(09-10-2014 11:46 PM)jhn31 Wrote: (09-10-2014 10:39 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote: No, I'm aware of the conversation, and it is hardly as if you have some consensus in the cfb project. Look up WP:OSE. But potential AfDs that you'd might need to worry about won't come from within the project anyway.
Seriously, whether they fly under the radar or not, the majority are going to be an outdated in exactly one year's time. There are literally about only 10 active cfb editors, all with mostly narrow interests of their own, and they're not going to go around maintaining 129 articles (or even 65) containing a giant lists of statistics they have to dig through media guides for each year. Not that your enthusiasm isn't admirable. I'm just trying to save you grief. And they absolutely could all fail AfDs if the wrong editors stumbled upon them. It's not that it would be a generally decent idea to do in an ideal world, but there just isn't enough editor activity to maintain things like that across an entire project of that size. That is why creating articles en mass, particularly long lists information that requires perpetual, regular maintenance to maintain relevancy, is generally a bad idea.
Those are all valid points. I was planning on updating all of them (I doubt we'll get to 129 by then) in January, because I suspect not many records are going to fall from year to year. I may be underestimating the time involved in doing that, but I'm thinking it would just be some quick checks to see if anyone needs to be inserted into a list.
I am also planning to add some context into the beginning of the articles so that they aren't just lists -- the already-existing Michigan article has several paragraphs to start out the article, and I want these to resemble that one. I think once that context is there, they should be pretty safe from any deletion concerns (granted, I could be wrong on that too, but that Michigan article has been up for years).
I'm surprised there's so few editors. Every team (including FCS) has an article for the current and recent seasons, I figured there must be way more than that. I was hoping that by creating a few of these articles myself, I'd inspire others to fill in the gaps -- not the regular supereditors who have their own projects, but joe blow fans like me, but that hasn't happened yet. And that's OK, probably just a symptom of not as many people actively editing as I'd thought.
Putting the stats in context will help. They all should have explanatory introductory leads and paragraphs with suitable citations. Do that, and that will definitely help ward off any potential AfD's.
When I say active editors, I mean the
maybe 10 cfb members that have a good number of cfb articles on their watch lists and go out and edit every day to help maintain the standards set forth by the project. I used to be one of those editors, but haven't had the time in the past year. Still, people tend to narrowly focused on their own interests, just like you and your largely SEC focus. That's fine, and necessary, because this is, after all, just a hobby for people and the whole encyclopedia depends on people volunteering efforts based on their personal interests. Burn out is high if people try to bite off too much. Frustration can also be high when newer editors unfamiliar with the editing culture and policies get their effort overturned, but if they stick it out they'll catch on.
For any projects involving creation of large numbers of articles, it is always wise to get input on any relevant project pages first. The problem with creating a bunch of skeleton articles is that they attract attention if they aren't done well and can lead to AfD based on a perceived lack of notability based, sometimes, simply from the nominator's poor understanding of the topic, even if the articles have the
potential to demonstrate that notability with more polish. This happens a lot with articles created by people that aren't experienced in the culture of wikipedia, because you have to remember there are many more active editors that have no idea about your topic of interest, in this cae american football, especially at the collegiate level. A lot of editors out there simply enjoy being wikipolicy and bureaucracy wonks, as well, so it is best to just not tempt fate by running afoul of them. The bottom line is that if an article gets deleted, it is much harder to get it back, so it is generally better to take the time to create well-crafted individual articles, one at a time, than make a bunch of sub-par ones with the hopes of other people filling in behind you. But keep in mind that the farther away you get from top level project priority articles (like the actual main team articles themselves or current seasons articles), the more likely articles are to be neglected over time.
You'll also find that it is very difficult to get people to participate in wikipedia editing, even from canvasing obvious abodes where people with like minded interests hang out, like message boards. So don't rely on the expectation that people will flood to help in the project. But the editors who are at the cfb project will definitely be there to help you, so carefully consider their suggestions and advice because at some point they've all learned the hard way themselves.
/
Working on a college football stats project for Wikipedia
