SABR Encyclopedia:Job Jar
From SABR Encyclopedia
The Job Jar is a list of suggested editorial tasks which require some human attention. These are designed to be tasks which can be completed in seconds or minutes with little prior knowledge or training. They are a great way to help out the progress of the SABR Online Encyclopedia without having to invest large chunks of time; you can do many of them in those idle minutes of your day.
Page names for Major Leaguers
When two or more people in baseball history share the same name, searching on that name usually leads to a "disambiguation" page directing the viewer to the pages of each of those people. However, when one person out of many sharing a name is significantly more prominent or notable than the others, it is desirable to have that "main article" page point to the main person. With a few minutes of work, you can help ensure this is possible. Here are some tasks to do, in increasing order of complexity:
- The most clear case where this should happen is where exactly one person out of two has Major League experience. In this case, the Major Leaguer should be the main article, and the other person should have a disambiguating article name. To see how this looks in practice, look at Major Leaguer Terry Adams and minor leaguer Terry_Adams (adams-002ter). You can check to see this pattern is followed by scrolling through the and finding a case where a Major Leaguer is listed with a trailing IDs in parentheses. Rearrange the pages to match the pattern used in the Terry Adams case.
- If you feel comfortable with how the first case works, a more complicated case is where one person out of many has Major League experience. This case should be formatted to look like the pattern used by the page for Major Leaguer George Adams and the disambiguation page George Adams (disambiguation), which lists all people named George Adams. Note the sectioning on the disambiguation page categorizing people by their primary roles. Also, be sure to edit the pages of all the minor leaguers to use the correct hatnote template at the top of the page; follow the example of the various minor leaguer George Adams.
- If you want something even more challenging, take on the case of multiple major leaguers with the same name. You'll need to first read SABR Encyclopedia:Naming conventions (people), and the related Wikipedia guidelines linked from that page. Where possible, pages for Major Leaguers should be named according to the Wikipedia naming conventions, and not the ID-based ones currently used in places in the Encyclopedia.
- If that's not challenging enough for you, the most complex task is to help make useful navigation links for people with similar names. For instance, there are multiple Major Leaguers who have gone by the name Bob Adams. In addition, one Major Leaguer has been known as Bobby Adams. Furthermore, there have been other players who have gone by Robert Adams, Rob Adams, etc., some of whom may someday also make the Major Leagues. In addition to the disambiguation tasks above, these pages should contain "see also" links directing viewers to similar names. For inspiration and guidance, look at Wikipedia disambiguation pages for the same or similar names when attacking examples like these.
Organizing page names for people is a task that requires a human touch. The goal is that when possible, typing in a person's name in the Search box on the left of the page will give a hit on the "right" person with that name as often as possible. We assume that the most notable or prominent person will be searched on the most. However, we also want to alert viewers to possible alternate spellings or renderings of names. These tasks will help achieve those goals. Even if you only have time to work on a few names at a time, your efforts will help make searching the Encyclopedia more effective for everyone.
