League Franchise Team Table Workflow

Workflow version: LFTTW-2026-08-24.01

Last updated: 2026-08-24

Versioning rule: Increment the final two-digit revision for each substantive workflow change. Use a new date when the workflow is revised on a later date. Cosmetic-only edits may be recorded without incrementing the revision.

Purpose

Create a standardized table listing franchise-level teams that played in a specific league or league identity across one or more seasons.

This workflow is similar to the Location table workflow, but it is organized around league participation, not geography.

Standard table

\|Franchise|Resource|Years|
\|---|---|---|
\|[Franchise thought]|[External resource URL]|[Years played in the league]|

• Use three columns: Franchise, Resource, and Years.
• Do not add a League column when the entire table represents one league.
• Preserve historically meaningful names, spellings, and disambiguating suffixes.
• Use year ranges to distinguish separate franchises that share a city and nickname.
• Do not merge distinct franchises merely because they share a name.
• Use an en dash (–) for normalized year ranges when editing a finished table, unless the source convention intentionally uses another form.

Thought-type safeguard

• Before applying any type, search the existing thought-type list and use the existing type by its exact name or ID.
• Never create a duplicate type with the same or nearly identical name.
• Types are not sort-order instructions. Do not change the order of the type list or any custom thought order while executing this workflow.
• Preserve the user’s existing type ordering and custom ordering.
• Prefer the existing MLB (Major League Baseball) type for major-league index thoughts and the existing MLB Team-Season type for major-league season thoughts.
• Prefer the existing Minor League Team-Season type for minor-league season thoughts.

Franchise identification

1. Read the source table and extract each franchise name, resource URL, and year range.
2. Search the Baseball brain for the exact franchise thought.
3. Prefer the existing franchise-level thought that best matches the league identity and historical period.
4. Preserve an existing year-range suffix when it distinguishes a franchise from another thought with the same base name.
5. If several candidates exist, inspect their labels, notes, parents, children, types, and source attachments.
6. Do not guess when two candidates could represent different franchises. Flag the ambiguity and ask for clarification.
7. Never create a replacement thought without permission.

Internal links

• Every Franchise cell should contain an internal link to the selected franchise thought.
• Generate every new internal link with TheBrain’s thought-link URL generator.
• Copy the returned Markdown link exactly.
• Never manually construct, guess, edit, or infer a brain:// URL.
• Preserve existing working internal brain:// links exactly.
• If link generation fails, leave the franchise text plain and report the unresolved item.

Graph relationships

• Link each selected franchise thought as a child of the league-team index thought being updated.
• The league-team index thought is the parent; the franchise thought is its child.
• Check for an existing link before creating one.
• Preserve all existing parent, child, and jump relationships.
• Do not re-parent or merge a franchise thought merely to make the table uniform.
• When a franchise has season-specific children, preserve those relationships and use them as supporting evidence for the franchise identity.

Resource URLs

1. Use the resource URL supplied in the source table as the starting point.
2. Inspect the selected franchise thought’s existing attachments.
3. Attach the URL to the franchise thought only when it is not already attached.
4. Use a descriptive title, such as StatsCrew — [Franchise Name].
5. Preserve duplicate or suspicious URLs as evidence when they document a source-system problem; do not silently replace them.
6. Treat URL directory paths such as /minorbaseball/ as non-authoritative classification metadata for 19th-century records.
7. Classify the team from the page content and historical league context, not from the URL path alone.
8. If the page is a ghost, broken route, duplicate record, or misclassified source page, document that fact and flag it.

Classification

• Use the existing MLB (Major League Baseball) type for major-league league identities and appropriate major-league index thoughts.
• Use MLB Team-Season for major-league season thoughts.
• Use Minor League Team-Season for minor-league season thoughts.
• For minor-league season records, apply the appropriate class or level type when known.
• Do not infer minor-league status from a StatsCrew URL containing /minorbaseball/.
• Treat abbreviations such as AA cautiously because they may mean:
  • American Association, a historical major league;
  • American Association, a minor league;
  • Double-A, a minor-league classification.

Historical identity and source anomalies

• Preserve alternate spellings when they reflect historical usage or a source-database duplicate.

• Use notes, tags, aliases, year ranges, and graph relationships to explain identity rather than deleting historical evidence.

• Flag duplicate or fractured source records, including cases where a database creates separate pages for spelling variants.

• Distinguish separate teams that used the same city and nickname in the same year.

• Record source-routing problems when deep links resolve to ghost pages or when a resource URL points to a misleading directory.

• Existing error/correction tags may be applied with permission, especially:
  • Errors-Corrections List 2 for broader data/source conflicts;
  • Errors-Corrections List 3 (Spelling not consistent) for naming and spelling inconsistencies.

Removing the Resource column

After every resource URL has been checked and attached where appropriate:

1. Verify each Franchise cell contains the correct internal link.
2. Verify each franchise thought is a child of the league-team index thought.
3. Verify each resource URL is attached or intentionally documented as a duplicate/ghost source.
4. Remove the Resource column only after verification.
5. Preserve the Franchise and Years columns.

Final form:

\|Franchise|Years|
\|---|---|
\|[Franchise thought]|[Years played in the league]|

Completion checklist

• [ ] Source rows extracted.
• [ ] Franchise identity verified.
• [ ] Historical name and spelling preserved.
• [ ] Ambiguous candidates flagged rather than guessed.
• [ ] Internal links generated through TheBrain’s URL generator.
• [ ] Existing internal links preserved.
• [ ] Franchise thoughts linked as children of the league-team index thought.
• [ ] Resource attachments checked.
• [ ] Missing resource URLs attached when valid.
• [ ] Ghost, duplicate, or misleading source URLs documented.
• [ ] Major/minor status determined from historical context and page content.
• [ ] Existing thought types reused; no duplicate types created.
• [ ] Existing type ordering and custom thought ordering preserved.
• [ ] Error/correction tags applied only with permission.
• [ ] Resource column removed only after verification.
• [ ] Final table verified.

Related workflows

• Affiliate (template) — MLB-to-Minor League affiliations by season.
• League (template) — connects team-season thoughts to league-season thoughts.
• Franchise (template) — organizes a franchise and its season records.
• Location: Template — indexes franchises associated with a location.