Twins Player Wiki Conversation

[Brock Beauchamp]

Okay, so I'm leaning toward starting a player wiki for Twins players. This would be user-generated and maintained by the community. If you have interest in being one of the stewards of this idea, please speak up here or PM me. The way I envision working is so:

This will only be open to verified or higher members, which means no one will be able to create an account and ****post content. We'll create a supergroup of volunteer users to keep the wiki clean and aligning with our principles. They'll likely approve all additions and changes to the wiki, though the mechanics of this are still undecided.

On to the content itself... what do we want on this page to differentiate it from content found elsewhere? This is what I've come up with so far:

Bio: pretty basic stuff, hard to see this wiki working without some kind of biography field.

Personal experiences: this is where fans can post short blurbs/stories about their interactions with the player.

Highlights/accomplishments: A bullet-point list of career accomplishments by the player.

B-Ref: A link to their B-Ref page.

User gallery: User-uploaded images of the player, either personal or stock imagery.

Tagged articles: A list of front page articles that have the player tagged in them.

Tagged community content: A list of blogs and forum threads that have the player tagged in them.

External links: Any articles of note about the player that are note-worthy.

Thoughts? What makes this different than other content out there? And how can we make this as streamlined as possible while also providing valuable resources for users looking for information?

[Twinsrtheworst]

This all sounds great.  I think what separates it, is it's created and done by us.  The TD community.  I know there is some great stories, information, and insight out there in our community.

[ashbury]

I may have asked some of these the last time you brought up this idea.

• What do you see as the biggest un-met need this effort would rectify? Significant players already have decent-quality bio pages on regular Wikipedia (hell, Anthony Slama's page isn't bad and he's not significant at all), so is the motivation a bunch of "one spring training Brian Duensing autographed a ball for me, and I traded it right away as a sweetener, LOL" personal reflections?
• Top Twins prospects have Wikipedia pages. Brooks Lee's page is good, and Charlee Soto hasn't thrown a pitch for the Twins but he has a rudimentary page.  Will what TDers do, be better than these?
• Also on "regular" Wikipedia, someone seems to be keeping up with the better Twins prospects on a page called "Minnesota Twins minor league players".  ERod, Canterino, etc.  Will this new TD-Wiki really only be bringing truly obscure prospects to light?
• What to do with significant players like Steve Carlton, Bartolo Colon, Dave Winfield, Jim Thome, who had relative cups of coffee with the Twins - strive for complete bios, or strive to focus on what they did as Twins, or just let whatever happens happen?
• Pages about players collectively - for example there is a Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame (not the Cooperstown one) that doesn't seem to have a standout presence on the internet - might the Wiki have an ability to set up a page that brings all that together?  I suppose a "Twins in Cooperstown" page likewise.  Probably there are other such "articles" people could want to write, at a "meta" level one step up from individual players themselves.  Where to draw that line?
• Walter Johnson.  Do we draw the line at 1961?

I guess what I come down to is: would the same effort be better spent, improving existing Wikipedia pages, and creating from scratch new Wikipedia pages for the few players that no one else is creating each year?

[Jocko87]

I think the focus should be on the stuff nobody but sickos like us would do.  Replicating already available resources won't hold a lot of attention for readers or curators while finding a way to be the go to location for answers to odd Twins questions would be fantastic.

My two ideas, that I'm both fascinated with and interested in enough to write about, are front office structure, roles and responsibilities and the Falvey pitching development pipeline myth.  Linking to a well done research project rather than rehashing the same thing in thread after thread would be refreshing. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

17 hours ago, ashbury said:

I may have asked some of these the last time you brought up this idea.

• What do you see as the biggest un-met need this effort would rectify? Significant players already have decent-quality bio pages on regular Wikipedia (hell, Anthony Slama's page isn't bad and he's not significant at all), so is the motivation a bunch of "one spring training Brian Duensing autographed a ball for me, and I traded it right away as a sweetener, LOL" personal reflections?
• Top Twins prospects have Wikipedia pages. Brooks Lee's page is good, and Charlee Soto hasn't thrown a pitch for the Twins but he has a rudimentary page.  Will what TDers do, be better than these?
• Also on "regular" Wikipedia, someone seems to be keeping up with the better Twins prospects on a page called "Minnesota Twins minor league players".  ERod, Canterino, etc.  Will this new TD-Wiki really only be bringing truly obscure prospects to light?
• What to do with significant players like Steve Carlton, Bartolo Colon, Dave Winfield, Jim Thome, who had relative cups of coffee with the Twins - strive for complete bios, or strive to focus on what they did as Twins, or just let whatever happens happen?
• Pages about players collectively - for example there is a Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame (not the Cooperstown one) that doesn't seem to have a standout presence on the internet - might the Wiki have an ability to set up a page that brings all that together?  I suppose a "Twins in Cooperstown" page likewise.  Probably there are other such "articles" people could want to write, at a "meta" level one step up from individual players themselves.  Where to draw that line?
• Walter Johnson.  Do we draw the line at 1961?

I guess what I come down to is: would the same effort be better spent, improving existing Wikipedia pages, and creating from scratch new Wikipedia pages for the few players that no one else is creating each year?

The more I think about it, I believe the differentiating factor is the general weird and obsessive nature of this community in regards to the Twins. As I was researching this more, I spent some time on Wikipedia and guys like Shane Mack stood out to me. He's a fascinating story that I know somebody out there wants to research but his Wiki page is just a list of stats and a mention who he played with in Japan. He doesn't have a sabr.org page. That's not the Shane Mack story Twins fans are interested in and no one else is cataloging that information.

On top of that, I think a high-quality link repository is really useful. Like if you want to find the best information on someone like Camino Pascual, where are you going to find it? A place to gather sabr.org, wikipedia, retrospective pieces, historical information, etc. in one place has real utility.

The Twins HoF is a great mention. I'm leaning toward figuring out how to incorporate groups of players together in another page. Like a page commemorating the 1969 Twins, one of the most under-appreciated teams in franchise history.

But your questions drive at the point I'm trying to determine myself: where is the real utility in this project and how are we approaching it differently than other sources on the internet? And I'm kinda leaning away from replicating the great work done on higher-profile players elsewhere in favor of linking to those sources to further promote the work being done.

[ashbury]

On 11/23/2023 at 8:41 AM, Brock Beauchamp said:

The more I think about it, I believe the differentiating factor is the general weird and obsessive nature of this community in regards to the Twins. As I was researching this more, I spent some time on Wikipedia and guys like Shane Mack stood out to me. He's a fascinating story that I know somebody out there wants to research but his Wiki page is just a list of stats and a mention who he played with in Japan. He doesn't have a sabr.org page. That's not the Shane Mack story Twins fans are interested in and no one else is cataloging that information.

On top of that, I think a high-quality link repository is really useful. Like if you want to find the best information on someone like Camino Pascual, where are you going to find it? A place to gather sabr.org, wikipedia, retrospective pieces, historical information, etc. in one place has real utility.

The Twins HoF is a great mention. I'm leaning toward figuring out how to incorporate groups of players together in another page. Like a page commemorating the 1969 Twins, one of the most under-appreciated teams in franchise history.

But your questions drive at the point I'm trying to determine myself: where is the real utility in this project and how are we approaching it differently than other sources on the internet? And I'm kinda leaning away from replicating the great work done on higher-profile players elsewhere in favor of linking to those sources to further promote the work being done.

I wanted to wait a day or so and see if others would chime in.  I hope you took my questions as constructive - in keeping with your original comment in this thread, I could see playing a role in fostering this project.  But it's a potentially huge open-ended project and I could see it getting bogged down in efforts not going toward what would make it a success.  First define success.

You used Camilo Pascual as an example, and I have to point back to the rather excellent bio on the SABR page for him.  That one's an outlier, because it was written by Peter Bjarkman, who made it his obsession to know everything about Cuban players of that era.  What could our Wiki page for Pascual do besides just point to the bio, plus b-r.com for the full stats?

Pascual aside, Gagne and Mack and a bunch others like them are great opportunities to provide something new - but who will actually do the digging?  Each one would be hours and hours of work, in my experience.

[Brock Beauchamp]

33 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I wanted to wait a day or so and see if others would chime in.  I hope you took my questions as constructive - in keeping with your original comment in this thread, I could see playing a role in fostering this project.  But it's a potentially huge open-ended project and I could see it getting bogged down in efforts not going toward what would make it a success.  First define success.

You used Camilo Pascual as an example, and I have to point back to the rather excellent bio on the SABR page for him.  That one's an outlier, because it was written by Peter Bjarkman, who made it his obsession to know everything about Cuban players of that era.  What could our Wiki page for Pascual do besides just point to the bio, plus b-r.com for the full stats?

Pascual aside, Gagne and Mack and a bunch others like them are great opportunities to provide something new - but who will actually do the digging?  Each one would be hours and hours of work, in my experience.

Yeah, I wasn't entirely clear what I meant. And your feedback is absolutely useful and constructive.

In the case of Pascual, his sabr bio is in-depth and great. But what other Pascual content is out there of quality? In the case of Pascual, we don't need to replicate the sabr work. In his case, maybe his page is most useful as a link aggregator: link to his Wikipedia, Sabr, and other articles of note.

But in the case of Gagne or Mack, I see the biography being of more importance because of the gaps left by other sites. And in this situation, the purpose of this wiki gets a little squishy. Some players are best served by collecting a repository of others' works. Some players are best served by creating new work.

And in the case of "squishy" stuff, that means human decision-making and coordination becomes more of a necessity.

[Boswell]

I agree that the project should be honed in on sickos like us.  Precisely the sort of specialized niche.  A place to say “yeah, I chatted with Disco Dan Ford at the 1992 Twins Fest.”

We’re just the group of sickos to really make this work!

[Boswell]

Didn’t “some guy” write about an experience with Larry Hisle?  He had been mailing cards and whatnot for a while, but then received a phone call from the ballplayer himself.  Wrote up the whole interview.  
 

Yes, would need plenty of coordination and trust.  But hey, anything worth doing (like playing first base) is indeed “incredibly hard”. 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Hisle and Ford both have long, detailed, and most importantly, good, SABR biographies. It would be a mammoth effort for someone to reproduce that from scratch.

Hisle's SABR page talks about what a great human being he is, but neither his Baseball Reference Bullpen page nor his Wikipedia page discuss it. Then, none of Disco Dan's SABR, Wikipedia, or Bullpen pages has the story about when he forgot to step on home plate. 🙂 So you would have to remember, or read about it on Reusse's blog from 2015:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150921091112/http://www.1500espn.com/blogs/Disco_Dans_detour_still_beats_Mauers_bunt

Also, it took me like 45 minutes to research, compose, and re-read just this single post. So, yeah. That said, I will throw my name in the hat but at this point cannot promise a set schedule or number of hours. 

Also, there is a lot of very interesting stuff that gets mentioned on the radio but gets lost in the ether, because I don't think that stuff is recorded for posterity. I mean, mind blowing stuff sometimes. I'm not talking about just the occasional swear word. Radio being a very different medium than print, I am conflicted on whether some of that stuff should be written out.