Template talk:National football squad start

Width problem

I've noticed that the squads tables don't seem to keep the same width. This is noticeable in articles in the Category:Football World Cup squads, where several squad lists are shown on each page. It seems to always occur using Internet Explorer and sometimes occurs using Firefox. When the width isn't full, the DOB field spans two lines and looks messy.

Refreshing the page results in it changing appearance. For example; one time the Switzerland squad was the only one not full width, I pressed reset and it was okay, but I found that the England squad was not full width. This happens not just on my computer, but at a friend's house too, and on more than one World Cup squad article. Anyone know why? I don't.
Slumgum | yap | stalk | 19:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I have fixed the column widths of the whole table. Hopefully it has fixed the problem. --Pkchan 11:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

Working example here: Template talk:National football squad start/sandbox. Please state whether you'd like to see it introduced. TheBigJagielka (talk) 14:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy enough to see that: at least it might get rid of the ugly variants with bars between positions. Kevin McE (talk) 17:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Recently I checked the history of the related template which include a Goals column: Template:National football squad start (goals). Initially someone chose to also include a sort option in all boxes. But then it was decided to remove all of them, due to the argument that they only "disturbed" the template, without anyone actualy using them when checking a squad. The related template with a Goals column, therefor instead chose, that whenever the template is being used, the editor will have the job to sort them:

• By position as first criteria
• By caps (descending) as second criteria
• By last name (ascending) as third criteria.

This way the squads are always shown in a structured and well sorted way, which the majority would find no need to further sort.

As it seems like this standard has not previously been transfered to this "National football squad start" template (without the Goals column), I vote for the inclusion of the sort option, but only for this specific version of the template. And I only think its appropriate to include the sort option, for the "Shirt number" and "Position" coloumns. As a final comment, I would in any case always prefer (for new articles), to use the new version of the template with a Goals column, as most people will appreciate to also find the Goal info included by the box. Danish Expert (talk) 10:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the template is good. I like the way you can sort the various parameters, yet it is clear to read. Eldumpo (talk) 10:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Today I had time to look further into the "sort option" suggestion, and how the several versions of the template so far have been used. As my reply will be rather long, I will now deal with the question, in two seperate subsections below:

To what degree would it be a good idea to implement the "sort option"?

I believe the criteria whether or not to implement a "sort option" should be: If we ever would use it -when checking out some of the squads we dont already know? In order to try and answer that question, I just had a look at the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup squads, and indeed found, that I would quiet often use the (so far missing) "sort option" for the coloumns:

• Shirt numbers (to check who initialy were intended for the start formation -being the first 11)
• Position (to get a clear overview of all available players at the team, for the general type of field positions)
• Age (to learn the teams distribution of age -as an indicator of how experienced we in general should consider the players at the team to be)
• Caps (to learn whether or not the team in general consist of players with a long/short experience of playing top level National Team matches)
• Goals (to get a quick overview of the most "goal scoring" players at the team)
• Teams (to get a quick overview of: How many players at the national team, had the bennefit of also playing together in the same club)

After trying the sort option out, I however clearly oppose to implement it in the "player name" coloumn, as I would never opt to sort the players alphabeticly by their "first name". In my point of view, the suggested "sort option" is indeed a nice improvement of the template, but only as long as we dont include it in the "player name" coloumn. In general, I feel that whenever something never will be used, the best decision would be not to add it. This way the template will appear more professional and well thought out, to the eyes of the reader. So my vote now goes, that we should implement the "sort option" for all coloumns -except the "player name" coloumn. :-)

Should we continue to use several versions of the {{{Nat fs start}}} template?:

To be frank, I more and more feel it would be appropriate also to start consider, whether or not we should continue to use two general template types in the Wikipedia articles (with and without a goals coloumn). The two guys who initially created the two versions in Feb/March 2006, agreed to go ahead with the two versions at that point of time, but also agreed that it perhaps would be a good idea to consider to merge them into one common standard -sometime later in the future. After having looked further into a transclusion count here today, I found that the:

• {{{nat fs start}}} template -without a goals coloumn, had been used in 279 articles:
  (216 were "seasonal/tournament related national team articles", 42 were "national team articles", and 21 were "other category articles").
• {{{nat fs g start}}} template -with a goals coloumn, had been used in 464 articles:
  (82 were "seasonal/tournament related national team articles", 345 were "national team articles", and 37 were "other category articles").

Based upon the survey above, the version with the goals coloumn has clearly developed into a common standard for all "national team articles", while the majority of "seasonal/tournament related national team articles" so far tend to prefer using the version without a goals coloumn. In my point of view, there is however no logic reason, why on earth we should prefer to use the version without the goals coloumn, instead of the more informative version with the goals coloumn. Apparently the reason in 2006 to create a version without the goals coloumn, was that many of the articles showing "an old national team at a prehistoric event", -ie the article 1930 FIFA World Cup squads, in most occations would leave a Goals coloumn empty, as the information for many teams were difficult (or time consuming) to obtain. On the other hand, one could however also argue, that just because no Wikipedians so far had the time also to list the "goal score" for players selected in the prehistoric teams, this fact should not be considered a valid reason, why we shouldnt add the info at some later point of time. With that in mind, I think it would be more relevant to ask, whether or not we believe the info about "goals score" would add value to the Squad table? If we can reach a consensus, that the answer to that question would be YES, then I think we should also prefer to convert the previous version "without a goals coloumn" into the version "with a goals coloumn". For that matter, it should not be considered a weakness or negative result, if the consequense in the beginning will be, that a lot of the "prehistoric football squad articles" will feature squad tables with an empty goals coloumn; because this will only mean, that editors will feel encouraged to slowly start updating the tables with the missing data in the coloumn, and thereby gradualy improve the value of the article. Please let me know if you agree with me on this particular viewpoint. Because in that case, it is very fast and easy to implement the convertion for the 279 articles, so that they start utilizing the "goals coloumn version" of the template, as it only require that we redirect the "nat fs start" template page to the "nat fs g start" template page. At the same time, I will however also propose, that we decide to further improve the current {{nat fs g start}} template, so that it basicly become identical with the newly improved {{nat fs g2 start}}. The {{{nat fs g2 start}}} template feature a sort option for most of the coloumns, and include a changed sortable data format with "Age" listed in years (to be calculated by the {{{age}}} template), instead of the previous format to list the players full Birth date+Age (to be shown by the {{{bda}}} template).

In order to compare and check out both the current {{{nat fs start}}}, the newly suggested sortable version of {{{nat fs start}}}, the current {{{nat fs g start}}} with a goals coloumn, and the newly suggested sortable and improved version with a goals coloum {{{nat fs g2 start}}}, I have now listed a full example of those 4 version at the Template talk:National football squad start/sandbox. The moment you have checked all of the 4 versions, then please also let me know, if you agree with this new expanded/combined counter proposal:

• To merge the two previous "unsortable" template versions with and without a goals coloumn -{{{nat fs start}}} and {{{nat fs g start}}}-, into one new common "sortable" version of the template {{{nat fs g2 start}}} -to make sure that we from now on only use the sortable template version with a goals coloumn, as a new common standard?

Danish Expert (talk) 05:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Related alternative templates

This is just a short note, to list all the other related alternative templates for showing a current/specific squad:

• {{National football squad start (goals)}}, or {{Nat fs g start}} in short:
  With a Goals column, and still show the players "Date of Birth" in the Age column.
  Previously used by this article at Oct.16-2010.
  And expanded to also include the optional "other" info in a small parenthesis at Nov.6-2010.

• {{National football squad start (goals, version 2)}}, or {{Nat fs g2 start}} in short:
  With a Goals column, and showing Age by "Year" instead of "Date of Birth".
  Previously used by this article at Nov.18-2010.

• {{National football squad start (goals, version 3)}}, or {{Nat fs g3 start}} in short:
  Same as version 2, but expanded with a specified Position column.
  Currently used by this article at Nov.19-2010.

The 3 versions above, currently also exist in a parallel variant called "recent", to show the "recent squad" of a national team with inclusion of a special extra coloumn to also note the "latest match". If you visit the links listed above, you will also find the related examples of the 3 different "recent squad" versions. As a general rule of thumb, the goal should be only to have as few templates in use as possible. However, there was a need to create the newest version 2 and version 3 of the template, for those Nations where the national FA also have chosen to post the exact field position the selected player is supposed to play (because when this info is included by the box, there was a "layout" call, to convert the long "Date of Birth" coloumn into a much shorter "Age" column). In example, version 3 of the template has now been implemented by the Denmark national football team article, to also show the exact field position of each player. Danish Expert (talk) 11:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

colour

I would like to propose change the background colour of this template from

to

the reason is to avoid confusion with the team colours, since   could be considered a team colour, but   is a typical colour for a table heading. this change would also need to be applied to the other "nat fs" heading templates. any objections? Frietjes (talk) 15:27, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Propose a change, yet implement it anyways... Eh, how about letting the discussion run it's course first. I, for one, don't see a need to change the color. Digirami (talk) 07:59, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

great, I was wondering what it would take to generate a comment here. There are some articles which won't use this template due to the colouring, see Indonesia national football team. Frietjes (talk) 14:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I guess not a lot of people ever visit these talk pages. I, in fact, agree that it's weird this template, contrary to all others (?), uses blue instead of grey. In any case, I'm in the process of changing all these template to make the background color an optional parameter. It defaults to  , so nobody gets hurt, but it can be set differently for those that want to. Everybody happy! Sygmoral (talk) 00:34, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Oh whoops, just realized I can't edit this exact template! Oh well, it's not used in the page I want to use it for anyway. So I just made the changes in {{National football squad player (goals)}}, {{National football squad start (recent)}} and {{National football squad break}}. Sygmoral (talk) 01:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine if the color customizability is removed, but then the colour should be the Wikipedia's default grey, not light-blue. There's no reason it should be light-blue. –Sygmoral (talk) 04:57, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Another possibility for the color options is to limit the color option to 'black' or 'white', but keep the background option open. This should address most concerns about accessibility. —Sygmoral (talk) 00:01, 2 January 2016 (UTC)