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Score! American football on Wikipedia
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This week, we headed over to WikiProject National Football League. With 10 Featured Articles, 61 Featured Lists, and 142 Good Articles (as of publication), this WikiProject has done a lot of work improving American football articles. This week, we interviewed ZappaOMati, Sportsguy17, Deejayk, and Zzyzx11.
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- What motivated you to join WikiProject NFL? What kind of NFL-related articles do you like to work on?
- ZappaOMati: Football was one of my first obsessions, and the first articles I created were football-related, so when I found out about WikiProject NFL's existence, I didn't hesitate in joining. Usually the pages I work on tend to vary, though pages about the Chicago Bears are usually my main focus.
- Sportsguy17: Similar to ZappaOMati, I enjoy football and I love following the NFL. I have been less active as I hoped, but now that we're heading into Thanksgiving games, and soon enough, the playoffs, I'll be getting more active there.
- DeeJayK: As you would probably assume, I'm a big football fan, particularly of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I started editing football-related articles when I found that coverage of some topics was lacking. My interest in the NFL WikiProject came about simply because it's a great resource to interface with like-minded editors and build consensus around best practices to improve articles on the subject.
- Zzyzx11: I was the one who first started WikiProject NFL back in July 2005. I originally came to Wikipedia in February 2005 with an interest in the NFL-related articles, and my first edits as a registered user were the Super Bowl-related pages. For the next several months, I was one of the few main contributors to the NFL-related articles. After looking through WikiProject Football and WikiProject Ice Hockey in May 2005, I thought about also creating one for the NFL pages, but it was not until July when another Wikipedian asked me on how to organize activity on these NFL articles.
- WikiProject NFL has 10 Featured Articles, but also has a very shocking 61 Featured Lists. Can you explain why WP NFL has so much Featured Lists?
- DeeJayK: I assume this is in part because the topic sort of lends itself to lists and also because getting a list to "featured" status simply seems to take less work and investment of time than getting an article featured.
- Zzyzx11: Statistics plays an important role in analyzing American football teams, coaches, and players, probably more so than baseball or other team sports. Since there are a lot of reliable sources on all these statistics, it is usually easier to add them to Wikipedia and convert them to featured status.
- What type of NFL articles do you like to improve? (Players, coaches, seasons, etc.)
- ZappaOMati: I usually like to improve pages about players, and report any news regarding them once they're confirmed, (e.g., transactions) along with updating/adding recaps to season pages. Also, two of the main priorities of mine include maintaining List of NFL starting quarterbacks, while also doing the same with List of current National Football League head coaches in the future.
- DeeJayK: While I have created and edited many player articles, lately my focus has been on improving season articles and articles with a wider scope (e.g. articles/lists on the NFL Draft, All-Pro teams, Pro Bowls and league championships). Particularly I like to work on articles where reliable information is difficult to find elsewhere online, as in the case of some of the games and events from the early days of the league.
- I noticed that you have a format for different types of articles. Do you use these formats when you create new articles?
- DeeJayK: Most definitely, and this is where I find the WikiProject particularly valuable. When establishing or changing article format "standards" it's so valuable to open the topic up to the other editors involved with the project. A good example of this is the evolution of the NFL Draft article format (e.g. 2013 NFL Draft) which came about as a result of a series of discussion in the WikiProject.
- Zzyzx11: This was one of the first things we emphasized during the first few weeks of Wikiproject NFL's existence. I was inspired by WikiProject Ice Hockey's formats, and I therefore initially drafted similar ones for Wikiproject NFL, listing what I was doing when contributing to the NFL articles during spring 2005. These formats also help getting some of these NFL-related pages to featured or good article status. It is no accident that, for example, Chicago Bears head coaches, New England Patriots head coaches, and 20 other featured lists on NFL head coaches look similar.
- Do you participate in any of the numerous task forces?
- ZappaOMati: I rarely join task forces if the scopes are not of my interest, and of the 17 task forces in existence, the lone one that I am in is WikiProject Chicago Bears.
- Sportsguy17: I may join task forces if I want to focus on one team, but I have someone similar thoughts to ZappaOMati on this one.
- DeeJayK: I also rarely join task forces as I find that I stay busy enough just by stumbling onto pages where I find opportunities for improvement.
- How can a new contributor help today?
- ZappaOMati: Pages always require updating, especially in the always-evolving NFL. As players/coaches come and go, and games are played, there must be someone to take action and edit articles to keep them up-to-date. Photos would also be greatly appreciated; there are many great players in the NFL who don't have photos (Mike Vanderjagt, for example) or have photos of poor quality (like Rob Gronkowski) that should be replaced.
- DeeJayK: The advice I would give is just to look around the site until you find an article you are interested in that seems lacking. Do some research into that topic and try to improve that article. I find that while I'm researching information to flesh out one article I generally come upon information that would improve another article, with one edit leading to the next. If you need some ideas of places other editors have identified as lacking or in need of improvement, check out the WikiProject's to-do list.
- Is there anything else you'd like to add?
- DeeJayK: Thanks for providing this opportunity to shed some light on the NFL WikiProject!
- Zzyzx11: Maintaining articles, not just NFL-related pages but also articles on any other topic, is a year-round task. Most of my activity on NFL-related articles is generally during the spring and summer when the league is in its offseason, and there are less news spikes and recentism activity.
Next week, we'll pad onto previous reports. Until then, check out the old ones at the archives.
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