BR Bullpen talk:Category Criteria

It has occurred to me that there have been a number of players who have died during seasons in which they played. Lyman Bostock comes to mind, for example, as well as Willard Hershberger and Mickey Finn. There may well be others - is this a suitable category? Can anyone come up with 10 names? - Randy 16:33 20 August 2006 (EDT)

Differentiating between Franchises and Teams

A proposal to modify split the current "team" category into separate "franchise" and "team" categories. In this new system teams will be categorised under their franchise, with seasons

• FRANCHISE
  • TEAM
    • SEASON

For instance take the Atlanta Braves, a name with a single franchise:

• Atlanta Braves Franchise
  • Atlanta Braves
    • 2000 Braves
    • 2001 Braves
    • etc.
  • Boston Beaneaters
    • 1883 Beaneaters
    • 1884 Beaneaters
    • 1885 Beaneaters
    • etc.
  • Boston Bees
  • Boston Braves
  • Boston Doves
  • Boston Red Caps
  • Boston Red Stockings
  • Boston Rustlers
  • Milwaukee Braves

It would also cleanup categories like Category:Baltimore Orioles which currently has three distinct teams from three franchises.

• Baltimore Orioles (1882-1899) Franchise
  • Baltimore Orioles (1882-1899)
• Baltimore Orioles Franchise
• Baltimore Orioles < the modern team, formerly of St. Louis

• New York Yankees Franchise
  • Baltimore Orioles (1901-1902) < the team that moved to New York

The format for naming these categories would be: *Franchise **the naming format is TEAM NAME (''any disambiguating information'') Franchise **take on most recent (or last) name ***for the current Milwaukee-based National League team it would be [[:Category:Milwaukee Brewers Franchise]] not <code>Seattle Pilots Franchise</code> or even <code>Milwaukee Brewers/Seattle Pilots Franchise</code> **active teams take precedence over inactive teams ***in the above example with the Baltimore Orioles, the modern team has no parenthetical disambiguation while the older franchises have **franchises with the same name are first disambiguated by league (two-letter abbreviation in parenthesis) then by year of establishment ***for instance there are five distinct Washington Nationals franchises. The modern one that was formerly the Expos would be [[:Category:Washington Nationals Franchise]] as it an active franchise. The one that played in the 1884 Union Association has a name of [[:Category:Washington Nationals (UA) Franchise]] since it was the only franchise in that league with that name. The three National Association/National League franchises are in the format of <code>Washington Nationals (LG YEAR) Franchise</code>, thus you have [[:Category:Washington Nationals (NA 1872) Franchise]], [[:Category:Washington Nationals (NA 1875) Franchise]], and [[:Category:Washington Nationals (NL 1886) Franchise]]. **franchises are placed as sub-categories of the leagues in which they played so the same name are first disambiguated by league (two-letter abbreviation in parenthesis) then by year of establishment *Team **the naming format is TEAM NAME (''any disambiguating information'') **most of these categories are already in existence, just some disambiguation would be needed **active teams take precedence over inactive teams **team should share the name of their franchise **team with the same name are first disambiguated by year of establishment ***for instance there are three distinct Washington Senators teams, the first began as the Statesmen in 1891 and then played as the Senators through 1899 and would have the name [[:Category:Washington Senators]] as that is the franchise. The other two were in the American League and moved. The team that moved to Minnesota would be [[:Category:Washington Senators (1901)]] while the one that moved to Texas would be [[:Category:Washington Senators (1961)]]. I believe this was the original intent of the categories, which is why on this page you have two Atlanta Braves categories.

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Both proposals sound reasonable to me. - --Mischa 18:59, 25 February 2007 (EST)

New Category Proposals

Location Categorizing

• Countries (or Nations) and Former (countries or nations) - for countries, a subcat of places and parent of Settlements in...
• Settlements (or Places) in NATION or FIRST LEVEL ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION - the current places category has over 8000 entries, separating by country will create a more manageable category, easier adding of places (the sorting format would just be the place's name) and allow categorical searching to be easier as like places will all be together (i.e. all places in Cuba, Japan, etc.). We essentially allready do this for all places with the current sorting format at Category Talk:Places
• Baseball venues in NATION' - for location categorization; the use of baseball venues rather than ballparks since some "ballparks" are just fields but they are all baseball venues
• Universities and colleges in NATION or FIRST LEVEL ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION - for location categorization; the use of universities and colleges rather than schools and junior colleges is due to the purpose of these categories (grouping institutions of higher education in an area together)
• Teams in NATION or FIRST LEVEL ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION - for location categorization

Subcategorizing

• Category:The Sporting News - there is enough information related to the publication for a category including awards and editors
• Category:Other sports stars - for other sports and as a parent cat for NFL, NHL, NBA players
• Category:League presidents - presidents of (minor) leagues, sub-cat of minor execs
• Category:Drugs in baseball - a parent cat of the following three categories as well as for articles such as steroids, amphetemines, Pittsburgh Drug Trials, etc.
  • Category:Suspended for drug offenses - for non-steroid drug suspensions from league play
  • Category:Suspended for steroid use - not a new category but a renaming to a proper case as it is a sentence fragment, for players suspended from league play for steroid use
  • Category:Tested positive for banned substances - for players who tested positive for banned subsatances (or admitted to use) but were not suspended from league play - for example Olympic athletes
• CONFERENCE NAME - for university athletic conferences. For instance Category:America East Conference would have within it: University at Albany, The State University of New York, Binghamton University, Boston University, University of Hartford, University of Maine, University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of New Hampshire, State University of New York at Stony Brook, and University of Vermont. The conference would be subcategorised under its Division which would be under its governing body.
• LEAGUE NAME teams - subcats of minors teams to releive burden

People Categories

• Births in YEAR, Deaths in YEAR - first, there is currently no way to obtain a list of people who were born or died in a certain year. Also, there is already a precedent for this type of category with Category:Deaths in 2006. Also as it would be dynamically generated after each edit, updating dates would be a lot easier
• People from NATION or People born in NATION - there is currently no way to obtain a list of people born in a country. Note that this category would not differentiate between birthplace and nationality so people like Dave Roberts (roberda07) will be listed as being born in Okinawa even though his nationality is of the United States.

These categories would not be "added by hand" but rather be part of a PERSONDATA metadata template that could be used to semi-automatically be used to add lists like those on the date pages.

This will add at most five new categories to a person

• Major League Baseball Debut in YEAR and Major League Baseball Finale in YEAR for all other years as we already have them for 2005 and 2006. The addition of the Major League Baseball qualifier is to avoid ambiguity with other leagues. Again these would be part of a PERSONDATA metadata template.
• NATION GENDER international baseball players - for international players who participated in tournaments other than the Olympics (Olympians would become a subcat)

Category Policy Proposal

from wikipedia

• For a pre-existing category, the article of the same or similar name and (rarely, or) on the same topic should be added to that category. When creating an article one should, only if appropriate (especially horizontally), create a category of the same or similar name on the same topic .
• Articles should be placed in the most specific categories possible. Categories should be more or equally as broad as the articles they contain; articles should be more or equally specific as the categories they are in.
• Avoid abbreviations. Example: "Korea Baseball Organization players", not "KBO players". However, former abbreviations that have become the official name should be used in their official form where there are no other conflicts.
• Don't hard-code the category structure into names. Example: "Players", not "People - Players".
• Choose category names that are able to stand alone, independent of the way a category is connected to other categories. Example: "Wikipedia policy precedents and examples", not "Precedents and examples" (a subcategory of "Wikipedia policies and guidelines").
• Topical category names should be singular. Examples: "Law", "Civilization"
• As with lists avoid descriptive adjectives such as famous, important, or notable in category titles.
• Use gender-neutral category names, unless there is a distinct reason and consensus to do otherwise. In that case, please specify the reason on the category page, and record the consensus on its associated discussion page. For instance
• Categories of permanently located man-made objects by country are named "... in country".
• In general avoid linking directly to the category page (in the category namespace) instead link to the approprite page.

• Category names should be follow the standard English, the first letter of the title and that of any proper noun should be capitalized. Example: "Korea Baseball Organization players", not "Korea Baseball Organization Players" - in this case players dhould not be capitalized as it is not a subject.
• Each league should have the following categories - where applicable - in the following format; League players, League managers, League coaches, League umpires, League teams, League baseball venues, League executives.
• The description of a category should be relativly short (under 50 words). Anything longer likely merits its own article.

Feedback appreciated. --MichaelEng (talk) 20:00, 11 February 2007 (EST)

• The idea of breaking up the places category by nation makes sense. As for the other locations, would this be in place of current categories or in addition to them?

• If the above is done with an automatic system, will it work for players we don't have a birthplace listed for. For instance, Sidney de Jong is a player from the Netherlands while Kab-yong Jin is a player from South Korea but neither has a specific birthplace listed on their page.

• The Other Sports Stars makes lots of sense and I already created it and made the NHL/NFL/NBA/golfers/etc. subcategories.

• The new categories for suspended substances makes sense IMO.

• Conference categories. I have no strong opinion.

• League name for minor league teams. What about teams that have been in 5-6 different leagues, such as the Buffalo Bisons? This could get more cluttered rather than less.

• Births in a year, deaths in a year would take a lot of time to create as we'd have to retrofit 20,000 or so pages into them. I like the idea but how would this be done? I'm unfamiliar with metadata templates.

• Same as the above with MLB debuts/final game. That shouldn't be hard at all to do as that info is available on the main B-R site.

• International tourney players. I'm not a huge fan of this, personally. Are others interested? Some of the original intention was not to make oodles of categories like at wikipedia and I don't want to go too far down that road.

• Avoiding descriptive adjectives. What do with the Cool Names category then? Can't say I'm a real fan of that one. Famous Firsts and Famous Lasts exist, but they're pretty clear-cut I think.

• As for "baseball venues in (place name here)", this seems much clumsier to me than "(place name here) ballparks". Ballparks doesn't imply anything fancy - it could cover anything used by a pro team, from a sandlot in some obscure foreign league to a fancy modern stadium like the Tokyo Dome

Those are my main comments. - --Mischa 19:07, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Responses (I have numbered each comment)

• (1-places) as a replacement for the current "Places" category.
• (2-birthplace) The template would have four birthplace parameters:
  • birth city - settlement (city, town, district, etc.) of birth (as existed at birthdate)
  • birth division - administrative division of birth (as existed at birthdate)
  • birth nation - nation of birth (as existed at birthdate)
  • birth notes - for any notes regarding the person's birth
    • using this syntax will add the proper category to the person
    • {{#ifeq: {{{birth_nation}}} | {{concat| {|{|{birth_nation}|}|} }} |<includeonly>[[Category:Missing place of birth]]</includeonly>|<includeonly>[[Category:People born in {{{birth_nation}}}]]</includeonly>}}}
• (3-other sports) NFL/NBA/NHL players should renamed to Professional football players, Professional basketball players, and Professional hockey players to include pros who did not play in those leagues.
• (6-minor leagues) The Buffalo team is a massive outlier, looking at a specific type of team stints (same name in the same league name in successive years) the average number of leagues is 1.41 for over 4500 teams with the following breakdown:

1: 3676
2: 551
3: 204
4: 77
5: 47
6: 29
7: 18
8: 9
9: 5
10: 2
11: 6
12: 2; Jackson Senators and Tulsa Oilers
13: 1; Syracuse Stars
14: 0
15: 1; Erie Sailors 
16: 1; Buffalo Bisons

However, in actuality the Buffalo team would have at most eight (International Association,Eastern Association,Eastern International League,Western League,Eastern League,International League,New International League,American Association - American League would not be included as that team would have its own page under the American League from the above team/franchise restructuring) and Erie team would have seven (Interstate League,Ohio-Pennsylvania League,Central League,Middle Atlantic League,Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League,New York-Pennsylvania League,Frontier League).

• (7-births, deaths) A similar syntax to (1) would be used.
• (8-debuts/final games) A similar syntax to (1) would be used.
• (9-intl players) For each national team a person was on they would receive one category; for example Orestes Kindelán would receive a single category Category:Cuba national baseball team players, despite playing in at least ten national teams. He would also retain the category of Olympians since it is a special case.
• (10-adjectives) I would delete Cool Names, and rename both "Famous..." to "Notable..."

--MichaelEng (talk) 17:00, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Using your numbering system:

• 2) I like the idea of having degrations of birthplace. For some players like Charlie Luis, we only have the state or for a guy like de Jong, the country, but it's a start.
• 3) Renaming the NHL/NFL/NBA categories makes sense to me. Do we start allowing things like the CBA though? I doubt it will come up much, but would it be possible to make it refer clearly to the top league at the time? The name change is good given the number of MLB players who were in the top football or basketball league at the time pre-NFL/NBA.
• 6) You still get over 100 teams with 5+ categories. What do others think? This seems counter to the spirit of the Bullpen to minimize categories unlike wikipedia.
• 7 and 8) Would we have to go through by hand and add this information to tens of thousands of pages?
• 10) Renaming famous to notable seems reasonable. In agreement on the Cool Names.

- --Mischa 19:21, 25 March 2007 (EDT)