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I think I owe Tango a table still. I've got a major exam (same one as mentioned earlier, it got postponed) this Saturday . . . after that I should have a window where I can get that done.

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I am working on the table I owe Tango now. Assuming shock and tango still have the time to work on this, I had this idea as a feature we could add:

Regarding the 'do it again' idea . . .

Maybe if we can get the website going, we could start over doing our personal Halls of Merit. If we could set up a form on the website, each voter could update his year by year. We could discuss each year for a week, update, etc.. They would all be easily accessible with a link to the voter.

I have no idea how hard that would be to set up . . . obviously we'd need a password setup for each user's form.

Would not be hard at all. I'm still willing to work on it; just tell me what you want. :-)

As a companion to the official one, the Personal Halls may be interesting re a concern frequently expressed during annual elections. Mid- and late in the 1898-2007 stage, DanG among others argued that the election structure favors polarizing candidates, who may score a winning point total although they appear on a minority of ballots. Some candidates with broader but less intense support also appear on a minority of ballots (everyone does), but they enjoy more near off-ballot support that should be identified and counted. How? The size of the ballot should grow as the backlog grows.

Back to the personal HOM. It would be interesting to see how many and which HOM members would appear more than 90% of the personal Halls, or in fewer than 30%. How many and which players in the backlog would appear in in more than 30%?

I take for granted, participation would not match the changing participation in annual elections so closely that any questions about the influence of the election structure on the official membership would be answered definitively. (That may be impossible given the degree of change in annual participation, and also impossible given the inevitably retrospective nature of many of the personal HOM.) Whether to go ahead must therefore depend on other interest in the project.

--
John McGraw was elected in 2009, appearing on 16 of 40 ballots including 15 in the top half (40%, 37%). Reggie Smith was elected appearing on 20 of 40 ballots including 12 in the top half (50%, 30%). It seems evident that some members do or would appear in less than 30% of the personal halls.

One thing a computer application could do:

1.
Accept the visitor's list of N players where N is the current size of the HOM, now 237. (Players are not trivial to specify. Some plausible candidates are not covered by popular ID sets. It might be reasonable to select from a menu, or something equivalent, limited to the "new eligibles" annually listed by DanG, extended in retrospect to cover the earlier elections.)

2.
Report the changes necessary in order to meet the chronological structure of the Hall of Merit. For example,
"You need four more who last played before 1893, one more before 1895, ..."

3.
Provide opportunity to revise the list.

4.
Repeat 2 and 3.


Completing such a process would generate a faux personal HOM --faux because not selected in chronological sequence but it couldabeen.

Hey, I will do this myself!
--inside my desktop baseball database, implementing step 2 in a way that is not generally helpful.
--presumably my first try will fit the chronological restrictions. The faux HOM process would have educational value primarily for newcomers --the HOM expects a lot of traffic, right?-- who initially overload with modern players: Rice, Parker, Murphy, Puckett, Belle, etc.

Paul, an application like what you suggest would be phenomenal. So if I understand correctly, the user could just start picking players (say Ruth, Wagner, Mays, Charleston, etc.). Once the user is 'forced' to pick someone 'older' the system gives a list of who they can choose from, etc..

It would be cool if the output once the user is done would show a list of who would have been elected each year, top ranked returnees, etc..

Or basically, something where you rank all of the players from 1-whatever, and then the application says who would have been elected each year based on this.

Joe,
There are differences between our visions including different white spaces that must be filled in.

Paragraph 1, I was thinking that the user would somehow specify 237 players and then get a report.

Par 2, yes that would be cool. It would depend on ranking the whole set or proceeding in sequence as you anticipate in pars 1 and 3.

While we are wishing, it would be nice to have storage of the faux phom (set of players) and assessment of revisions. In effect, "May I drop Keeler for Canseco?" "No wee, Jose!"

OK, I finally sent Tango the spreadsheet I owed him.

I will have some more time going forward, summer travels are done, wedding over, etc..

Hopefully we can start moving forward with this.

dunno if you folks are interested, but I can do visuals for the plaques, if you'd like...

Babe Ruth plain

Babe Ruth accent lights

That is great! Thanks and we'll definitely be interested in something like that.

Love the accent light version, Coot. It actually gave me goosebumps. Very, very nice.

What do you guys think of my Reggie Smith example? What can be added/changed?

What do you guys think of my Reggie Smith example? What can be added/changed?

At this time, I can't think of anything to add or change. It looks very impressive and eye catching. Thank you for your hard work on it!

It really is gorgeous. Very exciting to see it in action, as it were.

One question for everyone: Is anyone else bothered by the one giant block of text listing Smith's accomplishments? I know that's how it's done on the Coop plaques, more or less, but (at least in this font/format) it's kind of a bear to read/process. Should we think about breaking the accomplishment sentences up in some way, either by just creating a couple of paragraph breaks or using bullet points or some such?

Oh, and is adding the visuals per Coot above still part of the agenda, too? Somehow you really want to see an image of the player, you know? (Ideally in the cap listed for him.)

I suggest,

- Present standardized listings of accomplishments as bullet points. Some may also be included or described in the prose blurb of course. (This is not the website developer's job.)

- Spell out "Off ballot" in the voting history tables.

- The points and ranks are official results and should be included or indicated somehow. maybe a link to the official results for the year elected, whose preface commonly covers strength of support and whose table features the player at or near the top. maybe electoral rank in another column to the right of the "off ballot" count.

I'm sure you all realize this, but just to make clear: The blurb is simply copy/pasted from the plaque room here.

Also, the data from Voting History came from DanG's excel file that he has maintained over the years. I mentioned this in the other thread, but it might have been missed: Voting History is available on the website for all players, not just Reggie. But only Reggie has the other stuff (for now.)

Can add the plaque if Coot still wants to make them. :-)

I added a couple of other suggestions. Off Ballot instead of Off and for now I made the year link to the relevant thread here. I am hesitant to call them official results until we can be sure the data got loaded correctly. In the future I plan to have the year link to its own page, with other goodies, absolutely.

There's lots more that can be added, this is the bare minimum in my mind.

I'm sure you all realize this, but just to make clear: The blurb is simply copy/pasted from the plaque room here.

I did, Shock. ;-)

We can figure out what to do about the prose/stats later on. I would still like to keep it more or less on the lines of the HOF's, but maybe we should create our own unique vision instead.

Can add the plaque if Coot still wants to make them. :-)

The combination of your handiwork and Coot's plaques would be phenomenal!

There's lots more that can be added, this is the bare minimum in my mind.

We are very appreciative of what you have done so far. It's like moving from a log cabin into the Chrysler Building.

We are very appreciative of what you have done so far.

Yes, absolutely! My comments were by no means a criticism, and I know everything there was just directly from the original sources in terms of content and layout.

I was just wondering if we wanted to take this moment to consider tweaks to make the pages more readable. After all, readability wasn't really something we were all that concerned about in the log cabin. When the room is full of smoke all the time, you're less worried about the decoration on the walls. :)

I'd like to see a photo for every player, ideally video for every player. Video seems less than likely for anyone before 1920 and the Negro Leaguers. Is that possible without violating copyright? Are there public domain photos of all these ballplayers? Maybe we can link to someone else's Youtube of some players.