Wiki Whitecaps page

...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Sounders ..... its not like you were promoted ....

 

god you're annoying.


for the last f**king time. the company that used to own the Whitecaps D2 team has changed into a investment group/company (having added new investors) that is now a 1/18th investor in MLS which has granted them the license to operate one of their 18 franchises, the one in Vancouver.

those are two entirely different things. there is a clear difference. one was an independently run business that participated with other independent business in various D2 leagues. the new "team" is a branch office of MLS LLC, one with some autonomy but not complete autonomy. it doesn't matter how many coaches, players, names, fan groups, names may stay the same the FACT of the matter is that the two things Whitecaps D2 and Whitecaps MLS are two entirely different structual things.

go take a f**king thorazine and give up you useless plight.

 

Heh. Realistically, Wikipedia is about accuracy and the accurate description of the Whitecaps MLS team is that it is a separate entity than the Whitecaps the D2 team and certainly different than the NASL team. As such they are given separate articles. If the teams were merged into a single article, then it would give the impression that the various Whitecaps clubs are, in fact, the same club when they are not.

 

As both a Sounders fan and a Napoli fan, I can relate. I do find it achingly annoying how American soccer fans focus on the business structures rather than the legacies of the teams on the field.

Napoli's wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.S.C._Napoli

By August 2004, Napoli was declared bankrupt with debts estimated up to €70 million.[29] To secure football in the city, film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis refounded the club under the name Napoli Soccer,[4] as they were not allowed to use their old name. FIGC placed Napoli in Serie C1, where they missed out on promotion after losing 2–1 in play-offs to local rivals Avellino.

In the U.S., know-it-all soccer fans who just glommed onto the sport yesterday will tell us that Napoli can't possibly be the same team because not only did they go bankrupt, but they came back with a SLIGHTLY different name! And a different owner! And they even came back in a different league!

But none of them will make a stink about the Cleveland Browns who jumped from the old AAFC to the NFL back in 1950.

The Sounders and Whitecaps have many players and coaches from the NASL days still involved. Same thing with the CSL/APSL/A-League days. Not to mention all the players and coaches not involved today, but whose tenures still spanned the different leagues and eras thus giving our legacies continuity.

 

okay. for the last time. the white caps did not just switch leagues. they didn't just exist, stop existing and then start back up. the changed the very core essence of what they are. there are NO "soccer clubs/teams" in MLS in the traditional sense. they are not independent clubs, they are branch offices with branch managers. they are two entirely different things conceptually and to have that reflected in wikipedia is absolutely correct and the most accurate way of representing the true situation. it wasn't like they changed the "business structure" from one group of owners in some form of company, that disbanded and reformed as a different kind of independent company. the disbanded and ceased to exist as an independent entity. they gave that very sort of existence up entirely to become 1 of 18 operational investors or branch managers in the MLS LLC corporation. that is something so fundamentally different from a conceptual stand point that no matter how many players cross over, coaches, staff do likewise, no matter how many times they talk about the good old days there is a clear bright line in the sand between being an independent soccer team/club/organization and being a part of the multi-armed single entity organism that is MLS LLC.

 

Let me tell on behalf of Whitecaps fans one last time, we don't care for your opinion. Some of us have been watching this team since the 70's and feel the history of this club spans that length even if Wikipedia or people like you disagree. In fact I believe the 86ers would have been the Whitecaps if it wasn't for an unreasonable owner, thankfully someone stepped up and bought the rights. The majority of us feel there is a history here and don't care about 1/18th LLC crap. For myself and others the Whitecaps started in 74 and nothing will change our mind.

I'm positive you will respond with a post bashing/yelling at me and what i've posted. Go for it cause I don't care.

 

That must be why it says "Since 1974" right on the back of the new jerseys then...

But really, who the f*** cares what wikipedia and some random Man U fan think? It's what Whitecaps fans think, and there seems to be a pretty strong consensus here.

 

so basically screw those pesky facts things it only matters what "feels" right. nobody can doubt that the Whitecaps have "spiritually" persisted thru many incarnations. but Wiki isn't about "spirit" or "what fans think". wiki is about facts and factually the "Whitecaps" no longer exist as an independent organization. period. end of story. the precedent has already been set in wiki that the entries are broken up along clear and concrete lines and a major shift in basic legal make up is clearly deserving of a separate and new entry, obviously with links back to the previous but very much different versions of the Whitecaps.

and this is from Whitecaps fans who are Canadians and by all indications i've had usually reasonable people. imagine what is going to happen when those delusional f**ktard fans from NY Cosmos get into the league ... this is going to be like 100x the problem.

i suggest anybody who doesn't fully understand the fundamental difference between any of the previous independent Whitecaps incarnations and the new MLS Whitecaps from a structual standpoint should read the Fraser vs MLS LLC case:

i know this runs counter to every intuitive sense fans have of what a "team" should be and MLS does an excellent job to shield the public from just how much the teams really are only "branch offices" for obvious reasons but the fact remains that MLS is one single entity, in total, and that the teams are simply so many arms that if cut off would no longer even exist as indicated by the fact from the caselaw that states the league owns the intellectual property, ie the name of the teams etc! think about what the quote means. if all of the investors currently involved violated some rules or were bought out by some rich Arab Shiek the name Whitecaps STAYS WITH THE LEAGUE and if those old investors wanted to start a new team, say a D2 team, they COULD NO LONGER USE THE NAME WHITECAPS!

anyway. the point is when you get in bed with MLS you are all the way in. you cease to be you and become just a small and inseparable part of MLS. i am pretty sure most fans don't know or understand this, want to know or understand this and i am very much looking forward to seeing how Cosmos fans freak out about it if they ever get their wish to join MLS.

 

^^^
don't care, but thanks for coming, bye.

 

By your standards Manchester United has been a new team since June 1991 when they were floated on the Stock exchange, and then a month later on 17 July we a co-signer of the "Founder Members Agreement", which started the FA Premier League's commercial independence from the Football Association and the Football League.

And the Kerfoot and Co don't just own a share of the MLS they have purchased the right to operate a major league team in a specific city. As for their trademarks, as far as the Canadian Intellectual Properties office, the name is still registered to a Vancouver based company.

 

If you want to talk about wiki continuity. Check out S.S.C._Napoli, who in August 2004, was declared bankrupt and kicked out of Serie A. The next year they 'returned' with new ownership and a new name in C1. Legally this club has nothing to do with the old club, but on wiki this change doesn't even warrant a new block let alone page.

 

Um, yes. That is exactly what they did.

Right. The business structure within which the team operates has fundamentally changed. That is worth noting in the history of the team. It doesn't constitute treating the phases of history as entirely separate entities. Do you go around wikipedia demanding that an actor should be broken up into different entities based on which studio he/she is signed to, and that each entity constitutes its own wikipedia page? Do you die and reincarnate as an entirely new person every time you switch employers?

 

um. no. they didn't. again. this isn't like they went from a privately held company to a public traded corporation or something like that. they went from existing as a single independent entity known as Whitecaps and became something entirely different. read the legal ruling.

WRONG! the nature of the "TEAM" itself has changed. it isn't a "TEAM" that is "within" a new structure. IT IS a 1/18th part of MLS. there is no Whitecaps and MLS there is only MLS-Whitecaps. If tomorrow Kerfoot and or the people involved in the Whitecaps decided they didn't like MLS and wanted to start a new league or join the J-League or go back to D2 as the Whitecaps THEY COULD NOT! the investors could sell their rights to operate the Vancouver branch office of MLS to somebody new but MLS retains the rights to Whitecaps. Kerfoot and the fans and whoever else who wanted to move on and get away from MLS would have to find a new name for their team.

no, but if katie holmes and tom cruise genetically fused into a single living inseperable human being called Katom Holuise who could appear sometimes as a woman named Katie Holmes or man named Tom Cruise depending on the film role but was still a single biological entity i sure as shit would give it a new wiki entry. as much as you'd like to deny it THIS is what happened to the Whitecaps. it is as if you took 18 people, killed them, took their genetic material, put it in a blender, infused it into a new humanoid organism that could shapeshift into any of the forms that it has the genetic information for. now if your long time friend Bob was one of those 18 dead people blended up and injected into this creature and he showed up at your party you might call him Bob but he would't BE Bob in anything other than the metaphoric sense.

if you are going to do an analogy try and do one that is intellectually consistent.

 

Whether or not the pages are merged the current page title needs to be changed. When I type in Vancouver Whitecaps FC (which is the name of the current MLS entity) I am taken to the page chronically the USL history of the club. Typing in the current name of the club should direct me to the page of the current club.

Also, when you type in "Vancouver Whitecaps" into wiki you are taken to a redirect page where you have to choose between 4 different histories of teh club.

If you want to go directly to the current version of the club's page you need to type "Vancouver Whitecaps FC (MLS)" which seems absurd, why would you have to qualify the team name when it should be the default page you go to.

Having said all that I'm not willing to make any changes on wiki anymore. People get way too involved and get frigging ridiculously crazy if you dare edit stuff.

 

there is no precedent anywhere in the world for what happens when a previously existing team ceases to exist and then a new, unique and entirely fundamentally different branch office of MLS opens in that town with the same name. well of course except for those times it has happened in MLS. because MLS is the ONLY single entity soccer league ON THE PLANET. there is no other league that is simply a single Corporation with 18-20 dependent branch offices so no team you can pick from anywhere on the planet outside of MLS is a precedent. period. end of story.

and that MLS precedent, rightly, states that the old and new entities are so entirely different on a organizational DNA level that a new wiki page is required. sorry Whitecaps you are no different than Seattle, Portland or San Jose. i don't care how much you love your team, or how much "tradition" the Whitecaps had when they were an independent team, or how advanced their youth system was prior to becoming part of MLS. the Whitecaps became part of MLS in the exact same way as every other MLS team does, by investing in MLS LLC and being given the right to operate a branch office. the Whitecaps aren't special, they didn't get a special dispensation from any rules nor did they become an MLS branch office in some special never before seen way that makes them somehow special and more "independent" than the other teams.

accept the fact that there is nothing special or different about the fundamental organizational constitution of Whitecaps MLS from Sounders MLS and you'll sleep alot easier at night and perhaps stop trying to overturn the rightful precedent already set for how MLS teams have wiki pages.

of course if you firmly believe that the name is the most important factor that makes the "team" and not the fundamental structure of the team vs branch office itself then i can understand why you think they should be one page. but you have to then change every single one of the previous 3 teams that kept/used old team names. there might be an argument that the team name is the essential factor in the continuity of the team but there is no argument that somehow Vancouver is a different case than Seattle or Portland or San Jose other than delusional pretensions. feel free to overturn the entire precedent if you like, i don't see it happening but you are free to try, but you guys really need to stop pretending and trying to make the case that somehow Vancouver Whitecaps MLS is some sort of special MLS case that has never before happened and is nothing like the other MLS teams that came into existence and for marketing purposes decided to use a name and tradition that already existed (a wise marketing move to be sure). the truth of the matter is that Kerfoot et al could have just as easily named the team Vancouver Mauvecaps or White Picket Fences and everything else could have been kept the same and the wiki page would still be a new one for the MLS team and it would still have all the same players, owners and coaches and the only different thing would be the name at the top.

so, feel free to fight for the concept that in the unique case of single entity MLS the NAME and not the unique structure is the important concept in wiki page delineation but understand that you have to overturn a precedent for 4 teams and the whole league structure to win that argument.

 

all in favor to get this troll banned, say I