Help:Editing demographic information

From SABR Encyclopedia

Revision as of 23:14, 8 January 2010

The demographic information on a person includes the person's name, dates and places of birth and death, and place of burial, as well as his batting and throwing hand, height, and typical playing weight.

Processes

The process for recommending a change to a person's demographic data depends on whether the person appeared in the Major Leagues in some capacity.

People with Major League experience

The SABR Biographical Research Committee is responsible for compiling and maintaining the authoritative demographic information on people who played, managed, coached, or umpired in the Major Leagues. These people can also be identified in the Encyclopedia by the legend "SABR Biographical Research Committee" appearing in the box containing their demographic information. To recommend a correction or update to this information, contact the Biographical Research Committee chair (currently Bill Carle).

People without Major League experience

There is no comparable central authoritative dataset for demographic information for people outside the purview of the Biographical Research Committee. The maintenance of demographic information on these people is organized within the SABR Encyclopedia itself. To recommend a change to demographic information, click the "Edit" link which appears in the box containing the person's demographic information.

All changes are reviewed by an Encyclopedia editor. In order for a change to be accepted, proper source documentation should be added to the person's sources section. Unsourced changes will not be approved.

Guidelines for making changes

Conclusively determining demographic information on people can be difficult. The demographic information in many sources is not carefully reviewed, and in some cases, demographic information has been deliberately misrepresented by players and teams. Determining the most accurate information requires patience and persistence. The SABR Encyclopedia addresses these practicalities in two ways:

1. All submissions of demographic information require published, citable sources. While the information in those sources need not be fully accurate, tracking the sources records the origin of the information displayed. If new sources are found with conflicting information, it is possible to compare the sources and analyze the disagreement.
2. There is an explicit mechanism for handling disagreement, when different sources contain conflicting information. With demographic information, especially demographic information for people who were not Major Leaguers, it is recommended to use the disagreement mechanisms liberally.

As a rule of thumb, the demographic information on a person's page should only be changed when a new source presents strong evidence in favor of new information. In the case where it is not certain whether a new source's information is compelling enough to make a change, place the {{disagree-person-demographics}} template on the person's page, and add an entry to the person's talk page outlining the content of the new source.

The following subsections give advice on how to implement these guidelines in specific cases which commonly arise.

Dates of birth

Birthplace versus hometown

SSDI and dates and places of death