Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College Basketball/Archive 9

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I notice a lot of articles include "... Men's Basketball Tournament" and "... Women's Basketball Tournament" in their titles, but I have a hard time finding sources that call them that, or that capitalize those terms in sentence context as

My take is that "... Men's Basketball Tournament" and "... Women's Basketball Tournament" are descriptive titles for Wikipedia disambiguation purposes. They are not proper nouns (example). Generally these are referred to simply as "NCAA Tournament", "Big Ten Tournament", etc., and the context is implied by the source based on newspaper/website organization, etc. As those titles read fine without capitalization, I think it's fine top convert them.—Bagumba (talk) 05:38, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. It looks like there may be a few thousand of these, so I'd need to have a strong consensus to ask for bot help to move them. I can start by doing more in-article case fixing with JWB, and some moves by hand to see if wider exposure attracts any discussion. Thanks for your support. Dicklyon (talk) 01:12, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the March Madness one to NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, but I incorrectly mentioned "Wikiproject Basketball" in my edit summaries; dang it. Now I need to make another edit to direct any reactions to here. Dicklyon (talk) 01:26, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

To note, even ESPN doesn't consistently capitalize the simpler "NCAA tournament" (see here).—Bagumba (talk) 01:37, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I've moved and editted a bunch more. I don't expect much pushback, but will wait and see. Dicklyon (talk) 04:05, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't know. I think the full names of these tournaments may be proper nouns. Whatever the case, this is a not a basketball-specific issue, so consistency should be applied to other sports as well. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:40, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Do you see any sources in support of the idea that those are the full names of the tournaments? I don't. You're right, I see, that there are some other sports with the same issue, and yes let's get to that, too. Dicklyon (talk) 17:45, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I've just now notified the wikiprojects involved in articles like

NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament, which use this same pattern, to join the discussion here. Dicklyon (talk

) 18:06, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. If they are nouns and not proper names they should not be capitalised. Nehme₁₄₉₉ 18:08, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

This topic should cover all sports, not just college basketball. I've no preference for upper-casing or lower-casing. I only ask that we apply the style consistently, across the related pages. GoodDay (talk) 18:13, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

PS: Perhaps this entire discussion would be better held at

I looked some more and found some in volleyball, in addition to the soccer and ice hockey I mentioned above. The great majority are in basketball, so maybe this is the best place to discuss. I'll notify the volleyball project. Dicklyon (talk) 20:41, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Using this query, I made this list of about 3200 titles, more than two-thirds of which are basketball: Dicklyon (talk) 16:12, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I'll go ahead and seek bot help to do the moves, then I'll do cleanup with JWB. Dicklyon (talk) 23:50, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I would slow down on the bot requests. I'm finding lost of sources capitalizing these tournaments: [1], [2], [3]. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:38, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm listening. Are you saying you think these are the proper names of the events, and are consistently capitalized in sources? For a few of them? Or a lot of them? Dicklyon :::(talk) 02:20, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, these are clearly treated as proper names in the examples I've given. Are they "consistently" capitalized? I don't know, but they're capitalized a lot. I'm sure there are other examples where sources say "ACC tournament". But a mix of proper and generic references doesn't negate the existence of proper name at the core of the subject, e.g. mentions of "the majors" or "baseball" do not negate the proper noun status of "Major League Baseball". The burden of proof lies on you to show that a name change is warranted for each case. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:43, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

In general, the occurrence and capitalization of the phrase "Men's Basketball Tournament" is so rare that the burden of proof should be on finding exceptions to the conclusion that these titles are descriptive, not proper names. Is "AAC Men's Basketball Tournament" or "AAC Women's Basketball Tournament" such an exception, due to being found in a couple of newspaper articles? Let's look at things near that: Web search might incline you to capitalize "AAC Men's Basketball Coaches" and "... Championship" and "... Standings" and "... Schedule" and "... Matchups" along with "AAC Men's Basketball Tournament". But if you search news, you'll find lowercase at least as often as capped. In Book Search there's pretty much nothing. So it doesn't seem to be close to the threshold of "consistently capitalized in reliable sources", or even

WP:COMMONNAME for these events. Are there other possible exceptions? That's what I'm looking for. Dicklyon (talk

) 04:06, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Re Major League Baseball, that one is quite common and has reached about 75% capped in sources, and is clearly the proper name of an actual organization. Not much analogy to what we're looking at here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:27, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

"ACC Men's Basketball Coaches", i.e. the coaches of men's basketball in the ACC is not a proper noun. But the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament is a specific annual event with its own proper name. It's not just a couple of newspaper articles--those are just three I found in a few minutes. It's likely hundreds for this one tournament and many thousands when you consider all tournaments implicated here. Per the MLB, your comparison is ignoring simply "majors" and "baseball"--generic references to the MLB, which can't be easily parsed out from other uses of of "majors" and "baseball" in a quick search like this.

ACC Men's Basketball Tournament. Jweiss11 (talk

) 05:25, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

If "ACC Men's Basketball Tournament is a specific annual event with its own proper name", then we'd expect to see it consistently used thus, and capitalized, in sources. But that's not what we see. Even the site that promotes watching it online calls it many different things, all on the same page: "ACC Men's Basketball Tournament", "ACC Tournament", "ACC Basketball Tournament", "ACC Tournament Championship". They cap them all, along with Online and a few other things important to their message. There's not much indication that any of these terms is the actual official or proper name of the event, which is probably why other sources are also so variable. ESPN doesn't cap it. Neither does Greenville News or WRAL or Boston College or Tar Heel Times or Blue Ridge Public Radio or lots of other places. And of all the references cited on

ACC Men's Basketball Tournament, only theacc.com uses this name, it appears. This doesn't feel to me like sources view this as a proper name. Dicklyon (talk

) 23:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

@

ACC Men's Basketball Tournament, and include a selection of other AAC and other basketball articles, to see if we arrive at consensus, with exceptions or not. Dicklyon (talk

) 23:57, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: I'll take the silence to mean you have no further objection re ACC Men's Basketball Tournament as long as we're consistent. Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I still think these are all proper names. A move discussion would be good. I think would should try to get a broader consensus before we start renaming over 1,000 articles and tons of associated categories and templates. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:50, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

OK, I launched an RM discussion at

Talk:ACC Men's Basketball Tournament, where you can explain why you think some of these are proper names. Dicklyon (talk

) 04:48, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

• My personal over-capitalization pet peeve is the All-America college football teams, which were over-capitalize as, e.g. 1970 College Football All-America Team instead of 1970 All-America college football team. Cbl62 (talk)

  That's not what we're working on here, but go for it. For now, having a list that's well defined, easy to generate, and relatively easy to vet might lead to convergence and progress. Dicklyon (talk) 02:20, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Let's take this to

After the above-linked RM completed as "Move", we got a bot to move over 3000 articles, and I've done about 10,000 or so cleanup edits, which has been a long slog with some errors along the way, and still a bunch to do. Finally got all the related basketball categories moved (or almost all), but not yet all the templates (about 66 to go; hoping to get bot help, but I could do them by hand). Once those are moved, there's still a bunch more over-capitalization to fix. And I'm focusing on basketball for now, but will get back to soccer, ice hockey, etc. eventually. Some relevant discussion is at User talk:Tol#Redirects needed (that's the operator of TolBot). Along the way I've been fixing some, but by no means all, of the other commonly over-capped phrases in basketball articles (like First Round, Third Place Game, and lots more). Please, if you see any redlinks or other problems I have caused, let me know. Dicklyon (talk) 22:53, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Dicklyon thanks for you all your efforts here. But I'm scratching my head on some of your cleanup edits though. What is the point this edit [4], which produced red links? Why not just link to proper target, 1956 NCAA basketball tournament, and format accordingly? Also, I see you are changing the capitalization of things like "first round". I presume "Sweet Sixteen", "Elite Eight", "Final Four" stay capitalized? Jweiss11 (talk) 03:01, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

J, thanks for asking. The point is that I'm going through thousands of articles quickly, using replacment patterns that I've developed to be almost always correct, but sometimes they result in unanticipated errors such as unintended redlinks. I'm watching for unusual results, but checking every edit for redlinks would be about 10x slower than what I'm doing. So I let a few mistakes slip through, usually in patterns that are amenable to quick bulk fixing with JWB once they get pointed out to me. Some of these were from the redirect problem discussed at User talk:Tol#Redirects needed; I just fixed some of those by hand and will check again after that process completes. Dicklyon (talk) 03:43, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Skipping the redirect and linking directly to the proper target would be ideal, I agree. The reason I don't is that I don't know how to semi-automate the detection of redirects and their targets in a regex-replacement setting. A good bot writer could do, I'd bet. Dicklyon (talk) 23:49, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

And yes, things like "Sweet Sixteen", "Elite Eight", "Final Four" are apparently trademarks, while "first round" and "second round" are generic. Dicklyon (talk) 23:47, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Anything else?

After a few intense weeks with lots more downcasing of "tournament" and lots of other stuff, I'm about done for now. There's still a lot of over-capitalization in table headings, in sentences, etc., but not in huge pattern clusters that are easy to find and fix. If anyone sees anything I messed up, or has other patterns that they'd like to see worked on, please do let me know. Dicklyon (talk) 23:42, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: The title of the infobox for general tournament pages like Pac-12 Conference women's basketball tournament needs to be changed to lowercase, along with the subheader "College Basketball Tournament". —Bagumba (talk) 05:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Like this. I'll try to generalize... Dicklyon (talk) 05:08, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I see about 300 pages using that particular infobox, in various sports. This will take a while... Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Done. Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

There is open conversation about the naming convention for UAPB's women's team name at

Given the

WP:NOCONSENSUS for inclusion, I removed them.—Bagumba (talk

) 13:08, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I have nominated ESPNU College Basketball for merging - see here for more information. 100.7.44.80 (talk) 20:28, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

here if you'd like to participate. 100.7.44.80 (talk

) 01:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

It is too clunky to have school name, years and city, state. The years should be discussed in prose in the high school section Rikster2 (talk) 00:41, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

What is the reasoning for why it *should* be included? "Because we have it" is not a reason for including it in the infobox. What does the reader gain from the infobox by seeing the years that a player was at a high school, or the multiple different high schools they may have attended, the vast majority of which are not well-known? At least professional and college teams are limited, and the vast majority of them are well-known. The overwhelming number of high schools are not known by the average reader, and seeing high schools listed adds nothing of value. fuzzy510 (talk) 01:53, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Agree w/Rikster2 and Fuzzy510. But to add: infoboxes are supposed to list the most relevant, pared-down, immediately necessary information for a reader to gain an understanding of the article's subject. For basketball biographies, high school years add no value to the very limited infobox real estate. College years are relevant because they provide context as to when a player played at the highest amateur level of the sport, and also provide a framework as to when that player was (approximately) eligible for the NBA draft. High school years do not create additional value; in the prose, sure, but not in the infobox where "(City, State)" are already listed after them. It's superfluous info at best for the infobox.

SportsGuy789 (talk

) 20:25, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

None of us can possibly know that, Tony, but whenever a determination is made, we can update the articles accordingly. In the meantime, this area is

WP:NOTAFORUM to discuss things like this. fuzzy510 (talk

) 04:42, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:WAWARD

) 05:28, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

If it's not definitive, why wouldn't we just call it "postponed" for now until a formal announcement is made otherwise?—Bagumba (talk) 05:37, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Both institutions involved have the game currently listed as postponed. Unless there has been a recent article (which is to say, not reporting on the initial fact that the game is not being played as scheduled) stating that the game has been cancelled, it would be inappropriate to say that the game is anything other than postponed. fuzzy510 (talk) 05:43, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Is there a reason that

ESPN, Fox Sports, and Hampton themselves refer to the team as Lady Pirates. A GHit result shows 3,030 results for "Hampton Lady Pirates basketball" versus 1,470 for "Hampton Pirates women's basketball". The only legit source which contradicts the use of Lady Pirates is the NCAA, whose page refers to the team as simply Pirates (link). So, I guess Lady Pirates is correct?

SportsGuy789 (talk

) 15:46, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

The inclusion of "men's" is probably to combat gender bias that "<school> <mascot> basketball" is assumed to be the men's program. On the other hand, "Lady Pirates" presumably is

WP:COMMONNAME over "Pirates women's". —Bagumba (talk

) 01:22, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd appreciate any feedback at a discussion I started at {{Infobox college sports team season}}. We don't seem to be using the tourney or tourney_result parameters as the template documentation suggests. Hoof Hearted (talk) 16:16, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

With the COVID redshirt, I notice that

I'm not sure that they've been updated for a minute, and could probably use some checking up. --fuzzy510 (talk) 20:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

SportsGuy789 (talk

) 04:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Now that you called my attention to it, I see that the NCAA career records were updated December 5.-

WP:WAWARD

) 14:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

My apologies, and thank you for that. And I agree, one big end-of-season update makes much more sense. fuzzy510 (talk) 14:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with one end-of-season update for the games played list. The other lists are much easier to keep up with. The number of active players on various leaders lists that I've been keeping up with (or, in some cases, created): — Dale Arnett (talk) 20:31, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

* Men's career scoring leaders: One (Antoine Davis). Davis is also the only active player who's an all-time conference scoring leader, and one of only two who (to my knowledge) is his program's all-time leader (Darius McGhee being the other).

* Men's career three-point leaders: Three (Davis, McGhee, Umoja Gibson).

* Women's career three-point leaders: Two (Taylor Robertson, Taylor Mikesell).

* Women's career field-goal percentage leaders: One (Monika Czinano).

• For the scoring leaders, it might be interesting to add a column for who their coach was since #1 and #2 had their dads as coach as did
  WP:WAWARD
  ) 11:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  It's not really relevant for most of them, and the conclusions you're drawing would be pure

  WP:OR. And for every four-year player who played for one coach the entire time, a player who transferred and had multiple coaching changes would look *extremely* messy in the table. fuzzy510 (talk

  ) 14:20, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

  I'm with fuzzy510. That's an unnecessary column and zero to do with career scoring leaders. The article is already borderline FL status, Tony, leave well enough alone, jeez.

  SportsGuy789 (talk

  ) 14:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

• My comment about asterisks and comments about Father-son coaching relationship are not meant to discredit
  WP:WAWARD
  ) 03:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
• P.S. I think
  WP:WAWARD
  ) 14:04, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Attn:
    WP:WAWARD
    ) 14:04, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

    • Confirmed. See here. — Dale Arnett (talk) 18:43, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone else feel it would be useful if

What value does that information have to justify its inclusion in the tournament article? fuzzy510 (talk) 22:49, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I find myself trying to figure out when more bids will be determined. Having a dates column would enable us to sort to figure things out. My team (Michigan) is on the bubble (and may have fallen off of it today). I am trying to figure out how many top conference tournament seeds were upset.--

WP:WAWARD

) 03:18, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I can see why that would be useful for you, but I'm not seeing why that's a useful inclusion on this year's tournament's main page. fuzzy510 (talk) 04:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

It's clutter for someone who reads this years, even weeks from now.—Bagumba (talk) 07:04, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Since the NIT uses a campus play format where the higher seed is the home team, why do we present brackets with the high seed above the low seed? Usually the home team is at the bottom when scores are presented in two rows.--

When scores are displayed, sure, but that's not a common principle when displaying brackets at all. Common bracket display involves having the higher-seeded team displayed on the top line, regardless of where the games are being played. -fuzzy510 (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

They're probably referring to something like 2021–22 NFL playoffs#Bracket, which isn't readily apparent that the home team is on the bottom, unless you happen to be a fan enough to know the stadiums. If the home team tidbit really was to be effectively conveyed, it'd just use a simple symbol, or at least explain in a key. —Bagumba (talk) 10:09, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I saw this line at Drew Timme, but have seen elsewhere before:

{{nowrap|2× Consensus second-team [[NCAA Men's Basketball All-Americans|All-American]] ([[2021 NCAA Men's Basketball All-Americans|2021]], [[2022 NCAA Men's Basketball All-Americans|2022]])}}

Its bad to nowrap an entire line; it's meant for small snippets. Per the {{nowrap}} documentation: Use this template sparingly...The size of the nowrapped text becomes the minimum width of that paragraph and that can negatively influence the ability of the page to adapt to smaller screens, or alternate representations of the content.

We can't assume everyone has got a wide screen, or easier yet, think mobiles. This just makes for a potentially giant infobox. Generally, let the platform decide how and when to wrap. —Bagumba (talk) 09:57, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that is the work of a specific user. Probably best to direct them here or address on their talk page. Rikster2 (talk) 12:59, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

For Timme, I traced it to this edit by

SportsGuy789—Bagumba (talk

) 14:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

What is the specific question/concern? Is it that year or official stats for any year? Rikster2 (talk) 01:37, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I am working on

WP:WAWARD

) 21:21, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

If you ever need

SportsGuy789 (talk

) 13:34, 16 March 2023 (UTC)