Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports

Implementation of consensus infobox changes for current seasons

At Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_172#Designating_current_seasons_in_infoboxes, I read clear consensus to use text rather than images to designate the current season. I went ahead and made the change at {{Infobox award}}, but since I'm not a sports person, I'll leave the implementation for sports templates such as {{Infobox football league}} to you all here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:35, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I've added a DNAU tag to this thread; feel free to remove it once you have finished implementation. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:49, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Recent changes patroller who knows hardly anything about sports

Hi everyone! I don't really care about sports and don't know much about them, but what I DO care about is fighting vandalism on Wikipedia! I've been a recent changes patroller for several days and I've noticed that a lot of people edit sports articles to update statistics, like goals scored and stuff. I especially see a lot of people doing that for soccer (association football) players. I would like to learn how to verify those changes to make sure people are accurately reporting the new statistics rather than just typing in random numbers and hoping no one notices. Are there specific sites that y'all use to get this information? I would appreciate a little advice on how I can be more helpful in this area. Thanks! Gottagotospace (talk) 16:41, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Your best bet is to talk to the individual sport WikiProjects. For instance, my sports-related activity is heavily on hockey, and the sites we use are www.hockeydb.com, www.hockey-reference.com and www.eliteprospects.com (the last mostly for juniors and European hockey). With that, sports-reference.com has a whole family of reliable sites, including ones for baseball, soccer, football, basketball and collegiate football and basketball. Some individual leagues also are good with their own stat sites. ESPN maintains its own. With soccer being the world's most popular sport, naturally much of the traffic will be soccer-related. That project is WP:FOOTY, and they can steer you towards the more reliable stat sites for their domestic leagues. Ravenswing 17:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

My general hand-wavey response would be that if the stats are only changing by small values (+1/2 for appearances, reasonable increases for "points scored" etc) I would consider them to be acceptable; it's when values change drastically that I would start questioning. Yes, it does mean that some values might still be changed incorrectly without being caught, but that's why we have a lot of RC patrollers, and of course the folks who watch the pages are likely to catch things as well. Primefac (talk) 17:57, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Mm, but if Gottagotospace isn't knowledgeable enough to know the difference, how could they tell? A gridiron football player scoring six points in a game, okay, he contributed. A basketball player scores six points in a game, he had a turn off of the bench, or a pretty mediocre day if he was a starter. A hockey player scoring six points in a game had an epic day that will show up in highlight reels. A soccer player scoring six times in a game is an instant legend who broke or tied the record in almost every top domestic league in Europe. Ravenswing 18:05, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the information! What about rugby? I know literally NOTHING about rugby except that Brits like it, the players get in huddles, there is a ball involved, and people get injured a lot. Gottagotospace (talk) 18:15, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Among other things, which rugby? The WikiProject for rugby league is WP:RL. The project for rugby union is WP:RU. (Rugby league and union have slightly different rule sets.) Ravenswing 00:33, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay so tl;dr, it's complicated, thank you :) Gottagotospace (talk) 00:46, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

That's fair, and why it's only a vague hand-wavey answer. Primefac (talk) 11:34, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

(late to the party but wanted to add here anyways) This general handwavey response is also for articles which are updated on a regular (per week/match) basis. In some cases (many leagues of women's soccer come to mind) the updates could be more sporadically and then changes of +20ish for appearances could make total sense.

Btw, @Gottagotospace: for soccer: Soccerway is a good general stats site that is used which is accurate for the bigger more well known leagues. For footy: AFL Tables and AustralianFootball cover stuff well.

--SuperJew (talk) 17:42, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Of course if there is a substantive edit summary that helps, and if there is no substantive edit summary (like just "fixed number") that heightens concerns.

• One idea if it is very suspicious is to accept the edit under pending changes criteria (= not obvious vandalism) as a pending changes reviewer and then after that revert it as an editor (edit summary could be "Revert unexplained change of a number"

• And if you're only slightly suspicious, accept the edit under pending changes and then as an editor put the CN tag ( ) after the unsourced modified numbers.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:10, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

If you don't know anything about the subject, how can you ascertain what is vandalism and what is a valid correction? I've had valid, evidenced and correctly cited corrections deleted and treated as vandalism on more than one occasion here - and always on articles where large industries have vested interest in maintaining their not so honest reputations. Please be certain it is vandalism, there are contentious issues that may appear to be vandalism but in fact are quite substantiated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.89.136.106 (talk) 11:04, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment: tournament venue image galleries

In articles on tournaments, should a full image gallery of all the tournament's venues, typically in a § Venues section such as 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup § Venues and 2023 Rugby World Cup § Venues, be encouraged or discouraged? To clarify, this is not a discussion on the methods in which such galleries can be implemented. This is a discussion on having them in the first place, and whether or not they add value to an article for readers with perhaps only a casual interest in sports. AFC Vixen 🦊 15:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

For context, feel free to read the discussion preceding this, and the relevant image use policy, WP:GALLERY. The WikiProjects for women's sport, basketball, cricket, football, and rugby union have been notified of this RfC, and Chris1834, ILoveSport2006, Kante4, SounderBruce, SuperJew, and Tvx1 have been pinged as participants in the aforementioned discussion. You're also welcome to notify other places of this RfC! — AFC Vixen 🦊 15:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Encourage They're helpful shorthand and a useful guide for users. I always thought this was a standard practice across tournament pages. The C of E God Save the King! (talk) 16:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
• Discourage I don't have much to add on to what I said at the discussion on WT:FOOTY, but to reiterate for anyone who didn't read there, I honestly don't think having images of each venue on the tournament page adds much. Also, I'm not sure why stadiums should get a different treatment than any other sets of things related to the tournament: why don't we have images of all the referees or all the coaches or all the captains or all the players? It feels like giving undue weight to the venues over other components of the tournament. --SuperJew (talk) 17:36, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  why don't we have images of all the referees or all the coaches or all the captains or all the players? There are usually lots of them and their visual appearance isn't important enough to justify the space those galleries would require, which is not the case for venues. – Teratix ₵ 02:44, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  One could say the exact same thing of venues. — AFC Vixen 🦊 17:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• Discourage Per the same viewpoint I had at WT:FOOTY. A picture of each and every venue is undue weight. The articles are about the tournament rather than the venues and yet the venues take up a large percentage of the article. The matches are the main part of the article, not the venues.

Chris1834 Talk 17:58, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Encourage to prevent the inevitable edit warring and arguments over which venues "deserve" pictures based on an arbitrary selection criteria. It is also more helpful to readers to visualize the differences between venues (e.g. for the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, there will be a mix of indoor and outdoor venues). SounderBruce 18:12, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  Personally, I feel that productive discussions on which images are best for each article should be celebrated and not feared. Any actual edit warring can be reported to WP:AN3. — AFC Vixen 🦊 18:23, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Encourage. It adds more than enough info and is an obvious no-brainer to me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. @SounderBruce also makes a good point that it is helpful to readers to visualize the differences between venues, which matters. ILoveSport2006 (talk) 20:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Encourage. In general, it's helpful for articles on events to include pictures of where the event took place as a visual aid. This is no less true for sports tournaments. Looking at the example articles, I'm afraid I simply don't see any cases where the venues are made unduly prominent because we include images. I agree with SounderBruce that only allowing select venue images would open up pointless arenas for dispute that don't need to arise in the first place. – Teratix ₵ 02:37, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  Are there any updates on the conversation? ILoveSport2006 (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

• Encourage: seems helpfully illustrative for the article and gives all-round coverage. Cremastra (talk) 02:02, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The map of the members of the Federation of International Bandy

Can anyone help? It is necessary to upload new versions of these two files to Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BandyCountries.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BandyCountries.svg

The information about the members of the Federation of International Bandy has been updated. The maps should show all current members of the organisation. K8M8S8 (talk) 17:07, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Using an infobox directly in the body and if we should make a new template

Special:Diff/1242915015/1245685601 popped up in my watchlist and I was not overly thrilled with the idea of using {{infobox}} directly in an article; to quote its /doc, In general, it is not meant for use directly in an article, but can be used on a one-off basis if required. Looking to check and see what the Summer Olympic Games article used for its list, I discovered it also uses {{infobox}} directly. In fact, most of the "big" sporting events use an infobox directly in the article to populate the list of past events.

I cannot seem to find any specific reason why this is happening (i.e. it's not a recent change), so should we be converting these direct uses to either an existing infobox or, if one doesn't exist, creating a new one? Primefac (talk) 13:26, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe Template:Infobox recurring event or Template:Infobox sporting event organization (which from a very brief look, does not have anything unique to it that the general event infobox does not). If one of these are used, two additional sections could be added, the additions links and the sport events links (the two sections that the Summer Olympic page has). Unrelated, but the infobox at the Summer Olympic page should be at the top of the lead. Gonnym (talk) 14:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I was a bit surprised to see that {{Infobox sporting event organization}} didn't have any parameters like this; I do suppose it would be easy enough to add them at the bottom (it's not a huge infobox as-is). Primefac (talk) 14:43, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Recurring event is the one I believe I've used for this case. No comment on whether to use that or a different box going forward. I also agree that raw infobox templates should be avoided. Izno (talk) 16:06, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Lundstrom Stones into Lifting stone

There is a proposed merge discussion at Talk:Lifting stone § Proposed merge of Lundstrom Stones into Lifting stone that may be of interest to this WikiProject. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:33, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#COI-editing,_but

Some sports-related COI-editing, for the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:07, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Yacht racing (not sailing) stub templates and category tree

I don't know why is the whole system (most notably the biography part) built on "yacht racing", rather that "sailing", which is a much broader term and more widely used? Not to mention an Olympic sport.

But I propose rewording the stub templates and categories to sailing (example: German yacht racing biography stubs -> German sailing biography stubs). Any thoughts? Pelmeen10 (talk) 18:05, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Softball team AfDs

Pending AfDs regarding notability of college softball seasons:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Houston Christian Huskies softball team
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2024 Houston Christian Huskies softball team
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2023 Texas A&M–Corpus Christi Islanders softball team
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2024 Texas A&M–Corpus Christi Islanders softball team

Cbl62 (talk) 22:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Swimming needs some improvement

Hello all,

Came across Swimming as a NPP (I don't know much about the topic myself) and it could sizable additions and reworking of content.

Any little bit helps. Thank you!

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 06:36, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Senior sport#Requested move 28 October 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Senior sport#Requested move 28 October 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Raladic (talk) 06:20, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

WIAA/WISAA Athletic Conference Histories

I’ve been working on a project for the better part of a year documenting the membership histories of athletic conferences in the state of Wisconsin. I have several articles out for review, and I would appreciate getting some feedback on what I have so far:

Big Nine Conference (Wisconsin)

Braveland Conference

Madison Suburban Conference

Metro Conference (Wisconsin)

Scenic Moraine Conference

South Shore Conference (Wisconsin)

Southern Lakes Conference

Suburban Conference

Suburban Park Conference

Thanks! Moserjames79 (talk) 00:12, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible to standardize color usage for wins/losses/etc?

I'm an active member of WP:WHOCKEY, and I tend to update lots of articles related to women's hockey. I have recently nominated List of Olympic women's ice hockey players for the United States to become (again) a Featured List. Through this nomination process, I've been reading and learning lots about wikitables, their use, etc. It started with the review I received that pointed me to MOS:DTAB, where I leared about scope="row" and scope="col" for accessibility enhancements.

This got me to thinking further about how some of the things work in the templates and tables I use.

For example, 2024–25 Minnesota Golden Gophers women's ice hockey season makes extensive use of {{CIH schedule entry}}, where I enter either a w, t, or l in the w/l parameter, and the template takes care of adding the background color to the table row if it's a win, tie, or loss. (Further, I just learned that those colors aren't in the web-safe colors list.)

Meanwhile, for 2023–24 PWHL Minnesota season, there's no template to use, so table rows must be styled manually. So far, I've been using #cfc for a win, #ccf for an overtime win, #fff for an overtime loss, and #fcc for a loss. These colors are in the web-safe colors list, and are copied from 2023–24 New York Rangers season, which is an example of where I'll go when I want to "learn how to do something in a hockey article" -- having been a New York Rangers fan since the 1990's.

Having looked at other sports pages, I know that not all sports even use the same color scheme. (I can't think of a specific example right now, but I think either cricket or rugby pages use different colors, or more colors, or something.)

Anyway, I have been thinking for a while that it "would be a good idea" for sports articles to somehow standardize this. Something like {{game-won}} or a class="game-won" or something *waves hands* so that it would be able to be used everywhere.

Maybe my Wikipedia search-fu isn't good enough, and something like this exists already. Or maybe it's a bad idea. Or maybe it just simply hasn't been done yet. What say y'all? --MikeVitale 17:05, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

In the general hand-wavey sense, I see nothing wrong with standardising the colours. However, WikiProjects about sports get... weird... when it comes to standardisation, and I'm not really sure why, but it's something to keep in mind. Happy to help out where I can if something gets decided. Primefac (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Because one size doesn't fit all. Not even within a sport: different countries/continents have different cultures of what is important or not. Ravenswing 09:01, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Can you say more on what you mean by this? --MikeVitale 15:58, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Let's take a simple example that affects templates; I've seen it in both hockey and soccer. In North America, the standard way records are tabulated and displayed run Win-Loss-Tie. In Europe, they're tabulated Win-Draw-Loss. Ravenswing 09:16, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd do it incrementally, like standardize the encoding among hockey articles first. If you then manage to gain further consensus among multiple sports, even if the colors change, it will be easily changeable at the point. —Bagumba (talk) 09:11, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah. That's definitely what is in my head. "Easily changeable".

As I noted above, for College Ice Hockey, there's the {{CIH schedule entry}} (and related) templates that work together to create a table. Meanwhile, for professional hockey (NHL, PWHL, former PHF, etc), there's no template, just tables.

So last night, I was WP:BOLD and edited the colors in the College Schedule Entry template to be web-safe colors (cfc instead of dfd, etc.) And in one edit, all the colors across all the college hockey pages that use the template were changed ever so slightly. If I wanted to accomplish the same thing even for just the New York Rangers seasons, I'd have to edit close to 100 pages, and multiple lines on each page.

This seems crazy to me. --MikeVitale 15:57, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Note: I'm not saying that the CIH schedule templates are perfect. They're not. There are things from both how the NHL teams do things, as well as how the college teams do things, that I'd like to see cross-pollinated to each other's pages.

For example, the college schedules don't collapse on a monthly basis like pro schedules tend to do. Meanwhile, the college template doesn't even have a column for a game-by-game reference. --MikeVitale 16:03, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Without picking sides, it seems that for basketball and football, there's some editors that have wanted to normalize the reader experience by sport (independent of pro or college), while other editors might want to make all college sports pages be uniform, even if the corresponding pro sport is different. —Bagumba (talk) 16:38, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

If possible: Win=green, Loss=red, Tie/OTL,Draw = yellow, for all sports. GoodDay (talk) 12:32, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#Dissent_(sports)

If you know anything, please comment in that thread. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:13, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

File:Backboard shattering.jpeg listed for discussion

File:Backboard shattering.jpeg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for discussion. Please see the discussion to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Left guide (talk) 14:51, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships § Lia Thomas

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships § Lia Thomas. Nuclearturtle (talk) 11:19, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I've noticed an edit from a week ago that I believe goes against Wikipedia's Manual of Style, but the article in question is semi-protected so I can't make a change myself. Nuclearturtle (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Adding colors to team tables

Regarding the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, some of the leagues' pages use background colors in the teams table to distinguish between different conferences/divisions. Examples include:

• National Basketball Association (navy blue for Eastern Conference, red for Western Conference)
• Major League Baseball (red for American League, navy blue for National League)
• Canadian Football League (navy blue for East Division, red for West Division)

Whereas other leagues do not, such as:

• National Football League
• National Hockey League
• Major League Soccer

A previous version of the WNBA page also used background colors (look under Teams: orange for Eastern Conference, black for Western Conference). However, MOS:COLORCODING partly states "excessive background shading of table entries impedes readability and recognition of Wikilinks. Background color should be used only as a supplementary visual cue and should be subtle (consider using lighter, less-dominant pastel hues) rather than glaring." So, I removed the coloring as the black background was too overwhelming.

This topic was disscussed at length on the NHL page, but I would like to see consistency across the leagues' pages and therefore ask for others' opinion on the following questions:

1. Do colors add clarity or distract from the information being displayed?
2. If they add clarity, then would you prefer the background color to remain as is, changed to a lighter hue, or replaced by a color border around or a color strip next to conferences/divisions?
3. If they add clarity, then should the colors match those of the map (e.g. the NFL has 8 divisions, so the table would have 8 different colors).

@1995hoo, @ZlatanSweden10, @Oknazevad please comment as well. Assadzadeh (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd presume for the NHL, a red background for the Eastern Conference & a blue background for the Western Conference. For the NFL? Red for the AFC & blue for the NFC. GoodDay (talk) 23:39, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

As you may recall, the ice hockey WikiProject previously reached consensus not to use background colours in tables, to avoid legibility issues that reduce accessibility. isaacl (talk) 23:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

The consensus (if I remember correctly) was that the coloured backgrounds make the text hard to read. Thus Assadzadeh then talked to make (as I was the one who made the edit and had the quite lengthy discussion with people to said to remove it) the coloured background instead a strip, border or lighter hue. ZlatanSweden10 (talk) 00:39, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

1. It would add clarity as leagues have their own colour system and I have personally expereienced my own confusion with conference colours as I never knew East was red in the NHL as an NBA fan.

2. I think a colour strip is best (as its the least distracting and political party tables for example already use colour strips and its not distracting at all and/or doesn't reduce accessibility). If that doesn't work then a colour border, and if that doesn't work, then a lighter hue would work.

3. I have no idea how to edit maps so I won't comment on something I don't know.

My only comment is I'm not sure if colouring divisions is completely necessary (and I'm not even sure if all divisions in the NFL and NHL have their own colours). So just colouring the conferences would be more than sufficient in my opinion. ZlatanSweden10 (talk) 01:25, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

I frankly don’t feel strongly about it other than that navy blue makes a box hard to read. I also don’t see a need for colors, much as I don’t understand the obsession with adding flags and other little graphics to every little reference. But I don’t feel strongly either way about this particular issue beyond not understanding why some people think it’s necessary. PS—I won’t be online much between now and Thursday, so don’t expect me to be able to weigh in again in the near future. 1995hoo (talk) 01:58, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Introducing Let's Connect

Hello everyone,

I hope that you are in good spirits. My name is Serine Ben Brahim and I am a part of the Let’s Connect working group - a team of movement contributors/organizers and liaisons for 7 regions : MENA | South Asia | East, South East Asia, Pacific | Sub-Saharan Africa | Central & Eastern Europe | Northern & Western | Latina America.

Why are we outreaching to you?

Wikimedia has 18 projects, and 17 that are solely run by the community, other than the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to hear from sister projects that some of us in the movement are not too familiar with and would like to know more about. We always want to hear from Wikipedia, but we also want to meet and hear from the community members in other sister projects too. We would like to hear your story and learn about the work you and your community do. You can review our past learning clinics here.

We want to invite community members who are:

• Part of an organized group, official or not
• A formally recognized affiliate or not
• An individual who will bring their knowledge back to their community
• An individual who wants to train others in their community on the learnings they received from the learning clinics.

To participate as a sharer and become a member of the Let’s Connect community you can sign up through this registration form.

Once you have registered, if you are interested, you can get to know the team via google meets or zoom to brainstorm an idea for a potential learning clinic about this project or just say hello and meet the team. Please email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you :)

Many thanks and warm regards,

Let’s Connect Working Group Member

Serine Ben Brahim Serine Ben Brahim (talk) 09:18, 11 December 2024 (UTC)