Talk:Association football/Archive 13

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Maths 101

Okay this is my final final post in this thread.

Lets look at those stats again. Let's say for the sake of argument that the figures represent stats based on 100,000,000 people. 54% of people who visit Wikipedia (as a whole) go to en.wikipedia org. So that would be 54,000,000 people. The stats also say that of the people who visit Wikipedia (as a whole) 16.1% (according to the stats on this page) come from the United States. So that's 16,100,000 people. For the sake of argument lets say that everybody from the USA is visiting the English Wikipedia. That leaves 37,900,000 (54,000,000-16,100,000) who are not from the USA. 37,900,000/54,000,000 = ~70.18% of people visiting English Wikipedia are not from the USA and one can only guess how many of them are from countries which do not use English as the first language. Jooler (talk) 10:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Problems: (1) you are assuming that the same sample is used in both surveys; you don't know if you are comparing apples to apples, or apples to pears. (2) The number of visitors from the UK is only 3.3% (3) These figures for UK and US visitors both seem low seem low and the "Other countries" figure of ~31.0% seems high. While Alexa can accurately record the language in which people are reading Wikipedia, IP address prefixes — the only means of identifying location — can be used by people in a third country and/or are frequently spread across one or more national borders. Grant | Talk 11:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

"you are assuming that the same sample is used in both surveys" - no I'm not. The sample might be 10,000 for the first survey and 50,000 for the second survey but it would make no difference because we're dealing with percentages. I included a hypothetical count here to help you understand. Even if they are actually using different samples it is presumably an accurate enough sample to generalise and scale up to the actual real count of visitors and I just used a hypothetical figure of 100,000,000 ro represent that as it's easy to plug in the percentages. I don't know what leads you to believe that they might perform two completely separate surveys firstly to do the count of people visiting Wikipedia tallied by their country of origin and then another one to query the count of people visiting Wikipedia tallied by the sub-site of Wikipedia that they visit? Normally a number of queries are posed of a single sample. Not that it matters as I say. Ok so now it looks like your now disputing the figures themselves rather than my maths. I did say you can prove anything but the truth with stats and it looks like you now agree with me. May I remind you that it was you that brought the Alexa stats to this discussion. Jooler (talk) 23:02, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes and I stand by them. If you don't understand the problems with your assumptions about the figures, or basic facts that they illustrate, then that is your problem.

Inter alia, they illustrate that less than four per cent of the visitors to WP are from the UK, i.e. a proportion less than one quarter of the number of visitors from the USA.

It is, as I have said to you time and time again, a commonplace that speakers of British English are outnumbered on a massive scale.

If the interests of ESL/EFL speakers were even a consideration, then the whole of en.wikipedia would be written in Indian English. But they aint. Grant | Talk 01:42, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

LOL you make me laugh. I've argued for ages (as David Levy will testify, and perhaps yourself if you look back at that Rio de la Plata debate) that the US usage of the Internet higher than its population percentage would suggest, because the US is a wealthy technologically advanced country with a much greater internet presence and usage. This is part of the systemic bias of Wikipedia and there is a Wiki project to counter it. Yes the interests of of ESL/EFL speakers ARE a consideration. As for UK usage the UK population is about 1/4 of the US's so that sounds about right. Jooler (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Let me get this straight: you opposed the name Rio de la Plata for River Plate because the latter is "English", and you consider that to be consistent with your opposition to mentioning "soccer" before "football" in a paragraph on the name of the game? Now you try to hide your opposition to the word soccer behind "systemic bias". Unbelievable.

The reason why ESL/EFL speakers should not be a consideration in this case is not what you think. It is this: no-one knows whether the preferred name is football/soccer in ESL/EFL, because no-one has studied it. I can tell you that when I did a search of English language pages on (for instance) .br and .mx sites, I discovered across more references to "soccer". Not surprising if you consider the geo-economic ties between Brazil and Mexico and the USA. Whereas .ar sites favoured "football". No-one even knows how many ESL/EFL speakers there are in China, let alone the proportion who say "soccer". So we are back to square one: we don't know what the preference is among ESL/EFL speakers, so we stick with first language usage.

The only systemic bias evident in this case is a peculiarly British prejudice against supposed "slang", especially if it has a "American" feel to it. (Never mind that soccer is neither slang, from where many of us are sitting, nor American.) Grant | Talk 15:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

"Let me get this straight: you opposed the name Rio de la Plata for River Plate because the latter is "English"" YES! - This is English Wikipedia! - "Rio De La Plata" is NOT English - neither is Munchen or Roma or Koln and I wouldn't expect those pages to be used when perfectly good English names for these places exist. Soccer and Football are both English and this article is written in a British English dialect so it predominately uses the word football, and that's been established for a long time and follows WP:ENGVAR, so it's perfectly justifiable. Its also obvious that with a mature and appropriate article at football, this page isn't going to move there. But we've been conflating two separate issues. You were not using first-language speakers to justify a different usage on this page, that's a spearate argument and you've already stated that you are not trying to get this page moved to soccer, but you brought together the whole issue of second language usage and Wikipedia usage when you said "but second language usage is not significant in this context. Our usage stats (pointing the Alexa data) show that people read Wikipedia articles in their native languages." - which really has nothing to do with the usage of the words football/soccer in a wider context. Of course as the point you were trying to prove with the Alexa stats is actually disproved by them (as far as English Wikipedia is concerned), I couldn't really resist picking you up on that point. Honestly, as pointed out above I'm making no 'assumptions' with those stats, other than that they both represent a true representative sample. If they don't their useless, but you can hardly blame me for bringing them to the table. Jooler (talk) 18:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

And so, as with the River Plate/Rio de la Plata case, this article is yet another case where the linguistic tail wags the dog...to such an extent that one can't even mention "soccer" before "football" in a sentence near the end of the article.

I admire the strength of your ideological commitment to promoting the norms of British English — because it is not "English" per se — but not the poverty of your understanding of/adherence to Wikipedia policy. Grant | Talk 03:49, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

As stated above repeatedly I didn't remove what you added because of the wording, as far as I'm concerned there's no issue there at all, but your citations left something to be desired in the reliability and authoritativeness stakes and an implied POV. Jooler (talk) 09:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Bollocks. Grant | Talk 09:29, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed at the bottom of this page: "Category:Wikipedia featured articles in other languages (Malayalam)". A language spoken by 37 million people in South India. Highly resonant evidence that people use their first language to read encyclopedias. Grant | Talk 13:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Errr, I don't know how you came to that conclusion. It is only evidence that someone (need not be more than one person) decided to make football a featured article in Malayalam. Nothing more. Football was once a featured article (now delisted) on the Swedish Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean that most Swedes would prefer sv.wiki before en.wiki when it comes to information about football. In my circle of friends, I'd say ~90 % primarily use en.wiki when they want to find information, even though their first language is Swedish. So your highly resonant evidence is... bollocks. ;) – Elisson • T • C • 17:19, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

If the Swedish WP is so crap, why don't you go and fix it then? I find it quite ironic that ESL/EFL speakers are prepared to collude with anglocentrics like Jooler. Grant | Talk 15:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Seriously folks, don't feed the trolls. Sebisthlm (talk) 15:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Grant I used to have a lot of respect for you as an editor. Not any more. Jooler (talk) 01:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I wish I could say the same, but your English nationalist bias has long been clear to me. Grant | Talk 01:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

It's actually 100% Irish blood that run through my veins. Jooler (talk) 02:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a common misconception that an individual's nationality, or nationalism, is closely related to that individual's genes. If that were the case, I would be stridently supporting you. Grant | Talk 11:52, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you would be supporting me in. All I did was remove some dodgy stats and come on the talk page to explain why. I think perhaps you should re-read what I wrote here viewing it in that context ignoring other people's interventions. You've variously accused me of raising a "smokescreen/obfuscation" you then said "Your attempts to raise smokescreens and muddy the waters are becoming more and more obvious, and less and less effective" then "...reveals the purely ideological basis of your position." and then called me "an anglocentric" and having "English nationalist bias" - I don't quite know what the smokescreen is meant to be hiding, as I said right from the start my issue was with the unscientific block voting of entire countries of English speakers backed up by dodgy stats and a polemic essay. I couldn't give a toss whether it said "Today the sport is known by a number of names throughout the English-speaking world, the most common being football and soccer." or "Today, the sport is known mostly by two names to people who speak English as a first language as soccer and football" except to add that the specific mention of first language speakers appears to only be in there just to make a point. Without the words "who speak English as a first language" or retaining the words "the English-speaking world" the information about the different names is still there and the whole WP:Point issue is gone. Jooler 04:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Jooler, Wikipedia policy does not decry articles "making a point". What it decries is the inclusion of "points" which are unverifiable. That does not apply here for reasons already stated. However, it does decry gaming the system, especially lawyering, which you have done here. The only charitable interpretation I can find for your approach is that you do not understand the spirit of these policies, considered as a whole. They are clearly not intended to prevent articles from expressing a point which you find unpalatable.

The sources clearly support my relatively minimal change to text and they are accepted sources in plenty of other Wikipedia articles. You are plainly wrong on this matter and are hiding behind the populist prejudices of other editors.

You said on my talk page:

The vast majority of USAians have no interest in Association football whatsoever so why should their opinion on the naming of the sport be given more weight than my Dutch friend who speaks excellent English, lives in Switzerland and loves the game? Why does living in the USA make all the difference? If he moved to the USA, would he be counted as a native speaker? Block voting entire countries is simply not scientific

Consider again what we are debating. Not the name of the article, but simply the order in which the most common names of the subject are mentioned, in a obscure part of the text. I believe this article should reflect the relative commonness of those names. Whereas you are now saying that the text should reflect the name favoured by the closest/elite followers of the subject, be they native or non-native speakers of English; which is a totally new argument, and is not supported by policy. We do not write articles for ourselves or "fans", we write them for a notional average reader, who in this case is likely to live in the United States and to speak American English. Your Dutch friend, if he/she moved to the USA, would have to refer to the game as "soccer" when conversing with locals, if he/she wished to be understood. That is simply the cold, hard logic of human culture. And no "block vote" is necessary, because we have sources.

Anyway, I find the collective approach to editing this article about as attractive as a team of professional divers . I'm not going to debate this any more at the moment, because I think we should probably drop the sticks and back slowly away from the horse carcass. Grant | Talk 15:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

"Consider again what we are debating. Not the name of the article, but simply the order in which the most common names of the subject are mentioned" - dunno what you're on about here, I've never once considered this an issue in this debate at all, and in fact see no mention of this in the above debate whatsoever. What you left out from my post of your talk page was the preamble "One thing that's just occurred to me regarding second language speakers. ...." - Yes it is a new argument I admitted that up front, and one that I thought might appeal to your sense of give and take not Wikipedia policy, which is why I posted it on your talk page and not here. As far as this article is concerned within the strictures of WP policy, the well established guidelines are already being adhered to. Because this sport has such a strong association with Britain and a relatively weak association with the USA it comes under the "British subject" category ruling of WP:ENGVAR, no other argument is required to support the use of British dialectical usage on this page. Jooler 16:33, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Spoken article

I've just listened to part of the spoken article. Good effort and all that, but really the amount of mispronunciation is really quite staggering.

• IFAB is not pronounced as "eyefab" but I. F. A. B.
• It's not "uston villa"
• Alcock is pronounced All cock not 'Al Cock'
• Blackheath is pronounced like "teeth" not "black herth"
• Sheffield , there's no strong emphasis on the first syllable and it's not fast-then-slow. It's not CHEF-field. The emphasis is even and it's more like "chef-yield" (this description still doesn't quite explain how wrongly it is pronounced in the spoken article).
• There's more but I got tired. Jooler 04:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

It probably needs a new one, given that the FAR removed lots of content from the history section and gave the whole article a copyedit. Woodym555 10:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The reasonable thing to do

Lets make it clear where I come from. At school I played soccer from primary till my final year. I still follow soccer to a certain extent, and when I barrack for Australia in the World Cup, I support the Socceroos. When I look up results in the newspaper, I look up soccer results, and when commentators talk about the sport on the radio they normally talk about soccer. I never refer to it as football when talking about it to friends, because that would just be confusing, and I am a little annoyed when others refer to it as such to me.

It seems quite possible that the majority of native English speakers, like me, call the sport soccer, but frankly that is unprovable and anyway not important. It is clear that most of those who play and seriously follow the game do call it football, though. So it seems to me important that the article does refer to the different names the sport is called by those involved in the sport, and that is football. Likewise an article on Australian football should define its terms and then refer to that sport as football, as should an article on American football (which by the way I call Gridiron). That just seems the logical and fair thing to do. So let's drop this attempt to split hairs over census figures and move on. --Michael Johnson 04:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Fully agreed. No matter what anyone calls the sport whether football or soccer, the official full name, whether anyone likes it or not, is Association football. Soccer is not the official name for the sport which is why the world governing body is FIFA and not FISA. I fully accept that some people call it soccer. There is already a compromise with the title of the article using both names even though the official name is Association football. Statistics are all well and good but the fact remains that the offical name is Association football and not soccer (and not just football for that matter). Your comments about the various articles about different forms of football perhaps is also reason for this article to be renamed Association football, not that I think it will happen as is evidenced by the above debate, and previous discussions such as the "its called soccer" section, there are some pretty strong views both ways and I suppose at least with the title as it is it is the best compromise to cover both views. ♦Tangerines♦·Talk 18:17, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm in total agreement with Tangerines, here. Both "football" and "soccer" are bastardisations of the sports proper name, which is "association football". Regardless of whether you call it "football", "soccer" or anything else, the only constant is the game that you're talking about. The article should be called "Association football", full stop. - PeeJay 18:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree, the official name of a sport should be used where possible. We do not name other codes of football as Football (American) [or Football (Gridiron)] and Football (Rugby), so why should this article be any different? Dave101→talk  18:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

You should always follow WP:COMMONNAME for article titles. And "association football" is quite formal and uncommon. The fact is the game is known as "football" in British English and "soccer" in US English. As the English Wikipedia does not have preferences between them, I think the statu quo is a fair solution. --Angelo 20:13, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

It's more common to refer to the sport as "association football" than it is to refer to it as "football (soccer)." I find it odd that you would cite our naming guidelines, which clearly disallow such disambiguation. —David Levy 09:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Zzz... the naming issue: quick poll

I think this subject has just about been talked to death here. There will always be some people who call it "Football", and other people who call it "Soccer". It's time to put the issue to rest - and therefore, I call upon Wikipedians to participate in a straw poll regarding the naming issue. For the record, I personally call the sport simply "Football" - but for the purpose of this article I support a name change to "Association Football", which is after all its official name, and one that distinguishes the sport from others with similar names. No lengthy comments please: the issue has already been discussed inside out - just add your name to your preferred option. EuroSong ^talk 22:55, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, "football" shouldn't be capitalised in "association football", should it? Reginmund 01:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Remember when polling here that Wikipedia is not a democracy. Don't put too much value in the result of this poll. — Gasheadsteve ^{Talk to me} 15:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am fully aware of that - I know that "votes" do not get conducted in such a manner, and this is why I did not label this as a vote to decide the title of the article. It is simply a poll to gauge opinion. Wikipedia is not a democracy: but issues do get decided according to general consensus among editors. Since the naming issue has been rambling on for so long that it's increasingly unclear what the consensus actually is, it is therefore at least useful to have such a poll to take a snapshot of current community opinions. See? EuroSong ^talk 23:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, calm down there. :) That was a general warning to everyone, not a reply to you, hence it not being indented from your message. — Gasheadsteve ^{Talk to me} 08:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)