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Archive 1

Recruitment

I have posted a messaged on User talk pages of anyone who has made a contribution to an Australian Baseball related article inviting them to join the project, anyone else seen editing -adding information, not just a slight correction- any articles related to Australian Baseball should be invited to join. --Dan027 10:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


Replacing stub tags

I believe these have now all been changed. Ive added the articles in Category:Australian Baseball players, in the near future a Australian Baseballers stub might be required, but at the moment there is only 21(that ive found) articles on Australian Baseball players. --Dan027 10:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

International Baseball League of Australia

Is there any information available on this league? I can't find anything on google, most things I find mention the name or they are dead links. I'd like to see this article created, but I can't find any information as of yet..--Borgarde 12:17, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The broken links are abit of a problem, ive found alot of links and thought id hit the jackpot, alot of searching over many hours just to find the smallest pieces of information. I have one decent source at the moment, there are a number of news paper articles out there aswell.--Dan027 09:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
The page states that each year was basically a different competition. One was based with Australian teams and the other with International teams on the Gold Coast. I don't know how to link this into the article, right now I've left it as a stub, incase someone else finds it and has more information. I'll keep searching though to find something to improve it --Borgarde 10:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
A source stating the $5millon Nillsson paid for the leagues rights [1].--Dan027 10:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey there Baseball fans. I prodded the above article because at the time I looked at it, it was quite small and made no real assertion to notabiliity.

What may have helped it's cause, would be an article for the league it is a member of? If you start the article creation process top-down - Baseball Baseball in Australia Pro Baseball in Australia Pro Baseball Leagues in Australia Pro Baseball League teams in Australia Amateur Baseball in Australia Amateur Baseball Leagues in Australia Amateur Baseball League teams in Australia

Then the previous article lends credability / notability to successive articles, and you don't have to spend as much time defending your work either through removing prod tags, or if an article goes straight to AfD (maybe because someone simply removes a prod tag rather than explaining why).

Since the bot was started which maintains the list at Wikipedia:New articles (Australia), articles are seen almost immediately by a lot more people even when they may be in a pretty minor stage so having the foundation articles already in place will provide a reason for what might easily be mistaken for a school competition team. Garrie 04:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Baseball WikiProject?

Please discuss here whether you think this project should become part of Baseball WikiProject. Having it a task force of the baseball wikiproject will allow a lot more integration with the project, and potential discussion on topics and activity. If it happened, the project page would be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball/Australian baseball task force. Thoughts? --Borgardetalk 11:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there any reason why it can't function as a task force of the Baseball WikiProject (and WP:AUS through WP:AUSSPORT for that matter) from its present location? I do agree, however, that this project is certainly too narrow to maintain the infrastructure it presently has. The assessments/tagging situation in particular requires resolution, as it is plainly ridiculous to have this project tagging in addition to WP:BASEBALL and WP:AUS.
I would suggest deprecating {{Australian Baseball-WikiProject}} in favour of {{WP Australia|baseball=yes}}, which could provide separate assessments for this project, as well as being integrated with the parent project systems.--cj | talk 13:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
It should still be integrated with the baseball project. There is no reason why it can't be part of both. Japanese baseball task force is part of wikiproject japan. The page would exist at the baseball wikiproject's page to keep the topics of interest around the sport of baseball, and then there would still be links to WikiProject Australia and with the assessments the Baseball-WikiProject template would still be used to provide baseball assessments, and then the australia w/ baseball=yes could be used also.--Borgardetalk 09:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
um? 3 days is hardly long enough to come to such a consensus, why cant a task force still keep its article rating system? --Dan027 09:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
It still has it's article rating system. It now has one for the baseball project AND the australia one in one banner. For instance, Melbourne Reds are probably considered Low on the main project, but on this one high. By adding "{{Baseball-WikiProject|class=Start|importance=Low|australia=yes|australia-importance=High}}" you are effectively doing the exact same thing. I'll help with the reassessments ASAP so all articles are assessed.--Borgardetalk 13:23, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Project for you

If anyone on this Project is looking for a project, please add the annual final standings and play-off results to each "year in baseball" page. There is a page for each year that is supposed to be for baseball throughout the world, but it so far mainly focuses on US baseball. It would be much appreciated if someone could add Australian baseball info to the pages. Regards.--Old Hoss 04:11, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

  • The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
  • The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
  • A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:19, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

What I've been up to

I have created the following articles, perhaps a bit of help expanding would be nice:

I have also expanded substantially:

Finally, I hope to create notable articles for all the teams in the Greater Brisbane League, as half of them I created have already been deleted. As well as:

I also hope to create some decent templates for the bottom of baseball articles so it is a lot easier to link between Australian baseball articles

This is also a little reminder to myself to write up this stuff, but if anyone can help, it'd be appreciated. Also if you want some articles done, preferably notable players or any teams/associations in Queensland. Jot it down =] - JRA WestyQld2 (talk) 03:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Australia national schoolboy baseball team has come under nomination for deletion. Please help get it at least merged into article Australian schoolboys - JRA WestyQld2 (talk) 03:02, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 04:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Over the last few months when I've had spare time and energy, I've been putting up bits and pieces of info on this article, to the point where I think most of the stuff that's there now has either come from me or been checked by me. I've put it up for the review process over on the main project's page, but thought I'd mention it over here as well. Given I've put up a lot of the stuff, I don't think I should be the one to assess whether it should be upgraded from Start-class to C-class or higher, assuming that's its good enough to move up at all. Also, if anyone else on here has any resources they know about that I can go through to put useful stuff up on here, or suggestions for things to either add or expand on, I'd welcome the input. - Afaber012 (talk) 03:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Alternate roster template

In my travels on here I've found a number of articles that list a baseball roster that might be for a tournament (eg the Claxton Shield rosters) but use the style of the MLB rosters, so things like disabled lists and so on are listed which have no relevance. With that in mind, I've created a new template that I'm about to put up on the Australia national baseball team article to replace the "manual" roster table that's there. I've still got to do a documentation page for it, but hopefully people will find it pretty simple to use. As always with the templates I come up with, any feedback/questions/criticisms are welcome, and I'll see what I can do.  Afaber012  (talk)  03:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Hehe it's probably my fault having all the MLB rosters, I kind of was just lazy and I'm not very good with templates. It looks good, the provisional roster bit, is that an optional column to have? JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 05:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, pretty much everything is optional. If nothing's specified in 'ProvisionalPlayers', that column disappears, likewise if nothing is put in 'Manager' or 'Coaches', that column disappears too. (If one or the other of those two is used, the "missing" one doesn't have its header used.) You don't have to use the 'TournamentName', you can use either 'Pitchers' or 'Starters'/'Bullpen'/'Closer' for the pitchers, 'DH' doesn't have to be used, you can use alternate names for the 2nd level headers using 'ActiveAlt', 'ProvisionalAlt' & 'CoachesAlt' (which I've used to insert a couple of references on the Australian team's page), and you can specify team colours for the headers with 'FC1', 'FC2', 'BC1' & 'BC2'.
I don't think there's anything else that I need to mention. I would imagine that a lot of the stuff you might need to know about it can be seen in the way I've used it in the Australian team's article.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Australia national baseball team... take 2

I've got this article up for peer review at the moment, and one person who's reviewed it has suggested it "could reasonably be nominated for GA". Given that, I want to upgrade it to B-Class from its current C status. There's more things I want to do with it before I nominate it for GA status, so I don't think I'll do that yet. Does anyone have any objections to this?  Afaber012  (talk)  02:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

I have no objections. I also have upgraded Dave Nilsson and Nightcliff Baseball Club, Darwin to C-Class status. I think they're both deserving JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 13:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Seems fair enough  Afaber012  (talk)  23:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

New Australian league?

I've been hearing information about a potential new Australian league in 2010. Has anyone got any good info on this? Or is it just more talk like in previous years? Borgarde (talk) 10:04, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

No. It's real stuff. Check the ABF website, they're going to trial it with the Claxton Shield as a model end of this year and it'll kick off 2010-2011 JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 14:16, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Junior/Youth national teams

I'm wondering whether the AAA and AA (Junior & Youth, U/19 & U/17, however you want to refer to them) teams should have their own pages, or should they be combined into a single article? At the moment, only the AAA side has a page, and its a stub. From what I can tell, none of the other countries seem to have any page for their age teams. I just think that they should be combined, particularly given that the coaching staff is essentially the same for both, and that yesterday's AA team will (likely) be tomorrow's AAA team. In my (admittedly brief) research, there's even less information available on these teams than there is for the senior team, which would make it even more difficult to establish notability of either team. What does everyone else think?  Afaber012  (talk)  00:39, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I originally created the AAA article and intended to create the AA one, but there is very little information on both teams, especially the AA, so I would suggest merging the articles (and perhaps the Cal Ripken team) to either some type general junior national team article, or merging it into the national team article. The latter may also improve the standard of the national team article. The reason behind this in the first place was to copy a baseball in Australia template similar to Rugby Union's template JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 02:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
Putting the junior stuff in with the senior team's article is probably a good idea! Particularly given a recent change I made to the World Youth Baseball Championship, after someone else came in and linked each of the teams listed to the corresponding senior team's pages. At the time I didn't think it was right, given that none of those pages seem to talk about the junior squads at all. I suppose if we do that, and at some point down the line we get enough information together about either or both to the point where it makes the main article too large, we can separate out that section(s) to standalone a article(s). And perhaps encourage others to add the same sort of info to the corresponding pages of other countries teams.  Afaber012  (talk)  05:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Colour icons for state teams (and state comp teams too?)

A while back I created a template that lets you specify a team and it produces a coloured square to help identify different teams, primarily for tables of teams, league leaders, that sort of thing. It was from what happens with a number of the rugby league articles - in fact I basically copied the template they use. It would do a similar sort of job that the bb template does for international teams, replacing the flag with a coloured square. It's already got the (at the time) Claxton Shield teams set, the NSW Major League teams, and the MLB teams. It should be a simple matter to expand it for any other state level teams, and the new ABL-Mark II teams when they make their prescence known. How do people feel about this being used for the Australian baseball articles?  Afaber012  (talk)  11:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I've come back and updated the svg files that I created a while ago, so they now have a little image of a baseball (although for someone not familiar with the sport it might look a bit like a tennis ball), a gradient background rather than the hard-edged strips, as well as giving a beveled border to clearly mark the edge where white is used in the background. They're in use on the New South Wales Major League page. I've got some for the teams in the Greater Brisbane League ready to upload, but just want to hold off in case there's some ideas people want to suggest for changes, or think they're not worth having.
The images I've uploaded so far are in the category Category:Australian baseball team logo replacements. The first one's shown are for the NSW teams, and obviously the others are the Claxton Shield ones. Anyone who's observant will notice that the SA one isn't there. It's been uploaded, but someone's tranferred it to Wikimedia Commons in Commons:Category:Baseball symbols. The one's uploaded so far are all marked to be transferred, so if they're missing from WP, they're probably over on Commons. Likewise any new ones I upload will go there as well.  Afaber012  (talk)  05:08, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Anybody home?

I don't know if anyone else is working on this taskforce at the moment. If you are, even if you're not doing any work on articles at the moment but will be or would like to be soon, can you let me know? Just post your signature below this. I'm not demanding contributions or anything like that, it would just be nice to know for my own sake - basically if I'm going to make a major change to an article, template, etc, or create new ones, I'd like to know that when I ask for input, discussions, ideas, etc, whether I;m going to get an answer from anyone on here. Also, if no one else is around - or cares - I might see if I can come up with something to spruce up the task force's page and try to drum up some new recruits.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey Afaber, I just got back from a representative baseball tour in the states I was on for the last month. I think a recruitment drive is needed, stick all the Australian baseball articles you know of on your watchlist and ask anyone who adds direct baseball edits to it from Australia to join this taskforce. So far, I've created the only C-Class article for Australian baseball on Wikipedia, but I'd say the national team page meets all criterion for a C-Class article, you should be proud of the work you've done, it's very extensive.
I also like the page of New South Wales Major League, maybe this could be expanded and more information about clubs can be created? I've done a fair bit on the Greater Brisbane League. All work helps, I recently saw a quote in a Californian newspaper to the Wikipedia article on Dave Nilsson I expanded on. Also have you thought about created a new article for the upcoming ABL? Cheers JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 01:08, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
As long as you've got a good excuse! :) I've put the national team's article up for peer review (I wound up upgrading it to C-class in the templates myself), and I'm working on expanding/updating the Olympic section in a sandbox to eventually split it into 2 different articles. Cheers for the encouragement! The NSWML is next on my list - I think the focus in terms of results, stats, etc should be on the 1st grade goings-on.
With the new ABL, I can't remember off the top of my head which ones, but I've updated a couple of pages with details of it being 'revived', but my personal opinion is to hold off creating a new article for it, because it would seem more of an extension of the previous version. Once more details come out, and if it looks more like the way soccer changed over to the A-League, I'll be up for setting up pages for the league, teams, etc.
I don't know if you've seen, but I"m putting together a newsletter in my sandbox that'll go to people's talk pages. I've put a notice on WP:AUSSPORT, which has also gone on WP:AWNB trying to get people interested. It has the same sort of look as the old WP:BASEBALL one, with a few tweaks. with any luck a few people currently signed up will be reminded of us.  Afaber012  (talk)  01:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
I used to edit quite afew of the articles, would be interested in it again just really dont have the time or motivation for wikipedia anymore. --Dan027 (talk) 10:39, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

DYK articles

I've been having a look at the guidelines for the "Did You Know" section on the Main Page, and apart from ensuring that the particular little hook is cited by an outside source, the big requirement is that the article either be no more than a week old or that within that same time the article has to be expanded fivefold in terms of the prose in the article. With that in mind, I'd suggest that if there's an article you want to create, or a stub you want to expand, to actually make a sandbox page as a subpage of your user page and to build the article there. Once you've got it up to a good point, copy it across to the actual page and then nominate it as a DYK article. I've done it here for the new version of the ABL - partly for this, and partly because there's a lot more information we need to be able to make it a decent article and avoid it being nominated for deletion.  Afaber012  (talk)  08:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I listed the Baseball NT article I expanded 5x a few days ago on DYK and I'm waiting for someone to review it. I suspect, subject to any concerns that may be raised, to be listed on the DYK front page section shortly. Cheers, Spy007au (talk) 09:17, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Archiving

Unless anyone's got any objections, I'm going to get the MiszaBot to start archiving this talk page for us. I don't think there's a need to have a whole bunch of sections - many of them with single posts - that are many months old, several over 2 years old. The way it gets setup would be to specify a minimum number of sections, and outside of that if a section hasn't been touched within a particular time frame, it gets shifted to the archive. Once an archive page gets to a certain size, it'll start a new archive page. (We could set it up to create archive pages based on dates, but I think we'd have to get a lot busier here for that to be warranted.)

If no one objects in the next couple of days, I'll set it up for minimum 8 sections, within 60 days. Afaber012  (talk)  01:34, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. It's easy enough to set-up with auto-detection of sub pages like on the main Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball page. I don't see the need to set it by dates, I don't think there's enough activity to warrant that. Borgarde (talk) 11:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
I've set the archiving up now. A bot will do it so we don't have to do anything manually. Also, a bot will be through (soon I hope) to manage the navigation to archive pages. Until that happens, if there's something in the older discussions you want to check, it will be at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Australian baseball task force/Archive 1.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:49, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

To do page

I've updated it, if you have any requests, especially for new articles, stick them on, I'll see what I can do. I'm going to start the Alice Springs baseball tonight hopefully. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Claxton Shield Infobox

I think this needs a major revamp, would you agree? JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:34, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

One of those ones I occassionally spot and think "that doesn't look right". (I assume you're talking about Claxton Shield Champions.) I don't think it should be used as an infobox, and I think the info in it would be better suited to a list, and I would think an opportunity for a featured list if done right. I'm thinking that as a start we'd replace it in the Claxton Shield article with the sports league infobox - can't remember the specific name of it now.
Right at the moment I'm trying to focus on the Australia national baseball team page so its GA nomination can go ahead. I put it up a while ago now, then got that message on its talk page and had to re-think it. Thankfully it takes a while for the nomination to actually be reviewed, so I haven't bothered to cancel the nomination. Once I've gotten rid of the "Tournament results" section and replaced it with decent prose about the two tournaments listed there at the moment, I'm happy for that to be my next pet project.  Afaber012  (talk)  13:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps replace it with a dropdown box instead of have it go all the way down the page, I know Dan did a lot of hard work to create these, but maybe a cleanup. Also the ABL infobox is quite handy for the ABL teams, but for Claxton Shield teams the bottom bit seems a bit useless as it only records the post ABL championships. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 02:11, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
when i originally made that infobox i intended it to be used over all the present and former "national" league articles but in a hide/drop down fashion as an extension of an info box about each of those leagues, however i never got it finished, the work in progress will be on one of my sub pages. you are referring to this Template:Claxton Shield template also? i think that as its now in a drop down form its hardly intrusive on the page and should remain there, when browsing other articles i often find this sort of navigation alot easier when going back and forth. --Dan027 (talk) 13:56, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
The latter is fine, it was just the other two (ie top right Claxton Shield and Queensland Rams ABL Infobox) that could do with drop downs JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 14:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
ok makes sense now, if i get a chance this week i will have a go at making it drop down, im not sure what to do about the ABL info box though, from memory that was an adaptation of info box used on some minor leagues, i think at the time the coding to get it to just work was doing my head in let alone to make it hide parts! --Dan027 (talk) 14:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Matthew Gahan

created the article Matthew Gahan need some major attentiom i cant seem to dig anything up on this guy what about you guys? BigPadresDUDE (talk) 00:29, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey BigPadresDude, welcome to the project. I have cleaned up the article for now, but remember to capitalise where necessary (ie australia > Australia) and the link to the national team is Australia national baseball team. When you create an article on Wikipedia, unless it is a very short stub about a non-biographical person, you must source at least one reference, if not two, as it may fall under criterion for speedy deletion. If you ever struggle to find information about a baseball player, trying putting his name in inverted comma's in the search engine, or adding key terms like 'baseball' or 'australia' to the search. Hope this helps! =] JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 09:04, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

GAN backlog reduction - Sports and recreation

As you may know, we currently have 400 good article nominations, with a large number of them being in the sports and recreation section. As such, the waiting time for this is especially long, much longer than it should be. As a result of this, I am asking each sports-related WikiProject to review two or three of these nominations. If this is abided by, then the backlog should be cleared quite quickly. Some projects nominate a lot but don't review, or vice-versa, and following this should help to provide a balance and make the waiting time much smaller so that our articles can actually get reviewed! Wizardman 23:39, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Project Plan

Hi Guys. I love to join the task force - project team. How is the team going? I try to find your project plan or prioritizing to do list. Do you have one? Where are you working on? What are the short time goals of the project? Is there a systematic method of working or some organisation in which why the project want to reach it goals. Please, give me a update ... I love to know where you stand. MascNL (talk) 12:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey Masc, this project seems to be driven by myself, Afaber and Dan. We have a to do list located here and a cleanup listing here. We just completed our short term goal of getting the national team article up to good article status and we are keeping up with the 2009 Baseball World Cup at the moment (well Afaber is =]). I create a lot of player articles and have been trying to expand them lately, but I would like to expand the old Australian Baseball League article a bit more and do some more work on the earlier history of Baseball in Australia.
So it's really up to you what you wish to do, but communication is key, because we can help you or point you in the right direction if you wish. Sorry by the way that this reply doesn't really flow, I've just come home from baseball training and am absolutely stuffed. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
At the moment I am in Holland (I was at the World Cup) and will be back in Perth before Perth Heats Spring Training. Baseball History in AUS is a bit difficult for me, as I am only 3 years in AUS. I guess my work will more actual based. I saw WA State League on the To Do List. I think I can start with that this spring or summer. Will have a close look at the to do list when I am back in Perth. MascNL (talk) 09:38, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Claxton Shield page move

I was always wondering, wouldn't the Claxton Shield pages be grammatically and officially correct if they had the year at the start of the title, rather than the end (i.e 2008 Claxton Shield rather than Claxton Shield 2008). JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 22:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Nobodies disagreed with the move, so I think I shall go ahead with it. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 03:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

He's ba-ack....

Hey guys, I'm back. Been busy dealing with a personal matter that came up, but I should be around more again.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Welcome back Afaber! We should also welcome a new member Halvorsen brian who's done some good work with the player articles lately. I've been pretty busy with university and the Brisbane league, but will be working on the Claxton Shield 2010 article. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 03:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I'm thinking that as the season goes on, the Results section is going to get pretty big, with a minimum of 60 different scores listed just for the regular season, which I think will get a bit difficult to go through. I've also been looking at the 2009 Major League Baseball season and thinking about cherry–picking the sections that apply and putting them in as well. To that end, I think the Results section should probably go, replaced by a Standings section, with a see also link in there to a new 2010 Claxton Shield results page. I've got both of those setup in my sandbox. That way with the results we can put more details in without swamping the main page. What does everyone else reckon?  Afaber012  (talk)  10:09, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I did this with the 2009 Claxton Shield Results for the 2009 Claxton Shield article. However, I didn't do this until after the tournaments completion. These were also full scoreboard thingy ma-bobs. Took me forever, that's why I'm just going with scorers and links to boxscores this year, a lot easier. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 11:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Good work on keeping these articles up to date. wish i had more time to help out though. --Dan027 (talk) 10:44, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

new article: Hall of Fame

FYI (for your info), I just created a new article: Baseball Australia Hall of Fame. Eagle4000 (talk) 08:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Old newspaper sources

I've just started doing some research for old Claxton Shields... Ok, well so far only the 1934 Claxton Shield but I'm intending to go through them all eventually. In trying to fill out the article, I've come across a series of four newspaper articles that give brief descriptions of the games that were held back then.

My point is if anyone else is looking for info for Australian topics through to the 1950s, Australian Newspapers, put together by the National Library of Australia seems to be a really good resource. They have newspapers from around the country from 1803 through to 1954. I've only just discovered the site, but it looks like worth checking out!  Afaber012  (talk)  00:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, it's a really good site, good find Afaber. I like the job you did on the 1934 and 35 Claxton articles, I'll see what I can do to help improve some of these articles as well. Got a bit of spare time over the next week, so I'll do some research while watching the cricket. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 22:03, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I've got someone on my talk page, questioning the use of the little flag shaped icons used on the Claxton Shield pages, particularly the current seasons' page. He's wanting to get rid of them. Feel free to post your views here one way or the other, or to post them at my talkpage. I'm biased because I created them, but I think they're worthwhile as a replacement for logos we can't use with the same frequency because of copyright issues.  Afaber012  (talk)  19:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

You have alot more patience then i do, incidents like that are one of the reasons i dont edit all that often anymore! --Dan027 (talk) 08:36, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
It comes from being working in customer service, where shouting, swearing, and physical abuse are considered bad options when dealing with customers, no matter how moronic or psychopathic they are. Though to be fair in this case, he's at least trying to do the right thing: just because I disagree, and think that even if it were an issue, its a very minor one, doesn't change that part. Besides - now it gives me a chance to try and play with my svg skills.
What a dickhead, sounds like my ex-gf, always had to be right :P JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 15:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Perth Heat vs West Australia split

I have started a discussion of sorts about the future form of this article, please post your input on the talk page on the Perth Heat article. cheers --Dan027 (talk) 09:26, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Claxton Shield record

In the announcements of Victoria's win in this year's Claxton Shield, I noticed the claims that it was the 23rd Victorian title win. The problem is, counting the Claxton Shield wins, the IBLA win in 2002, and the four wins by Victorian teams during the ABL, I count only 22. I've found that there seems to be an inconsistency with the way the 1966 Shield is recorded. The ABF seems to have either made a mistake or changed its mind at some point in the last decade, because even it has two different versions. If you go to the 2001 Archives section of the Claxton Shield website [2] and look at the "Past Winners" [3] it shows the 1966 winners as South Australia. But if you go to the 2009 Archives [4] and look at the "Trophy Winnners" [5] it shows Victoria as the '66 winners.

I've not been able to find anything that explicitly states a decision to revisit the results of 1966 by the ABF or any other authority. But I was able to find a newspaper article from The Age [6] declaring South Australia to be the winners. I'm assuming the confusion comes from:

  • Victoria beat South Australia in the last game of the tournament that year,
  • Victoria and South Australia finished level in points, but
  • South Australia had a better "percentage" (based on context, I'm assuming for/against) than Victoria.

Apart from the article from the time, I've also found a few other sources that back up the SA win side of things, so it seems we should go with that too. I've put this here though because it would potentially affect a few different articles, not just the one.  Afaber012  (talk)  23:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you think contacting the ABF would be a good idea? If so, I know a couple of the guys that work there. Hope you don't mind, I'll quote what you said. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 00:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
That'd be excellent. I think it'd be great to have some contact direct with the ABF - not just on this, but on any other question marks that might come up.  Afaber012  (talk)  01:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Looks to be a misprint by the ABF. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 05:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Ratings on talk pages

I don't know if anyone else's noticed, but with the new bot compiling the ratings for importance and quality there's been several articles appearing here in the log every day switching from one rating to another. I've finally worked out why: they actually have more than one rating. The talk pages of almost all the articles in the task force have {{WikiProject Baseball}} and {{WP Australia}} (and sometimes other templates too), and usually the baseball templlate references Australia, and the Australia template references baseball.

We need to make sure whenever a new article is created or a pre-existing article is added to our purview that the australia-importance parameter in {{WikiProject Baseball}} is set to the same thing as baseball-importance in {{WP Australia}}. That way we reduce the load on the bot so its less likely to crash, looking at the template generated will provide more meaningful data for anyone trying to work out where next to focus their energies, and anyone monitoring the changes to the ratings (such as nerds like me) can see the actual changes rather than garbage cluttering up the list.

It'd probably also be a good idea if we notice any other doubling up in the project talk page templates to do the same thing for the other projects and task forces.  Afaber012  (talk)  09:56, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

2010 Claxton Shield

I've put this up for peer review at WP:BASEBALL, after splitting out the regular season and finals series sections into their own articles. You can get to the review page via the article's talk page and click on the "request has been made" link. As usual, if you've got suggestions feel free to make them, or even make the changes yourself. Let's see if we can get it up to good article status.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Revisiting this, I know you've done a lot of work on it, are you putting it up for GA? JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 10:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah I think I should. It's been through a peer review and come out the other side ok. I put it up to B-class tonight after coming back to it and taking another look at it. I'll go over and put it up now.
While I think of it, I've been trying to get some sort of response from the ABF about releasing some photos that are on the websites it controls under a license that Wikipedia can make use of. So far I haven't made any progress: not even a thanks but no thanks. I noticed your post a little lower... Is there someone you could get in contact with that might be able to help out? Either from the Brisbane franchise perspective or the ABL/ABF overall? As long as that's not going to put you in an awkward position, of course.  Afaber012  (talk)  11:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
The ABF aren't very good with communication. I suggest you contact Ben Foster who now works with the ABL. Try ableague@baseball.com.au. I'll ask the guys from BQ next time I'm in the office. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 03:43, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Also, while I was looking for Ben's email, stumbled across this: http://yakyubaka.com/2010/05/21/abl-ben-foster-visits-five-npb-teams/ JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 03:43, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I've got this up for GA now, and have addressed all of the concerns brought up in the review bar one: description of the games themselves. I'm just not sure how to do it: a description of every single game would be more appropriate for the regular season or finals series articles, and would make the main article way too long. If I summarize, I'm not sure how to get the balance right in terms of brevity and length, but also what to consider noteworthy: what is and what isn't worthy of inclusion?

The other part of the problem is that I'm not entirely sure its appropriate to have that much detail and "feel" information in an encyclopedic entry. If anyone else has any ideas, I'd more than welcome them.  Afaber012  (talk)  04:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Player Drive

I'm going to start creating some articles ahead of the new league. Cleared up whether all Shield players were eligible and it seems they are. I will start with the missing Australian national team players, then the more notable professional Clacko players, and so on. I'll update the to do list. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

New ABL launch

A few days ago the new ABL (I wish they'd decided to go with a new name) got its brand launch with a couple of TV ads and what I assume is an early version of its own website. With this and the fact that the ABL is due to start in November (6 months to go and counting...) I was wondering what people thought about how we'll handle the articles involved. Based on the discussion at the Perth Heat talk page - which hasn't been actioned yet, so possibly something someone could volunteer for... nudge, nudge, wink, wink - the teams, when their names are announced along with rosters, etc, will get their own pages, regardless of whether their name coincides with an existing Claxton Shield team or a previous ABL team name. On this basis, my guess is the way to go for the league itself would be to create a new page for it as well, with some reference going back and forth between the existing article and the new one.

Assuming I'm right, how do we go about disambiguating these two articles. My thought is that the new article would be the primary topic which would be called Australian Baseball League, while the existing article would be called Australian Baseball League (1989-1999). What do other people think? Do you agree with the naming? Agree with having two articles but not the naming? Disagree with having two articles?  Afaber012  (talk)  07:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I agree. I've got a job with the Brisbane ABL team, so hopefully should get me a bit more insight. I'll be pretty busy the next few weeks as I've got two final assessment pieces to do, my final exams and then I'm off to MLBAAP for a month. Mid-July the marketing for the ABL is going to be stepped up another notch and team names will be unveiled to the public, until that time, we shouldn't disambig the pages. Perth Heat is almost a certainty to disambig, and at this stage, probably another franchise. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

New teams

I believe we reached the consensus to split the current ABL teams of the same name (Brisbane Bandits, Perth Heat) into old articles with their lifespan and have the new franchises take over the current names. This would mean a move from the current Bandits page to Brisbane Bandits (1989–98) and Perth to Perth Heat (1989–2010). I know we had a bit of discussion on the Perth Heat article, but it seems if we keep uniform to other team name changes, it should be ok. The Perth Heat team did change to the Western Heelers for a couple of seasons, but retained most of it's Australian Baseball League format to the Claxton Shield. We can perhaps discuss this in length a bit more, but for now unless anyone has any massive complaints, I'll move this page when I get home tonight.

The other one is the actual Australian Baseball League article itself. I know Afaber has been working on the new one for a while, so I'll let him put up that article and we should move the old page to Australian Baseball League (1989-1999). JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 09:33, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

My suggestion at the time on the Perth Heat talk page was that there be an article Western Australia state baseball team that covered all years under the name "Claxton Shield" which would include the last couple of years while called "Perth Heat" along with years of the "Western Heelers", one called Perth Heat (1989–1999) for the first incarnation of the ABL, and a Perth Heat for the new ABL. No one shouted it down at the time - or politely said no for that matter - but there wasn't a whole lot of commenting either way after mine. One of the advantages I see for using "Western Australia state baseball team" (and doing the same for the other states) is that its then consistent with Australia national baseball team, as well redirects already exist from "_____ state baseball team" to the various mascot-named teams used for last season. Assuming we go that way - or somewhere similar - making Brisbane Bandits for the new and Brisbane Bandits (1989–1998) for the old would seem to make sense.
I've got a fair bit done on the new ABL article - its at User:Afaber012/Sandbox/Article1 if anyone wants to contribute/suggest/criticize/rip to shreds what I've got so far... anything and everything is welcome. Its been a while since I've gone through the whole thing properly, and I want to do that before switching it over to the article namespace.  Afaber012  (talk)  12:18, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
@ Perth Heat, sounds like that makes more sense. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Australian Baseball League is now up, with the old article now moved to Australian Baseball League (1989-1999). All the links that needed to be moved over in the mainspace have been fixed up as well, so wikilinks in articles going to the new article should only be about the new league. (AWB is a wonderful thing!) If everyone's ok with it, I can do the same for Brisbane Bandits (1989-1998) and Perth Heat (1989-1999).  Afaber012  (talk)  21:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

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I've posted to the talk page there about a change to the layout of the article I'd like to make. I'm more than happy to go through any concerns or suggestions. The idea would be that if the changes are made, and that they actually wind up making sense, that the same sort of format would be used for the other Claxton Shield/ABL season articles. Let me know what you think.  Afaber012  (talk)  09:06, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Rosters

35 man rosters are up on the ABL website. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 08:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Roster templates have been filled according to the ABL's release on 28th October 2010, with additional info in-filled from the clubs' own roster announcements (eg. shirt numbers). Nationalities were determined through Google searches, though there is a possibility the actual link to another wikipedia entry may lead to another player of the same name. So there are no references for player nationalities. Qwertyqwas (talk) 10:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

ABL Club logos?

How does one go about getting the club logos onto the respective clubs' pages with regards to copyrights etc? I presume the ABL/MLB own the rights.

I'd like them to be up ASAP because they really stand out on a page without graphics and with increasing public awareness of the league, the pages are going to get more hits. A logo is essential to building a new brand and Wikipedia is a good platform to help with that.  Qwertyqwas  (talk)  10:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Logos are free to upload. Use the right template and it should be fine. See Brisbane Bandits Logo JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 13:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks.  Qwertyqwas  (talk)  14:25, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Club uniforms

I have added to Sandbox works on the other page what the Sydney Blue Sox infox would look like with the uniform added. I cannot workout, however, why the HOME and ROAD uniforms are not displayed side-by-side. The syntax of the code is the same as several other articles I have looked at.  Qwertyqwas  (talk)  12:05, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not real sure either why the uniforms display like that, and I set up the template. I've tried a bunch of different things to work properly with that {{Baseball uniform}} template, but couldn't get it to work while also having options for handling when only one uniform is displayed, and eventually gave up - especially seeing as I don't like the look of the little things anyway. Instead, what I'm working on now are images of the different uniforms, like AustraliaBaseball.PNG, for each of the ABL teams to go on their respective pages, and a combined one to go on the ABL page as well. I'm holding off on uploading them though for a couple of reasons. One is based on past Claxton Shield seasons, there may or may not be differences between home uniforms and away away uniforms: they may not use the road greys, or only some might rather than all of them. (Though from the looks of the Aces' launch, they will have grey pants for away games.) The other is I'd like a couple more photos to work with to try and get them as accurate as possible.
But they are on the way... I've only got the Blue Sox still to do - getting the script right (or close enough to) is tricky - and a few tweaks with the pant stripes I want to make.  Afaber012  (talk)  23:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
BB don't have an away uniform yet. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 01:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Wait, I lied, they have grey pants. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 12:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
Sox players are pictured here wearing grey pants. There would surely be a consistency throughout the league with regard to uniforms. I can't see the competition (with it's MLB influence) not adopting the traditional white-home grey-road system, regardless what the Claxton Shield has previously done. Suppose we'll know soon enough.  Qwertyqwas  (talk)  14:02, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

First two look slick Afaber. Keep it coming! JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 11:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

All 6 teams now have their uniform images uploaded and added to the team pages. From what I've been able to see so far, it looks like both Adelaide and Perth do not have separate road uniforms, while the other four all have grey pants as the only difference for their road uniforms. If I'm wrong about any of them let me know: it shouldn't take too long to sort out as long as its a minor sort of change or I've got some good photos to work with.  Afaber012  (talk)  02:17, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello, my friends: A group of us are working on clearing the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The article in the above header has been without sources for the past four years and might be removed if none are added. I wonder if you can help do so. Sincerely, and all the best to you, GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's my intention to go through all of the old ABL season articles and try to get them up to as high a standard as I can, including the 1997–98 article. As a start - at least to get it out of this category - I'll put in a reference at the tail of the article, then come back as I go through them and make some inline references where I can.  Afaber012  (talk)  21:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

ABL 2010-11 articles

I've been thinking about the various articles the structure of the articles covering the 2010-11 season, and I've been looking at the hierarchy of the MLB season articles. I'm wondering if instead of the current structure of:

we go with something like

What do people think?  Afaber012  (talk)  01:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I've been working on the 2010–11 Sydney Blue Sox season article in my sandbox here, and when I can get over my almost-fear of writing prose and fill out the monthly summaries, postseason series game descriptions, will switch it to the article space and start working on the others. (I've kept it out of the article space because I don't want it deleted while I'm busy procrastinating or have commitments/distractions out in the real world.) I've basically taken the format from the various MLB equivalents, particularly the 2008 and 2009 Philadelphia Phillies ones that have become Good Articles. I'm also thinking that the existing postseason article can stay rather than change to just the Championship series so that the article itself is a more appropriate size.
By the way, 2010–11 Australian Baseball League season is undergoing a GA review itself at the moment, so hopefully we'll have a third all-baseball article added to the list.  Afaber012  (talk)  09:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Women's baseball in Australia

Check out the article Women's baseball in Australia, good to see someone outside the project contribute. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 08:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

2011/12 ABL season

Schedule is up, I'll be busy with assessment until Wednesday, but will start to have a crack at it after. JRA_WestyQld2 Talk 08:30, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

With the promotion of Josh Spence to the Padres, taking the Aussie MLB player tally up to 29, I've been working on the List of Major League Baseball players from Australia, with a view to nominating it for Featured List status. So far I've been taking queues form the Japan list which seems pretty well put together, and the Puerto Rico list which is already a Featured List. So if anyone's got any thoughts, suggestions, comments or criticisms, you know where to find both it and me.  Afaber012  (talk)  00:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I've just nominated it as a Featured List Candidate. With any luck it'll go through successfully in the next couple of weeks.  Afaber012  (talk)  00:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Good luck. Great article. Spy007au (talk) 10:35, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

New ABL uniforms

I was wondering if anyone's seen new uniform tops for the Bandits, Bite or Aces for this coming season? I've already seen the new road jersey for the Heat to go along with new road-grey pants, and I've seen what I assume to be new home jerseys for the Blue Sox and Cavalry, as they are both the more traditional white ones similar to the Heat's from last year. Given this it would seem like the others will be getting new ones as well (and maybe updating some of the coloured ones from last season to have the more traditional city name on the road and the mascot/whatever on the home, like with the Heat's setup). I'm in the process of getting the graphics updated for the team pages and the team's season pages as well, but don't want to do the 3 others until I've got a source for them.  Afaber012  (talk)  07:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Call off the dogs - I found sources for the three remaining teams. Looks like everyone is getting a new jersey for the new season. I'll have the new versions of the uniforms up (hopefully) in the next day or two, as long as I can get it done before the Blue Sox's home opener tomorrow night.
Speaking of which, a reminder of the userboxes I created for the ABL can be found here.  Afaber012  (talk)  00:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedians to the Games

Not directly baseball related… but general Australian sport stuff which could help experience wise with Australian baseball improving. :) If there are any general Australian sport fans lurking around, Wikimedians to the Games is a collaboration drive to improve Australian Paralympic articles, with the most active contributors having an opportunity to go attend the Paralympic Games and to cover the Games behind the scenes with a press pass. The top two contributors will get their airfare and accommodation paid for. :) The drive official starts on 10 January 2012. --LauraHale (talk) 09:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Perth Heat multiple identities

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion over in the Perth Heat article over who it is or should be with a number of redirects in the wrong place. i think this needs everyone's attention to sort out ASAP. --Dan027 (talk) 06:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)