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Wikipedia:Featured article review/Baseball/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 2:32, 7 July 2018 (UTC) [1].

Baseball

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Notified: WP Baseball, WP Sports, Woohookitty, no other active unblocked significant contributors ‎

This featured article review is a procedural nomination as there was sockpuppet involvement at its last FAC. Thus the article needs to be immediately reassessed. Note that this does not necessarily mean that it is not up to standard, but that it needs to be checked. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:23, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Notes, @Fasach Nua: reviewed images, so they should be good, unless new images have been added. @Giants2008: the only active FAC supporter. I did not promote this FA, so will be participating in this review, particularly with regard to WP:SIZE and WP:SUMMARY SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, I'd describe myself as kind of active the way things have been going, and I've been dealing with other issues (having a TFL changed on you unilaterally isn't fun!), but I'll try to find some time to look at this article. I remember adding a few cites to it at one point, and it looks to be in decent shape at first glance. Giants2008 (Talk) 16:31, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comments

WP:SIZE recommends WP:SUMMARY at 50 kb. The readable prose size of this article greater than 62KB, about 12,000 words (the Drpda prose script is not picking up considerable KB in lists and block quotes, so I measured it directly by copying text into Microsoft Word.) I suggest that summary style could be better used at:

Hatnotes are used incorrectly, since Summary style is not generally used. For example, the section, Uniqueness of each baseball park, is not a summary of Baseball park; that hatnote should be changed from Main to something else, like further information. This happens everywhere.

Checking for outdatedness is in order:

  • ... for example, stated records in the popularity section.
  • Another example, "As of 2007, Little League Baseball oversees more than 7,000 children's baseball leagues with more than 2.2 million participants ... " ... It is 2018, why 2007 data unless it is in History section?
  • "In 2008, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 35,000 collegians played on their schools' baseball teams.[183] The number of Americans participating in baseball has declined since the late 1980s, falling well behind the number of soccer participants.[186]" Why a 2004 and 2008 source?
Player rosters; idea of DH rule in other countries where baseball is a major sport.

Prose can be reviewed, example redundancy: "... the first games of baseball to charge admission took place. The games, which took place ..."

This archived source does not point to the text it is citing, so a page number is missing for the book:

  • The tactical decision that precedes almost every play in a baseball game involves pitch selection. By gripping and then releasing the baseball in a certain manner, and by throwing it at a certain speed, pitchers can cause the baseball to break to either side, or downward, as it approaches the batter.
This is a dead link, that is not at archive.org-- should be easy to source:
  • Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is known for its fickle disposition: a hitter's park when the strong winds off Lake Michigan are blowing out, it becomes more of a pitcher's park when they are blowing in.[dead link‍]
    • REFGilbert, Steve (September 30, 2008). "Wrigley's Winds Don't Rattle Lowe". Major League Baseball. Retrieved 2009-02-17.
Another dead MLB link, not at archive.org Would it be appropriate to mention the extent in the US (Japan also) of players coming from the Caribbean and Venezuela?

Going through 12,000 words to make sure everything is up to date will be a chore-- this is one of the problems that occurs with size bloat. This is only a brief foray. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:37, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I ran the DYK checker on both the current version and the one that passed FAC, and the current one is longer by about 1,000 words. That indicates that I may be able to do some trimming, although some of this is surely the effect of updates. In general, I'm not as bothered by the length as you are, Sandy. FAs in general are longer now than they were in those days, and any article on a major general subject like baseball is going to be longer than a run-of-the-mill FA if it is truly comprehensive (and it will fail the criteria if it isn't comprehensive). I wrote an FA about this long that passed with flying colors, so length alone should not be a barrier if it has a purpose. When I go to copy-edit this page, we'll find out how necessary it is.
  • Changed as many of the hatnotes as I could find.
  • When I get a chance, I'd like to take a shot at finding those MLB.com pages. They changed their website at some point, and I've had some success digging through the archive to find old pages that were tagged as lost causes. My editing has been cut down to almost nothing because of real-life work, so work on this page may come in stops and starts. However, I will do as much as I can for this page, as it is so important for all of us sports fans. Giants2008 (Talk) 12:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just took a quick look at the size of the section that were mentioned by Sandy, and the rules section is the one that really need trimming. Just doing that will take the size down by a good amount. Some trims should be possible in the history section, although I tend to like long history sections so I may not be the best judge. As for the "around the world" section, we do need some of this information for the article to be comprehensive, so I'd lean towards the conservative side in making changes there. Giants2008 (Talk) 13:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suspected you would have some tricks up your sleeve re finding those links, which is why I tagged them! They are also things that could easily be re-sourced, and I suspected you also would know where to find other sources. I trust you on size, but I would say to take into consideration what an average reader is looking for. As of now, this is 40 printed pages! But what do you think about the outdatedness of some of the info, records and such? Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Here is History of baseball, which I just created; at 3,650 words, it is fully a third of this article. History does not need to be a third of the total article; this article can still be cut down to use summary style in the History section. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Giants2008: I cut 2,000 words from History and moved it down; as odd as it seems to us, people in some other countries have no idea how baseball is played, so to be talking in so much detail about the game before explaining how the game is played seemed odd. I think the size is manageable now (it is STILL a huge article), but we should look at Further reading, See also. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:49, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • PS, Giants, for your effort, you might take History of Baseball to FAC, and get an FA out of it. With a better lead, it might be there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:50, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I can live with the size, but I do think the section should be towards the top of the page, not near the bottom. At a minimum, it should be higher than Distinctive elements and Statistics. There's some logic in keeping the rules and strategy-related sections together, but I'd certainly consider it more worthy of appearing higher than those other sections. You apparently answered your own question on the See also section; I'll try to make further trims here and in the external links. Giants2008 (Talk) 18:33, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've done all I can, so edit away-- move History section wherever you'd like ... any ideas on Further reading? Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:36, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • The article is down to a trim 8,000 words, I did a little image work to fix sandwiching, and some updates have been made where necessary. In addition, the further reading section has been trimmed (I agree with the implication that it was bloated before). Perhaps, with the copy-editing pass that I'll start later today, this won't even need to go to FARC. Giants2008 (Talk) 16:36, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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