Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Archive 2

message: Look at Football World Cup 2002... It's all messed up. Different tables, ugly formatting, bad wiki-links, etc. I am sorry to say the quality of the WC articles is going downhill over the past few months. DR31 16:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Ugly World Cup articles

message: I want to propose restarting this collaboration. I was not here when the drive first started, and stopped, so I probably wouldn't know of any problems that might have arisen/might arise, but I want to give it an honest try. I'm certain it can be made to work, with so many people actively working on football articles. -Aabha (talk) 18:42, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The main problem was that there were not enough contributors to have a successful collaboration. If you restart the collaboration I'd definitely like to help out. However, keep in mind that there needs to be someone that does a couple of things every week. Templates need to be updated, the history section needs to be maintained, and failed nominations need to be pruned. If you feel you can handle this and there are sufficient contributors, then I see no reason to restart the collaboration. Jacoplane 08:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm ready to take on the responsibility of that, if someone who has done it before can explain to me once what all needs to be done. -Aabha (talk) 09:49, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Article improvement drive]] 

message: I have been working on the  Wikipedia Syntax cleanup project and there are a large number of football year articles that have a common problem with the syntax of tables.  The league tables have two opening sections (ie two sets of {| followed by table styles), but only one closing |}.  Although this is rendered fine by browsers it gets picked up by syntax-checking bots and should really be fixed.  Given the number of occurances I guess it must have come from a template or example somewhere.  When creating further new articles of this type, can people try and correct the problem - otherwise any new ones will need fixing again (see eg 2003-04_in_Scottish_football for a fixed page).  I think most of the existing ones are now fixed.  Well done on a truely impressive collection of articles!! Kcordina 10:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki Syntax in football year articles 

message: There is currently a vote on to move Football World Cup to FIFA World Cup. see talk:Football World Cup Jooler 11:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Page move vote in progress

message: I prefer to do squad template according to positions 1st then squad numbers 2nd. Here's an example.
No.        	Country    	Player             	Year Signed	Previous Club                	
Goalkeepers	Goalkeepers	Goalkeepers        	Goalkeepers	Goalkeepers                  	Goalkeepers
1          	           	Tim Howard         	2003       	MetroStars                   	
19         	           	Edwin van der Sar  	2005       	Fulham                       	
30         	           	Luke Steele        	2002       	Peterborough United / Academy	
Defenders  	Defenders  	Defenders          	Defenders  	Defenders                    	Defenders
2          	           	Gary Neville       	1991       	Academy                      	
4          	           	Gabriel Heinze     	2004       	Paris Saint-Germain          	
5          	           	Rio Ferdinand      	2002       	Leeds United                 	
6          	           	Wes Brown          	1996       	Academy                      	
22         	           	John O'Shea        	1998       	Waterford United             	
26         	           	Phil Bardsley      	2001       	Waterford United/Academy     	
Midfielders	Midfielders	Midfielders        	Midfielders	Midfielders                  	Midfielders
7          	           	Cristiano Ronaldo  	2003       	Sporting Lisbon              	
11         	           	Ryan Giggs         	1990       	Academy                      	
13         	           	Park Ji-Sung       	2005       	PSV Eindhoven                	
14         	           	Alan Smith         	2004       	Leeds United                 	
18         	           	Paul Scholes       	1991       	Academy                      	
23         	           	Kieran Richardson  	2001       	West Ham United / Academy    	
24         	           	Darren Fletcher    	2000       	Academy                      	
25         	           	Quinton Fortune    	1999       	Atlético Madrid              	
41         	           	Floribert N'Galula 	           	Anderlecht / Academy         	
46         	           	Lee Martin         	2004       	Wimbledon / Academy          	
Forwards   	Forwards   	Forwards           	Forwards   	Forwards                     	Forwards
8          	           	Wayne Rooney       	2004       	Everton                      	
9          	           	Louis Saha         	2004       	Fulham                       	
10         	           	Ruud van Nistelrooy	2001       	PSV Eindhoven                	
20         	           	Ole Gunnar Solskjær	1996       	Molde FK                     	
37         	           	Kenny Cooper       	           	Academy                      	
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kingjeff (talk • contribs) 03:12, January 5, 2006
:That table is about three times as large as the more compact standardised form used by  and does not convey that much more useful information - details about a player's career and previous clubs are best reserved for the article about the player itself. Also, what is the (non-playing) manager doing in the playing squad? Qwghlm 08:38, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Couldn't agree more with Qwghlm. Too long, to much unnecessary info. -- Elisson • Talk 11:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Don't necissarily look at the column headings here. They can always change to more relevent information. Look at the basic design and concept. I think it looks better when players are seperated by position instead of using just a list of players. The managers of the club don't have to be there and the position column doesn't have to be there since the players would be separated by position anyways. Kingjeff 02:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text:  I have just shorten the table as suggested. Length, leaving out irrelevent information. This is what, more or less, what I think the size of the table would be for most of the clubs. Kingjeff 02:54, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You've had to get rid of several minor players to make it shorter - my comment about it taking much more space than the equivalent in the existing template is still valid. I still don't see why it needs to display information about the player's previous club, and I don't like the background or the gridlines - they crowd out the useful data and make it harder to read. Qwghlm 08:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Doesn't matter - the fact remains that the current template will still be still much smaller than the above suggested one, if you remove the same players from it as well. PS You deleted one or two quite significant players from the above (e.g. Mikael Silvestre) to make your point. Qwghlm 20:07, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Player squad template

message: I have nominated a series of minor players for deletion for non-notability reasons. Anyone interested please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dorchester Town footballers - all contributions welcome. Qwghlm 13:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion discussion 

message: The user  has been adding a lot to articles about English clubs recently, about each club's experiences in the FA Premier League (e.g. Aston_Villa_F.C.#Villa_in_the_Premiership). Unfortunately, this content is often a duplicate of what has already been mentioned in the club's history (and thus adds little new information), and is totally unwikified. In some cases, there is also a lot of unnecessary speculation. The duplicate content is, IMHO, severely reducing the quality of these articles by making them a disorganised mess. 
Despite me asking him on his talk page to retract or merge his edits he is seemingly ploughing on regardless, so I think the best thing to do is just clean it up now and nip the problem in the bud. I am willing to go through some of his edits and make sure they're properly merged with what already exists but there are a lot of articles that need repairing and I could do with some assistance. All help gratefully received - let me know here or on my talk page. Thanks. Qwghlm 01:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: and I have managed to sort out the offending articles between us. Qwghlm 18:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup help required 

message: This page is constantly being under attack from vandals that change the names of (what I presume is) firms they don't like, or similar. As I don't have enough interrest and/or knowledge to see if a change is vandalism or an enhancement (unless it is obvious or related to Sweden which I do have knowledge about), I need help finding a way to make this stop. Do we have a member of the project that has knowledge about English football firms (the section being vandalized the most), or do we need to request the page to be semi-protected? -- Elisson • Talk 17:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with vandalism on [[Football firm]] 

message: Football in Wikipedia is quickly growing, and more and more players' articles have a related Infobox in which several interesting information is contained (like career, and more).
So, I propose to make another Infobox for the football managers too. I think people like Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello and José Mourinho deserve to have one. In the case, we should keep in mind that most (but not all) managers were also players in their past years. --Angelo 16:10, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Angelo, just to say I already created this infobox some month ago for former players who became managers.  Have a look at Paul Van Himst for instance.   As I don't know much about templates, I don't know if it is possible to remove the players info from the infobox when needed but we could create another template for this purpose.  By the way, feel free to improve the existing template as I think it is still not a perfect one.  Regards, Julien Tuerlinckx 21:49, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually Franky Vercauteren is a better example.  Julien Tuerlinckx 22:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like it and have put it in Michael Laudrup :) - just one minor thing, perhaps change "managerclubs" to "managerteams" is more logic for national team managers? Poulsen 22:25, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanx, just wanted to say that the current club in this infobox was expected to contain the club/team he manages (maybe we'll have to change it to team too).  Retired would only be seen for retired managers.  But this then brings a new problem: what about player/managers? Julien Tuerlinckx 08:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, the "retired" was an oversight by me. Player/managers can just be noted as "Player/Manager" as I see it? - or do you mean the position he played as an active player will be lost? Also, the "Position" shouldn't link to football (soccer) positions as that has no relevance for the position of manager. Poulsen 11:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You remind me of an old problem I had foreseen some time ago.  The position field becomes quite ambiguous in the situation of the manager infobox since it could be interesting to keep the position he used to play, and so we could not put "manager" in the position field.  Maybe we can just put both things...  Because, you know, some people are better known as footballers than as managers and thus a people looking for a former player article would not find the position of the player at the right place.  Thus, maybe the best solution is to put something like Position defender (as a footballer) </br> manager.  This would also suit well to player/managers if we just put Position defender/manager in this case. Julien Tuerlinckx 17:21, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Infobox template for football managers

message: As there'll probably be a lot of discussion on this, I've set up a page at /Notability for it.   CTOAGN (talk) 06:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On a related note, I've nominated an Arsenal youth player for deletion, as he seems to have vanished from the face of the earth - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armand Traoré. Qwghlm 17:42, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The debate on the notability page has stalled lately, but we should move to get a consensus on these issues.  AfD's such as Duke William CSA FC are not reaching a decision. Browsing the New pages log I'm seeing articles such as Paul Adcock, a player with a handful of pro appearances, and proper notability guidelines would be very helpful. Oldelpaso 10:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article notablility (see Article deletion above) 

message: Tierney Weighting System - what do we reckon? To me, it just looks like one non-notable guy's attempt to rank football clubs - it seems arbitrary and probable original research. I'd nominate it for AfD but I'd like a wider opinion first. Qwghlm 11:49, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is a firm candidate for speedy deletion. Google says: "Rory Tierney" = 126 hits (from forums); "Tierney Weighting System" no hits. Mariano(t/c) 12:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd have to say original research. No hits for the system, and the first hit on "Rory Tierney" is to a football tipping site... AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 12:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it really meets any of the criteria for speedy deletion, but is definitely deletable the long way under original research (as "a synthesis of established facts in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing the synthesis to a reputable source") Qwghlm 12:58, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article has been listed on Articles for deletion. Qwghlm 13:28, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Tierney Weighting System]]

message: I thought I'd open a discussion about how to refer to clubs in player bios - quite often users write the full club name, including F.C. every time, which, while providing total clarity, doesn't necessarily read very well. An example is Andy Bishop. I think, once the person has been established as a footballer, you need only enter the 'common' club name, e.g. York City. You can even go further than that - football has its own disambiguation system, so you can refer to Northampton Town as simply Northampton, as there is no ambiguity, but, say, Manchester City have to be differentiated by their neighbours. Of course the links themselves would always go to the full club name, which would provide any more information the users need. But I think doing it this way would make a lot of the articles read better. ArtVandelay13 13:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I quite agree with that.  I even think this should be the case in every football related article (competitions (except maybe in the former winners section), clubs, managers, players (except maybe in the infobox)).  Julien Tuerlinckx 21:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

text: And BTW this would mean I'll have some work to do in the articles I created... Julien Tuerlinckx 21:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Clubs in player bios

message: I have nominated some more non-league footballers' bios for deletion - please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gloucester City footballers. All comments welcome. Qwghlm 18:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another notability-related AfD 

message: I just came across this article, and while I was able to do somewhat to help it, it needs the attention of someone who knows more about soccer(see, you can tell I don't, as I call the sport by the wrong name... ;-)).  Thanks for all your work! The article on Football (soccer) positions was quite helpful to me. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:58, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this article should be merged into and redirected to Football (soccer) positions. Oldelpaso 13:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually I think it should be merged into Midfielder. Football (soccer) positions could do with being rewritten in summary style and appropriate Main article: links added to each section. Qwghlm 13:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with Qwghlm. Merge Holding role with Midfielder and then we should try to shorten down the actual Football (soccer) positions article and moving most content to the articles on the positions themselves. -- Elisson • Talk 14:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I'd go along with this too.  I'd also like to see the stubs hole (soccer) and striker merged into something like forward (football) as there's some overlap between those positions - there are plenty of people who can play in either role and definitions of "striker" vary.  I'll put some merge tags on the articles; it's probably best to discuss merging on those articles' talk pages.  CTOAGN (talk) 07:03, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thinking about it, Oldelpaso might have been right.  Football (soccer) positions hardly has any content if you ignore the lists, so we could probably merge all of the individual position articles into that and make a really good article.  I'm not sure what we'd do with positions that don't really exist any more though (wing-half, outside-left), maybe a History of football (soccer) formations article could cover it?   CTOAGN (talk) 07:12, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Holding role]] needs help 

message: I think there's enough interest in English non-league football for a monthly collaboration now, so I'm thinking about setting one up.  Would anyone have any strong objections to it being part of this WikiProject (I know some people on here aren't overly keen on the subject)?  I could set up a sub-project or separate project, or even just run it from my user page.  I'm just trying to get some opinions on what would be most appropriate, but I think some sort of noticeboard for people working on non-league articles would be useful so I'm leaning towards a sub-project.  Anyone who'd be interested in contributing, please leave a message on my talk page.   CTOAGN (talk) 14:35, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I won't claim too much knowledge in the area, but I would like to contribute. A sub-project is a good idea in my opinion. -Aabha (talk) 04:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  English non-league football collaboration 

message: You may have noticed the entire Forest Green Rovers squad has been added to Wikipedia, all by the same user. I think this is a good thing, but they are a bit of a mess. Anyone else interested in helping tidy them up? I've done a few. ArtVandelay13 15:57, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forest Green Rovers Players 

message: Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I noticed your list of FAs, are there any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bobby Charlton and FIFA World Cup might be worth a look. Oldelpaso 18:08, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, nice job, they both look A-Class to me.  As a Northumbrian in exile, I particularly liked reading about Bobby Charlton. If you want to add more, feel free to update our list directly.  Cheers, Walkerma 03:08, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project 

message: Please have a look at my proposal on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football/Templates and leave your comments on it. -- Elisson • Talk 19:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not many seems to be interrested in this, but I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter. I've created a fully working system that I currently use on articles related to Swedish football, but it would be good to reach a concensus wether or not we should try to convert all templates to that standard. -- Elisson • Talk 21:35, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template standardization 

message: I've created this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Non-league football and listed it as a subproject.  CTOAGN (talk) 20:31, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-league project 

message: One thing that I find awkward throughout football related articles are the myraid ways that people represent seasons. There's 2005-2006, 2005-06, 05-06, 2005/2006, 2005/06, 05/06 and then the hyphen can end up being replaced by a minus, an endash, an emdash or some other variant and that's all before considering the addition of whitespace! While each of these is valid and I can see situations where diversity is useful (eg shorter versions for use in tables, longer for titles), perhaps agreeing on a common style for normal use would be beneficial? My personal preference would be for 2005–06 (2005–06). Veila 05:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Mmmm, I think it's a false problem. Anybody should feel himself free to use his favourite format. I prefer to use 2005-2006 and 2005/2006, anyway. --Angelo 00:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Season article titles generally use e.g. 2005-06 with a hyphen - which I prefer (short and avoids slashes, which I think are ugly). But, as with Angelo, I don't think it's the biggest problem that needs fixing right now. Qwghlm 18:09, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand that it's not the most pressing matter but I'm not advocating a clean up of current articles, simply a style guide point that can be used going forward. It's exactly the kind of detail that can be done correctly many different ways but consistency is a useful (and attractive) thing. Veila 06:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I too prefer a hyphen (not –), and dislike slashes, and it seems almost all articles use this format (except for example the seasons in Yugoslav football), so it isn't a very big problem. However we should have a manual of style on it, which in this case would be to use the hyphen it seems, and only the last two digits in the second year (unless there is ambiguity if doing so) -- Elisson • Talk 18:18, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Johan though I concede an endash would be better in the articles paragraphs (neither tables nor titles) because if I'm right this avoids the 2005-06 to be cut at the end of a line, which would look ugly.  But since it hasn't been done for most articles, I'm not sure it is worth changing this.  And on top it would mean that for linked seasons, one should write 2005–06, which would lead to some confusion.  But to me we should change the slashes that look not so good as you (nearly) all think. Julien Tuerlinckx 21:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I too would like to see the endash be used in-text, if possible, but as for article titles, the hyphen is better as it is more used when searching and writing (when not thinking about the endash). It should be mentioned as an option in the style guide to use the endash in-text. -- Elisson • Talk 21:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Season date consistency 

message: FYI, their was a move of two articles Republic of Ireland national football team and Northern Ireland national football team to Republic of Ireland national soccer team and Northern Ireland national soccer team. Their is currently a discussion to move the two articles back to their previous names. See:Talk:Republic of Ireland national soccer team and Talk:Northern Ireland national soccer team. --Boothy443 |  trácht ar 00:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page moves 

message: Yes i'm new to all this. Just done some minor editing on a few Football pages - but i'd like to get involved with the Football project. First steps: Am I literally just adding my name to the participants section on the main page?--Cavs 17:23, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. :) And place discussions at the bottom of the talk pages. ;) Welcome to the family! -- Elisson • Talk 17:28, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Why thank you. I just realised this was meant to go at the bottom after looking at all the dates of the posts...My apologies!--Cavs 17:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stupid Question? 

message: Kingjeff has decided to make major "improvements" to this page without discussing them anywhere first.  Could you add it to your watchlist and revert any blanking/general nonsense as necessary?    Thanks, CTOAGN (talk) 23:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[F.C. United of Manchester]] 

message: I have created an alternative version of the football manager infobox, named , just for resolving the issue about unknown or missing info about the playing career of a manager. --Angelo 23:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice job.  And of course not every manager has been a player.  Julien Tuerlinckx 21:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Football manager infobox2