Talk:Safety (gridiron football position)

A term that definitely needs to redirect to this article

I don't know how you have missed out on this one before: Safetyman should redirect to this article. Also should Safety (defensive back)and Safetyman (defensive back).

What you are all missing is that "Safety" is merely a short form for the real (the genuine original) name of safetyman for this position. "Safetyman" should probably be the actual title for this article. There are safety men in American and Canadian football, and probably in rugby, and in soccer football, the safetyman is called the "goalkeeper" or "goalie".

For those of you who think that this is just a step backwards to the era of "stone knives and bearskins" (Mr. Spock of Star Trek said this in about 1968), I can just state that you are painfully lacking in historical perspective. 98.67.108.198 (talk) 15:49, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

"...safeties have become more involved in covering receivers."

• safe_(baseball)
• safe_(disambiguation)
• Sean Taylor (musician)
• Sean Taylor (American football)
• safety (football score)
• Canadian_football

Regarding any subject that a person is not trained in, even with such a definition, much can seem mysterious, or silly, or humorous.

Regarding a telephone, a covered receiver might pertain to segmenting two simultaneous conversations.

In all such definitions, clarifying edits might need continual updates.

Thank You,

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 15:00, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely with the above, except that a very important point has been omitted. Regarding a telephone, a covered receiver would refer to a telephone handset that has been covered up, e.g. with a pillow or a hand, to silence it from picking up on a sentence or more that one does not want to be heard on the other end of the phone line (such as when asking for confidential advice on what to say next).98.67.108.198 (talk) 15:49, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was:

Safety (American football) → Safety (football position) — I believe the disambiguation (American football) is rather unclear as it could also mean the Safety (football score) and the same position is also in Canadian football. I suggest (football position). Any thoughts? DoubleBlue (Talk) 22:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Closed. Failed to gain consensus. DoubleBlue (Talk) 00:20, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

survey

• Weak oppose Football on its own could be confused with association football (Though there isn't a safety position, I guess there is potential for confusion). Probably best at Safety (American football position) Narson (talk) 00:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. Agree that the current article name is bad. I immediately thought it related to the safety of players, and feel it fails WP:NC on grounds of ambiguity. But, agree that (football position) is also ambiguous regarding which code of football. Safety (American football position) I would support. Andrewa (talk) 06:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose This move would be out of line with recent moves on sports named football and their related pages such as football (soccer) to Association football and Kit (football) to Kit (association football). I say if the current title is ambiguous, the article if it is going to be moved should be moved to Safety (American football position)--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose Ahree with Lucy above. Proposed move is worse than current situation. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 15:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• Support. Proposed title doesn't conflict with the title of a position in any other kind of football, and thus isn't really ambiguous. It is based on this same reasoning that we have Defender (football), an article on the "soccer" position with no qualifier as to type. Dekimasuよ! 10:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment- Defender football is one of the pages which has yet to be proposed for moving away from using football in the title I am sure though in time it will happen.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support - per Deskimasu. Why are we worried about being confused with a non-existent rugby/soccer position? And we should be consistent with our usage (i.e. Defender (football)). However, failing this, I support moving to American football position. The Evil Spartan (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support but prefer to be Safety (defensive back). --Louis Alberto Guel 19:52, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

discussion

Any additional comments:

• So it's not okay to use Safety (football position) because it may be confused with a non-existent soccer position but it is okay to label it (American football position) when it is also a Canadian football position? How about Safety (defensive back) instead? DoubleBlue (Talk) 17:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, American Football is generally used to refer to them both. If you really prefer, you could always use 'Gridiron'. Narson (talk) 18:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • What's the problem with Safety (American football position)? Andrewa (talk) 20:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Do the positions between the Canadian game and the American game differ?--Lucy-marie (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
      • @Lucy-marie: Position and responsibilities are the same so different articles would be unproductive. DoubleBlue (Talk) 21:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
    • @Andrewa: Position exists in both American football and Canadian football. DoubleBlue (Talk) 21:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Interesting observation, and yes, the article is about both codes. I guess one possible way around this is to use Safety (gridiron position) as the article name, or Safety (gridiron football position), but I'd prefer to leave it simply as Safety (American football position), According to the article on gridiron both the terms gridiron and American football are sometimes used to refer to both codes, so IMO any of the three is acceptable, and all have drawbacks. In particular I can see how this will annoy some Canadians, but if that's the way English is spoken, that's the way we should use it too. Safety (gridiron football position) would be my second choice. Andrewa (talk) 06:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
    • @Narson: Since the game, rules, and history are different, only those unfamiliar with the sports would use the term for both. Gridiron football is somewhat acceptable as it does reference both (as it refers to the nickname for the field) but is a term not usually used in North America where most would find this article of interest. DoubleBlue (Talk) 21:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• @all - the position in Canadian football vs. American football is the same. The differences between the two versions of the sport are negligible - almost as small as the difference between High school football and NFL. I would be utterly shocked if there were different articles elsewhere on different positions in the two separate ones (e.g., quarterback). The Evil Spartan (talk) 20:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Depends which kind of high school football you're playing: American or Canadian. Comparison of Canadian and American football. DoubleBlue (Talk) 00:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move request 2

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. JPG-GR (talk) 19:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Safety (American football) → Safety (football position) — As last year, I believe the disambiguation (American football) is ambiguous as it could also mean the Safety (football score) and incorrect as it also discusses the position in Canadian football. I think that (football position) is the best choice as clarifies we are speaking of the position and there is no need to specify the code of football as this article covers all football Safety positions. — DoubleBlue (talk) 18:47, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Survey 2

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support the move, oppose the name - I would think a better name would be Safety (Gridiron football position), that way the other position articles that need to be dabbed can also be moved to a consistent naming convention that doesn't involve specifying American vs Canadian football. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 19:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
• A move to Safety (American Football position) seems a reasonable compromise to me (or whatever variant of capitlisation floats your boat!). - fchd (talk) 20:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
  • American designation is both unnecessary and incorrect since it's about the position in Canadian football as well and besides these two, there is no other code of football from which we need to disambiguate the safety position. There is absolutely no reason to disambiguate "football" in the dab and, in fact, it's harmful to do so when this article discusses the safety position in all forms of football that have a safety player position. DoubleBlue (talk) 20:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
    • For most of the world, "football" means what Americans call "soccer". "American football" is a recognition of this fact, and does not make any distinction between any of the variations on the game, nor where it is played - it is, for example also played in Europe occasionally. You would have to get all Americans to stop calling it "football" before you could start calling it something else, such as "Gridiron". 199.125.109.126 (talk) 16:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I don't understand the implications of your comment. DoubleBlue (talk) 22:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
        • The only implication intended was that "American football" simply is a synonym for what Americans call "football". Wikipedia can not use Safety (football), for example, because for most of the world that would be interpreted as Safety (soccer) and not mean anything. In other words, anytime an American wants to use the word "football", they need to substitute "American football" to distinguish "football" from "soccer". I also pointed out that the words "American football" do not imply where the game is played, simply that the ball is not round, for example. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 23:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
          • This is simply a file name, not an article and not even a title. There is no need to define what kind of football is discussed in the dab; it is discussed in the lead. Nowhere will come upon this filename and say "ooh, an article about the safety position in soccer" because there should be nowhere where one will come upon this file name without context and there is no safety position in soccer. There is no need to disambiguate the code of football in the dab and it is, in fact, wrong and harmful to do so. DoubleBlue (talk) 23:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
            • DoubleBlue, the article still needs to main a consistency with the other positions that require dabbing. The convention on Wikipedia has always been that if a football (either kind) page requires a dab it needs to specify if they mean Association football or American football and the naming of this article, and all the other AmF position articles, reflects that convention. If your concern is that the position is used in both Canadian football and American football, then the proper course of action would be to lift it to the next level of ambiguation and call it Gridiron football and apply that convention across all of the position articles. --Bobblehead ^(rants) 23:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion 2

Any additional comments:

• There is no need to disambiguate between different types of football safety positions if there are no others. DoubleBlue (talk) 19:30, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Moved from WP:RM 199.125.109.126 (talk) 23:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• How many other type of football have a "safety" position? Certainly soccer, rugby union and rugby league do not. – ukexpat (talk) 19:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
  • American football and Canadian football. DoubleBlue (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support, since multiple sports use that position, it seems logical. Tavix (talk) 00:03, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion?

I came here in the hope of closing the request at WP:RM. From the above it seems to me that there is agreement that the current title is inappropriate, but there is not yet consensus about what the replacement should be. In the meantime I have deleted all but one version of Safety (football position) so that the move can be made if consensus supports it. Martin^msgj 16:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Wait a minute, did I see DoubleBlue and Tavix agreeing on something here? :O Martin^msgj 17:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I did not see some of the later comments to the above move request and I'd like to respond. There is a misconception somewhere that there is a convention to disambiguate dabs; this is not so. In fact, the rule is to use the most general descriptive dab that does not conflict with another title and one of the reasons is for cases such as this. DoubleBlue (talk) 21:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Article Name

Looking above at the archived move requests, it appears that there is (or was) consensus that the name of this article should be changed to "Safety (XXX football position)"; the debate was whether the title should be Safety (football position), Safety (American football position), or Safety (Gridiron football position). Am I understanding this correctly?

I'm neutral on whether the title should contain "American", "Gridiron", or (blank), but I do think that the current title is confusing. I'd suggest also moving Safety (football score) in accordance with what is decided here, and setting up a new Safety (American football) that's a WP:DAB page between the position and the score. Thoughts? –Grondemar 06:10, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Since I've received no replies, and yet there's evidence of disagreement in the article revision history as recently as six months ago, I'm going to open an RfC to get more input. –Grondemar 03:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

RfC: "Safety" article titles

The article Safety (American football) currently describes the position in American football called "Safety". However, there is another element of American football referred to as "Safety", a scoring play, currently located at Safety (football score). The current name of this article is ambiguous. However, since both the position and scoring play are common between American and Canadian football, and nonexistent in association football and rugby, there has been controversy whether the article names should be modified by:

• (football),
• (American football),
• (Canadian football), or
• (gridiron football), which is an Australian term for American football not commonly used in North America.

I would like to reach consensus on the following issues:

1. What title should the article about the position have?
2. What title should the article about the scoring play have?
3. What content should be located at the Safety (American football) page?

Thanks for your attention. –Grondemar 04:07, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I like your suggestion above of making Safety (American football) a disambiguation page. I'd move the position to Safety (American football position) and the score to Safety (American football score). Tada! --Geologik (talk) 21:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree, this certainly seems to be the most logical way of solving this. However, moving the score article to Safety (American football score) woldn't work as its also used in Canadian Football. Bettia (talk) 17:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

My understanding of the standard is to use a disambiguation page only if there are more than two articles to link to, or if there are two articles, but neither term is more common than the other. Considering that the scoring of a safety is relatively infrequent, whereas every team has numerous safeties on their roster, I think the position is the more common usage. So I think best practice is already in place, with a hatnote used at the position article to disambiguate the term. I have no opinion on renaming the position article to reflect its use in that sense in both American and Canadian codes however. Strikehold (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Geologik's suggestion. Although a safety is not a common way of scoring in the game, it is as integral a part of the sport as the safety position is. – PeeJay 22:27, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with PeeJay2K3 that the position and scoring play are of equal importance. In fact, people might look more often for an article on the score than on the position. Signed, Dffgd (talk) 00:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't dispute that both terms are of importance to the game, but the naming convention is an effort to direct users to the article they are most likely to be searching for. I don't see a basis to support the assertion that people search for the type of score more often, and at least by one metric, it seems to be untrue: Safety (American football) registered 13,454 hits in April 2010, while safety (football score) registered only 4,467. Even if every user that hit upon the type of score did so by following the hatnote from the position article, that would mean that more than twice as many (8,987 hits) went to the position without continuing onto the type of score. It seems clear that the position article is the more commonly searched term. Strikehold (talk) 00:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

That's only looking at one month. I looked back farther, and what I found, looking back about a year, was that during football season the articles had about the same number of views, and out of football season the position ("Safety (American football)") had about twice the amount of views than the score ("Safety (football score)"). So, assuming most of the people who viewed the score page used the hatnote, the articles are probably searched for about the same amount. Signed, Dffgd (talk) 12:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I like the suggestion of Geologik Elmmapleoakpine (talk) 02:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Possible consensus

From the discussion above, it appears that a consensus has formed to move the article about the position to Safety (American football position) and the article about the scoring play to Safety (American football score), while having Safety (American football) as a disambiguation page. In order to resolve the concerns about American vs Canadian football, I propose having the titles Safety (Canadian football position), Safety (Canadian football score), and Safety (Canadian football) redirect to the American football articles, with all of the main articles clearly indicating "In American and Canadian football..." in their leads. If there is no objection to this plan I'll start making the moves tomorrow. –Grondemar 00:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

So Safety (Canadian football position) would redirect to Safety (American football position) and Safety (Canadian football score) would redirect to Safety (American football score). That's fine in my opinion, but what about Safety (Canadian football)? Would it redirect to Safety (American football)? Signed, Dffgd (talk) 22:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Safety (Canadian football) would indeed redirect to the new disambiguation page to be placed at Safety (American football). –Grondemar 02:36, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Since no one else has commented, I'm going to begin making the moves now. –Grondemar 03:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The pages have been moved and redirects created; I'll work on updating all the links over the next couple of the days. Thanks to all who commented in the RfC. –Grondemar 03:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Effected article renaming

The title was clearly inaccurate at reflecting the dual American and Canadian nature of the player position. "and Canadian" was added as per WP:AND, since the article is describing both positions simultaneously, yet the material is not similar enough to necessitate separate pages for the content. Unless a reason can be produced why the title should be reverted to only "American football position", I propose it be left as it is now, including its description of being a Canadian position.

The title was left as Safety since it is the common name used by people across both nations (WP:COMMONNAME). However, the genuine name "safetyman" can be used in reference to other sports, as pointed out previously:

What you are all missing is that "Safety" is merely a short form for the real (the genuine original) name of safetyman for this position....There are safety men in American and Canadian football, and probably in rugby, and in soccer football, the safetyman is called the "goalkeeper" or "goalie". - 98.67.108.198 (talk) 15:49, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

The word "position" was also left in the title to differentiate between the player position of the game and the American football scoring method.

The descriptor was also not replaced with "Defensive back" since that term is of a categorical nature. "American" and "Canadian" are explicit adjectives, they are more suited to add necessary detail to the title, and they also describe the origins of the article's subject.

Sothisislife101 (talk) 04:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

We need article titles to agree with each other. Right now we have Safety (gridiron football score) and Safety (American and Canadian football position). Both of these articles should use the same disambiguation, whatever that may be. I realize that Gridiron football is not the most common term, but that is the name of the parent article for American football and Canadian football, therefore, I suggest that we use "(gridiron football)" as the disambiguation and move this article to Safety (gridiron football position). Rreagan007 (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2013 (UTC)