Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Non-league football

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Contents 1 Enquiry 2 King's Lynn 3 English football club stubs 4 Hello 5 History section 6 2006-07 Restructuring in England 7 Bishop's Stortford and Fisher Athletic 8 League vs. Division articles 9 A concern 10 I'm new! 11 What should I do?? 12 Encyclopedic content vs News 13 Carshalton Athletic 14 Wikipedia Day Awards 15 Playoffs 16 Chasetown F.C. 17 Creation of WikiProject Football task forces

[edit] Enquiry

I would definitely like to help out. But does non-league football refer to English clubs only or the whole world? I feel countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and other nations having non-league football should also be included in this project. If ALL football clubs are being represented and quite a number of these articles reach Featured Articles standard, then Wikipedia will truly be a global encyclopedia! --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 12:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... that's something that needs to be decided. I personally think we should limit our scope first to English non-League football, then expand to the rest of the UK, then the rest of the English-speaking world, then everything else. Tompw 18:56, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I set up the project because I noticed a few new editors were interested in English non-league football and was going to call it "English non-league football" but decided to expand it to any non-league football at Siva1979's request. I don't know how many contributors are interested in non-league football outside Britain at the moment, but it can't hurt to include other countries in the project and if any work we do on templates, standards etc is useful for articles on clubs in other countries then that can only be a good thing. CTOAGN (talk) 12:43, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we should proceed step-by-step first. But if contributers are able to create good articles on clubs from other countries having non-league football, we should also help out. But the real goal of this project should include ALL clubs in the footballing world. If we limit our scope first to English non-league football, we should also not neglect clubs from other countries as well. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 12:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] King's Lynn

Apart from ongoing work on Gloucester City and Brian Godfrey, I intend to make King's Lynn my priority. Dave Hatton 23:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I've added some info to Kings Lynn from the club's website. I'm intending to do some work on AFC Wimbledon for a while - does anyone want to help? There's so much content already there that with a bit of tidying up and some info on the players I think we could get it onto the main page.

I think going Division-wise is helpful, well for me at least, since I'm not all that well-versed with all the divisions. I think I'll begin with Northern Premier League, Burscough F.C., to be more precise. -Aabha (talk) 14:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Since King's Lynn is Dave's priority, I intend to make Gloucester City my priority to make sure if it relegates or it promotes then sending the end-of-season reports of either the relegation point or the promotion point for the next season.

Rakuten06 21:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English football club stubs

There are over 809 articles in Category:English football club stubs. In order to help bring this number down, I'd like to propose that we introduce a "letter of the week". The object will be to spend a week de-stubbing all club names begining with that letter. What do people think of this? Tompw 14:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I do like this idea of focusing on a letter, but feel that a week may not be long enough to make any substantial inroad into the lists of stubs, what with the day job and other commitments that most of us have. In addition, there appear to be a limited number of us here in this section. Would a month be a more workable timescale?Dave Hatton 22:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

My thought was to start on the letters with relativly few club stubs, and then move onto more common letters as the number of participants increases - though I agree some may require over a week, and for those, we could make it a fortnight or a month as required. Tompw 23:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

B	S	C	W	H	L	R	A	M	T	P	N	D	F	G	E	O	K	I	U	V	Y	misc	Q	J
100	86	70	68	67	46	42	41	40	40	35	31	28	27	25	24	21	15	7	4	4	4	3	2	1

(As 14th Feb 2006)

I agree, It will be more easy to get through the stubs in monthly basis, starting with "A"

Rakuten06 00:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to help as much as I can.

Freshprince 18:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I've had a good crack at AFC Sudbury (think that's sorted) and Alsager Town F.C. (needs a bit more). Dancarney 20:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Who will be responsible for de-stubbing the articles?? I and Dancarney finished Abingdon United F.C. but still waits for the approval to de-stub the article...

Rakuten06 16:24, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm slowly going through the teams in the Eastern Counties Football League Premier Division. I've finished AFC Sudbury, Clacton Town F.C. and Bury Town F.C., but the latter 2 need checking before de-stubbing. Dancarney 01:23, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no approval needed for destubbing articles. I removed the stub tag from Clacton Town F.C. and Bury Town F.C., they aren't stubs anymore, in my opinion, going by Wikipedia:Stub. I've also made the infoboxes a bit narrower, by breaking the name of the league, I hope nobody minds that. -Aabha (talk) 05:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I have had a go at editing Tonbridge Angels F.C., tell what you think and if it's good enough to de-stub. Freshprince 18:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Freshprince,

Be Bold in removing stub tags yourself! Have a read of Wikipedia:Stub, it is the amount of info in the article that determines its status as a stub, so if you're the one who has worked on the article, you're the best judge. Aabha (talk) 04:58, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hello

Do I need to do anything to formally join this project other than add my name to the list on the project page? I would like to do some work on clubs in the West Midlands (where I live) and Kent (where I'm originally from) - I made a start with Pelsall Villa F.C., please let me know what you think..... ChrisTheDude 13:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Chris,
Yup, just add your name to the participant list on the main page. If you want to pick a specific division to work on, go ahead and do so. And that's great work on Pelsall Villa. -Aabha (talk) 04:57, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I have now de-stubbed all 22 clubs in the West Midlands Regional League - hurrah!!! ChrisTheDude 12:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Great job, ChrisTheDude! --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

And now I've finished all the clubs in the Kent League Premier Division....think I'll have a little breather now :-) ChrisTheDude 12:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History section

I was just wondering if there should be uniformity in the way the club history is given. Pelsall Villa F.C. for instance, uses a year-wise list, while Clacton Town F.C. has paragraphs. What does everyone else think? -Aabha (talk) 05:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I went for the bullet point approach with Pelsall Villa simply because that was the only info I could find and I thought it would look a bit rubbish to have a paragraph that just read "In this year they got promoted, then in this year they got relegated, then in this year they got promoted again". If I can locate some more in-depth info on the club's history I will try and flesh that section out into a proper paragraph, as I personally prefer that approach..... ChrisTheDude 08:11, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the paragraph form is preferable. I've just had a quick look at Pelsall Villa's website and their club history section is pretty uniformative. Unfortunately for them it appears that for most of their history they've been a mediocore team in a low division so it's difficult to know what you else can other than what ChrisTheDude has included. At least Clacton have had a bit of a topsy-turvy existance, and their league's website provided an excellent 2-page history of it all. Dancarney 11:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

In general, the year-based bullet point information is drawn from the Football Club History Database. The bullet-point list has the advantage of providing concise list of milestones in the club's life. I think paragrpah based material should aim to provide the bigger picture, or detail on specific episodes of the club's life. Tompw 12:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

But please try to gain some verifcation of FCHD information. I do as much as I can to cross-check stuff, but it's a personal web-site after all and it won't have the same standard of independent checking as Wikipedia. With over 6000 club entries, each averaging over 4K of text, most of it manually entered, there are bound to be numerous errors. fchd 07:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The FCHD site is invaluable for this stuff (thanks Richard). While errors will be a concern if compiling season-by-season totals for clubs, when using the site for broader historical purposes, it's fairly invulnerable. It's easy to mistype the number of goals scored in a season, but it's much less likely to have a mistake where it is stated that the club was in the wrong league than in reality. I've been beefing up clubs' histories and notable FA Cup/Trophy/Vase this way. While I don't have all the information necessary to un-stub them, it's progress. Balerion 21:21, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2006-07 Restructuring in England

What with the English National League System being restructured, lots of 'non-league' league systems, team pages, etc. are now out of date and need updating. I've had a good crack at the Isthmian League First Division North and its teams, but I suspect there's a lot to be done in the summer break. Dancarney 23:25, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with you on this. In fact, updating the information on the league systems and clubs is a yearly affair which I am eager and passionate about to keep the articles up-to-date. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 03:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bishop's Stortford and Fisher Athletic

I've made some changes here, adding the teambox, but I am completely baffled by how to edit the kit colours. When I delete that code, the kits just show up as black, which is how I've left Fisher Athletic. I'd like to help out more but don't want to mess things up. As well, if the ground capacity and general manager are unknown, I've left them in the template and just written "unknown" afterwards. Is there a standard that I'm not aware of in cases like this? Jmcnally 05:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Hiya, hope I can help out a bit. Within the infobox you should see fields for leftarm1, body1, rightarm1, shorts1 and socks1 - these represent the different portions of the kit. There are also equivalent fields for the away kit, with 2 instead of 1 in the descriptions. To select the colour of a portion of the kit, all you need to do is add the six character "web colour" code for the colour you wish it to be after the = sign, for instance typing leftarm1=0000FF will turn the leftarm blue. If you don't know the colour codes for the colours you need, check out Web colors, or alternatively (this is what I do) look up another team who wear the same colours and copy it from there!!

To add a pattern (eg stripes) to a section of the shirt, colour it in as normal and then add the name of the pattern after (for example) "pattern_la1", so if you had already coloured the left arm blue as described above and then you set the pattern_la1 field to pattern_la1=_white_stripes, you would see a blue sleeve with white stripes. The full line-up of available patterns can be found at Template_talk:Football_kit#Pattern_files. Hope this helps..... ChrisTheDude 09:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, Chris. I've done my best but the away kit for Fisher Athletic is not exactly right. But I've learned a thing or two! Jmcnally 20:35, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] League vs. Division articles

I realize this has been discussed on WikiProject football a while ago but I thought it was a bit more relevant here; as we are delving more and more into adding information to lower leagues we should figure out how we are doing this before loading ourselves with tons of reformatting work. A few weeks ago I fleshed out the Middlesex County Football League and created pages for the top three divisions. Yesterday I added a bit more info and merged the individual division pages back into the league page. The fact is, there is very little , if any, information about each division that can't be placed in the main league article. I plan on working through the Step 7 leagues soon, but before I make a lot of changes I'd like to figure out what the consensus is.

On related stylistic note, I see that Richard Rundle (among others) has done a fine job with the Anglian Combination. In the member clubs section, he created a list of clubs per division in a more compact manner than I did in the MCFL. I think I like his way better - what do others thing? --Balerion 16:10, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Despite the fact that I just added to one, I think that divisional pages for Step 5 leagues are pretty pointless. What useful information can we put in the division articles that can't go into the league pages? It's not like any of the Step 5 league articles are overflowing with information. I propose that we merge divisional articles for the 14 Step 5 and related Step 6 divisions into their respective league articles. --Balerion 06:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A concern

I wish to raise up a concer with regards to this project. Recently, an article about a non-league football club, Uppermill Football Club was listed in AfD. The result of the debate was Delete. This club is quite notable at the local level, even though it was a level 14 club of the English football league system. It even has its own website. If this precedence was to carry on, it is in my humble opinion that this project would be redundent and unnecessary. Is there any way to address these concerns? Moreover, I feel that the statement at WP:CORP#Criteria for sporting clubs is unusually absolute in nature. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Football has passed a proposal that only clubs levels 1-10 are inherently notable and they seem to be deleting all clubs below level 10 unless they have played at a higher level in the past or are in a particularly strong level 11 league (SWL, Devon County, CML, etc). I'm with you and don't entirely agree with this. We don't need a bajillion stubs about clubs in Division 9 of the Mid-Sussex Football League, but if someone contributes to Wikipedia by writing an informative article about, say a level 14 club, that has sources and interesting information, I suggest we use common sense and keep it.--Balerion 17:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I advise we non-league enthusiasts play the long-term game.... concentrate on getting articles on clubs at levels 1-10 up to scratch... then it becomes far easier to argue keeping an article on a club that happens to be at level 11. Tompw 14:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, that is a fair comment. These articles (level 11 -24 clubs) would be created for sure in the near or distant future when information about them is verifiable in a great detail. Let us now refocus on our goals in de-stubbing the current non-league football club articles and we shall take it from there. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 04:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'm new!

• Hello all! I have just joined as a new member of WikiProject Non-league football. How are we all doing? What's to do? I've already done lots of work on AFC Wimbledon as well as stuff on Kingsmeadow, Supporters Direct, Supporters' trusts, etc.

Also, for those active members of WikiProject Non-league football, I've done a quick userbox template (see my user page for how it looks - MLD). To add it to your own page type {{Template:User WikiProject Non-league football}} on your userpage.

--MLD 16:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Lately it seems that efforts have been concentrated on the English football league system and all the leagues/divisions therein. It's something that requires constant maintenance because we discover new leagues somewhat frequently, plus we have to deal with the vagaries and inconsistencies within the pyramid.

But really, the next important step is to really flesh out the club articles. There are a ton of stubs, especially in the Step 5 and Step 6 leagues. You seem to be an AFC Wimbledon...perhaps you could start by working on Isthmian Premier League articles? A lot of them already have some information, but most of them could use some formatting and adjustments. --Balerion 16:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What should I do??

What club stubs should I do now?? I joined this a few months ago but I forgot about this, can anyone give me an assignment??

Reply to me when you find an assignment

Rakuten06 19:09, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Just do whatever takes your fancy, dude.... ChrisTheDude 19:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

We don't really hand out assignments. It's Wikipedia, improve the articles on subjects you know something about. We have a ton of club article stubs, especially in the level 9 and 10 leagues. Most of the league pages have been improved over the past few months, but the club articles could definitely use some help. --Balerion 20:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Really?? Which club articles should I start helping?? Rakuten06 20:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned above, it's really up to you, we're all editors together, nobody is a "senior" editor who's going to tell you to edit such-and-such, but if you really don't know where to start, just as a suggestion, how about having a look at the clubs in the Combined Counties Football League Premier Division - lots of stubs there..... ChrisTheDude 08:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Encyclopedic content vs News

Hiya, I'm new to this project and all. I'm a Hyde United fan (I know, this page really needs sorting out too!) and will help out where I can. I've noticed quite a few football articles are a bit 'newsy', and have a lot of focus on recent results. Something to look out for, I'd think. One quite bad example is the FCUM page which has such delights as

"FC United defeated Brodsworth Welfare (Doncaster) by 3-1 in an away fixture (taking most of the 1,251 crowd), then went to Padiham F.C. in Round One where goals by Simon Carden (2) and Stuart Rudd gave FC United a 3-0 victory in front of 1,371 supporters"

I know they're only a recently formed club, but I feel it does set a bit of a precedent. Thoughts are appreciated - tell me I'm out of order if you like. As I said, I'm new to Wiki etiquette! --Gavinio 01:18, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• I agree, there is certainly far too much detail on the FCUM page - we don't even have match-by-match accounts of the current season for most Premiership teams, let alone a team that plays eight levels lower. It definitely needs trimming (WP is not a news wire, after all). As I see it (and this goes for league teams as much as non-league) we should be aiming for an overview of each club's history and highlights without falling victim to the curse of "recentism" (whereby the last couple of years are detailed in painstaking detail whilst whole decades from earlier in the history are glossed over in single sentences)..... ChrisTheDude 08:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I also agree, too much detail on the main article. Perhaps if whoever is updating this article feels the need to keep such detailed information about each match they should be in season-by-season articles like Plymouth Argyle F.C. season 2006-07. Also, it may be original research, has all of this information been published before? Gasheadsteve 09:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Glad to see I'm not on my own with that one - shall I be the one to wield the sword then? Anyway, as for the original research, I think you're always going to struggle without that in small non-league clubs. I've seen other clubs do the same outside the non-league arena too. The difficulty with FCUM is that they're so recently formed - there's not much beyond that. I'll give it a go - watch the revert war commence from fans who think they're being victimised... :o) --Gavinio

OK - I've done it! Can people please take a look at the FCUM and FC United of Manchester Season 2005-06 articles and tidy up if needs be? I'm a bit busy at the moment! --Gavinio

[edit] Carshalton Athletic

I've just finished rewriting the history for Carshalton Athletic and would appreciate someone having alook and seeing if it is OK (I've a feeling I've been a bit long winded!). Will be working on the grounds section over the next couple of days. Thanks Vicard 01:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Excellent work, especially in that you've given equal weight to every era of Carshalton's history...recentism can be a problem with football articles. My thought is that we could make use of WikiProject's Assessment drive to get it up to Good Article status without too much more work. There are currently only 14 football articles with such status and to get an article in there that is within the scope of the non-league world would be a nice advertisement for our sub-Project. --Balerion 05:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Sadly from looking at their priorities and recent nomination habits, it doesn't look likely that a non league article would get very far at all, even the Watford article failed to get nominated. Judging from the discussions on WikiProject football, it needs a bit of formatting and fitting to their style template for clubs but that shouldn't be too arduous. Only real difficulty will be getting the info on club colours and the badge (which has changed a couple of times recently) / motto. Still wondering how to do that without falling foul of No Original Research - suspect I can get it from the club (advantage of living round the corner) but citing its going to be difficult. Will wait to see if a request for their assesment throws anything up. Vicard 07:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Playoffs

Anyone got the scores for previous Conference National playoffs? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Me677 (talk • contribs) 19:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Chasetown F.C.

What are people's thoughts with regard to the huge "Statistics and records" section in this article, which is essentially the fixtures/results for this season with scorers, etc, as you might find in a club programme? It's being meticulously maintained by a couple of IP editors, but (overlooking the fact that it isn't wiki-formatted) it just seems to be way too much detail to include on WP (under the "WP is not RSSSF" principle), especially for a step 4 non-league team. I didn't want to just go ahead and delete it all (although presumably it would be deleted at the end of the season anyway unless the IPs were planning on adding on next season, and then the one after, and then the one after that, etc, which would certainly be inappropriate) but wanted to see what other editors thought......? ChrisTheDude 15:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the records are fine, and should be left in. A club's position in the previous season's table is something that always be included. However, the individual results should go... one can find this information in plenty of other places, not least the club's website. Tompw (talk) 23:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Tompw, there is definitely no need to have the full match record there, it is just clutter. Also needs 'Wikifying' as a lot of it seems a very chatty nature. Harrias 11:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

They could be moved to a new article, "Chasetown F.C. 2006-07 Season", where they could use that information, and even expand upon it. I don't know if that article would be notable enough to qualify for Wikipedia, however. Che84 03:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, F.C. United of Manchester season 2005-06 exists, and at the time they were playing at Step 6, whereas Chasetown are at Step 4. Of course it could be argued that FCUM are a special case..... ChrisTheDude 07:05, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Creation of WikiProject Football task forces

A proposal to reorganise all football related projects has been made here. Input from members of this project is wanted. – Elisson • T • C • 20:22, 1 April 2007 (UTC)