Talk:Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster/Archive

The 'X' claim is synthesis

This is WP:OR (although there is a cite, the reference shows but does not discuss the fact), trivialises the article and should be removed. Ericoides (talk) 07:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I beg to differ. If the reference, which is reliable, shows that no players with surnames beginning with X exist, then they do not, and that's all that has been stated here. You could also look at the general reference in each article to confirm that there are no players on the Phillies all-time roster whose surnames begin with X. — KV5 • Talk • 12:08, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. No source has commented on the fact being put across in this section. In any case, it is the most absurd thing to comment on. What about, Chelsea F.C. have had 1231 players with three-letter names, 1875 with 4-letter names, 1872 with 5-letter names etc etc? It's equally facile. (In any case, are there are lots of teams with players whose name begin with X?) Ericoides (talk) 12:56, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're going to discuss, I don't consider it to be a good-faith edit to simply remove something when discussion is ongoing. That being said, the lead is a summary of the list. The summary discusses both the largest and shortest sublists of this particular article. I'm not sure what you mean by your parenthetical sentence, but there has never been a major league player whose last name begins with X. — KV5 • Talk • 13:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Apologies, you are correct. Re the X name, as there has never been a player with an X surname, it's hardly worth mentioning. It's like saying, the Phillies have never had a player who is 2 foot tall. Have you an RS which mentions these facts about the Phillies? Which, if you will, thematises this particular facet of the list. If not, it's OR. It strikes me that this particular fact was generated to make the DYK hook look fun; now it has achieved this purpose, it should be removed lest we have a similar letter-count in every list (did you know that no mountain in the Mont Blanc massif begins with the letter X? did you know that no MP for Sevenoaks has a surname beginning with X? etc etc. What purpose is served by this?) Ericoides (talk) 13:04, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

This list doesn't have anything to do with the heights of players. There wouldn't be any reason to mention it. I've already explained about the sources: there are two references which now show that there has never been a player whose surname begins with X in Major League Baseball history. This list, one of the general references, shows all players ever to play for Philadelphia, and no such players exist. As to your final point: would those other lists be ordered alphabetically? I would tend to believe that a list of members of Parliament would be ordered by term, and that mountains would be ordered by height or some such. These would then be germane discussion points. — KV5 • Talk • 13:18, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Whether OR or not, SO WHAT? This DYK never should have been approved as it's the epitome of mundane and boring since there are very few last names that start with X. I say remove it from the article. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:28, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree. It's quite the most absurd fact to be included in an article I have ever seen (and that's saying something) but I really cannot be bothered arguing with someone who considers it reasonable nor have I any desire to interfere with his or her Alice in Wonderland world. Ericoides (talk) 13:30, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you refrained from attacking me, Ericoides, as I have done nothing of the sort. I stated my point, as clearly as I was able, and obviously we disagree, but that's no reason to insult me. — KV5 • Talk • 13:50, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Apologies. It's no excuse, I know, but I stopped smoking yesterday and am really very irritable today. Please ignore what I said, it was childish. Ericoides (talk) 14:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Understood. So requested, so stricken from the record. — KV5 • Talk • 14:46, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Should country name be included in articles?

I came across this article, which started "The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." Given what Wikipedia is, an encylopaedia for anyone who can read English, this can be obscure for many Anglophones, so I added ", USA" after Pennsylvania; I usually do this whenever a place name is mentioned without specifying a country. Perhaps people interested in this particular topic would care to consider a hypothetical article starting, for example, "The Congress Party is represented in the assembly constituency in Piler", then goes on to a detailed discussion of what issues are discussed. The places Pennsylvania and Piler are linked, but it is useful to have an idea what country is being talked about without following hyperlinks. Does anybody feel strongly that it is inappropriate to add "USA" to articles such as this which do not otherwise say what country they refer to in the first couple of sentences? I haven't seen this general point discussed anywhere; if anyone can point me to a general discussion I'd be grateful. Personally I know where Philadelphia is and, as it happens, had never heard of Piler, but I do see the audience as including people from a variety of vastly different backgrounds.

After I inserted ", USA" a couple of times I was asked to post this issue here. Pol098 (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

It is made clear by clicking on either the links to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Major League Baseball that this is a topic based in the United States. No other lists discussing the Phillies, nor the main article about the team, say "USA" in the lead. If there has to be a clarifier (which I believe is extraneous), then it should be "United States of America", linked, not just "USA", as you inserted.

My other concern stems from the fact that you made the change only in one sublist, when there are 21 lists that should be receiving fairly identical treatment. That was the major concern aside from the fact that this appears to be unnecessary wording. — KV5 • Talk • 00:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

To summarise:

• No response or comment whatsoever to my reasoned argument about the need to include country
• adding "USA" is an unnecessary complication—extends the article by a full 3 characters
  • adding "United States of America" is much better
• Not only is this article deficient in this respect, but there are another 20. The implication seems to be that 21 deficiencies are better than 20.
• It is true that clicking on the place name leads to an article that includes the country. I had addressed that in my text: search for "hyperlink" above
• There has only been one person objecting to this change. (If you don't want the country to be added—or if you do—speak up.)

There seems to be a trend to discourage linking the names of countries in articles. I don't have any strong opinions either way about linking, or indeed the format of names; I tend to add the country in some way to make sure it's there, and not object to any changes to format and linking that are then made by others.
Comment: I've often thought that it would be useful for Wikipedia to have some provision for standard text to be inserted in identical form in several articles, so that the standard text could be changed once and be reflected in all articles. As soon as I put this in words, I realise that there is such a mechanism: a template. If all 21 articles are supposed to have some content which is 100% identical in form with a few words changed from one to another, would it not be practical to use a template?
I will change the heading for this discussion, as it may otherwise be missed by people scanning this page. Pol098 (talk) 11:51, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

In response to your bullets:

• I did give a response to your reasoned argument, which you apparently overlooked: "It is made clear by clicking on either the links to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Major League Baseball that this is a topic based in the United States." Therefore, this is not necessary.
• I never claimed that "USA" was an "unnecessary complication", as you claim; I said that it was extraneous and redundant.
• I never claimed that 21 deficiencies (which I don't believe to be deficiencies at all) are better than 20; I noted that consistency is the ultimate solution.
• There has only been one person supporting this change as well (one of these lists is currently a featured list candidate under review and no one has mentioned a thing, including editors from Great Britain).

As to your question about the template, no, it would not be practical to have a template with that content because it is prohibited by WP:TMP: "Templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article.". — KV5 • Talk • 12:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree that adding the country in this case is overkill. The chances of someone arriving at this particular article and not realizing that it is referring to the Philadelphia in the United States is pretty much zero. Philadelphia, PA, USA has been deemed such a primary target for the word "Philadelphia" that the title of the article Philadelphia does not even include a qualifier. Further, this is a sub-sub-sub-page (in a manner of speaking) of American baseball - no one would ever find it unless they clicked on several other pages related to American baseball. It's not as though it is linked from Wilczkowice, Kraków County or Academy ratio or Electric acoustic guitar. The nature of the project means articles usually link to somewhat related articles, therefore we don't need to assume that this article lives in a total vacuum and needs an entire re-stating of context. This is a solution looking for a problem. Wknight94 ^talk 16:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

"This is a solution looking for a problem." - Well said. — KV5 • Talk • 01:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Splitting/merging of the subarticles

I am just going to preemptively mention that of the remaining non-FLs, a bit more should be done in terms of reordering them:

• N-O and P-Q should be merged since the resulting list would be easily under 150 items (you could put Q with R if worried, but it would not make much of a difference)
• T-V + W-Z would be slightly above 150, but I it would be around the total for S, so they should also probably be merged

Nergaal (talk) 16:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Per the FLC for the E list, mergers are now complete. The other lists are well beyond the requirements for stand-alone lists and no further merges are anywhere close to necessary. Merging further invites disjunction and loss of focus in the leads. This is exactly the concern that many reviewers had: once we merge one, merge after merge is demanded without any policy-based foundation. It is absolutely fine the way it is. — KV5 • Talk • 22:02, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, 10 is already the arbitrary minimum for a list to be considered able to stand alone, and the minimum list size in this series is now 5 times that. At 51 items, the A list is now the shortest, and that's absolutely not a content fork. — KV5 • Talk • 01:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)