BR Bullpen:Guidelines

Introduction

The SABR/Baseball Reference Encyclopedia, commonly known as the "Bullpen", is a companion project to Baseball-Reference, the most complete statistical database covering baseball. It was launched in 2005 and has since become endorsed by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), when it took over the society's parallel project, the SABR Online Baseball Encyclopedia, which was launched around the same time but never achieved the critical mass that the Bullpen has reached.

The Bullpen is intended to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of baseball (not to be confused with the Baseball Encyclopedia) providing write-ups about participants in professional and international baseball since the game's creation, information about teams and leagues past and present, definition of terms, summaries of books about baseball, and various other items that relate to baseball and its rich history.

The creator of Baseball-Reference and of the Bullpen is Sean Forman. The site is based on contributions from the general public. While originally, everyone was open to edit any page with minimal control, a rash of spammers forced the Bullpen to introduce mandatory registration of contributors. A group of volunteer editors are responsible for ensuring quality control and keeping the pages up to date; employees of Sports Reference LLC, Sean's company, take care of the underlying technical framework and ensure everything is working properly.

The software used is based on the open source wikidata software developed for Wikipedia, and the markup language is essentially a compressed version of Wikipedia's wikitext. Anyone familiar with contributing to that site will have little difficulty editing pages here, with the caveat that many fewer templates are enabled on the Bullpen site. There is also a lot less bureaucracy, but certain pages can only be edited by users having Administrator status.

Notability

The Bullpen includes an article on every player, manager and umpire who appeared in a major league game, including in the Negro Leagues for the period these are considered major leagues. If such a player does not have a page, either it is someone who made his debut very recently, in which case a page will be created in a matter of days, or the person is in the Bullpen under a different name and some searching may be required. An effort has been made to capture all frequent name variations for a person, but some may be missing. Almost all major league coaches also have a page, although a small number may still be missing.

All minor league players, managers, coaches and umpires are also eligible to have a page, but pages have not been systematically created for every one. Users are encouraged to create such pages to make the site more complete - provided they have enough information to create a page that will not be simply a stub.

All players in top level international leagues are also considered notable, including Nippon Pro Baseball. the Korea Baseball Organization and the Cuban National League, but also European leagues like those in Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and so forth. Pages can be created for these persons. All players taking part in major international tournaments are also considered notable.

Players not considered notable are amateur and semi-pro players, including college players. An exception is made for players who have achieved personal notability by winning major awards or through other means.

Similarly, there is a page not only for every professional team and league, but also for individual seasons of all major league teams and all major leagues. Some of the principal minor leagues also have seasonal pages, and all professional leagues are eligible for such pages. If a contributor wants to create a page for the season of a team that does not have one, he/she should first consider creating a page for the relevant league for that season if such a page does not already exist.

Teams not considered notable are amateur and semi-pro teams unless there are special circumstances. However. semi-pro leagues are considered notable, as are major tournaments featuring semi-pro or amateur teams.

Basic player page format

Player biographies follow a standard format as per below

Player Full Name
any alias or name variation
(Nickname)

• Bats , Throws
• Height , Weight
• School (college and/or junior college, in chronological order`; can include institutions attended after playing career)
• High School (there can be more than one attended)
• Debut (Major League players only)
• Final Game (Major League players only)
• Born
• Died

[BR page] or [BR Minors page] or [BR Register page] (BR page is for major leaguers only; BR Register page for those who have played internationally)

==Biographical Information==

==Related Sites==

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lastname,Firstname}} (names written without any diacritics and compound names merged into a single name)

[[Category:]] (as many as relevant; there is a more or less standard order of categories, and it is recommended to list each one on a separate line to facilitate reorganization if required. Note that every page requires at least one category in order to fit into the site structure).

Most contributions should go under the "Biographical Information" section. This can be divided into sub-sections to facilitate organization.

Other sections that can appear on a player page include: "Notable Achievements" which is a standardized list (see the linked page); "Year-by-Year Managerial Record" (in the form of a table); "Records held"; "Notes" (if footnotes have been used in the main text); and "Further Reading" (a bibliography related to the subject). Other sections can be added as required, but the above are the most common.

To be avoided

In addition to creating pages for non-notable subjects, users should avoid the following traps:

• Pages should be written in a way that they will not immediately become obsolete. For example saying a player is "currently" something or other is not useful when the page may be read five years later by someone who has no idea when the text was written.
• Personal opinions are to be avoided - this is an encyclopedia. Articles are not signed and are liable to be modified by anyone. Always attempt to use a neutral point of view when writing. Materials on this site are intended to be factual and not opinion.

• Statistical tables that are hard to maintain - the main Baseball-Reference site has the resources to keep these stats up-to-date, and the relevant pages are usually just a click away. Duplicating this work is bound to result in pages that are quickly out-of-date. However, lists of rare occurrences are fine, as they are relatively easier to keep current, as are all-time list of statistical leaders. In that last case, a good practice is to identify active players and list their totals as of the end of last completed season, or else the tables become a nightmare to keep current.

• Any spam links, copyright violations, and inappropriate or insulting language will be deleted and the contributor will also be banned.

Formatting and related issues

Style Guide

The SABR Style Guide can be found here [1]. It should be used by default.

Images

Images should be public domain or have been given an appropriate license by their creator. Baseball cards can be used to illustrate a player page, in a reduced format. More information is available by clicking on the "Upload wizard" link.

Copyright

Absolutely do not submit material for which someone else holds the copyright. If there is any question as to the provenance of an entry, it will be removed.

If you believe that your copyright has been violated, please contact [2] to alert us to the infringement. We will review the material and remove it if needed.

See our Copyright page for more information.

New Categories

Feel free to create new categories, but use existing ones as appropriate. If in doubt see Category Criteria.

New Pages

Create new pages that either add information to existing topics and categories or that have significance to the subject of baseball. Do not create pages that are unrelated to baseball or do not add useful information.

• If in doubt see Page Criteria.
• For an introduction to creating pages see How to contribute.

Using Links

Through the use of links, one can spend hours browsing a wiki. An article on Babe Ruth is made more interesting with links to Lou Gehrig, the Boston Red Sox, Hank Aaron, and Guy Bush. Links within the wiki are added with double brackets around the linked page. Examples include [[1985 Royals]] or [[Tampa Bay Devil Rays]] or [[Endy Chavez]]. would create 1985 Royals, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Endy Chavez.

References

References should be placed immediately before any subsequent grammar marks, and should be used as frequently as possible. Use the name parameter to cite the same source twice. In the example below, the first ref is given a name since the writer plans on using the reference again - <ref name="Miller, E">(the citation goes here)</ref>. Note how the end-ref tag is required. In the third sentence, which uses the same citation as the first, all that is needed is <ref name="Miller, E"/>; the / signals the end of the citation; the end-ref tag is not needed since no information needs to go between the ref tag and the end-ref tag, except for the name, but that is a parameter.

The <references/> tag indicates that the citations should show up "here".

The Sun is pretty big,<ref name="Miller, E">Miller, E: "The Sun". Academic Press, 2005.</ref>
but the Moon is not so big.<ref>Brown, R: "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 51(78):46</ref>
The Sun is also quite hot.<ref name="Miller, E"/>
==Notes==
<references/>

Example rendered result:

The Sun is pretty big, but the Moon is not so big. The Sun is also quite hot.

Notes

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Quotation marks

Quotation marks (and their position relative to other grammatical marks) depend on the quotation.

Correct:	Arthur said that the situation is "deplorable".
	(When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period is outside.)
Correct:	Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable."
	(The period is part of the quoted text.)
Correct:	Martha asked, "Are you coming?"
	(When quoting a question, the question mark belongs inside because the quoted text itself was a question.)
Correct:	Did Martha say, "Come with me"?
	(The very quote is being questioned, so here, the question mark is correctly outside; the period in the original quote is omitted.)

Headlines

The first segment of any page should not have a headline - this is the introduction, and it should appear above the table of contents. The subsequent sections may have headlines. The first headline used should be headline 2, ==Headline 1==; for sub-headlines, simply add an "=" to each side; ===Sub Headline 1 of Headline 1===

==Headline 1==
Lorem Ipsum

===Sub Headline 1 of Headline 1===
Lorem Ipsum

====Sub Sub Headline 1 of Sub Headline 1 of Headline 1====
Lorem Ipsum

===Sub Headline 2 of Headline 1===
Lorem Ipsum

==Headline 2==
Lorem Ipsum

Headline 1

Lorem Ipsum

Sub Headline 1 of Headline 1

Lorem Ipsum

Sub Sub Headline 1 of Sub Headline 1 of Headline 1

Lorem Ipsum

Sub Headline 2 of Headline 1

Lorem Ipsum

Headline 2

Lorem Ipsum

See also

• About the BR Bullpen
• How to contribute