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Feedback needed on merged template

After addressing all of the issues raised in the last round of feedback I'd like to solicit your thoughts on the current state of the merged template in the sandbox. Please take a look at the testcases. Feel free to add (or recommend) additional test cases if you have a particular situation you'd like to look at. If you notice an issue, please feel free to fix it or simply leave a note here and I'll take a look. I'll be available only sporadically over the next week or so, until after New Years, but if you leave a comment I'll be sure to get back to you (just be patient). Thanks! — DeeJayK (talk) 22:32, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

As soon as I get a day off work (hah!) I'll sit down and take a proper look at the test cases and give some feedback. Awesome job you've done so far! Primefac (talk) 01:54, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
I made some minor tweaks, including reducing the number of line-wrapping stats labels. Frietjes (talk) 16:50, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
Frietjes makes a good point: we should standardize short-form infobox stats labels to minimize, if not eliminate, line-wrapping. In an ideal world, we would move the NFL stats to a separate table in the pro career section of the article. Unless and until that happens, we should do everything reasonably possible to eliminate line-wrapping of the infobox labels because line-wrapping screws up the appearance of the infobox to no good purpose. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:16, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Has anyone had a chance to evaluate the current state of the proposed merged template? I think that a lot of progress has been made since the previous round of feedback. In fact, I would hazard to say that we are getting very close to a state where the merged template offers improvements over both of the templates we are proposing to replace. I'd love to get some feedback from other editors as to whether any consensus can be found to move forward with implementing the merger. — DeeJayK (talk) 16:02, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Feedback:
  1. Moving the roster status to the top section is probably a good idea.
  2. We should consider moving height and weight from "Personal information" to the top section for players, together with position and roster status. Height and weight are directly relevant to the player's athletic career.
  3. Height and weight should be toggled off for coaches by using a "coach=yes" parameter for coaches. The display of all coach-specific parameters should be tied to the toggle.
  4. Likewise, jersey number should be toggled off for coaches.
  5. Using the same toggle function for coaches, the "position" parameter label should changed to "title" for coaches.
  6. Coach win-loss records should be toggled on, and player stats toggled off for coaches.
  7. Moving player statistics to the center of the box is a bad idea. The existing section order, with stats at the bottom, is better.
  8. Moving career history to the bottom of the box, effectively switching positions with career history, is a bad idea. The existing section order is better.
  9. "Career information" and "career history" should either be adjoining sections, or we should consider combining them into a single "career history" sectiuon. Semantically, the distinction between "career information" and "career history" has never been particularly clear.
  10. The segregated "championships," with separate parameters and separate field labels, for the 338 articles that currently use Infobox NFL coach need to be folded into the highlights section to be consistent with the 16,000+ existing uses of Infobox NFL player. If this requires manual editing of the 338 infoboxes that currently use Infobox NFL coach, so be it. The last thing we need to do is introduce a new format into the 16,000 existing uses of Infobox NFL player.
  11. Segregated honors, such as separate parameters, with separate field labels, for Pro Bowls, All-Pro, CFL All-Star, AFL All-Star, retired nos., etc., need to be folded in to the highlights section, with the standard formatting used Infobox NFL player. If this requires manual editing of the 338 infoboxes that currently use Infobox NFL coach, that's okay. Again, the last thing we need to do is introduce a new and competing format into the 16,000 existing uses of Infobox NFL player.
  12. It would be far better to segregate coaching championships and other highlights so that they are displayed under a separate subheader from those won or received as a player, just as we have a separate parameter with a displayed subheader for coaching career history
When this merge was proposed by a non-sports editor, none of the obvious inconsistencies between these two templates were ever considered let alone discussed in a meaningful way. The goal of any well-thought-out merge should be to fold the relatively small number of uses of Infobox NFL coach into Infobox NFL player, and conform all uses to a single template, a single data entry format, a single data presentation format, and a single set of parameter names. Creating a Frankenstein template where we simply stitch the two templates together and preserve all of the existing inconsistencies from the coach infobox into the player infobox is a very bad idea. Again, if this requires manual editing of the remaining 338 uses of Infobox NFL coach, that's fine. We have the experienced volunteers to do that manual editing. The most tedious spadework has already been done by eliminating the multiplicity of field names. Once we resolve the issues above, it's time to take the final step and conform the coach fields and formatting to those of the player box. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:56, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@Dirtlawyer1: first, thank you for the detailed feedback. Let me respond to your points individually
1. I think this change should be fairly non-controversial. If anyone feels otherwise, let's discuss.
2, 3 & 4. I understand where you are coming from here, but I'm not sure I agree. While it does make sense that physical attributes have very little bearing on a coach's performance, simply because a player becomes a coach doesn't erase that he was previously a player where these attributes are key. As such, it doesn't make sense to me to suppress these attributes for coaches. We could consider a scenario where these physical attributes would be suppressed for coaches who never played, but as discussed previously in the alma_mater conversation, that is a tiny minority of cases and as such I'm not sure it warrants the effort. A better solution might be simply to note in the documentation that the height/weight parameters should be supplied only for current or former players. Also, your "coach=y" toggle solution would require adding that parameter to all relevant pages which use this template, which is a decent sized effort.
5. If you look at the Kris Richard example, I've attempted to do just this in cases where both currentposition and position are provided. If we go forward with the merger, it makes more sense to use the current_title parameter for coaching titles.
6. Again, simply because a person is now a coach, it doesn't make sense that we should essentially ignore the fact that he was formerly a player.
7 & 8. This is a case where I attempted to integrate the layout of the two infoboxes and in doing so made a decision that I thought that it made sense for the "Career History" section should be at the bottom (as it is in {{Infobox NFL coach}}). I'm open to other suggestions regarding the order of the sections, but we should do so on more than an assertion that "the existing order is better." Why is it better? What reasoning do we have to order these infobox section? Also, when you say that "the existing order is better" you have to remember that there are TWO infoboxes involved in this merge with two different existing orders and I feel strongly that we need to settle on one layout. Aslo, if player stats are retained for coaches (as I argue for above), then I'm not sure it makes sense for that player stats be the lower-most section for an infobox related to a coach.
9. I agree that we probably should come up with a better name for one or both of these sections, but I do believe the two sections should remain distinct and should not be merged. In practice, the "Career information" section of the merged infobox contains primarily information related to the subject's playing career. I'm not sure I love the idea of renaming the section "Playing career information". If anyone has other suggestions, then I'm all ears.
10, 11 & 12. I disagree. With any MERGER you're going to end up with a template that includes parameters from only one of the constituent templates. Otherwise what you are suggesting is not a MERGER but simply a replacement of the coach template with the player template. I've tried to minimize that where possible, but I don't have any programmatic way to deal with these particular parameters and thus have retained them in the merged design. We can discuss which parameter might be preferred in the final merger and noted in the documentation as such, but if we're going to do a MERGER then we have to be okay with some actual MERGING.
By and large these suggestions (addressed above) pertain to requests for improvements to one or the other of the constituent templates and as such shouldn't be considered germane to a discussion of the merger per se. It would be great if we could limit this discussion to the differences between the merged template and the existing templates as shown in the side-by-side comparisons in the testcase article. If we can agree that the merged presentation improves upon the existing presentation (or at a minimum doesn't make is worse), then we can perhaps complete this merge and THEN discuss your other ideas for improving the template. Also, I wholeheartedly disagree that the player template should be prioritized over the coach template in discussing this merger simply on the basis of the player templates much larger installed base. Rather than favoring either template, I feel that our goal in this effort should be to make the merged template as complete and as functional as possible and incorporate the best designs from each of the constituent templates. This merger proposal has already dragged out over two years, so the sooner we can put this behind us the sooner we can refocus our efforts on improving the single infobox going forward (possibly implementing some of your suggestions above). — DeeJayK (talk) 18:11, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
10, 11 & 12. Okay. For now, let's focus on the most essential point. As I said above, "When this merge was proposed by a non-sports editor, none of the obvious inconsistencies between these two templates were ever considered let alone discussed in a meaningful way. The goal of any well-thought-out merge should be to fold the relatively small number of uses of Infobox NFL coach into Infobox NFL player, and conform all uses to a single template, a single data entry format, a single data presentation format, and a single set of parameter names."
Call it a merge, call it a replacement; it doesn't matter. We should not introduce inconsistent design elements, conflicting data formats, and separate parameters that render different display results for the same data into the existing 16,000 uses for the sake of a small minority of 338. Having two different displays for player tenures, coach tenures, honors, awards, and championships based on which parameters are selected (those of existing Infobox player or existing Infobox coach) is not a merge result; it's essentially two completely different infoboxes stitched together, sharing only the same template, but rendering different graphics, and displaying data in a different format. That's exactly the wrong result. When we are done, the infoboxes for all coaches should share the same design elements, and all data should be displayed in the same format, not two distinctly different designs with two different data displays. Moreover, the coaching data and player data should be displayed in exactly the same format to the extent possible. The idea that one head coach's infobox should display teams first and year-spans second, while another head coach's infobox displays year-spans first and teams second is just plain goofy. And, yes, the relative numbers are relevant: we are not going to reformat 16,000 infoboxes to accommodate 338. That's common sense.
We have the experienced volunteers to do this properly, and there is no reason why the required manual editing should not be wrapped up in a month, give or take. It's waited three years, with two months of actual spadework to get us where we are now. It can certainly wait another month in order to avoid introducing conflicting design elements and formatting to the existing template. I feel strongly enough about this to manually edit all 338 of them by myself. I did so for three examples in about an hour last week, so I have a pretty good idea how much time is involved, and if necessary, I can replace all 338 in less than four months (at the rate of about three per day). With the experienced volunteers I recruited in December, this can be accomplished in a fraction of that time.
In case you are not aware of the template history, the separate parameters for "coach_team" and "coach_years" were only introduced to Infobox NFL coach in late January and early February 2015, when Frietjes was attempting to address WP:ACCESS concerns; as Infobox NFL existed prior to January/February 2015, the parameters for "coach_team" and "coach_years" were single parameters with the individual teams and year-spans separated by hard-coded linebreaks. To eliminate the hard-coded breaks in the then-350 or so examples, Frietjes used a script and then did manual checking and clean-up. When she was in the middle of this process, I reminded her that the coach/player merge was still pending, and that the separate parameters conflicted with the plainlist formatting of Infobox NFL player. I was assured that the now-separate parameters could be readily converted again to conform to the final merge. So, there is no precedent, no substantial history, behind the separate parameters. For our editors, plainlist is the simpler and more flexible format now in wide use in many of our infoboxes and virtually all of our navboxes; Infobox NFL player has incorporated plainlist from its creation in 2007.
Bottom line: yes, consistency is important, and yes, the design and formatting of the 16,000 takes priority over the 338. We certainly are not going to reformat the 16,000 to the style of the 338. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
If that's your position, and there's no room for compromise as you see it, then we might as well just wrap this entire merge attempt up and you can go ahead and work on replacing the current instances of {{Infobox NFL coach}} with {{Infobox NFL player}}. I regret the considerable efforts I've put forth in the past months in an attempt to move this merge forward as it doesn't appear that anything short of a simple replacement could possibly meet your demands. — DeeJayK (talk) 19:54, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@DeeJayK: The consensus since 2012 has been to merge these two templates. While DL has always opposed this, there has been no new consensus to halt this. The implementation has been consolidated, a maintenance relief for template editors and less confusion for article editors, and the merged result generally seems to have the same inherent properties with some improvements over the previous respective templates. I support going forward, with no reservation about any improvements after this merge if there is further consensus.—Bagumba (talk) 20:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC) <small
Wrong, Bagumba. I did not oppose this merge in principle; I opposed it after the fact because (1) the merge was proposed with absolutely no notice to or consultation with WP:NFL editors, (2) the template's major contributors were not notified or consulted, (3) not a single one of the various conflicting design and data format complications were discussed or even mentioned, (4) no consideration was given to whether it made sense to maintain separate templates or not, and (5) non-sports "template editors" presumed they would just slap two complex templates together with no input from the actual users of them. Five people participated in that TfD/TfM -- five people who had zero to minimal experience in designing, maintaining or using these two templates, who knew zero to precious little about their creation, their subsequent history, and their actual use, and who presented absolutely no plan for the merge of the single most important template for two of the most active WikiProjects. Given the procedural defects and the lack of any discussion of the surviving template in the original TfD/TfM, I was angry then and I'm still angry about it over three years later. It's why I now patrol TfD daily, looking for discussions that affect the sports WikiProjects, requesting that template creators and affected projects be notified as appropriate, and why I do what I can to prevent any template zealots from bullying through merges when there is a perfectly valid reason for maintaining two or more separate templates. For me, it has always been about the ease of use for the actual users and best presentation of infobox information. Somehow, I would hope you could understand that problematic history, instead of saying "DL has always opposed this". Hopefully, I have refreshed your memory. What is happening now on this talk page was what should have happened in 2012, either before or during the TfD/TfM discussion. I may not agree with DJK on every point, but he is a sports editor who understands the practical concerns of other sports editors, and his goal is a surviving template that its primary users like and can easily use. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:25, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
DL: I'm generally aware of the past points you have made, and I did not suggest that you did not explain your reasons, nor that they are completely without merit. However, I stand by my assertion that there has always been consensus to merge, and I'd be grateful if DeeJayK is the one that finally accomplishes this after four years. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 23:22, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
It would have been done in the first four months of 2015, but for the interference of others derailing the process I had started among NFL and CFB editors. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:53, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Re: 8. Moving career history to the bottom of the box: I agree with DL that history should come before highlights. It's consistent with the previous implementation for players, which considerably outnumbered instances of coaches. Moreover, it's consistent with basketball and baseball infoboxes.—Bagumba (talk) 20:56, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a simple enough change to make if the consensus here is that the order you suggest makes sense. The previous merge attempt maintained the positions of this section from each of the constituent templates and I felt that was a bad design for the merge to follow. As such, I simply followed the order from the coach template as that made more sense to me, but I don't have an strong reason to support that order. We just need to be aware that if we change it for the merged template, this will represent a change from the existing coach template. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@Deejayk: I obviously feel very strongly about preserving the core design of Infobox NFL player, but there's still room for compromise regarding design elements as noted in numbered items 1 through 9 above. What I am adamant about is that there will be a single template, with a single set of parameter names, that presents the data in the same format for all players and coaches. The merge still requires us to address the use of the imported parameters for current title, alma mater, win-loss, records, and any others for which there is was no previous corresponding substitute in Infobox NFL player -- which will need to be added to all coaches other than 338. In summary, here are my core points:
1. All team tenures, championships, awards and honors should be presented in the standard format of the individual tenure, championship, award or honor (linked when appropriate), followed by the year of such items in a parenthetical (also linked when appropriate); and
2. Plainlist should be preserved as the primary coded field structure for (a) career history/team tenures for both players and coaches, and (b) all highlights, including all championships, awards and honors.
That maintains the existing template code architecture and the existing data formatting and presentation. Frankly, I will accept any number of things which are not my first choices in order to preserve those core points of architecture and graphic design. As for your considerable efforts, all the work you have done to date has contributed to getting us where we are, and that's no small thing. Having been a part of a much larger merge involving this same template five years ago, believe me, I understand how tedious and time-consuming the work you have performed is. I have over 1,500 NFL players and coaches on watch lists, and I have seen what you have done -- tracking and eliminating duplicate and non-conforming parameters, removing deprecated and non-functional parameters, cleaning up data as required, cleaning up and simplifying the template code. All of that work was a necessary prerequisite to performing this merge, whether you want to call it a "merge" or "replacement"; none of that work is wasted -- all of your work was necessary to doing this the right way. But having one template render two different presentations of the biographical data was not, and should never have been a consideration, and based on your comments through early December, I don't think it was your goal, either, when you started this process.
I've spoken my piece, and now I will hold my peace. In addition to the parameters for current title, birth name, alma mater, and win-loss records imported from Infobox NFL coach, what other parameters and/or datapoints do you think should be imported from Infobox into the surviving Template:Infobox NFL biography? And what are your core positions on items 1 through 9 above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
My core feeling on your items 2 thru 6 is that those suggestions are fine in and of themselves (not that I agree, but am open to discussing them), but I feel they're largely misplaced in the context of a discussion of the merge which is my primary focus at the moment since they're essentially issues related to the existing functionality of one or both of the constituent templates and not with any changes that are being made to support the merge. As such, bringing them up at this point accomplishes little except sidetracking us from the merge at hand. Ideally, we could limit this discussion to the side-by-side changes in the testcases so that we can gain consensus to move forward with the merger. Then, once the merger is complete we can continue to work on ways to streamline and improve the merged template. As far as your other suggestions, I'm happy to entertain them as I've described above as long as there is some logical basis. — DeeJayK (talk) 21:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
DJK: point by point --
Okay, let's set aside items 2 through 6 as "new" topics to be discussed later. They are "largely misplaced in the context of the discussion of the merge," in your words.
Items 7 and 8, as they exist in the sandbox examples, represent changes to the existing order of data presentation, and should likewise be set aside to be discussed later. These are proposed design changes that are "largely misplaced in the context of the discussion of the merge," to borrow your words.
Regarding item 9, I think we agree that a better, more semantically intuitive section header is desirable. Whether we can find a better label remains to be determined, and can be punted for the time being if needed.
Items 10, 11 and 12 are core points: use of plainlist coding for the career history section (inclusive of coach and player tenures) and highlights (inclusive of all championships, awards and honors); and both tenures and highlights will be presented in the order of the tenure and highlight items presented first followed by the applicable years in parentheticals (e.g., "3× Pro Bowl (2012, 2014, 2015)", "Super Bowl championship (2012)", "AFL Player of the Year (2015)"). Separate parameters will not be used for tenure and highlight items and dates. This will require manual editing. I am serious as a heart attack on there being a single template, with a single set of parameters, with a single presentation format for all coach and player data as described.
In addition to parameters for current title, birth name, alma mater, and win-loss records imported from Infobox NFL coach, what other parameters and/or datapoints do you think should be imported from Infobox into the surviving Template:Infobox NFL biography? Is there some substantive parameter of Infobox NFL coach which I am omitting?
Your turn. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:05, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree that we should table #2–6 and focus on the merge questions. I've got to run at the moment, but will respond to the remainder of your points as soon as I get a few spare minutes. — DeeJayK (talk) 23:04, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
For #10 and #11, one option would be to deprecate the Infobox NFL Coach parameters in documentation, and manually change them to the preferred format after going live with the merged template. Once they have all been removed from the transclustions, the legacy code can be removed from the template implementation.—Bagumba (talk) 07:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
#7 & 8 re: the order of the sections are most certainly germane to the merge discussion as this change was an attempt to unify the section orders of the two templates. Unless we are going to have different section orders depending on which of the existing templates is currently used (a bad practice in my opinion) then the orders of the sections of one or both of the constituent templates must change. I chose to largely maintain the order of the coach template in this case, simply because I felt that order made more sense. After looking at how the career history is presented in some other sports infoboxes, it appears that the consensus is to follow the rough order that is used currently by the player infobox, and so I've altered the order of the merged template to follow that consensus. As far as the overall order of the rest of the sections, this is another item that makes as much or more sense to deal with after the merge as before or during the merge. For example, I might argue that the player stats and head coaching records sections might belong above the career highlights sections, but as noted that is something we can settle post-merge. For now, please take another look at the testcases and let me know if the section order looks better to you.
#9 re: the "Career information" section header is a minor question and a change that we can make at any time. If someone has a better name they'd like to use, please throw it out here for consideration.
#10 & 12 re: separate parameters and sections for Super Bowls and Championships. These parameters exist in both of the constituent templates and the only change in the merge consisted of a one-to-one mapping of the elements ("SuperBowls" and "coachSB", "ArenaBowls" and "coachAB", "Championships" and "coachchamps"). As such, I don't really consider a discussion around the elimination of these parameters a component of the merge discussion. If there is a case to remove them it could have been made for either or both of the templates just as simply as it can be made for the merged template after the completion of the merge. Bringing the topic up here simply serves to muddy the waters. As with your points 2-6 and 10 the exercise at hand is not to PERFECT this template in one stroke, but merely to merge these two templates. As such, this discussion seems to me to fall outside the scope of the merge. I don't have a strong opinion on these suggestions pro or con, but simply feel that it's they should also be tabled until after the merge is behind us.
#11 re: manually editing the coach articles to merge some parameters. I don't share your belief that a single plaintext "highlights" section is the only workable solution. My general preference is for structured over unstructured data as I feel that is more conducive to maintaining a consistent presentation across all articles that use the template — it's just as unlikely that you are going to disabuse me of my opinion as that I am going to alter your beliefs. That said, I think that Bagumba's suggestion makes a lot of sense. If we (as a project) decide that your suggestion should carry the day, then the manual editing necessary to achieve that end is simpler to achieve after the merge than it is before anyway.
Overall, I would urge you to consider this merge with the mindset that the merged template is not being delivered from the mountaintop carved in stone. I view this as an iterative process and a work in progress. Whatever quibbles you (or anyone) has with the template can continue to be hashed out after the merge, and in fact, since we'll have just a single template to worry about at that point any changes will be that much simpler to implement. — DeeJayK (talk) 13:07, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Convenience break no. 1

Re: 10, 11, 12: I think the guiding principle should be the consensus stated at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Holding_cell#Sports to merge Infobox NFL coach into Infobox NFL player. Coupled with the fact that there are more transclusions of the players' template than the coaches', precedence should be given to retain the players' format inasmuch as possible. Parameters like coachSB, coachAB, and coachchamps should remain grouped under Head coaching record, as they are with Infobox NFL player.—Bagumba (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

If you feel these parameters fit better somewhere else, then by all means move them. But the placement of these (infrequently used) parameters shouldn't be the thing that is holding up this merge effort. I'd love to get this merge DONE, so that I can start in with the post merge cleanup and then eventually get on to more important topics. — DeeJayK (talk) 04:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I moved some player- and coach-specific parameters so that they retained the order from their orig templates. AFAICS, I think you can process with competing this. What are the outstanding action items that are needed for the merge?—Bagumba (talk) 08:28, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
No, Bagumba, we are not ready to go live. The sandbox examples of hybrid conversions from Infobox NFL coach to the rearranged Infobox NFL biography look like a sloppy mess, and there remain issues to be resolved regarding the parameters for player position and coach title and their placement within the boxes for current and retired coaches. It ain't yet ready for prime time, and the hasty implementation will simply contribute to the confusion among template users as to the correct parameters and data formatting to be used during an interim period. The coach-to-biography conversions that now live in the bottom half of the sandbox are a graphic and semantic mess. We owe our editors and readers much more than that, even if you believe it is only an intermediate step.
I've converted 20+ articles from Infobox NFL coach to the current version of Infobox NFL biography, including all of the parameters that DJ has conformed to date. Having performed those 20+ manual conversions, I am convinced more than ever that the only way to execute this properly is a manual editing of the data of the remaining 316 instances of Infobox NFL coach. If need be, I will personally convert every single one of the remaining 316 uses of Infobox NFL coach so that the parameters and data formatting conform to those of Infobox NFL player (with accepted modifications). We are not going to introduce a "Trojan horse" of conflicting parameters and conflicting data formats after 8.5 years of imposing a measure of uniformity on the existing 16,000 infoboxes -- a result of over a half dozen merges and untold hours of volunteer editor time. This is not some code that exists in isolation; it is used daily by dozens of editors, and hundreds if not thousands of readers.
If you compare any of the infoboxes of the 28 currently listed NFL head coaches -- all of which have been converted or conformed by me in the last 24 hours -- to what's in the sandbox, you may begin to understand my frustration. The 28 current head coach infoboxes I've converted or conformed look like nearly finished products. The examples of coach-to-biography conversions in the lower half of the sandbox look like exactly what they are: the rushed stitching-together of two templates with disparate design elements, and conflicting data formats. The proposed importation of new and conflicting parameters and data formats from a small minority of 300 templates into an existing environment of 16,000 is a formula for confusion among the actual users of the template and has the potential to create conflict and chaos among our volunteer editors. I would hope that you would understand and accept what I have been saying for the last two months on this talk page: (1) one set of parameters, (2) one data input format, (3) both based on the existing plainlist coding of Infobox NFL player, and (4) not on a proliferation of multiple new parameters for teams, tenures, awards, honors, championships, etc., imported from the existing Infobox NFL coach.
In addition to the outstanding design issues, there remains plenty of parameter clean-up work that remains to be done -- all of which may proceed while the remaining 300 coach boxes are manually edited. I would ask you to postpone any idea of going live for 30 days. During that time, I can eliminate all of the conflicting data and parameters of the existing Infobox NFL coach, thereby simplifying the coding for this merge with absolutely no down side. That would permit us to launch with a 97% solution in mid-February, as opposed to going live with the 60% solution that now lives in the sandbox. There is absolutely no reason to rush this, and no one should be obligated to buy a pig in a poke. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 11:29, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm out. I've tried to get this merge moving, but it's clear to me now that some participants are not coming to the effort with an open mind and participating in this dialog in good faith. I have better things to do with my time than deal with this nonsense. — DeeJayK (talk) 19:01, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
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