Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket/infobox

When bored, and not having much to do, I decided to have a go at finishing what Ngb started here (I basically stole everything from here). It is basically the same as the current Template:Infobox Cricketer, but allows you to choose whether you display Internationals (Tests & ODIs) or Domestics (First-class and List A) or both (best only for long articles). It works pretty much the same way as Template:Infobox Pope, whereby one of the parameters (here they are International and Domestic, and you choose show or hide for either) decides what is displayed. I tried to make as few changes to the code as possible, so if it is accepted, it would be easy to change the articles over. The major disadvantage I think (apart from its size, which is largely unavoidable) is the fact that if you don't want to show one of them, you still have to include all of the parameter names for the unused stuff. This also cannot be avoided, but just leads to a massively long amount of code before the start of the article. Yeh, so basically:

• Template:Cricketer Infobox is where it is. I just put this as the name firstly so I didn't write over the current template and I didn't know how to test it other than using the template namespace. If accepted, it can just be copy-pasted to the normal name and the sub-templates (needed for it to work) can be moved. The subtemplates are:
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/main
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/International show
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/International hide
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/Domestic show
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/Domestic hide
  • Template:Cricketer Infobox/Source
• This is an example page, using Gary Sober's stats, which shows how it is used, have a sneek peek at the code to see how it works.

I didn't make many (if any at all) changes to the basic code already used, but a few changes that I thought could be made include:

1. Allowing a choice between showing overs or balls bowled for older cricketers (pretty simple to change). Currently international has overs (though i think Template:Infobox Historic Cricketer allows for balls bowled), while domestic has balls. I think it's better to either keep them consistent or give the choice where stats may not be available.
2. Allowing a choice between showing ODIs or First-class in the second column of the International section. This is also what is shown in Template:Infobox Historic Cricketer, and would be fundamentally easy to change, though obviously we would need to:
   1. remove the International heading from that set (I don't think it's particularly necessary, but it could be made to disappear automatically if you choose First-class instead of ODI.
   2. make sure if First-class is chosen, the Domestic section is not shown. Though I can't think of a solution that isn't ridiculously complicated, it would obviously mean that First-class is shown twice.
3. Standardising 5 wicket innings across all the sections. Currently 5WI is used for Tests, ODIs and First-class, but 4WI is used for List A.
4. Combining the 5WI and 10WM rows in both sections. This is relatively simple, and although unnecessary, it would just reduce the size of the template a little. 5WI could be linked like 5 WI for example to remove the need for a longer description. Fundamentally, to do this, one of the parameters would need to change and one would need to be removed, so this would take a long time if we were to change all cricketers to this format.

Well it's been a long rant, I have a couple more things to say before I leave you alone... I think the major advantages of this are firstly that if all the proposals above are allowed, we could remove the need for both Template:Infobox Cricketer and Template:Infobox Historic Cricketer, as I believe both bases would be covered, and secondly that as shown here, you could just put a small infobox on cricketer pages with very little article (although obviously there is a teething problem with the extra lines being shown in the bowling row).

Anyway, that's the end of it now. Please comment on the infobox and the proposed changes. I understand it would be a big task to switch over every player with an Infobox currently (there are in excess of 250 just with the regular one), the fact that I changed only a little code would mean that the extra parameters could just be cut-and-pasted in without changes needed.

Thanks AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 11:27, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Looks nice, though I think that given the constantly increasing number of bio articles (he said, optimistically!) we should really set this in stone soon, and not change again after this (if it happens) without a really good reason. Changing 250 players is just about reasonable; changing thousands would be unbearable.

One thing that does come to mind immediately, though, is that as far as I can see there's no provision for players who play ODIs but not Tests, something that's already quite common (WC players from Canada, pre-Test Zimbabwe etc) and is likely to become more and more so now that the "second-tier six" are to have full ODI status. There could well be several hundred players in this category before too long, and it looks ugly to have a whole column of "N/A"s so often.

I also think that bowling stats should be overs throughout a player's boxes, or balls throughout, but not both as Sobers has in his "show all" example; if that's just to illustrate how things work then by all means ignore this point. Loganberry (Talk) 23:22, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

What about a bowler's strike rate? I've often thought that was an important statistic (I'd prefer a wicket-taking bowler to one who simply doesn't concede runs), but none of our articles seem to include it. Raven4x4x 01:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Re:Loganberry Firstly, I agree with you about the players with ODIs but no Tests. I hadn't thought of that situation, maybe one way to allow for it is to let the person choose two (or four) categories (eg Tests & ODIs or ODIs & first-class), and these could be used for the column headings - this would be pretty easy to do, and could be called (say) Flexible Infobox Cricketer, and be used instead of this one. This solution would also allow it to be used in place of Template:Infobox Historic Cricketer, say if you want to show Tests and First-class only. Secondly, I definitely agree about the balls/overs thing. The reason the example is like that is because I simply put the two existing infoboxes together, and for whatever reason, one used balls and the other overs. I prefer overs, but it's obviously time-consuming if not impossible to find the number of overs for an older cricketer (esp those who bowled where the standard over was changing). Again, it would be pretty simple to allow the person who enters the information to select whether they want Balls or Overs to be displyed, depending on what information is available to them, and I think it should be kept constant throughout a player's infobox. Finally, since this infobox is merely extra features added to the current one, it may not be necessary to have it replace those used already on pages. I believe Ngb originally started work on this due to the messy nature of the boxes on the Garfield Sobers page, and maybe this box could just be used on new articles and longer ones where the author thinks it appropriate to include First-class and List A stats. AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 10:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Re:Raven When the infobox was originally created/suggested, it contained practically every stat available on cricinfo. This of course made it ridiculously long and useless on all but the most extensive articles. It was whittled down until what you see now remains, so obviously it was thought unnecessary for strike rate to appear. However, i also think it's an interesting stat, and like I said with point 4 above, maybe 5WI and 10WM could be moved into one row to create space for this extra one. AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 10:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)