Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of violent spectator incidents in sports/archive2

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Dabomb87 02:43, 12 August 2009 [1].

List of violent spectator incidents in sports[edit]

Nominator(s): Drdisque (talk) 15:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I nominated this list in December 2007. Back then it had numerous deficiencies and the FLC process helped me identify the deficiencies, not only with regards to the official criteria, but in more qualitative ways.

I currently feel that this list is written in consistent and neutral prose, is extremely well cited, is exhaustive and suffers from less recency bias as in the past (the recency bias that remains is largely due to older violent events not being well documented). It has clear criteria for inclusion and is covers a notable topic. -Drdisque (talk) 15:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest withdrawal This list is quite interesting, but still has maintanence tags and inline citation requests. In addition, the lead is not long enough and has the non-engaging "This list of violent spectator incidents in sports includes" start (see recently promoted lists for examples of better and more engaging lists). Please resolve the maintanence tags before FLC. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the maintenance tags as they're outdated (and one was incomplete and had no justification). In the whole list, there's 2 or 3 citation needed tags. They're both events that from a confluence of non-journalistic sources did indeed happen, I just can't find the journalistic source that backs it up as the events happened awhile ago. -Drdisque (talk) 15:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed tags are not acceptable as Wikipedia:Verifiability is a part of Wikipedia:Featured list criteria.—Chris! _ct 18:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've removed those few items. It does not substantially affect the quality of the list. Every item in the still very exhaustive list is now cited. -Drdisque (talk) 19:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Issues raised by User:Dabomb87 has not been addressed. Also references aren't formatted correctly and consistently.—Chris! _ct 23:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What issues have not been addressed? All citations meet the requirements of WP:CITE. Using the citation tool templates is optional per WP:CITE. What is not "correct"? It seems to me you fellows are picking nits with regards to things that are not official policy. -Drdisque (talk) 00:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The lead needs to be expanded, the start "This list of violent spectator incidents in sports includes" needs to be rewritten, web references are missing last access dates, others are missing publishers or web titles. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:56, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose now because nominator has made no attempt to fix the two major issues above beside comprehensiveness.—Chris! _ct 18:24, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It's an interesting list, but as said before, the references is not to standard, for example:

Ref #2 has no title, date and publisher.
Ref #16 has no title.
Ref #43, #46 has no date and publisher.
Ref #12, #25, #39, #58, #59, #71 has no date.
Most of the references does not have last access dates or "Retrieved on ..."

The references need to be improved in order to fulfil the FL criteria. Perhaps you want to apply Template:Cite web, Template:Cite book, or similar templates on the references. — Martin tamb (talk) 04:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I like the idea for the list, but I see alot of problems. Since the list is fairly large, I imagine these relatively small problems will present alot of work to address, but I hope someone is up to it.

The list seems extremely North-American centric. Of all the entries of the list, after a quick scan I found 2 soccer games, one rugby match, one cricket match, and one Olympic match (this isn't a complete list of Non-North American sporting events included, but just the few that I found). Every other instance (and the VAST majority of the list) was either MLB, NFL, NHL, or NBA games. This is a huge problem, in my estimation, and I would oppose it's nomination on this fact alone.
The dating format is wildly inconsistent. Some entries say "On May 15, 1912", some say "June 4", while still others start with prose then the date ("Bounty Bowl II, December 10"), and some avoid a date all together. My suggestion: we already know the year, so you can omit that. Every entry should have a month and day, probably in international format (day then month, rather than the American format, month then day). I would avoid any text until after the date, preferably incorporating it into the prose.
In a similar vein, I think it would be helpful if immediately after the date, while still in a listy/data form (ie before the prose starts), one were to include the actual event, ie Super Bowl XXII.
Also, most of the entries use a hyphen to split up the date and prose, a la "February 12 - In an NHL". A hyphen is not appropriate here; it should be an en-dash (–).
To make the date stand out a bit, I'd recommend bolding the date.
To make things clearer, this is basically what I recommend (minus the indent):

10 December – Bounty Bowl II. Fans of the Philadelphia...

Publishers in the references should be wikilinked wherever appropriate. They should also be named after the publisher not neccessarily the source (the publisher isn't "ESPN.com", but "ESPN", for example).
Citation #2 needs to be formatted correctly.
Don't abbreviate publisher names unless that's the common form. So AP should probably be Associated Press. Though ESPN should stay ESPN.
What makes letsrun.com a reliabls source?
This list definitely needs to include {{Dynamic list}}.
Avoid bolding the name of the list in the lead when the name of the list is a phrase, like in this case.

I haven't read through any of the prose yet, this is just what I found with a quick style-based scan of the list. Drewcifer (talk) 07:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - there's no images, some sections are wholly unreferenced, and there's some very dodgy prose like "The Los Angeles Dodgers gave out baseballs to paying customers as they entered the gates for a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals leading the game 2-1 as the Dodgers came to bat in the bottom of the 9th inning. The Dodgers had given away thousands of baseballs to fans coming to the game as a promotion." The main problem, however, is the disproportionate coverage. All the way up to 1992, there's only two incidents from outside the USA/Canada. Hooliganism was a huge problem at British football matches in the 1970s and 80s (and to a lesser extent in other European countries), with incidents regularly making the national news and even being discussed in Parliament (some incidents, such as the 1985 Kenilworth Road riot even have their own WP articles) yet the article makes no mention of this at all, which I would argue means that it fails criterion 3 (comprehensiveness). -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 12:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the list is of incidents that involve fans and participants. Many football riots do not involve participants. -Drdisque (talk) 16:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Even so, there were a number of incidents in the 1970s and 80s which did involve fans and participants. For example, you note the Peterborough-Kingstonian "goalie felled by coin throwing" incident, yet don't note a similar incident involving Leicester City and Burton Albion in 1985. There was also a well-known incident in 1980 when a fan attacked Gordon Strachan. There are certainly more examples.... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose and definite withdrawl. Dodgy formatting, referencing, and how can you ever really know it's complete? What is the standard for entry? For example, in 2009 there is a high school-based incident listed, do we really think we can source and list ALL high school incidents? Or even just for this year, does this guy count? Staxringold _talk^contribs 17:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the list's defense, a topic like this will never be complete, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a list about the topic. There are "incomplete" lists that have been promoted to FL, such as the List of Gay/Bisexual people lists. This is why I recommended the use of the {{Dynamic list}} template. That said, I stand by my oppose, and I'm not trying to negate yours. This list has alot of problems besides not being definitive. Drewcifer (talk) 19:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. My point was it's not just incomplete, but it's not clear in what WAY it's incomplete. Are we trying to document HS events, or is that just a random one that slipped in? What about Little League explosions?

Someone else added that High School one. I left it because it was extensively covered by the American media. I debated whether it was worthy myself. I'm fine with withdrawing it now. I'm finally getting real feedback now. The first respondents only tried to wikilawyer me by stating that it didn't meet certain referencing criteria that don't actually exist. -Drdisque (talk) 23:37, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimately I just think the list needs some stringent rules set. For example, all the "Tallest building" lists have an in-article rule for what is necessary to qualify (400 foot example, 250 foot example). Or the list I just created and is up for DYK, has $30k as a set rule because that's what there's clear source material for (and will have a $50k+ career winners list later for the same reason). Is this only for professional leagues? What qualifies as violent? Etc, etc. Staxringold _talk^contribs 00:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.