BR Bullpen:What's Happening

From BR Bullpen

[edit] League pages

Hi. I'm looking for feedback on the following pages: 1888, 1888 AA, 1888 NL, 1888 WS, 1952, 1952 AL, 1952 NL, 1952 WS, 1995, 1995 AL, 1995 NL, 1995 ALDS1, 1995 ALDS2, 1995 NLDS1, 1995 NLDS2, 1995 ALCS, 1995 NLCS, 1995 WS, and the Kansas State League as well as the AAGPBL seasons. --MichaelEng (talk) 09:10, 4 January 2007 (EST)

Lookin great, I think. -Chisoxfan 10:55, 4 January 2007 (EST)

I like it too, but lots of the links seem off. On the National League, AL and AA Season Templates, almost all the links are misdirected when pages already exist. One was aimed at Central League (United States) when the page is Central League (US) or Club Fe (Cuban League) when the page is Club Fe or similar problems. A births in/deaths in category for each year would be good but would take someone (or some people) to do lots of "retrofitting" as would some of the other stuff. I like the NLCS-type pages and league pages overall. Great work, but lots of stuff to look through and a fair bit of editing needed. - --Mischa 15:42, 4 January 2007 (EST)

Also, you erased some existing work - the 1995 NLDS2 had a fair bit of information that people have put in and got replaced by the new entry. There was a little bit on the 1995 ALDS2 that got erased and maybe about some of the others. - --Mischa 17:21, 4 January 2007 (EST)

Two more notes - 1) When you do add the new pages, could you do so slowly instead of in one large dump so that people can edit them as they come in instead of scrambling to deal with a lot of information at once?

2) Can you do the 2006 in Japanese Baseball page? It's one of the most requested and you did such a fine job with the others. - --Mischa 20:42, 4 January 2007 (EST)

Re-added info to the NLDS page - they were originally reversed with the BB-Ref series 1 linking to the Bullpen series 2 page. The info on the ALDS2 page was moved under the appropriate game heading.

The differences in the Central League and Club Fe names were due to my listing of the champions in the format Country|League|Champion. In the Central League's case in the league and country name concatenated (since there being some discussion of splitting the United States leagues off. Club Fe's is due to it being listed under Cuba in the same slot as the Cuban National Leagues whose team pages are in the format NAME (LEAGUE) so they ended up having the same format as well. I have moved the Cuban National League under the Americas heading.

Mischa, what do you mean by "retrofitting"? The links on a player's page should still link to the date, not a list of births or deaths.

Navboxes fixed by adding redirects. The names of the leagues were part of a proposal that I had to rename all the MLB league and playoff pages to their short names instead of their abbreviations, which would become redirects (i.e. 1884 AA>1884 American Association, 1995 WS>1995 World Series, etc.). My reasoning was that they are most often referred to by their short names rather than their abbreviations compare "1995 World Series" (43 000) to "1995 WS" (12 000) and that the names would make more sense from a naming convention perspective. Also if this info is added to all the pages of this type, they could just as easily be moved.

Added a MLB playoff box to the top of the 1995 series.

Added 2006 in Japanese baseball page.

Paper of Record is now free, it has all issues of The Sporting News from 1886 - 2003 in PDF format.

Any chance we could use "interwiki" links to link to pages rather than in an external links section. See the Taiwan Baseball Wiki for an example (in the left frame).

Is there a way to contact Admin (talk · contribs) outside of the the wiki as it might be time for a site update to fix some outstanding problems (parserfunctions, image scaling, etc.) and the site is three versions out of date.

Retrofitting - I meant that the 1888 sample you posted include links to Births and Deaths in 1888 categories, which would have to be added by going through all the existing pages and adding such categories. If this can be done automatically somehow, great!

Renaming the pages. Sounds good to me.

Thanks for the 2006 in Japanese Baseball page

Great news about Paper of Record. Woohoo! If only I had more free time (not that I want to lose my job, of course)

Interwiki links sound good to me. I thought they were just for official wikipedia pages (ex. links between the Dutch and English wikis for Hoofdklasse teams), but if not, we can add them in.

The best way to contact Sean is either direct e-mail or through the BR Bullpen admin mailing list. If you're not on it, let him know. Once in a while we discuss issues about the Bullpen.

- --Mischa 21:04, 13 February 2007 (EST)

{{yr}} is acting oddly, so I wouldn't use it for now. --MichaelEng (talk) 14:58, 18 February 2007 (EST)

Hello,

Do you think there should be a "request an article" page on this wiki? Thanks.Alex 17:02, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

You can always create the page as a stub and hope people will add to it or raise the subject here. Do others think we should have a "request an article" page? Right now, there are so many stubs out there already. - --Mischa 17:39, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

The featured birthday template is great, but can we expand it to cover non-MLB players too? There are lots of bios here for people like Yutaka Fukumoto who are of interest and never played in the majors. - --Mischa 17:21, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

I would need a listing of birthdates. --MichaelEng (talk) 18:05, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Through June 19, all birthdates listed on the Bullpen should be listed on the respective calendar page. Within a year, I hope to be all caught up. - --Mischa 18:07, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

Sites can be added to My spam blacklist to prohibit spammers from adding the same sites again and again. --MichaelEng (talk) 18:05, 25 March 2007 (EDT)

How about picture requests for prominent players without a pic up? Let's start with Tom Seaver, Ichiro Suzuki, Jim Thome, Jim Thorpe and Ferguson Jenkins. -

[edit] Bots erasing info

Sean seems to have tracked this down - it actually appears to have been a bot from a search engine. - --Mischa 17:30, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

The latest batch all was coming from the blackberry network and did not appear malicious as per Sean. He temporarily has blocked the blackberry network while this gets checked out. - --Mischa 11:54, 19 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] We made it

We're past 40,000 content pages. I estimate that over 1/3 of the pages have been created since Sean set up the "base" with all the player and team pages - we've added thousands of minor league players and teams plus many Negro Leaguers, Nippon Pro Baseball Players, AAGPBL players, international teams, international tournaments, high schools, junior colleges, umpires, executives and more. I think we can all take a collective pat on the back for the progress the BR Bullpen has made to date. - --Mischa 12:32, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

We're now at 45,000 content pages. - --Mischa 16:47, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

These spammers are terrible the last few days. I got some of the overnight mess cleaned up but have to go to work now... if someone else doesn't get around to it, I'll finish the rest up later. -Chisoxfan 09:26, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

1983 Division II College World Series was the 48,000th page. 69.68.238.142 14:23, 30 December 2008 (EST)

52,000 pages. - --Mischa 12:27, 3 November 2009 (EST)

We're under 30,000 wanted pages for the first time since late 2007. - --Mischa 12:13, 9 November 2009 (EST)

Back over 30,000 wanted pages with all the college coaches being added. - --Mischa 13:21, 1 February 2010 (EST)

Over 54,000 content pages. - --Mischa 20:49, 14 February 2010 (EST)

Topped 11,000 uploaded files. That means that about 1/5 of the pages have pictures attached. That's excellent compared to a few years back and it will just improve over time. - --Mischa 16:24, 4 March 2010 (EST)

Back under 30,000 wanted pages. - --Mischa 13:16, 3 May 2010 (EDT)

Over 55,000 content pages. #55,000 was Anthony Garibaldi - --Mischa 10:17, 21 May 2010 (EDT)

A page can now crack the 150 most wanted with fewer than 10 links for the first time in I don't know how long. Yet another sign of progress. - --Mischa 13:02, 16 June 2010 (EDT)

56,000 pages. #56,000 was Kurt Wilkinson. - --Mischa 21:21, 18 July 2010 (EDT)

Passed 57,000 some point recently. - --Mischa 12:07, 3 October 2010 (EDT)

Topped 58,000 this weekend. - --Mischa 14:25, 5 December 2010 (EST)

Under 500 "wanted pages" with 6+ links. - --Mischa 15:38, 10 January 2011 (EST)

A page can now crack the 150 most wanted with fewer than 9 links for the first time in years. - --Mischa 16:34, 19 January 2011 (EST)

Another wave of college coaches, another time over 30,000 wanted pages - first time since the last wave a year ago. - --Mischa 10:31, 1 February 2011 (EST)

59,000 pages. #59,000 is Cocaine, a bit of an odd one as most of our pages are for players or teams. - --Mischa 11:58, 2 February 2011 (EST)

60,000 pages. #60,000 is the 2006 Korea Baseball Organization. - --Mischa 12:07, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

• • And the milestone was noted on the blog [1]. Maybe we'll get a new contributor or two. --Jeff 12:57, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

61,000 pages. #61,000 is Shitoshi Sekimoto - --Mischa 12:53, 14 July 2011 (EDT)

A page can make the top 150 with under 8 links. - --Mischa 12:23, 2 August 2011 (EDT)

Back under 31,000 wanted pages for the first time since January. - --Mischa 11:49, 19 August 2011 (EDT)

Over 100,000 "total pages" (not just content pages - included stub, talk pages, etc.) - another milestone. - --Mischa 16:36, 7 September 2011 (EDT)

62,000 pages. #62,000 is Yuya Fukui - --Mischa 15:38, 24 November 2011 (EST)

For the first time in over four years, we have more than twice as many content pages (62,186) as wanted pages (31,035). Of course, that doesn't mean a third of our links are red ones. Our most-wanted page, the 1993 Intercontinental Cup (76 links) would not make the top 5,000 in terms of links if it was created now. Our second-most wanted, the 2012 Blue Jays (37 links) would not make the top 9,000. - --Mischa 13:15, 8 December 2011 (EST)

And our wanted pages are at a new all-time peak I believe - 31,502 - with lots of new disambig pages with red links. OTOH, we're nearing 63,000 total pages. - --Mischa 12:57, 1 February 2012 (EST)

Our 63,000th page was Lamar Johnson (college) - --Mischa 11:58, 6 February 2012 (EST)

64,000th page is taxi squad - --Mischa 13:21, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

#65,000 is Noah Hall - --Mischa 08:17, 29 June 2012 (EDT)

We've reached 66,000 with 2012 NLDS2 - --Mischa 16:30, 15 October 2012 (EDT)

[edit] MLB pressbox

The MLB pressbox located here has 2006 or 2007 media guides for all MLB teams as well as headshots for most players on the 40-man rosters of those clubs (which may fall under fair use as promotional images). --MichaelEng (talk) 09:44, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

I just saw this post. Anyone with a little more legal knowledge than me want to take a stab as to whether we can use these images under fair use or not? Or does anyone want to contact MLB on behalf of the Bullpen? -Chisoxfan 00:39, 14 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] bravesjournal.com copies the site

This site has copied the entire site. --MichaelEng (talk) 13:09, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

That was an error that has been fixed. Sean also hosts that site and had done something incorrect with the formatting. There was no ill will at work. - --Mischa 12:20, 25 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Added new Extensions to the Site

You can see a full rundown of what is installed in the Special:Version page.

I tried really hard to get imagemagick installed and running, but I can't find a version older than 6.3 and installing that would require us to upgrade the kernel and many other things, which is a hurdle, I'm just not willing/able to clear right now.

--Admin 23:03, 14 August 2007 (EDT)

Comments regarding upgrade:

• on the fly image scaling is now enabled; all of the old Image:name-size.ext can be deleted
• the default sort magic word has been added and should now used
• the <ref> parser hooks from Cite.php are old but never seem to be used
• all of the templates using parser functions are now broken, due to the switch from not including the leading # to requiring it. These need to be fixed.
• did all of the buttons at the top of the edit box disappear?
• image scaling of raster files does work, however it does not for vector images:
  • ,,
• the SVG file does not show up, except when fully rendered. I believe that all wiki-media projects use RSVG to create PNG thumbnails of its SVG images.
• string functions don't seem to work

--MichaelEng (talk) 00:53, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Soxrock/SoxrockProjects's edits

1. Why are two accounts being used?
2. Are all of these templates in Category:Baseball standings templates necessary, isn't the information already on the associated league page. If they are deemed necessary, alot of them need to be fixed as they link to the "main page" modern page for the club. For instance in {{1908 American League Standings}} the link for the Detroit Tigers goes to the Detroit Tigers rather than 1908 Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Browns > Baltimore Orioles?
3. Are the listing of stats for most (all?) of the players necessary, the information (and much more) is a link away at the main BR site. If we want to list the team's roster there are User:Exshpos' great looking templates. Maybe a list of team leaders for certain stats would be better. Is it really that important to show that Slats Jordan had 4 at bats for the 1902 Orioles.
4. Shouldn't there be a link to the yearly league page on the seasonal team articles. The standings and placing could go in the template. Should the header colors be changed to team specific?
5. Are these all of templates necessary?
   • {{User infobox}}
   • {{Birth date}}
   • {{Birth date and age}}
   • {{Death date and age}}
   • {{1921 New York Yankees season game log}}
   • User:Timpcrk87/sandbox/Baseball infobox-pre1969
   • {{Mlbretired}}
6. What is the point of having these images uploaded here: Image:Al 1901 newyork 01.jpg, Image:Al 1912 newyork 01.jpg? We could just as easily link to the HoF page (or not since the link is already on the linked BR page) without using (stealing?) their content.
7. There was seems to duplication of images and templates.

--MichaelEng (talk) 00:53, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Fair use images

A quick note about fair use images, they are only usable on the page which depicts the object in question. Using a baseball card image here is not allowed, nor is this, or even this using team logos here. Using the series logo is allowable as is using single season logos on the appropriate single season page. On postseason and year-team pages, the use of team-specific colors (example at wikipedia here and here) could be used instead. A template {{MLB htc}} has been made created this purpose. --MichaelEng (talk) 02:09, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

So you're saying we need to remove images such as this and these? Would that make image use on the front page a problem? -Chisoxfan 07:17, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

Yes to both. The images on the seasonal pages should be removed since they do not add anything to the page, it would be like using  United States everytime the United States is mentioned. The images on the main page are only being used because there are no free alternatives available - all images currently on the main page could (and should) be replaced by other images if possible; an image for Limmer would be the hardest to obtain. --MichaelEng (talk) 01:39, 16 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Further Extension work

I was able to compile and run ImageMagick, (Hallelujah!!) and now the thumbs are being auto-created.

I set up Special:ImportFreeImages now works, so you can grab images from flickr and use them on the site.

Special:MultipleUpload now works, so you can upload multiple files at once.

CharInsert appears to be working, at least I can see a box below. Is it?

Are the string and parser functions now working? Put something in my talk page if we need that fixed.

I'm going to work on getting the edittools back in there.

11:00, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

Both charinsert and string functions are working. --MichaelEng (talk) 01:39, 16 August 2007 (EDT)

Edittoolbar appears to be working now.

--Admin 12:31, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] SVG Resizing

The flag appears to be resizing appropriately now.

--Admin 12:32, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

there are still some SVG resizing problems (Flag of the United States: }) --MichaelEng (talk) 13:31, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Math Markup

The math markup modules are working now, so you can use latex to your heart's content.

--Admin 13:55, 15 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Wikipedia and GFDL

Can wikipedia copy our articles without attribution? (Some examples [2] [3] [4] [5])? --MichaelEng (talk) 01:39, 16 August 2007 (EDT)

I have no idea. I know it's been done many times. I'm also worried that people have copied some articles here from wikipedia without proper attribution. It'd be a lot easier if people just contributed original work everywhere. - --Mischa 13:40, 17 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Any way to find old edits for a time period

If I try to list more than 3,000 "Recent changes", it doesn't bring them up. As a result, I have been unable to review anything added from 8/13, 21:55 to 8/14, 18:22. Is there any way to bring up those edits only? - --Mischa 13:46, 17 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Fair use images

As per MichaelEng's reasoning above, I am removing fair use images from articles. I've already disabled the feature in the infoboxes, and all logos will be removed from articles where they violate copyright. I like them there, but we need to stay within copyright rules, and they do not depict the object in question. Only on the team's page does it depict the object in question. Thanks Soxrock 12:30, 2 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Vandalism as of late

Hey Jeff; what is with the vandals as of late? I mean, yesterday, there were at least 30 articles vandalized that we had to revert. I have no idea where they came from. Do you? Thanks Soxrock 12:30, 2 September 2007 (EDT)

We've had spells before like this, usually a search engine bot like Yahoo's. Once we notify the admin, he usually finds a way to block them within a week. Jeff emailed Sean, I believe. - --Mischa 15:34, 3 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Career MLB Stats

I've lifted the below from the Lance Broadway talk page.

Are these "Current Major League Stats" sections necessary? They seem like a maintenance nightmare. And, updated stats are already just a click away at the BR pages. -Chisoxfan 17:53, 21 October 2007 (EDT)

There are other talk pages around here with exactly the same sentiment. --Jeff 00:19, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

I want to say that I fully agree with the sentiments expressed and would like to see if there is a consensus to simply delete these sections when we come across them. --Philippe 11:30, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

[edit] New stadium pages

Sorry about the mess caused by the mass addition of the stadiums, but thanks to help from Mischa I think most of the pages are no longer full of red links. --MichaelEng (talk) 23:02, 29 October 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Neat news

For the second straight month, our number of "wanted pages" has gone down. I can't recall this ever happening before. Let's hope we keep it up. - --Mischa 12:13, 3 March 2008 (EST)

Three months in a row. Under 32,000 wanted pages for the first time since December. - --Mischa 09:51, 1 April 2008 (EDT)

Four in a row. - --Mischa 13:51, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

Five in a row. We added over 700 pages in the last month while reducing the wanted pages by about 115. - --Mischa 09:27, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

Our streak is over. We have 74 more wanted pages than a month ago. - --Mischa 15:39, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

Hey that's probably a good thing! More wanted pages means more pages are being created and those pages have a lot of links!--danielfolsom 15:44, 1 July 2008 (EDT)

We were gaining in wanted pages for the last few months, but went down by over 200 in the past month. We're now about even with where we were last October with 30,703. - --Mischa 13:08, 3 August 2009 (EDT)

[edit] Images

Quick question about images, specifically, baseball cards. Is it okay to take scans from a site like Beckett.com and use them here? Or does the person who uploaded the picture to Beckett hold the copyright to that scan? Alex 20:46, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

If the card was not altered in any way (autographed for example) the image is still the copyright of the card company in my opinion. I've always seen the use here of baseball cards to illustrate biographical pages as fair use since a low resolution electronic reproduction of one side of a card is not a satisfactory substitute for an actual card for collectors so we are not taking away any of the card maker's business. Kinston eagle 21:24, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

I would ask Beckett.com what their policy is. - --Mischa 09:06, 24 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Downtime

In case anyone was wondering why the Bullpen was down this weekend - a post at a Yahoo blog about Brandon Inge's freak injury linked to our Glenallen Hill page with Hill's spider incident. This resulted in two hits per second to the Bullpen, which is not designed to handle that level of traffic and was slowing down the whole B-R site. As a result, Sean shut us down for the weekend until things slowed down.

FWIW, Hill now only trails A-Rod, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Jeter, Schmidt, Aaron and Cobb in terms of page views for a player, putting him into the top 10 all of a sudden. - --Mischa 08:51, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Calendar

We're only 3 days ahead in terms of wikifying the calendar (that is, it is August 1 and we're wikifed through August 4). This is not good as the main BR site links to the calendar entry for the day and it would look bad if it starts linking to un-wikified entries. I'm working at this when I have time and I know Kinston Eagle and Just Me have helped, but we need a concerted effort to stay ahead for the next couple months. - --Mischa 11:58, 1 August 2008 (EDT)

It's now done through the 8th, but I will be going on vacation later this week and I'm sure Mischa will have his hands full with the Olympics. Kinston eagle 20:38, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

Also, I moved yesterday and the computer is not unpacked. We're focusing on things like dishes, pots, pans, clothes, etc. first. So the only time I have for the BR Bullpen is any free time I get at work - --Mischa 08:54, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

We're down to being two days ahead. The computer is unpacked at home but the DSL is not working yet. They're hoping to get it fixed this week. I could use help with the calendar. Could someone do August 15? - --Mischa 12:49, 12 August 2008 (EDT)

I've done August 14 and August 15, but I won't have much time to do anything more over the coming days. --Philippe 15:33, 13 August 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Flag Templates

Drop me a line if you come across any flag templates that seem messed up. svg files never work with our templates for some reason (these all come from wikimedia commons) and png files work sometimes but not all the time. Flags should always be jpg or gif files. All the most common ones should now be fixed. Kinston eagle 10:38, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

Great job! - --Mischa 10:39, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Wikipedians

<rant> Why do folks from wikipedia insist on doing over all our pages without formatting things correctly? They insist on replacing all the templates or making redundant copies of existing pages then get upset when we try to unify things and make things flow smoothly. A lot of these people then vanish back into thin air without ever correcting matters (ex. Soxrocks, Daniel Folsom, etc.) leaving us to clean up a lot of stuff. I think they need to get their own house in order in terms of all the blatantly copyrighted material they steal over at wikipedia without even citing the source. When you notify them over there about it, they don't even act. </rant> - --Mischa 16:50, 16 October 2008 (EDT)

Someone with the same user name as the recent copy and paster is a vandal over at WP. See this for example: [6]. And this more shocking edit: [7]. Kinston eagle 22:42, 16 October 2008 (EDT)

That vandalism was two years ago though. Mischa, I agree. I find it rather presumptuous that new editers come here and edit as if our system is inferior to wikipedia. This isn't wikipedia. --Jeff 22:53, 16 October 2008 (EDT)

He is still at it there. Just this week he added players to the Latino Legends Team who weren't on that team: [8]. I chose the above edits to show the depths of what he is capable of. Kinston eagle 23:03, 16 October 2008 (EDT)

Should we block him then? Why haven't they blocked him? Of course, the policing there doesn't seem as strict but they did get Auricle when he was vandalizing at both sites.

BTW, I was just upset earlier. I did not mean offense to people like Kinston Eagle and Alexsautographs who post to both here and Wikipedia, keeping in mind each site's formatting issues, notability rules, etc. - --Mischa 09:11, 17 October 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Bored? Need something to do?

There are over 6100 Dead-end pages. That's about an eighth of all our pages. All pages should link to another page. Most are places that should mention who was born/died there or schools that should mention their alumni. They only take a minute or two to un-deadend. If all the regulars would un-deadend three or four pages a day we could get rid of these by the end of next year. 69.68.238.142 08:27, 14 November 2008 (EST)

I've cleaned up quite a few of them from that list, but they don't seem to be removed when the pages are created. Is there some way we can refresh the list, so it will remove an article once it's created? --Oaktree b 17:15, 26 December 2008 (EST)

Your recent ones seem to be off the list. 66.56.238.238 19:30, 26 December 2008 (EST)

For it to be removed, you have to link to something. A lot of your entries haven't, though I went back and added the links. - --Mischa 10:41, 28 December 2008 (EST)

[edit] Image Requests

I have added a template for baseball card/image requests. You can see an example of it in action here: Talk:Carlos Alvarez. I couldn't find a template for this sort of thing. If we already had one, let me know. Also, drop me a line if you feel that the template can be improved in some way. Thanks. Kinston eagle 00:27, 28 November 2008 (EST)

[edit] Baseball Digest Online

Research help. This website seems to have all the Baseball Digest articles from April 2000 to the present available for free online. [9] 69.68.238.142 13:58, 22 December 2008 (EST)

There are a lot more issues than I originally thought. It's not a complete run, but they have many issues going all the way back to 1945: [10] 69.68.238.142 10:50, 14 January 2009 (EST)

[edit] Italian Baseball League

Serie A1 has changed its name to the Italian Baseball League. Does anyone know how to set up a bot to move everyone in category:Serie A1 Players to category:Italian Baseball League Players? - --Mischa 12:00, 9 February 2009 (EST)

I am not well versed in bots. 69.68.238.142 16:55, 10 February 2009 (EST)

[edit] Credit for our articles

The Wikipedians have begun a "This day in Major League Baseball" series of pages. The content of the first few pages seemed a lot like our calendar pages so I checked and found that they were indeed copy and pastes of some of our content. The creator of the pages acknowledged that the initial content was from us and created a GNU documentation template to give us credit similar to our own template we use on stuff we borrow from them. A sample page of one of their calendar pages can be seen here: [11] and the template can be seen here: [12]. As our template does for them, this template links back to our page. I know this has been a sticking point for some of you, but now when you see an offending page over there this template can be added. Hopefully, this will not only create recognition for the true authors of work, but also create some level of mutual respect between the wikis. From now on, if you read articles that are very similar to each other, determine which came first from the histories and add the appropriate template either here or there. 69.68.238.142 16:55, 10 February 2009 (EST)

Thanks. At least they're giving credit this time. - --Mischa 16:59, 10 February 2009 (EST)

I would like to add, that there is no substitute for wholly original articles in both places. This should not be seen as a license for wholesale copying back and forth. 69.68.238.142 17:01, 10 February 2009 (EST)

[edit] Importing from Commons

I found this while poking around over at the Wikimedia Commons. Can we not use this here to directly import pictures ? I know we have a similar setup to import directly from Flickr, but I'm not at all familiar with scripts...

I found it at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia Own MediaWiki installation Since MediaWiki revision 1.13.0 you can direct embed media from Wikimedia Commons into your own wiki. Add the following lines to the localSettings.php of your installation:

$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(

 'class'            => 'ForeignAPIRepo',
 'name'             => 'shared',
 'apibase'          => 'http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php',
 'fetchDescription' => true, // Optional

);

Now you can embed every medium from Wikimedia Commons without the need to copy it to your own server.

Can we use this here? --Oaktree_b 20:53, 17 February 2009 (EST)

[edit] New BR minors site

The new Baseball Reference site is up including a new BR minors site. The new minors site goes back much further than 1992 and some of the errors of the old site have been cleared up. The new site has reassigned URLs for all the players. I had visions of having to fix hundreds of links over here where we link to BR minors pages, but most seem to redirect (slowly) to the new pages. I have run across a few that don't work though (or maybe they just timed out?). Be on the lookout and feel free to add BR minors links to all the older players now that they have pages. See for example Joe D's BR minors page. 69.68.238.142 15:58, 3 April 2009 (EDT)

[edit] Need something else to do?

The Library of Congress website (http://memory.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html/) literally has thousands of images of baseball, the World Series, many old ballplayers, etc. that we could use here on the Bullpen. Go do a search and update the various articles... Just remember to check the copyright status, stuff before 1923 is ok, some things have been donated to the Library and have no known rights (thus are ok to use). Go forth boldly! Oaktree_b 13:01, 8 August 2009 (EDT)

[edit] 2009 World Cup

When I try to view the 2009 Baseball World Cup page, it now comes up blank. Is anyone else having the same problem? - --Mischa 17:08, 10 March 2010 (EST)

I'm still having this problem. Is anyone else? - --Mischa 10:27, 14 March 2010 (EDT)

I've sliced about 30K off figuring that might help as size may be an issue but it's still not working. Argh! Can anyone help? - --Mischa 20:31, 18 March 2010 (EDT)

[edit] Trends

I've been tracking new pages added and changes in wanted pages over the past four years. These are rough estimates but I think this shows good progress:

9/06 to 9/07 +5000 pages +16000 wanted pages 9/07 to 9/08 +5000 pages +1000 wanted pages 9/08 to 9/09 +5000 pages -100 wanted pages 9/09 to 9/10 +5000 pages -1000 wanted pages

- --Mischa 12:42, 2 September 2010 (EDT)

[edit] Baseball obits

This is a good resource for recent baseball deaths and obituaries:

http://sports.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/BaseballNecrology/messages/2665?viscount=-30&l=1

Alex 12:15, 27 December 2010 (EST)

[edit] New Template

There's a new user adding this template to a large number of player pages. Was going to rollback all his contributions since the website linked is an extremely partial list and the has ads on it. The value to the bullpen seems very limited. Just seems to be a guy who wants to show off his collection or generate lots of hits. Either way, it doesn't seem to be like the kind of thing we would want to encourage. Didn't want to rollback without some discussion of the issue. Any thoughts? Kinston eagle 06:40, 29 December 2010 (EST)

If it's mostly ads for something incomplete, I'd say remove them. A link to a complete listing somewhere would be nice, if such lists exist. What do others think? - --Mischa 09:13, 29 December 2010 (EST)

I'd say roll them back. It looks like it's mostly just an attempt by the guy to advertise his website. Alex 12:55, 29 December 2010 (EST)

[edit] Major League Players Who Played in the 1950s

This page contains many, many errors. There are links to people who never played in the 50s, there are many links to redirect pages, many names are not in alphabetical order, some of the boxes used for listing the names are broken and not formatted properly, the boxes themselves are of differing sizes creating aesthetic problems, the list of executives is incomplete. There are a lot of pages with errors or bad formatting, what makes this one different is that every attempt I have made to correct any of these problems has been reverted by the creator who seems to want this to be his own personal page with no input from anyone else. If this editor wants this to be his own personal page, it needs to be moved to his own name space and deleted from public content. I have made a template for players by decade in order to make pages of other decades and began work on 60s and 70s pages, but I don't want to continue with this very time consuming task if all I will get is resistance and edit warring. As the page stands now, it is an embarrassment to the Bullpen. At the very least, the names need to be in alphabetical order. Since the creator is not even allowing these changes to be made, I feel that the page needs to be deleted or moved to the creators name space for his own enjoyment. Kinston eagle 12:19, 2 January 2011 (EST)

I'd say just keep rolling it back to the edited version. A user shouldn't be able to keep replacing a fixed copy with a flawed one. I'll try to keep an eye out for his rollbacks too to make sure it stays fixed. - --Mischa 11:27, 3 January 2011 (EST)

Couple of things: 1) the use of the cards may not be appropriate on the page. There was a discussion at one point about fair use of baseball card images. I believe its fair use if it illustrates the player in question, therefore it may not be fair use to put those images on that particular page. 2) Here again, we have a situation where there's a "don't touch my work" attitude. Thank you Kinston for attempting to fix the page. I agree that having players on the page that never played in the 50s reflects badly on the bullpen's credibility. --Jeff 22:37, 4 January 2011 (EST)

[edit] Spam problem

I have a technical suggestion to get rid of the annoying spamming problem we have been experiencing these past couple of weeks: if we could prevent new users from creating a page unless they have made a small number of edits to existing pages (say 5 or 10), then we could probably chase the idiotic robots elsewhere. If someone with access to the keys could do this, it would be appreciated. --Philippe 09:15, 7 April 2011 (EDT)

I have no idea how to do this. Should we check with Sean? Another suggestion is having one of those "word-recognition" spamcheckers instead of the mathematical problem ones - are those better at keeping out spammers? The Taiwanese Baseball Wiki uses them. - --Mischa 09:16, 7 April 2011 (EDT)

Yes, it should be brought up to Sean's attention if you have a way of contacting him. --Philippe 10:02, 7 April 2011 (EDT)

I'll see if I can get to this this week.--Admin 11:33, 11 April 2011 (EDT)

[edit] Most popular players

Out of curiosity's sake, I wondered which players get the most attention, so checked four different metrics -

[edit] Players with the most page hits

1. Babe Ruth, 76,239 (#4 among all pages)
2. Jackie Robinson, 52,834 (9)
3. Alex Rodriguez, 50,523 (11)
4. Tuffy Rhodes, 48,496 (12)
5. Daisuke Matsuzaka, 44,593 (15)
6. Derek Jeter, 43,852 (16)
7. Hank Aaron, 39,571 (20)
8. Ty Cobb, 39,477 (21)
9. Roberto Clemente, 39,181 (22)
10. Aroldis Chapman, 36,621 (24)

Chapman, Rhodes and Matsuzaka all are probably due at least in part to our heavier focus on Japan and Cuba than other baseball websites. The others are all Hall-of-Famers or among today's most prominent players.

[edit] Players with the most categories

• 1. Ty Cobb (18)
• 2-4. Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays (17)
• 5. Tris Speaker (16)
• 6-9: Jimmie Foxx, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson and Ken Griffey Jr. (15)

All position players and all inner-circle Hall-of-Famers (except Griffey, who is a shoo-in barring a scandal). No Ruth?

[edit] Articles with the most revisions

1. Roberto Clemente (1,752)
2. Adrian Garrett (710)
3. Frank Thomas (225)
4. Wayne Garrett (206)
5. Derek Jeter (195)
6. Babe Ruth (194)
7. Barry Bonds (191)
8. Rafael Palmeiro (175)
9. Ty Cobb (167)
10. Alex Rodriguez (156)

The top four are all due to one user doing a lot of work, but 5-10 are a realistic guide. A lot more focus on active or recently-active players

[edit] Articles with the most links

1. Babe Ruth, 676 (276th of all pages; leagues, dates and teams dominate this list obviously over players)
2. Ted Williams, 438 (627th)
3. Hank Aaron, 421 (637rd)
4. Willie Mays, 421 (638th)
5. Ty Cobb, 391 (667th)
6. Mickey Mantle, 378 (690th)
7. Barry Bonds, 356 (714th - Bonds at 714, how fitting)
8. Roberto Clemente, 355 (715th)
9. Lou Gehrig, 350 (718th)
10. Walter Johnson, 342 (724th)

So, Cobb makes all four lists. Ruth, Clemente and Aaron each make three. Bonds, A-Rod, Jeter, Jackie Robinson and Mays each make two. - --Mischa 15:19, 21 April 2011 (EDT)

Interesting stuff. Alex 01:20, 24 April 2011 (EDT)

[edit] Question

What is standard SOP now? Do we include the Biographical Information headline or not in new articles? Personally, I think it looks better with the headline. Without it, pages look jumbled and "messy." Just curious as to what the consensus is. Alex 23:20, 15 May 2011 (EDT)

I put it in whenever I find an article where it's missing. It allows a separation between the basic personal data and the rest of the article. And if there are enough sub-headings to generate a table of contents, it will show up near the top of the page and not in the middle of the article. --Philippe 09:21, 16 May 2011 (EDT)

[edit] World Cup

The 2011 Baseball World Cup has been one of our hottest articles, with about 5,000 hits in the past couple weeks. I'm offline from tonight until at least late Saturday night. Could somebody please update that page in the time I'm off - lots of important games. You can find box scores, play-by-play, etc. here. The sources list at the bottom of the page can help flesh out articles. - --Mischa 13:19, 12 October 2011 (EDT)

Why do we even have this page if people ignore it, focusing instead on replacing most wanted pages that will get addressed with stubs that will never get addressed? - --Mischa 10:45, 17 October 2011 (EDT)

I see Wikipedia is having a blackout because they don't like being held responsible for all the copyright violation that goes on there. What a bunch of criminal enablers - --Mischa 12:15, 18 January 2012 (EST)