Wikipedia, you are not my friend

Coach Lee Hedges

     If you are familiar with Wikipedia -- which bills itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" -- you know it is a quick online source of information. Reliable? It depends.
    Can anyone edit it? Yes ... if you know what you're doing. That does not necessarily include me.
    As I informed people last week through my Facebook post and e-mail note, there is now a new Wikipedia page on Lee Hedges, a coaching icon in Shreveport and in Louisiana. I can assure you it is accurate.
    I created the page -- my first Wikipedia creation -- because my good friend Casey, who obviously has little to do other than a regular job, noticed there wasn't a page for our high school head coach who is also our favorite coach.
    Casey asked/suggested that I put together the page because he knows I have nothing else to do.
    But I was happy to do it because (1) I'm pretty familiar with Lee Hedges' career and (2) the man is a treasure who would be on most anyone's list of "most admirable" people in Shreveport-Bossier.
    Great subject matter. However, doing the page -- figuring out Wikipedia -- was a pain. I could be more explicit, but take my word. A pain.
    Especially a pain if you are technologically challenged, or just clueless. Computers, phones, TVs and remotes ... hey, I'm trying, but I don't always get there.
    Formatting Wikipedia, though ... help!
    I did not do well in high school geometry or chemistry, struggled in biology. Physics was out of the question, but not as much as trigonometry or calculus (even had to look up how to spell those). These are not sportswriter subjects. 
    But Wikipedia stumped me as much as any of those. You want to be confused? Look up how to create a Wikipedia page, how to format it, how to -- oh, please -- add photos. 
    It might as well have been hieroglyphics or Greek or Arabic to me. It is not, in my opinion, user-friendly.
    There is a Lee Hedges page because I did muddle through some of it, and -- thankfully -- got some help. Here is your link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hedges
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    It wasn't my first Wikipedia experience. A few years ago I was notified that a page had been created for my mother, Rose Van Thyn. When I first saw it, I noticed a few facts that needed correcting or enhancing, so I did manage to go in and edit those items.
     That wasn't all that difficult, as I remember. But creating a page ...
     Until Monday, because of neglect and/or ignorance, I never knew who created Mom's page. Looking at the Lee Hedges page, I noticed a "history" tab and clicked on it. It's a history of how the page was created and any changes that were made.
      Remember this name: Billy Hathorn. He created the Rose Van Thyn page and many others, and when I sent him a note, he bailed me out on the Lee Hedges page.
      Billy is 67, a year younger than me, and lives in Laredo, Texas. He grew up in Minden, La., attended Minden High and Louisiana Tech University, and after a few years in the newspaper business, he was smart enough to turn to teaching for a couple of decades. 
       Doing Wikipedia pages is one of his hobbies, and he has created a bunch relating to people and subject with North Louisiana ties. I know my family is grateful to him for Mom's page, and I'm sure many others are grateful for pages dear to them.
       I have gone to many Wikipedia pages for quick information, when I was working at the Fort Worth newspaper and now as I write these blog pieces. Some pages are very accurate and thorough; some leaves gaps -- some of them large gaps. (I am not picking on Billy here; this is a general observation.)
       What I can tell you: At the Fort Worth paper, we had orders -- DO NOT rely on Wikipedia as a credible source to double-check facts in stories. (OK, so we cheated and sometimes used Wikipedia anyway.)
       Bottom line for me: It's useful. And if you want information on Lee Hedges, it's there ... for now. I suppose there is a chance Wikipedia editors -- whoever they are -- could change the page or delete it. I hope not.
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      Here is the process for me: I spent 2-3 days compiling the information I wanted to share, using several sources -- most notably, a story by Jason Pugh (The Times in Shreveport) that is Coach Hedges' sketch on the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame web site;  chapters from Jerry Byrd's Football Country, published in 1981; Coach's year-by-year records compiled by The Times statistician guru Lee Hiller; and my personal knowledge of the man.
      Polished the material into story form, tried (and I stress, tried) to follow the Wikipedia format and offered it to "Articles for Creation" on May 15.
      And then waited, and wondered.
      Nine days later an editor -- FoCuSandLeArN -- posted a note saying that the subject seemed to worthy of a page, but that the article didn't follow the biographical style of Wikipedia and needed "cleaning up."
      To which, I replied -- not modestly -- that I've been writing articles for newspapers for 40 years and I don't mind being edited or making changes, but can you tell me exactly what "cleaning up" means? 
      I never heard back directly, and I didn't know how to check the history, but now I do and I found that FoCuSandLeArN did some cleaning up, and took out segments that I had used from Jerry Byrd's book. That's fine.
      Again, a silent period, and then 3 1/2 weeks later, on June 18, "Calliopejen1" sent this message: "Lee Hedges, which you submitted to Articles for Creation, has been created."       
       All right. 
       Next task: Inserting photos into the sketch. Again, a complication process because Wikipedia it seems has very tough copyright standards. I submitted three photos (all of which are on the Internet) through an "upload wizard."

The Lee Hedges LSU running back photo from
about 1950 that you won't see on Wikipedia.

       In about 10 minutes, "1989" left me a message that the early 1950s photo of Lee Hedges as a running back at LSU "has been marked as a possible copyright violation" and likely was to be deleted. 
       Because that photo is 65 years old and a publicity shot -- common in those days and for probably 50 years at every college of note -- I doubt it would be considered a copyright violation by anyone with any sense.
       Nevertheless, Billy Hathorn explained to me how difficult Wikipedia can be on photo use and he found a couple -- one of Mrs. Hedges -- that are on the page now. I'm hoping to find a Woodlawn yearbook photo of Coach; Billy said yearbook photos from before 1978 are public domain. So we'll keep trying.
       Billy also cleaned up the Hedges page, added some significant information, and linked the page to other Wikipedia pages.
       One other significant twist -- at the top of the Lee Hedges page is a note: "This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions." 
       Guess I'm not as good as I thought.
       My friend Tom Marshall liked that. He sent a note saying, "I think you need to work on your 'encyclopedic tone' a bit. In a subsequent exchange, he said, "... The annotation seemed so asinine that I couldn't resist."

       If I knew what "encyclopedic tone" meant, I would fix it. If I knew what annotation meant, I probably would agree.
       Anyway, I have done a Wikipedia page, and I've had several people suggest that I do some more. And I'm answering, that ain't gonna happen. I've done my one, and it's a painful process. (Have I been clear enough about that?)

                                   

A case for integrity

Lee Hedges, speaking at his recent induction to the
Ark-La-Tex Sports Museum Hall of Fame
(Shreveport Times photo)

         Whenever I see a reference to forfeited football games and how they are recorded -- such as the ones Penn State just forfeited for 14 seasons -- I think of Lee Hedges.
          For instance, does LSU now list the Capital One Bowl at the end of the 2009 season -- a game  it lost to Penn State 19-17 on a day when the Tigers played miserably on a miserably wet field -- as a victory?
           Before I wrote the blog piece on Lee Hedges ("One coach tops them all," July 31), I checked with Lee Hiller -- longtime Shreveport Times agate guru and record-keeper, expert-on-everything Captain Shreve High athletics) -- for Coach Hedges' year-by-year football record.
           The bottom line was 217 wins in 27 seasons. However, I noticed right away that the list Hiller sent me had the 1963 Woodlawn record as 9-2-1. Don't have to look this up because it is in my memory bank, but that season's record always has been 8-3-1.
           The game in question was the one against Byrd, a 14-7 loss. A couple of weeks later, Byrd was ordered by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association to forfeit eight victories (four in district) because it used an ineligible player.
           Lee Hedges promptly told the media -- and me, as sports editor of the school newspaper and yearbook -- that we should list the game as a loss for Woodlawn in our records. And that's the way it stayed through the years.
           "Byrd won the game," he reasoned. "We don't want anything given to us."
           (The result, however, did stand with the LHSAA, which is why Woodlawn made the playoffs that year as the second-place team in 1-AAA behind Bastrop. And that's what put us in New Orleans on November 22, 1963 -- the subject of a future blog.)
            Somewhere through the years, someone -- not Hiller, not me, not Coach Hedges -- changed the game to a victory on his record. When I pointed this out to Hiller, he went back and double-checked and found some instances where Coach's total record had 217 wins and some where it was 216.
             Hiller said he would change it to 216 wherever he saw the discrepancy.
             Sure, it doesn't matter in the big picture. We all know that Lee Hedges is considered by many the best high school coach in Shreveport-Bossier history, and one of the best ever in the state. But this just points out the type of integrity he had.
              As for LSU and Penn State, I haven't seen the latest LSU football guide, but on the LSU web site, on the Les Miles' record page, the Capital One bowl game is listed as a loss. Miles' total record at LSU (75-18, seven seasons) includes a loss to Penn State. The record for 2009 is 9-4.
            And that's fine with me. If the NCAA wants to put an asterisk by that game to note a forfeit, so be it. But I saw the game, and LSU didn't deserve a win.
 ---
            I also think of Lee Hedges when I see a reference to a team having a "rebuilding" season.
            Before the 1962 Woodlawn season, after a "miracle" season in 1961 when the team went from 0-9 the year before to a 9-3 record and the district championship in its first year of eligibility, the headline on The Shreveport Times preview story, said, "Knights in Rebuilding Year."
            Coach Hedges' philosophy on that -- and I heard him say this several times -- is that every year in high school football is a rebuilding year.         
            His thinking was that you always put together a new team, You always have a lot of spots to fill. It's not like the pros, where you might have most of a team coming back from year to year, similarly to college programs, too. In high school, especially in the bigger programs, teams are often senior-dominated.
             So in my sportswriting career -- with Coach Hedges' influence -- I tried to stay away from using the term "rebuilding." If I ever did, I hereby apologize.
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         One more Lee Hedges note, this one from John James Marshall, the best quarterback-turned-sportswriter in Louisiana history (he was a good QB, the leader of an undefeated state championship team at Shreveport Jesuit in 1976; he was a much better sportswriter and sports editor).
          Covering a Captain Shreve game for us at the Shreveport Journal in the 1980s, John James went to interview Coach Hedges afterward. As John James was leaving, Coach Hedges asked him, "Are you going to call me a 'veteran mentor?' "
          "Well, if you want me to, I will," John James replied, laughing.
          "Good," Coach Hedges answered. "I like that."