User talk:David Speed

The Notable Achievements section is a standardized list of accomplishments; other things go in the main bio section. See Notable Achievements for what is included. - --Mischa 11:56, 19 September 2008 (EDT)

BTW, welcome to the Bullpen and thanks for all the info on Clemente. - --Mischa 11:57, 19 September 2008 (EDT)

Instead of linking to wikipedia articles for Campanis, Bavasi, etc., you should link to the Baseball-Reference articles for them. - --Mischa 13:55, 23 September 2008 (EDT)

The standard way to cite sources and make asides on the wiki is by endnotes using the ref markers around what you want to endnote. I have done the first few dozen in the Clemente article. I'll try to do some more tomorrow. Also, the use of ibid should be avoided since you or others may insert info with a citation in between the two notes at some future date. Otherwise, it is shaping up to be a very good article that will probably be named a featured article once it is completed. Kinston eagle 22:28, 28 October 2008 (EDT)

I agree. We certainly need more feature-ready articles and this looks great. - --Mischa 09:16, 29 October 2008 (EDT)

I saw the problem you started having with the Clemente article in regards to its enormous size and how that prevented the page from coming up properly or even at all. As a possible solution, I have created articles called Roberto Clemente Timeline and Roberto Clemente Bibliography. They can be made to look nicer with scans of cards or scans of book covers on the biblio page. I'm hoping that the idea will catch on and there will be extensive timelines and bibliographies for many important players sometime down the road. If you do not like this way of handling this problem, I can easily revert my changes back to the way they were. In the future, if you have trouble getting to the edit page, here is a direct link: [1]. 69.68.238.142 10:53, 4 February 2009 (EST)

The thanks to me are misdirected as it was Kinston eagle who solved the problem. - --Mischa 16:55, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Glad I could help. I usually don't log on when I am on public computers. Kinston eagle 20:39, 5 February 2009 (EST)

David, the calendar of events is written in a certain style which should be respected. In particular, no footnotes are used. --Philippe 10:50, 12 January 2010 (EST)

The items you're adding are absolutely relevant; it's only a question of conforming to the style used in the calendar. I've changed a few of your items in this perspective, since cleaning-up the calendar is a bit of a personal project. --Philippe 14:58, 12 January 2010 (EST)

David, I read your remarks today about items in the calendar (I was travelling on business). You're basically correct about what is the proper style for the calendar, i.e what should not be plut in the item. External links are out. The items are supposed to be a teaser and give a sense of major or remarkable events that happened that day. Readers interested in more should follow the internal links, in this case to the Clemente main article. In that article, they'll get redirected to the timeline. The timeline is an article supportive of the main Clemente article, but should probably not be the first source to which we re-direct in the case of the calendar. If you skim randonly through various dates on the calendar, you'll see that we rarely use adjectives like "colossal". In a case where we do, like the Clemente reference, where it was quite appropriate, it should perk the reader that it is indeed a home run that stands out. The full description with all details would then be included in the article, or in this case, in the timeline. --Philippe 16:17, 14 January 2010 (EST)

David, let me just add that I enjoy and appreciate the passion and thoroughness you bring to your contributions to the bullpen. Keep it up! --Philippe 09:53, 15 January 2010 (EST)

David, there's not a huge deal here. I try to limit quotes to a strict minimum in the calendar. Anything that sounds like an account of the game, such as "John homered off James in the third inning", should not be a quote. Quotes should be limited to instances where they give, as you say, "contemporary flavor", and you've chosen a number of good ones that accomplish this. Except for that, I'm just looking for consistency of style with the rest of that huge beast that is the calendar. You've probably noticed I've barely touched your items in the last few days, since I think you're now writing in a style that is entirely appropriate and adding some interesting items. Keep at it ! --Philippe 09:32, 24 January 2010 (EST)

I have no opposition to internal links. For closely-spaced dates, it usually sounds more natural to say: "a week earlier" or "in ten days", but there's nothing hard and fast. I was doing a general cleaning-up and thought the item sounded more natural without a reference to the date. --Philippe 11:52, 24 January 2010 (EST)

Davis, just so you know I'm not just picking on you. In reviewing the January 31 calendar this morning, I moved a whole section from 1969 to the designated hitter article, as it provided way too much detail for a calendar item. Cheers ! --Philippe 10:14, 1 February 2010 (EST) this section of the DH article was originally part of the January 31, 1969 item. --Philippe 20:40, 1 February 2010 (EST)

October 16, 1971

I've kept the reference to Frank Robinson's injury - only shortened it a bit. I have copied your entire original posting under that day to the 1971 World Series article, under Game 6. The article is still a shapeless stub, but I would encourage you to work on that article at some point, since you have access to all sorts of great sources about that series. I can help with formatting issues, and you will have a lot bigger canvas to work with than in the calendar ! The 1970 NLCS, 1971 NLCS and 1960 WS articles also await your wonderful input.--Philippe 09:21, 2 February 2010 (EST)

The calendar used to have a mix of past and present tenses. Philippe has been going through and trying to put everything in present for the safe of consistency but he must have missed that date. - --Mischa 12:49, 3 February 2010 (EST)

I was on holidays for three weeks in late May/early June last year, so I skipped some dates. I hope to get back to them when the calendar rolls around again. I've been updating one day at a time, usually when I'm inserting the previous day's news. --Philippe 16:31, 3 February 2010 (EST)

Links

David, I was 1) getting rid of excessive bolding; and 2) making the reference to the NY Times article more bibliographic. Minor stuff to be consistent with how the "related sites" and "further reading" sections are handled on most pages. Nothing worth flogging a cat for, as we say in French. Cheers. --Philippe 18:03, 15 February 2010 (EST)

I'd say, use less bolding, and forgive me if I once in a while I am over-enthusiastic on the editing (it's part of my regular job, so I tend to do it as a reflex). --Philippe 10:58, 16 February 2010 (EST)

David: I try to keep the editing of your calendar items to a minimum, since they're now quite good in general (notice I didn't touch the one for April 12). However, for April 11, I tried to find a way to boil down the paragraph into something more clear, and couldn't, because it was solely focussed on a tiny element of the game in question, and didn't provide enough other elements to make the salient item pop out. In other words, it might be interesting in a Clemente context, but in a calendar that is trying to provide a flavor of the entire history of baseball on that day, I couldn't make it work. It was a problem with that one item, not with your writing in general. You can try to rewrite it, if you wish. On the other question, I usually go through your edits a first time when you post them, and a second time when I go through that entire day as I'm adding this year's item. I sometimes miss the first go-round, because I don't always have time to go through a day's edit to see what others have added. So I missed the item in question the first time around. Regards, --Philippe 19:37, 13 April 2010 (EDT)

That's much better; I've made a few changes, but kept the bulk of your entry. --Philippe 22:15, 13 April 2010 (EDT) The four additional changes you propose are all good. Thanks. --Philippe 11:28, 14 April 2010 (EDT)

Just a couple of quick points: on dates link the day and the year separately. On abbreviations, I think they are generally overused all over the place (not just on the bullpen). Abbreviating positions is the only case for which I'll make an exception in the calendar. It just reads better if you use the full term,and homer is almost as short as HR (you can also use blast, dinger, long ball, or whatever your imagination comes up with). You'll also notice that I removed a couple of sentences yesterday or the day before when they dealt with either events on another day, or with pure speculation. Any way, your input is generally very good, so keep it up ! --Philippe 20:22, 20 April 2010 (EDT)

Riley's The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues says that Pancho Coimbre had a "father-son relationship" with Roberto Clemente. Can you cite anything first-hand about this for both Clemente's and Coimbre's pages? - --Mischa 15:21, 16 May 2010 (EDT)

Welcome back. - --Mischa 16:38, 3 August 2010 (EDT)

Thanks for all the good work on the Roberto Clemente stuff. Alex 01:19, 24 April 2011 (EDT)

Navigation boxes etc.

David, I've made a few changes to your RC cluster of pages that I hope you will see as improvements: I systemized all the article under a Roberto Clemente category, which I've integrated into the site's category tree, and created a navigation box to help move between the various articles. I've also made a couple of changes to the RC page in areas where we should not deviate from bullpen standards: the vital data section, and the notable achievements. You may want to reinsert the bit about intentional walks, which I've taken out, to a more appropriate section. Let me know what you think. --Philippe 11:30, 7 May 2011 (EDT)

Thanks for the feebdack David. I'll make the changes you suggest to the labelling of the items in the RC info box. You're right that putting three elements across at the top of the page is too much. I still have a small monitor at work and pages like that display just awfully. Whenever I see such a layout, I'm standardizing the page to just a picture + vital information, and moving any other element down on the page. Finally, when Sean changed the basic display for non logged-in users a few months ago, he kept it the same for logged-in users, so as not to upset us too much. You can set these under the "my preferences" tab to have the standard display show up when you're logged in too. --Philippe 09:07, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

Check under "my preferences", then under "skin" try the various options. The one marked BRef (default) may be the one you are looking for. Also, I've moved the template on the main RC page. Does it work better for you ? It looks better on this machine, as the vital data starts immediately under the picture, which is not a bad solution. --Philippe 18:25, 10 May 2011 (EDT)

I've reversed the order of "Sporting News" and "Misc. etc" in the navigation box. It's just a navigation box to make it easier to find the various linked Clemente articles you've been working on with such diligence. I'm afraid you may be asking it to do a little too much by explaining what the different bibliography categories mean. In my view, it's something better explained at the beginning of the three bibliography articles. Re: the display of pages, I can't help you more; you will need to leave a message for Sean to ask for help (his user name is "Admin"). He's the technical person. I just know enough html to make my own updates and changes work. Re: how the main RC page displays: I access the site from three different computers, all with a different screen size, and it looks different on all three! Beats me how to achive a consistent look that will work on all machines. You could try moving the nav box to a different section of the page, and see if that helps achieve the look you want. Cheers, --Philippe 18:13, 11 May 2011 (EDT)

Sorry about that. The navigation box appears in the codes as {{Roberto Clemente}}. You can cut and paste it to various other places on the page, and using the "show preview" button, see how the page looks with this different lay-out. And I wouldnt know how to link it to the table of contents rather than to the main article. --Philippe 20:47, 11 May 2011 (EDT)

To edit the box (which is in template format), open for editing one of the pages it's curently on. Scroll to the very bottom of the page (below the editing box) and there will be a line that says: "Templates used on this page", where all templates used are marked as blue links. Click on the one called "Roberto Clemente" and the box comes up as a page that you can edit. You may want to play around with it in the sandbox if you're not too comfortable with some of the html codes used. Good luck. --Philippe 09:09, 12 May 2011 (EDT)

I'd prefer you keep the vital statistics on RC's page in conformity with the standard layout for other player pages. I'll give you free reign or the rest of the page though. --Philippe 17:53, 13 May 2011 (EDT)

Great job on adding all the sportswriter bios! - --Mischa 10:21, 19 May 2011 (EDT)

The Neal Russo bio reads like an obituary in a newspaper. I assume you did not just copy-and-paste the article but merely wrote in that style? - --Mischa 08:56, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

There are copyright issues with copying someone's obituary wholesale here. It should really be used as the raw material for an original article. --Philippe 16:25, 24 May 2011 (EDT)

For the Clemente HR log corrections, you can use the feedback form or email Sean Forman. I've taken both approaches when correcting info on the main part of the BR site. - --Mischa 14:14, 1 June 2011 (EDT)

The home run log was originally compiled by a SABR researcher. You may also wish to poke around the SABR site to see if you can find attribution and a contact address. --Philippe 14:22, 1 June 2011 (EDT)

Jimmy Wacker

Thanks for pointing out the name under which he should be listed. I've sent the information to Bill Carle, who heads SABR's biographical research committee so that he can make the change in the official database. Philippe (talk) 11:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes David, once it makes it to SABR's bi-monthly Bio Research Committee list, the main B-Ref site and Retrosheet, which both base their content on this list, will both be updated. Next update is planned for early September. Philippe (talk) 10:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)