. I will address the many issues it raised and eventually renominate it. It had a lot of support for its subject matter and many reviewers said it was close. There was too much primary-source information from Fedor's website, the article suffered from what was called a "lightbulb format," where sections got smaller and smaller as the article progressed, and there was several references from sources that weren't considered reliable.

As for reliable sources, I think we need to set up a list on the project page of agreed reliable sources to which we can point the reviewers. The list above seems like a pretty good start. Any references showing that they are reliable would be helpful as well.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 02:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should make a list of reliable sources. Mmafan420 (talk) 03:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Codifying a list of unimpeachable sources isn't useful, plus it has the potential to be actively harmful: not every use of material from a specific publisher will be appropriate in every situation. Besides, the list a couple sections above is second-string anyway; with newspapers of record regularly publishing stories (and more infrequently, scholarly publications), we should generally avoid the industry websites except with good reasons to do otherwise. — east718  &#124;  talk  &#124; 04:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be ideal, but there aren't a lot of mainstream publication coverage until very, very recently, and a lot of the articles need sourcing for back at least ten years or so. A lot of the FA reviewers know nothing about good sources such as Sherdog and MMAWeekly.  I mean, ESPN is the "world leader' and they farm out their whole MMA section to Sherdog.  CBS showed the highest-rated MMA broadcast ever, but it gets its content from Five Ounces of Pain.  Yet despite ratings and coverage and fan interest, each UFC fight might be lucky to get a tiny, tiny mention in my local paper.  This is a perfect example of why newspapers are going down the toilet.  Yahoo! Sports is the only "normal" source that has its own coverage, and they still bring in a lot of content from MMA Weekly.  (And when did  Yahoo! become a peer of old media?)  Wikipedia articles shouldn't be dinged because they are going towards newer media sources, provided those sources are reliable.  Some of these websites are manned by professional journalists, such as Sam Caplan at Five Ounces or Jeff Sherwood at Sherdog.  MMA weekly is a huge presence, see its BusinessWeek profile here.  Bleacherreport is dangerous, however, because it is sort of a wikipedia-style site with user-created content.  Personally, I don't think we need to go beyond Sherdog, MMA Weekly, and Five Ounces of Pain as additions to normal sites.  -- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 05:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think a list can still be beneficial. Arguably the biggest problem we face in the MMA project is a lack of reliable sources. The newspapers aren't always gonna be available to us, and most of the time, we'd have to goto web sources. If we can tell an editor that, first, you should look for a newspaper to support the fact/claim you are adding, and if it's not there, then look for the fact/claim in MMAWeekly, Sherdog, Yahoo Sports, MMAjunkie, or FiveOuncesofPain. If it's still not there, cite your current source, but be aware that it might not be considered "reliable". I don't see how something like that could not benefit the project in the long run, because a lot of the time a fact that gets cited in some misc site is also found in one of those more reliable sources. Bad intentionz (talk) 07:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't newspapers be available? If it's an issue of verifiability, then an online link is just a convenience (a source should not be prejudiced against because it's available solely in print). If it's an issue of not being able to find articles/papers because you don't have the resources or aren't willing to part with the cash to buy them, just get at me if you're looking to cite something and are coming up blank. I have pay access to most major international newspapers' archives. — east718  &#124;  talk  &#124; 09:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think BI means that there is a lack of access when he writes that "newspapers aren't...available to us." BI means that there is not going to be coverage in the newspapers to use at all.  They definitely do not run fight announcements, and usually only the top fight or two from a UFC event will get any coverage.  Fight Nights, undercards, fighter signings and firings, smaller promotions, even details other than the results of major fights get no actual ink anywhere.  But that information is covered by reliable sources and reported online. It may be years before MMA gets the type of coverage that the big three get.  Because of the internet's rise at the same time as MMA's, there isn't even a RINGS-magazine type source for MMA.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 18:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Mike Brown
I've gone to town on the Mike Brown article, adding a lot of content and references. I was wondering if anyone could help me find a free image for the page. I realize this page is probably low priority, but any help or advice would be much appreciated. -- jhan  CRUSH  04:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello, I have added a picture of Brown from Sherdog posted by someone who saw him in Ohio this weekend. I sent him the official declaration and I'm just waiting for him to digitally sign it. He has already given a verbal agreement so it should be OK.


 * As for the article, you are doing a great job. For our project here, I think it meets the Start class criteria (at least), so I have changed it. Anyone who objects is free to change it back, of course.


 * Good job on finding all Sherdog/MMAWeekly sources on there. One piece of advice I would offer is to try and incorporate some other reliable sources as well. I think it's really excellent that you're citing only sources with prima facie reliability, but from what I've seen in the past over-relying on the same sources is usually an area of criticism. Oh, and I'm not sure if having caps lock'D titles in the reflist ("BROWN SAYS THE TITLE MAKES IT ALL WORTH WHILE") is the proper practice (I'll double check when I'm home from school). Other than those two points keep up the good work! Bad intentionz (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit war on UFC 94
There's an edit war over at UFC 94 with and  wanting the result of the St-Pierre/Penn fight to be TKO by "corner stoppage" (which is Sherdog's result), while myself and others wanting it to echo NSAC's official result of "referee stoppage on doctor's advice". The issue was briefly brought up at Talk:UFC_94. I would think the right course of action would be to get a consensus for one or the other, so what do we think? I would say commission > everyone else. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would agree that the sanctioning body would be the ultimate source in match results. So in this case, the NSAC would take precedence over Sherdog or any other website.  It does look like an edit-war and the IPs are not providing edit summaries.  I would report them for possibly being blocked.  Their talk pages show that they have been sufficiently warned.  That's just my opinion.  --TreyGeek (talk) 22:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would not agree. WE the internet fans are the sole responsibilty for MMA being around,Sherdog is a website that has been involved with MMA and its fans far longer than the NSAC which was orignally a boxing commission. The NSAC in no way takes precedence over Sherdog. Leave it how you want, but all MMA fans know the result is a corner stoppage, regardless of what Wikipedia says, it de-values your word. --User:Anonomous User (User talk:) 22:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.1.2 (talk)
 * I disagree, and not only that, I find your assertion that Sherdog somehow takes precedence over the NSAC as completely ridiculous. hateless 23:13, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Here here, hateless and aktsu. One pain in the ass anon ip down, one to go, it seems.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 23:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Not down yet apparently, but should be soon for violation the 3RR :) -- aktsu (t / c) 00:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also worth mentioning is that the UFC reports it as "TKO Stoppage (Referee)". -- aktsu (t / c) 00:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

FYI, has been blocked from editing for 24 hours. Hopefully, this will end the problems from this user. However, we won't know for sure until tomorrow night as well as waiting to see if the other IP will behave as well. --TreyGeek (talk) 02:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I was one of the people who asserted it was a Corner Stoppage at first. But after hateless cited the NSAC, I felt obliged to take their word for it over what I saw. It was probably the case that the referee/doctor intended to stop it before the corner called for the stoppage themselves, thus making the latter irrelevant. Bad intentionz (talk) 04:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Templates
Just a quick heads-up; most (new) articles I see don't include all parameters for the various templates we use (i.e. Template:MMAstatsbox and Template:MMArecordbox). I just created Jung Chan Sung where I've made sure to include all of them, so if anyone is going to create any new articles you're welcome to copy from there to make sure all the fields are included. Cheers, -- aktsu (t / c) 16:44, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The Ultimate Fighter Finales
Should we consider creating separate articles for the Finales as opposed to them being included within the articles detailing the seasons? --Drr-darkomen (talk) 22:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't care. The more I think about it, I think it would be a good idea.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 06:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I say go for it. -- jhan  CRUSH  18:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll get to work on it. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 19:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I created pages for 1-6, now 5 (and the rest) are under consideration for deletion... go here and show some support to keep them: Articles for deletion/The Ultimate Fighter 5 Finale
 * All of the Finale articles are now completed, and the nomination for deletion is closed as a Keep. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 15:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good job. Something I thought about just now.  Should the finale pages include the TUF template at the bottom of the pages for their respective TUF season?  I can think of arguments for and against, so thought to bring it up and see if there were any strong opinions either way.  --TreyGeek (talk) 02:49, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would include them.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 03:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not so sure they are needed. Each of the Finale pages has a link back to the season page.  If they are added I think they should be added below the UFC events template and that the UFC events template should be set to not auto-collapse. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 14:19, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, should the UFC events template be removed from the TUF season articles? -- jhan  CRUSH  04:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would certainly agree that the UFC events template should be removed from the season articles. I'll remove them in the morning unless someone gets to it before then.  Good catch. --TreyGeek (talk) 04:26, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Mixed martial arts article
does not seem to like the focus of our mixed martial arts article. He seemingly feels if emphasizes greco-roman wrestling more than MMA, and has thus decided to replace the existing image with a (copyvio, which is being dealt with, but that's not the point) more "fitting" image of Jon Jones suplexing Stephan Bonnar. (Which seems a little WP:POINTy to me, but hey.) I moved his concerns to the MMA-articles talk page. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs Team Forrest Tournament Bracket problem
Can someone look at the tournament bracket for TUF Rampage vs Forrest and tell me what you see for the final match. I'm seeing it as Dollaway in both halves of the match, however that's now what the code says when you edit it. I just want to make sure it's not just me or if the bracket coding is in error. Thanks all. --TreyGeek (talk) 00:58, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Same here... Doesn't look like there's an error in the code, but someone just edited Template:32TeamBracket so that might be it. -- aktsu (t / c) 01:11, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Think I fixed it by editing the template. You might need to CTRL+F5 (Firefox) or Shift+Refresh (IE) for it to update. -- aktsu (t / c) 01:14, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL! I was looking at the template code and finally figured out where the problem was. However, when I went to edit it... someone had beaten me to it!  :)  Thanks Aktsu!  --TreyGeek (talk) 01:16, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

World Victory Road Presents: Sengoku 7 & Nam Phan Flag discussion
For those of you who are interested, there is an ongoing discussion on the World Victory Road Presents: Sengoku 7 talk page in regards to which flag should be used for Nam Phan. Phan was born in the US and appears to still be a US citizen. In this event, the Japanese broadcast displayed a South Vietnam flag and an article calling him South Vietnamese has also been uncovered. His gi displays the South Vietnam flag on his left breast, a US flag on the right shoulder, and a Brazilian flag on the left shoulder. The debate is on which flag to use (between US and South Vietnam). If you have any interest in seeing what is discussed or want to put in your two cents, feel free to head over there. --TreyGeek (talk) 19:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Flags for Locations in Record Boxes
First of all, it is not my intention to start another flag debate. However, this specific issue was briefly mentioned in previous debates and I think what I am about to propose has support. I just want to double-check before I start making edits.

In some of the fighter articles, locations in the record boxes are preceded with a flag. (Ex from Junie Browning's article: 🇺🇸 Las Vegas, Nevada) My belief is that there is support to remove the flags in this case. I just wanted to make sure there was no argument against removing these location flags, particularly as I clean up TUF fighter pages. (NOTE: I will leave flags next to fighter's names alone.) --TreyGeek (talk) 23:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * When the country is mentioned, the flags are basically useless. WP:ICONDECORATION: "Hence, avoid adding icons that do not provide additional information relevant to the article (for example, adding a country's flag next to its name may not provide extra information about the subject of the article). Icons should serve an encyclopedic purpose other than decoration". If the country isn't listed (e.g. "🇺🇸 Las Vegas, Nevada") I would just removed it and instead add the country. -- aktsu (t / c) 00:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Fight Cards
What is the thought behind what cards are listed and what is not?

I understand that UFC and Pride get listings- but what about RINGS, Pancrase, Rage Cage etc? If the Promotion is listed under the "Professional mixed martial arts organizations" is that the cutoff so JoeBob Big honking MMA show doesn't make the cut? --David.snipes (talk) 01:32, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't think there's any special requirements, so I guess it comes down to the usual "significant coverage in realible sources". If you need somewhere to start, I'd love to see more coverage of Shooto and Pancrase. -- aktsu (t / c) 14:53, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Show Reviews
Q. I hate to bring the subject up, but as other PPV's (noteably Pro-Wresting) has in the extrnal link section a show review (most to 411mania) Should we also link the cards to a good review? --David.snipes (talk) 15:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * They do? :S No we shouldn't (and they shouldn't), but if the reviews are reliably sourced you can use them to source a "reception"-section or similar. -- aktsu (t / c)
 * Next time I come across one I will send it to you. I don;t think that we should use a reception- one person's classic ground matchup is another's 15 minutes of Lay and Pray. You may see Machida as a boring fighter while I see him as a brilliant fighter. See Bisping vs Leben for another example. --David.snipes (talk) 14:52, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And those opinions that can be attributed and presented, so it's certainly at least possible. I definetly think the event-articles can be expanded (such as WP:PW does, see e.g. featured article Lockdown (2008)) but it's hard with us having only a fraction of the manpower WP:PW have. -- aktsu (t / c) 17:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, now I'm confused- looking at the lockdown article- it IS a show review! Its pretty much a copy from PWTorch.com! I do NOT have a problem re-writing the shows I have as the same format as they have it- my issue is that it would be much cleaner to have a short review of the fight IE

Evans hit Liddell with an overhead right knocking him to the ground and the fight was called by (can;t remember the ref) at 2:30 of the second round. Then on the External Links have a link to several sites Sherdog,411mania,ISC etc. that a person can go LOOK for more details & Opinion. --David.snipes (talk) 15:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The goal of all event-articles it to ultimatly get them to the state Lockdown 2008 is at (i.e. featured article status). But that's naturally a lot of work, so instead we're left with a lot of stubs/short articles. The guideline for links is that they should only be used for links containing info that for some reason could not be in the article should it be expanded to a featured article. It's entirely up to you how much effort you're willing to put into articles, but keep in mind we preferably want them as extensive/close to FA as possible. -- aktsu (t / c) 16:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Bas_Rutten
Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_Rutten on his fight history All of the Pancrase shows (Pancrase-Truth 4 for example) have links to the wiki/Pancrase page neither the card or the organization --David.snipes (talk) 15:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not the organization? Pancrase is the organization, or am I missing something? No one have created articles for the events so linking to the organization is the most logical. -- aktsu (t / c) 17:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, but on all the other ones I have seen the card is linked to the show NOT the organization. David.snipes (talk) 17:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * But there's no even-article to link to - so the one creating the links choose to just link the organization instead. If someone creates the article it's no problem to change it so that he full "Pancrase - Truth 4" is linked to the event. There's no set standard for the links, so you'll probably see it done many different ways. -- aktsu (t / c) 17:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought our "job" was to standardize this stuff :-) Since there is no page for the show (yet-I have it on my DVD list) should it be redlinked or non-linked since there is a link to the pancrase organization on his page already? --David.snipes (talk) 17:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit war over Krzysztof Soszynski's flag
. That was only on the UFC 97 article, and only going back to the 8th. So, what do we use? -- aktsu (t / c) 19:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Would his nickname of "The Polish Experiment" matter? --TreyGeek (talk) 22:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe, though he's listed as simply "The Experiment" on some places. Dunno if he's changed it recently. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * He was born in Poland, moved to Canada when he was 10. Someone has edited his wikipedia article to list him as "Polish Canadian" which to me is sidestepping the issue.  I would be interested in knowing which is correct, Poland or Canada?  For both his article and his flag use.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 20:47, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, to call him "Polish-Canadian" would be correct. Just someone who moved to the US (and becomes a citizen) from the Mexico would be Mexican-American.  As for what flag to use..... I vote for no flags. :)  I read an interview with Soszynski and he wanted to fight in both Canada and Germany; Germany because it's next door to Poland and he has "a lot of fans in Poland."  It's going to be at the whim of Soszynski on which country he feels he represents at an event.  --TreyGeek (talk) 21:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll be interested to see how the UFC bills him. When he fought at TUF8 they didn't do a tale of the tape for his prelim fight when it was spliced in to the broadcast.  I like the flags, but then again I wouldn't miss them either.  It would be a lot of editing to remove them from all the MMA event articles. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 22:21, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Seeing as the UFC use flags to represent birthplace only, that would be the Polish flag. Removing them is no problem at all using something like AWB or a simple script. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like the above discussion about flag use really didn't go anywhere. Are we beating a dead horse here? --Drr-darkomen (talk) 23:27, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Dunno... Seems to me like we're kinda caught in the middle with people on both sides. Beside the obvious problem of actually determining a persons main nationality, I personally think the flags violate the "Do not emphasize nationality without good reason"-section of MOS:FLAG guideline and that guidelines interpretation of the NOT and WP:NPOV policies, but without a consensus I consider it disruptive to go ahead and remove them so we're left with the status quo. I tried to enforce a middle-ground at Sengoku 7 with the rule that the flags used are the ones reported by the promoter (see the talkpage for the full reasoning) but some IPs are not liking a South Vietnamese flag next to US-born Nam Phan, and I guess there's still the problem of "no good reason" so I've kinda given up on it. Status quo ftw. -- aktsu  (t / c) 23:45, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * After reading MOS:FLAG, and in particular the "Flags should never indicate the player's nationality in a non-sporting sense" part I tend to agree the flags should be eliminated all together as MMA is not a sport where fighters represent a national team. They are independent contractors. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 01:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Weight in record tables
Any thought on including the weight(class) in the record tables? Seems pretty useful to me seeing as more and more people are fighting at multiple weights (relevant recent examples include Aoki being defeated by Sakurai at welterweight while being the WAMMA lightweight champ and the upcoming catchweight bouts Shamrock-Diaz and Silva-Franklin). I'll get on it if there's no objections. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd have to say that I think that is a good idea. There are a lot of fighters competing in multiple weight classes (over time and at once).  I can see the usefulness.  I assume this should only be something to do for those fighters who have regularly fought at different weight classes.  If it's a one-off deal, like if they fight catch-weight when their opponent fails to make weight, we shouldn't have a whole new column for them.  Rare exceptions can probably be dealt with in the "notes" column.  Would you agree?  --TreyGeek (talk) 00:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yeah, though the coloumn is also useful when remembering that some organizations (Japanese ones mainly) have different weight limits from US-sanctioned events - meaning that someone fighting in Japan will probably already have fought at two weights even before considering potensial moves between weight classes. Not that it's a big deal or anything, but it's seems pretty useful. The tables can get cramped quickly though (especially with event-names like "Heiwa DREAM.1 - Lightweight Grand Prix Opening Round" and the like :p), so maybe it won't work... I'll do some research.
 * Anthing else to consider before potentially starting changing tables? One thing I'm wondering is if there's something we can to with the sorting of the "record" column, and that we perhaps should use Tokyo, Japan or similar for more logical sorting of the Location column. Should probably watch out for making the whole thing to complicated though... -- aktsu (t / c) 20:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's something I've wondered about, but haven't had the opportunity to ask. Is there a reason for a "record" column?  We list in multiple places what their current record is.  There is a column for win/loss/whatever that a person can extrapolate their record at anyone time.  Is there some reason why the record column was added?  --TreyGeek (talk) 00:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Dunno... I've seen it added as well, I think by the same person adding a "Location" column. As long as there's room I don't really have a problem with it -_- Anyway, User:Aktsu/Sandbox. Thought/suggestions? -- aktsu (t / c) 15:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the Weight Class is a GREAT Idea- maybe in the Fixbox we can list Overall record W/L as each class etc.

--David.snipes (talk) 15:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not in favor of the above table. There's plenty of clutter in the records as is, and as TreyGeek noted with win-loss counts in the tables, we don't need to add more clutter that people can just extrapolate with the data that's available. Also, on the point of "room in the tables", WP's page design is liquid. Depending on the width of the browser (which is quite variable for those with large monitors and on mobile devices) and how large the browser renders the type, room is a relative term, and we don't really have as much as is apparent. hateless 16:51, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

We are live. Looks decent on my screens, though they have pretty high resolutions. I was considering forcing each entry to be over two lines (that way all entries would be the same height no matter the content) but it didn't seem necessary. Feel free to edit or revert or whatever. If no-one complains I'll start implementing it on other pages and put it up at WP:MMA. -- aktsu (t / c) 00:10, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I should add, I purposefully didn't include the MMArecordbox in favor of the line at the top because it imo looks better. -- aktsu (t / c) 00:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, in regards to listing the record; I have no problem removing it but not having it included either so as there was space I (actually User:Moe Epsilon) figured that was an OK way to do it. -- aktsu (t / c) 00:14, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm going to reserve judgment on it (for now). I will say that my first thought on seeing it was, "Wow, there's a lot of stuff there."  --TreyGeek (talk) 00:20, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

UFC 94 Rewrite
Hey guys,

I've been working on a rewrite of the UFC 94 article, making it a much more extensive coverage of the event. I picked 94 because there were many issues to deal with (promotion, greasegate), etc, and thought sources would be abundant. I've been working on it for a couple of hours every night for the past week (exam period) and just got the initial draft up today. There are probably errors a-plenty so if you guys can be on the lookout for them that would be awesome.

If you guys like it, I think it'd be possible to expand a few more articles in this way as well. UFC 100 is definitely one we can look at it, along with 92, etc.

Things to do for UFC 94
 * proofread for errors
 * Expand Background section so it talks a little bit about all of the main card at least (IE bonnar/parisyan's return from injury).
 * Start & finish the "event" section (right before "The Results"), which basically is a summary of the fights. In my view, the summary of each fight need not be highly detailed--about a paragraph per fight is enough.

I have to run now--more studying to do! Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Bad intentionz (talk) 22:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As I said on you talkpage - awesome, awesome stuff. Did some copyediting and sent it to GAN. While it probably can be expanded a little, I think it'll pass GAN easily and if there's any complaints I'll try to take care of them. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Aktsu/Sandbox: thoughts? It's somewhat difficult writing about the bouts because one has to be careful not to state an opinion as fact (or if so attribute the opinion). Not sure if my writing is any good either (feels very Sherdog-ish which may or may not be any good here) so some input on that would be awesome. -- aktsu (t / c) 02:22, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's shaping up just fine, Aktsu. You are being too hard on yourself. In terms of the writing, that's about where we'd want it to be IMO, so good job. My last exam is on Friday at 3:30 pm (-8:00) and after that I'll be back and able to help more substantially. Only comment I can offer for now is a question...


 * Dan Cramer became the first fighter to be successful in a professional mixed martial arts debut at a UFC pay-per-view event since Marcio Cruz at UFC 55.

Is that fact sourced? I can't tell from the Sandbox. We're gonna need one for that I think. Other than that, keep up the good work. I look forward to reading the finished product.Bad intentionz (talk) 07:30, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, it's noted here. When I'm writing for each fight, I read the event-summary from a few sites to get an impression on how they summarize the fight so my personal analysis never factors in (WP:OR and all that). I'm interpreting it as that we could theoretically do a play-by-play (e.g. punch, punch, kick, takedown, mount, armbar - all facts) but as that'd end up far to long and unnecessary detailed we have to rely on some level of analysis (fighter X was more successful on the feet while Y had the more effective takedowns"). The question is whether such opinions requires attribution ("Sherdog.com felt fighter X had the most success on the feet") or that as long as multiple sources comment on something it can be added as fact. I've in any case tried to make sure all analysis is agreed on by multiple sites. This seems to be a point where we differ from WP:PW's articles as they mostly only take note of the end of the fight (and I actually think they're forced to as wrestling matches are copyrighted work of art believe it or not). -- aktsu (t / c) 12:04, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Alright, moved the "event"-section from the sandbox to the article. -- aktsu (t / c) 16:45, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * From the article: "In the first bout of the evening, Dan Cramer became the first fighter to be successful in a professional mixed martial arts debut at a UFC pay-per-view event since Marcio Cruz at UFC 55 in his fight with Matt Arroyo." Should this perhaps be reworded?  It took me a few times to realize that the sentence wasn't (mistakenly) referring to Marcio Cruz fighting Matt Arroyo at UFC 55.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 18:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps... "In the first bout of the evening, Dan Cramer became the first fighter since Marcio Cruz at UFC 55 to be successful in a professional mixed martial arts debut at a UFC pay-per-view in his fight with Matt Arroyo." ? --Drr-darkomen (talk) 18:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "In the first bout of the evening, Dan Cramer became the first fighter to be successful in a professional mixed martial arts debut at a UFC pay-per-view event since Marcio Cruz at UFC 55. In his fight with Matt Arroyo, Cramer took Arroyo down and attempted . . ." --TreyGeek (talk) 18:18, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Two Fighters with the Same Name
I was looking over the Krzysztof Soszynski article. I noticed that a couple of the fight histories he is linked to (most recently Brian Stann) has a Polish flag next to his name. I'll change those to Canadian flags. But the more important thing I noticed is that Soszynski had a match against a "Marcus Hicks" in April 2008. The Marcus Hicks article doesn't have the Soszynski match listed. The Hicks article is one for Marcus "The Wrecking Ball" Hicks (Sherdog). Soszynski fought against Marcus "The Loudmouth Assassin" Hicks (Sherdog).

Does anyone have any idea how you handle two people in the same career/field? I'm going to unlink the incorrect Marcus Hicks' name in Soszynski's article. But how do we handle this potential conflict in the long term? What happens if both Hicks' deserves an article? --TreyGeek (talk) 01:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I found the answer for myself. I just discovered articles for Jason Miller (fighter) and Jason Miller (light heavyweight fighter) for two MMA fighers with different names.  Using this naming convention there can then be articles for Marcus Hicks and Marcus Hicks (light heavyweight fighter), with the latter being the person Soszynski fought.  --TreyGeek (talk) 03:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Works for me, though you could also make the distinction that one is Canadian. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Compromise
Reading the discussion of the fighters that fought on The Ultimate fighter but did ntohing of consequense following but are still minor parts of an significant event. What if we built a page for other fighters on the show? That way they still have an entry without having to give them the entire space (like the lists of other charaters on TV shows.

Someone MUCH better than me can make my concept less of an eyesore.

We could use the format like This one or  This one David.snipes (talk) 01:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I would not agree with this. I think it's an all or nothing situation. If the fighter is notable, they should get their own article.  If they aren't notable they don't get an article.  Neither should they have an article within an article (which it seems like your proposing, multiple articles within a single article).
 * For those curious what may have brought this on, an editor marked Dean Amasinger for deletion. They did it in good faith questioning Amasinger's notability seeing the article listed in the new pages list.  The page creator pointed out all of the other The Ultimate Fighter competitor articles.  The deletion proposal was taken back, but in doing so the editor still questions the notability of Amasinger (and many other MMA fighter articles). --TreyGeek (talk) 02:01, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Having a small section on each fighter might not actually be such a bad idea imo. I believe that is what most characters in movies/tv-shows and videogames get unless they are notable outside that movie/program/game (see eg. Big_Brother_1_(U.S.) and Characters_of_Final_Fantasy_VII and notice how some have links to their main article). -- aktsu (t / c) 02:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * How about this as an Idea? User:David.snipes/sandbox_5 —Preceding undated comment added 23:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC).

But some of the participants are notable as far as MMA goes, are you wanting to redirect ALL of them to the TUF article?Sepulwiki 22:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * only the ones that are deemed no longer notable- Tommy Speer for example, has retired and will never be notable (unless he reinvents the seed drill or something) but Griffith and Rashad Evans as champions would be notable  for all wiki-timeDavid.snipes (talk) 22:32, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * My primary issue with the proposed page is listing fight records and infoboxes giving the appearance of multiple articles on the same page. I'd also like to offer a rebuttal to Aktsu's Big Brother pages with Survivor (U.S. TV series) and The Amazing Race which create articles for notable contestants; non-notable contestants are not linked to a article of their own or grouped into a single article. --TreyGeek (talk) 00:09, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Should sporting nationality flags be sourced?
Today I've run into several instances in fighter histories where the flag next to a fighter's name seems to be stereotypically chosen based on their name. I noticed it when in the Frank Lester (fighter) article, an anon IP changed the flag next to Cosmo Chiles from Mexico to Cuba. I tried doing some research on Chiles and found nothing to suggest he's Cuban or Mexican (he currently fights out of California, but that doesn't mean much). Looking around, I see other instances of where a 'red-linked' fighter has a flag next to their name, but there is nothing to suggest why that flag was chosen; neither can I find a source suggesting what their nationality is (sporting or otherwise).

So my question is, should flags next to fighters names representing their sporting nationality be sourced, particularly for 'red-linked' fighters? If not, how do we ensure that the correct flag is next to the fighter's name? --TreyGeek (talk) 21:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course it should. Is it likely to be done: nope. Even so, we have no guidelines for what flags to use for fighters we know everything about so how are we going to determine it for next-to total strangers? -- aktsu (t / c) 21:56, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I understand trying to get everyone creating articles on fighters to best practices will be difficult to impossible. However, as I go through working on articles (I try to do one fighter article a week) if I remove flags from next to fighter's names because there is no reference to point to their nationality (sporting or otherwise) then I can point here if someone complains.  --TreyGeek (talk) 21:26, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I've sourced the flags for the fighter history for Jason Dent. So we can see what it could look like.  --TreyGeek (talk) 22:37, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Fighter links in fight records
Do we really need to link to fighters who don't have pages at wikipedia? Seems kind of pointless. Plus the red is an eyesore. Also because everyone seems to link the fighters name reagrdless if that fighter has a page at wikipedia a lot of fighters links will get redirected to someone who is more prominent with the same name who actually have a wikipedia page. So someone say came and looked at a fighters wikipedia page and were looking at their fight record click on one of the opponents and it goes to a policticians page or something along those lines they'd be lead to believe that fighter fought a 80 year old politician.

So should we only link to fighters who atcually have a wikipedia page? It seems the more logical thing to do. Thoughts?

Omar Rodriguez (talk) 14:36, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, one of the functions of the redlinks is to invite users to create articles on them. So with that in mind, I'd say it's OK to remove the links for people who are clearly non-notable and is unlikely to become so. If the subject is notable and there's someone with the same it's probably better to create a piped link with a "(fighter)" postfix so that if/when they get an article we won't need to re-link. -- aktsu (t / c) 15:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Feel free to send me any bad links you find but don;t have time to fix- or the page that's there is a bunch- fixing links is one of the few things I can do without TreyGeek yelling at me :-) I'm thinking of going through most of the early cards and if Sherdog doesn;t ahve them fighting in the past 3 years removing the links- If they havn't done anything in 3 years thats long enough. Thoughts? David.snipes (talk) 21:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh god no, don't do that. This isn't a website of recent or currently active fighters.  This is an encyclopedia.  It should have as much past info as we can get in here.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 23:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Jeremiah Riggs
Input welcome. -- aktsu (t / c) 14:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

slight problem
on Bobby Lashley's article, the Pro Wrestling infobox was replaced with the MMA one. This is fine, but now there is no record of ringnames (this applies to all wrestlers who jump, but only so far affects him. he used to compete as Blaster Lashley in OVW) 77.102.18.231 (talk) 16:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, this was how it was before the change. Can't say there's much useful info lost (only "Blaster Lashley" which is bolded in the second section anyway). -- aktsu (t / c) 16:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

source for results
Hey guys, not too sure if i'm putting this in the right spot. Just wondering why most of the fight results in articles such as ufc 94 or ufc 99 etc. don't have a source for the match results? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.220.188.111 (talk) 22:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, well, there should probably have a link for easy verifiability but the event/PPV itself is a perfectly good source. That is the reason we don't require sourcing for things like plot summaries (the movie/episode is the source). UFC 94 have plenty of sources btw, just see the "notes and references"-section. -- aktsu (t / c) 23:01, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

how can I help?
Hi there, kind of new to wikipedia. I have a bit of a hankering to do some writing and I figure this is the best place to do it, since I have some knowledge of MMA and a love of the UFC.So what can I do to help this project? I don't know very much about editing articles at all, but I'm willing to learn if somebody has the time to teach. I could be a very valuable edition to this project. Aj10101 (talk) 05:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Standardize the statistics
Stanardize the "Mixed martial arts record"-section. Include win-loss in each fighter. Makes it much easier for data-gathering! I'm currently writing a script, but I've already noticed many differing versions. Inluding the "breakdown"-section. Some adds draws, some adds no contest. There no standard anywhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mazter00 (talk • contribs) 18:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Easier said then done :\ The MMArecordbox-templates (and the other templates such as the infobox) are indeed missing parameters all over the place. Maybe someone with AWB-experience could make something that automatically fixes it. The actual record isn't very standarized either. To avoid having to fix it manually we could make a script recreating them in our prefered format (mine can be seen at Joe Warren (fighter)) by pulling info from Sherdog (outdated example (as in, it doesn't pull current info) of just that is at mmawiki.awardspace.com, the user who made it is retired afaik) as doing it manually is a real pain. Thought? -- aktsu (t / c) 19:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Are we talking about standardizing all fighter pages to have the same record history table and record breakdown entries as is offered at WikiProject Mixed martial arts (since there are variation of it on the various fighter pages)? If someone wants to take on that task, fine, even though I have my own opinions on what should and should not go in the record history table (as suggested in a previous discussion).
 * Or are we raising the question of modifying what appears in these tables? (I'm unsure what the OP's second sentence means: "Include win-loss in each fighter.") As for issues of allowing Wikipedia to make it easier for data-gathering, we should probably keep in mind WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information).  And I'll stop there unless there is a desire to discuss this area further (area = what should go in the record history).  --TreyGeek (talk) 19:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

James Wilks
I think there is a possible Copyright violation with James Wilks at brief glance its almost identical to his bio page from his official website. Jimmy Skitz's Answer Machine 20:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup, it's a cut and paste. Aktsu beat me to the punch in flagging it.  Thanks for pointing it out.  --TreyGeek (talk) 20:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * (ec) It almost definetly is. The page was created on May 29 and I found a cache of the website that had the text on May 22. Removed. -- aktsu (t / c) 20:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * *sigh* I've went to review edits by the creator of the Wilks article. It appears the biography of Justin Wren was mostly cut/pasted from  (Google cache version since the site doesn't load for me).  I'm going to blank the article's bio and slap a warning on this user's page.  Later today I'll see about coming back and reviewing more of this user's edits.  But wanted to make folks aware there may be more issues.  --TreyGeek (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And I see Aktsu is on top of it as always. I'm stepping way from the computer for a bit. :)  --TreyGeek (talk) 20:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I got the worst of it (thanks to the Contribution Surveyor although it crashes halfway though his contribs so I had to look through the rest manually). If there's more it's most likely very small pharagraphs only. In addition to this he has also uploaded a bunch of copyrighted images previously so at this point he's extremly close to being blocked IMO. -- aktsu (t / c) 21:57, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for notability
I'm not completely sure how to attack this, but let's consider this first: how does the notability guideline for athletes work with MMA? I'm thinking one could interpret it as either 1) all professional fighters are notable (which would mean next to everybody; many states hasn't even implemented amateur competition and if so it's mostly used for promoters to avoid paying instead of for actual amateur-level fighters) or 2) only fighters at the top level of competition is notable ("fully professional level" as opposed to only a professional level).

The problem with interpretation 1 is obvious and would mean we should create or own guidelines specific for MMA (similar to WikiProject_Martial_arts/Notability) to avoid allowing everyone having fought MMA ever an article. #2 is far more reasonable, but requires us to get a consensus for where we draw the line.

I guess that this (WP:ATHLETE in regards to MMA and notability for fighters in general) is something that's not really urgent or currently a problem, but it's something that needs to be decided eventually IMO. Agreeing on an interpertation of WP:ATHLETE would be a start at least. Thoughts? -- aktsu (t / c) 18:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the basic notability criteria is sufficient: non-trivial coverage of the subject (MMA fighter) in multiple publications. The disclaimer atop of the Additional criteria section of WP:BIO could be interpreted as "everything in this section can be ignored," not sure why that section is still up besides cruft and inertia... hateless 21:56, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * True, but it's still used at AFD so I still think we should have a guideline saying "look, this is not the NFL so that criteria doesn't work. Here's the MMA equivalent: [...]". I also get the impression that would exclude a lot of the fighters we have articles on currently.. Do you think, say, the average prelim fighter in WEC has received the required coverage? I notice almost everyone on the three latest events has an article. Using only the GNG works for me (it's how I argue at AFD to avoid people saying "KEEP! WP:ATHLETE!") but I imagine many people would disagree. (Not sure where you specifically stand on who you want to include but if you would say that generally the coverage for prelim fighters in WEC is too low so delete I guess that makes two of us. If you think they generally should be included I'm wondering if/where you see the coverage (play-by-plays and mentions in recaps are trivial IMO)). -- aktsu (t / c) 22:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Our project page has a blurb on notability in regards to WP:ATHLETE:

At face value, this would appear to include most professional mixed martial artists, but in practice should probably include those who have had at least one, and preferably several fights in an established professional fight promotion (e.g. not a startup promotion).
 * This statement might provide a start, but the next question would be what is an "established professional fight promotion"? The major ones (UFC, WEC, Dream, Pride) are easy to determine this way.  I'm sure there are other promotions that are just as established (I'm less knowledgeable with them).  If we were to go this route would it be possible to state what we would consider to be established promotions?  Or would going along with this line of thinking be counter productive? (Regardless of what guidelines we come up with, there will always be exceptions and potential arguments, but I suppose that's life, especially on Wikipedia. :) --TreyGeek (talk) 00:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "High-level" would probably be clearer than "established" IMO. I'm getting unsure if we can actually make it less unambiguous than that though... As long as we're clear on that ATHLETE doesn't work I'm starting to think that's the best we can do. I hate updating records and having to have 2,218 (and counting) articles on my watchlist so I'd love a criteria specifically saying articles like Levi Avera, Ron Faircloth and people doomed to go no longer than prelim-fights for WEC are not notable (sidenote: I wonder if people think I hate WEC now, wanting half of their roster deleted from WP and always using them as an example :D), but I somewhat doubt that's feasible. I should probably try taking some to AFD to see what's up, but if I get a literal interpretation of WP:ATHLETE thrown in my face I'll be pretty disappointed. Here's hoping people have more common sense than that. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I went for Levi Avera (Articles_for_deletion/Levi Avera). If it's not deleted it should at least end up being improved somewhat which is always good. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be.... appropriate(?) to specify what we, as a WikiProject, consider to be a high-level promotion? That would eliminate ambiguity on that point, though there will likely always be exceptions to the rule.  --TreyGeek (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I would be OK with it in any case. My prefered criteria would be multiple apperences on the main card of the likes of the UFC, Strikeforce, Affliction, Pride, EliteXC, Dream, Sengoku, Hero's, and being a class A fighter in Shooto, (those are high-level IMO) or championship contestation at the mid-level (WEC, Deep, Pancrase, IFL, Cage Warriors etc.). A more realistic criteria would probably be more like multiple fights at any card at the mid level and above. -- aktsu (t / c) 04:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is my viewpoint
 * 1. If a fighter has not fought in 3 years- we consider him "done" and remove the redlinks, if they have not become noteable yet- and 3 years of Nada (per Sherdog) then they more than likely will not do anything.


 * 2. My idea on having a "other characters" on the TUF show- Look at the ones such as these - Jeff Dye almost all the TUF were on TV longer than this guy was.
 * 3. How about this as a line for notable-not notable 10 or 15 fights WITH at least one from a top tier organization (UFC/Pride/Affliction?Dream?)


 * I'm not saying 15 fights is the bottom line- Rashad Evans hasn;t hit 15 fights yet he is notable- I'm talking about the lower "tier" guys


 * I have gone through 1-4 UFCs and only 5 fighters cannot be removed from Redlink via this criteria


 * Zane Frazier ,Sean Daugherty ,Orlando Weit ,Remco Pardoel ,Joe Charles - everyone else either has a page or is not notable and now is not redlinked. (Thanks aktsu for starting this)David.snipes (talk) 00:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * We should probably handle the use of redlinks separatly to (hopefully) keep things moving IMO. A hardlimit on the total number of fights is no good (see eg. Jon Jones (fighter) and Muhammed Lawal), so the question become what/if anything else would be a good criteria... -- aktsu (t / c) 03:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Having a firm number of matches could potentially be a bad idea. It would cause issues with potentially notable fighters early in their career (TUF winners in particular).  --TreyGeek (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, you probably doesn't get a better example than Amir Sadollah though you could argue the TUF finalists get their notability from the show itself so to argue notability from fights is a moot point. -- aktsu (t / c) 04:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sadollah is one in particular I had in mind. I think regardless of what is decided there will be exceptions.  I also think (hope?) that these exceptions will stand out, such as Sadollah.  --TreyGeek (talk) 04:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we're only discussing people not clearly notable by passing WP:GNG, as the winners of TUF definetly do. -- aktsu (t / c) 05:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

(break) Not beat a point in the ground- but I did state that fighting in the last 3 years as part of the above criteria. All TUF winners fit in that category. Tell you what, Let me do what I got based on the above criteria - and err on the side of caution - and then I'll post a list, I can stub the one you people want to keep next week sometime. I don;t mean to be a bear here- but its a pain in the rear to try to get things looking good. David.snipes (talk) 13:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Should I just start a box Here  and start it as I go? David.snipes (talk) 13:50, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Im still unclear as far as guidelines here goes, i focus more on Wikipedia Portugues, but i can say that if a fighter has had a sufficient amount of fights for the major tier promotions said above, UFC, WEC, IFL, etc, has fought in the last couple years or so, and has fought a sufficient amount of fighters with articles should be enough to at least establish the page, what we need to figure out is how to come to an agreement about the matter. User:Sepulwiki (talk) 22:19, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability Proposal
On our project page there is a section regarding determining the notability of fighters. Based on the discussion above, here is a proposal for how the section could be rewritten: To determine whether a fighter is notable enough to be deserving of their own Wikipedia article the following guidelines can be used: A couple of points from the discussion not here is mention of a specific number of fights. My thinking is that good judgment would be better than specifying 3, 5, 10, or 50 fights. There were also a couple mentions of a time-based determination. Again, I think good judgment is best here, as someone who hasn't fought in a number of years and has yet to have an article may still be notable.
 * The fighter has competed on the main card of several events of a high-level professional fight promotion. Examples of high-level fight promotions are: Affliction, Dream, EliteXC, Hero's, Sengoku, Strikeforce, and UFC.
 * The fighter has won a championship with a mid-level professional fight promotion. Examples of mid-level fight promotions are: Cage Warriors, Deep, IFL, Pancrase, and WEC.

Comments, suggestions, blasts? --TreyGeek (talk) 16:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * As much as I'd like that to be the state of affairs, it's probably too strict and doesn't really conform to current practises. Prelim or main at high-level and main at mid-level is better with that in mind though. Another issue is that many promotions doesn't split their cards, so another wording might be necessary ("main part" of a card perhaps? Something like that..) If the rest of you feel it isn't to strict though, I'm right behind you. -- aktsu (t / c) 16:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we should recognize how much weight WP:GNG has. If you parse the language of WP:BIO carefully, it's clear that the most important consideration is the GNG (aka, the basic notability criteria). WP:ATHLETE merely generally indicates notability, the GNG however allows the assumption of notability. On top of that, the GNG has the added benefit of being derived from the big three editorial policies WP:OR, WP:V and WP:NPOV: subjects that don't have substantial neutral (NPOV), reliable (V) information from secondary sources (OR) should not have articles here. We should also recognize that fighters that completely fail WP:ATHLETE can still be notable if GNG is passed, as Kyle Maynard demonstrates. At the very minimum, the GNG should be noted as the main consideration for notability, and any other criteria (just like WP:ATHLETE and every other secondary criteria) we introduce merely are correlating factors that may indicate notability. As for hierarchy, high/mid/low/etc tiers are still too unrefined...for instance I wouldn't call WEC mid-level, given it's international prominence. I would make tiers geography-based and replace "high-level" with "international" and mid-level with "national." hateless 17:10, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm viewing this as our equivalent to WP:ATHLETE or as an guideline explaning how WP:ATHLETE should be interpreted in relation to MMA. We all know who's generally notable or not, but the idea was that a guideline would be something people unfamiliar with the sport could look to to get an idea of what MMA's equivalent is.
 * That's fine. My point is that WP:GNG should be mentioned prominently, especially since it's not on the same page as WP:BIO. hateless 17:25, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

How's something along these lines? When considering if a fighter is notable enough for it's own article the guidelines at Notability and Notability (people) (except the additional criteria for athletes) takes precedent over anything on this page. The criteria below should be considered a replacement for WP:ATHLETE as the status of being a "professional" in MMA is not equivalent to other sports.

Generally a fighter is considered notable if: The tiers probably needs refining though. Thoughts? -- aktsu (t / c) 18:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The fighter has competed extensivly at the international level of the sport. That would include multiple apperances on the main part of events promoted by the likes of the UFC, Pride FC, EliteXC, WEC, Strikeforce, Affliction, Dream, Sengoku and in professional Shooto.
 * The fighter has won a championship or been in contestation of a championship in a major national promotion. Such promotions would include King of the Cage, Deep, Cage Warriors and Pancrase.
 * That criteria opens up almost every fighter to a page that has more than 10 fights. The main issue I have is if a player gets on the field for ONE play in the NFL/NBA/NHL he is notable- MMA does not have that clear a line - fighting as an alternate in UFC 10 or a fighter like Robert Lucarelli who ONLY fought once but it was at a UFC event should get a page on those guidelines. Some people may take organizations as minor while others would reject them out of hand (fighters in a Bingo Hall today would be considered notable 15 years from now) David.snipes (talk) 22:29, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see where Robert Lucarelli's one UFC fight equates to having "competed extensively in the international level of the sport." The guy who has fought ten times down at the VFW hall also would not be notable by these guidelines because the folks running the show at the VFW hall are not running a promotion on the "international level" nor are they a "national promotion" should that guy have won a championship.  So, I fail to see your point.  --TreyGeek (talk) 00:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the NFL/NBA/NHL:Notable guidelines- one play and they are in. How About Mark Hughes? David.snipes (talk) 12:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the general agreement in this discussion thus far is that MMA fighters cannot have their notability judged the same as NFL players and other athletes of that type. --TreyGeek (talk) 14:44, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

It's been almost two weeks since the last comment on this issue. I was thinking of coming in here and offering up another proposal for notability of MMA fighters. However, I see that there hasn't been any real comments or suggests to the version posted last by Aktsu. I've made some slight copy-edits and some minor wording changes to offer it back for discussion: When considering if a fighter is notable enough for an article, the guidelines at Notability and Notability (people) (except the additional criteria for athletes) takes precedence over anything on this page. The criteria below should be considered a replacement for WP:ATHLETE as the status of being a "professional" in MMA is not equivalent to other sports.

Generally a fighter is considered notable if: Given the time to sleep on it, does anyone have anything they'd want to amend to this version of notability guidelines? The eventual goal would be to replace the text that currently resides at WikiProject Mixed martial arts. --TreyGeek (talk) 05:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The fighter has competed extensively at the international level of the sport. That would include multiple appearances in events promoted by UFC, Pride FC, EliteXC, WEC, Strikeforce, Affliction, Dream, Sengoku, other similar organizations, and in professional Shooto.
 * The fighter has won a championship or been a contestant of a championship match in a major national promotion. Such promotions would include King of the Cage, Deep, Cage Warriors, Pancrase, and other similar organizations.
 * Not so sure I'm a fan of the criteria. It seems like this problem with WP:ATHLETE isn't confined to MMA.  Anyone who gets on the field for a single down in the NFL passes WP:ATHLETE.  Applying these proposed guidelines to Football, any player who plays a single down in the CFL's Grey Cup would be notable.  I sort of see this as replacing one set of imperfect rules with a whole new set of imperfect rules.  That being said, I really can't think of any alternative suggestions.  Just wanted to add my two cents. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 06:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Fully professional league
In football, the guideline has been interpreted as being one that would let the player live without having to have another job. So Arena football, yes, AF2, which only pays $200 a game, no. Under that precedent, I would say that Aktsu, as edited by TreyGeek, has got it pretty good in terms of which organization provide the opportunity for the fighter to live on just fighting.-- 2008 Olym pian chit chat 23:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Problem there, Shreveport's AF2 QB Quincy Carter was paid 28K for his term with the team- a living wage in this area.
 * In MMA there is not hard and fast line- every restriction almost has a "yeah-But" clause in it. Total Fights (Rashad Evans) High Winning % (Tito and Randy) Championships (Horn)
 * We could go with:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mixed_martial_arts/notable
 * and just go case by case and try to get a list of whom is and is not instead of proposing half of the pages for deletion.
 * David.snipes (talk) 15:49, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There appears there are only two people who seem to be unhappy with the proposal. User:Drr-darkomen suggests the proposal is flawed, but doesn't have an alternative to suggest.  User:David.snipes, if I am understanding his comments and I'm not sure I am, suggests that some fighters would be considered non-notable under the proposal(?).  However, the fighters he list, I believe, all would be considered notable under the proposed text that is above.  I also think the possibility for exceptions to be real and those can be handled on a case-by-case basis.  Otherwise, it appears other believe the proposal to be favorable.... unless I missed something somewhere. --TreyGeek (talk) 14:11, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't see what the big deal is by letting anyone who has fought in a major promotion (from the list above) to have their own article. It still cuts out a lot of "professional" mix martial artists who only fight in regional and local shows.  If someone feels like creating the article, why not?  Are we trying to conserve hard drive space or what? :)  The only point I would even argue is that in the history of MMA I think there have only been two major promotions:  UFC and PrideFC.  EliteXC was a short lived joke of a promotion.  Strikeforce, while very well run and climbing the ladder is a regional promotion.  Affliction hasn't even had 3 shows yet.  DREAM and WVR Sengoku, while trying to fill the void left by PrideFC have only had around 9 shows each and draw poor ratings.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 15:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)  [edit] The WEC is trickier.  I don't think it is a major promotion exactly.  It is under the Zuffa banner and has some steam.  It is probably the premier organization for Featherweights and Bantamweights, but with them recently dropping Light Heavyweights, Middleweights, and Welterweights (and let's be honest, nobody thinks their Lightweight division is a premier division) I just don't see them as major outside of those two weight classes.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 20:33, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Trying to conserve hard drive space? No.  However, we are trying to reduce the number of pages to monitor, specifically pages for non-notable people.  Aktsu metioned at the beginning of this discussion he has somewhere over 2,000 articles on his watchlist.  I don't have anywhere near that many, but I do know that in my two biggest chunks of Wikipedia time today I've spent it dealing with vandalism and nonconstructive edits.  (Admittedly, the pages today were notable pages, but that has not always been the case.) I think time could be better spent improving and creating articles about notable people; as opposed to monitoring articles of non-notable people for improper changes and updating their record tables.
 * If we come up with a good set of guidelines on what makes an MMA fighter notable, we can start to weed out some of the articles we are currently monitoring so that, hopefully, we'll have more time to work on more notable articles. --TreyGeek (talk) 23:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I hope you didn't take my quip about hard drive space too seriously. I would like to get back to my issue with the proposed system. We have fighter notability defined largely by how many fights in which organization.  The problem is how to we determine which organizations are actually notable.  It almost seems that the organizations were primarily chosen based on notable fighters competing for them.  We now have a serious chicken and egg problem.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 02:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

For anyone who may be interested there is a discussion at Articles for deletion/Jeremy May in regards to whether the Jeremy May article should be deleted or not. One of the common basis for keeping it is that May is notable as per WP:Athlete. One of the people making this argument states that unless the MMA Wikiproject comes to a consensus on its own determination of notability WP:Athlete takes precedence. I've put up an argument that WP:Athlete is a guideline and doesn't have to be followed to a 'tee', but still, the argument is out there in case anyone is interested in discussing the May article (there) or MMA fighter notability in general (here). --TreyGeek (talk) 18:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Dispute over "the consensus two best female fighters in the world" at Strikeforce
The claim that Gina Carano and Cristiane Santos are "the the consensus two best female fighters in the world" is sourced to this article at Foxsports.com which is apparantly written by InsideFights.com. I have a huge problem with that statement and the statement that the fight is "the first women in MMA history to headline a major MMA fight card". To dispute the first claim, see e.g. Sherdogs Unofficial Female Pound-for-Pound MMA Rankings compiled by Jordan Breen and Mike Fridley and WAMMA's female rankings (note they have multiple weight classes, Carano and Santos are #1 and #3 in one). For the second claim I'd point to cards held by female-only promotions such as the defunct Smackgirl and the new Valkyrie and Jewels promotions.

So, per WP:V I'd like to either see these claims properly sourced (i.e. multiple sources for it; I think this is impossible) or removed and instead changed to simply state the facts (two people are fighting for a championship). Thoughts?-- aktsu (t / c) 01:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The source you gave Sherdogs Unofficial Female Pound-for-Pound MMA Rankings compiled by Jordan Breen and Mike Fridley CLEARLY states that it is UNOFFICIAL. Why did you give it?Sea888 (talk) 22:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's only unofficial because the entire Sherdog staff wasn't involved in creating it. The point is that it is a list created by a reliable source (i.e. Breen) which contradicts the claim in your source. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Please read carefully, you gave an UNOFFICIAL ranked source. It says UNOFFICIAL on the page itself. UNOFFICIAL is UNOFFICIAL. Secondly, Carano and Cyborg will headline the first MAJOR, yes MAJOR, mma fight card, which is held obviously by Strikeforce.Sea888 (talk) 22:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Rankings is all about opinions, but the opinions needs to come from reliable sources, being "offical" in that an entire organization endore it have nothing to do with it. The claim from that Fox/InsideFighting article is that they are the concensus two top female fighters in the world. That is an extraordinary claim which needs extraordinary sourcing. I've provided you with sources to to contrary, which should show that they are in fact not the concensus top female fighters in the world. That is the issue here. If you want to dispute this, please provide more sources for the view that they in fact are. My sources given here is only to show I'm not the only one who disputes this. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And yes, I realize "concensus" means a minority can disagree. But we're currently 1 against 2 sources. Please provide more sources for your view. -- aktsu (t / c) 22:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And no, sources echoing Strikeforce's press release (where they present the claim) does not count per it being just that -- a press release -- aktsu (t / c) 22:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

(de-indent) In my opinion, I think phrases such as "world class" or "best in the world" should not be used in any Wikipedia article. If only for the fact that such a wording could quickly change when something better comes along. If someone or something is truly the best thing since sliced bread, or any other like description, then there would be a lot of sources to back up such a claim. Without numerous, or at least several, sources cited for such a statement on a Wikipedia article, then it should be removed, (again) in my opinion. --TreyGeek (talk) 23:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The origin for the "consensus best in the world" claim seems to be Strikeforce's press release, and it seems the sources given for the claim is just a retelling what they've read. As I said to Sea on our most recent exchanged (see my and his talkpage) is that I'd rather see a claim towards their popularity then som BS claim about them being the best. Something along those lines or just noting that it's the first female MMA headliner on a major card in the US (a claim backed by Sherdog) is what we should be going for IMO. -- aktsu (t / c) 01:02, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * World class as in a CLASS not by itself but among the premier. I've provided third party sources. It should be o.k. As to the "consensus best in the world" it should stand because it is not a press release. It came directly from the source. Cheers. Sea888 (talk) 01:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * How can you have someone be "consensus best in the world" when there are top sources which disagree with that statement? The fact of the matter is that statements even remotely like the one you presented are entirely opinion and not to be included in Wikipedia. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 01:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Unknown Card
Awhile back I started editing event articles and placing a section under 'Announced matchups' titled 'Unknown Card'. This is a place to put fights that had reliable sources, yet have not been placed in to the official fight card yet. It has seemed to work out fairly well, but I've never quite been happy with the way it looks. I would like to get some thoughts on a new structure which can be seen here: UFC 101 (sandbox) vs. what is in place now: UFC 101. Personally I think it looks better. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 02:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, one problem doing it that way would probably be that matches announced for a spesific card but not by the UFC itself would be innacuratly described as officialy announced. I personally really like the way it's currently. (Also, sidenote: per WP:MOS, you should use normal capitalization in headings, i.e. not "Main Card" etc.). -- aktsu (t / c) 02:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. I don't think there would be any confusion given that 'Official Fight Card' and 'Announced matchups' are completely separate sections. If anything I think it's less confusing. But that's me. If I didn't prefer it, I wouldn't have suggested it, right? :) --Drr-darkomen (talk) 02:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, if the "Official fight card" is only for actual official matchups then I'm with you. It was the "not yet been confirmed for either [card]"-line that put me off and made me think the actually-announced-for-a-card matches went in the section above. Definetly support a separate "Official fight card"-section. -- aktsu (t / c) 03:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I see the benefit to separating the official card from the other reported fights. One thing that bugs me slightly, is calling the second section "Announced Matches" as if the fights listed on the official card aren't announced.  I can't come up with a better title though, so I shouldn't complain.  --TreyGeek (talk) 03:57, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Unofficial matchups ? --Drr-darkomen (talk) 04:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, "Unofficial matchups" or "Unofficial matches" works for me. The title is simple, that's why I couldn't come up with it.  :/ --TreyGeek (talk) 04:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * How about "Other reported matchups/bouts/whatever"? Calling it "Unofficial" sounds like an open invitation for anyone to insert anything. -- aktsu (t / c) 04:40, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * "Other announced matchups".... I would be fine with that as well. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 04:41, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Check the sandbox. --Drr-darkomen (talk) 04:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh... I hadn't intended my nit-pickiness to have this effect. Looks good to me, without anything bugging me this time.  --TreyGeek (talk) 04:46, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me also (or should that be "as well"? I might have listened too much to Bas). -- aktsu (t / c) 04:54, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * How about "Unconfirmed"? Aj10101 (talk) 05:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You can have a confirmed bout through reliable sources which is not yet on the official fight card. This would make "Unconfirmed" inaccurate and undesirable.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 22:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Input needed at Talk:Dana_White
There's disagreement about the inclusion of a section about his video-blog where he attacked Loretta Hunt at Talk:Dana_White. Input appreciated. -- aktsu (t / c) 12:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

King of the cage - 'fully professional'?
Hello. I'm trying to find out whether King of the cage is 'fully professional' in the sense required by WP:ATHLETE. A reply at Talk:Victorville, California would be greatly appreciated. Olaf Davis (talk) 08:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You may wish to read the above it's all a bit of a debate...--Nate1481 09:53, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Considering they have a fairly wide distribution system as well as a proving ground for more than a few fighters, I would consider them worthy of a page. I mean I've seen the DVDs all over the place- (including Walmart)David.snipes (talk) 14:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Preliminary card/Undercard Bouts/Under Card/Undercard
Have seen many variations on this theme within UFC/Strikeforce/WEC event articles. "Main Card" seems fairly universal; I think we should come to some sort of consensus on what to name non-main card bouts. Fire away! --Drr-darkomen (talk) 03:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Strikeforce uses "undercard" and the UFC calls them "undercard bouts" so I'd say we go with that. -- aktsu (t / c) 04:40, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * UFC isn't consistent because they also refer to them as "preliminary bouts". --Drr-darkomen (talk) 04:59, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Frequently on UFC PPVs, you'll hear Joe Rogan saying "view the unaired preliminary bouts at UFC.com".
 * Is there a big concern if different promotions uses different terms? As long as the articles reflect the term used by the promotion shouldn't all be well?  Just questioning, not stating my opinion (don't have one either way at this time).  --TreyGeek (talk) 14:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it would be nice if the Mixed martial arts project provided a "Standard template", if you will, for how the articles are presented. There is no good reason for WEC to use one terminology, Strikeforce to use another terminology, and the UFC to use yet another terminology.  DREAM/Sengoku articles use different terms as well, but they are usually acceptable because most of their matches at multi-event Gran Prix and such.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 15:13, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * aktsu... If you read the UFC link you referenced closely, any bout which is not the main event is considered an "undercard bout". This is consistent with the way boxing uses that term as well.  You have the Main event and the Undercard.  That may be another route to go.  Should we break cards down in to "Main Event", "Televised Undercard", and "Non-televised Undercard"?  Or perhaps just "Main Event" and "Undercard"? I would personally lean toward indicating which bouts were broadcast and which were not.  --Drr-darkomen (talk) 15:32, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that seems to be how it's described at Main event as well, so maybe using another terminology would be good to avoid confusion. What you described is a possibility as well, but I'm not sure adding more headings is a good idea... -- aktsu (t / c) 00:39, 19 July 2009 (UTC)