Talk:San Marino national football team results

Copy editing of match statistics

In a series of edits,[1] Футболло and I have made corrections to the match details. There were inconsistencies in about half of all matches, ranging from small differences in the timing of the goals (by a few minutes) to attendance numbers that were wrong by a factor of 50 or more; wrong order of goals; wrong kind of goals (penalties, own goals); and timing of goals being off by up to an hour. Mistakes were present in all years, from 1990 to 2023. It would have taken too much time to check if the goal scorers and referees were correct, so further errors may still be present there. Maybe someone else is willing to put another two hours or so into this... Renerpho (talk) 07:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Removal of pre-1990 results

The pre-1990 results have recently been removed by Stevie fae Scotland, and the 1990-1991 data were converted into a table.[2] No reason was given why this would be necessary or useful, and I have just reverted the edit. Why should we remove the early matches, official or not, and make the page more difficult to read? Template:football box collapsible exists for a reason! Renerpho (talk) 02:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for bringing this up here. It's common practice to not include unofficial matches in the match result list and a number of teams have separate articles for it. I don't really understand what you mean by more difficult to read though. For someone like me, I can read and understand both formats but that's not the case for someone with a screenreader. Footballbox collapsible does not meet WP:ACCESS standards as some parameters do not produce captions, it omits column and row headers and it uses tables for visual positioning of non-tabular content among other things. The use of the template has been discussed numerous times at WP:FOOTY with consensus against its use for match result lists. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 09:16, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@Stevie fae Scotland: Then why replace 1990-1991 only? It is the mixture of the two formats that I personally find difficult to read, not the table itself. If it's too much work to do in one go then maybe turn that section into a draft and work on that separately. Note that the data may still contain errors though (compare the previous talk page section above), so if you go ahead with the "draft idea" then any corrections made in the mean time would have to be addressed separately. Renerpho (talk) 13:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

How do you partially collapse a table like that, to deal with additional information (goals, scorers, attendance, referees etc.) that might only interest some readers? That's something the 1990-1991 part you worked on didn't deal with. Renerpho (talk) 13:22, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

As you say, it was just a bit much to do in one go. I can prepare it in a sandbox though and bring here in one edit. As for collapsibility, I don't know. I imagine it's possible but I don't know how to do it. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 14:36, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

In that case, I suggest to leave it as it is for now. I'm worried that a non-collapsible table would be too cluttered, and losing the information would outweigh any benefits the change might bring. Maybe try something in a sandbox, and then come here and propose to add it (discussing it before actually adding it to the article)? Did the discussions at WP:FOOTY come up with a proper alternative? Otherwise the consensus reached there doesn't sound very useful in practice. Renerpho (talk) 17:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Both Faroe Islands national football team results (1988–2019) and Gibraltar national football team results were promoted to featured lists with similar table formats. The Gibraltar one was changed from the collapsible football box to its current format during that process. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 18:40, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

@Stevie fae Scotland: The Gibraltar article looks good, I'd actually be fine with that table format. Having thought about it, I think we can do without details about the goals against SMR. However, I suggest that we should keep the non-official results, regardless of whether that's usually done or not. Those results are notable; in particular, one game (a draw) is mentioned in the article text, as one of SMR's ten draws. Listing only nine draws in the table would be confusing. Renerpho (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

This is partly just so I don't forget, rather than a counter argument but an unofficial match against Italy in 2017 isn't included in the current list. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 12:09, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Circular references?

Can we be sure that the current "standard reference" for results, eu-football.info, isn't circular? In https://eu-football.info/_match.php?id=3633 (San Marino vs. Malta, 14 August 2012), someone points out in the comments that they use the English Wikipedia as a source for much of their information, and why that led to errors in that specific instance. Renerpho (talk) 10:29, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I honestly don't know. I have found it to be reliable before but it's not usually one I would cite as I think other sources are better/more reliable. I know of alternatives that would work for some of the matches but not all of them. Might be worth raising at WP:RS to get a view on the site's reliability. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 15:08, 22 March 2024 (UTC)