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I love standards - there are so many to choose from

Now that the Olympics have come to a close, it's cleanup time. A few items immediately come to mind that I've encountered (mostly in event results). I'm sure that there are many others that can be added to the list.

I've added separate subsections for each issue I've listed. Please comment and state your preference individually in each subsection and sign each individual comment. If you have additional issues, please add them directly into the following list and add new subsections to this topic.

Oh, and if someone with more experience than I believes the discussion needs to be relocated or reorganized, go ahead.

-- Tcncv (talk) 17:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Issue summary:

  • Gold, silver, and bronze line items in final results tables There are two dominant styles and many variations. I think it's time to get a consensus select a standard. This was previously discussed here.
  • Combined or separate name/nationality columns in event results
  • Bolding or result values.
  • Column names
  • Notes/remarks column standardization
  • References


Final results style

Two common styles were discussed here, but I think it's worth starting a fresh discussion, even if it just reaffirms the prior consensus.. Thare are many variations, but the dominant styles appear to be:

Option 1:

Rank Lane Name Nationality Time Notes
1 7 Britta Steffen  Germany 53.12 OR
2 8 Lisbeth Trickett  Australia 53.16
3 4 Natalie Coughlin  United States 53.39 AM

Option 2:

Rank Lane Name Nationality Time Notes
7 Britta Steffen  Germany 53.12 OR
8 Lisbeth Trickett  Australia 53.16
4 Natalie Coughlin  United States 53.39 AM

The Swimming and Athletics tended to use option 1, while Gymnastics, Rowing and many others tended to use option 2. The prior discussion favored option 2.

A side issue is figuring a way for get rank column to sort properly with the medal images present. This would probably involve the use of a hidden-text span element.

Comment Below

  • Option 2 - for the same reasons in the previous discussion Basement12 (T.C) 17:57, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I definitely prefer option 2 as well, but the images are a little problem. They need an alt parameter to work on systems that can't display images, and even with this they render the rank column unsortable. Can this be solved? Or rather, what would we lose by simply using the numbers 1, 2, and 3? -- Jao (talk) 21:43, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Maybe even 1, 2, and 3 with background colour, as I just tried out at Shooting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 10 metre air pistol. (I know I probably shouldn't tamper with it until consensus has been reached, but I got eager... Any comments on how I treated Kim, such as that invisible rank in the final table, is appreciated. I also tried out using flagIOCathlete for the final where country sorting is unlikely to be an issue, and it massively helps reduce table width! I hadn't thought of that benefit, but it's really great.) -- Jao (talk) 22:05, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I like colors, but I'll live if we don't use them. Reywas92Talk 22:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Definite Option 2. Bgcolors in option 1 make reading of table contents difficult. Sort problem on medal images - use Template:Sort in format {{sort|1|[[Image:gold medal icon.svg]]}} on the medal image cells. Take care with sortable table Time column - events with times both less than and greater than 1 minute won't sort correctly. Yboy83 (talk) 22:17, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Yboy83 stole my words. I also thought about tweaking with {{Gold medal}}, {{Silver medal}} and {{Bronze medal}} so that there would be an option to hide the "Gold", "Silver" and "Bronze" text, and one could use these templates in results tables, as well. But I guess {{Sort}} can do the job. Parutakupiu (talk) 22:45, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 2. As a prior proponent of option 1, I now wee the light (and the white space). -- Tcncv (talk) 23:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 2, clearly. I have been using this style exclusively when I have been reformatting older results pages (2004 and earlier). I hate the old icons with a passion, and I really think that setting the bgcolor for the entire row is really ugly and unnecessary. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 2, much better looking. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Proposed consensus: Option 2 - Use , , and in results table with no background color in medal rows. Also recommend use of the {{Sort}} template in sorted tables. Example: {{sort|1|[[Image:gold medal icon.svg]]}}

Comments?

  • As I write this, it occurred to me that we could use templates named {{Gold1}}, {{Silver2}}, and {{Bronze3}} plus variants such as {{Gold01}} and maybe {{Gold001}} to handle larger lists. They're available, short, easy to remember, and could support sorting plus possibly an alt-text value that Jao suggested above. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:22, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Great, thanks! -- Jao (talk) 12:21, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Combined or separate name/nationality columns in event results

Many result tables have a single column that uses the {{flagIOCathlete}}. Many others have separate columns that use no template for the athelete and <nowiki>{{flagIOCathlete}} for the nationality. In the latter case, should athlete or nationality be listed first.

Option 1:

Rank Lane Name Time Notes
1 7  Britta Steffen (GER) 53.12 OR
2 8  Lisbeth Trickett (AUS) 53.16
3 4  Natalie Coughlin (USA) 53.39 AM

Option 2:

Rank Lane Country Name Time Notes
1 7  Germany Britta Steffen 53.12 OR
2 8  Australia Lisbeth Trickett 53.16
3 4  United States Natalie Coughlin 53.39 AM

Option 3:

Rank Lane Name Country Time Notes
1 7 Britta Steffen  Germany 53.12 OR
2 8 Lisbeth Trickett  Australia 53.16
3 4 Natalie Coughlin  United States 53.39 AM

I'd recommend option 3 since it allows for sorting by either athelete or nationality and also give the athelete greater prominence. A side issue is getting the Atheletes to sort by last name. The {{sortname}} template can be used for this, but it requires alot of work.

Comment Below

  • Option 1 - the template used links nicely to both the athlete and the nations olympic summary, the flag and abbreviation gives the country and looks neater than having more columns and full country name. Basement12 (T.C) 18:00, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Good point Jao, to allow sorting by country I think use Option 3 for larger tables e.g weightlifting results tables, or if unwilling to use two differing styles it'll have to be 3 everywhere. Basement12 (T.C) 18:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 3 as sortability by country is nice in large tables. It seems that few sports have these though, and the sortability is rather redundant in a list of 6-10 athletes, so I certainly see the case for option 1 (which I agree looks neater). In any case, I don't think we have to go to any lengths to sort athletes by last name. If someone wants to find a person in a list, it's probable they know the first name too. -- Jao (talk) 18:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I prefer option 1 for the looks but 3 is indeed better for sorting purposes. What about using 1 just for medal section while 3 for overall results? (with times and all that) --Tone 19:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 1 is better to look at, but option 3 is better for sorting. Column order in option 2 could be used for team events the NOC is perhaps more of interest than team members? Yboy83 (talk) 22:17, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 1 is the best for most of the results pages, but I concur that option 3 is best suited for long tables listing multiple athletes from the same NOC. Parutakupiu (talk) 22:58, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Lol. Seems we have a consensus that option 1 is better but 3 is also better... So, shall we use 1 for medals at the top of the article and 3 for other purposes? Or is it better to consistently use only one? --Tone 23:06, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
No, continue using Template:OlympicGoldMedalist etc there. But in my test at Shooting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 10 metre air pistol, I'm using option 3 for the qualification round (48 shooters), and flagIOCathlete (option 1) for the final (8 shooters). I don't think that looks too inconsistent, it allows sorting by country for the qualifications, and reduces table width for the finals. Personally, I'm quite pleased with the outcome. -- Jao (talk) 23:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Precisely, Jao. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Option 3, but for the result tables. Let the medal tables be, since sorting is not necessary (at least at the event level). As a compromize and in recognition or the work required to change existing tables, I would recognize option 1 as an acceptable alternative. Thus we could support conversion to option 3, but not require it. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:33, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't have a preference either way for event results pages (except, I suppose, against option 2). I note that there are some other options available for option 3. Instead of  Germany, we could also use the longer  Germany (GER), or the shorter  Germany. This last option is closer in style to option 1, perhaps, but matches some consensus in WP:Manual of style (flags), where we say Accompany flags with country names. It also makes for a clean, compact column layout, as codes are always 3 letters vs. variable country names. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:46, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • NOT option 2, otherwise I don't particularly care. The compactness of option 1 is nice, especially for pages in which numerous columns are needed for results. However, option 3 is nice in that it is more clear to those who do not necessarily recognize flags and IOC codes, associating them with the correct nation, quickly. In any case, the individual should be more prominent than the nation. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


Proposed consensus: Partial consensus - Option 1 and Option 3 are preferred. Option 1 is preferred in complex tables to conserve width. Option 3 is preferred in longer result tables to permit sorting by either athelete or country. Option 2 should be avoided, except possibly for team events. Comments?

-- Tcncv (talk) 03:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Bolding result values

I've seen this in several result tables, but don't think it is necessary if there is a single result value. When there are multiple result values, bolding can be useful to make key results stand out, such as in Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's long jump#Final.

Comment Below

  • support - But only for events like the long jump when one attempt/value overrides all others Basement12 (T.C) 18:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Agree with Basement12. Reywas92Talk 22:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, it's totally logic in my perspective. Boldfacing is used to highlight, give emphasis to something, so it's reasonable it should only be used in events where classification is a result of the best of multiples attempts. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:08, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Just to clarify what I suggested: Bold should not be used for results, except when needed to make final scores stand out from other details in complex listings. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Conditional support. It should not be used for listings with single result values, such as Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's Marathon, but can be used for listings with a "total" column for a such as Triathlon at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Note that if bolding is added, it should be with '''triple quote''' syntax and not with !table heading syntax, as the latter will result in a different background colour in the table in addition to the bold text. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:03, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think we're all in agreement here, no? Bolding only in the instance where one value from multiple result values should stand out? -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Proposed consensus: Avoid bolding - Result scores/times/marks should not be bolded except in complex results where bolding is used to make final/total results stand out from other contributing scores. Comments?

-- Tcncv (talk) 03:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Column names

Understandable, different events have different table formmatting requirements, but for the common elements, it would be nice to have a labeling standard.

  • Should the finish order by "Rank", "Position", or something else? ("Rank" seend to be dominant.)
  • Should the participant column be "Name", "Athlete", "Participant"?
  • Should the NOC column be "Country", "Nationality", or "NOC"?
  • Should the result be ""Result", "Mark", or the more event specific "Time", "Distance", "Height", "Points" or "Score"?
  • Should tables have "Remarks" or "Notes"

Comment Below

  • Rank, athlete, nationality (i'd prefer this although this may be controversal for eg GB), more specific (where possible) if various use result, and notes are the options that i'd prefer Basement12 (T.C) 18:09, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Rank, athlete, country. Country is more common, besides, some NOC still represent a country but not a state (probably a confusing comment but I don't know when country would be controversial while nationality is clearly a problem - naturalized sportsmen and so on). --Tone 19:11, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Country would still be very controversial for Great Britain , due to the issue of Northern Ireland, see here. NOC is probably the only fully correct option. Basement12 (T.C) 19:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
"NOC" is definitely best if it will be generally understood. Will it? -- Jao (talk) 20:24, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I am afraid that NOC will just make the article harder to understand to a random reader. Indeed, we probably can't say NOC=country but what about common name and the issues addressed in talk in the link you provided? --Tone 22:54, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I would think a simple link like this (NOC) will easily solve the problem. While "country" and "nation" may fulfil WP:COMMONNAMES, "NOC" would meet WP:NPOV best, because no one can possibly question the status of an NOC.--Huaiwei (talk) 09:30, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I concur. A linked "NOC" assures we keep NPOV, disregarding if the political entity is a sovereign state or not, and allows the reader to access the article explaining what a NOC is in fact. I don't think a linked header does any damage to the table. Parutakupiu (talk) 10:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Rank, Athlete, Country, Score, Notes. I don't think NOC will be understood as well as country. Score is best for me, but something else when relevant os fine. I do not like Remarks or Mark at all, and Nationality is not always correct. Reywas92Talk 22:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I like Rank, Athlete, Country, xxx, Notes, where "xxx" is the appropriate measurement unit for the event. As for "Country", that's what the Official Page uses. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I also support the Rank, Athlete, Country, xxxx, Notes, per Tcncv above. NOC and Nationality get a bit technical, and I figure that if there are specific cases where the NOC and "country" differ, those would be sufficiently explained at a place such as "[Country] at the Olympics". Peloneoustc 23:17, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I say Rank, Athlete, Country (NOC is more precise, but we'd have to explain it with a note, or using {{tooltip}}), Time or Result (when time is not the result unit), Notes. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:20, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I prefer Rank, Athlete, NOC, Result, Remarks. "Country" is a term which will invariably invite criticisms from those who insist on being "politically correct" (for in theory there isn't a country called "Chinese Taipei", but "Taiwan", for example. Similarly, some people raise eyebrows when referring to Hong Kong, China as a "country".)--Huaiwei (talk) 11:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Rank instead of "Position", as it is more economical with the column width, especially if the sort icon is also there. I also prefer Nation instead of "Nationality" or "Country". We frequently state that a "nation" at the Olympics is represented by a National Olympic Committee and not necessarily a "sovereign nation", and "nation" is more user-friendly than using the "NOC" acronym. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
    • But the common meaning of the words "country" or "nation" refers to a "sovereign state" to many English speakers, regardless of what the linguists or academics say. We doubt we can ignore this and pretend that any of those words will not be seen as offensive or POVed.--Huaiwei (talk) 09:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Rank, Athlete, Nation. Nation is the appropriate term of art here. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Proposed consensus: Partial
  • Consensus: Rank(10), no other votes
  • Consensus: Athlete(9), no other votes
  • No Consensus: Country(5), Nation/Nationality(2/2), NOC(2)
  • No Consensus: Results(1), Score(1), Time/Result(1), Event-specific-measure(2)
  • Weak Consensus: Notes(3), Remarks(1)

Comments?

-- Tcncv (talk) 03:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Notes/remarks column standardization

There are several minor issues.

  • Should an world record be "WR", "(WR)", "WR", or ""?
  • Should Disqualification be "DQ" or "DSQ" (or maybe we don't care)?
  • Should DQ/DSQ, DNS, and DNF be in the Rank or Result column. (If placed in the Rank column, a value can still be placed in the result column.)
  • We also need to add legends throughout the results.

Comment Below

  • I'd use "WR" as it makes a large achievement stand out from the result. Where possible use full text, i.e disqualification or did not finish. This can usually be done as it can be spread over both columns as if a result isn't achieved the rank is normally unranked and so doesn't need a value. Basement12 (T.C) 18:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Template:WR (and the image to which it links) should either be used throughout or proposed for deletion; I would prefer the latter as I don't see any advantages over text. Full text is a good idea (I think I'll adopt that right away for the shooting articles), and I would primarily use the notes column. Result values for disqualified athletes is another question, they officially "don't exist" but they can certainly be interesting, as discussed above. -- Jao (talk) 18:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think that Template:WR should be proposed for deletion if its not used outside of an olympic context. And i was thinking more of disqualifications for things like dropping the baton in a relay not the more interesting cases, which are a different problem altogether. Basement12 (T.C) 18:59, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I just saw the template has some additional linking functionality, which might be useful (there's also Template:OlyR). So keeping the template is not so bad an idea, but it should still be changed from the image to text. -- Jao (talk) 20:28, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I'd use "WR" as well. The blue one does not look too nice, besides, the WR should be bolded in order to be clearly seen out of the blue. Anyway, "WR" is far better. And whenever using those abbreviations, make sure there is a legend in the footnotes. --Tone 19:08, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Regarding legends, I thought it'd be useful to bring up the question of tooltips. I realize for tables like those for United States swimming, legends are far superior because of the high number of notes. In the Barbados article, I opted for tooltips, albeit perhaps overzealously. Being one lonely "NR", I assumed a tooltip would be sufficient there. Thoughts? Peloneoustc 20:28, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Personally i'd prefer all the articles to be consistent (plus i'm not a fan of tooltips). I don't think a single line (NR = National record) would look out of place below the table. Really all these records in articles should also be referenced but as the official site doesn't record them finding sources from various nations media is going to be difficult Basement12 (T.C) 20:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Also - is it going to be necessary to put a legend under every sport on a nations page? When abbreviations such as Q (qualified for next round) are consistent for each of 20+ sports on a page it seems a bit daft to list this lots of times. Don't know where in the articles an overall legend could be incorporated tho. Basement12 (T.C) 20:53, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think the answer to the above question is yes, since we can't assume the average reader already knows the difference between "Q", "q" and "DQ". The key shouldn't take more than a line or two. -- Tcncv (talk) 21:22, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
What I meant was can we put a standard list of abbreviations somewhere in the article so there is just one key not 20 seperate ones- but i guess this wouldn't be do-able as you couldn't guarantee a reader would find it. Basement12 (T.C) 22:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I think one key would be sufficient at the end of the article, if we can point to it somehow, possibly as a titled section that listed in the TOC. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:01, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the legends have to be removed. People may simply be interested in results in a single sport, and Q can mean different things depending on the sport. Every results page on the Olympics website had a legend, and I think it's easier for clarification to have it for each sports section just in case. --Jh12 (talk) 05:10, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I didn't mean to suggest removing them. It brief legends already appear after each table, let them be. If they don't currently exist, They could be added to each table or to the end of the article - as long as they are somewhere accessible. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Use the simple WR. Use a simple legend for abbreviations because tooltips are hard to add and sometimes confusing. Reywas92Talk 22:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
At this Olympics so many records were broken that it won't be too bad if we include a full list of abbreviations somewhere at the bottom of the articles that have at least one of them. Somehow a template style should probably be fine. --Tone 22:56, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I prefer a plain text "WR" over the image. I would also support a bold "WR" and "OR", but only if used to contrast with other unbolded tags such as "PB"s, "SB"s, and various regional record tags. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:01, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Just to make sure we have a clear idea, only "WR" and "OR" would be bolded. NR, AS, PB, etc., would be left plain text? I support this convention, just want to be sure the details of it would be clear. Peloneoustc 23:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this is fine. And the common legend box for all articles at the bottom. --Tone 23:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Plain text—bolded or not—is the most simple and yet best option. As for the common legend box, I'm not so sure; it would have plenty of keys in it and most wouldn't appear on some event pages. An event-specific legend is more suited in my opinion. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:30, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I think the common legend box, if created, would be for the Nations pages not the events, because, as you say, there'd be lots of unused entries. Basement12 (T.C) 00:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Or is it possible to use OR, so that a legend is no longer required?--Huaiwei (talk) 11:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Linking is a good idea, and more specific linkage is even better (such as that provided by Template:OlyR which I would use if it was only changed from image to plain text), but the link doesn't work in print so the legend is still needed. -- Jao (talk) 12:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I have updated {{WR}} and {{OlyR}} to use plain text instead of imagemaps, since that seems to be consensus here. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
They're good. The only potential problem with them though is the pages which they link to, for example World records in athletics, only show the current records. This may confuse someone who clicks on it only to find the record in question not listed because its since been broken. Some events, like the 100 metres, do then further link to a WR progression page but not all of them do. Perhaps though we just have to accept that we'll have done all we can? Basement12 (T.C) 19:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
It would certainly be worthwhile to add another parameter to the template to link to the per-event pages, but I think it might make more sense to create all those pages first. The IOC website currently has a database with the full progression of all results, so the data is readily available to be "mined" and reformatted in wiki markup. Also, those article names (e.g. World record progression 100 metres men) should be changed to something more reader-friendly, in my opinion. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Good point. Also, can the templates be used to display "EWR" or "EOR"? -- Jao (talk) 20:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
What does the "E" stand for? I'm unfamiliar with the use of this acronym, whereas "WR" and "OR" are rather well known. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
"Equalled". It's commonly used in result lists, but yes, it does need a legend (as do the plain WR and OR too, probably). -- Jao (talk) 22:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Surely those can just be denoted as "=WR" or "=OR" with the same template? Basement12 (T.C) 23:03, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Such as ={{WR|swimming}} for =WR. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I have never seen that, but then I'm pretty much only familiar with the ISSF's result lists. Yes, = will obviously be more easily understood, so that should be fine. -- Jao (talk) 23:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Yep thats fine. Theres no need to overly emphasise the fact its "only" an equal record by making a seperate template. Basement12 (T.C) 23:35, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
As for naming, there are already {{=}} and {{=)}} templates, so we could probably use {{=WR}} and {{=OR}} rather than {{EWR}} and {{EOR}}. And is the intent to link these to pages like List of Olympic records in swimming? -- Tcncv (talk) 23:55, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I just added a parameter to the existing templates, so you can add eq=yes or eq=1 to add the equals sign (also bolded). — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks great! I think I'm ready to start retrofitting. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • PB/SB - a related issue is the placing of PB (personal best) and SB (season best) in the notes column or next to results in other places. As i've mentioned elsewhere i'd like to see the end of these in ALL olympic related articles as they are firstly not relevant to the olympics and secondly far too changeable and hard to verify with other sources. Athlete's pages are the only place they should be included. Basement12 (T.C) 00:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I could go either way. They aren't high on the notability scale and add a lot of clutter. On the other hand, they are already there and are likely backed up in the current results sources. What about national (NR) and area/continental records (AF, AS, OC, etc)? Shall we leave these plain, untemplated, and without parentheses? -- Tcncv (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
OK they have now been included in the official results for athletics at least (they weren't at one stage). But i don't know about other sports and i'm still not convinced about notability or the fact that so many athletes have comments in the notes column, meaning more notable achievements such as WR don't stand out. I'd leave in "NR" and put all of AF, AS, ER, OC etc as "CR" (continental record) to reduce the size of the keys, both unbolded. Basement12 (T.C) 01:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • DQ/DSQ - Nobody has commented so far. I this a don't care issue? -- Tcncv (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Either way it means the same and has to go in the key. DSQ so its the same length as DNF and DNS? Basement12 (T.C) 01:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I actually prefer DQ, since it is common (I think) to use the phrase "dee-qued". But it doesn't sound like theirs any strong feeling either way. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Proposed consensus: Partial
  • Consensus: WR and OR should be replaced with templates {{OlyR}} and {{WR}}, which will display bold text with an appropriate link. Example: {{WR|swimming}} which will display as WR. For equalled records, add the parameter "eq=y". Example: {{OlyR|cycling|eq=y}} which will display as =OR.
  • Consensus: Any other indicators (including continental, NR, PB and SB) should be normal text (not bold).
  • No consensus: DSQ(1) vs DQ(1)
  • Consensus: Pages need to have a legend listing abbreviations and their meanings.
  • No Discussion: Should DQ/DSQ, DNS, and DNF be in the Rank or Result column?

Comments?

-- Tcncv (talk) 03:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

References

Many pages need supporting references. Would anyone like to propose a standard format for results citations? Should be provide redundant sources?

Comment Below

  • If you are talking about providing a source for the results (e.g. official olympic site) it does seem a bit pointless to reproduce all the results in wikipedia just to link to a page with identical information. Basement12 (T.C) 18:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, to clarify pointless but necessary. Basement12 (T.C) 18:55, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I usually find our presentation of the results easier to use. Additionally, the official results website will likely be taken down sometime in the next year or so, making it much less useful than it is now. The official report should contain all of the results when published, but most people won't have easy access to a hard copy. AAFLA puts PDF versions on its website, but again, the wiki is much easier to navigate and use than a PDF. So, in my opinion, there is a point to reproduce all the results here even if the identical information is available elsewhere and linked to by us. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Proposed consensus: No Consensus

Comments?

-- Tcncv (talk) 03:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Key?

Just an idea. I think a key should be implemented to inform the reader what the table icons read, i.e. "DQ" = Disqualification; "OR" = Olympic Record. D.M.N. (talk) 16:17, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. Thats part of what's being discussed in the above Notes/remarks column standardization section. -- Tcncv (talk) 22:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Use of bold type on medal table

From 2008 Medal Table talk:

Seems we have a minor edit war going over the use of boldface to highlight the winners of the most medals in each "category"; i.e. gold, silver, bronze, and total. I don't think it's necessary because it is possible to see which country is winning each "category" by simply sorting the tables. It just adds confusion, especially since it's not explained in the article what the significance of the bold face is. However, I still think it would be unnecessarily confusing even if an explanation was added. The other side of the argument is that this has been done for previous Olympic pages. Is the precedent relevant here if it's not making the table any easier to understand? Discuss. KiwiDave (talk) 06:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that. I don't think it's particularly notable which NOC has the most gold, silver, or bronze medals. Like you pointed out, the table is sortable so boldface is unnecessary. Nirvana888 (talk) 11:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
We used to use bold on these articles before we sortable tables were created, but once we switched to sortable tables, the "need" for bolding went away. Also, there is nothing in WP:MOSBOLD that suggests it is appropriate here. The MOS only allows table headers, and that is all we should have. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with the removal of the boldface for the top counts in the medals table. First, WP:MOSBOLD appears to be written with normal text in mind to preserve readability. Tables are whole different animal. Table designers throughout Wikipedia use a variety of methods to highlight selected items including, yes, boldface. As for sorting, why ask the user to sort, when the information can be shown up front. I'd bet there are many users who don't even know what the sort icons mean. Granted, for the 2008 Summer Olympics medal table, bu this is not always the case. For example, in 1998 Winter Olympics medal table and 2006 Winter Olympics medal table, the top bronze medal count is far down the list. The bold has always been there. Lets leave it there. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:10, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Again, I don't think that boldface is necessary for emphasizing which country has the most silver or bronze medals. It is superfluous and the instructions added by you on how to sort a table already accomplishes this. Nirvana888 (talk) 19:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't find bolding necessary as well. Sortable tables do the job. --Tone 22:57, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you, Tcncv , in that I think the bolding should remain. Yes, the tables are sortable, but for people skimming through the article the bold type gives a quick summation of the leaders in each medal category without having to fiddle with the table. I'm not sure why years after this has become a standard practice that all of a sudden it gets taken up as a crusade. Geologik (talk) 01:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Comment Where is the discussion on the "consensus" that bolding was appropriate? So far, there does not seem to be an adequate reason for bolding to exist. There are more people advocating for its removal based on the arguments above. Nirvana888 (talk) 03:35, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
The bolding isn't needed in the sortable table. There's nothing notable enough about having the most bronze medals to require it sortable or not. Basement12 (T.C) 02:26, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Agree. No bolding needed. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 18:26, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Tcncv, bolding should remain. By bolding you can see in a glimps of an eye which country got most medals in any category. And if a country has most medals in multiple categories you can see that with bolding, but without bolding you won't find out. Miho (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I disagree. If one wants to see that, he merely need to click the respective sorting buttons to sort the columns.--Huaiwei (talk) 09:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

AFD Discussion

Would the project editors mind contributing to this AFD discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 Summer Olympics medals per capita? I just want this to be resolved quickly like similarly themed AFDs over the past two years.

Thanks! --Madchester (talk) 01:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Medals/Medalists/Medal Winners

All of the Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles use the heading "Medalists" for the section on medal winners (the only few that didn't i recently changed), but looking at similar articles for all previous games the heading "Medals" appears to be used almost exclusively. I'd imagine it makes sense for the 2008 pages to be changed to be consistent with previous games. What do others think of the choice of heading? Basement12 (T.C) 01:33, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I like "Medalists", as it focuses on the athlete. We already know there will be medals - that section tells us who got them. -- Tcncv (talk) 02:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
I should point out that for articles that use UK English, "Medallists" is the correct spelling (2 "l"s) Bluap (talk) 13:06, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, but for some reason despite using British english throughout (metres, sabre etc) for some reason this is not the case (except at GB where it was discussed). I'd imagine this is why "Medals" has been used previously. Basement12 (T.C) 13:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
One shouldn't take what the articles of previous Games show as definitive. They haven't been majorly updated yet (apart from 2004, mostly), in order to follow the current style consensus. I guess "Medalists" is better since it's the section title for the medal winners at the events pages. Parutakupiu (talk) 20:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

"Gold-centric" issue - Questions and Answers page

Hello, everyone. The Beijing Olympics may be over but the issue of medal table/count/"rank" always appear once every 2 years (Winter/Summer Olympics). The most common issue of the medal table is the difference between the "Gold-centric"-ness of the rest-of-the-world media vs. the "Total-centric"-ness of the US media. This has brought confusion and questions of "fairness" or "logical or not" to whether a country is *better* than another. Thus, to (hopefully) prevent another epic battle 2 years from now during the Vancouver games, I propose that the members of Wikiproject:Olympics should make a Questions and Answers page dedicated to this issue (I am not, at this point, aware of any such clearly-dedicated Q&A page yet). Why stick to IOC standard and so forth. Why not use a 3-2-1 point value system for gold-silver-bronze despite it being the *most logical* to some. Thus, the next time somebody is having an issue, they can be re-directed to the proposed Q&A page and should answer all their questions. So it saves everybody's time, hopefully. Thanks. Heilme (talk) 16:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course, Q&A on any other relevant issues should be added too. Such as, for instance, why there should be no European Union (EU) or the likes in the medal table. Or, using bold-fonts to highlights the most medal in each category. Or, why there should be no "per-capita" medals for each country. Basically, it should be complete able to answer questions that frequently appear. Heilme (talk) 16:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea that, doesn't mean people still won't argue with aQ&A page as much as they do when we explain it to them though. Should the "gold-centric" system be used on all the nation articles or should e.g [Canada at the 2008 Summer Olympics]], which keeps being changed to reflect the position in a "Total-centric" table, with the reasoning that the COC uses this measurement (it is referenced) be allowed if it is the way that country records positions. After all no official ranking table is recognised by the IOC. Basement12 (T.C) 17:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

The whole ranking issue does seem a bit curious. After all, the US does rank by total and no ranking system is officially recognized. I briefly placed a clarification on the USA infobox so that it said "Rank: 2 (by gold)", but it definitely looked a bit off. Still, when the infobox says "Rank," I think there ought to be some kind of visible clarification. I kid not when I say several of my Chinese relatives know the US ranks by total and wish China had won in that respect. --Jh12 (talk) 18:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
As a follow-up, I just want to note that I do not want the medal tables changed, or even the USA rank in its own infobox changed. But since they are USA pages with its own history and records, I was wondering if an exception could be made to change the USA infobox. The infobox would look like the one seen here and says "Rank by gold": User:Jh12/Draft5. Would this be ok with project members? --Jh12 (talk) 19:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
The Q&A page should reflect general Wikipedia guidelines on past, present, and future medals reporting. It would certainly be naive to think that in the future no one would argue with the "answers" in the Q&A page. Future editors new to the discussion should respect the previously-set guideline and unless there is a major flaw with it, they must abide by it. Ranting otherwise should simply be ignored. It may sound un-Wikipedian to ignore other people's suggestions, but if the "debate" leads eventually to the same result - that of using the previously-set (i.e. IOC) guideline - might as well be heavy-handed a bit and save everybody's time. Cheers, Heilme (talk) 18:43, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Just use {{FAQ}} for this. OhanaUnitedTalk page 20:37, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

It appears a page does already exist that at least sets out a convention for this issue - WP:OLYCON. It doesn't explain reasons for it though. Basement12 (T.C) 00:45, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Summer Olympic Games

Having just had a quick read through the article Summer Olympic Games it is in quite a mess. This article should be a flagship of the project but had its featured article status removed over two years ago and I fully understand why. I think we need to make it a priority to get this article back up to featured status. Basement12 (T.C) 04:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The same goes for Olympic Games. - Basement12 (T.C) 04:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I read Olympic Games yesterday and I completely agree with Basement12. Both articles need a complete revision, and (no offense) whoever wrote it a few years ago did a terrible job compared to today's FA standards. All of the prose needs to be rewritten. I'd be happy to help, but my writing admittedly isn't very good either. Bringing these back to FA status should be a major goal when we're all done with Beijing. Reywas92Talk 19:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

World-bias against American articles

I have serious concerns with how Olympic medal table has been changed recently. It makes it seem like the American media suddenly decided to change medal counts from by gold to total. The majority of United States media has ranked by total for most of modern Olympic history. [2]. An editor has even removed information from the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics because they say it is biased towards Americans. The material removed could definitely be re-written in a more neutral tone, but I would say of course the US article will have a bias towards America; the article is about American athletes, history, and records. It is even written in American english. The lack of clarification for rank in the infobox is a problem, because there is no officially accepted ranking method. Either way is perfectly acceptable given that the IOC takes no position on the matter [3]. Given the current status, how can we possibly blame editors who change the rank on the page since by American standards, they are supposed to do so? --Jh12 (talk) 13:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and changed Infobox Olympics United States to clarify the rank. User:JamesAM has changed Olympic medal table to reflect a more correct, balanced view. As JamesAM eloquently states, the solution to perceived pro-U.S. bias is not anti-U.S. bias. The best neutral point of view articles are ones that respect all important view-points and traditions. If this were not an important point, it wouldn't be brought up by so many world news agencies and even directly mentioned by Jacques Rogge. I think the United States article should respect the widely used rank by gold, and follow the conventions of other Olympics articles. But in the end, the article is about US athletes and their incredible accomplishments. Well-sourced information in that regard should not be removed without discussion and agreement on the United States pages, just as I will not go to other NOC articles and change them to reflect an American-viewpoint. --Jh12 (talk) 16:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
And I have quickly reverted. I strongly oppose any intention to make one nation's infobox different from the other 230. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
It IS the US infobox; the title is Infobox Olympics United States. You are imposing a non-American viewpoint on an American infobox and article. The vast majority of the United States has not traditionally ranked by gold. I can assure you of this point. --Jh12 (talk) 16:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Andrwsc. It is not OK, as you claim, to impose an American viewpoint on an American infobox and article. Neutrality is a Wikipedia policy. Nirvana888 (talk) 16:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec) How is changing the infobox wikicode imposing a non-American viewpoint? If you want to have rank=1 on United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics, go ahead. But there is zero reason whatsoever to bypass the meta-template (used on ~3200 articles) for that one trivial reason. It's difficult enough to maintain all of this without the code forking off for different nations. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Given that the IOC itself does not 'rank' countries in this way, doing so is inherently RS and POV. We should use only the IOC results as the source, because the IOC is not biased for or against any country; they merely present totals and order them according to number of gold medals. And, as Andrwsc pointed out, all infoboxes should be the same, else we run into POV (again) and presentism. Prince of Canada t | c 16:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
If it's an issue of infobox maintenance, I will personally maintain the USA infobox so that it follows the general standards. I have already aided in maintenance and changes to project banners for WikiProject Schools and WikiProject Canada, so updating the infobox should not be a problem. Or, I will request assistance from other editors. --Jh12 (talk) 17:44, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
That's not it. The only reason I changed the bypass was so it could say "Rank by gold" instead of rank. Please understand, I greatly respect the standard, but there HAS to be a better way of explaining to the reader that this is a rank by gold, a way of ranking that is not used by the country the article is about. See User:Jh12/Draft5 for what I changed it to look like. --Jh12 (talk) 17:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Wow you look away for 10 minutes and a discussion goes crazy. This is alomost a similar issue to using different spellings on pages related to different countries however the fact that no "official" table is recognised is problematic.I'll refer you all to the conventions page, although this probably not enough to settle the dispute. I think the infoboxes should all consistently use the same rankings system set out in the conventions page however the main body of text can explain the different rankings systems. Basement12 (T.C) 17:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I also assume America, like the rest of the world, has been fully baraged by the media, explaining the differences between the two ranking systems. Anyone who knows enough about the olympics to know of a ranking system is more than likely to know there is more than one. Also the medals link in the infobox takes the reader to a page where the differences i ranking should be explained. Its interesting that complaints of a bias against america now exist as well as bias towards america regarding the image on the medal table page! Basement12 (T.C) 17:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I have a much better idea that avoids this whole mess entirely. Let's just leave 'rank' out of the infobox. It's not an official 'rank' anyway; the IOC does not 'rank' countries. It merely lists a table of which countries won how many medals, and orders it by gold. The rest of the world generally follows the IOC table. So let's take it out. The medal counts need to be sourced anyway, so citations for those sources will lead readers to see references to "marked xth by total medal count, and yth by golds. Prince of Canada t | c 17:17, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Because there is more than one way to rank and none of them are official, I think either the infoboxes should be unique to each NOC, or as PrinceOfCanada proposes rank should not be placed in NOC infoboxes. --Jh12 (talk) 17:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I strongly feel that the status quo should remain. The standard is to rank by gold and there is no reason to change it even if the country with the most gold does not have the most total medals. You may mention that the U.S. won the most overall medals in the article prose if you wish but there is absolutely no reason to warrant messing with the infobox. Nirvana888 (talk) 17:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I repeat, I am not trying to change the rank method which has consensus; I am trying to add additional clarification to the infobox User:Jh12/Draft5. --Jh12 (talk) 18:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The infobox uses a standard style so you are trying to change consensus. It is fine to add clarification or explaination to the main body of text regarding the issue but the infobox already links to the 2008 Summer Olympics medal table where clarification should be given. Basement12 (T.C) 18:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

If you don't want to see a rank in the infobox for any page, just leave the parameter blank, as rank= or omit it altogether. As for removing the parameter from all infoboxes, I would not be opposed to that. It wasn't originally in the template when I first wrote it, but editors insisted on putting "Foobania finished 12th in the medal standings, with four gold medals" into the prose text of the article, and I thought that was over-emphasizing the rank too much. Deleting that text and putting the number into the infobox kept the same information, but more subtly. If you want to change the text string for all infoboxes from "Rank" to "Rank by gold", that's also fine. But regardless of how this discussion thread concludes, I am utterly convinced that creating a custom template fork for a single nation is a very stupid idea. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:15, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

So you would not be opposed if I changed the main Template Infobox Country Olympics? You're just opposed to the creation of a different USA infobox. Thanks for the compromise, --Jh12 (talk) 18:21, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I certainly didn't see that 'compromise' there. It is, shall we say, less than fully honest to say that it was. Hold your horses until there is actually consensus here. Prince of Canada t | c 18:30, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, Andrwsc was the one who reverted my changes to the infobox, so I assumed he was the principal objector to a separate infobox. Nirvana888 is opposed to changing the status quo, but I took that to mean an objection to changing the ranking method. I'll change the infobox back again then and wait for further input. --Jh12 (talk) 18:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess the three choices are:

  1. leave as it always has been
  2. change the text string to read "Rank by gold"
  3. get rid of the rank parameter altogether

I would prefer 1, 2, 3 in that order. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:18, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

  • Gosh, I hate surveys but my preference would be 2, 3, 1. --Jh12 (talk) 19:20, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
    Sorry, it's not so much of a survey as a statement to try to clearly summarize where we're at in the discussion. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer things to remain as is, but the idea of changing to "rank by gold" is a sensible compromise, if everyone can agree on it, and wouldn't do any real harm to the appearence of the box. I'd hate to see the rank removed altogether. Basement12 (T.C) 19:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
3,1,2.
  • 3 is optimal, as removing the parameter will end these ridiculous discussions permanently. We can have a guideline for the articles that requires both types of rankings to be listed, and a note that the IOC doesn't 'rank' countries in this way
  • 1 is not unreasonable, but it just means the discussion will come up again, and it will be frustrating
  • 2 is massively suboptimal, as (for the nth time), the IOC--that is, the governing body that runs the Olympics--does not 'rank' countries, period.
By analogy, look at the Oscars. While it's true that you will see movies listed by how many awards they've won, there is never a "This movie is ranked #1 because it won 5 Oscars". Prince of Canada t | c 19:27, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem for me, however, is that we already rank by gold. Optional 2 merely clarifies the method of ranking, the downside being some users won't find it necessary and it adds clutter. --Jh12 (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
But the use of the term 'rank' itself is problematic. Listing it as such, and choosing one method over the other, is inherently POV. Notice that by gold USA is second, by total medals it is first. The IOC doesn't 'rank' for a reason. Nor should we. Prince of Canada t | c 19:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, right now it is already POV (outside US), but at least with option 2 it is clear what kind of POV we're using... I think. --Jh12 (talk) 19:56, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Um no.. it's POV everywhere. In fact, it's the media in USA that is reordering the standings by total as opposed to by gold in order to come out on top. So uhh.. yeah. You're still kind of missing the point, but I've already made and clarified my point multiple times, so I don't think I'm going to be able to make it any clearer. Prince of Canada t | c 20:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Where have people gotten the concept of manipulation? My family has roots in America for two generations, and everyone remembers ranking by total at least as far back as 1980... Frankly, I hope China wins the medal count by gold and total --Jh12 (talk) 20:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Because the only way the USA shows up as #1 in almost every Games is by ranking by total. A ranking, again, that is not supported by the organizing institution. Prince of Canada t | c 20:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
1,2. I don't think that it such a big deal especially because "Rank" links to 2008 Summer Olympics medal table. I wouldn't mind if "by gold" were added, but it causes clutter. I strongly oppose removing the section altogether. No offence, but Prince's analogy really doesn't work for me. Reywas92Talk 19:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps you could explain why not? The analogy is that the organizations in question do not rank winning teams; they just publish results. Prince of Canada t | c 19:39, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Ah, now I understand what you mean. Sure, you're right. The organization doesn't officially do it, but the media do. I won't die, but I'd just rather keep the rankings. Reywas92Talk 20:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • For the record the official site does have "medal standings". Whilst this site isn't actually the IOC site it is still an "official medal table". For the record it ranks by gold with a seperate heading a the end giving the rank by total. Basement12 (T.C) 20:08, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for proving my point. Standing is a very different word from rank. Also, "[http://www.olympic.org/common/search/search_uk.asp?q=medal+ranking+by+country&lang=en&submit1=# The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not recognise global ranking per

country; the medal tables are displayed for information only]" Prince of Canada t | c 20:24, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

  • The site I gave does use the word rank within the table. At the end of the day rank is the most suitable word to use. It is common for every media organisation and NOC to use one ranking system or another so Wikipedia should as well. As "gold-centric" is more common internationally it is the system that should mainly be used here, as long as we are clear to explain how we are ranking. Change the template to Rank by gold to compromise and lets get on with more useful and important things. Basement12 (T.C) 20:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Except that doesn't address the fact that this argument will pop up again and again and again and again. Thus: remove it, as again the concept of 'ranking by country' is, quote 'not recognise[d]' by the IOC. Prince of Canada t | c 21:04, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Jh12's issue here was that he wnted to add clarification to the box, this does that and is therefore a compromise for the problem which he had. As for removing ranks altogether the IOC does not recognise them but everyone else does. Would you have us delete 2008 Summer Olympics medal table and all others like it as well? Basement12 (T.C) 21:10, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I think it needs to be rewritten to reflect that the IOC categorically does not recognize 'ranking'; it merely reports standings, and 'ranking' countries is an artefact of the media (and nationalistic obsessions with appearing first, but that is POV unless citable and thus should not be in the article). Prince of Canada t | c 21:20, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I would be 1, 2, 3 as well. I believe that the status quo is the most appropriate. "Rank" is appropriate because it comes directly from the official medal table. Adding, "rank by gold" adds unnecessary detail as it is clear that the standard is to sort by gold. If there is any confusion, they need only click on the link to the medal table which explains everything, hence no "clarification" is needed. As far as I am concerned, it does not matter what the world media decides to rank by, we've already agreed that the IOC medal table is the standard. Therefore, I believe that the current template is the most neutral, appropriate method. 76.69.62.224 (talk) 21:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Refocus

  • There is no official standard or ranking according to the IOC. And really, one can look at the same numbers and come to different conclusions: that's statistics. But again, I think it is biased to force a specific standard on country that has an established history of not using it, and then failing to clearly indicate what that standard is. Clarifying rank by gold was the best compromise I could come up with. If that is too much to ask, how about changing rank so that it links to Olympic medal table? --Jh12 (talk) 23:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
    I had originally done that when that article was first created, but removed the link when it looked like the article was going to remain in a crappy state or deleted through AfD. Now that the article seems to have some merit, I will put the link back in. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
    I didn't mind your previous proposal but this would be an even better solution in my view, and it'd not effect the look of the box at all. Whatever we do we won't satisfy everyone but that article seems to summarise the system used by "most" nations is used in wikipedia as well as the "alternative" system used in the US, and it seems well referenced. If only China had won 10 more bronze medals.... :) Basement12 (T.C) 00:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
    Sounds like a good compromise provided that Olympic medal table is kept up to date . Nirvana888 (talk) 00:02, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Since my name was mentioned in the beginning of this discusson, let me chime in. I think wikilinking to the Olympic medal table article that describes the two ranking systems is a satisfactory solution. It balances the dueling interests of using a method used by IOC generated tables with providing a quick link to an explanation for people who are used to total medals ordering system. I referred to anti-American bias in an edit summary because one editor was trying to push an incorrect assertion that ranking by overall medals was a recent invention of the U.S. media to save face over winning less gold medals than China. In reality, the U.S. media using tables supplied by the Associated Press has generally ranked by total medals in the past as well. The editor who spearheaded the effort to portray the total medal system as merely the result of "sour grapes" has derided the U.S. as "Amerikkka" in edit summaries. Edits should be guided by the facts rather than national animus, and the U.S. isn't an exception to that. --JamesAM (talk) 22:29, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Format for Category:Nations at the Summer Olympics

I think it is important to establish a set of "definitive guidelines" for this type of article to ensure consistency throughout. To that end I have started to do this at User:Basement12/Format for Nations at the Summer Olympics Articles. Once this is completed, with all standard formats decided upon by consensus within the project, it should be moved into the Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics namespace and used for reference when editing these types of articles.

At the moment the standards i've included are ones that either are consensus at this page or are the closest to it. It is by no means complete and I invite all of you to help finishing/correcting it. Discussion on the desired format can either take place here or at the talk page. Hopefully we can a consistent style nailed down. Basement12 (T.C) 16:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Great work you've done, so far. Glad someone took the first step, as I wanted to but never got started, since the amount of solicitations resulting from the recent Games, have given this project an urgent need of such documented guidelines. Kudos, Basement! I've already helped expand that page and hope you don't mind if I edit it further, whenever I see necessary. Parutakupiu (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Cheers. Edit away, i make no particular claim to the page, just placed it as a user subpage because I didn't know where else to put it. Basement12 (T.C) 17:59, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

An editor is adding host country flags (flagicons) and Beijing sport pictograms to the "Country at the Olympics" pages. (see here) Is this standard? I deleted a few but saw s/he had done it to many. I didn't want to undue his work if that was decided upon. I prefer the simpler version, not to mention it's weird to have China's flag on, for example, Togo's Olympic page just because they won a medal there. (This is the previous version). Your thoughts? -Cbradshaw (talk) 18:22, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Definitely is an example of "icon overkill". An Estonian has been doing that to "their" page also, and I have been reverting. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't be there. Simple as that. Basement12 (T.C) 18:30, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Question - Obviously seperate tables for men's and women's results are a good idea to but do they need sperate headers or just Men and Women above the tables? I'm worried that the tables of contents, e.g. at Romania at the 2008 Summer Olympics, are somewhat out of control. Basement12 (T.C) 18:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
The Romania page is definitely a bit overboard. There should be headers for team sports, but for individual sports I think it depends on the number of athletes. Something like "In the case of a nation that has many competitors in a given sport this may be further split into Men's and Women's results tables, with relevant headers if necessary" --Jh12 (talk) 19:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I don't think it's "obvious" at all to separate tables for men and women. Often I'll see a nation have 1 or 2 competitors per gender in a single sport, and it seems more logical to me to reduce that to a single table and make sure that "Men's" or "Women's" is prepended to the event name. It think it only makes sense to split the tables into two when there is "critical mass" (> half a dozen names?) In the latter case, if split into Men's and Women's tables for larger delegations, we should use the semi-colon instead of equals signs so that the TOC isn't blown out (e.g. use ;Men and not ===Men=== (and not '''Men'''. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:16, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Sorry I did only mean for larger delegations. More than half a dozen seems a sensible guideline as does use of semi-colon. Basement12 (T.C) 19:23, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
It seems obvious to me to use separate tables in the interests of consistency across articles. People looking at articles with separate tables would not immediately assume consolidated tables in another article, and vice-versa. Plus, I'm working on templating out the results tables to make things easier for people to fill in the blanks. Prince of Canada t | c 19:34, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I really disagree with that. There can never be a "one size fits all" approach when you range from teams of 1–2 competitors in one event each, all the way up to teams of several hundred competitors with multiple entries in many events. I agree that consistency is extremely important, but to me, the consistency doesn't have to mandate a rigid style. For example, on larger teams (e.g. United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics#Track and Field (Athletics)), we typically put the event in the first column (with rowspan=3, and the three entries in the second column. That leads to names being repeated in the second column, but it is certainly clearer to keep the event together. On smaller teams (e.g. Cayman Islands at the 2008 Summer Olympics#Swimming), we typically put the athlete name in the first column and the events in the second. This is much clearer for those situations. Comparing both of those pages, we have a common visual style, which is very important, but the tables are tailored to the teams in question. Another example is Philippines at the 2008 Summer Olympics, which groups men and women together for every sport, and the result looks great. This may put a crimp in your template plans, but I think we're reaching the same conclusions we did a couple of years ago when we started to use tables on the 2006 articles. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Completely agree with Andrwsc - I see no real reason to split the two, except in obvious examples (decathlon vs heptathlon). I've been working on Uzbekistan at the 2008 Summer Olympics and I think it looks fine in every sport. Wrestling split the seperate styles (freestyle & Greco-Roman) in the same way as gender, but I merged those and it looks completely fine, in my opinion. AllynJ (talk | contribs) 05:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Team sport results - At United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics, we had small medal tables at the end of results to clearly indicate what medal was won by the team: see the bottom of the volleyball section at United_States_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics#Men_8. A user felt that the US's final result could already be determined from the prior results and so the medal table was redundant. See the baseball results without a medal table at United_States_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics#Results. Is there a preference for either way? I guess the way with medal tables made it similar to the individual sports where bronze, silver, and gold were clearly shown. But the medal tables do take up extra space on the big article. Thanks, --Jh12 (talk) 19:38, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Something probably is necessary to make the colour of any medal won clearer but there's no need to list the other medal winners like that (we don't do it for individual sports). Not sure how represent it but i'll have a think. Basement12 (T.C) 19:44, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
That was me, and Jh12 and I's short discussion is here. Reywas92Talk 19:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • As an alternative the Brazil article simply places  Gold (or silver/bronze) under the result of the final. Basement12 (T.C) 20:17, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Looks good to me. --Jh12 (talk) 20:20, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I really don't like repeating the medal summary for team sports in each per-nation article. We don't do that for individual sports, and there are wikilinks galore to get to the per-sport articles. The little medal summary tables look out of place on the USA page. What is wrong with a simple line of prose text ("The United States won the silver medal in softball...") in the section intro? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd say using both the line of prose plus the small icon next to or below the final result isn't too much to do. In fact i'd say a summary of perfomances at the start of each sport section should exist in big articles, like i've started to do at Great Britain. Basement12 (T.C) 21:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, a small indicator like the Brazil article and a line of text in the section intro is fine. --Jh12 (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I like what you've done. One comment though - most of the box scores have width set to 100%. This adds a lot of white space - especially on a wide screen monitor. I'd suggest removing this and letting the browser set the width. -- Tcncv (talk) 22:08, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Hmm, can you an example of how to fix the problem so I can use it as a reference? Thanks, --Jh12 (talk) 23:52, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


  • Below are some examples that show the difference (on a sufficiently wide screen). The volleyballbox and footballbox templates looked like they supported a size parameter, but I couldn't figure out how to get an empty or blank parameter to work. When playing with the template, I also learned that getting widths to work right is no simple matter. Especially if the goal is to achieve a mix of variable widths while attempting to get two columns to have the same width. So, what I'm looking for would probably require alot of work at the template level. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


Headers A comment on Basement12's summary is that he uses ==Results by event==; ===Pictogram Sport===, with a main header for all event results with each sport having a 3rd-level header. This is in contrast to Romania at the 2008 Summer Olympics and most others (for 2008). I prefer as it is now, with each sport having its own 2nd-level header. Also, have we decided if Swimming, Diving, and Water polo should all be grouped together under Aquatics on these articles, such as on Germany at the 2008 Summer Olympics? I prefer them being separate, as on Russia at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Reywas92Talk 19:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd say them all being under a ==Results by event== heading is more correct. Otherwise the headings should be "Athletics results", "Badminton results" etc. I think it makes more sense to split aquatics, people wil look for swimming or diving not aquatics. Basement12 (T.C) 20:13, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I like what Brazil has for the team medals. I really don't think that there should be 20+ sport headings all under one results heading. The fact that "Athletics" represents how the country did in that sport is self-evident. Also, when there are even more headings under the sport, such as Basketball → Men → Results, it is less convenient to have Results down to a level 5 header, and "Basketball" having the underline looks better to me. United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics and most others I checked have the sport as the main header. Reywas92Talk 20:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
True for this olympics but not for 2004, 2000, 1996 etc. Plus not all of those levels of headings will remain. It might be self evident that its a results section but i still think jumping straight from a medalists to archery/athletics doesn't make complete sense without an intermediate heading. Basement12 (T.C) 20:44, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Large pages that have 90% of their content grouped under "Results by sport" have a terrible looking TOC. The older (original?) article style for these pages used to do that, but we've been trying to get away from that lately and put the per-sport results at the top TOC level (e.g. ==Sport==) — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Okely dokely. Changes made to reflect the opinions here. :) Basement12 (T.C) 21:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

New questions

  • Team rosters - where do we stand them in the articles? Should there just be a list of squad members or, where available, something more elaborate like at Nigeria for example?
  • Background colours - no one has so far complained about the guideline for ALL background colours (for non-existant rounds, dna, medallists etc) being removed. can i take this to mean there is no problem (as far as contributors here are concerned) if i begin to remove them from the 2008 articles?

Basement12 (T.C) 00:43, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

What is done on Nigeria looks nice and includes all relevant information. Most 2008 articles have it and the table should be standard. It's okay if colors are removed. For example, Jamaica at the 2008 Summer Olympics#Women; There's no reason to have such a bright color for just a blank field. And it's rediculous to hightlight DNF or disqualified in green. I agree with you on both new questions. Reywas92Talk 01:07, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I disagree that the Nigeria roster contains relevant information. Surely there is excessive information for what is essentially a summary list of players. Including such information would be excessive if done for countries with large numbers of teams and all the personal information is already included in the individuals profile page and adds nothing to the Olympics page. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (talk) 01:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with DerbyCountyinNZ. I think there are a couple of issues here. First, the team sport rosters were basically cut&paste jobs from the respective sport pages (e.g. Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's team squads). If you look at the talk page for that one, and if you can find the WP:FOOTY discussion from a few weeks ago, it seems as though the multi-coloured format is rather despised. The WP:FOOTY consensus format for football is what you see on 2006 FIFA World Cup squads, for example, using {{nat fs player}} etc. Now, having said that, I am not suggesting that we have a carbon-copy on each of the per-nation articles of the corresponding section from each of the per-sport roster articles. What I would like to see is a statistical summary of that team's players, omitting the personal details. That would be much more complementary to the results data (only) of the competitors in individual sports. For example, the summary for each basketball team would be a table with the MPG, FG%, FT%, PPG, RPG, APG. Other teams would have statistics relevant to their respective sports. I think that kind of data would have much more long-term historical value and be consistent with the content of the rest of the page. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:59, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I think separate tables should be created for the squad and individual statistics. The club and age are pretty widely used on squad tables on the Beijing website and at FIFA.com [4]. The age at the time of the tournament is especially important in men's football because only three players over the age of 23 are allowed per team. The club they play for is a historical snapshot of their status and professional background. [5]. All that information is for squad tables on the tournament pages, but we don't really need it on the results pages of the by country articles. For that, we can have cumulative statistics tables like the one here. --Jh12 (talk) 09:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Colors are pretty and all, but they're a bit of a headache to implement when there are established sets of text/images we use already. Do we want different text for rounds that were contested by no one, and others where the competitor listed specifically did not compete (eg. repechages)? Should I even ask that question in this section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Peloneous (talk • contribs) 05:39, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed with above that the colour in the rosters for team sports is massively overkill. Partially disagree that colours in various places should be removed, though - honeydew for the background for byes and DNA and wheat for rounds that don't exist, as is currently the standard on pages such as Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics#Women 5, looks fine to me (certainly more so than N/A), but I'm not a fan of disqualified or DNS/DNF being highlighted in bright green, and would be ok with those being removed. (There's no real policy covering this, so I guess this is just going to come down to the consensus of what people prefer the most? Because I don't have any backing for what I think is best, other than I think it looks better :)) AllynJ (talk | contribs) 06:38, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
In the colors issue, I'm really fine with the well-established, oft-used DNA, byes, etc. I just find it difficult when you have a case of a DNS or DNF there is the inconsistently employed green color. If there needed to be a color, I think the honeydew we use to slightly differentiate the DNAs and such would be appropriate. Chiefly, I support removing the green background in the case of DNS/DNF/non-group round team sports tables. Peloneoustc 07:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Team rosters should be simple (no colors) and display relevant data and stats to the tournament in question. As for background colors, I say it again: none. Parutakupiu (talk) 10:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Athletics sections - Should the athletics tables be split between running events and field events (United States versus Great Britain)? Should this be a unifying standard or done on a case-by-case basis? Peloneoustc 05:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure here. On the articles without too many athletes it looks fine merging the two, but with as many as the US has it does look as if it needs a break, and that is a logical place to put one. AllynJ (talk | contribs) 06:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm the one who created the athletics and swimming tables for the US article, and ordering them by event and separate event types was the only way I could create the tables without losing my mind. This is also how they group the different competition formats on the website: see facts and figures under [6]. The track events have heats, semifinals, and finals. The field events have a qualification and then a final. It's a minor point, but I think then it should be on a case-by-case basis. I'm happy that people used my decathlon/heptathlon tables. As an off-shoot, I also created the separate gymnastics qualification and individual final tables. I think the Great Britain page should them as well, because the Qualification stage and Individual/Team finals are separate events with totally new sets of scores. --Jh12 (talk) 10:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I think that for larger teams, it could be another way to better organize the data. But what about marathon and walk events? They're not either track nor field events. Parutakupiu (talk) 10:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Those are road events, with simply a final. --Jh12 (talk) 10:10, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think this may be a case of where a one size fits all model won't work. It seems reasonable to split by track/road events and field events if it looks better on a case by case basis. This may be particularly true where a nation has many cokmpetitors in field events, where there are only 2 rounds, in order to avoid a lot of N/As in the table. It would perhaps also allow something like at Lithuania, where the score for each attempted throw/jump could be recorded. Basement12 (T.C) 12:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Athletics title - Athletics vs Track and Field (Athletics). Great Britain uses the former and United States uses the latter. Personally, I prefer just Athletics, but I couldn't give you a reason why. AllynJ (talk | contribs) 06:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
I really like Athletics, as you seem to see it in every instance of the events outside of the U.S. Granted, there are probably going to be many readers looking for "track and field" in the U.S. article, but they could just as easily be searching for that in the Belgium or Chile articles. With such a widely established norm, I vote following it. Peloneoustc 07:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Track and field is what the US always calls athletics: [7]. Right now the section is still ordered as athletics even though it is called "Track and Field (Athletics)", and I think it is the more appropriate name for the country. Athletics (Track and Field) is all right as well, like Football (soccer). Either way is acceptable as long as it is consistent --Jh12 (talk) 09:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
The IOC and IAAF call the sport "Athletics" and it's known worldwide mostly in this form, so this should be the main name. If the American POV starts questioning that, we can put "Athletics (track and field)" so it pleases everyone. Parutakupiu (talk) 10:08, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I think if some colors go they all go, if I were to suggest keeping any colour it would have been to highlight disqualifications (but not green). An example of some prospective colourless tables are shown above incase anyone didn't see them. I initially thouht they maybe too much of a blur of figures but it wasn't the case when I made them.

The sport is Athletics, but where applicable it would be fine to call it "Track and Field (Athletics)", the same with "Soccer (Football)" as long as it remains in the usual alphabetical position.

The rosters are too garish at the moment, but making new ones, with the stats we want, is a big task. If anyone is willing to take that on fine if not i reckon they could stay. Age is important for the football and the club column is interesting. The tables in 2006 FIFA World Cup squads don't give info on matches, goals etc, can they be adapted to do so? Basement12 (T.C) 12:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, making the tables for team rosters and tournament statistics is rather easy. You just cut&paste from the official website into an Excel sheet, use some formulas to massage the data, and out pops something like this (for basketball):
№ Player GP MPG FG% 3FG% FT% RPG APG SPG BPG PPG
4 Carlos Boozer 8 05:59 .556 — .750 1.9 0.3 0.25 0.00 3.3
5 Jason Kidd 8 13:32 .857 .500 — 2.6 2.0 0.63 0.25 1.6
6 Lebron James 8 24:45 .602 .464 .458 5.3 3.8 2.38 1.00 15.5
7 Deron Williams 8 18:59 .442 .375 .900 2.3 2.8 0.75 0.00 8.0
8 Michael Redd 8 08:57 .323 .278 .000 1.1 0.5 0.25 0.00 3.1
9 Dwyane Wade 8 18:43 .671 .471 .634 4.0 1.9 2.25 0.13 16.0
10 Kobe Bryant 8 23:35 .462 .321 .583 2.8 2.1 1.13 0.50 15.0
11 Dwight Howard 8 16:15 .745 — .459 5.8 0.5 0.63 0.88 10.9
12 Chris Bosh 8 17:12 .774 — .862 6.1 0.3 0.63 0.75 9.1
13 Chris Paul 8 21:43 .500 .286 .917 3.6 4.1 2.25 0.00 8.0
14 Tayshaun Prince 8 11:07 .591 .545 .500 1.9 0.3 0.38 0.13 4.3
15 Carmelo Anthony 8 19:07 .422 .378 .828 4.3 0.4 1.00 0.25 11.5
I still assert that this is far more useful than duplicating the same table on both Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's team rosters#.C2.A0USA and United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics#Basketball. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:42, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Nice, I agree those table are much more useful/informative (they'll need a key), i'm merely saying that i'll leave it to someone other than myself to do them. My knowledge of basketball/handball etc probably isn't good enough to know what stats and things are necessary. I'll have a go at making one for baseball though if I get the time. Basement12 (T.C) 17:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Medalists

Are we happy using this, or medallists where appropriate, for the heading? Rather than say medal winners or simply "Medals" as used in previous years? Basement12 (T.C) 12:41, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

If no one has any objections (there didn't seem to be any above) this will be the standard set out at Format for Nations at the Summer Olympics Articles. I will also start changing all older articles in Category: Nations at the Summer Olympics to match the 2008 games. Basement12 (T.C) 01:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I've taken the lack of any objections in either of the two discussions to be a consensus (3 for, 1 no objection, 0 against) for the change to medalists and have begun implementing it. Basement12 (T.C) 23:41, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Move

I think we're close to completing the guidelines so its probably time to start thinking about moving them to the project pages. Any suggestions for the exact title it should be moved to? Once moved and complete I think the page should probably be protected in some way as well. Thoughts/suggestions on this or other things that need to be included? Basement12 (T.C) 16:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The Military History project has it's equivalent guidelines at WP:MILMOS i.e Military Manual of Style - I can't remember what the "real" page title is, follow the shortcut to find out. David Underdown (talk) 08:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

List of athletes by country

Does one of these exist anywhere, as an RS? I've been doing Uzbekistan at the 2008 Summer Olympics but I can't figure out the proper athlete count. The official Olympic site linked not only has the count of athletes wrong (it says 58 when it only lists 55) but also lists a swimmer who didn't take part and doesn't list a judoka who did take part (I went through just about every event page and double-checked, so I don't have a source for this). The official Beijing site has a list of just about every athlete of record, but includes those that didn't make it to the Olympics, which doesn't help. The Beijing site's page for the NOC in question doesn't help either. Anyone got any clues? AllynJ (talk | contribs) 06:47, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know of any accurate source that lists a correct number, but my own database of results I compiled from the official site gives 56 athletes (there is one swimmer missing on the current page). Unfortunately, I have generally found that other mainstream sources will have the same problems, or worse, than the official site, as I'm sure you've seen as well. Unfortunately, the only way to really be sure of accuracy seems to me to be going through the official reports event-by-event. Edged (talk) 16:15, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
Eventually i'd hope each NOCs official website should give an accurate number for its own competitors. Quickly scanned the Uzbekistan site but it doesn't appear to at the moment, however it does for previous games so give it some time and hopefully it'll catch up. Basement12 (T.C) 17:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:Swimming events at the 2008 Summer Olympics

Could someone with some auto-editing program (eh?) or otherwise manually, move all the contents of Category:Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics to Category:Swimming events at the 2008 Summer Olympics to match the naming convention of other subcategories of Category:2008 Summer Olympics events. Yboy83 (talk) 22:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll make it my next job. If you want to do lots of repetetive edits in the future i recommend WP:AWB. - Basement12 (T.C) 23:01, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's done. Don't know what needs to happen to the old, empty category though. Basement12 (T.C) 23:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry everyone there's a typo in the edit summary but the category IS in the desired place. My bad. Basement12 (T.C) 23:25, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Team sports statistics on per-nation pages

Continuing the discussion thread above—it really is quite easy to create tables like these, so I'm perfectly willing to do that work myself if we have consensus here. Once I have my Excel file constructed for each sport, it's a simple cut&paste job. The only challenge for me is figuring out what columns each sport's tables should have. The cumulative statistics pages on the official website have much more than is required, in my opinion, so we should just extract a subset. On the basketball sample I have shown, I used the Wikipedia NBA season pages as my guideline for what the WP:WikiProject Basketball editors found most important. I would need to have similar guidelines for each sport, but once I've got that, I'm good to go. Here is my best guess per sport, with the proposed table headers and legends. I;ve put them into separate subsections on this talk page to make it easier to comment on each one, if necessary. Any comments on this plan before I proceed? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Basketball

№ Player Pos GP MPG FG% 3FG% FT% RPG APG SPG BPG PPG

Pos – Position; GP – Games Played; MPG – Minutes Per Game; FG% – Field Goal Percentage; 3FG% – Three-point Field Goal Percentage; FT% – Free Throw Percentage; RPG – Rebounds Per Game; APG – Assists Per Game; SPG – Steals Per Game; BPG – Blocks Per Game; PPG – Points Per Game

Baseball and Softball

Batting
№ Player Pos GP AB R H HR RBI TB BB SO SB OBP SLG BA

Pos – Position; GP – Games Played; AB – At Bat; R – Runs; H – Hits; HR – Home Runs; RBI – Runs Batted In; TB – Total Bases; BB – Base On Balls; SO – Strikeouts; SB – Stolen Bases; OBP – On-Base Percentage; SLG – Slugging Percentage; BA – Batting Average

Pitching
№ Player GP GS W L SV IP H R HR SO BB ERA

GP – Games Played; GS – Games Started; W – Wins; L – Losses; SV – Saves; IP – Innings Pitched; H – Hits; R – Runs; HR – Home Runs; SO – Strikeouts; BB – Base On Balls; ERA – Earned Run Average

You've got most of it covered there. You don't need "innings played" but perhaps "SLG (slugging percentage)" or "OBP (on base percentage)" if available and definitely "TB (total bases)". For the pitching also have "GS (games started)". I'd suggest changing the order you have the stats in as well. See here and here for a guide. Basement12 (T.C) 00:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've made some changes. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
That's great. Basement12 (T.C) 04:36, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Football

№ Player Pos GP Min G S Yellow card Yellow cardRed card Red card

Pos – Position; GP – Games Played; Min – Minutes Played; G – Goals; S – Shots; Yellow card Yellow Cards; Yellow cardRed card Second Yellow = Red Card; Red card Red Cards

Either an age column or there should be an asterisk of somekind next to the names of the 3 over-23 players in the squad, this is quite a key olympic rule. "Shots" could just about stay but "shots on goal" (i assume this is on target) is too excessive. Basement12 (T.C) 00:52, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd prefer to add an annotation after the names of those three players for each team, rather than add a new column for age. I think that would draw attention to them more effectively. As for the "SG" column, it can go. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Thats probably the better idea, just checking that it hadn't been overlooked. Basement12 (T.C) 04:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Handball

№ Player GP MPG G S A ST B Pen Yellow card Red card

GP – Games Played; MPG – Minutes Per Game; G – Goals; S – Shots; A – Assists; ST – Steals; B – Blocked Shots; Pen – 2 Minute Penalties; Yellow card Yellow Cards; Red card Red Cards

Field hockey

№ Player GP G S FG PC PS Green card Yellow card Red card

GP – Games Played; G – Goals; S – Shots; FG – Field Goals; PC – Penalty Corners; PS – Penalty Strokes; Green card Green Cards; Yellow card Yellow Cards; Red card Red Cards

Volleyball

№ Player Pts Spk% Blk Srv Dig Set Rec%

Pts – Total scoring points; Spk% – Spikers efficiency percentage; Blk – Blockers average by set; Srv – Servers average by set; Dig – Diggers averages by set; Set – Setters averages by set; Rec% – Receivers success percentage

Water polo

№ Player GP Min G S A ST B PF

GP – Games Played; Min – Minutes Played; G – Goals; S – Shots; A – Assists; ST – Steals; B – Blocked Shots; PF – Personal Fouls

Wow! That's looks really great, Andrwsc. I don't see anything that should be changed. Nirvana888 (talk) 00:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
We probably need separate goalkeeper statistics for field hockey, football, handball and water polo. But I agree, this looks really great. I never stop marvelling at how much work Andrwsc is putting into all this stuff. -- Jao (talk) 01:02, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
From what i know of basketball and the rest they seem to have everything required. Don't know if any goalkeeper stat would be particularly significant? Saves? Fantastic work. Basement12 (T.C) 01:06, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks to all for the encouragement! I will try to add some goalkeeping stats to the relevant sports. Note that I am proposing two tables for baseball and softball, so adding second tables for football, handball, field hockey, and water polo is no big deal. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 03:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Yet another set of medal templates

As a result of some prior discussions (#Final_results_style), I have created some new medal templates that I hope the community will find useful. The templates {{Gold1}}, {{Silver2}}, and {{Bronze3}} display 1st place, gold medalist(s), 2nd place, silver medalist(s), and 3rd place, bronze medalist(s). They are designed to support sorting in results tables (internally using the {{sort}} template), and also provide alt text values for text-only browsers. See Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's marathon#Results for sample usage.

I would like to use them as I reformat existing tables to match the consensus style, but would like to get some feedback first. Thank you. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Seems fine, but it would be better to just rewrite {{Gold medal}}, {{Silver medal}}, and {{Bronze medal}} to have a parameter to leave off the word "Gold" and be sortable by itself. That would be simpler than another set of templates. This kind is better than the funny little trophy symbols. Reywas92Talk 00:50, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd say having those is easier than using an extra parameter. Its only two different sets of templates we actually want to use and in different contexts. Those trophy icon medals are awful. Basement12 (T.C) 01:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I prefer the shorter {{Gold1}} etc too, I'm already using them in the shooting articles. -- Jao (talk) 01:05, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Presumably they can be used to save typing the full [[Image:Gold medal icon.svg]] for as well. Basement12 (T.C) 01:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
The extra parameter could be as simple as {{Gold medal|icon}} for without words, and nothing with the words, or the other way around. I see that as simpler and more standardized. There's almost no difference between this template and that other than one word, so there's no need to have both; they should be merged somehow. Reywas92Talk 01:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Reywas. We should minimize the creation and use of similar templates if existing ones can accommodate the variations. I think {{Gold medal}} and alikes can be changed in that way, so we don't have to be reminded which templates to use in which ocasions. Parutakupiu (talk) 11:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It is also worth mentioning that as the result of a releted discussion {here), someone created new {{WR}} and {{OlyR}} templates that provide links to the approprate records pages. Examples:

-- Tcncv (talk) 01:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

That was me. I have started to roll them out on a few articles to replace Image:World record icon.svg, for example. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 03:56, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, and thank you. I should have given you proper credit. Nice job. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:11, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I've used the new medal templates in a couple of swimming articles. Hope thats ok. Basement12 (T.C) 04:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Closing ceremony flagbearers

Just found a ref for these, and am contemplating how it would be best to go about introducing them: should they be added in to the current article, where using rowspan & colspan would break the sortable aspect of the table, or rename the current article and create a new one for the closing ceremony. Anyone got any opinions on how best to go about this? AllynJ (talk | contribs) 05:12, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It might simply be better to create a seperate closing ceremony flagbearer article to keep the length down, particularly as there wasn't the same kind of ordered parade like in the opening ceremony. Basement12 (T.C) 17:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree. Adding the closing flagbearers to the same article would make it a little bit too disjointed. Nirvana888 (talk) 17:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Template for format guidelines

Would it be a good idea to develop a template, probably for use on the talk pages, linking to the format guidelines page? If we wanted to do this can i'd suggest doing it before the paralympics start, then the category:Nations at the 2008 Summer Paralympics articles could have it added, hopefully reducing the amount of clean up needed on those articles after the games. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to making templates so if someone else could have a go it could prove useful. Basement12 (T.C) 16:47, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I think we can simply add the link (after you move the page from the user namespace to the Wikipedia namespace) to the Template:OlympicsWikiProject banner, so that way it is automatically added to all existing talk pages. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:54, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I did wonder if that would be an option but didn't know if we'd want it on every single olympic article? When it gets moved it will need the name changing slightly, maybe "Format for Nation at the Year Summer Olympics articles". I did try to do this when i first created the page but for some reason it wouldn't let me. Basement12 (T.C) 17:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Eventually we need format guidelines for all article sets; we just happen to be starting on this type first. I think a link from the project banner is essential for the top-level guidelines page, assuming that's what we end up with. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Official site for Beijing 2008

The offical website now redirects to the summer paralympics site, a site that for some reason instantly makes my browser crash. If anybody else has this problem or just wishes to see the old summer games site its now at http://en.beijing2008.cn/en_index.shtml[8]. Basement12 (T.C) 19:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

That's bad. When I was creating initial stubs for the medalists, I was mostly using this site as the reference (given the amount of info, the reference was enough). Can someone with AWB repair those links that are now wrong? Thanks. --Tone 20:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd hope that once the paralympics are over, somewhere around the middle of september, the site will go back to its previous form (or at least be a joint olympic/paralympic site). It may be worth holding off changing the articles till then. Any idea roughly how many you've made Tone? - Basement12 (T.C) 20:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
At least 200? A good part of them has already been expanded but some are still in initial state. Anyway, probably the site will indeed move back after the Paraolympics so maybe it's not such a need for a change... --Tone 20:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Tie in the Men's 10000m?

The Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 10000 metres article and other sources (here and here) show identical third and fourth place times, yet only one bronze medal appears to have been awarded. Does anyone here know why? -- Tcncv (talk) 05:01, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

May be Photo finish -- WildCherry06 (talk) 06:48, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review Request of Olympic Games

I'm not sure if this is the right place to request this but here goes. I've been working on the Olympic Games article in an attempt to restore it to FA status. I think it's important to the Olympics Project that this article be Featured. It was demoted in early 2007 for these [[9]] reasons. I have tried to address the reasons as best as I can. I'm still working on the citations. Please shred the article and I will go back in and make the corrections. Thank you for your time and help. H1nkles (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Firstly thanks for your efforts on the page, i'd noticed (above) that it needed work but had been too busy with the 2008 articles since to do anything about it. I've not had time to read the whole article yet but here's a few things i've noticed so far....
  • "The IOC has become the heart of the "Olympic Movement,"" - unless a source actually calls it the heart the wording here probably needs changing
  • "Games attempts to add more events in order to" - i think it now aims to keep number roughly consistent with any new events replace old ones. Don't have a source for this to hand though
  • "less than 250, which is minuscule by modern standards,..." - this is a very point of view statement

I'll give you some more feedback when i get a sec. Basement12 (T.C) 22:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your insight, I genuinely appreciate it!
  • I've reworded the Olympic Movement line and added a source to show the IOC's place.
  • While I've kept the line about adding more sports, it's in the past tense to show why sports such as snowboarding and beach volleyball were added, I've also included a sentence about how the sports program has plateaued, which is consistent with the next paragraph from the most current Olympic Charter.
  • You're correct, very point of viewish - I've changed that.

Thank you for the time and suggestions! H1nkles (talk) 14:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Images

I've come across a good source for images of athletes, medals etc. User:Jmex60 has uploaded a lot of useful pictures (s)he took during the games to the commons (some are already being used). See his/her gallery here. If anyone else has found good sources it might be useful to post them here as well. Cheers Basement12 (T.C) 22:32, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

1968 Olympics Black Power salute

I just tagged this article for your project, 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. Was hoping to get a few more sets of eyes on it, as well as a few more voices on the talk page as needed. Anyone who can watchlist it, please do. Thanks.--IvoShandor (talk) 20:40, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, i've taken a look and tagged it as a high priority article since its one of the most famous and controversial events in Olympic history. I've done the same for Olympic Project for Human Rights. Basement12 (T.C) 21:30, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
I've also included the image and a paragraph about this event in the Olympic Games page. I'm 100% in agreement that this article should be prioritized and fast-tracked towards improvement. H1nkles (talk) 04:05, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Another Olympic link of interest

I know that some users have been using http://www.databaseolympics.com for referencing, but one of its limitations has been its limitation on just Olympic medalists only instead of all Olympic competitors. I have found another site that puts the results and listing of all Olympics athletes from the 1896 Summer Olympics to the 2006 Winter Olympics - http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/ . From waht I have seen of this site, it is a gold mine of information that I think we need to put in as references. Chris (talk) 22:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Do these count as reliable sources? Bluap (talk) 05:53, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Just read who build up the database...it's the best team on Earth. --necronudist (talk) 12:32, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed! Without any question, the International Society of Olympic Historians (also see http://www.isoh.org) are about as reliable as we can get! I had also been looking at the ne sports-reference Olympic section yesterday, and came to the same conclusion as Chris. The really helpful thing for us is that their database is organized with a similar heirarchy as ours. That means we have a great reference for all of our "Nation at the Olympics" pages (subpages of http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/countries/), for all of our "Nation at the year Olympics" pages (e.g. http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/countries/AFG/summer/2004/), for all of our "Sport at the year Olympics" pages (e.g. http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/2004/ATH/), and so on. I still assert that the official reports from each Games (downloadable from http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OfficialReports/) and the IOC medal database (at http://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/results/search_r_uk.asp) must be cited on all those pages, but the addition of an independent, reliable secondary source to supplement the primary sources is very welcome indeed. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:19, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Are horses awarded medals?

I've found some horse articles, such as Hickstead, that basically say that the horse was awarded an Olympic medal, which of course begs the question, are Horses officially awarded Olympic medals? If they are, do horses belong in the "Olympic competitors for [insert nation]" or "Olympic [insert medal] medalists for [insert nation]" categories? -- Scorpion0422 16:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think they are awarded actual medals, nor are they credited with being part of a medal winning pair, for example "Tina Cook" should be credited as the bronze medalist in the individual eventing not "Tina Cook and Miners Frolic" (much like the bike isn't credited in cycling). Perhaps a seperate category to cover all "equine olympians" should be created. Basement12 (T.C) 17:43, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
It is a horse/rider pair which qualifies for the Olympics Zara Phillips had to pull out after the horse she had qualified on was injured - a cyclist can chagne their bike at any time, so the two aren't really comparable. David Underdown (talk) 11:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Nominee

I'm not sure were to put this, so I'll post it here. Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metre butterfly has been nominated for GA status. ANy help would be appreciated. Thanks ! --Mr.crabby (Talk) 18:51, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added an {{Infobox Olympic event}} which we hope will eventually be rolled out to all olympic event articles. Basement12 (T.C) 19:11, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
See the talk page for my suggestions/review. H1nkles (talk) 21:22, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Categories for discussion

Yesterday, I proposed here a renaming of the Category: Summer Olympic events and Category:Winter Olympic events to Category: Summer Olympics events and Category:Winter Olympics events, as I think that, like with 2012 Summer Olympics bids, the name should state that these are "events of the Summer/Winter Olympics" and not "Olympic events of Summer/Winter", as it seems to me now. Am I wrong? Should I have provided a better renaming, such as "Events at the Winter/Summer Olympics", maybe? Parutakupiu (talk) 21:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

If renaming, I would go for Events at/of the Winter/Summer Olympics. That's more a grammatical question than anything else. Do we have any sources using those terms? That would be helpful... --Tone 21:50, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Do these really need to be split into two categories (Summer/Winter)? It's not like there is an excessive number of articles, and it helps the special cases of figure skating in 1908/1920 and ice hockey 1920 which were "Summer" events that predated the I Winter Olympic Games. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Football at the Summer Olympics - squads

Latouffedisco (talk · contribs) has just finished to add ALL the football squads. You can browse his HUGE work here: {{Football at the Summer Olympics - Men's team squads}}. I think he deserves all our congratulations and maybe something more. Congratulations Erwan! What's your next project? :-) --necronudist (talk) 19:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

His work is even more valuable considering the fact, that it is not a result of some fresh Olympic-mania but a long-time systematic work. Latouffedisco works long-time on several projects, so I think he will continue to please us. :) - Darwinek (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Sincere congratulations. Excellent work, and thank you for putting so much time and effort into it! Aridd (talk) 20:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't want to sound ungrateful, but why was a new format invented for most of these articles instead of the standard tables that use the {{nat fs player}} templates, as found on all the World Cup roster articles etc.? (See Football at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's team squads for one of the few Olympic articles that does use the standard templates.) It certainly looks odd to have such a variety of table formats, and the recent multi-coloured mess on Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's team squads is the most offensive (this is not Latouffedisco's work, I should note!) — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
It's been already discussed, but I can't find out when and where. The result was that without an "automatic thing" it's impossible to convert all manually. --necronudist (talk) 08:40, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Query

Xinhua states that Pal Szekeres is the only person ever to have won medals both at the Olympics and at the Paralympics. Xinhua has been known to make rather big mistakes in Olympic-related articles, so, before I add that to Szekeres' article, I thought I should ask here whether anyone knows of other athletes who have achieved that distinction. Aridd (talk) 20:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that's correct. this source from the BBC says the same thing. Basement12 (T.C) 20:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! H2G2 doesn't count as an acceptable source, I think, but I've found confirmation on the website of Radio Canada, and Szekeres also confirms it himself on the website of the IPC, which is about as official as it can get. Now if I can just find out what events he won all his medals in, I may suggest it for a DYK... Having it on the main page may attract a bit of attention to the Paralympics! Aridd (talk) 20:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

List of Nations Finishing at the Top of the Medals Tables at Summer Olympic Games

What are anybody's opinions on this article, which was created today. As a first thought it seems to be named against guidelines (too many capitalised words?). It was, briefly, merged with Olympic medal table but I undid that straight away as I thought it would cause too much controversy in an article that needs to be kept very neutral. It is properly referenced but does it need to exist at all? Similar tables have, I think, been removed from Summer Olympic Games in the past and there are very few places that could actually link to it. Basement12 (T.C) 12:09, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

There is also a similar article for the winter games. Basement12 (T.C) 13:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Lots of issues with this article. For one, why first 4 and not first 3 or first 10 or just the first or all? What is the definition of top? Also, there is no official listing, hence this list is in violation with WP:SYNTH. I suggest deleting both of them. --Tone 13:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
For the record I agree with you Tone. I suspect the counter arguement will be the suggestion of removing all medal tables and ranking from all articles. Basement12 (T.C) 14:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Medal tables are widely used for separate games, there are even two (unofficial) ways of ranking the countries. So this does not violate WP:SYNTH. But putting all those together on arbitrary basis does. --Tone 14:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I do not believe that this list is in violation of WP:SNYTH if it does not advance a new argument or position. We already have well-sourced medal tables for each of the games, so basically this list is just a table of cited facts. No synthesis involved. If the article was drawing some kind of previously unpublished conclusion from the rankings, then it would be a violation. As it stands, it's no more against WP:SYNTH than, to take a random example, List of state leaders in 1914. Orange Tuesday (talk) 16:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
After reading WP:SYNTH I was about to post the same thing. I don't see that it advances any argument or position, so can't see how it can be in violation. A less random example of an article not violation WP:SYNTH would be the All-time Olympic Games medal table article. Lukens (talk) 16:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Removing my argument, indeed, it's not the best example here. But the other arguments remain. --Tone 17:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the capitalisation issue with the title, I tried to rectify this by moving the article but was told I was not permitted to do so. I also agree with it being odd that the top 4 nations are shown, the table was copied from the last version of the Summer Olympic Games article that it existed in, where it included the top 4. I agree that top 3 would seem a more 'normal' number to show, and was going to raise this very question on the discussion page for the article. If it is felt that it is arbitrary to include anything other than all nations finishing with medals, then I'm happy to expand the article, so that it is basically a list of all Olympic medals tables, however, I feel that the benefits of the summarisation that it currently offers would then be lost. Perhaps the article could have a summary showing the top 3, and then a link to the full table. I'm open to any suggestions on how these articles could be improved, and what could be done to make them fit wikipedia guidelines, and so not be deleted. Lukens (talk) 14:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, do people think these two articles should be merged into one? Lukens (talk) 15:27, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of nations finishing at the top of the medals tables at the Summer Olympic Games‎. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes for events

This may or may not have been addressed before. I propose creating a uniform infobox for separate Olympic events where key details would be written, such as medal winners, venue, date and similar. I got this idea when seeing something similar at the Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's road race article. I think such a box would make all the articles more uniform and clearer to the reader since several different styles are used for different sports. Opinions? --Tone 10:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps somehow this could be integrated into the {{CyclingAt2008SummerOlympics}} template, among the others, because those are great templates and already show unification among the events. That's probably a good idea though, to have such a thing. Jared (t)  16:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
At WikiProject Cycling I'm sure we'd be up for this, as we could amend a few bits for the Olympics anyway (such as Gold/Silver/Bronze rather than Winner/Second/Third and Medal podium rather than Palmares). SeveroTC 16:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
We already have a style convention for medal winners, putting them in a "Medalists" section in a table with {{OlympicGoldMedalist}} et. al. right at the top of the page, before any results (e.g. Shooting at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 10 metre air pistol). This solution accomodates any atypical situation, such as when ties happen (two golds and one bronze, one gold and two silver, etc.), which might be awkward for a generic infobox. It also works well for events like rowing eights, where the names of all medalists are highlighted early in the article. We really are trying to make all sport results uniform in visual style, but the problem is when fans of cycling, field hockey, volleyball, etc. work on their "own" sport only without regard to the "common WikiProject Olympics" style, and we end up with infoboxes like you point out. What do you have in mind? What infobox contents could be common enough for all events? Maybe venue, # of particpants, dates of competition, and a medal summary (although that would repeat the "Medalists" section), but anything else? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:54, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking about something like this. I know the medal template exists already but it looks a bit awkward to me and usually the boxes are on the top right side. I think that the venue, # of particpants, dates of competition, and a medal summary are there in all events, medalists section can then be omitted from the main text. It is not hard to have exotic combinations of medals in the template, some sentences in the syntax would do it. And sure, for olympics articles, this template should be superior to the others since olympics are a special sport event. I would make a provisionary box but I am not much of a designer... Anyone interested in a challenge? :-) --Tone 21:34, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm a serious template geek (designed many flag templates, {{Infobox Country Olympics}}, etc.) so if you want to share some ideas with me here or on my talk page, I'd be happy to whip something up. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Let's try here then, so more people can share ideas. I was thinking about something that would apply to all Olympic sports since there are different styles for different sports and the only thing that is in common, is the box with medals (and even here there are proposals to change the format). Since I am not very good at template design, could you make some generic form with the info mentioned above in this paragpaph, so that we have something to begin with? Thanks. --Tone 18:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Please take a look at {{Infobox Olympic event}} and let me know what you think. There is still a problem when it is used on the same page as our right-floating navigation boxes, and I will look into that. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I quite like it. I would like to see two more columns after the NOC code: time (or distance or points, as appropriate), and (as applicable) whether the result was at the time an OR or WR. Prince of Canada t | c 15:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I fixed that problem, so check out Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metre individual medley. We will have to update all the per-Games sport navboxes (like {{SwimmingAt2008SummerOlympics}}) to use them and the event infobox on the same pages. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Great, that's what I had in mind :-) The picture option is a nice idea as well. Since this will probably be the top infobox on the page, I would make the games parameter an obligatory one (to appear in the box, the present sample does not show it - or is that what you intended?). Also, the discipline I would prefer inside the frame. I wonder whether an Olympic logo would fit on the top as well (fair use since January). How would you put competitors for team sports, just the number of nations? Any other ideas? I am trying to imagine situations where this design would fail but I can't think of any at the moment, some applying will probably show if there are other issues. Maybe the results? IMO, that is not a good idea since this is totaly different for different sports and would be confusing. --Tone 20:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Why not a third column in the medalists section, after the flags, where the results would be shown, just for comparison? Would an additional note for Olympic or world record be already too much? So far, it looks great, Andrwsc. Parutakupiu (talk) 20:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess I thought that the discipline and Games parameters weren't needed for display as they are redundant with the article title, and with the navbox. As for the Olympic logo, we can't use it if it is "fair use" (careful about the terminology there). I have been following discussions on Commons about the status of the rings image, and don't want to go hog-wild with using the image if its going to be reverted. I had posted something to Wikipedia:Media copyright questions about it a while ago and did not get a clear answer. As for team sports, I don't think the infobox ought to list all the medalists (rosters) of the three teams, that would be too much clutter. Similar infoboxes for the football World Cup, for example, just list the team names in the infobox and the rosters in the article. As for results and records, I guess I have always preferred to keep the top-level summary simple (hence just the names only when using {{OlympicGoldMedalist}} etc., but I could try and work in some extra fields if it was really felt to be necessary. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:32, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Lapsus, the logo should be PD-old but let's wait what they say at Commons. I didn't really mean to list all the roosters for team sports, I just wandered what happens in cases where there are more teams from the same country (rowing maybe). So eventually up to 8 people should be put in for each medal since the country would be insufficient. But this is a rare case, I think. The problem I see with the results is that some competitions don't have time/distance/points results, like how would you write results for judo with it complex system? But on the other hand, for sports like swimming, this is possible and can also mention World records at the same time (many of those recently :-)) --Tone 20:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Any new ideas? If we decide to start using these templates, it would be reasonable to start now when the Olympics are still ongoing so that more people see them in the articles. Are there any things that need to be fixed before? I would appreciate some feedback. Thanks. --Tone 22:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've made some tweaks, the most notable is to add the Games to the event header. I also think that these can be used on the per-sport summary pages, so check out Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice, it is certainly relevant to have the box there as well. Still, I would prefer having the name of the event inside the frame so that it is immediately clear that it belongs to the box. If everyone is fine with it, we can start applying the box to the articles? --Tone 08:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
The title is now inside the infobox. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 08:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I like {{Infobox Olympic event}}, but a suggestion would be to use {{flagIOCmedalist}} for the names of the medalists. I could easily incorporate that into the infobox if you want. Reywas92Talk 20:43, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I intentionally chose not to use flagIOCmedalist for this infobox for two reasons:
  1. I thought that having the flag icons next to the medal icons didn't look as good as having the names adjacent to the medal icons, and then the flag icons next to the country codes.
  2. I thought that the wikilinked country code looked better at the same font size within the infobox, and flagIOCmedalist reduces it to 90%.
Your mileage may vary, but I believe the aesthetics are better as shown. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I have now implemented the infobox in some articles, such as Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 110 metre hurdles, Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres, Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metres..., for those we already have pictures. I think this looks pretty good. However, suddenly the section medalists becomes redundant. So shall we remove it? --Tone 17:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I am adding more infoboxes. So here is the first technical question: at Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 4 x 100 metre freestyle relay, whom to list in the box? Obviously, only 4 swimmers took place in the finals but the medals were awarded to more people, some participated in heats only. So shall we just list the countries? I'll do this for now. --Tone 21:26, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Came across the same thing at Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's team pursuit. There I put all the competitors in (max of 5 per country). That looked ok, but i imagine some of the swimming events may have used 6-7+. I think puting the country only is sufficient, like we would for a team sport. Basement12 (T.C) 21:48, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I've tested this at Rowing at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's eight. It might be a bit too much names, what do you think? Also, a question arises: 8 teams were competing, each 8+1 people. Is that 72 competitors or 8 competitors, if we count them as teams? By the way, the rowing box should be made a floating object. --Tone 22:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I think it looks fine, the flags are still clearly visible on the right of all the names. If we're going to be consistent it's 72 competitors, we don't count teams as a single athlete in the numbers on nations articles. Basement12 (T.C) 22:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I fixed the rowing navbox. I also changed the infobox to not wrap competitor names across lines. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree. By the way, do we have a consensus to remove medal tables when there's a box in the article? Ideally, when we have boxes in all events, the medal box will be redundant. Any any idea what to do when there are other top boxes, such as there is one in Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's road race? Keep the old one, change for the new one? The present one includes the length of the race that we don't have in the new box. And speaking of that article, I have removed it to a en dash, as we agreed. Since the games are over, maybe it's time to reanme them all. --Tone 22:38, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
I'd think it was best to leave the other infobox in as well, it does have some different info and will ensure we don't offend those at WP:CYC who've done alot of work getting the road cycling articles up to a good standard. The renaming does need to happen and (as long as the old pages are left as redirects) it probably doesn't matter if they're done a few at a time. Basement12 (T.C) 22:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Talk:Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's road race#Infobox about this. I don't think the issue is one of competing or offending WikiProjects; I think it is an issue of consistency. That infobox is specific for road race events, so it would not even apply to any of the other cycling events. Why should these two (men/women) events stand out as different from the other 300 Olympic events? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:46, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I'll take a look there but in response here i'd say that its probably a matter of consistency between all other cycling road race articles as well. See 2008 Tour de France as a quick example. Basement12 (T.C) 16:10, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I like the look of the different flag display at Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's team pursuit, looks better than it did before. The <br> between flag/nation and athletes is necessary (even in individual sports) I think. Basement12 (T.C) 18:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
    I'm actually in the middle of some re-work on the template at the moment, to try and fit full nation names in. Before I continue, perhaps we should gauge some consensus. Which of the following is preferred:
Current style
Gold medal  Walton Eller  United States
Silver medal  Francesco D'Aniello  Italy
Bronze medal  Walton Eller  China
Use full names for countries
Gold medal  Walton Eller  United States
Silver medal  Francesco D'Aniello  Italy
Bronze medal  Walton Eller  China
Put countries onto separate lines, like we do for team events
Gold medal  Walton Eller
 United States
Silver medal  Francesco D'Aniello
 Italy
Bronze medal  Walton Eller
 China
Or put country name first (like team events)
Gold medal   United States
Walton Eller
Silver medal   Italy
Francesco D'Aniello
Bronze medal   China
Walton Eller
For comparison, here is how a team event looks
Gold medal   Great Britain
Ed Clancy, Paul Manning, Geraint Thomas, Bradley Wiggins
Silver medal   Denmark
Casper Jørgensen, Jens-Erik Madsen, Michael Mørkøv, Alex Nicki Rasmussen, Michael Færk Christensen
Bronze medal   New Zealand
Sam Bewley, Hayden Roulston, Marc Ryan, Jesse Sergent, Westley Gough
I think that we should use the second style for individual events (and pairs), but the last style for team events (>= 3 people). If we agree, then I'll add an infobox parameter to choose between individual or team layout styles. But if we agree on the last two styles, then no extra parameter is needed. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:51, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you other than the fact I think we use the last option for anything more one athlete, otherwise its a bit of a blurred line between individual or team events. One small question; what happens with option 2 in the event of an exceptionally long name, where the name, flag and nation doesn't fit on a single line (or does the box simply widen automatically)? Basement12 (T.C) 19:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The worst case is probably Weightlifting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 53 kg. I think infoboxes are supposed to be a standard width, so I think we would use the second style (by using {{flagIOC}} directly as an infobox parameter and leaving the goldNOC parameter blank) to fix those situations. As for pairs, take a look at Volleyball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's beach volleyball. That's not so bad (I need to fix the valign on the flag and NOC). — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Right now, I've changed it to use the full country names (second style). Some articles that break are Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 200 metres (Veronica Campbell-Brown is too long)and Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres (Trinidad and Tobago is too long). Most of the others look better. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
My worry with the pairs wasn't that it'd look bad (it looks fine) but that it may cause some confusion when to use team/individual styles. I assume eventually these boxes would be used throughout all event pages from previous games, so I guess we'll just have to sort out long name problems on a case by case basis as they arise. Basement12 (T.C) 19:55, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
We're going to have to have some sort of "style guide" for this anyway, so hopefully any confusion will be addressed there. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I was wondering: since it's called {{Infobox Olympic event}}, should it only be used for event articles? Or could it also be used in the parental sport pages? I ask this mostly because of what is seen in Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics. I think it should not, because the little information that the infobox gives in this situation can perfectly be covered in the lead text. Parutakupiu (talk) 01:23, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Hi, first I want to thank you for taking my idea of showing the whole nation name instead of the IOC-abbreviation into consideration! As for my next concern will be on how to change the other team sports, like Football, Handball, Volleyball, and Basketball! I know that the Template:Infobox International Football Competition has a widely known layout, and contains alot more tournament statistics than other Olympic sports! Maybe you could borrow some codes from that template and insert it as optional content on the Olympic one?

The extra statistics would be
  • Teams (from xxx confederations) (Can maybe modify the Comptitors option)
  • Venue(s) (in xxx host cities) (Can maybe modify the current Venue option)
  • Matches played
  • Goals scored (xxx per match)
  • Attendance (xxx per match) (Can be used in many other sports aswell, maybe?)
  • Top scorer(s)
  • Best player (if this gets awarded)

And how to solve the gender question? Show both men & women in the same infobox (as now) or make separate infoboxes? ...why even keep a main page, all it does is to copy the other pages... Thougths anyone? lil2mas (talk) 21:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been thinking today about how best to handle team sports. There is much inconsistency between:
  • {{Infobox Baseball at the Olympics}}/{{Infobox Softball at the Olympics}}
    • also shows the flags of all non teams in the tournament (I don't like this)
    • provides a navigation link to the same event at the previous/next Games (I do like this, and it would be useful for all the individual events too. Nice to navigate across all the Olympic marathons over the years, for example.)
  • {{Infobox Basketball Olympic tourney}}
    • shows both men's and women's tournament summary in distinct sections, which I like
    • uses blue colour for the men's header and pink for the women's, which I find excessively "cute", if not offensive
  • {{Infobox International Football Competition}}/{{Infobox International Handball Competition}}
    • (not an Olympic-specific template)
    • forced to intertwine the men's and women's finishers (i.e. M gold/W gold/M silver/W silver/M bronze/W bronze)
    • also shows fourth place finisher—do we want this?
    • Has an extra set of tournament statistics at the end. Not sure how useful attendance is, for example, for other Olympic sports.
  • {{Infobox Volleyball Olympic tourney}} and {{Infobox Beach Volleyball Olympic tourney}}
    • both are shown on the main page, duplicating the whole "city=Beijing" thing. I'm not sure that a beach volleyball tournament infobox is really needed; we don't have them for other tournament bracket sports that don't involved large national teams, such as tennis doubles, for example.
    • also uses the obnoxious boys=blue, girls=pink colour scheme
Currently, we don't have anything for field hockey or water polo.
Some generic questions:
  1. Do we really need to have a line for the host country (complete with the flag of China) in each of these?
  2. How important are the tournament statistics for avg. goals scored, attendance, etc.
So, here is a wikitable mock-up of what I'd like to do to unify all of these into a single style:
Football
at the Games of the XXIX Olympiad

The fair-use Image:Football 2008.gif would be here
Venue(s) 6 (in 5 host cities)
Men's tournament
Dates August 7–23
Teams 16 (rosters)
Goals scored 75 (2.34 per match)
Top scorer(s)  Giuseppe Rossi (ITA)
Attendance 1,404,254 (43,883 per match)
Medalists Gold medal   Argentina
Silver medal   Nigeria
Bronze medal   Brazil
Women's tournament
Dates August 6–21
Teams 12 (rosters)
Goals scored 64 (2.46 per match)
Top scorer(s)  Cristiane (BRA)
Attendance 740,014 (28,462 per match)
Medalists Gold medal   United States
Silver medal   Brazil
Bronze medal   Germany
«2004 2012»
Football
at the Games of the XXIX Olympiad

The fair-use Image:Football 2008.gif would be here
Venues Beijing National Stadium
Workers' Stadium (Beijing)
Qinhuangdao
Shanghai
Shenyang
Tianjin
Men's tournament
Dates August 7–23
Teams 16 (rosters)
Matches played 32
Medalists Gold medal   Argentina
Silver medal   Nigeria
Bronze medal   Brazil
Women's tournament
Dates August 6–21
Teams 12 (rosters)
Matches played 26
Medalists Gold medal   United States
Silver medal   Brazil
Bronze medal   Germany
«2004 2012»
Comments welcome! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
You do keep coming up trumps don't you? Looks good to me, the host country flags and fourth places aren't necessary. Any top scorer etc isn't needed in the infobox (we don't put any stats like that in for individual events). Beach volleyball should just use the same box as any other event where a pair is involved. I assume the current boxes were implemented by various other WikiProjects (football at least) will changing them cause issues like with the cycling articles? The links to previous games events are good and they would be good on {{Infobox Olympic event}} as well. Basement12 (T.C) 23:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The 3 most important statistic records are # of goals scored, attendance & the top goalscorer. These are vital elements of a tournament, a quick look and one can see if it was a entertaining tournament (a lot of goals), a crowd-gathering tournament (attendance) & which player(s) were the best at that time (top scorer)... I made a proposal to the right of your option, one can easily see that there were more goals scored (per match) in the women's tournament, but more people came to see the men's tournament! I will gladly sacrifice a listing of all the venues for a more useful infobox! They are already listed in the article aswell... I could put the statistics below the medalists, but I think it is better to have the most important info at the bottom (medalists), like all the other Olympic articles! You can look at these statistics, like the winning time of other articles! lil2mas (talk) 23:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
My plan would actually be to add more options to {{Infobox Olympic event}} instead of creating something new, which would help maintain consistency. As for the current infoboxes, {{Infobox Baseball at the Olympics}}, {{Infobox Softball at the Olympics}}, {{Infobox Basketball Olympic tourney}}, {{Infobox Volleyball Olympic tourney}} and {{Infobox Beach Volleyball Olympic tourney}} all seem to have been created in good-faith outside of any discussion on this WikiProject, but certainly fall under this project's consensus decision. The other two ({{Infobox International Football Competition}} and {{Infobox International Handball Competition}}) would still be used on other articles, of course. The only potential objection I envision is possibly from the WP:FOOTY crowd, who like those stats like average goals per game, attendance, etc. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
I still don't understand why attendance is important, but whatever. It can certainly be an optional parameter, as can top scorer (also useful for field hockey) etc. I think these infoboxes would be used on three different pages, actually: on the top-level per-sport page (Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics), and the per-"event" pages (Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's tournament), and maybe we'd want two different levels of statistics. For example, if you only listed half the details (men or women as appropriate), you'd have more room for additional items. This kind of multi-purposing is what I'd like to see for the individual sports also. On Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics, there is no list of medalists, but there are (or should be) totals numbers of participants etc. for all events. On the athletics sub-pages, the number of competitors field refers to that event only. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

The one thing that sticks out to me is "Games of the XXIX Olympiad." Though official, that name is not at all common in usage. It is FAR more common to say "The 2008 Summer Olympics," evidenced by no less than WP naming conventions. I certainly like the box for the cycling article. Don't fall asleep zzzzzz 07:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

We commonly show the more official names in infoboxes, though, such as the long forms of country names ("French Republic" in France, "Islamic Republic of Iran" in Iran etc), so I don't think that's a problem. -- Jao (talk) 12:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
That was my thinking when I wrote it. The infobox on the 2008 Summer Olympics article is titled "Games of the XXIX Olympiad", and of course, the article names for all the event pages will have "2008 Summer Olympics" in the title, which is rendered in a very large bold font on the top left corner, so I don't think there will be confusion. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:33, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Great progress with the additional parameters! Games of the XXIX Olympiad is probably fine since there is a link to the specific games in the intro of each article, also, the year is in the title, pretty obvious. The top scorer will probably be relevant only in football or maybe in hockey, attendance... if this can be provided?, ... I see no harm in additional parameters that make the box include similar data as the existing ones but we should try and implement them to all events to see if we are missing anything. Also, in the present state, we can put complete rosters of the teams with medals in. Regarding the records, if one is set in other race than in finals, it can be put as Winning time: 1:00:00 (0:59:00 WR set in semifinal). What do you think? Are we putting too much data in the boxes? --Tone 21:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I like what I see with the new event info boxes. However, rather than having each page specify a complete prev and next link, would it be better to automatically generate them? This assumes that the previous and next pages follow recognizable naming conventions. I'd suggest adding a category parameter. Together with the games and event parameter, standard default previous and next links could be generated. The prev and next parameters could still be supported as overrides or a special value such as "none" to indicate that the links should be suppressed altogether. Prev links for 1892 would be suppressed automatically by default. -- Tcncv (talk) 01:56, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

  • In case anyone has trouble with multiple info boxes stacking horizontally instead of vertically, the problem might be solved by an edit to second info box similar to this change that I made to to {{GymnasticsAt2008SummerOlympics}}. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:58, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Two more questions. What is now the decision on future/previous event, will it be added automatically or should it be done manually (I support automatic with an override option)? And shall we change the footbal infobox with one of the two presented up here? - the same goes for other team events. --Tone 13:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Even more... could the image aprameter be changed so that we don't need to write the full syntax, just the name, and the iamge size is automatically 240px? And, could someone with the AWB or a bot correct all the SportAt????SummerOlympics boxes since it is a looooong work to fix them all manually. --Tone 16:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Later this week I shall have lots of free time to return back to this mini-project. I can certainly fix all the navboxes to use the infobox class (using AWB), and they need some category work too. I will see what I can do about the image syntax and the next/prev events. For the latter, I'm not sure that it will be worth the effort. There are relatively few events that have a consistent sequence across multiple Games, or that have an event= string (for the infobox title) that is usable for the wikilink. I'd estimate that you'd have to use the override about ¾ of the time. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Guideline for "Sport at the year Summer Olympics"

Hello all. With the guidelines manual for the "Nation at the year Summer Olympics" article series pretty much finished, I've began buidling up a similar manual for the "Sport at the year Summer Olympics" series, some days ago. I've done it all in a userpage of mine (linked from the title), before it is moved to the project namespace, and as you can see, there are still things to finish, and even things to start. I invite you to edit away, where you think it could be improved or where some item is missing. Much of what I wrote will also probably be further discussed, as it might not have been the result of a consensus. For that purpose, we can use the talkpage for future discussions. Cheers! Parutakupiu (talk) 23:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I just started removing the medal tables from the articles that already contain the new event infobox since the medals would otherwise be mentioned 3 times and this is rather a lot. Maybe keeping these tables only for rosters, when the medal in the box is assigned to the country. --Tone 10:02, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure you understood (or was I who didn't understood you?). This guideline if for the main-level "Sport at the year Summer Olympics" pages, not the subsidiary event pages, which only shows the medalists for that event. In these pages, the medalists from all events, not just one, are shown together in a single table.
Ah, ok, it seems I didn't read that in details :-) Then it is fine. --Tone 11:28, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
"If the team is composed of up to eight members, their names should be listed below the template-rendered nation's name." Why only up to eight? They are all medalists, so we can list them all on the main page? Doma-w (talk) 14:30, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
We can, i've changed it to explain the use of the {{CompactTable}} template to list all names.Basement12 (T.C) 14:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, forgot that template. Thanks, Basement12. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you! I think this looks better. Doma-w (talk) 15:40, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
One issue is the wrapping of names inside the compact table inside the {{MedalistTable}}-formated table. We can either increase the column header width (possible with one single parameter in this template) or maybe only show the player's last name (piped link). Parutakupiu (talk) 16:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

What about results in the medalist table (using 2 columns)? The examples given are from the 2008 athletics article, which has them, but that's pretty uncommon. For 2008, we have results in the main athletics and swimming articles but not in the ones for canoeing, cycling, diving, equestrian, gymnastics, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, synchronized swimming, triathlon or weightlifting. I've previously been under the impression that consensus was to keep results out of these tables, but consensus may have changed. If so, we should at the very least add results to those of the sports which keep Olympic records (track cycling, shooting and weightlifting; archery also keeps ORs but is an elimination tournament so that spells trouble). -- Jao (talk) 15:04, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think results in the table of medallists are necessary, the links to the pages to the individual events ("details") take the reader to the results. Basement12 (T.C) 15:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I think it is better to keep the results out. Our target is to have a result page for every Olympic competition, so we do not need the results on the main page? Doma-w (talk) 15:40, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't see why we should discard the results, they are good info and don't occupy much space (I should've even expanded this for other sports, not only athletics and swimming). It was Andrwsc who added that multi-column option to the header template, precisely to allow results to be shown. But if the consensus is to ommit, then I'm not against it either. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
My preference is to leave results off the top-level summary page, but if there is consensus to have them there, I strongly believe they should only be kept for events where the results can be compared cross-Games—i.e. the small set of sports for which Olympic records are maintained: archery, athletics, cycling (some events), shooting, short track speed skating, speed skating, swimming, and weightlifting. For judged events, or events held on variable courses, times/scores/etc. are not as meaningful, and I don't think they're needed on the top-level pages. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, if you don't think it's necessary, who am I to argue against? :) Results off, then. Parutakupiu (talk) 17:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I guess my biggest reason against them is the horizontal space required for the extra columns. Lately I see too many pages that seem to be designed for widescreen displays, and not all of our readers use them yet. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

What about the order of the team members? Do we show them alphabetically in every case? E.g. relay teams? Do we also show them in alphabetically order or in the order them ran/swum? Also in this case I would prefer alphabetically order, but on the result page we can show them in the order they competed? Doma-w (talk) 15:40, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying to remove the Medal Summary section from e.g. Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics? Please don't. Yes, it's large and already in the individual event articles, but they're individual. I don't want to go to every single event article when I could just see a summary on the main article. If it does take up too much space, which I disagree with, there must be a section link to list of 2008 Summer Olympics medal winners#Swimming so I don't have to page through 15 event articles. And even then, I do want to see the time next to the name, which that list doesn't have. Reywas92Talk 22:47, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think anyone suggested that. Tone was talking about the medal table on the individual event articles, rather than sport articles such as Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The suggestion made by Jao was to have only the medalists names (instead of, for example, times as well) in the medal summary. I would prefer not to have the times listed in the medal summary, for the reasons Andrwsc mentions above. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 22:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
So only remove the medal table section from event articles which already have an infobox with the medals in it? That makes more sense, though I think times should be kept, but they don't have to be in a separate column. Thanks for the clarification. Reywas92Talk 23:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

?

I still have my problems with the Category:Olympic competitors from Ireland who represented other countries. E.g. John Daly: In 1904 he competed for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. So why he represented an other country?? He represented his home country, or not? Doma-w (talk) 14:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Sports diplomacy

The ever-present effects on sports and politics didn't have an article. I've just created Sports diplomacy which others may find a good read and to add more to. Lihaas (talk) 18:15, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Wushu?

A section on a wushu tournament has been aded to Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics and also mentioned on 2012 Summer Olympics. Not sure if its real/official in anyway but, if it is, then other than the fact it needed special permission to take place does this have anything whatsoever to do with the 2008 Summer Olympics? Its not part of the actual games (not even a demonstration sport) in any case so I don't think it belongs. Does anyone know anything about it and has it appeared on other 2008 pages? Basement12 (talk) 16:54, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I removed it from GB@2008 page. It has nothing to do with it. --Tone 16:59, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
It should be removed from all Olympic pages. Check out this link. It is clear that BOCOG is helping organize the event, with the IOC's approval, but they also state: Wang emphasized that the Wushu competition is a special tournament and is not related to the Olympic Games. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:11, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
In the case of the 2012 page, it was cited as being a possible precedent for having a 20Twenty cricket tournament in London at the same time as the Olympics, which seemed reasonable to me. David Underdown (talk) 09:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Certain individuals have stated that because this is neither an official or demonstration event that it "has nothing to do with the Olympics". Given that the tournament is being organised by the BOCOG and is being held in an Olympic Arena, it clearly has something to do with the Olympics and I think it at least deserves to be mentioned; what was added to the Team GB page gave a clear explanation that no medals would be added to the official tally. Hammersfan 21/08/08, 10.51 BST
It should not be mentioned on the Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics article. These competitors are not part of Team GB, do not stay in the athlete's village, do not march in the opening or closing ceremony, etc. It would be misleading to make any connection between these competitors and the hundreds of people already mentioned in the article. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 09:57, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
But the title of the article is "Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics", not "Team GB at the 2008 Summer Olympics". Hammersfan 21/08/08, 11.34 BST
And yet, the infobox surely implies that the article is about the results of the 312 competitors in 20 sports, managed by the British Olympic Association, and not also about any other British athletes who happened to compete at some other event in Beijing this week. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 10:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Not an olympic sport so shouldn't be included IMO. Dpmuk (talk) 22:30, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I believe that the following would not be WP:undue weight:

  1. A short paragraph in the main 2008 Summer Olympics article about how BOCOG tried to make it an official demonstration sport, but were declined by the IOC, and this is the compromise. A link to the article, but no details about results (number of nations, events, competitors, etc.)
  2. No mention from any of the Category:Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles. It is out of the scope of those articles.

— Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok agreed. I removed it from 2008 Summer Olympics as I didn't feel the explaination of what it was explained clearly enough that it wasn't directly related and did give it undue weight. It should though be put in a paragraph somehwere other than directly beneath the list of olympic sports where it seems too directly tied to the games. Probably above the list where changes to the events are discussed, with emphasis on the fact it was declined as a demonstration event and this was the compromise. Basement12 (T.C) 16:38, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

One further clarification -- the Wushu athletes did stay in the Olympic Village during part of the Olympic Games. I can tell you that this was somewhat upsetting to the NOCs, although I have not found any official statements condemning BOCOG for the rule-breaking.Petermgiles (talk) 02:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

AFDed - ARTICLE DELETION REQUEST - 2028 Summer Olympics

May I suggest this page for deletion as it is a bit pathetic having a wikipedia article for an event that is 20 years in the future . I have known articles only a few months away that have been deleted but this takes the piss really, I mean no news on the games will be known until 2021 at the least. I suggest it be deleted and protected to at least 2019, what does anyone else think. (BlackpoolKickboxer2008 (talk) 00:13, 13 September 2008 (UTC))

Thx for your comments. I have to disagree, though. There are several sources supporting the entries. It's true these bids *may* fall through, but the reports are from reliable sources. Just because you've seen other pages been deleted before doesn't mean this one should be. Part of the reason it has been kept before it that barring world war and annhilation, the Olympics are almost certain to occur. Oppose-Cbradshaw (talk) 01:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Cbradshaw here. The sources are there, cities are clearly already thinking about structuring a bid (the Dutch bid was first propsed in 2005), by 2019 any potential bids will need to have been finalised. Its not an issue as far as WP:CRYSTAL is concerned as the event is almost certain to occur and the article contains more than speculation. Basement12 (T.C) 01:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Format for Nations at the Summer Olympics Articles - moving to project space

WikiProject Olympics
Main pages
Project main page talk
Olympics Portal talk
Departments
Assessment talk
Docs & guidelines
Summer Olympics articles talk
Winter Olympics articles talk
Summer Youth Olympics articles talk
Winter Youth Olympics articles talk
Summer templates talk
Winter templates talk
Youth templates talk
Project tools
Article Banner talk
Member Userbox talk
Announcements talk

I did add this above but thought moving to the bottom of the page would get it more attention....

I think we're close to completing the guidelines so its probably time to start thinking about moving them to the project pages. Any suggestions for the exact title it should be moved to? Once moved and complete I think the page should probably be protected in some way as well. Thoughts/suggestions on this or other things that need to be included? Basement12 (T.C) 16:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The Military History project has it's equivalent guidelines at WP:MILMOS i.e Military Manual of Style - I can't remember what the "real" page title is, follow the shortcut to find out. David Underdown (talk) 08:18, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Splendid work. It seems that all the aspect we discussed are covered. --Tone 19:25, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Suggest: Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics/Manual of Style (Games summary – Nations) (i.e. similar naming format as WP:MOS subpages). We should also then perhaps have Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics/Manual of Style (Games summary – Sports) Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics/Manual of Style (Games summary – Events) guides. Would be great to get the nations style guide moved pretty swiftly so there is something to refer newbies to during editing of the Paralympics Nations articles... Yboy83 (talk) 22:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
My plan was to have it moved before the start of the Paralympics. Your suggestion for places to move to sounds good, they don't bias towards Olympics rather than paralympics. It also needs to be added to the main project template, that way there will be a link to the guide on all related talk pages. I hope Andrwsc, as the resident template guru, would be able to incorporate it some how. Basement12 (T.C) 22:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
I like those suggestions of names, Yboy83. I don't know what others think but we could adopt them immediately. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
You might already be aware of them, but there are a number of articles (some apparently idle) related to this project listed here. There's also a navigation template {{WPOLYMPICS}} that I've included on the right. It might be worth finding a good place among these pages to place the new style guides and adding the new pages to the navigation box. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Well done Basement! Nirvana888 (talk) 02:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Moves

Hi! I think we need an admin to move back all the 2008 Judo articles? They all have an incorrect dash? Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 23:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I think they are infact correct, it is all the other articles that need moving. See the above discussion. - Basement12 (T.C) 23:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
:) Happy moving... to a dash that can not be typed easily... Thanks for your answer. Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 08:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
The en dash is available in the box below the edit window. So it's not so hard to get. Well, MOS has the final word here. The moves will be done by a bot, some time soon, probably. --Tone 11:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I know where to find an en dash when I am editing an article, but when I am searching for an article I have no box for an en dash? An en dash is not available for normal users. But no disussion - we have to follow MOS... Doma-w (talk) 19:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
A part of the move process, redirects will be created from the hyphen names to the dash names, so searches will still be able to find the hyphen names.
On a side note, I believe the prior discussion stated a preference for a spaced n-dash rather than an unspaced m-dash. If we stick to this decision, the Judo articles will need to be moved again. Both the hyphen and m-dash names would redirect to the spaced n-dash name. -- Tcncv (talk) 19:43, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Any chance of including moves such as "400 metre relay" to "400 metres relay" in this? The IAAF lists the events as such and I'd have to agree with them. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 03:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Olympics

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Bid images

I'd like to get a third opinion as to whether it desirable to include bid images in the bid section of the main Olympic pages, such as those shown in the 2004 Summer Olympics article. I think it adds page bloat and is unnecessary since the images are already contained in the 2004 Summer Olympics bids article. I removed them once, but they were added back in. Opinions? Thanks. -- Tcncv (talk) 23:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've seen these added to a lot of the " Year" Olympics pages lately and a couple of users have been removing them. I'd tend to agree that they do bloat the page unnecessarily (including them is of little value) and there is also the issue of them being non-free images so I think you're right to remove them. Basement12 (T.C) 00:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree; they are copyrighted images and keeping them on the bid pages only is best. --Jh12 (talk) 02:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I just got your message. The reason I'm doing this is because I notice that on some pages (i.e, 2008 Summer Olympic bids) there have been pictures that have been deleted. I hope you understand. 24.1.4.241 (talk) 00:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC) (Moved from User talk:Tcncv#Bid_Image_Response)

I don't follow your logic. Currently, the images are present on both the 2004 Summer Olympics bids and 2008 Summer Olympics bids articles. Besides, if they were absent, adding the images to the main Olympics page is not the solution. There may be copyright issues as Basement12 noted above. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:27, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the images. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:24, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Good article nominee

I have nominated Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics as a good article. I believe it is one of the first "Nation" at "Year" style articles to give complete results and follow our new guidelines so it would be nice to see it recognised. It will probably take a while to get reviewed, give the backlog there, but i'll keep you updated on the progress made. It is also my and Yboy83's hope to get Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Paralympics to a similar standard. So if anyone can help out it'd be appreciated, cheers Basement12 (T.C) 23:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Paralympic Games

Do articles relating to the Paralympic Games fall within the scope of this WikiProject? I'm not sure if I should add {{OlympicsWikiProject}} to articles about the Paralympics that I've created. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 08:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it greatly depends upon what type of articles you mean? Major articles like the main Paralympic Games article and those for each ""Year" Paralympics" are. Basement12 (T.C) 01:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I've written two articles about Paralympic athletes, "Theresa Goh" and "Laurentia Tan". I was wondering if the {{OlympicsWikiProject}} banner should be applied to them, as it is applied to Olympic athletes. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 02:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, well firstly i'd say that infact very few Olympic athletes get tagged, though this may just be because editors are unaware of the project. Personally i'd say go for it, though I don't know if there has been any previous project discussion on the matter, it doesn't do any harm and gives people somewhere they can come for assistance with the article. Just make sure you you mark them as being of low importance, {{OlympicsWikiProject|class=|importance=Low}}. Cheers Basement12 (T.C) 03:07, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Looking at those two pages, which I see are GA nominees, i'd suggest that the tables contained in the "Medals" sections are too bulky and too colourful. I'd suggest replacing them with tables similar to those used in the "Nation" at the 2008 Olympics/Paralympics articles, with date and competition colums replacing those for athlete name e.g adapted from from Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Paralympics
Date Competition Event Test round Final round Total
Score Rank Score Rank Score Rank
Ind. champ. test - Grade Ib N/A 64.953 5
Ind. freestyle test - Grade Ib N/A 70.444
Ind. champ. test - Grade Ia N/A 72.800
Ind. freestyle test - Grade Ia N/A 76.166
Ind. champ. test - Grade II N/A 65.546 8
Ind. freestyle test - Grade II N/A 71.056
Ind. champ. test - Grade III N/A 68.160 5
Ind. freestyle test - Grade III N/A 73.110 4
Ind. champ. test - Grade Ia N/A 73.100
Ind. freestyle test - Grade Ia N/A 73.333
Ind. champ. test - Grade III N/A 62.88 8
Ind. freestyle test - Grade III N/A 73.499
Ind. champ. test - Grade Ib N/A 73.238
Ind. freestyle test - Grade Ib N/A 77.057
Overall team - Championship 220.470
69.538
72.000
73.294
75.176 		1 219.138
62.880
72.800
73.238
73.100 		1 439.608

There are similar tables for swimming in these types of article as well. This is just my opinion but i'd think something similar would be suggested in a GA review. Basement12 (T.C) 03:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. About the medal tables – aargh. Converting the whole table will take a lot of effort. I think I'll wait and see what the GA reviewers say. So far I've not had problems with the medal table currently used in the articles. By the way, you removed the image placeholders from the articles. I note from "Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders" that while the use of image placeholders appears to be deprecated while a new system for soliciting images for articles is developed, there is no consensus on removing current placeholders from articles. Just thought I'd point that out. — Cheers, JackLee –talk– 04:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Unified or united

Hello. There is a discrepancy in the naming I would like to solve. The article about German team 1956-1964 stands at Unified Team of Germany, hence categories use "United", e.g. Category:Olympic competitors for the United Team of Germany. We should use only one form. Which form is then correct? - Darwinek (talk) 11:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The article had been at United Team of Germany for a long time until User:Matthead moved it about three months ago with "per IOC website" in the edit summary. However, the IOC website is inconsistent; medal tables for 1956, 1960, and 1964 all say "United Team of Germany", but team results in the medal database show "Unified Team of Germany". It is unclear which is more "correct", but I think we should certainly be consistent! However, why do we need a distinct category for those three Olympiads; why not just use Category:Olympic competitors for Germany? I don't see the benefit in having the Unified/United category. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Archival

I'm not a member of this project, but you guys really need to archive this page. It's like 456 kb. You can do it manually, or I believe that MiszaBotIII can archive it automatically. Thanks, Genius101 T. C. 13:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. I've set it to 15 days, means all sections with posts older than 15 days are automatically archived by bot. - Darwinek (talk) 13:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Okay, thanks a lot. It was getting hard to read. Genius101 T. C. 14:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Hoorah, 71 kb. Much better. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 12:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Peer Review of Olympic Games Article

I've listed the Olympic Games article at WP:Peer Review. If there is anyone who could kindly take a look at the article and provide a critique it will only help make it better. Thanks! H1nkles (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm probably not the best on things like MoS issues but i'll certainly read through and see what I can spot for you. Basement12 (T.C) 16:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Help needed with identifying Australian Olympians

Gallery at commons Thanks, YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Infobox questions

I raised a question at Template talk:Infobox Olympic event, but probably it's not on everybody's watchlist, so I'm trying here instead: When using the nations parameter, should we treat every IOC code as one nation, even those that don't represent an NOC (EUN and IOP in 1992, IOA in 2000)? Also, would it be a good idea to abbreviate the very long country names? The infoboxes at Shooting at the 1992 Summer Olympics - Women's 10 metre air pistol and Shooting at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's double trap, for instance, are line-broken in all my browsers, and positively absurdly so in one (Opera 9, and it doesn't seem to depend on window width or anything). -- Jao (talk) 12:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Better to discuss topic here, indeed. I use FF and it's working fine for me... If the problem with breaks can be solved, I would support to have full names of the IOCs. And another question. Where shall we put the team members in the infobox and where only the countries? At rowing, we have individual names for 1,2,4 and 8 since it would be inconsistent otherwise. For basketball or football, I would think that only the IOC goes into the infobox. So, where shall we draw the line between those two options? --Tone 13:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Using FF or IE I don't have any problem, the boxes use {{FlagIOC}} so I have no idea how easy it would be to get it to abbreviate only some nations, Andrwsc would know more. Is the nation vs IOP etc really a problem, the boxes don't actually diaplay a nation heading or nation=? As far as team sports go I think 9 would be a sensible cutt off point as it allows for consistency in rowing (8 crew plus cox in largest events). Basement12 (T.C) 14:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
It does say "Competitors: 47 from 31 nations". -- Jao (talk) 16:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I suppose nation=IOC in that case. We've discussed that when we were standardizing the tables. Regarding the number of sportsmen, 9 seems a good compromise (probably covers all the events). --Tone 21:46, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Ah, sorry Jao I see what you mean now. I think for those few instances it makes sense to treat them as a single nation. I think going to the trouble of finding out which country someone in the unified team hails from would only result in confusion if fewer flags are shown in the list of competitors than the number of nations displayed in the box. We always treat athletes for the Great Britain NOC as being from one nation even though technically they could be from 4 (England, Scotland, Wales, N Ireland) so in this instance I think nation has to be used to refer to any competing team/country/NOC. Basement12 (T.C) 22:02, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

To reply to the original questions, my intent was that the nations parameter referred to distinct NOCs, including "special" ones like IOP. As for the long names, that's one reason why I just used the codes instead of country names in the original version of the infobox, before there were comments here about using the full names. My solution for really long names is visible on Weightlifting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 53 kg. The goldNOC etc. parameters are left blank, and the country name is formatted using {{flagIOC}} as part of the gold etc. parameters, with line breaks after the competitor names. Is that an acceptable solution? An alternative might be to have a special parameter for the infobox (longnames=true perhaps?) and this type of formatting could be done automatically. I hope to get back to this infobox very soon, for extensions for the team sports as discussed before, but I've been ultra-busy in the real world lately. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

More GA nominees

I've currently nominated Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Paralympics and Palau at the 2008 Summer Olympics for good article reviews. If anyone has time to have a look over them and make any necessary changes or additions that I haven't thought of i'd appreciated it. Cheers Basement12 (T.C) 00:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD 2008 Summer Paralympics medal table (with respect to population)

I have AfDed the above article, its nothing but original research and is additionally completely unsourced. The precedent has been set for deleting such pages by numerous similar Olympic articles but any further comment from project mebers would be welcome, the debate can be found here. Thanks Basement12 (T.C) 11:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Header

Shouldn't you guys change the header? Remove Beijing? 'Cause it's over? Thanks, Genius101 Guestbook 21:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That will probably not be removed until another host city is selected by the IOC. Currently, only the hosts of the three next Games have been announced. The host of the 2016 Olympics will be choosen in October 2009--so it will be awhile before it's changed. Cheers-Cbradshaw (talk) 22:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Flags

The flag used for Canada at the 1912 Summer Olympics is not the flag Canada used at the opening ceremony in 1912. Please see the image added to the article. Also you can see in the background the team of Australasia and they have also not used the flag shown in the article Australasia at the 1912 Summer Olympics? Anybody knows more? Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 23:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Photo straw poll on Olympics

User_talk:YellowMonkey#Straw_poll_for_selecting_photos_of_Australia_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics

I went to an Olympics welcome home parade in Australia and took a lot of photos. I took multiple photos of the same people and so I created a poll so that anyone can vote on which photo they think is the best. YellowMonkey (click here to choose Australia's next top model) 03:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

AfD notification: 2006 Winter Olympics highlights

AfD discussion on 2006 Winter Olympics highlights is underway, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 Winter Olympics highlights (2nd nomination). -- Jao (talk) 13:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Now, we also have Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chronological summary of the 2008 Summer Olympics. -- Jao (talk) 11:29, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

TfD Notice on {{Deaflympic Games}}

Template:Deaflympic Games has been nominated for deletion (because the linked to articles disappeared - no longer are articles) 70.51.10.188 (talk) 07:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

references in the 1896 olympics

in some articles of the sports at the 1896 olympics there are some references of a digital document who can be read in the site

http://www.aafla.org/6oic/OfficialReports/1896/1896.pdf

Although the site who host that document was created for the 1984 olympics, the document itself has some errors since by reading the info from the IOC site one can see that the 1896 olympics took place between

Opening date: 06 April 1896

Closing date: 15 April 1896

and in that document stated as reference (which has many good information, no doubt about it) the first day of that olympics was on 25th march 1896, something surely are not right. Can that reference continue on the site although has wrong info? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bproof (talk • contribs) 19:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but April 6, 1896 is March 25, 1896. At least, when the former is in the Gregorian calendar and the latter is in the Julian calendar. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 22:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


many thanks for that useful info, Jonel ;)Bproof (talk) 22:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Yip Pin Xiu

I wrote an article about Singaporean Paralympic swimmer Yip Pin Xiu. The article is currently on peer review in preparation for a GA nomination. Members of this WikiProject are invited to review the article. Any and all feedback is welcome. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 11:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Big bunch of pictures

Some of you may already be aware of this but a huge set of photographs have been added to Commons after an agreement with the German federal archive. In particular, there are dozens of pictures of German olympians now available. Pichpich (talk) 15:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Women's Olympic Games

Is there an article for the Women's Olympic Games/Les Jeux Olympiques Feminines ? (The competing setup from before the Olympics allowed women to compete, and up until it's final event in 1937) 76.66.195.159 (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to switch the "changes in standings" sections in the medal count articles to tables

Talk:2008 Summer Olympics medal table#Proposal to switch the "changes in medal standings" section to a table format

If people agree (and once the kinks are worked out), I'm going to add this to the other medal table articles. As this is a change that will affect several FLs, I figured I should give the project a heads up. Please try to keep the discussion in one place (preferably the 2008 medal table page). -- Scorpion0422 01:26, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Norway at the Olympics medal counts

Is there anyone out there who can readily check the medal counts in Norway at the Olympics? The total medals for summer games do not match the total medals for summer events. (Same for winter.) The additions for Beijing appear to correct, but the numbers were wrong since at least the October 2007 revision. Thanks. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

A spot check or about 10 other countries shows similar problems with the United States at the Olympics, Russia at the Olympics, Sweden at the Olympics, Finland at the Olympics, and France at the Olympics medal counts (France needs a simple update to the event tables for Beijing). I'd be willing to take on the task of reviewing all of the tables, if someone could direct me to a consolidated source that I can query, search and filter. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:51, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Russia is correct. They won 109 gold medals in Summer Games and 33 gold medals in Winter Games. But the won "only" 108 gold medals in summer sports, but 34 gold medals in winter sports. This is because figure skating (a winter sport) was part of the Summer Games in 1908. So this medal is counted for Summer Games but for winter sports. I think this needs a footnote?
Norway is also correct. The same case, but in 1920. Norway won one silver and two bronze medals in fugurs skating. Footnote?
Sweden is correct. The same case, but in 1908 and 1920. Sweden won one gold, one silver, and one bronze in 1908 and in 1920 two gold and one silver. Footnote?
I checked these three, I hope this helps? Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 09:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Try this as a source, it's what I used when checking the counts forGreat Britain. Alternatively you could trawl through the official olympic reports. Hope those help. Basement12 (T.C) 12:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Thank you both. After taking into account 1908 and 1920 figure skating and 1920 ice hockey, the numbers make sense now. I've also added a few footnotes where appropriate. -- Tcncv (talk) 17:35, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

2000 vacant athletic gold medals

Does anyone know if a decision was ever made on the redistribution of medals listed as vacant in Athletics at the 2000 Summer Olympics? That page and the 2000 Summer Olympics medal table page show Sri Lanka as having received a bronze medal. But the Sri Lanka at the 2000 Summer Olympics and the Sri Lanka at the Olympics pages indicate silver. Also, the Nigeria at the 2000 Summer Olympics page shows gold for the men's 4x400m, but Athletics at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's 4 x 400 metre relay shows silver. Thanks. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:18, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

It appears that the few edits that promoted the other medals in these events were likely made by well-meaning anonymous users who had formed premature conclusions. I can find no indications that any of these medals have been redistributed. I have reversed those changes. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

FYI - I added Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1996-2002 data to the Yugoslavia at the Olympics page. The corresponding Yugoslavia at the xxxx yyyy Olympics pages already linked back to this page via the "summary" link, and the All-time Olympic Games medal table includes these games in the Yugoslavia medal totals. All of these pages are associated with the YUG NOC code. If anyone knows of a reason not to do this, please let me know. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:01, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

It has been called to my attention that the Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics article covers those years for the YUG NOC code. The changes have been reversed. -- Tcncv (talk) 03:45, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
I took a further look in the archives and found this discussion regarding the treatment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1996 to 2002 games. As an apparent follow-up, users Andrwsc and Imbris updated the Yugoslavia at the Olympics and Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics articles to migrate the 1996 to 2002 Yugoslavia (YUG) Country/NOC medals to the Serbia and Montenegro (SCG) Country/NOC article. However, on 2 September, an attempt to make an equivalent change to the All-time Olympic Games medal table was reverted.
Now the numbers are not consistent across pages. The All-time article shows 94 total medals for Yugoslavia (YUG) links to an article that only shows 87. That same article shows 2 medals for Serbia and Montenegro (SCG), but links to an article that shows 12.
Should this be left this way? Should the All-time Olympic Games medal table be updated to match the YUG and SCG articles (which I believe would make them inconsistent with the IOC database)? Is there another option? I like consistency, but this appears to be a case where we've deviated from following the IOC lead in favor of geo-political categorizations. I guess part of the question is: Are these NOC pages or are these country pages?
It appears that either noone has an opinion, or nobody wants to reopen an contentious issue. So I'll leave the status quo unchanged. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:48, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
As a side issue, if we leave the NOC/country pages as they are, I'd recommend that the Yugoslavia at the 1996-Summer/1998-Winter/2000-Summer/2002-Winter Olympics articles be updated so that the infobox "summary" links will bring up the Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics article. Any objections? -- Tcncv (talk) 06:56, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm still looking for feedback on the changes I recommended above. Lacking any other input, I'm inclined to go ahead with the change. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:48, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
In any case, the articles should not contradict one another. What I see now is that Yugoslavia is listed until 1992 and coverage of both FRY and SCG are at Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics. This is reasonable. Maybe a footnote comment that IOC lists a bit different is in place. --Tone 16:06, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Per discussion, I have updated the Yugoslavia at the 1996-Summer/1998-Winter/2000-Summer/2002-Winter Olympics articles so that the infobox "summary" links will bring up the Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics article. I also updated templates: {{subst:Infobox Olympics Yugoslavia}} and {{subst:Infobox Country Olympics}} to implement a new "altsummarypage" parameter in support of these changes. -- Tcncv (talk) 02:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Olympic Games Article Critique Request

Hello, after a brief hiatus I have resumed my editing of the Olympic Games article. I have tried to incorporate many of the suggestions put forth by the community. Thank yous go to User:Basement12, User:Jonel and User:Andrwsc for their help to get it to where it currently stands. At this point I am seeking a final review of the article before posting it for FA consideration. I'm still relatively new to this and I would sincerely appreciate a seasoned editor's review. The community has listed this A class article as a top priority and I very much would like to get this back to Featured Article status. Your help would be fantastic. Thanks! H1nkles (talk) 21:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments
  • Overall it is very good. It is well-referenced, though for an article of this length there could definitely be more.
  • Rostrum needs to be disambiguated or replaced.
  • Done
  • I have already made some edits correcting phrasing, punctuation, and other details. A dash is not the same as a hyphen so &ndash does not need to be used for a hyphen, and &nbsp is not needed in every instance of a number (WP:MOS).
  • The information about hockey and figure skating previously being in the summer olympics is repeated in the Sports section.
  • Done
  • I also suggest that you clear out some of the excess external links.
  • Some more individual statements could use references, although it is overall very well referenced, and you have done a very good job using summary style. You may want to take the article to WP:PR as well. Thanks for your great work and good luck at FAC! Reywas92Talk 23:16, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much for your review. The hard dash/hyphon issue has been confusing for me, I appreciate you clearing some of that up. I will look into removing duplicative information and clearing out some superfluous external links. Thanks again!!! H1nkles (talk) 17:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Please participate in Yip Pin Xiu's peer review

Greetings, members of this WikiProject! I know you guys are interested in improving articles about the Olympics. But what about the Paralympics? Yip Pin Xiu won Singapore's first Paralympic gold medal (and a silver) and set two world records at the 2008 Summer Paralympics. Yet her Wikipedia biography was speedy deleted by Xaosflux. Systemic bias? Discrimination against the disabled? What a shame! Can you stomach that? I could not. So I wrote a high-quality article about her. I believe it nearly meets GA standards and have filed a PR to help get it there. If you care about Wikipedia, about the Paralympics and about fighting discrimination (against the disabled), please give the article a thorough review! --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

List of Olympic medalists in alpine skiing

This is an article that I just randomly started working on, and I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. I would like a better lead image, but I couldn't find anything that was appropriate. I'm hoping to take it to FLC, but I wanted to get some comments from the project first. -- Scorpion0422 05:34, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Look good overall. Nice job. I especially like what you did to the table of contents. I do have a few comments, several of which are simply opinions or preferences.
  • The word "contested" in the opening sentence seems awkward to me, but that may just be a usage that is not common in American English.
  • Suggest changing "The Winter Olympics were first held in 1924 and included..." to "The first Winter Olympics held in 1924 included...".
Done.
  • Suggest changing "...but the first alpine skiing events were held at..." to "...but the first alpine skiing events were not held until...".
Done.
  • I'm not entirely sure if sortability is necessary since there have been so few repeat winners and you can't sort by nation. Also, I don't think the {{flagIOCathlete}} uses the {{sortname}} option.
I hope you find these comments useful. Feel free to ignore any suggestions that you disagree with. -- Tcncv (talk) 18:48, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look. -- Scorpion0422 22:09, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
The other lists of Olympic medalists by sport use {{flagIOCathlete}}. I think that in these lists, the doubling of the number of rows caused by {{flagIOCmedalist}} would be too large a trade-off for the increased clarity. Agree with the other points, although the "first Winter Olympics held in 1924 included" would probably need commas: "first Winter Olympics, held in 1924, included", to avoid the (unlikely) misinterpretation. -- Jao (talk) 21:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


Question What does everyone think of a format like this, that way you could sort by nation:

Games Gold Nation Silver Nation Bronze Nation
1948 St. Moritz Henri Oreiller  France Franz Gabl  Austria Karl Molitor
Rolf Olinger 		 Switzerland
 Switzerland
1952 Oslo Zeno Colò  Italy Othmar Schneider  Austria Christian Pravda  Austria
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Toni Sailer  Austria Raymond Fellay  Switzerland Anderl Molterer  Austria
1960 Squaw Valley Jean Vuarnet  France Hans-Peter Lanig  United Team of Germany Guy Périllat  France
1964 Innsbruck Egon Zimmermann  Austria Léo Lacroix  France Wolfgang Bartels  United Team of Germany
1968 Grenoble Jean-Claude Killy  France Guy Périllat  France Jean-Daniel Dätwyler  Switzerland
1972 Sapporo Bernhard Russi  Switzerland Roland Collombin  Switzerland Heinrich Messner  Austria
1976 Innsbruck Franz Klammer  Austria Bernhard Russi  Switzerland Herbert Plank  Italy
1980 Lake Placid Leonhard Stock  Austria Peter Wirnsberger  Austria Steve Podborski  Canada
1984 Sarajevo Bill Johnson  United States Peter Müller  Switzerland Anton Steiner  Austria
1988 Calgary Pirmin Zurbriggen  Switzerland Peter Müller  Switzerland Franck Piccard  France
1992 Albertville Patrick Ortlieb  Austria Franck Piccard  France Günther Mader  Austria
1994 Lillehammer Tommy Moe  United States Kjetil André Aamodt  Norway Ed Podivinsky  Canada
1998 Nagano Jean-Luc Crétier  France Lasse Kjus  Norway Hannes Trinkl  Austria
2002 Salt Lake City Fritz Strobl  Austria Lasse Kjus  Norway Stephan Eberharter  Austria
2006 Turin Antoine Dénériaz  France Michael Walchhofer  Austria Bruno Kernen  Switzerland
Comments
  • No, actually this is one of the few cases I don't think sorting is necessary. Since everything is already split up between discipline and gender there are only sixteen or fewer rows per table; I don't see the need to add more columns just for the countries when there are so few rows. Anyway, the ties would screw it up.
  • Everything should be linked to the specific event article, not to the "Alpine skiing at YEAR Winter Olympics". So the first cell of the first table should link to Alpine skiing at the 1948 Winter Olympics - Men's downhill instead of simply Alpine skiing at the 1948 Winter Olympics. That shouldn't be too hard to fix - Just add " - Men's downhill" or the relevant to each cell in the table.
    • I'll link what I can, but you have to remember that very few of the specific events have pages at the moment. -- Scorpion0422 00:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
      • It might be wise to link to the event specific articles anyway, and then add redirects to the more general articles where needed.
        • Most of them do, but those that don't can link to the section. Reywas92Talk 01:40, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
  • The ties in the Medals by nation table need to be changed to "17=" for all rows so it can be sorted.
    • Okily dokily. -- Scorpion0422 00:15, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
    • Overall it is an excellent list with an informative lead and I hope to see more like it coming soon! Reywas92Talk 23:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Now that I look at the updated table, it does look kind of busy. I have no real objections to using {{flagIOCathlete}} for simplicity and consistency. I could go either way. I like that you took the time to use of {{sortname}}. By the way, I think you can also use sortname with {{flagIOCathlete}}, {{flagIOCmedalist}}, and other templates – just replace the "[[firstname lastname]]" "{{sortname|firstname|lastname}}" where needed. As for sorting and rowspan, I was referring to the Medals by nation table. The current wikibits javascript that does the table sorting doesn't recognize rowspan or colspan, and it doesn't adjust for them when looking up columns values to be sorted or to reformat the table after sorting. (This is on the wish list to be implemented one day, but not today.) -- Tcncv (talk) 00:30, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Another experiment What does everyone think of combining all 5 events into one table and having one for men and one for women. Alternatively, the current format could be used without the seperate nation column. Example:

Games Event Gold Nation Silver Nation Bronze Nation
1948 St. Moritz Downhill Henri Oreiller  France Franz Gabl  Austria Karl Molitor
Rolf Olinger 		 Switzerland
 Switzerland
1952 Oslo Downhill Zeno Colò  Italy Othmar Schneider  Austria Christian Pravda  Austria
1948 St. Moritz Slalom Edy Reinalter  Switzerland James Couttet  France Henri Oreiller  France
1952 Oslo Slalom Othmar Schneider  Austria Stein Eriksen  Norway Guttorm Berge  Norway
1952 Oslo Giant slalom Stein Eriksen  Norway Christian Pravda  Austria Toni Spiess  Austria
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Giant slalom Toni Sailer  Austria Anderl Molterer  Austria Walter Schuster  Austria
1988 Calgary Super G Franck Piccard  France Helmut Mayer  Austria Lars-Börje Eriksson  Sweden
1992 Albertville Super G Kjetil André Aamodt  Norway Marc Girardelli  Luxembourg Jan Einar Thorsen  Norway
1936 Garmisch-
Partenkirchen 		Combined Franz Pfnür  Germany Gustav Lantschner  Germany Emile Allais  France
1948 St. Moritz Combined Henri Oreiller  France Karl Molitor  Switzerland James Couttet  France

OR

Games Event Gold Silver Bronze
1948 St. Moritz Downhill  Henri Oreiller (FRA)  Franz Gabl (AUT)  Karl Molitor (SUI)
 Rolf Olinger (SUI)
1952 Oslo Downhill  Zeno Colò (ITA)  Othmar Schneider (AUT)  Christian Pravda (AUT)
1948 St. Moritz Slalom  Edy Reinalter (SUI)  James Couttet (FRA)  Henri Oreiller (FRA)
1952 Oslo Slalom  Othmar Schneider (AUT)  Stein Eriksen (NOR)  Guttorm Berge (NOR)
1952 Oslo Giant slalom  Stein Eriksen (NOR)  Christian Pravda (AUT)  Toni Spiess (AUT)
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Giant slalom  Toni Sailer (AUT)  Anderl Molterer (AUT)  Walter Schuster (AUT)
1988 Calgary Super G  Franck Piccard (FRA)  Helmut Mayer (AUT)  Lars-Börje Eriksson (SWE)
1992 Albertville Super G  Kjetil André Aamodt (NOR)  Marc Girardelli (LUX)  Jan Einar Thorsen (NOR)
1936 Garmisch-
Partenkirchen 		Combined  Franz Pfnür (GER)  Gustav Lantschner (GER)  Emile Allais (FRA)
1948 St. Moritz Combined  Henri Oreiller (FRA)  Karl Molitor (SUI)  James Couttet (FRA)

No, I prefer how it is already. And the current form conforms most to other medalist articles. Having separate columns for countries is way too crowded. I'm not completely opposed to merging the tables, but I don't see it necessary at all. Combining them doesn't effectively show that not all disciplines were competed every year. And again, the four ties completely screw up the sorting. Reywas92Talk 01:40, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm neutral on both the separate or combined athlete-nations and the separate- or combined-event tables questions. Go with what you think best. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:42, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed enhancements to table sorting (rowspan/colspan support)

Hello all. I've been working quite a bit with tables and noticed that one of the features that has been on the table sorting todo list is "don't break on colspans/rowspans (bug 8028)". Well. I've taken on the task and have put together an enhanced test version that implements rowspan and colspan support. To summarize, the enhancements do the following.

  1. Before sorting, rowspans will be exploded, so that each row is self contained and can be moved without corrupting the table structure.
  2. During sorting, colspans are recognized and counted when retrieving column values, so that the proper sort value is retrieved from each row. Each column in a colspan range is treated as having the same value. Colspans are preserved – they are not split.
  3. After sorting, some cell ranges may be recombined under certain restrictive conditions (still being refined). Also, the class="autorowspan" option can be applied to column headers or the entire table to enable more aggressive rowspan combines, such as combining cells in the newly sorted column that were not originally combined.

To test the enhancements, you will need to add the statement importScript('User:Tcncv/sorttables.js'); to your User:Xxx/monobook.js file (or whatever skin you use). Some sample tables are located in User:Tcncv/Table Sort Demo. You can also test your own tables by copying them to a test page and changing the table class to "wikitable tcncv_sortable autorowspan". (The "autorowspan" can be left off the table class and added to the column header class attributes to fine tune the behavior.)

I will eventually submit this for format review by the code gurus in Bugzilla (which I expect to be a long and carefully reviewed process), but I'd like to get some preliminary informal feedback from you folks first. Please tell me what you think – especially if you would like to see the enhancements work a bit differently. Also, if you know of any tables with unusual formatting that could benefit from these enhancements, please let me know. I need some good examples..

Thank you. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:25, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

This is an amazing improvement for medal tables! I haven't done much testing with the more complex tables, but I really like what you're doing here. -- Jao (talk) 21:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Ditto! Tremendous work. From what I could tell I did not notice any glitch, so I strongly support and advocate the adoption of this script in WP. Congrats and thank you! Parutakupiu (talk) 22:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

YOU ARE AMAZING! I have been waiting for this for a long time and your work on it is excellent! Thank you and I hope this is implemented Wiki-wide soon! The only thing that could be objected to is automatic merging of cells, which you noted. Reywas92Talk 03:29, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators?

I was looking at WP:MILHIST and noticed that they have coordinators on their project. Why can't we? I say this because there are users who have preferences for certain sports and or different aspects of the Olympics, like the Olympic oath, the Olympic flame, nations at the Olympics (France at the Olympics), nations at specific Olympics (Canada at the 1972 Winter Olympics), sports at Olympics (Bobsleigh at the Winter Olympics), sports at specific Olympics (Canoeing at the 1996 Summer Olympics, athletes (Michael Phelps), venues (Lake Sagami), or a combonation of these. Considering the organization has improved, would it not be a good idea to start having people devoted to making certain as much of the Olympics is in as possible in Wikipedia? Thoughts on this? Chris (talk) 04:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

As you see this project defacto do not exist. I tried several times to ask simple questions but with no reply. Sorry Doma-w (talk) 23:35, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Personally I didn't reply because I thought it was not a worthwhile thing to do. The fact that "there are users who have preferences for certain sports and or different aspects of the Olympics" means that attention is already spread over all aspects, and there are quite frankly not that many people to co-ordinate. Basement12 (T.C) 00:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
It was just a thought. Chris (talk) 02:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
Chris, the idea was great, but you and me is not enough... Kind regards Doma-w (talk) 23:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Help!!

I'm in need of help. The Olympic Games article is up for FAC, one of the reviewers has asked for a page number for one of the references from David Young's The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival. It is reference 3 in the article. I do not have access to this book so I will need someone who has this book to provide the page number for reference 3. I will be greatly in your debt if someone from the community can help with this. H1nkles (talk) 20:44, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

My local library has it, so I can find the page number tomorrow evening if nobody else has it. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 21:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Thanks I'm in your debt. H1nkles (talk) 23:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Couldn't find a citation for that in Young. Might be in there, though, since the book was in-library use only and I didn't have the time to read the whole thing. I think the Burkert citation from the Pelops article is better in any case, as Young is far more about the 19th century revival attempts and touches on Pelops briefly if at all (Pelops isn't in the index). Burkert deals more directly with the ancient Games, with a full chapter delving into the role of Pelops in relation to the Games at Olympia. Availability on GoogleBooks for citation-checking doesn't hurt, either. I've gone ahead and changed the reference. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 04:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
That will work fine, I really appreciate your help on this! H1nkles (talk) 21:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Paralympics taskforce/project

Would anyone be infavour/against a paralympics taskforce/wikiproject? Would anyone be interested in jioning such a taskforce/project? Anyone know the steps needed to go through for a taskforce/project? Waacstats (talk) 14:59, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You propose your idea at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. After that, follow the steps on the page, and if you need any help, ask me - I set up this taskforce in December, and it covers Paralympic football amongst other things. I would happily join. DeMoN2009 19:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Proposed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals for anyone who is interested. Waacstats (talk) 15:55, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
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