Template talk:Card

Tried this out with Beau Mills and have some requests. Could there be a separate line for high school and college? Is there a way of showing multiple drafts for people drafted more than once? Can there be a separate line for their BR minors page? Is there a way to turn off the debut and status lines for players who are minor leaguers? Thanks. 69.68.238.142 16:58, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

We will also need a death date line for those who are no longer with us. With nearly 17000 major league players and nearly 3000 minor league players already on the wiki, I'm wondering if all of these will need to be done by hand - or is this something a bot could do? Kinston eagle 21:53, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

Oh hey - just to let you know: I'm working on a death line now - the parameter will be death, the heading will be died, and users can just put in the date.--danielfolsom 20:54, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Done, sorry about the delay.--danielfolsom 20:58, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

My Opinion

I'll probably catch alot of flack for this but here goes. This template looks just like the one at wikipedia. If our page format for players needs to be redone, well, that'll be a logistical nightmare, but if it looks better great. But if we do that, I think we should do something different. We should have our pages look like Bullpen pages, not wikipedia pages. --Jeff 21:58, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

The way we've been doing it imparts all the same information and takes up less space. The template does look nicer though. If all we're talking about is a cosmetic change, I'm all for keeping it if it can be done by a bot. There are only about a dozen active editors here, and I don't see doing nearly 20,000 pages by hand. What we need most of all is content, not formatting. I have a set list of tasks I want to get accomplished here, as do many others, and adding these to each player page would sidetrack me quite a bit. Kinston eagle 22:31, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

I tried making the template look like a baseball card at first, the format was two columns instead of two rows, one column for the picture and the other for the text; that presented space problems, and I was forced to change the template. As for the bot - I'm afraid that would be near impossible. Bots need access to the information they are distributing, and the information for this template is not compiled in any one location. The idea is from now on, when the player's page is first being created, this template will go on it.--danielfolsom 22:59, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

That sounds reasonable. There's no reason why there should be absolute uniformity on every single page. The important thing is that the info is presented clearly. I think that either format could be used to that end. As pointed out elsewhere, we've used several different formats for rosters and there haven't been any problems there. Thank you for putting in all the work on the template. Kinston eagle 23:08, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

Haha np, although eventually I do think there needs to be an effort to standardize, in fact that's really the point of any template - consistency. I'm doing a few players as I go along, I agree that it's unreasonable to expect every player to be done, although eventually, either by myself or hopefully with others, we can get it to the point where a strong majority are (I'm also in the process of standardizing rosters with Template:TeamPositions).--danielfolsom 23:22, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

Another question - how about linking to the draft in question? So instead of "1998" on Juan Pierre's page, it could be [[1998 amateur draft|1998]] - --Mischa 14:00, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Oh I like that - although it would make the template a bit harder - there'd have to be an extra parameter - but I'll try putting it in now, the new parameter will be called draftlink - and it should be filled with the title of the page the draft is on.--danielfolsom 14:29, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Ok, it's a bit more complicated than I thought - a separate parameter had to be created if you wanted to cite a source where you got the draft information, but otherwise it's all in order. See Ken Griffey Jr..--danielfolsom 14:41, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

I'll go with whatever the majority thinks as far as this template (there are some things I like about the way we were doing things before, but this template is more pleasing to the eye), but the one thing I was wondering is, can we make the text any larger? At least on my monitor, the text is very small and kind of difficult to read. -Chisoxfan 21:36, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

I went the size up - but the font got a lot larger, so I had to do a little work around with the format; this resulted in a clunkier template, so I reverted myself, though I'm open to reverting back, I would say just see how many other people are first.--danielfolsom 22:34, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

I don`t mind a new template, but I'll need to work with it when I start inputing new player pages when I come back from holidays in a few days' time. I'll provide you with some comments once I've tried to create a few of these for players who make their MLB debuts and others for whom biographical information is added. We will absolutely need a bot to change everyone in the player and manager category, though. I would suggesting waiting until the end of the 2008 regular season to do this, however. For minor league players and managers, we only have full biographical details for a minority, and even fewer pictures (apart from the group which Kingston eagle is adding); I would stick with the current simple formatting for those for now (apart for the afforementioned group). --Philippe 05:28, 8 July 2008 (EDT)

Steve Olin

Take a look at the template on the Steve Olin page. It was fine when I first put it up, but since the changes were made, the debut date is not showing up and the other lines are messed up. He may be the only one we've tried with a death date. Kinston eagle 22:01, 8 July 2008 (EDT)