Template talk:Cite sports-reference

Unexplained author generated by template

About Justin Kubatko: He's listed as VP at http://www.sports-reference.com/about.shtml, having joined in 2007 after creating the basketball-reference.com website in 2004. He writes the "Keeping Score" blog for the NYTimes. But it's not clear to me that he should be listed as "author" of every citation of sports-reference.com, since many people are involved there, many sports other than basketball are cited from there, and it's a database, not an authored work. So I'm boldly removing his name from "author=". Discuss? --Lexein (talk) 09:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

(Re-) Adding Author Information to the Template

Hello. I wanted to raise the issue, and form a consensus, regarding the idea of adding author information to this template. This stems from two discussions, one c back in 2016 and a second more recently, where editors replaced a more detailed citation with the template, which I reverted in both cases because I felt that it provided less information than the full citation I had provided and thus lowered the quality of the citation. In the first case, I had a third opinion agree with me, and the second case has led to this discussion, which means that there is yet to be a strong consensus on the issue.

@Schwede66: has suggested (and I concur) that a proposal should be raised here to add author information on the template, which would address my objection to using the template instead of a regular citation. The question is what author information to include: Justin Kubatko is often raised as a contributor, but he is involved in running the site, not contributing the data, so he’s responsible for presentation rather than content. My suggestion (and what I have been doing when I use a regular template) is to list the group leaders noted at the bottom of each page (Hilary Evans, Arild Gjerde, Jeroen Heijmans, and Bill Mallon – the latter of whom is the founder). Unlike some of the other information in the contributors and sources section, this information is still up to date (full disclosure: I’m one of the contributors to the data), and is unlikely to change, so it would make for a stable template. Therefore, I am posting this here to garner a consensus on the issue of including author information in the template, and what the nature of that information should be.

In summary, I propose that the parameters last1, first1 through last4, first4 be added to the template, including author-link4 for Mallon. Canadian Paul 14:12, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support I was initially unconvinced that this is the right thing to do as Sports Reference is a database and there are thus numerous contributors. With Canadian Paul having inside knowledge and being able to confirm that the four people proposed are indeed the leaders of the effort, I accept that this is the right thing to do. What also helps is that Sports Reference is on its way out (the notice that they won't host the data much longer has been displayed since the end of 2016) and will at some point be available via archive services only. This means that authorship won't change over time. Schwede66 18:35, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Sports has been notified. Schwede66 18:52, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Olympics has been notified. Schwede66 18:52, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

Hidden ping to those users who have edited this template and have been active in the last six months. ​​​​​​Schwede66 19:00, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

• Support Per Canadian Paul and Schwede66's comments. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:24, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that; I've implemented this as per the proposal. Schwede66 19:17, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Site closing update

Hello. Today, I've found out that Sports Reference will be closing by March 1 2020 as of this update. As this will effect a lot of articles, I thought I'd let you know. I also hope the IOC and OlyMADMen work out a site to replace these stats per this post. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 00:09, 1 January 2020 (UTC)