Template talk:Sports links
(Redirected from Template talk:Sports links/sandbox)
Latest comment: 2 months ago by Robby.is.on in topic Link Limits
 | This template was considered for deletion on 7 April 2022. The result of the discussion was "no consensus". |
 | To help centralise discussions and keep related topics together, Module talk:External links/conf/Sports redirects here. |
 | Template:Sports links is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.
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Federazione Italiana Canottaggio (Italian Rowing Federation)
editIs it possible to create a sport link of the athletes referred to in this federation? --Kasper2006 (talk) 16:40, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
Event ID — discussion
editWith the existence of WikiData event ID properties such as Olympedia event ID (P9055), IJF competition ID (P10065) & JudoInside competition ID (P10066) for example, I was wondering whether they should be added to this template or should there be a separated "conf" to hold them and theirs such as "External links/conf/Sports_events" with its own "Template:Sports events links". Zyxw, Pppery, Firefly: Your thoughts? Deancarmeli (talk) 09:39, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- @Deancarmeli ooh I'm afraid that sort of thing is outside of my wheelhouse really, and probably best left to the people using/working with/impacted by use of the template on a regular basis. I'm happy to assist with implementations, but don't know enough about the architecture here to comment on it :) firefly ( t · c ) 09:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks anyway :)
I'd like to add that I've spotted ATP tennis tournament ID (P3456) & WTA tennis tournament ID (P3469) in Module:External links/conf/Sports, pushing me to side with adding the new properties to it as well. Deancarmeli (talk) 09:58, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks anyway :)
Questions
edit- Is there a reason to have both Olympedia, and an archived version of "Olympics at Sportsreference.com"? The latter is either the same as the former, or an outdated version of it. I would suggest only keeping Olympedia.
- Similarly, is there a reason to have both olympics.com and the archived copy from olympics.org? They are the same, or olympics.com is better and .org is outdated. Only keeping olympics.com is sufficient.
- Is Curlingzone.com a reliable site? They don't even know that Sandra Schmirler, skip of the 1998 Olympic Gold Medal team and named the second greatest Canadian female curler of all time, died in 2000[1]. Her list of events at that site is woefully incomplete, and what they have is wrong: e.g. for the 1998 Olympics (which she won), they list her as "DNQ"! Please remove asap, this is terrible.
- The-sports.org: does this add anything? It seems rather incomplete, e.g. for Fausto Coppi[2] it looks like a very small selection of his actual results. And they apparently don't know he died a while ago... This isn't a sad exception or one sport they badly cover: Jack Brabham[3] is still alive (and while they have his individual F1 results, they don't even mention that he was 3 times World Champion). We don't do our readers a service by sending them to this site it seems.
- For e.g. Janica Kostelić, I don't see why we would show ski-db.com[4] when we have the same and much, much more at the official fis-ski.com[5]. Are there pages where ski-db really adds something, or can this one go as well?
- Does mackolik.com work[6]? I can't access it. Does it add anything the countless other football databases don't already have?
- The ForaDejogo links (e.g. [7]) don't work
- Is Trackfield-brinkster.net reliable? For Daley Thompson[8], it lists in one column his world record of 8847 points (LA 1984), but then claims in another column that he won the LA 1984 Olympics with 8798 points (incorrect). For Ivo Van Damme, it doesn't know that he died[9], even though the Memorial Van Damme is one of the most important athletics competitions every year. And it isn't up to date, e.g. for Bashir Abdi[10]. Better to remove it.
I didn't check all links, but these are some problematic examples about very, very notable athletes, not about some obscure entries. If these aren't correct, it's hard to trust them for anything else; and if we can't trust them, we shouldn't link to them (certainly not in an automated fashion: individual links on individual pages may be appropriate in some cases). Fram (talk) 12:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Fram: agree the list of IDs needs refining. I would comment out rather than remove the IDs we choose to deprecate, in case they become useful/functional again in future and so it's easier to compare Module:External links/conf/Sports to the original no:Modul:External links/conf/Sport. Your reasoning behind deprecating all 8 of those IDs seems sound, so I would be in favor of doing so. Pinging template creator @Zyxw. --Sod25k (talk) 15:36, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
The results at The-sports.org are as you say not complete, but then again which broad sports-database are complete ? And this one have many results from many sports and disciplines, and i believe it is better to include it with a note to say it isn't complete. What databases would you Fram include for those lesser sports, and those other sports which only have databases with newer results ? Best regards Migrant (talk – contribs) 18:21, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
MTBdata
editToday I have imported all data from nl-wiki into the brandnew P10190 MTBdata property. If wished, this can be incorporated into this template too. Edoderoo (talk) 07:35, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
United World Wrestling ID
editHi there, for visibility I'm posting this message here, just in case something is broken. As can be read on Wikidata, the United World Wrestling ID property has been updated on Wikidata to point to a different location (as the data is now located at https://whatsmat.uww.org/daten.php). I have also updated {{UWW}} accordingly. As far as I can tell, things work as before but please let me know if there's something broken. Simeon (talk) 12:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Links to include
editAt the ongoing TFD, editors have proposed that the template is modified to limit it to certain links, assumedly through either a whitelist or a blacklist. I am opening this discussion so that editors can decide which they believe is more suitable, and start discussing which domains should be excluded or included with the decision being based on whether it will always provide content that would not be suitable to include in an FA. The following domains are a few of those that will need to be considered, taken from links provided by the template in a small sampling of articles:
BilledMammal (talk) 01:32, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Discussion
edit- @BilledMammal the template already is limited to certain links, the full list of which is at Module:External links/conf/Sports. Letcord (talk) 02:27, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you. As you have to look at Wikidata to see the link I've updated the list to include every example up to "Bobsleigh / Skeleton / Luge" from there; I will try to expand it further when I have the chance, but if other editors want to contribute then please do so. However, having looked at many of the links above, I am not seeing any that I believe we can say will always be suitable for a FA sports article. BilledMammal (talk) 03:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- I took the liberty of creating a full table with examples from Wikidata. I'm not sure "will always be suitable for a FA sports article" is the bar to set for inclusion, but in tennis for example, the ITF, ATP (for men) and WTA (for women) IDs are always linked at the bottom of articles when available. Letcord (talk) 07:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Excellent work, thank you. We need to work out the bar for inclusion; if it is below "will always be suitable for a FA sports article", then we will need to add a note that editors are responsible for ensuring that any links added by the template would be suitable for a FA sports article, per WP:ELNO #1. BilledMammal (talk) 07:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Ok, I hadn't seen that guideline, that is the standard then. Letcord (talk) 07:42, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- The problem with that case is that, short of removing the links on Wikidata themselves, there is no other way to control which ones are included; unless somebody wants to re-write this template entirely to allow for some sort of manual override. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:27, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Excellent work, thank you. We need to work out the bar for inclusion; if it is below "will always be suitable for a FA sports article", then we will need to add a note that editors are responsible for ensuring that any links added by the template would be suitable for a FA sports article, per WP:ELNO #1. BilledMammal (talk) 07:31, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- I took the liberty of creating a full table with examples from Wikidata. I'm not sure "will always be suitable for a FA sports article" is the bar to set for inclusion, but in tennis for example, the ITF, ATP (for men) and WTA (for women) IDs are always linked at the bottom of articles when available. Letcord (talk) 07:19, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Thank you. As you have to look at Wikidata to see the link I've updated the list to include every example up to "Bobsleigh / Skeleton / Luge" from there; I will try to expand it further when I have the chance, but if other editors want to contribute then please do so. However, having looked at many of the links above, I am not seeing any that I believe we can say will always be suitable for a FA sports article. BilledMammal (talk) 03:13, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't know much about making this complex external links-templates, but what if you added a parameter for exceptions of properties for not wanted ones ? Best regards Migrant (talk – contribs) 22:02, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
- Adding manual overrides, however that's done, might be solving the symptom (too many useless links) but not the root cause (an aggregator of external links like this is neither necessary nor helpful). Plus requiring manual maintenance in all of the affected articles would make this template useless: easier, and far simpler (and no Wikidata involved) to just list the relevant external links manually. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:32, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Who says it's not necessary or helpful? 10+ editors have already disagreed with you about that. To "just list the relevant external links manually" means foregoing the purpose-built tools Wikidata has for dealing with identifiers like these at scale. What would happen if say a site linked on twenty thousand articles changed its URL, breaking all links to the old one (a common occurrence)? With "manual" external links, this would require twenty thousand edits to fix. With Wikidata, just one. Letcord (talk) 01:59, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- "10+ editors have disagreed" - of which at least half have only presented cheap personal attacks as arguments, and the other half say "well, it might be better to discuss if there's a possibility to make this compliant with policy". And there have been others who have agreed with my concern, withotu having to resort to cheap tricks like that either. Wikidata is another project, with different standards, and the requirements for reliable sources and for avoiding link spam is not something present there. And if there's a problem with Wikidata, then it goes downstream to Wikipedia... If a site frequently changes its URL (to the point it's a "common occurrence"), then it probably isn't a good website to use for an external link anyway: most of the kind of links that would be acceptable are from generally stable places like authoritative databases or official sports website. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Wikidata's standards are completely irrelevant here as (again) this template only pulls IDs listed on the whitelist. If a person's Wikidata item has 1000 links, almost all spam, with 2 on the whitelist, then this template will only display those 2. While it is relatively uncommon for individual sites to change their URLs or the format of their IDs, when dealing with all sites across all sports there will be URL and ID changes regularly. The most authoritative site for men's tennis is the ATP's, which in 20 years has been atptour.com then atptennis.com then atpworldtour.com then atptour.com, with numerous formatter URL and ID changes along the way. Multiply that rate of change across all "generally stable ... authoritative databases" and you still get dozens of site/formatter URL/ID changes a year, requiring changes to hundreds of thousands of articles if linked manually. There's a good reason it's done via Wikidata. Letcord (talk) 03:05, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Perhaps we should use individual templates for each source; one for ATP, one of Olympedia, etc, and editors can add the appropriate templates? It both ensures that the links are not dead, and it prevents the WP:ELNO violations caused by the current template - I've continued reviewing sources, and there are still none that I can say will also be appropriate for a FA sports article. BilledMammal (talk) 04:01, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Those already exist — {{ATP}} & {{Olympedia}} (category) — and are widely used. The benefit this template brings over site-specific templates like those is that if new whitelisted IDs are added to a person's Wikidata item, they will automatically be displayed in their article, rather than requiring somebody to notice that an ID is there ready to be used and then add the relevant site-specific template. Wikidata is the central hub for external links/IDs, so this situation is ever-present. For example, {{ATP}} is used on 4500 articles, but there are 5400 articles that have ATP IDs attached to their Wikidata items, so 900 articles have a key external link sitting in Wikidata waiting to be used. This could be addressed by adding {{ATP}} to all 900 articles, but then what about IDs for the ITF, WTA, Olympedia etc. (and that's just for tennis bios)? It would be a never-ending process of seeing which articles have useful IDs in Wikidata and then adding the appropriate external link templates to them, whereas with {{Sports links}}, it's one and done. Letcord (talk) 07:33, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- The question is what links, if any, are suitable for use in every relevant article? So far, I have not been able to find any; have you? BilledMammal (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Well I'm only familiar enough with tennis sources to give a meaningful opinion on that. In tennis articles, external links to ITF profiles along with those at the ATP and Davis Cup (men), or WTA and BJK Cup (women) sites should always be made as they are the official organizing bodies. This aligns with the three tennis FAs: Milos Raonic, Kim Clijsters, Suzanne Lenglen and all tennis GAs. Tennis Hall of Fame profiles are already linked in infoboxes, so can be removed from the whitelist; Wimbledon has nothing that the ATP/WTA/ITF profiles don't, so can be removed; Tennis Australia gives nothing a FA wouldn't, so can be removed. That leaves Tennis Archives, which is very good for pre-Open Era info, and Tennis Abstract which has more in-depth statistics than any other website. Neither are official though, so I'd remove them too (with a heavy heart). That would cut the tennis bio IDs down from 10 to 5, with 3 the max on any given article due to the gender specific ones. This excludes tennis player profiles at the various Olympics sites, which I'm not familiar enough with to judge, and of course site-specific templates for those I'd remove from the whitelist could still be added to articles where useful. Letcord (talk) 13:11, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Those do seem to be suitable, although I believe it would be better to create a tennis-only template for that purpose to avoid providing too many external links for players who competed in multiple sports. Beyond tennis, do we have any suitable sources? BilledMammal (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- As I said I don't know enough about other sports to comment, but I'd assume that the official international federation databases for each of them should be kept. I wouldn't assume that tennis has more or fewer such databases than any other sport, so don't see why it would be special enough to deserve its own template. If an athlete has completed in multiple sports at the highest level then they should have external links to the official databases for each of them, in my opinion. Letcord (talk) 06:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with Letcord. No reason to separate tennis from any other sport and duplicate this template. That is in fact the strength of the template: it provides the relevant links from every sportsperson, (almost) regardless of discipline. I don't know about tennis, but in combat sports many athletes compete in various disciplines, and this template helps to provide links to their entries in the relevant, separate databases. CLalgo (talk) 06:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- Because the template shows relevant profile-links of the athlete for several sports, it also helps with biased articles with focus on only one or fewer sports than the athlete has competed in, if the article-contributor haven't been aware or unaware of these multi-sportspersons. It will surely help to discover them, when the article has external links to another sports-databases than the biography has details about. -- Migrant (talk – contribs) 13:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- That is an argument against the template as it is, not for it - if the purpose of the template is to help editors expand the article, then it should be used in talk space, not article space. BilledMammal (talk) 13:58, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- At BilledMammal: That view are only from a wikipedian standpoint and not a readers view, which is looking/searching for information about the athlete. And I thought that wikipedia was mostly for the readers!! --Migrant (talk – contribs) 14:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- That is an argument against the template as it is, not for it - if the purpose of the template is to help editors expand the article, then it should be used in talk space, not article space. BilledMammal (talk) 13:58, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- Because the template shows relevant profile-links of the athlete for several sports, it also helps with biased articles with focus on only one or fewer sports than the athlete has competed in, if the article-contributor haven't been aware or unaware of these multi-sportspersons. It will surely help to discover them, when the article has external links to another sports-databases than the biography has details about. -- Migrant (talk – contribs) 13:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- I agree with Letcord. No reason to separate tennis from any other sport and duplicate this template. That is in fact the strength of the template: it provides the relevant links from every sportsperson, (almost) regardless of discipline. I don't know about tennis, but in combat sports many athletes compete in various disciplines, and this template helps to provide links to their entries in the relevant, separate databases. CLalgo (talk) 06:29, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- As I said I don't know enough about other sports to comment, but I'd assume that the official international federation databases for each of them should be kept. I wouldn't assume that tennis has more or fewer such databases than any other sport, so don't see why it would be special enough to deserve its own template. If an athlete has completed in multiple sports at the highest level then they should have external links to the official databases for each of them, in my opinion. Letcord (talk) 06:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- Those do seem to be suitable, although I believe it would be better to create a tennis-only template for that purpose to avoid providing too many external links for players who competed in multiple sports. Beyond tennis, do we have any suitable sources? BilledMammal (talk) 10:47, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- Well I'm only familiar enough with tennis sources to give a meaningful opinion on that. In tennis articles, external links to ITF profiles along with those at the ATP and Davis Cup (men), or WTA and BJK Cup (women) sites should always be made as they are the official organizing bodies. This aligns with the three tennis FAs: Milos Raonic, Kim Clijsters, Suzanne Lenglen and all tennis GAs. Tennis Hall of Fame profiles are already linked in infoboxes, so can be removed from the whitelist; Wimbledon has nothing that the ATP/WTA/ITF profiles don't, so can be removed; Tennis Australia gives nothing a FA wouldn't, so can be removed. That leaves Tennis Archives, which is very good for pre-Open Era info, and Tennis Abstract which has more in-depth statistics than any other website. Neither are official though, so I'd remove them too (with a heavy heart). That would cut the tennis bio IDs down from 10 to 5, with 3 the max on any given article due to the gender specific ones. This excludes tennis player profiles at the various Olympics sites, which I'm not familiar enough with to judge, and of course site-specific templates for those I'd remove from the whitelist could still be added to articles where useful. Letcord (talk) 13:11, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- The question is what links, if any, are suitable for use in every relevant article? So far, I have not been able to find any; have you? BilledMammal (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Those already exist — {{ATP}} & {{Olympedia}} (category) — and are widely used. The benefit this template brings over site-specific templates like those is that if new whitelisted IDs are added to a person's Wikidata item, they will automatically be displayed in their article, rather than requiring somebody to notice that an ID is there ready to be used and then add the relevant site-specific template. Wikidata is the central hub for external links/IDs, so this situation is ever-present. For example, {{ATP}} is used on 4500 articles, but there are 5400 articles that have ATP IDs attached to their Wikidata items, so 900 articles have a key external link sitting in Wikidata waiting to be used. This could be addressed by adding {{ATP}} to all 900 articles, but then what about IDs for the ITF, WTA, Olympedia etc. (and that's just for tennis bios)? It would be a never-ending process of seeing which articles have useful IDs in Wikidata and then adding the appropriate external link templates to them, whereas with {{Sports links}}, it's one and done. Letcord (talk) 07:33, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Perhaps we should use individual templates for each source; one for ATP, one of Olympedia, etc, and editors can add the appropriate templates? It both ensures that the links are not dead, and it prevents the WP:ELNO violations caused by the current template - I've continued reviewing sources, and there are still none that I can say will also be appropriate for a FA sports article. BilledMammal (talk) 04:01, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Wikidata's standards are completely irrelevant here as (again) this template only pulls IDs listed on the whitelist. If a person's Wikidata item has 1000 links, almost all spam, with 2 on the whitelist, then this template will only display those 2. While it is relatively uncommon for individual sites to change their URLs or the format of their IDs, when dealing with all sites across all sports there will be URL and ID changes regularly. The most authoritative site for men's tennis is the ATP's, which in 20 years has been atptour.com then atptennis.com then atpworldtour.com then atptour.com, with numerous formatter URL and ID changes along the way. Multiply that rate of change across all "generally stable ... authoritative databases" and you still get dozens of site/formatter URL/ID changes a year, requiring changes to hundreds of thousands of articles if linked manually. There's a good reason it's done via Wikidata. Letcord (talk) 03:05, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- "10+ editors have disagreed" - of which at least half have only presented cheap personal attacks as arguments, and the other half say "well, it might be better to discuss if there's a possibility to make this compliant with policy". And there have been others who have agreed with my concern, withotu having to resort to cheap tricks like that either. Wikidata is another project, with different standards, and the requirements for reliable sources and for avoiding link spam is not something present there. And if there's a problem with Wikidata, then it goes downstream to Wikipedia... If a site frequently changes its URL (to the point it's a "common occurrence"), then it probably isn't a good website to use for an external link anyway: most of the kind of links that would be acceptable are from generally stable places like authoritative databases or official sports website. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- Who says it's not necessary or helpful? 10+ editors have already disagreed with you about that. To "just list the relevant external links manually" means foregoing the purpose-built tools Wikidata has for dealing with identifiers like these at scale. What would happen if say a site linked on twenty thousand articles changed its URL, breaking all links to the old one (a common occurrence)? With "manual" external links, this would require twenty thousand edits to fix. With Wikidata, just one. Letcord (talk) 01:59, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
- I'm with Letcord. As mentioned in the TFD, this template already uses a whitelist of sources, regularly updated, as can be seen in this very page. The proposal for a manual override for the some odd sources that should be removed from specific articles seems reasonable enough for me. That said, I think it is as far as contributors should go to accommodate the grievances listed in the TFD. If one cannot see the benefits of adding links to relevant entries in reliable databases to articles, I cannot thing of a bridge to fix the gap between us. CLalgo (talk) 15:39, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
- The problem is that, even if those links are "whitelisted", that doesn't guarantee they're relevant in any given article (linking one or another database might be acceptable, but that [and which one specifically to link] is something that needs to be determined individually at each article, not by using a generic template which has no nuances and is basically an "attempt to enforce globally some particular interpretation [of the external links policy]". And of course it doesn't help that the particular interpretation of "how to use external links in Wikipedia articles" espoused by this template is not a very good one (when we have WP:ELPOINTS no. 3, which states that such links should be kept to a minimum; or ELNO no. 1 as previously explained by others). The template is such that the simplest way to make sure future usage is compliant with policy is to simply have individual templates for each relevant site (which for most sports is probably only one or two - all the others are either duplicative or less authoritative), instead of having one Wikidata-based monster template like this. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
- WP:ELPOINTS 3 is irrelevant, as WP:ELYES 3 states that
"What can normally be linked: Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject... (such as professional athlete statistics...)"
. The point about WP:ELNO 1 was addressed in the TFD. As this topic is discussed over there, let us have it in one place at a time. CLalgo (talk) 08:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)- Nonsense.
Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum.
applies to all external links. It is also very much in line with WP:LINKFARM - and WP:NOT definitively takes precedence over this. We don't need ten different databases, even if some of them may contain relevant information. To begin, many of the sites that are linked by this template are not reliable sources (they're random amateur databases). Simply because something is technically allowed doesn't mean that we need to cram as many possible examples of it. WP:ELYES is also "what can", not "what must". If we have an article where the database adds absolutely nothing of interest (say, the typical only-played-in-a-few-games sportsperson given previously), then it should be removed per ELNO. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:28, 13 April 2022 (UTC)- If any of the sites whitelisted are not reliable sources, they should be discussed here and removed from the template. I've tried to help kickstart such discussions above. I would be interested in seeing articles for sportspeople who only played a few games and for whom the databases "add absolutely nothing of interest". In tennis articles for example, scores and match durations aren't listed in prose except where necessary (guideline), but scores in particular are of interest to many people, so even a database with only a few matches would benefit readers interested in those details. Letcord (talk) 14:21, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
- Nonsense.
- WP:ELPOINTS 3 is irrelevant, as WP:ELYES 3 states that
- The problem is that, even if those links are "whitelisted", that doesn't guarantee they're relevant in any given article (linking one or another database might be acceptable, but that [and which one specifically to link] is something that needs to be determined individually at each article, not by using a generic template which has no nuances and is basically an "attempt to enforce globally some particular interpretation [of the external links policy]". And of course it doesn't help that the particular interpretation of "how to use external links in Wikipedia articles" espoused by this template is not a very good one (when we have WP:ELPOINTS no. 3, which states that such links should be kept to a minimum; or ELNO no. 1 as previously explained by others). The template is such that the simplest way to make sure future usage is compliant with policy is to simply have individual templates for each relevant site (which for most sports is probably only one or two - all the others are either duplicative or less authoritative), instead of having one Wikidata-based monster template like this. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:59, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 16 August 2022
edit | This edit request to Module:External links/conf/Sports has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Add SkiMo Stats to the template Saksapoiss (talk) 01:14, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
Not done this is not a ready-to-go edit request, it appears to be the start of a discussion, which can certainly continue. If there is consensus to add and someone prepares the edit request, please reactivate for processing. — xaosflux Talk 18:33, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
Edit request
editMinor fix to properly link PGA Tour article. See Module:External links/conf/Sports, line 274
Current: { prop='P2811', message='[$2 $1] at [[Professional Golfers Association|PGA]]$3', short='[$2 PGA]', langcode='en' },
Proposed: { prop='P2811', message='[$2 $1] at [[PGA Tour]]$3', short='[$2 PGA]', langcode='en' },
Cycling link addition request
edit| | This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
The links about cycling are great, but for years now I was wondering why FirstCycling is not in one of them, and I have only found this page. I therefore suggest to add item P10902 (wikidata:Property:P10902). First cycling is I would say rapidly taking dominance of the second most used cycling result and statistic website after ProCyclingStats, and major companies like Global Cycling Network are partnered with them. (@FirstCycling (May 25, 2023). "We are proud to announce our new data partnership with @GcnRacing!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.) Thanks a lot. LegofanCy (talk) 14:29, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not seeing what benefit this site would bring as an EL, or how it's addition would be compatible with WP:EL. If anything, per comments at the TFD, the number of spammy stats-site links pulled from Wikidata by this template needs reducing, not increasing. wjematherplease leave a message... 16:01, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}}template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:08, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
Request for edit
editNot sure how these work, but I believe "P4668", the identifier for members of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, is not currently included in the Gymnastics section. This is the recognized hall of fame for the nation's sport governing body. Thanks! GauchoDude (talk) 17:15, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
- I will also ask for the inclusion of "P4469", the identifier for members elected to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. GauchoDude (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
Please remove some speed skating sites
editDefinitely: "SpeedSkatingBase.eu", which seems to have been discontinued and is now a spam site (e.g. link from Bart Swings gives this, link from Jordan Stolz gives this).
Preferably: "Speedskatingstats.com", which is no longer maintained and e.g. for Bart Swings doesn't mention his Olympic gold medal or his World Championship titles[676]. Fram (talk) 08:40, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
I see that Speedskatingbase.eu is now replaced with an archived version, which is very outdated (e.g. at Bart Swings): so while no longer a spam site, the added value of the link is negligible. Fram (talk) 08:34, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
Link Limits
editI strongly disagree with the recent change S.A. Julio (talk · contribs) has just made limiting the number of links this template shows to just 5 (from 10). By doing so, I noticed that this template runs into potential issues.
Using a gymnastics example, Mary Lou Retton does not currently have this template on her biography. However, if utilized, that's when I noticed the issue. By limiting to 5 links, this hard stop becomes more noticible. Using this template with no cap, Retton (I believe) would typically show the following:
- prop='P7440', International Gymnastics Federation profile
- prop='P4668', USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame profile
- prop='P4469', International Gymnastics Hall of Fame profile
- prop='P5815', International Olympic Committee profile
- prop='P8286', Olympedia profile
- prop='P12285', USOPC Hall of Fame
The resulting 5 limitation would mean that Mary Lou Retton's entry for the United States Olympic Hall of Fame would not be displayed in favor of the earlier 5 entries. A more outlandish, theoretical baseball player could have:
- Played in MLB (prop='P3541'), the Japanese league (prop='P4260'), the Korean league (prop='P4370'), and the Australian league (prop='P4476'), while having an a profile linked at Baseball Reference (prop='P1825'), and this would result in a 6th entry that this person was in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame (prop='P4164') not being shown.
For me, the issues here are two-fold:
- This arbitrarily puts a hard number (currently 5, could be 10, could be 1,000) on links displayed. Initial reasoning was per WP:LINKFARM, but this limitation does nothing to address that. A better resolution would likely be for the community to be more selective about the links selected for this template.
- This limitation has no way to select which links are shown. Not all links are created equal. In the hypothetical arguments above, I'd argue the United States Olympics Hall of Fame profile is probably more noteworthy/important than Olympedia, but if all 6 of those fields are utilized then the USOPC HOF profile will never be shown. In the baseball example, the MLB HOF would be excluded because the player played and had profiles in 4 countries and 1 external website. It is simply the order in which we arbitrarily added lines of code into the template.
GauchoDude (talk) 15:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
- I understand your point, but having 10 external links on some articles is quite excessive. I agree a more selective criteria for inclusion is necessary. However, more prominent sportspeople will always have more profiles in these databases, bringing the articles into conflict with WP:LINKFARM. Also, what might be too many links on one article might be okay on another, but unfortunately this is a "one size fits all" template. For such edge cases it would probably be better to use individual external link templates instead of {{Sports links}}. S.A. Julio (talk) 15:53, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- I can appreciate an attempt to limit the number of links shown, however a hard cap on the template itself should not be the solution for the reasons above. The links are stored at, and can be found in, WikiData and certainly don't have to be shown via this template.
- If you want to meaningfully limit what is shown, that's done by inclusionary/exclusionary criteria to be added to the template itself. It likely would be best for each sports community to figure out what that is, but would go a long way to limiting cases where "too many" links are shown.
- Additionally, WP:LINKFARM makes no mention to how many are "appropriate" vs. "excessive", which we're trying to police with this cap. For those that hit that cap, it's potentially doing even worse things by showing less relevant links as currently constructed.
- tl;dr - I think we've done more harm than good with this hard cap limit.
- GauchoDude (talk) 21:30, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
- Well the hard cap limit had already existed before, I just reduced it. Until a more thorough cleanup of the links in this template is completed, this seems like the best "quick fix". And as I mentioned, some of the more prominent sportspeople will have a plethora of database links. Even after the cleanup, displaying all of them would be excessive and in violation of WP:LINKFARM. In these cases it is better to use editorial discretion to individually choose the best links. S.A. Julio (talk) 01:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
- Again, per the points made above, by reducing the cap we've negatively impacted these articles which have links between 5 to 10 listed. This is an arbitrary number not based on anything in policy. We continue to reference WP:LINKFARM, but it says:
- "There is nothing wrong with adding relevant, useful links to the external links section of an article;" - Again, an argument for inclusionary criteria for this template. If the link is relevant and useful, it should be included. If it's not, then it shouldn't.
- "however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." - No mention as to total number of links, but moreso a potential call to action to improve the article size. Again, if the links were relevant and useful per above, I don't see why that shouldn't be shown.
- As a view into "how many is too many", I looked at some featured articles of sports biographies, none of whom use this template. Thierry Henry has 10, Wayne Gretzky has 11, Michael Jordan has 8, Stan Musial has 10, and Babe Ruth has 10.
- As far as I can tell, we've had this initial cap of 10 links since the template's creation 7 years ago, so it feels at best hasty and rushed to implement a global change without any conversation. If it's been just fine and well for 7 years, we should revert back to the 10 links as we discuss a path forward more thoroughly.
- GauchoDude (talk) 17:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
- I don't believe this has been resolved nor fully discussed so I'm still calling for a rollback to the original 10 links in the interim. @Zyxw:, @S.A. Julio:, @Trappist the monk:. GauchoDude (talk) 13:03, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- No idea why I've been pinged into this conversation. I care nothing for sports; have never edited this template; have no opinion on the matter to hand.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:39, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Trappist the monk: Apologies, I thought you had. I could have sworn I went into the history and pinged the most active editors. Sorry! GauchoDude (talk) 16:10, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- @S.A. Julio:, I am still in objection to this bold edit. As the template is locked, I am unable to revert. As there still has been no further discussion, the status quo of 10 links shown should be reverted back to default. Additionally, this puts this project in line with every other project this one is based on, which has seen their default set to 10 (or have actually increased):
- • no:Modul:External links (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Sport (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Arter (11)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Astronomi (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Autoritetsdata (25)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Film (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Filmperson (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Musikk (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Offisielle lenker (10)
- • no:Modul:External links/conf/Spill (10)
- I don't believe this has been resolved nor fully discussed so I'm still calling for a rollback to the original 10 links in the interim. @Zyxw:, @S.A. Julio:, @Trappist the monk:. GauchoDude (talk) 13:03, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well the hard cap limit had already existed before, I just reduced it. Until a more thorough cleanup of the links in this template is completed, this seems like the best "quick fix". And as I mentioned, some of the more prominent sportspeople will have a plethora of database links. Even after the cleanup, displaying all of them would be excessive and in violation of WP:LINKFARM. In these cases it is better to use editorial discretion to individually choose the best links. S.A. Julio (talk) 01:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
- Of course, with the exception of Module:External links (5) which you also took the liberty to reduce yourself. It is quite clear that the running consensus, both here prior and currently at the sister project on Norwegian Wikipedia, is a much greater number than you've tried to implement. GauchoDude (talk) 16:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- The limit of five links is sensible. In most cases anything beyond five external links is excessive. If the limit means "important" links are not shown, the solution is to specify links manually, without using the template, as S.A. Julio has explained:
For such edge cases it would probably be better to use individual external link templates instead of This article has no link in Wikidata.
,In these cases it is better to use editorial discretion to individually choose the best links.
. Robby.is.on (talk) 19:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Robby.is.on: Thank you for your participation. Again, in my opinion, the 5 link limit is absolutely arbitrary in nature and not based on any Wikipedia guidance. As has been shown above, the only impact this change has is on the profiles we can least afford it to.
- The most used external link template for MLB players is Template:Baseballstats, which for MLB players at minimum lists 5 to 6 external sources immediately (typically MLB, ESPN, Baseball Reference, and FanGraphs with RetroSheet sometimes appearing), which doesn't take into consideration any outside leagues or Halls of Fame. It's a similar story with all NHL players via Template:Ice hockey stats (NHL, Elite Prospects, ESPN, Hockey Reference, and Hockey DB with Eurohockey and TSN sometimes appearing) and all NFL players via Template:Footballstats (NFL, ESPN, CBS, Yahoo, Pro Football Reference), not to mention the huge amounts global soccer players could accrue.
- This arbitrary limit effectively kills the overall reach of this template for an overwhelming amount of players, not just "edge cases", and stops dead in its tracks what could be an incredibly powerful, far-reaching, and impactful template. GauchoDude (talk) 20:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
the 5 link limit is absolutely arbitrary in nature and not based on any Wikipedia guidance.
Well, Wikipedia:External links states: "Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum." At footballer articles, I have very rarely come across articles where more than three or four, let alone five, links were useful.MLB players, NHL players […]
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.stops dead in its tracks what could be an incredibly powerful, far-reaching, and impactful template.
or spammy, depending on how you look at it. Robby.is.on (talk) 21:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- This arbitrary limit effectively kills the overall reach of this template for an overwhelming amount of players, not just "edge cases", and stops dead in its tracks what could be an incredibly powerful, far-reaching, and impactful template. GauchoDude (talk) 20:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
Discussion over usage of Soccerdonna
edit| | This edit request to Module:External links/conf/Sports has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Discussion regarding reliability of Soccerdonna at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Soccerdonna. CNC (talk) 04:52, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
- Seems to be consensus against using. What needs to be done to stop Soccerdonna from displaying? Hameltion (talk | contribs) 15:16, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'd like to think it's as simple as removing the following lines from the module, given there is enough to fall back on:
{ prop='P4381', message='[$2 $1] at Soccerdonna$3', short='[$2 Soccerdonna$3]', langcode='de' },{ prop='P8134', message='[$2 $1] at Soccerdonna (manager)$3', short='[$2 Soccerdonna (manager)$3]', langcode='de' },- Hopefully someone with more understanding can confirm if this is correct or not. Either way an admin will be needed to edit the template, so if any are watching this page that'd be a good start. Thanks in advance. CNC (talk) 15:21, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- I believe you are correct. GauchoDude (talk) 22:26, 13 July 2024 (UTC)