Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of New England Patriots head coaches/archive1

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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 20:12, 11 May 2008.

List of New England Patriots head coaches[edit]

Self-nomination Well done list. I just created this and it seems to meat all criteria. Milk’s Favorite Cookie (Talk) 18:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

**What more references does it need? It is a list of head coaches. It is referenced to an outside list of head coaches. This is pretty non-controversial stuff. These men served as the head coaches on the dates indicated, won the awards indicated, and had the records as indicated. What bits of information were you unable to confirm via the references already provided by the article?!?--Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)*Support Meets all criteria. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    • OK. I am an idiot. After having actually read the article closer, it is clearly in need of major work. The references are not a problem. The greater problem is that the list is insanely wrong. Let me itemize the problems:
      1. Lou Saban was not UPI NFL Coach of the Year. He was UPI AFL Coach of the Year, and he was not coach of the Pats when he won that award. Thus, its irrelevent to this article. And the link is a double redirect. Also, where the award IS relevent (like for Mike Holvak, who actually won it as the coach of the Pats) take the redirect out and fix it with a pipe link...
      2. Low Saban is NOT a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He's a member of the AFL Hall of Fame, which is a different thing entirely...
      3. Other links need to be changed from dead-end double redirects. Again, just pipe-link them.
      4. Other coaches also have awards they won while coaching other teams, and not the Pats...
      5. John Mazur coached most of the 1972 season, and was replaced by Bengston, who was only the "interim" head coach, for a single game. This should be fixed to be actually correct. The current dates list Mazur as having coached only until 1971.
      6. The unusual situation at the end of the 1978 season should probably be noted somewhere. Heck, if the list immortalizes Phil Bengston's single game as interim head-coach, it can include Hank Bullough and Ron Erhardt's single game as co-interim-head-coaches...
      7. Is it really relevent if the coach spent his entire professional head coaching career with the Pats? Plus, its not really all that correct. Rust would later coach Montreal in the CFL, but why is THAT more relevent than say, Fairbank's extensive college career.
      8. Again, the coaching record is all wrong. For example, Parcells is listed as having coached the Pats for 96 regular season games. Um, he coached them for 4 seasons. My math is rusty, but 4*16 = 64. Plus, it lists his playoff record as 0 games coached and 1 win. Other than being plainly wrong, its also logically wrong.
    • This list needs lots of work. Sorry about the outburst above. While the referencing was not a problem, upon closer inspection, the list itself needs work to be both accurate and relevent. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 19:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • As requested at my talk page, to clarify #6: The situation in 1978 was similar to 1971. In 1978, it was learned that Chuck Fairbanks was negotiating with other teams, specifically the University of Colorado Buffaloes, to leave the Pats and accept a head coaching job there. The Pats responded by removing Fairbanks (rather than fire him, they suspended him without pay, IIRC, for the rest of the season) and replacing him for the last game of the season with Ron Ehrhardt and Hank Bullough, who were officially "co-interim-head-coaches" or something like that, much like Phil Bengston was the interim head coach for the final game of the 1971 season. That would have been that in 1978, however by a fluke of the old NFL tiebreaking procedure, though the Erhardt/Bullough coached Pats lost the final regular season game, they still squeeked into the playoffs. So, the Pats reinstated Fairbanks for that one playoff game, which he lost, and then he quit for good. My whole point was that if Bengston's single game as interim head coach was noted in 1971, then Erhardt & Bullough's single game as co-interim-head-coach should be part of the list as well. Check to see if Fairbanks' record does or does not include that one regular season game, and either correct the list, or include a footnote to explain the weirdness.--Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, re-read the lead. It still lists Saban as a member of the pro football HOF, and the caption on Parcells pic is wrong as well. Also, as another thing, for sake of completeness, you should probably have links to all of the references for each coach's record, and use the same website for them all. I prefer jt-sw for my football stats (they are the most complete of ANY of them, IMHO) but just be consistent. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And more stuff. Parcells playoff record is STILL wrong. He certainly coached the Pats to more than one playoff game. Carrolls playoff record is wrong too... it lists him as having coached in 1 and won 2 playoff games?!?!? How does that make sense? Look, go back to JT-sw or Profootballdatabase or whatever site you plan to use, and go over these stats one-by-one with a fine toothed comb. Having spoted all of these errors, my confidence in the rest of the list is quite low.--Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:43, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...and  Done with everything above. (I think I got everything). And Julian, your ref problem is also resolved :) Milk’s Favorite Cookie (Talk) 02:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And  Not done. I have struck through the stuff you fixed. You still need to fix a bunch of other stuff. Take your time. There is no rush... Re-read the whole thing carefully, and fix the stuff that needs fixing... Like Mazur's coaching years. Like Parcell's playoff record. Like the other stuff... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 12:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Struck through some stuff you recently fixed. But the numbers are still wrong in many places. Parcell's playoff coaching record is wrong (he coached in at LEAST 4 playoff games, one loss in 1994, and three or four(can;t remember if he played in the wild card round or not) including the Super Bowl in 1996.). Clive Rush and John Mazur split coaching the 1970 season, and you have rush ending his career in 1969. Plus, Mazur's numbers are completely wrong. BY YOUR OWN SOURCE, he had an overall record of 10-24 as a coach of the Boston/New England Patriots, which he coached for part of 1970, all of 1971, and part of 1972. Go over ever number in this chart since they are all suspect. Changing one will likely not fix everything, everytime I look at it I find more problems... Plus, make the fixes noted below. The formatting of the decimals is inconsistent. And he's right about the Parcells pic. We can't feature any article with a pic of that poor a quality.--Jayron32.talk.contribs 13:40, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose
    • The prose needs a fair bit of work on it. I've just made some very obvious corrections to tenses, possessives and use of there / their. It's too jerky and it doesn't really describe the history of coaches. Referring to Phil Bengston's record as being the worst, while correct, doesn't really compare against those with lots more games.
    • Why are some averages .333 while others 0.250?
    • The picture of Bill Parcells surely isn't of any encyclopedic quality? Peanut4 (talk) 03:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Much better now. Though I would change this sentence, to a more active and understandable sentence.
      • "In 1978, it was learned that then head coach Chuck Fairbanks had been negotiating with the University of Colorado Buffaloes to take over as head coach of their team while he was still under contract with the Patriots." Peanut4 (talk) 13:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support OK. I went ahead and fixed all of the problems myself. Someone double check me on those, but I re-wrote the lead and fixed all of the numerical errors I could find in the chart myself. I think its now up-to-standard, but someone else check me since I have done some significant work on this one. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 17:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved stuff from Struway2
  • Comments
    • Election to Pro Football HoF: per WP:MOS#Color coding, use of colour shouldn't be the only way information is conveyed. You need a footnote or italics or suchlike as well.
    • Pete Carroll image caption should have "to" between dates, not a dash (per WP:DASH).
    • Column heading Regular Season should have a small s (per MOS:CAPS).
    • At screen width 1024 (if I go up to 1280 on this small monitor I can't read the print), the Term column entries wrap to two lines, which looks rather silly. If the endash were unspaced, as examples at WP:DASH imply to be the norm for year ranges, it would solve this. (Changing the heading of the Reference column to Ref. would reduce the width of that column to allow a bit of extra space for the Term column.)
    • Some of the Boston seasons links in the Term column are redirects (link has Season with capital S where the article title has season with small s).
    • Many of the Awards links are redirects. Is this deliberate in anticipation of them getting their own articles, or what?
    • Where numeric coulmn entries are of different lengths, they look better right-aligned so they line up arithmetically. Looks odd with Bengtson's 1 lined up under the 1 of Holovak's 107.
    • On WP:WikiProject Football (soccer), which is where my main interest lies, editors tend to put lists up for peer review within the project before taking them to FLC, which helps to iron out any obvious problems before they show up here. Do you have a similar system on your project, if not, it might be an idea to think about?
hope some of this helps, cheers,
Struway2 (talk) 10:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Done Milk’s Favorite Cookie (Talk) 21:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Think it's probably a good idea to let the reviewer strike through their own comments if and when they think fit, rather than doing it yourself. Struway2 (talk) 10:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • BTW, as suggested above, I right aligned all of the numerical entries in the table... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 22:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as of now: There are a few things that i want to see before i support this article.
    • How many championships did each of these coaches win? Where is the data provided for the same?
    • Achievements of these coaches with the team. BB had several - one 16-0 regular season; max. no of undefeated games (21 games in a strech). I am sure some of the others too have similar achievements. Same needs to be captured.
    • Partial coverage of controversies - no mention of BB's cameragate controversy. Similarly, no mention of Bill Parcell's rumored negotiations with the Jets during SB XXXI

In summary, the article is just a listing and doesn't do enough justice for the subject. Please add those details and i would be happy to support this list as FL --Kalyan (talk) 05:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to the above:
  • The championships are mentioned in Paragraph 2, sentances 3 & 4 of the lead.
  • With regard to the other two points; every item of information is not always needed to be mentioned in every article. Given the nature of a list article, some information needs to be left out. I feel this article strikes a balance between some information (such as specifically cited coaching awards) while, of necessity, it leaves some information out. Specific information as you have requested is available in other articles, such as History of the New England Patriots, New England Patriots, New England Patriots seasons, or of the specific articles of the coaches themselves. All of which are readily accessible as a single click from this article. There is no need to be redundant. This article substantially matches the format and content of several other largely identical list articles that ARE featured (such as List of East Carolina Pirates head football coaches for one. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 21:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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