12/22/24
February 06, 2002
Mefi had a fairly international membership, and I would expect that to also become the case with SpoFi. With that in mind, why has the category 'Football' been reserved for American Football? In addition, in various parts of the world, Rugby Union, Rugby League, Gaelic Football, Aussie Rules and Canadian Football are also referred to locally as 'Football'. Would it make more sense to name the categories 'American Football' and 'Soccer', to avoid confusion?
Many years ago, when Yahoo had only just aquired their own domain, I made this same suggestion to them, and that is why their category is now 'Football (American)'.
posted by salmacis to editorial policy at 02:53 AM - 14 comments
i'm interested in the international perspective on the world of sport, but not really interested enough to go out and find it myself. if people are willing to bring that perspective to a site i'll be visiting regularly anyway, i think sportsfilter should do all it can to encourage international involvement. if that means saying "american football," so be it IMO. or maybe call it 'pigskin' or 'gridiron'. (eg. - i had nothing to add to yesterday's Cup of Nations thread ... but think it's really cool that it's there.)
posted by danostuporstar at 09:46 AM on February 06, 2002
or maybe Rugby Union, Rugby League, Gaelic Football, Aussie Rules and Canadian Football can all be legitimately posted in the football category ??? (not that there's any question about the CFL) was that the Founding 7's intention?
posted by danostuporstar at 09:53 AM on February 06, 2002
We discussed the issue when coming up with categories and ended up choosing all one-word category names. It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think it's likely to confuse anyone outside the U.S. Foreigners have figured out that we call football soccer.
posted by rcade at 11:02 AM on February 06, 2002
I don't see any reason why SportsFilter can't become one of the best sports discussion sites on the internet, given time and a few more subscribers. For discussions to be centred almost exclusively on North American sports would be a great pity I think. I would make the plea that if you're not interested in a sport, you simply stay away from a thread, rather than denigrate it *cough*ttrendel*cough*. Even if you meant the comment humourously, it's not always obvious for readers, and flame wars are the last thing we want here.
posted by salmacis at 11:10 AM on February 06, 2002
rcade: One word categories, like 'Etiquette/Policy'? :-) I don't see any downside to calling the category "American Football", or if you like, "Gridiron", whereas I see plenty of downside of keeping "Football". As this site gains popularity, is there any reason why SpoFi should be so US-centric?
posted by salmacis at 11:21 AM on February 06, 2002
It's "soccer" that's plain wrong, since it's the more popular sport, but I don't see it changing, so I'm happy to do mental backflips while reading the site. At least everyone knows what it means ... As for "football": given soccer, it's obvious. I'd personally like to see separate Rugby and F1 categories since they are also huge outside the states, but it depends if there's enough interest I suppose. Gridiron is just confusing, and I think Aussie rules etc will be so rare that they can go in "other".
posted by walrus at 12:03 PM on February 06, 2002
One-word categories over there.
posted by rcade at 12:40 PM on February 06, 2002
I'd vote for an F1 category, or atleast an autosport one.
posted by riffola at 01:48 PM on February 06, 2002
Yeah, I was thinking the same. Motorsports are big. So there should be at least one category for that... F1/CART/IRL/NASCAR/Rally. But none of that NHRA stuff though ;)
posted by mkn at 09:33 PM on February 06, 2002
we can change category names easily, in case any admins were wondering. A motorsport category was considered at the start, but I think we agreed to keep things small at first and add as necessary.
posted by mathowie at 12:54 AM on February 07, 2002
we agreed to keep things small at first and add as necessary Yeah, it should become obvious after we've had a few months to get into pattern.
posted by walrus at 07:23 AM on February 07, 2002
As my personal protest at the categorys I've just posted my thread in 'football', you mean it isn't supposed to be 'rugby football'?
posted by nedrichards at 05:54 PM on February 11, 2002
Also I made a mistake on the post screen. Admistrator please hope me!
posted by nedrichards at 05:55 PM on February 11, 2002
The host is in the US and the founding members are Americans. To us, Football means one thing. To you, football means that immensely boring sport played on ESPN at 3 am. Just kidding. There should be some differentiation. Just make sure that football=N.A. Football. I'm damn sure that owillis has my back on that.Football is football. Kicking the ball around aimlessly for 1 hour is called futbol.