What's Happening/Archive1

This is an archive of past discussions.

Do not edit the contents of this page.

If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Mystery Man

currently there is a guy going around putting stuff like "this guy is good and has earned my respect" and signing it "the mystery man". That's good and all, but that's not what this is for. If you come across something like this, please delete it. --TopGear 16:44, 12 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Capital letters are our friends

I am spending my Friday afternoon correcting someone who can't capitalize. Remember, capital letters, when used for proper names, are our friends. Links are nice too. --Scott

We're in the zone today

We're in the zone today. We kick ass when everyone is editting at the same time. --Pti 13:00, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

We need to get about 10 more people going and then we'd be set. ;-) --Admin 14:15, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

We have a small but powerful crew but new recruits would definitely help. --Pti 14:36, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Category for Fans

Added a category for Fans, could be a nice addition to the site. (It will be subjective and general, but will be a change from the statistics heavy articles..) --Smocko

Spam

A couple times today a "new user" spams a page, another "new user" comes along very shortly thereafter and says they removed the spam, while leaving some of it. I suspect that it may be the same person - by spamming and then claiming it was removed, they hope no one will notice some is left behind. We'll see if the pattern continues. - --Mischa 09:15, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

It looks as though some pages are repeatedly targeted for spamming. Do you think that it would be practical to mark those pages as patrolled, or do you think that the spammers would just turn elsewhere? --Roger 18:47, 9 Mar 2006 (EST)

Couldn't a blacklist be created to stop the spammers? MichaelEng 14:07, 10 Mar 2006 (EST)

New York Public Library images

Someone on baseball-fever pointed out this site: Photos of early baseball. I thought some folks here might be interested. I'm not big on pictures of players but we can probably find some harder-to-locate players here. -

New blood

Hey, Seems like there's a number of posts seeking new blood for writing/research... I've long admired the site and would love to contribute. Wiki's are so broad, though -- is there a more immediate area the BR braintrust would like to see completed/augmented?

Succession boxes

Can anyone give me some information on how to create sucession boxes. I found it once in the help section and then could never find it again. You can either put it here on email it to me at Biggtone23@yahoo.com thanks. I've got a bunch of lists of coaches and want to add them but cant figure out how to do it. --Biggtone23

Although it looks like I'm a little late, see Succession Box. --MichaelEng 00:10, 1 May 2006 (EDT)

MTurk experiment

What is "MTurk task completed"? Can the MTurk user(s) please cleanup their articles before posting (mainly removing redundant biographical information). Thanks. --MichaelEng 15:47, 6 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I'm doing a little experiment. I'm hiring people ($1/article, up to 40), to copy articles from wikipedia to the site. I'll go in and clean them up tomorrow. --Admin 15:58, 6 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I don't think it's worth it. You'd get much better articles by letting people write new ones. Some, like the Cuyler or Hanlon ones, tell us basically nothing that wasn't already at the B-R site. A couple are decent (like the Mize one) but most are too loaded with errors. Besides, why duplicate what's already out there instead of offering a fresh look? I'd advise against discontinuing this MTurk project and not doing it again. - --Mischa 22:02, 6 Jun 2006 (EDT)

The wiki articles seem too dumbed down when it comes to baseball. maybe its just me. --Just me 23:05, 6 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I agree with Just me. They're for people unfamiliar with baseball, while this site assumes basic knowledge and expands greatly on it. Please tell me we're at the end of the 40 MTurk articles - I still have 29 marked to clean up if no one gets to them first. - --Mischa 08:18, 7 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I agree with Mischa and Just me. Why not just add a link to wikipedia on these pages rather than duplicate them in their entirety? -Chisoxfan 11:11, 7 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I see these bios as a starting point. And I certainly would love to see them greatly expanded. The site is a year old now, and we didn't have any text for a lot of the biggest names in MLB history. think that providing a starting point is a good way to encourage expanded contribution. For instance, sitting down to "write the Hank Aaron entry" is a daunting task. It would take a long time to write something that wouldn't look trivial for a giant like Aaron. My thought is to use the wikipedia entry as a starting point and then people won't feel like they have to write the whole thing at once. Perhaps I'm wrong and these 40 will sit there unedited for another year. I apologize for not broaching this subject with the editors beforehand. I get a little caught up in trying new things and wanted to give it a whirl. Mischa, I will wikify them and clean up the ones you haven't gotten to.--Admin 11:34, 7 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I think that there's a real benefit to getting some kind of article in place for the biggest names in the game. I think that it's especially important to have some kind of written bio (as opposed to just awards, notable achievements, and records) for every HOFer, and probably for every contemporary player who's a regular all-star. Anyone who thinks that the Wikipedia articles are too dumbed down for the Bullpen audience is free to improve them. --Roger 19:02, 7 Jun 2006 (EDT)

Most wanted page

I just added a Most Wanted page based on user statistics (or search engine web bots).--Admin 16:30, 12 Jun 2006 (EDT)

New categories?

I was digging around the database schema and I think I have a good grasp on how the database is set up. I believe that it would be "pretty easy" (until I screw something up) to add lots of pages to a large number of categories. For instance, I could add categories for "Players from Michigan" or "Players from the Dominican Republic" or "Players to have 2000 Hits", "Outfielders", "Shortstops", etc.. If there are some categories that people would like to see let me know and I'll see if I can set something up. --141.158.234.6 09:29, 15 Jun 2006 (EDT)

The general consensus among admins is that there are already too many categories as is. Some players are already in close to a dozen categories, which is too many. If you start adding a whole bunch of new categories, it'll just get completely out of hand. It's one thing to divide up an existing Category into subcategories, but adding entirely new things, especially ones that can be gotten to without the need for new categories like players by place of birth, is asking for trouble. --Roger 13:12, 15 Jun 2006 (EDT)

If you think you can mass-add categories to pages, you might want to contact User:Auricle99 who has a list of over 1000 war veterans. I was thinking about adding Category:Jewish for Jewish persons, Category:Salon de Fama to Salon de Fama (Mexico) members, Category:On-field Injury (or something like that) for players who died or were severely injured as a result of events on the baseball field (Ray Chapman, Jiro Kuji, Jimmy Clayton, Tony Saunders, Dave Dravecky, Noriyoshi Sano, etc.) and Category:Halls of Fame to Halls of Fame (the National Hall of Fame, Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, the multiple Salon de Famas). Are there any objections? --MichaelEng 09:45, 18 Jun 2006 (EDT)

We already have categories for veterans. The Jewish category opens a whole can of worms in terms of whether someone is halachically Jewish and I'd advise against it. Salon de la Fama sounds good as we already have JBHOF and HoF categories. Players who died while playing could get their own pages if there are that many of them. I don't feel comfortable lumping it in with what happened to Dave Dravecky, even if that was traumatic - there's a major difference between injury and death. - --Mischa 10:29, 18 Jun 2006 (EDT)

OK. My list of deaths, as a direct result of events on the baseball field includes: Ray Chapman, Jiro Kuji, Jimmy Clayton, Steve Bechler, John McSherry, Addie Joss, Usami Kazuo, Kuji Jiro, Kurosawa Toshio, Satou Kikuo, Shima Teiichi, Kanda Takeo, Sawa Noboru, Toumon Akira, Kitai Masao, Hori Sadaichi. --MichaelEng 18:32, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Blurry images

Can someone tell me why, when I upload an image, it gets all blurry? Alexsautographs 16:50, 17 Jun 2006 (EDT)

I don't know when I uploaded the same image from your site it was not blurry. Compare the two images on the right. My guess is that it may be your resizing program. You might want to try resizing to a different size (height 200 or 220 px), changing your JPEG compression level or try saving in a different format (I would use PNG). --MichaelEng 20:11, 17 Jun 2006 (EDT)

The Bullpen still doesn't allow on-the-fly thumbnailing. Is it possible to add whatever add-on would make that work? --Roger 17:20, 25 June 2006 (EDT)

Site Update

The site will be down for a few hours (hopefully) tonight, as I do an upgrade to the site's software. I'm anticipating this starting ~9pm EDT

Installed Spam Blocker

SysOps can edit the spam blocking file here My spam blacklist.

Bugs

• A TOC parameter, "undefined," is showing up on every page with a TOC (see this page).
• HTML tables don't seem to be working (they align to the bottom of the page); see the International League. Table rows need to have a closing tag to render properly.
• Other html codes (see li in Did You Know on the main page) are showing up. same as above, you need the closing
tag.
• The edit button is showing up on the Main Page; adding the Magic word: NOEDITSECTION should fix this.
• What does "undefined" mean right below TOC on a page (e.g., a few lines up)?
• What "show map" above the edit toolbar do?
  • Show map is related to the GoogleMaps extension. It allows you to build and embed a googlemap into the page. See Sandbox for an example.--Admin 12:02, 20 June 2006 (EDT)
  • I can't even view the sandbox
• I can't seem to get rid of the Google web site registration diagnostic - what web site should I register with Google?
  • It doesn't work for alternate url names, so if you don't have the baseball-reference.com/ in the url it will believe that it is the incorrect site using the api key.
• But I get this diagnostic every time I try to edit anything
  • I have added a bit of code to check for this. It fixes the issue. To get the show map feature you must use the hostname www.baseball-reference.com in the url.--Admin 15:25, 25 June 2006 (EDT)
• Parser Functions appear to not work properly; for comparision see Template:Linescore and paste the following text of the template into the Wikipedia:Sandbox:
  • It appears that the if function does not work with MediaWiki 1.6. There are two possible solutions, either an upgrade to 1.7 or change a line of ParserFunctions.php (see the link).

{{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}} 
<!-- Hello! Feel free to try your formatting and editing skills below this line. As this page is for editing experiments, this page will automatically be cleaned every 12 hours. -->


{| style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); margin: 1em 1em 1em 0pt; background: rgb(249, 249, 249) none repeat scroll 0%; border-collapse: collapse;" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="600"
|----- style="text-align: center; background-color: rgb(242, 242, 242);"
! align="left" width="125" | Team

{{#if:{{{R1|}}}|
! 1
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R2|}}}|
! 2
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R3|}}}|
! 3
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R4|}}}|
! 4
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R5|}}}|
! 5
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R6|}}}|
! 6
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R7|}}}|
! 7
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R8|}}}|
! 8
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R9|}}}|
! 9
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R10|}}}|
! 10
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R11|}}}|
! 11
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R12|}}}|
! 12
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R13|}}}|
! 13
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R14|}}}|
! 14
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R15|}}}|
! 15
|}}
! R
<!--
-->{{#if:{{{RH|}}}|
! H
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{RE|}}}|
! E
|}}
|----- style="text-align: center;"
| align="left" | {{{Road}}}
{{#if:{{{R1|}}}|
| {{{R1}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R2|}}}|
| {{{R2}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R3|}}}|
| {{{R3}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R4|}}}|
| {{{R4}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R5|}}}|
| {{{R5}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R6|}}}|
| {{{R6}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R7|}}}|
| {{{R7}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R8|}}}|
| {{{R8}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R9|}}}|
| {{{R9}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R10|}}}|
| {{{R10}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R11|}}}|
| {{{R11}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R12|}}}|
| {{{R12}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R13|}}}|
| {{{R13}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R14|}}}|
| {{{R14}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{R15|}}}|
| {{{R15}}}
|}}
| {{{RR}}}
<!--
-->{{#if:{{{RH|}}}|
| {{{RH}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{RE|}}}|
| {{{RE}}}
|}}
|----- style="text-align: center;"
| align="left" | {{{Home}}}
{{#if:{{{H1|}}}|
| {{{H1}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H2|}}}|
| {{{H2}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H3|}}}|
| {{{H3}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H4|}}}|
| {{{H4}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H5|}}}|
| {{{H5}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H6|}}}|
| {{{H6}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H7|}}}|
| {{{H7}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H8|}}}|
| {{{H8}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H9|}}}|
| {{{H9}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H10|}}}|
| {{{H10}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H11|}}}|
| {{{H11}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H12|}}}|
| {{{H12}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H13|}}}|
| {{{H13}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H14|}}}|
| {{{H14}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{H15|}}}|
| {{{H15}}}
|}}
| {{{HR}}}
<!--
-->{{#if:{{{HH|}}}|
| {{{HH}}}
|}}<!--
-->{{#if:{{{HE|}}}|
| {{{HE}}}
|}}
|----- style="text-align: left;"
| colspan="{{#if:{{{Col|}}}|{{{Col}}}|2}}" style="font-size: smaller;" | <b>Win:</b> {{{WP}}}   <b>Loss:</b> {{{LP}}}{{#if:{{{SV|}}}|   <b>Save:</b> {{{SV}}}|}}
|----- style="text-align: left;"
| colspan="{{#if:{{{Col|}}}|{{{Col}}}|2}}" style="font-size: smaller;" | <b>HRs:</b> {{#if:{{{HomeRuns|}}}|{{{HomeRuns}}}|none}}
|}

• This comes up when I save a page (I am going to revert my edit to the Spam Blacklist):

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: regular expression too large at offset 0 in /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist_body.php on line 154

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist_body.php:154) in /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/includes/OutputPage.php on line 416

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist_body.php:154) in /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/includes/OutputPage.php on line 444

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist_body.php:154) in /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/includes/OutputPage.php on line 445

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist_body.php:154) in /home/baseball-reference/www/bpv/includes/OutputPage.php on line 504

• Searching for "japanese baseball hall of fame" gives this result (where did the colon come from?):

Search results
From BR Bullpen
For query "japanese baseball hall of fame"
Jump to: navigation, search

There is no page titled ":japanese baseball hall of fame". 

Converting tables

Is there any sort of way to fix tables other than going in and adding to every row? -Chisoxfan 17:57, 21 June 2006 (EDT) The best approach to fixing tables is to convert them from HTML to wiki formatting. That's a bit of a pain for large tables, but it isn't that bad. --Roger 18:51, 21 June 2006 (EDT) This page converts [1] HTML to wiki format. --MichaelEng 22:42, 21 June 2006 (EDT)

Date entries from Wikipedia

Should we be creating redirects for NAME (baseball player) and NAME (baseball). They are there because I imported most of the date entries from wikipedia. I thought that I had gotten rid of most of them, but I most have missed some. If I can ever get MEBot to work cleaning up the dates will be its first priority. Also does anyone have experience with pywikipediabot? --MichaelEng 23:28, 25 June 2006 (EDT)

Importation of non-image files

Can someone allow for the importation of non-image files (mp3, midi, ogg, etc.)? --MichaelEng 07:43, 18 July 2006 (EDT)

Database server

Sorry for the short outage this afternoon. I have switched the bullpen database over to a dedicated database server, and we should start seeing MUCH better performance on the site. At least I hope so for the money I'm spending. Let me know if there are any buggy issues. It looks like everything is working thus far. --Admin 15:21, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

Sorry for the shorter outage around 4:00. I did a raw copy of the database files and that can sometimes introduce errors. I'm pretty sure that the repair I just ran will fix the issues I was seeing. --Admin 16:02, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

I still appear to be seeing some issues. Let me know if you see them as well. --Admin 16:34, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

I apologize for not fixing this earlier, but the search engine now appears to be running correctly. --Admin 17:16, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

Job Queue

If anyone knows how to use the Job Queue, could they have it perform null edits on all the pages using the calender template? --MichaelEng 09:14, 23 July 2006 (EDT)

Edittools

Would anyone mind if I added Edittools to the wiki? --MichaelEng 19:29, 27 July 2006 (EDT)

Sounds fine by me. - --Mischa 19:38, 27 July 2006 (EDT)

Nevermind, you need the extension charinsert for it to work. --MichaelEng 17:51, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

ImageMagick (Image Scaling)

Was it ever determined why this wiki is unable to scale images? Is there an installation that is missing? ImageMagick? --MichaelEng 18:02, 2 August 2006 (EDT)

Now I am pretty sure that for the ability to scale images ImageMagick has to be installed, which apparently is not. --MichaelEng 13:47, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Naming Conventions and Verifiability

Created two policy discussion pages at Naming Conventions and Verifiability. --MichaelEng 09:22, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Wikitable class

How do we add a "wikitable" class to the wiki? --MichaelEng 08:43, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Olarko

Someone with the user name "Olarko" reports that he is being blocked from posting. Is there any way to find out which IP this was as it was likely blocked due to a past spammer from that number? - --Mischa 13:44, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Personally, I think that we've probably gone overboard with the length of IP blocks. With so many IP addresses being assigned dynamically, it doesn't make sense to hand out long-term blocks for spam. We should probably go through and do a mass unblocking of every address that's been blocked for more than a month. Especially with the new spam blocklist, I'd expect that it won't invite much more spam and will let people like Olarko post. --Roger 14:08, 8 September 2006 (EDT)

Template:Qif

Template:Qif has been added as a temporary measure to allow for conditional statments, until parserfunction if is fixed. --MichaelEng 09:50, 13 September 2006 (EDT)

Biography hacker

Hey y'all there is hacker amongst us -- look at biography on the recent changes. someone is hacking us! -- user:dbrewer18tx 21:42 25 Oct. 2006.

The bio page was erased. Thanks for the notice. - --Mischa 10:24, 26 October 2006 (EDT)

Quality of contributions

Is it just me or has the quality of contributions dipped lately? The kind of silly redundancy you find at wikipedia, a lack of attention to facts, grammar, spelling or correct links, a lack of concern for consistent formatting, etc? Hopefully, it's only temporary. - --Mischa 19:05, 18 November 2006 (EST)