Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Pro Football HoF Articles

I am not sure if this has been discussed before, so please let me know if it has, but I would like to bring up the following pages for discussion:
 * List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of National Football Conference North Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of National Football Conference East Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of National Football Conference West Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of National Football Conference South Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of American Football Conference North Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of American Football Conference East Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of American Football Conference West Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of American Football Conference South Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees
 * List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees from defunct NFL franchises
 * List of Green Bay Packers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame
 * List of Chicago Bears in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (redirect)

List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees is the basic list of football players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (HoF). Many years ago, I created List of Green Bay Packers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a natural fork of the main article, based on the main way that the HoF categorizes players (see here). The HoF categorizes players by other categories (college, year of enshrinement, etc.), but this is the most obvious and natural way to organize players (see here for the Packers.com list). I also brought the Packers list up to Featured List status (see here for nomination). A few years ago, User:Halophile, with no consensus, created these previous 8 forks based on NFL's divisions, and redirected the two team based lists (Packers and Bears) to their respective division. Since the Packers list was now a redirect, it was nominated for Featured List Removal. Based on the consensus in that discussion (see here), the Packers list was restored and general consensus was formed that forking the Pro Football HoF list by division did not make sense, and if any forks were necessary, they would be done by team (albeit greater consensus on a more noticed page is needed to make this conclusion).

One major issue I have with organizing this list by division is that the NFL's current division breakdown is relatively new and subject to future changes. As such, these lists will not stay the same, whereas if a player enters the HoF as a Packers player, that will never change, even if the team ceases to exist (see older players who played for now defunct teams, players who played for teams that moved or changed names). Also, I doubt that anyone would search to find out which players are in the HoF in each division. The Pro Football HoF doesn't even list the division a player played for on their page.

As such, I propose the following and would like to see if there is consensus to:
 * Merge any useful content from the 8 forks into the List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees, or create HoF by team pages for each team.
 * Delete the 8 forks, or redirect them to the List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees.
 * Restore List of Chicago Bears in the Pro Football Hall of Fame to its status as a standalone fork (and do this for any other team fork I am unaware of).

Any comments or input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @  02:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

*Notified User:Halophile as the original creator of the lists, User:Happyman22 as the nominator of the failed Bears featured list and WP:FLC as the venue that the original discussion occurred at. « Gonzo fan2007  (talk)  @  03:07, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

*Also placed a notice on the talk page of each article listed here for any editors who are following those articles. « Gonzo fan2007  (talk)  @  17:47, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Support your proposal. This is common sense, in my opinion. Readers who are fans of a particular team are likely to seek out a list of all players from their team of choice in the hall of fame. They are highly unlikely to seek out a list of all players from a particular division. There are certainly other arguments for or against divisional lists, but the first criteria for forking content should always be based on what our readers will find most useful. ~ RobTalk 11:06, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support option 1 or 2. Perhaps they could be combined into AFC/NFC lists if divisions are a bad split and the full details are too long for a single list, but because the main list is sortable by team, there should not be 32 separate articles for this. Reywas92Talk 17:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Gonzo's proposal. I said at one of the FLRCs for the Packers list that I didn't know of anyone who splits Hall of Famers by division. Well, I still don't know anyone who does that. Most people either call a person a Hall of Famer in general or connect the person to a team. If there aren't enough Hall of Famers for a given team to support a stand-alone list, we have sortability in List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees to help guide readers. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 22:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support your proposal creating page for each team. It would be easy to do 32 different pages by taking each team section from the 8 forks (actually 9 when you count the defunct teams list) to start the pages. Of course a couple of pages would be stubs (Jacksonville, Houston). The Template:NFL Hall of Famers by team could be reconfigured and added to each page. The links on the main article teams for each player would have to be redone also. Spparky (talk) 02:06, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Support deleting the 8 forks. I had no idea these existed until now. That's just silly and unnecessary. Lizard  (talk) 02:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I redesigned the NFL Hall of Famers by team template that is in the Hall of Famers by team section of the main List. The list by division is linked at top of column. The Green Bay link sends you directly to the team list. As each team page is written, the template can be updated easily to direct you to the team list (whether an article or a section within an article). This is going to be convenient for users no matter which way is decided.Spparky (talk) 03:08, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Something we have to consider if we go the "one list for each team" route is if each list meets WP:LISTN – Something that is often blatantly ignored when it comes to sports lists. Which can be seen with the current lists by division. Has each list by division been "discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources"? I seriously doubt it. We'll need to be sure to keep this in mind for each team. But for the record, I'm not in favor of a separate list article for each team. Seems like unnecessary cruft in most cases. Lizard  (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Every time someone new is inducted into the HOF from any given team, every reporter and their cousin from around the regional area writes an article of the formula: "WWWWW was inducted into the Hall of Fame today. He joins the likes of XXXX and YYYY, some of the best ZZZZs to ever play football with INSERT_TEAM_NAME_HERE". In researching biographies, I see that type of coverage for every single team in the CFL, and I would certainly expect all NFL teams to get greater than or equal coverage to the most well-covered CFL team. ~ RobTalk 23:46, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Fair enough eh. Lizard  (talk) 00:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Thanks everyone for your input so far. There seems to be strong consensus to no longer divide HoF'ers by division.  It also seems that there is no prejudice in creating a list for each team, with it becoming less clear for teams that do not have many HoF'ers, and thus would lead to a small standalone list (i.e. the Carolina Panthers, who only have three).  It would seem that List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees from defunct NFL franchises is an ok way of organizing players who are from teams that do not exist anymore.


 * Now comes the big question, what to do next? Unfortunately, I do not have the time or energy to create standalone lists for each team.  So I will do the following steps to better organize everything and set it up so other editors can establish these pages at their leisure:
 * Create a page for each team in the format of List of TEAM NAME in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.✅
 * Place a redirect in each article pointing to List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees (I created one to provide an example: List of Buffalo Bills in the Pro Football Hall of Fame).✅
 * Redirect each division article to List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees using the Template:R with history template so the page history will be maintained.
 * Add a note on each team page's talk page pointing to page history of the relevant division (see Talk:List of Buffalo Bills in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for an example).
 * Remove any double redirects that may result.
 * Maintain List of Green Bay Packers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and restore List of Chicago Bears in the Pro Football Hall of Fame to its previous status as a standalone list.✅
 * Expanded List of Buffalo Bills in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, removed redirect, changed links on main list, edited team list template. Now a standalone list.✅ Spparky (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2016 (UTC)


 * This seems to be a happy medium that removes the current division breakdown, which no one likes, and creates a page for each team that can be a redirect until someone wants to expand it. That way our readers can find the info they want in the List of Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees article and our editors can easily expand each redirect to a standalone list (when notable). Lastly, all of the relevant page histories will be maintained and linked for any editor to use as a basis to establish each team page. I will work on this as time permits, but anyone else can assist.  I added a link to each page here: User:Gonzo_fan2007/HoF to help organize it.  I will create each team redirect before I make any changes to the division articles.  Please feel free to propose other ideas, nothing I will be doing will the redirects can;t be undone.  « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @  02:05, 18 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I marked the tasks I completed tonight with ✅. I will work on the others in a few days to give everyone a chance to see what's going to happen and comment if necessary.  « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @  02:59, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Just a reminder it's important to add references to reliable sources that discuss each team's players in the HOF as a group or set, per WP:LISTN. When people see a bunch of lists like these pop up all of a sudden they start wanting to know if they're all necessary. Then next thing you know they're all getting sent to AfD. Just save us the trouble now, and make sure they're well cited so we don't have to go cite them later to justify their creation. Lizard  (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2016 (UTC)