Sports page changes

[ka3jjz]

Folks I am knee deep in attempting to migrate all the location specific content in our sports category to the various collaboration pages. Right now I have just downloaded a text copy of the NBA article, and got the National Lacrosse article last night.

From here on out, until everything in this category has been migrated, if you have changes to the NBA, NFL, NHL or National Lacrosse pages (the 4 that remain to be done), please put them in the sports page associated with that state instead. For example if you have changes for the Atlanta Hawks, place them in the Georgia sports article. If I see that someone has put this data here, I will assume that the page I have stored has old data and leave yours alone.

Just about every state now has a dedicated sports article, and it's linked in the web/wiki links section found near the end of each state's article. For example, for sports in Illinois, there is an Illinois Sports page. For the Boston Red Sox, you would find that in the Massachusetts Sports page, if there was data in the original Major League Baseball article for them.

This way I am never second-guessing as to whose data is more up to date, and constantly trying to reload because I think I have old data (which I build migration articles off line to accumulate the data - I couldn't do this any other way on dialup).

We're coming down the wire with moving all the location based wiki articles; this is the last category to be moved, I think. Once all the data is done, I need to add refresh links to all the sports articles, and this phase of the move is complete.

73 and thanks for your cooperation A much cross eyed Mike

 

[cubn]

Something to consider related to sports series (ex. regional racing, LPGA, PGA) is that the track or course may be on the tour for this year but not next year. Before it was quite easy to look at say the LPGA page and compare the courses listed to the current 2009 schedule and remove and add courses as venues change. Now that the courses and tracks are listed on various pages, it will be quite difficult to keep the wiki up-to-date as the sports schedules evolve.

Also, minor league sports teams change nicknames, venues (and venue names), or fold more frequently than their major league counterparts and keeping the wiki up-to-date in that regard is really challenging (not to mention their radio usage can change).

 

[ka3jjz]

If you can come up with a better method, please speak up. Unfortunately this new 'location based' outlook (that is behind the collaboration project) forces this kind of organization, but perhaps there's one that works better? 73 Mike

 

[cubn]

I don't have any solution right now. My only thought was for something like the PGA to leave the PGA page in place having the tour official frequencies on there since they are used nationwide and state that course frequencies are found on the wiki colobaration pages or in the database and then not mentioning on those collaboration pages that the course holds a PGA event; just have the section stating "Golf Courses: TPC Sawgrass" or whatever. Maybe it's not such a big deal for a course to be listed on the collaboration page as hosting an event it doesn't host anymore since there are other sites to tell the sports fan the tour schedule.

Hopefully the collaboration effort will bring more viewers (and editors) to the pages so the content expands and is more up-to-date as far as these issues.

 

[ka3jjz]

I was going to eliminate as many of those pages as I could; however, I've taken a different approach. I will put links with anchors in to point to each state's sports page, and the event or organization. Since you mentioned the PGA, I redid that article earlier today. This should keep the 'generic' or 'national' stuff in place, but everything that's state-related gets a link. Take a look and see if that's along the lines of what you are thinking.

I'm not up on racing, but I would think that if a site - say Chicagoland Speedway - hosts several events, it's not going to be the site that moves, but it's entirely possible that an event from another state would use it, right? If that's the case, then an anchored link to the Speedway solves that problem.

I am not quite done moving all the sports stuff - I have 9 or 10 states to go - but after that's done, I will restore the list of sports articles I posted in another thread. These articles will be temporarily locked for editing (so that I don't end up chasing my tail every time someone decides to put a change in that I don't see) , but anyone can view them. I will then redo them with anchored links, then unlock them.

But before I can do all that, we absolutely have to clean up the sports pages and isolate all these teams and sites that cause the same site to be repeated several times. That's very sloppy, frankly. Some of them are too long - even with the wiki's table of contents, maintaining them might be problematic (the Illinois sports and racing pages come to mind). That's an a-priori need once all this data is moved. There's a lot there.

73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

OK Folks, I think I have copied all the sports related data that was in the sports category into the state collaboration area. Just about every state now has a 'sports' page (linked at the bottom of the state page) where all the data has been assembled. The lone exception is Illinois - there was so much racing data that it had to be split off into its own article.

You will notice that several articles in the sports section have been locked out from editing (except for those with sysop priveledges or higher). This is deliberate - where a particular team or group is involved, the changes must be applied to the collaboration page, not to the original source page. That page is available for viewing only. After the sports stuff has been cleaned out, these pages will be redone so they point to whatever state and group is appropriate, then the pages will be unlocked. At that point, only organization-specific data should be placed in these articles (for example, a new radio network for NFL officials used nationwide). All state related data should continue to go to the state collaboration's sports page.

Thanks for taking the time to review the absorption. It's quite likely I made several mistakes - don't be shy about correcting them. The more eyes we have on this, and the more corrections, the more accurate this data will be 73 Mike

 

[ka3jjz]

The Sports page migrations are, for the most part, finished. All pages should now be open for business. From here on out, any team related (or sports site related) changes should go to that state's collaboration page. Any organizational stuff (like NFL officials frequencies) should stay in the Sports pages.

73 Mike