IHW Project:Hockey towns

Welcome to the IHW project Hockey towns. This project aims to build complete and accurate all-time lists of teams and players based on the city they are/were based in, in case of teams, or where they were born, in case of players, coaches, GMs and so on. Eventually, this project aims to cover every city worldwide where the sport of ice hockey has spread its roots.

Who may participate in this project?
This project is open to everyone willing to participate.

How does it work?
The project being a wide scale one, it is divided in smaller parts adding up to make a whole. This project therefore has several levels, all the way from the national level to the smaller unit, the town (here, "town" has been chosen to refer to anything from the largest cities to the smallest villages).

The national level
At this level, the articles talk about hockey countries. These articles' names should be the country name (exemple: Canada) and contain basic information on the country - its location in the world, the number of people inhabiting it and several general interest facts about it (these information shall be put in a brief and concise introduction). Then, the article should provide extensive coverage of the history of hockey within its boundaries. At the bottom of the article, there should be a box template allowing visitors to access the next level of the project: the subnational level. This box is actually a list of the various subdivisions of said country.

The subnational level
This second level in the project is all about the various provinces, states, etc. making up a country. For instance, in Canada's case, there should be articles on all 10 provinces and 3 territories. There again, an introduction shall give basic facts about the province, while the main body of the article is used for some history of the hockey in the province (when did the sport begin being played there? Where was it? Is it popular and well-developped? Have important tournaments/competitions been played there?). This history may include interprovincial competitions if such tournaments exists (i.e. competitions where provincial teams face up in a tournament). There again, at the bottom of the article, a box template shall lead to the next level, the town level, by listing the towns comprised within the boundaries of the province.

The towns level
This third and last level is the towns level, i.e. properly speaking all the various towns of a country. As with the larger levels, articles at this point should comprise an introduction with general facts about the town, an the main body being the history of the sport in the town. The article should then have a "teams" section listing all teams, past and present, to have called that town their home, and some info about them (league they played, years of activity, championships won, etc). Then, the next section would be "players". There again, it should be a list of players born in that place (please note that it is all about birth place and not residence place). The most notable players should be presented atop the list; then the others should come in alphabetical order.

Please note that, in order to keep things simple, any national subdivision below the provincial level and above the town level shall be omitted; in countries like China, for instance, you would have 34 provinces, 330 prefectures and 2873 counties before reaching the township level - that makes a colossal number of articles that in the end would serve little purpose; therefore, it is much better to keep it 34 provinces and then go right to the township level.

Since towns can be counted by thousands and often tens of thousands within a country, an exhaustive list of them all can be a huge burden, especially in countries where hockey is not widely developped. Therefore, it is advised to only create articles for places you are sure there is or was hockey in some way. It is OK to create an article for a village where one single pro player hails from, but it makes no sense to create 1500 blank ones for Chinese towns where nobody ever heard of hockey.

How to participate?
It's easy and can be done in many ways. Basically, creating a page for a particular city, adding some information on the history of hockey in the town, adding a team or a player in the list - these are all ways to contribute to the project. When you create a city page, please make sure that it has all the required sections (Hockey in [town name], Teams, Arenas, Players) and that it is properly categorized (ex: Category:Canadian towns, Category:American towns). Also make sure that each town page has the proper portal tag at the bottom of the page. For instance, a town in Austria (say, Vienna) should have the   tagline added to the bottom of the editing box, so that at the bottom of the article, a box is displayed linking to a portal within IHW linked to everything about Austrian hockey.

When you create articles about players or teams, make sure the name of the town the player is born in or the name of the town the team is located. If it turns out that an article already exists for that place, please click that link and add the player's name or the team's name in the appropriate section, if it isn't there already.