Category talk:Teams

Page format

Should there be a set format for how the team page titles are set? Like, how some are East Stroudsburg High School South, some are Forest Hills Northern MS, and some are simply Jenkins? Shouldn't this be set? EASTstroudsburg13 4:11 pm EST 2/23/09

I think that it should be NAME {Middle|High} School {any clarification North|South} --Robotman09 01:47, 10 February 2010 (CET)

Subcategories

In the future, if there's lots of teams from one state, say Pennsylvania, I'm just throwing out the idea that we could put subcategories for more used states. Eaststroudsburg13 20:47, 9 February 2010 (CET)

Add Catagories so that it goes [[Category:Team Pages]] [[Category:Team Pages B]][[Category:Texas]] So that it would be classified as each --Robotman09 01:54, 10 February 2010 (CET)

Notability Requirements in Team Pages

I think this might be a discussion that's overdue to have. In the past we hadn't had notability guidelines for pages, as generally if a page was made that was short, it could either get tagged as a Stub, or I would just find extra information in the case of short team pages to fill them out. But as team pages get added in more and more bulk, should there be a set of minimum standards a team page must be able to meet in order to merit having a page? Or is it better to maintain the general laissez-faire approach? I don't want to take a position necessarily, as it should be younger members that decide on the direction the wiki should take, but I think it should be considered. EastStroudsburg13 (talk) 21:56, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

I think there are a couple different directions this could take. The two main routes that come to mind are 1) any team with available results should have a page or 2) any team that's advanced to a state competition should have a page. Both of these fit a certain notoriety requirement, but the latter is a lot more strict in some cases (especially for regionals with only two or three bids) and I'm not sure I like it that much. The thing about team pages is that a lot of times the information is out there, but it just hasn't been put on the page yet. However, for states like Wyoming (that has rules against posting state placements) or Alaska (with very little available information) those pages might not ever get filled out and they'll sit empty. For that reason, I think that any team with listable results should be able to have a page.

I also think that there should be some updates to the way team pages are laid out. It's not very standardized at all right now, and I think that some collaborative effort (a project, perhaps?) to create slash update team pages could be something to consider. While a lot of things like amount of coaches or other details might not be available without talking to someone who's actually on the team, I think it would be reasonable to at least make sure that team pages have results on them. --jaspattack 🧬 23:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

My position on this is teams that qualify for the state tournament. Basically, making more pages will mean that more pages will need to be updated; more pages that need to be updated mean more human effort is needed. Although enthusiasm for keeping the wiki updated is great, and many times plentiful, the fact is that keeping thousands and thousands of team pages updated is unreasonable. ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 01:12, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I generally agree, but I think it may be prudent to make two exceptions:

Team pages are a source of team pride. The Orange County School of the Arts page is an organically sourced page cultivated on the whole by students from the school. Team pages let students contribute to something permanent and greater than themselves—recognition on wiki. Getting to know my team's legacy (hi pika) inspired me to continue in SciOly, and so team pages have a positive effect on student motivation. To this end, we could stop creating new team pages ourselves, but if students from the team itself start the page, we shouldn't deny them the opportunity to highlight their team.

Teams may be notable for reasons other than qualifying for states. Unome summarizes it pretty well over here. Broken bid allocation systems are unfortunately why some teams can't make states. Perhaps another way for a team to show its notability is to have a top-five finish at any tournament (top five because the top five teams are clickable links from an invitational page). This could serve as a compromise between team pages with any listable results and team pages with any states results.

gz839918 (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

What I will say is that this was discussed quite a bit in the IRC, and many of the points that you make were brought up there. The main takeaway from that is that there is no perfect answer, and obviously any notoriety rules will have any number of exceptions. I think the top-five finish idea is a good compromise however, and one that might address a lot of the "exceptions" that might come along with an any listable results rule. Some teams that don't quality for states are still very good because of the way that different states operate, and I personally believe that there's a good case for these teams to have pages. --jaspattack 🧬 (talk) 04:16, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I just want to add, as someone who created a page for their high school before they had ever made states, that I think making a page for your own school is an exception to these cases. Being a member of the team you're making a page for gives you the insight to be able to provide extra information that will make the page "notable" by the standards of a Science Olympiad wiki. I am assuming that the above discussion is focusing primarily on projects where pages are being created from an outsider's point of view. Ultimately, from our chat, the important thing seemed to be that the page have information that is not easily found through a cursory Google search otherwise. EastStroudsburg13 (talk) 12:38, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I do like the top-5 rule, and think that's a good place to start. And please note, this is just a general guideline. Exceptions can always be made (ex. like making your own school's page, making a page for a school that's notable but hasn't made top-5 somewhere, etc.) The main purpose of this rule is just to discourage a user from trying to make a page for every team in a certain state/tournament, many of which may never even be looked at/used in the first place. And then yes, as East said, those pages should have a reasonable amount of content, not just a simple sentence or two describing basic information about the school... ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 16:03, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I'll contribute to this conversation by adding 1) I feel keeping team pages updated is as good as creating new ones, and 2) team pages are a good way to collect results for a school, especially if the team has competed for many years (for example, Columbia River High School). I would definitely say it's more valuable to make team pages for schools with lots of results than those with almost nothing to go on (i.e. CO schools vs. IA schools). In my opinion, if a team only has one or two years of results (for instance, Janesville Junior-Senior High School), it isn't really worthwhile (unless, of course, the user creating the page goes to that school, in which case it's definitely permissible). Tailsfan101^talk 17:05, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Inclusion of "Never qualified"

I am just curious what the reasoning is behind removing "Never qualified" from the best state and best nationals fields of the TeamInfoBox. In most cases this is legitimate information, and it doesn't strike me as something that is causing any issue unless it's untrue. Was this a collective decision made at some point? EastStroudsburg13 (talk) 13:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think the main thing is that if a team hasn't qualified for state/nationals, then the parameter just won't show up in the template. If state/national placements are never mentioned, it's pretty well implied that the team has never made it. I don't know if a collective decision was ever made, but it's a practice that I follow when fleshing out team pages, at the very least. --jaspattack 🧬 (talk) 15:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I suppose. My convention for Pennsylvania pages has always been, if state/national placements aren't mentioned, the implication is that it's unknown whether they have qualified for that tournament stage or not. If I do know that the team has never qualified, only then did I input that information for clarity. I think it's a little less ambiguous, but I suppose I see the reasoning behind doing it otherwise. EastStroudsburg13 (talk) 19:40, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Bumping this. I think it's worthwhile to consider what a lack of a mention for state/national placements implies. I personally do not see the drawback of just being clear and including the information. EastStroudsburg13 (talk) 17:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Years of best finishes

I've noticed there are a lot of team pages that use parentheses [2nd (2017)], and a lot that use commas [2nd, 2017] for best regional, state, and national finishes. I feel that we should try to keep pages consistent, so which usage is better? I tend to use the commas, but as I see it, it could go either way. For teams with a lot of wins in non-consecutive years (i.e. Bishop Kelly High School), the parentheses seem better to avoid confusion between the "1st" and the years, but for teams that compete in multiple divisions (i.e. Treasure Valley Homeschool), the commas seem better so that parentheses can be used for "B" and "C". I'd love to hear someone else's input on this, though. Tailsfan101^talk 14:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm leaning towards the parenthesis because it's less confusing for non-consecutive years - if a team competes in multiple divisions (see the Davidson Academy page I recently updated) I usually just put line breaks to separate the divisions. This can get somewhat bulky, but it does a good job of clarifying which statistics are for which division. --jaspattack 🧬 (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)