Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College football/Archive-Jun2006

First quick question

Will this be covering all of college football, or will this Wikiproject focus mostly on Division I? I"m asking since I'd probably be more inclined to help out with any Division III things that could be improved. --Wizardman 01:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think there is room to cover all divisions, if we get participants interested in all divisions. Johntex\^talk 02:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
• I agree ... bring it all on ... if we get too much, we can always spawn child projects. We probably do, though, need to figure out what to do with articles about individual teams. Maybe we should create a sub-category for individual team football/athletics articles (like Auburn Tigers football) so that there isn't a lot of clutter in the main category.) But by all means, from IA to III to NAIA, bring it on. BigDT 02:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think we need to map out an entire heirarchy, something like:

College football

Division IA

Seasons

Teams

Seasons

Players

Coaches

Traditions (mascots, hand-signals, etc.

Bowl games

Rivalrys

...

Maybe we don't need quite that many, for UT, we currently have:

Univeristy of Texas System

University of Texas at Austin

Texas Longhorn Athletics (all sports)

Texas Longhorn football

Texas Longhorns football players

Texas Longhorns football coaches

Any article that isn't a player or a coach (E.g. a team season, a tradition, a rivalry game) is getting classified into Texas Longhorn football. We take care to ensure we don't duplicate, so Vince Young should only be in Category:Texas Longhorns football players and then he belongs to all the parents through each level being classified under the next highest. Johntex\^talk 05:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Doh

Doh - you beat me to the bunch by a day or two - I've been creating just such a project in my user space. I also have a draft of a college football portal almost ready to launch. I have added my name to the project and I've also added several suggested "to-do" items. Johntex\^talk 01:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• LOL ... well ... I'm new to projects ... I've seen lots of scattered efforts for college football and I thought it would be nice to have our own project. WP:NFL has a nice one. What do you have for the portal? I took a look at Portal:American football (which, by the way, I just got my first ever portal namespace edit by adding a link here). BigDT 02:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggested Goals

I suggest the following as goals we should adopt:

1. To improve the quality and quantity of colleg football related articles.
2. To better organize and where appropriate to standardize information in college football related articles.
3. To bring College football to Featured article status.
4. To make Wikipedia one of the premier online resources on college football.
5. To create and maintain Portal:College football and bring it to Featured portal status.

Johntex\^talk 02:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I notice someone has suggested "Players that have gone to the NFL, are in the NFL, or are in the NFL Hall of Fame." as a goal. I think this is a fine suggestion, as those players will be some of the more notable players. On the other hand, there is already an NFL WikiProject that presumably will get many of those. I think we should be focused more on college teams, bowl games, traditions - the things that make college football a unique sport of its own vs a feeder system for the NFL. Other thoughts? Johntex\^talk 20:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Texas Longhorns

I've just tagged about 75 articles belonging to Category:Texas Longhorns football with the new Talk page template for this WikiProject. The articles now appear in Category:WikiProject College football. The visibility of those tags and the fact that the edits will show up in people's watch lists should drive some extra participants here, I would think. Johntex\^talk 02:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Good grief ... 75 articles on Texas football? Don't mess with Texas. ;) BigDT 04:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, we are the national champions and all. Hook 'em Horns! ;) Johntex\^talk 04:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

College coach infobox

I created {{College coach infobox}} last week. I modeled it after {{NFL PlayerCoach}}. I've added it to a few coaches already.--NMajdan•talk 13:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello

I love this idea and college football! I'll start by separating college football pages from athletic pages. Bornagain4 19:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

This may not always be desirable. Teams that are not top ten likely will not have sufficient information in the articles before we focus on them. Rkevins82 19:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Rkevins82. Some caution would be good. For some schools, it may be more appropriate to have an article on the school's entire athletic program. Also, copy and pasting from one article to another is not ideal because of the GFDL. If you do decide to do it, please make a note on the new page to credit the original authors of the original page. Johntex\^talk 19:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

We can do it for programs like Michigan, and pretty much any other Big Ten team. Bornagain4 19:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Still before we do that, let's work on some standardization of naming. Doing so will prevent the need for page moves and disambiguation and save us work in the long run. For example the page could be named Michigan Wolverines football or Michigan Wolverine football or Michigan Wolverine football team or Michigan Wolverine football program... Aslo, I've learned from experience that it is often best to state intentions before a major change. Some of those articles may have established editors that may not appreciate "outsiders" coming in and changing things without the courtesy of discussion. For all we may know (unless we look into it) they may have already discussed breaking out football and may have decided not to do so. If we have a well thought out plan in place, it will be easier to work with these valuable editors. Johntex\^talk 20:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It should be [[ <Short School Name> <Nickname> football ]], since most schools are after states and Colorado football wouldn't work and University of Colorado at Boulder football is unnecessary, team is irrelevant. Correct examples: Colorado Buffaloes football, Nebraska Cornhuskers football, Iowa State Cyclones football. Incorrect: Notre Dame football (should be Notre Dame Fighting Irish football). For season pages, I think [[ <Year> <Short School Name> <Nickname> football team ]]. Correct: 2006 Colorado Buffaloes football team, 2006 Michigan Wolverines football team, 2005 Texas Longhorn football team. How do we generate policies within the Project? --Mecu 14:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Consensus seems to work so far for generating policy. We don't really have any "old hands" to step in and add a sense of weight to either side of an argument because the project is so new. Z4ns4tsu 15:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Request

Could an admin separate the Michigan Wolverines football article from the athletic article. I would like to start on that article first but I need more space.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bornagain4 (talk • contribs) 12:24, 2006 June 28

• Please see above. Johntex\^talk 20:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Rivalries

Per a discussion at Category talk:College sports rivalries (really, more like a 2-way conversation), I have recategorized the mess that once was Category:College rivalry games and Category:College rivalry trophies. If you should happen to come across any football (or roundball for that matter) rivalry articles, rivalry game articles, or rivalry trophy articles, please categorize them in the correct place under Category:College sports rivalries and, if it is a "named" rivalry game/trophy, please add it to List of NCAA college football rivalry games. BigDT 05:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

How does one add a rivalry to the category? Bornagain4 00:58, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

At the bottom of the page, put [[Category:College football rivalries]] (or whatever category you want to add it to. It's a good idea if you aren't familiar with the category structure for the particular topic area to look and find the BEST subcategory or subcategories for an article. For example, Commonwealth Cup is certainly about college football and could go into Category:College football, but if it went directly in there, that category would get very big very quickly. Thus, we put it in the subcategory of Category:College football rivalry trophies. BigDT 01:57, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

How do I revert?

How can I revert a page that has been vandalized? or can admins only do that? Bornagain4 15:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Go here: Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups.--NMajdan•talk 15:33, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

See also Help:Reverting, which will tell you how to do it, as well as the etiquette you should observe. Johntex\^talk 15:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Un-stubbing

To unstub an article, does one need to take a vote on it or not? The Paul Bunyan Trophy stub-article is still listed as a stub, but is pretty much an article. Bornagain4 16:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

No, if you feel it is not a stub, unstub it. I agree, that looks like it is beyond stub-status to me as well.--NMajdan•talk 16:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree there is no reason to vote and I have no objection to destubbing that article. However, as a general comment, I do think that we should try to look at text length and completeness more than the overall length of the article. Much of the length of that article is due to the infoboxes - the actual text is fairly short. Again, I'm not objecting, just raising an observation. Johntex\^talk 17:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

k, thanx Bornagain4 18:08, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Question

I have a question, when mentioning a date in a sports related event. Do we forward them to the year in sports or the normal year? Another one, should we have a page for this fall's season or for past seasons?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bornagain4 (talk • contribs) 10:47, 2006 June 29

In general, dates should be written like 29 June 2006. This allows the user's own Wikipedia preference settings to determine how the date is displayed. Please see WP:DATE.

In general, solitary years or months should not be linked at all. So in general, you should not wikilink if you just want to say something like "Coach Smith joined the Buckeyes in 2006." Just leave the year unlinked. The exception is if there is a very strong connection between the article you are writing and the year in question. For example, if you said "The University of Alaska won the national championship in 2006." Then you might make the case that the event was so significant as to be relevant for linking to the year in question. In such a case, I would recommend linking to the year in sports, like ([[2006 in sports]], so you would type [[2006 in sports|2006]].

Please note that the championship game is held the year After the season. So the 2006 Rose Bowl decided the 2005 NCAA Division I-A football season.

As to your question about articles on the seasons: As you might guess from the example above, we have those already. See Category:College football seasons. Johntex\^talk 19:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

First steps

Hello, I have added a number of proposed to-do items above. I notice that User:Nmajdan has put a standard-lookking to-do list on the project page, which is OK - it is certainly conventional. However, I think we should delve into organizational issues first, such as creating an organizational structure for cateogires, discussing what templates we need, etc. I am adding a line called "organizational" to the to-do list to represent this area of work. Once we are well organized, the articles will flow more smoothly. Johntex\^talk 16:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I moved this question off of the todo page ... it was causing the talk page TOC to be placed inside the todo template and looked funky BigDT 01:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The first thing I noticed this morning was the Mike Stoops has been added to the WikiProject. He has both a college football stub and an american football coach stub. We need to work on subcategories such as college football coach stub that could replace both of those. I may take a look at that today.--NMajdan•talk 13:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I proposed a new category over at the stub sorting project.--NMajdan•talk 14:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I have been going through Category:College football and adding all of them to the WikiProject, and adding the college football stub to the stubs, many of them were stubbed as American football coach. Bornagain4 14:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

This is why I think we should be spending time discussing our organization before we start implementing our organization. The stub sorting project gets very bent out of shape when people make stubs without going through their process. It is important because they have the power to delete stubs. Johntex\^talk 01:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, this is the first time I've gone through that process but I didn't really know anything about it before. Hopefully, it'll get approved and we'll get it created sometime early next week and we can start sorting. If anybody has any other proposals, please bring them forth here and we'll determine if we should put it to the stub committee.--NMajdan•talk 02:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Goals

I went ahead and took the liberty of adding some things to the Goals section on the project page. Take a look at em, change em, add to em, or whatever. Bornagain4 03:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• Good work Bornagain, I think those are good goals that you added. I was WP:BOLD and added some more. Johntex\^talk 15:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

A note

A note to whom it may concern: the reason many NFL coaches are classified with this project is that they coached in college at one time or another and are classifed under the College football category. Bornagain4 15:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Priority List?

Should there be a priority list on the goals section? They are numbered but that is not priority. We might want to organize the College football articles before we work on a portal. Bornagain4 16:20, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Portal proposal submitted [Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals#Proposals] Mecu 18:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Categorizing

I have been going through Category:College football and adding the project template to all of the talk pages and adding the stub template to the stubs. I have made my way from the beginning and am currently in the middle of the "N"s of the coaches section. I am posting this so noone overlaps in going through the College football Category. If you do start, please post what you will go through here so another person doesn't have to cover it. Thank You. Bornagain4 20:25, 30 June 2006 (UTC)