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Might as well throw some racing info out there too:

Racing-Reference

-Tom

Name matching is an instance where complete stats and birthdays on card backs are real useful. If scans exist, you don't always have to research Baseball Reference, as the info you need may be right in front of you. Of course, we don't have scans of everything.

Looking at sets like 1991 Pro Set, the cards left for validation do not have a single player, but are things like teams or Teacher of The Year, etc. Can we validate them as complete with these cards outstanding? Also, the Pro Line National set has 2 cards left, one being the Rashad family. Can these also be validated as complete?

Stadiums, Teams, Trophies, cards describing plays or strategies of the sport/game, generic Checklists, and other inanimate objects do not get PIDs.

Players, coaches, managers, trainers, front office staff (when named), bat boys (again, when named), and other people who are named get PIDs. However, not all PIDs belong in the sport they appear in. For instance, if there is a William Howard Taft card in baseball, WHT's PID should be Non-Sport, not baseball.

Sound good?

But to validate it can we just make it NO TEAM so we can finish the set?

You're asking about Team validation, and I was talking about Name validation.

If there is truly no team associated with a card, then yes, it should be specified as "No Team" (so the team selector goes away on the card's page) and then the team validation can be marked as complete. If the card is the card I'm thinking of, I think it shows them in Vikings gear and doesn't it include the athlete himself as well?

Cards that fall into this category would be generic (not team) checklists, trophies, non-sport figures in sport sets, etc. (Note: Checklists that contain cards from specific teams - from only 1 or 2 up to as many as 4 or 6 teams - should get the teams listed as it will help team collectors.)

Ok, since this is kind of on topic, I have something that's bugging me.
I recently decided to start trying to clean up the non-sport section. I actually went through and added birthdates to everybody I could find and knocked down the need list from about 1100 to about 500. The ones that are left are basically a whole bunch of Benchwarmers cards and historical figures that nobody knows their exact birthdates (speaking of which, I found a glitch there which I will get to in a minute).
In going through all of those names, I found some things that bug me and I'm not sure if they only bug me or are things that should be considered to tweak on the admin side.

1) The birthday glitch. I've discovered that anytime I try and put in a date from before 1800, it gives me an error message that the date is not in the correct format. There are some people that I *could* give a full birthdate (and/or death date) but the system won't accept it because it's too old I guess. 
2) along those lines, is there a reason why it was decided that the system would only allow full dates as opposed to just a year? I mean, as a stat enthusiast and historian, I love the specific dates, but sometimes it would help differentiate between similar names if we could at least have a birth year listed.
3) Classification for non-sport cards. We now have the option of making something "fictional" across all categories, which is great and I love it since it removes the need to add birthdates and other info that is unnecessary for the category. But, in nonsport, there is an annoyance where this only gives us the option to classify the subject as a real person or a fictional character. But there are cards of animals, plants,and other things that are neither people nor fictional creations. This really gets annoying when you have a fictional character that shares a name with an animal species or another non-human name.

For example, the is an animal called a wolverine and there is a comic book character that is not an actual animal wolverine but a person named Wolverine.  I'm actually not thrilled about creating a PID for a group name (like wolverine or submarine or lightsaber) or for locations (i.e. France or Jackson Hole, Wyoming) but in the case of Wolverine, you have to create a PID for the animal or anytime it shows up in a card set, it's going to link to the comic book character. And maybe I am just way too AR, but I don't like calling a real animal "fictional." Would it be possible to have a secondary classification for non-fictional/non-human or some way to differentiate? 

Another example of why I think we need some other level of classification: things with proper names. Cards featuring the Titanic for example should definitely have a link to a PID, but again, it's neither fictional nor human.
 

4) "Team" affiliations. With musician cards and comic book character cards and such, could we have the team thing available for non-sport? If I have a Paul McCartney card of him in the Beatles, it would nice to be able to list it as Paul McCartney and The Beatles where the Beatles is a collective name that has it's own seperate searchable TID. (Granted, McCartney has alos been in Wings and solo and not all cards necessarily have him pictured as a Beatle, but this just further supports my point really).
And with comic cards, I think it would be nice to  have the ability to add "Avengers" or "Justice Society" as a group affiliation. Think of it like Mike Trout is a member of the Angels and Captain America is a member of the Avengers.

5) It looks like a lot of PIDs were set up and folks just went with however the Firstname/Lastname broke it apart. So, I see things like comic characters with names like "Mister Miracle" show up in the list as "Miracle, Mister" and even animals show up like "Whale, Blue". My favorites are things like kings being listed as "I, Richard." I realize these are two (or more) words, but shouldn't they be considered a single name (Lastname) instead of a two part? 

Hence my request upthread to add Place and Thing as available categories for names.  I mean, The Moon has a PID for crying out loud, why should we not be able to create entries for staduims or other venues that have cards commemorasting them?

As for the names like Richard I or Mister Miracle, that is simply a case of the user who created the name entry accepting the automatic parsing of the name instead of correctly putting it all in the surname field.

-Tom

Wow lots of good points made there, I do feel the need for IDs for non-living things as I just entered a team issue set that has a card of multiple players around the stanley cup. I added Stanley Cup to the Name field but it has no PID, to me it should as there COULD be somebody out there who collects trophy cards. Pretty simple idea I'd say but where does Admin draw the line? And I also like the affiliation thing for artists, actors etc. This way it would just be like adding a team affiliation to a minor league card. Two cents spent. ;)

I collect trophy cards :)

Did you ever get your package?