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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mike Selinker (talk | contribs) at 18:39, 30 December 2005 (→now that that's out of the way... more category work). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


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Category:National Football League players

howcheng and I are discussing how to utilize this category (see: my talk page). He claims it is overbroad and thus not useful. In addition, he suggests recategorizing, and (if I'm correct in assuming this), essentially deleting the category. Finally, when I created the team categories, I made them sub-cats of American football players, rather than National Football League, which in light of the fact that there is not one non-NFL team category probably means that it should be a subcat of the NFL rather than American football as a whole. In summation... what the hell should we do here? Anthony 20:32, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, not deleting it per se, but more like Category:NBA players which is empty except for the categories by team (in fact, I'm thinking of having it retitled to Category:NBA players by team). As it stands now, Category:National Football League players is just overcrowded, and I don't see people browsing it to say, "Hmm, who else plays in the NFL?" IMHO people are more likely to wonder who else plays on or has played on a certain team. howcheng [ t • c • w • e ] 22:43, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm the one who emptied Category:NBA players (and a whole lot of other such categories) and made sure they were sorted by team and/or country, and so I'm biased when I say that I think doing the same with the NFL players is a good idea. I agree that few people are interested in these broad listings, but a lot of people would be interested in the players by team. I've also started to make this process friendlier to college football, by creating Category:College football players and a bunch of subcategories like Category:Michigan Wolverines football players, so that notable players can be referred to by their college team as well. If we go through and remove the Category:National Football League players tag from all the 1,000+ articles in the category, we can use that opportunity to add their college backgrounds and create a lot of really useful subcategories. I'd help with that, anyway.--Mike Selinker 15:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree completely. And after all the players recategorized in the 42+ team categories, the category that holds them should be renamed from Category:American football players by team. I'll help with the process, and taking the opportunity to add college info is a good idea. -Meegs 08:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Count me in however you want to do that.--Mike Selinker 21:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

On a related topic, I made team categories for the active teams that didn't already have one (in line with what they have in MLB and what Mike Selinker has been adding for college teams). Team player categories for renamed teams are members of their current team's category (e.g. Category:Arizona Cardinals contains Category:Chicago Cardinals players). There currently are no team player categories for defunct teams. -Meegs 09:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Summary

×Meegs 19:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that I've created, with Meegs's aid, a list called Football players from small colleges. Basically, if you adapt an article to the above format but the player's college is not noteworthy enough for a category (yet), don't create a non-linked category; just put the player on this list. Eventually some of them will move off this list into their own categories. We're trying to avoid categories which only contain one player for the time being, just to avoid clutter. This seems a good solution for now.--Mike Selinker 03:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fan templates

Not really NFL per se, but if anyone's interested, there's a page at Wikipedia:Sports Fans where you can use (and create, as I have been doing) templates for your user page to indicate your fandom for a particular sports team. For the NFL, so far we've got the Colts, and the Panthers template I created (natch). If you want to make your own, just follow the format: use the HTML from one of the existing templates, punch in the image for your team, change the cat names, and if you so choose (as I do), use one of the team's colors, instead of the bland "user:blank" one for the Pacers and Colts. Posted this here mostly to get the interest of all the fellow football fans here. Anthony 03:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

NFL player infobox?

I'm surprised there isn't one. Perhaps we should create one... what should be on it. Joe Montana's isn't all that bad. Gflores Talk 01:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I like that one. What I especially like about it is that it doesn't load itself up with fantasy numbers and details. Clean is better.--Mike Selinker 15:57, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've come up with a draft of a parameterized infobox at Template:NFL_player, based on the nonparameterized one at Joe Montana, with a couple additional fields. I then applied it back to Joe Montana so it could be seen in context. Any thoughts/objections? --Arcadian 16:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea. I have a few suggestions, however. For starters, we should wikify the birthday, and put it in the mm/dd/yyyy format, instead of dd/mm/yyyy format. Typical US formatting for dates is mm/dd/yyyy, and since we're doing this for American football players, we should stick to that format. Secondly, wikify the position, and Pro Bowl (on the left-hand side; once we get more Pro Bowl articles, we can wikify the Pro Bowl years as well). Third, possibly add Super Bowl appearances in there? I know Montana will have a lot, and others won't have any, but I think it's of enough importance to include in an infobox. Those are just some of my thoughts, but I definitely think it's not a bad idea to create a standard box for all NFL players. Anthony 20:19, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If the dates are entered in square brackets, as suggested in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), then the preferences of the reader determine the format dates are displayed in. I changed Joe Montana again, so it should look the way you want it to if your preferences. Second, I think Pro Bowl listings are unnecessary. They're not important, they make the box taller (it's already taller than a lot of players' articles), and most players have none to list. I would argue even stronger against superbowls listings for the same reasons. Also, if we're listing teams, I'm not sure the drafting team (or even the last team of retired player) should get its own entry. I'd suggest at least combining "drafting team" with "other teams" to make "previous teams". As it is, it's pretty confusing: listing the first team, then the last team, then any teams in the middle.-Meegs 21:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point on the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl appearances... they are a pretty small number of players on the overall. I still think the position should be wikified. As per the team question, I say the "Current team" goes on top, and under "Other teams", they should be listed chronologically, with the drafted team on top, and any subsequent teams underneath. This way, if it changes, we just make additions to the bottom, rather than shifting teams down the list. I'm also suggesting this discussion, once we agree on a compromise and finalize it, be transferred to the talk page of the template, this way any newbies who want to start adding it to pages know how to set it up. Anthony 22:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the infobox to reflect the above (I think). How's it looking? --Arcadian 22:22, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked at the boxes for a few other sports, and of the ones that don't take a minimalist approach, the one like the most is futbol;) Look at David Beckham, specifically the "professional clubs" section. Even though the current team isn't a special field, it's still easy to pick out immediately (especially with the dates). And putting all of the teams together in a single list seems to make much more sense for retired players too. -Meegs 23:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've reformatted the teams/years section to work like it does for futbol. Take a loot at Joe Montana to see how it looks now. Is it okay, or at least close enough to start using on a few more pages? --Arcadian 01:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I've put it on one more page, Alex Smith, to test that the draft round linking worked correctly (we don't have a 1979 draft page for Montana yet.) --Arcadian 01:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I like it. I did Morten Andersen. I also changed the template (please check my work - I'm not totally comfortable with the syntax) so that it behaves gracefully when either the "image=" is left empty, or when it's omitted altogether. We definitely don't want to encourage the masses to start adding images to every player, because most of them will have unknown/dubious copyright status - athlete pages are a mess with them already. It might be worth making the other fields "optional" too, but it's sometimes a good thing be able to explicitly see when a piece of information (e.g. DOB) is missing. Two questions:
  1. Should we include place of birth? Most bio infoboxes do.
  2. Can we think of a cleaner way to label the stats row than Stats:PFR? I has to fit on one line, and can only really be 10 or 11 characters.
--Meegs 02:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Very cool! I didn't know anything about that "hiddenStructure" trick before. I added a 'place of birth' field to address your first point, and for your second point, I tried to address it by creating a new page for Pro Football Reference, and then linking to it in the template. But I'm open to other suggestions. However, it's a lot easier to change labels after 'launch' than fieldnames, so unless anyone objects, I think Template:NFL_player is good enough to start using. --Arcadian 03:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Let's give everyone a couple of days to weigh-in on the field names, because they won't be easy to change after rollout. We've got Montana, Andersen, and Alex Smith to look at. I'm fine with it, but one thing that some might disagree with is the inclusion of the draft round, and/or the exclusion of the "overall" pick number. Someone might argue for the exclusion of the image field — as I write this someone is uploading random Cowboys pictures tagged "fair use: website screenshot" <groan> This kind of trouble will only get worse with the infobox. Also, we could add Anthony's pro bowl appearances as an optional row somewhere (I'm neutral on the topic, though I still oppose listing superbowls). It is sort a traditional stat to report. -Meegs 04:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I added a Probowl field It's an optional parameter and right now only Joe Montana's uses it. It could display either a list of years or a single number (# of appearances). I also made a little banner that could appear at the bottom of HOF players – again, only used on Montana's. ×Meegs 02:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice work! I think that unless anybody objects in the next few days, it would be okay to start using it. Perhaps we could put it on the 32 starting quarterbacks. That would give the template enough visibility that we'd know if there were any huge objections. --Arcadian 19:33, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The infobox is now on about 25 prominent players. GeorgeC made the following suggestions, which I moved from the top of this talk page to here: ×Meegs 09:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

Meegs edited the infobox I had created for Carson Palmer. It was a beaut, too. I don't like the new official NFL player infobox one bit. I know it's not your fault, Meegs. You're only following the rules. But the truth is that the official one sucks.

I'd like to see a slightly wider box to accommodate longer entries, the players' name at the top of the box, the ability to customize colors to denote present team (or, in the case of a retired player, the color of the team he is most associated with — e.g., orange for Boomer Esiason of the Cincinnati Bengals or green for Joe Namath of the New York Jets.) And how about an option for overall draft position? To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, check out the one I did for Ray Guy.

And speaking of Hall of Famers, how about a logo denoting them like there is for baseball Hall of Famers? GeorgeC 09:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • There's nothing official about the new infobox, we're merely trying to create continuity between all of the player articles (active/retired, all-pro/3rd-string) and present a small amount of essential info in a compact form. The good news is, there's nothing keeping us from making it better. For reference, here is GeorgeC's nice-looking Carson Palmer. ×Meegs 10:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

All-Time Records

  • Should we being a list of the all time leaders in any given category? (Passing yards, rushing yards, catches, sacks, etc.) We can update it every year, so no one has to worry about every week. We could do the top 100 in the categories so we have an exhaustive list.
Ideally we would annotate every record with the date that it was last confirmed to be current - but that is probably unmanageable. Most people realize that recently-broken records are frequently absent from lists like this. There is one kind of record, at least, that I think we really should do it for: the active streaks of doing something in consecutive games. I looked quickly through the two pages and found three that might be ongoing:
  • Most Consecutive Games Scoring, 370, San Francisco 49ers(1977-current)
  • Most Consecutive Games Scoring Field Goals, 38, Matt Stover ended in 2001 [1]
  • Most Consecutive (Kicking) Points After Touchdown, 371, Jason Elam ended in 2002 [2]
Streaks for consecutive years might be worthwhile too, though they move a lot slower. -Meegs 19:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it would be ideal to add the current dates, but I too think that it might not be possible, esp since there are already a clutter of numbers on these anyway. I would just ask any Wikipedians to take note of any records that are broken on any given week (which there are usually a couple here and there, no matter how obscure). I also like the strikethrough on records that have recently been broken, in order to add the new one (although I know that was not your intent above). Right now, I am just concentrating on data and formatting and hopefully others will get involved in this page and add more records.Bill shannon 22:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Football-Bios.

I normally work on the football bios here and I'm noticing that alot of the current bios we have are either horribly written or sad-subs. I have completely rewritten a few articles today, and I'm noticing that there is just too much to be done. Examples Donnie Spragan is just one sentence with a few words, and the Jason Taylor article is just a sad stub and I've seen much worst around. We need to fix that. I nominated Dan Marino for the Wikipedia:Article_Improvement_Drive and maybe that could be a start and maybe we could have a few weeks exclusively for fixing all those articles. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 01:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that writing quality (along with a lack of citation) is a particular problem in the player bios. I'm not really bothered by the stubs at all, though. What, for example, is your biggest complaint about Jason Taylor's stub? Is it just its brevity? There's more content there than 3/4 of the articles I've seen while re-cataloging Category:National_Football_League_players. In any case, whether it be problematic long articles, or stubby articles of major players, I like the idea of defining some small subset of the bios and mobilizing to fix them up as models. HOFers might be a good set., or maybe this year's Pro Bowl starters. ×Meegs 09:02, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If you haven't seen it yet, there's a list at 2006 Pro Bowl. Some of the players still have red links. For any new pages created, I'd recommend using the Template:NFL player infobox described above -- there's still some tweaking going on, but it seems to be doing okay in the wild. --Arcadian 23:01, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • For example the Jason Taylor article barely has info on his NFL, or college info. Just his high school carrer and info that he was picked for People magazine Ten Sexiest atheltes which is sad in my opinion. We should fix the articles on this year pro bowls starters at least. Marvin Harrison is pretty bad also for one of the best wide recivers in the league. We should start there and improve the writing quality. --Jaranda wat's sup 20:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I would submit that not every player needs a full-fledged article, as some players have plenty of material on other websites about them. For example, Jason Taylor is a fine player, but he's not necessarily worthy of a large, exhaustive article, as his career may not be considered that interesting, overall. Whereas someone like Terrell Owens (right or wrong) has a lot more interesting info about him, and might be worth of an article due to his controversy. We can get player bios on any team or sports website, just about. I don't know that every player needs much more than a stub unless there is something truly remarkable in their careers. Otherwise, I'm fine with a stub. Maybe only HOF player (as Meegs wrote above) would be a good place to start, and then we can start to fill in the blanks afterward. Bill shannon 23:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have no doubt Jason Taylor is accomplished and interesting enough to support a full article, and I wish he already had one, but there are there are dozens of players of his caliber with similar problems. Defensive players an OLmen lag behind the others, but that's not surprising. Players for some teams like the Eagles, the Patriots, and the '85 Bears seem to have unusually good coverage too. It might be fair to subdivide the problematic articles into three:
  1. Superstars with detailed, but flawed articles, like Dan Marino. "Future Hall of Famers" probably deserve stellar articles too.
  2. Stars with minimal stubs, like Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, Ed Reed + retirees like Eric Allen or Ben Davidson
  3. non-benchwarmers with no article at all, including some in the 2006 Pro Bowl, and some old-timey HOFers
They're all important, by I personally prioritize #3 and #1 above #2, mainly because casual wikipedia users are best at improving #2, whereas it often takes a concerted effort to start articles about players who aren't in the spotlight (#3), or do extensive research and rewriting (#1). With #3, it has to be considered that it's not realistic to have an article for every single player, at least not anytime soon. There are a lot of pages out there for players drafted this year and whose careers appear to be over. ×Meegs 01:01, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I've been doing expansion on several football articles, mostly on Carolina Panthers players (yes I'm biased, but I don't let it affect my writing). Namely what I do is go to the team website of the player's current team, and check their bio. Then, without copyvio, taking the information and turning it into an article. I'm well aware that a backup offensive lineman probably isn't going to become a Featured Candidate anytime soon, but at the very least make it beyond a single sentence and lone cat. If we can do that for all the current NFL players, then move beyond to the former players, HOFers, and so on, we could have an excellent compendium of football knowledge at our fingertips. Just my thoughts. Anthony 01:26, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

a question I should know the answer to, but don't

When a player from the early years of the NFL is listed as an "end" (or with an "E"), is he a defensive end or a tight end? Woody Strode and Gene Stallings await your answer, at least in spirit. Also, does anyone know what football position Jackie Robinson played at USC?--Mike Selinker 18:24, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The second paragraph of End (football) reads:
More than 30 years ago, an End only referred to an offensive player who just assisted the guards, tackles, and center in blocking defenders. But this position was largely replaced by using another wide receiver or tight end.
Zzyzx11 (Talk) 20:05, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

DYK

From my user talk page

Updated DYK query Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Greg Landry, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Gurubrahma 15:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Is this our first DYK? --Jaranda wat's sup 17:39, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

college football players categories are clean

I finished going through all the college football player categories and making sure each player had their college (obviously), their position, and their pro team categories listed, and no NFL player category. I couldn't find positions for Jackie Robinson, Ralph Jordan and Cliff Hare.

Category:Entertainers who played football is a bit less settled. I couldn't find positions for these guys: Hugh Beaumont, Ward Bond, Ric Flair, Richard Grieco, Harold Hoag, Christopher Judge, Nikita Koloff, Ryan McPartlin, Ed O'Neill, Randy Thornton, Erik Watts, John Wayne, and Steve Williams (wrestler). Anybody who feels like checking those guys out is welcome to do so.

Best line that I had to edit out of existence: "John Henry Johnson (born November 24, 1929 in Waterproof, Louisiana) was an American football."--Mike Selinker 23:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Need Images.

Right now I'm currently trying to work the Terry Bradshaw article into featured status. But I really need images including a couple of him in his playing days and one of him in the Fox studios. Could anyone help me with those images. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 02:09, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you thought the running game-by-game commentary trend was bad...

...now we have people computing the tie-breaking scenarios!

Ugh! Zzyzx11 (Talk) 08:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

now that that's out of the way... more category work

The category:National Football League players is scrubbed of individuals. Everybody who was there now has a position category, some number of pro team categories, and either a college team category or an appearance in Football players from small colleges. So what's left to do in this regard? I would say these things:

  1. Go through the List of current NFL team rosters and check the categorization of everyone there.
  2. Go through Category:National Football League Draft articles and check those.
  3. Go through Category:American football players by position's subcategories and check those for teams.
  4. Go through (ulp) all the subcategories of Category:National Football League players by team and check those folks.

I call "not it" on #4.--Mike Selinker 01:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also like to suggest giving similar treatment to Category:American Football League players (76 members) - that it be drained and deleted. I neither added nor deleted the category from players as I went though categorizing by NFL team, but I observed that most AFL players do not currently belong to this category, especially ones whose career lasted though the merger. Category:National Football League players by team already has categories for all of the AFL team names, including the ones that never made it to the NFL. I also suggest that Category:All-America Football Conference players (1 member) be given the fate, or, alternately, kept and populated with everyone that ever played in the AAFC. ×Meegs 03:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You're saying that the AFL category gets removed from each player and replaced (if necessary) by team name? I'd be fine with that. In fact, this will probably lead us to do the same with Canadian teams, though I claim no particular expertise with that.--Mike Selinker 03:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly. There are a lot of US college players and some forgotten NFL transients in Category:Canadian Football League players too. ×Meegs 04:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Nice job, guys. I'm surprised we were able to get it done that quickly. I've been helping out when I can, although with law school I don't exactly have all the time in the world to sit on Wikipedia and update thousands of pages (if only...). I think the American Football League categories are somewhat important, since it defines a particular era for the team. I note that the NHL teams that were members of the WHA have separate categories to define players who played for the four teams that merged; there are separate categories for the Edmonton Oilers and Edmonton Oilers (WHA). Perhaps we could do the same, i.e. San Diego Chargers and San Diego Chargers (AFL)? All of the requisite AFL team categories would therefore be included in the American Football League players category, which would be devoid of individuals like the NFL players cat. With respect to the CFL, I've been going through players who played in the NFL and CFL and deleting the extra CFL players cat if they have the team cats, much like the NFL. Finally, I'm sure we can find/create a few more player articles for the AAFC; it was an important era in pro football history, and should not be neglected. Well, those are my thoughts, tired though my brain may be. I'm off to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream... of a Wikipedia where everything is categorized neatly, and there are no stubs... Anthony 05:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't think I want to distinguish, say, the Chargers of the AFL from the Chargers of the NFL, because the two sets of teams flowed seamlessly (if acrimoniously) into each other. That seems like overcategorization. If someone was a Charger when the merger happened, I don't think he needs two categories. Just my opinion, though. (As for the time thing, I find my Wikipediing goes up as my workload goes up; the faster I'm trying to get a game written, the more my brain needs the downtime of mindlessly categorizing things. So I get both done at a faster rate, oddly enough. Which is a logic that doesn't apply to, say, my closet.)--Mike Selinker 06:25, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The plan would clear-up some problems with our current system (especially if we did the same for the AAFC teams that really don't belong where they are now), but would make the system more complex and less accessible for some. One could also argue that experience of pre-merger NFL teams changed just as much as it did for the AFL teams, but splitting the Packers in two obviously isn't on the table. I'm pretty-much neutral, but I'll definitely help if others like it. ×Meegs 06:41, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'm merely proposing it to give credit to those players who played in the AFL. Otherwise, there's really nothing that recognizes the players who played for those 7 (?) years in the AFL. If we eliminate Category:American Football League players, that's going overboard with the concept of merging the AFL & NFL. They merged, but the NFL still recognizes the AFL existed. I think we should do the same on Wikipedia. My main thing is recognizing a point in history; that's why we have separate cats for the Chicago, St. Louis, Phoenix, and Arizona Cardinals. If we simply create a New York Jets (AFL) cat, all it does is merely create one more cat for Joe Namath. But we can link him to players who played in the AFL and never played in the NFL, guys whose careers didn't last all those seven years. My main point, simply put, is that we shouldn't ignore the AFL simply for ease of categorization. Just my thoughts. I'll go along with whatever the majority is, but I'm strongly voicing an opinion that we create separate AFL cats for the AFL teams. Anthony 13:31, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Question - Anthony, I started this whole thing by suggesting we get rid of the AFL category, but do you prefer the current system, where Namath is a Jet and a AFLer, or your proposed system where he's just a Jet (NFL) and a Jet (AFL)? I'm not sure how big the existing AFL category would become if we applied it consistently. Probably not too big. ×Meegs 14:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Jet (NFL) and Jet (AFL). Here are the cats that would have to be created:

  • Boston Patriots
  • Buffalo Bills (AFL)
  • Cincinnati Bengals (AFL)
  • Dallas Texans (AFL) [I think, regarding the discussion between Meegs & Mike on the three separate Dallas Texans teams, that we should have Dallas Texans (NFL), Dallas Texans (AFL), and Dallas Texans (Arena)]
  • Denver Broncos (AFL)
  • Houston Oilers (AFL)
  • Kansas City Chiefs (AFL)
  • Miami Dolphins (AFL)
  • New England Patriots (AFL)
  • New York Jets (AFL)
  • New York Titans
  • Oakland Raiders (AFL)
  • San Diego Chargers (AFL)

Note that the Los Angeles Chargers cat would not have to be created, and I've already moved it temporarily to the AFL cat, until we create (I'm assuming) Category:American Football League players by team. I realize it's quite a bit of work, but it's for the sake of consistency. Also, would we want to include (AFL) after the Boston Patriots, New York Titans, and Los Angeles Chargers cats, even though there are no other teams with that name? If it's a matter of doing the work, I'm willing to do the work myself, all I'm asking for is approval from the other members of the Project. If it's in everyone else's opinion that it's not necessary, then I'll do whatever we decide is best. But as I said above, I'll do all the work, just give me the thumbs-up. Anthony 14:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's a matter of work, as it's not that hard either way. I certainly don't have an objection to recognizing this stage of football, and it's an identical number of entries per player whether it's "Jets (AFL)" or "AFL players". So we do one or the other. I think the wacky Dallas situation made our decision for us: If we're going to have the Dallas category (which would move people out of AFL), we should have all of them. So yeah, I'm on board with Anthony if he wants to have separate team categories. Here's the problem I see: Some anti-abbreviation commando is probably going to tag all of them with a cfr tag, and the damn thing is that he'll be right to do so, based on the Dallas/Arena thing. We can't just ignore the chance that an Arena fan might show up and surround Art Donovan with half-fielders. I'm not sure what's the best thing to do here. (One thing I'm certain of: I don't want to give a player a tag for a team he didn't play for, so dumping Boston Patriots into New England is no good.)--Mike Selinker 16:25, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Abstain! I'm keeping my neutral position on Anthony's plan vs. the keeping the AFL category, but I'd like to wait on enacting it for a few days to see what others have to say. It's not much work at all, but doing and then undoing it would be. I'm slightly concerned about having Broncos & Brocos (AFL) rather than Broncos (NFL) & Broncos (AFL). I'm just not sure that 35 years post-merger vs. 10 years pre-merger is enough imbalance to allow it to go undisambiguated. On the other hand, adding (NFL) to the ten post-AFL teams is pretty obnoxious. I'm bothered by both names schemes about the same, I guess. ×Meegs 17:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so what's the consensus? Is it New York Jets (AFL) or New York Jets (American Football League)? I'm against adding (NFL) to the existing cats, just because it's unnecessary, like Meegs said. I'm in favor of making it a simple (AFL) addition, and worrying about whether some "anti-abbreviation commando" will try to cfr it later. For purposes of simplicity and length I suggest making it (AFL). I'm just trying to figure out what everyone's opinion on this is before I start working, because once I start, I want a clear standard for all cats. Anthony 17:43, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
No, no, I think everyone is in favor of the abbreviated (AFL) if we do the splits. The question is whether each AFL team should have its own player category, or whether we should keep the status quo of a single category for all AFL players. Vote early, vote often ×Meegs 17:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Gotcha. BTW, does someone (preferably someone with a tad more experience and authority than I) want to archive some of these discussions... I'm getting a page size warning when I'm adding to the talk page. Anthony 18:13, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, let me think about it for a day or two. I'm leaning toward just doing the (AFL) for every team that needs it and saying the hell with it, but I sure don't want it done twice. Meantime, I think I'll go check the draft categories.--Mike Selinker 18:39, 30 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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