Talk:2004 Summer Olympics/Archive 1

what does "they had a bid that was not only founded on their tradition" mean? Kingturtle 02:22, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Duplicates

This is only the fourth time a duplicate has been made in the city of a Summer Olympic game, after:

• 1924 was a duplicate of 1900 (Paris)
• 1948 was a duplicate of 1908 (London)
• 1984 was a duplicate of 1932 (Los Angeles)

Are there any general rules about duplicates?? 66.32.149.57 01:01, 26 Apr 2004

1948 London nobody else wanted to hold it; 1908 I don't think there was a selection process. Dunc_Harris|☺ 17:30, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, 1908 Rome was supposed to hold it but Mt Vesuvius blew off and it had to be moved. [1] Dunc_Harris|☺ 23:15, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Chinese Taipei my ########

No personal attacks. Thanks. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 19:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

no rules about duplicates, just common sense that the same city ( or country ) will host the games in a short span of years-bskel

Flags

The flags seem to be full-size versions shrunk down on display. The full size image still has top download. This is poor design and I feel sorry for the poor suckers with dial-up. Nelson Ricardo 20:20, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

No, actually the server thumbnails them and serves images that are the size specified. The flag thumbnails seem to be only about 0.5 KBs each. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 20:35, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Korea

Just wondering, isn't North and south Korea going as a united team under that blue flag? Colipon 01:06, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I believe that they are walking under one flag for the opening ceremony to try and show unity, but are competing in the events under their individual country ie; North or South as all of the athletes and teams listed on the athens 2004 website show them under their respective flags.Scraggy4 01:44, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

United States team image

Isn't it a little POV to have a picture of the US team? I dont want to sound anti-American, but if we are going to have a photo of the Americans, then we need to have a photo of every team. Perhaps a better team would be the Greeks? Earl Andrew 21:10, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh nevermind, I should have read the caption. Actually, it still seems a bit odd. Earl Andrew 21:11, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but since the site is edited by a majority (or large part atleast) americans, this happens from time to time. It only means that editors interested in other things than america has to find a lot to write about to even it out.

I don't worry too much. I took out another statement though, that it was Hitler who personally established the torch relay tradition; I'm happy if we spare ourselves this blatant POV-pushing. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 21:23, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I added it because of the significance of the audience reaction they received when they came out. I guess if it seems NPOV still, anyone could remove it. --Gerald Farinas 21:24, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

From what I saw, *every* country received a reaction. All 202 countries or nonw, imho. --[[User:VampWillow|VampWillow]] 09:45, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think what Gerald was alluding to was the significant negative reaction the United States team received when it entered the stadium. A large chunk of the audience made a thumbs down gesture at the Americans; noted as an important development by NBC in its coverage of the opening ceremonies. Because of that unique event, the use of the American image with a caption that described that unique detail should be used in the article. --James Easton 17:49, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If Any team gets a photo, it should be the Greeks, since they are the hosts, and it won't be perceived as POV. Dunc_Harris|☺ 17:39, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Risk of terrorism

"Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the risk of a terrorist attack is much higher."

According to who, exactly? I find this statement controversial, and it should at least be attributed. --Sam Francis

To clarify, I don't think the risk of terrorist attack is very different after 11.09.2001, but the ability of people to imagine it happening is probably much higher as a consequence of that event. --Sam Francis

That's a good point. The odds really haven't changed so much, we've just become more aware that it can happen. The Games are probably more secure, in fact, because of the insane amount of money being expended on security. Sam, you posted that message literally less than a second before I was ready to post mine ;) --cookiecaper

Thought I might have interrupted someone's answer! Anyway, I think it should be changed to reflect the management's increased concern over security, signalled by increased budget for it, and possibly find out what reasons they have given for this expenditure, and whether or not it is specifically because of a perceived increase in the threat of terrorism, or perhaps because of the increased awareness and fear of terrorism, as we've both noted. --Sam Francis 18:55, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I guess we can add that the games happened without a terrorist event, now. (24/Aug)

Inconsistent medal count tables

Several pages have a table of medal counts. However, there are at least two different sort orders being used: sort by gold medals as in 2002 Winter Olympics, and sort by total medals as in this article. Of those two methods, I would have thought that sort by total medals is better for a table that lists all medals. You might even argue that total performance requires some form of weighting by points with 3 points for a gold, 2 for a silver and 1 for a bronze.

Finally, any ranking that does not account for population size is not very meaningful. It is misleading as a measure of national success, except to send out the message that countries with large populations are better than countries with small populations. Switzerland and Finland have few people, so will always be low on a medal total or gold total list. But they rank very highly on a population/medal table. It would be difficult to have accurate measures of population for countries all the way back to 1908. If the table cannot be sorted by population/medal, then perhaps it should simply be alphabetical.

Whilst people are debating that issue, I propose that the two current sort orders are reduced to one. I recommend that tables that are sorted by gold medals should be resorted by total medals.
Bobblewik 19:36, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

See also Talk:2004 Summer Olympics medal count. -- ke4roh 19:52, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Would it be better if the country's population (and possibly number of athletes) was included in another column of the table? Kind of like this:

2004 Summer Olympics medal count
Pos	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Population	Athletes
1	China, People's Republic of	4	1	1	6	1,286,975,468	416
2	United States of America	1	3	1	5	293,027,571	611
3	Australia	2	1	1	4	20,003,249	512
4	Russia		3	1	4	145,537,200	512

Just say yes and I'd be happy to do it. [[User:Supadawg|supadawg - talk - contribs]] 21:57, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be interesting to have the number of athletes participating listed in the table. As far as sorting, I think sorting by total medals, using whoever has the most golds to break a tie, and alphabetical listing where that still results in a tie works fine. Kairos 22:04, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The method the IOC uses, and which I feel we should use, is to sort the tables by number of gold medals, and have this rank number in a column on the left (entitled "rank by gold") and have the rank by total medals on the far right column (entitled "rank by total"). Have a look at the IOC medal tally page.

Individual Country Articles

Just as we have articles such as Sailing at the 2004 Summer Olympics could we have articles for each country - People's Republic of China at the 2004 Summer Olympics. I, for example, am interested in the kind of preperation this country has made, how much they have spent, their team members - any statements from the government (probably candidly) as to how much they would like, or expect to win. And, of course, a table for their total medals - what they got them in - better or worse than the last olympics? Where have they done the best? There is certainly enough information to fill such articles - but are there enough people to help, to make it viable? --80.225.59.28 10:43, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I just don't think there's enough people to make it work. We're already struggling to keep up with the event articles. It's Day 2, and I've already had to enlist outside help to keep the swimming relatively up to date, and I suspect other articles are getting behind somewhat already. Ambi 10:46, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we have undertaken quite a project - the number of articles is quite amazing. I am impressed with Wikipedia's coverage of the Olympics. Would anyone object if I were to start doing country articles? --80.225.59.28 10:49, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I can see this as a possible separate page linked from the main page but cannot think of a decent name for the page at the moment. I don't think that we would need a page for each country but just one page with a small write up for each country. More important is to try and get a small write up for each of the events as pages purely containing results do not always give the true impression of what happened in each particular event. Cycling at the 2004 Summer Olympics#Road Race men is a good example of a good write up which we should have for all events, the problem being that most of the time is required to keep the results up to date. Any write ups added now will make less work afterwards in having to find interesting details about each medal won.

No objection at all. I like the idea of country pages. I would be especially interested in seeing a list of who won the medals, in which discipline for each country. This could be under "Russia in the 2004 Summer Olympics" or something similar. Yardcock 15:14, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

For example see 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships, although far from perfect it is more interesting than just a list of results. I did this after the event but if I had done the write ups as I was watching the event I could have included more interesting details. Scraggy4 10:59, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Keeping an EU count of medals

What is the purpose of this? If the EU were to compete as one nation, they would have considerably fewer competitors in each event, as each nation is limited as to how many participants they may enter into an event. This is an invalid number. RickK 06:53, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Performance is not correlated to the number of competitors. Why chould a European medal be less valid than an American or Chinese one? First time I see somebody discussing a medal's validity on such a ground. --Pgreenfinch 07:06, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I have to agree with RickK on this - the validity of the medal is not being questioned, but rather, the comparison of a multinational entity to a single nation. For example, take a relay event; each NOC is only allowed to enter one team (I believe). At present, the EU can enter over 10 teams into a relay competition, whereas other countries can only enter one. As this "EU team" can get multiple medals when other teams can only get a maximum of one, an "EU medal count" simply isn't valid as demonstrating how an "EU team" would perform. If there's some other reason to show this on the page, that's fine, but without it, I'm leaning toward deleting the section. -- Mike J. 08:15, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm with RickK and Mike - I don't think it is relevant, and definitely not encyclopediac. I vote it should be removed -- Chuq 09:03, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Would not be your stance a pure (POV) declaring hard data as irrelevant, invalid and non encyclopedic? Are not there some hidden reason behind your proposed censorship? --Pgreenfinch 09:30, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In most legal systems the motive behind any argument is irrelevant. Whilst I too might not like the personal agendas that many expouse on these pages (particularly the Americentric ones), this should also be the approach in Wikipedia. The EU has no relevance in an Olympic context and for the reasons stated above (especially the distortion due to number of competitors) means that is a distorted and unhelpful set of statistics. Dainamo 09:46, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I see you try to be fair, but please can you explain what distorts those statistics and why should those data be kept secret? For example, what do you find distorted and unhelpful in the olympic qualification process that would make that all medals doesn't have the same statistical value? If it is objectively the case, it could make an interested chapter or article also, don't you think? Who starts it? --Pgreenfinch 10:12, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Btw, as the legal issue was raised, and although I am not a lawyer and I didn't have the courage to download and read the full olympic charter, [2], it seems that legally the medals are given to athletes and not to countries (foobviously if an athlete change its nationality he/she keeps its medal, and will not give it to somebody else in its previous country). It seems thus that the country medals count is just given for practicability and has nothing legally binding (well, to my knowledge, it doesn't even appear fully in the official olympic website, there is just an extract). If there is some specialist here, I hope that person will give information about that issue, if posible as a mention in the article. --Pgreenfinch 11:58, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The athletes paraded behind a specific flag. Likewise a specific flag is raised for the gold medalists. A Basque athlete can't ask for a Basque flag to be raised (the Spanish flag is raised), the same way that a Quebequi athlete can't ask for the flag of Quebec to be raised (the flag of Canada will be raised), the same that an EU athlete can't ask for the EU flag to be raised. Finally ofcourse there exist the sports where national teams participate. 4x100 for example. Or football. Or basketball. In that case what will you do if three EU teams get the three medals? If EU had participated as one team it could at most have only gotten *one* medal, therefore the statistics you would display would be heavily skewed. Aris Katsaris 12:09, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you read the previous talk comments the people who have been doing the majority of the work on the olympic pages have already managed to come to a concensus on how the medal tables without arguments. We could of course have tables for everything such as how many gold medallist have pet goldfish or how many ate a pizza the day they won the medal but the relevant details the majority of people would want to look at the the basic medal tables. If people would like to make variants on these I would suggest that they record the details separately and then create comparison tables once the games have finished so as to leave the main olympic pages uncluttered. What really needs to be done is actual write ups of the events that have already happened to make the articles more interesting.Scraggy4 12:17, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I understand that to reach a consensu were a hard work, The problem is that statistics given in the article are by "countries" not by "teams" if I read well. Thus, I ask that

• either the information I gave be put back in the article,
• or that the wording of the medal count in the article be changed (from countries to teams ), as it creates a confusion, making believe that medals are given to countries, which, I admit, would be far from the universalistic spirit of the olympic games.

As relates to the "three medals" objection, when teams sports are involved, I would agree that only the highest one be kept in the EU statistics, in the comparison tables to be made after the game, as I still think that to inform about EU performance be relevant --Pgreenfinch 12:30, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As you appear to obsessed by the EU requiring a table why don't you just create yourself a new page away from the main olympic pages and add all the little Eu facts onto it. To be NPOV you should then really create articles on all of the continents or trade groups or countries beginning with the letter A or countries that have national holidays on April 6 or whatever you think is neccessary. I can't see why you would want a table for the EU if you were comparing continents then I could possibly understand by why would you want comparison on different trading groups.?Scraggy4 13:58, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You just made a small mistake, Europe is a continent, Nafta is a trade group, but the EU is something else. For example, European Union is written on my passport cover, and every 5 years (as it was the case a couple of months ago, all European citizens elect their European parliament. --Pgreenfinch 14:35, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I should note that a skewed medal count is also present in some individual sports (e.g., any individual swimming event, and to a limited extent, the triathlon), where any one NOC (National Olympic Committee) can only send 2 competitors - this still allows for three medals to be awarded to competitors from EU nations, when an EU team could not have won as many had it competed as one NOC. And of course, the idea that medals are given to individuals, not countries, is correct - but individuals are not allowed to compete under their own "personal flag" (i.e., they must be sponsored by a NOC); a medal count by NOC is a (somewhat) fair way to compare the performance of an NOC's training of and assistance to its athletes. I would not have any objection though, to changing "country" to "NOC" or something similar (as that is the more correct term). -- Mike J. 14:27, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There is now an article at European Union Olympic medals count for 2004, which I have listed on VfD for deletion. Oh, and Pgreenfinch once again tried to sneak the EU medal count into this article by linking to the article. I have reverted his addition and will continue to do so. Please note that my motives have NOTHING to do with being "anti-EU" or anything of the sort, but entirely with the fact that this medal count is bogus. I'd object if somebody tried to slip in a medal count by US state, as well, or any other meaningless grouping. RickK 07:11, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

Real numbers of medals are bogus? That must be newspeak... --Pgreenfinch 15:48, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure why this issue gets people so fired up. It is interesting to contrast this with the widespread assumption that ranking by country is somehow inherent in the Olympic games. Ranking by country was not originally conceived as part of the Olympics. A large part of the Olympic concept is about individual achievement. Medal are awarded to competitors, not to countries. The first few games had athletes associating themselves with multinational teams. The association with national teams came later. Country ranking is not even recognised by the IOC itself. This is what they say:

"The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not recognise global ranking per country; the medal tables are displayed for information only. ... However, for the first Olympic Games (until Antwerp in 1920), it is difficult to give the exact number of medals awarded to some countries, due to the fact that teams were composed of athletes from different countries."

The IOC recognises each NOC, but an NOC is not the same as 'country'. NOC teams do not even have mutually exclusive geographical catchments. Olympic team names do not coincide with UN or EU member state names. Olympic team entry requirements do not coincide with citizenship requirements of the countries either. An interesting case occured in 1980, the United Kingdom officially boycotted the Olympics but the British NOC sent a team of athletes anyway. So the question is: who were the athletes of that team representing? The team used the Olympic flag instead of the British flag.

Bobblewik 20:50, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Why not have a UK count? All you have to do is figure out which members of the Ireland team are from Northern Ireland and add their medals to the Great Britain count. And maybe the Cyprus medals should be added to the Greece total, but only if they aren't Turks, but add the Turks from Cyrpus to the Turkey total. And add the American Samoa and Puerto Rico medals to the United States total. But then, since Puerto Rico beat the US basketball team, you can't count that as a win or a loss since they're the same team. And what happens is one Northern Irish swimmer competes in a relay while the other three are from the Republic of Ireland? Do you award 1/4 of a medal to the UK? RickK 22:42, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

I think that your point is well made Rick. We can go from the ridiculous to the pit of nno return here! Dainamo 20:54, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Um.....just to clarify, the Great Britain Olympic team is the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland), and the Ireland team is the Republic of Ireland. The names used are for historical reasons, but the teams do represent the actual real sovereign states! sjorford 13:46, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Purpose of this tally

I believe it is perfectly valid for Europeans/EUians to be able to see how the region has fared as a whole. I've substantially edited the accompanying text on European Union Olympic medals count for 2004 though. A united EU team is patent nonsense. However, I have described the potential for co-operation amongst EU member states. I would like to put in a link to this page if it survives VfD. Please view the page again, comment, and/or vote here. Thanks. zoney ███ talk 01:08, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The point is, IMO, you will not get a realistic picture of performance of the EU as the competitors as a "group" will have more of a statistical chance of winning medals than other political "units" such as the USA and Russian Federation, who each as a single olympic country can only field as many athletes in a single event as each of the individual EU nations (yes I know not every EU nation will be in each event but there is more of a chance of there being more in one event). I am not saying you should not represent EU medals, I am just questioning its usefulness as a guage to measure success, as there will be no other comparible "group" Dainamo 20:54, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In fact, the picture of performance may be unrealistic in a different way. Schmidhuber has pointed out that the EU gold count actually should go up if the EU were a singular entity. Why? Because the EU could form great equipes for team sports and medleys, say, with Brits and Germans and French and Italians in the same team, and so they'd win many team competitions currently won by others. The downside is that the EU would get less silver and bronze, because in many sports each nation may send only one team per competition (there are exceptions though). EUmedals 17:04, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Individual Event Breakdown

Is there any reason that there are separate articles for Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Synchronized Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics, but there is only one article for Diving at the 2004 Summer Olympics? Shouldn't this also be broken out into Synchronized Diving at the 2004 Summer Olympics? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:12, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

When I originally set up all of the event pages I followed the list of events that somebody had already created on the main page. Which is why all equestrian events are also on the same page and some others too. There is obviously no problem with splitting articles, but personally I was just only going to split them if some pages became extraordinarily big. Cycling is another one where road and track cycling appear on the same page.Scraggy4 14:19, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK. I guess since the Diving events don't have the "heat" system and as many competitors as swimming, the page won't be as large. Either way, I'm going to make that article a redirect. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:53, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Need for articles specific on Nations

Is there really a need to have a separate article for each nation at these Olympics? I mean topics on Wikipedia should be useful and frequently viewed. I highly doubt that after these Olympics are over, many people are still going to check Albania at the 2004 Summer Olympics. I think this raises an issue probably already raised before: Wikipedia should not go on an editing frenzy of new articles of every current event, because these articles will most likely be ignored after the event is over. Any suggestions or commentary on this issue? [[User:Colipon|Colipon -- (Talk)]] 01:12, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some Albanians would like to have this page. They are as important as Americans. Helldjinn 14:25, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If we put in the hard work now getting our coverage up as the current event happens, then we won't have to do anything in future, and we will become a source of choice for information like this. People say "where the hell will I get the results for the gymnastics at those appalling olympics back in 2004" and someone will say "don't you have a copy of wikipedia on DVD?" and they'll say "oh yeah! i don't know why I didn't think to look in that. It's sure to be in there, they have everything!" Or something like that. - Mark 01:29, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's what I thought when I saw these articles being created - however the first one I looked at was Algeria at the 2004 Summer Olympics and I was quite impressed by the quality of the article, considering Algeria aren't exactly an olympic heavyweight.

I do suggest, however, that smaller countries that generally only send 5 or so people each games, have an article Countryname at the Summer Olympics and consolidate that countries olympic history into one article.

It would be absolutely fantastic to get detailed results from all Olympic Games into Wikipedia. I noticed some of the earlier ones don't even have medal tallys yet :-/ -- Chuq 01:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I personally find them useful and interesting. I would like to be able to have these for not only the current Olympiad, but also for prior ones. This would create a handy resource to view Olympic history and a place for people to look at historical comparisons when the next Olympiad rolls around. I saw the discussion above (Individual Country Articles section on this page) and got the impression that these pages were wanted but considered infeasible. Of course, this is a lot that I am doing, but as I said, I would like for there to be these pages when 2008 comes around and I want to see how each country has done previously. - Jonel 08:26, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

New idea: I totally agree with Chuq's idea of Countryname at the Summer Olympics. I do suggest, however, that all countries who have won less than 20 medals, say, are to be in this category. Another problem is, how will we find all the detailed results of previous Olympics? Or are we not going to keep the consistency and only have specific nation articles and full results for 2004? It'd we great if we can find answers to these questions. [[User:Colipon|Colipon -- (Talk)]] 16:29, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Its not difficult to find out all previous records they are all here. If someone puts them onto a spreadsheet they can then easily pull out specific countries. This will enable you to easily see who was Country n's first n medal winner in n sport etc or first female winner or male medallist. Once you find the names it makes it easier to research a particular interesting fact about a particular event.Scraggy4 16:59, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Glad to see you agree with me Colipon; I'll make another suggestion that all redlinked (non-existant) articles in this section be named this way - it won't take long for articles on the major countries to be filled out, and if they are not filled out, then all the more reason for just Countryname at the Summer Olympics, rather than 2004 Summer Olympics, etc. -- Chuq 01:47, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

splitting of volleyball page

The volleyball page had reached 36kb so I have split the men's and women's beach volleyball off into their own articles. I have used Template:VolleyballAt2004SummerOlympics to maintain consistency as it matches the one used for the swimming. I will move the indoor volleyball tomorrow unless someone beats me to it. This will now give space for a write up for each of the events. If anyone knows anybody in athens at the moment we could do with a few nice little photo's.Scraggy4 23:38, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The official Olympics website lists Beach Volleyball and Volleyball as two different sports. If it is split between beach and indoor, do we actually need to split men's and women's as well? It would be nice to use as few pages as necessary for each sport. - Jonel 00:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I did it this way so that it matched the format of Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics. As this will no doubt have to happen for some of the other events I felt that if all split pages for the olympics were divided the same way it would be easier for the reader to use as they will be faced by the same format for each event that may have to be split. I feel that consistency is more important than trying to save just a couple of article pages.Scraggy4 10:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pages for olympic competitors

This isn't specific to the 2004 games, but I thought I would post this question here as this page gets a lot of edits these days, and more people are likely to see it - plus it gets traffic off the village pump page.

I noticed a page for a silver medallist has appeared on VFD. By the looks of it, this is likely to stay. But what do people think of the idea that every Olympic athlete (medal winner or not) should have a wiki article? All athletes? Individual (non-team sports) athletes only? Including or not including members of relay teams?

Is it Ok for them to have empty links? Stubs? A name, birthdate, location and events entered is still better than none at all. I also noted all links on the "sub-articles" (Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics, etc) have been wiki'ed in advance.

I think this should be discussed before I wikilink every name listed at Australia at the 2004 Summer Olympics :) -- Chuq 06:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would say that Olympic competition is sufficient to make someone eligible for an article. I would say adding information about every single athlete would be low on the priority list, and it is likely that only successful Olympians will actually get articles, but if someone makes an article about an Olympian, it should be kept. (I like the wikilinked names for the different color from standard text, even if no article is even created, anyway). - Jonel 08:03, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We should include every athlete that we can provide content for. For example, Michael Phelps. I think during the olympics, we should wikify all athlete's names, and chances are high that some of them gets articles written. With the end of the games, the chance dimishes rapidly and we should delink most, I think.[[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 13:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I say include every single Olympic athlete, period. The criteria for picking one over another is too vague; Only medal winners? Only up to 4th place? Only horrendous losers? And to get to the Olympics, they're likely highly notable in their personal fields anyway. Do 'em wholesale. Now, I don't mean write them now, but certainly make a list of athelets and wikilink the names. Then we will get to them in time. And fight for them on VfD. --Golbez 15:44, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I advocate allowing an article if someone writes it by hand, but would discourage scrapeing every athelete from a database (a la Rambot) assuming such a thing is available. Pcb21| Pete 16:16, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I see no reason not to link them but they only need linking once from each event, there is no point linking competitors in the first round heats of an event then again in the second and again in the third etc. As the medal winners will be linked from that particular events medal table they don't relly need to be linked further on. In the prevailing months my aim is to try!!! and write rtcls for every competitors at the games that I can find information on. There are already dozens of baseball players with short stubby articles virtually nobody outside the U.S. has heard of so I see no reason not to write rtcls on other sportspeople many of whom are widely known in the other parts of the world. As Pete says above they should not just be copied and pasted from elsewhere but time given to try and research them so interesting can be written and if they already linked this will help readers find them.Scraggy4 16:41, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Countries

AFAK some "countries" competing in Olympics and listed here are really not "countries". Virgin islands, Portoriko, Guam, Micronesia FS, Hong Kong, Cayman islands, British virgin islands come to my mind. There are also some others for which one could discuss the issue :), however i think we should put a note somewhere on the page!

Every entity listed in our list has its own National Olympic Committee (NOC) and is recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a separate entity. They compete under their own flag and are identified officially as a member of that nation. "Nation" is probably a more accurate word to describe them; but there is no need to note sovereignty status on the Olympics page. - Jonel 19:26, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that the country list includes entries for the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Virgin Islands! Clearly one should go -- but I'm not sure which! --199.105.191.2 18:13, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oops. The U.S. Virgin Islands compete as Virgin Islands. Removed the erroenous one. - Jonel 19:28, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Games of the XXVIII Olympiad

These are the games of the XXVIII Olympiad. User:Patricknoddy User talk:Patricknoddy 17:22 August 19, 2004 (EDT)

Volleyball tables

Can one of you people that's any good with tables take a look at the Volleyball page? The tables there could do with some work. Ambi 00:26, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Court of Arbitration Decision

The court of arbitration has found in favour of the protest by the USA, French and Great Britain federations against the reinstatement of Bettina Hoy in the three day eventing. Giving GBR another gold meal. Yippeeeee.Scraggy4 14:07, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

POV: This must be by far the dumbest decision in Olympic Games history. The German team was clearly the best team in the competition. This 'mistake' did not give them any advantage whatsoever. But in the end, we lost two medals due to a misunderstanding between athlete and grounds crew. What a shame. Yardcock 22:16, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

New category for athletes

I have created a new category, Category:Athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and I've started to add the category tag to the athletes' articles. If you start an article for an athlete competing in the 2004 Games, please add the category tag. Thanks!  :-) --bdesham 17:25, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

As I have mentioned at Category talk:Athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics I feel the name of this category is somewhat misleading and suggest it be renamed. something like Olympians at the 2004 Summer Olympics would be a better to show that it covers all competitors not just those taking part in athletics. Scraggy4 22:29, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Started placing people in the Olympians at the 2004 Summer Olympics category. - Jonel 23:37, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, I added a notice to Category:Athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics asking people to use that category for athletics participants only. I'm going to start categorizing some of the people in that category now. --bdesham 04:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm categorizing, and have a question... should synchronized swimmers be placed in Category:Swimmers at the 2004 Summer Olympics? or should they get their own category? --bdesham 05:02, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not so sure this category is useful, at least in the long term. It's very long, and what about those who've competed at three or four olympics? Category:Olympians, broken down into Category:Olympic swimmers and such would seem to make more sense to me. Ambi 10:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If athletes have competed in more than one Olympics, then they can be placed into more than one category, as applicable. That's the beauty of the category system: articles can be placed into as many categories as are relevant. --bdesham 16:27, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Sports Olympics

Just thought I would point out Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sports_Olympics - for the huge amount of people editing Olympics articles, the WikiProject seems quite deserted. I have made a page Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sports_Olympics/Articles which can be used to keep track of the huge amount of articles related to this games, as well as games of the past. Due to it being a newly created sub-page it probably isn't going to show up on peoples watchlists so I thought I would spam it here :) -- Chuq 13:08, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Useful job, imo. --Pgreenfinch 13:25, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Pictograms = copyvio?

As has been pointed out (to no response) on a few of the sport talk pages (e.g. Talk:Boxing at the 2004 Summer Olympics), the pictograms used on a number of the sport pages are copyrighted by the Athens Organizing Committee. I personally don't think these images fall under the fair use exception; but I possess little lawyerosity, so I'm just bringing it up here. -- Mike J. 00:20, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's my personal opinion that these images should go - they are in no means an example of fair use - they're not a logo like the olypic rings that we can't avoid using - we're just stealing someone else's graphics! Tompagenet 13:45, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would agree. Since this problem would likely repeat itself at future Games, perhaps we could create a set of our own pictograms for all Olympic sports, and release them under GFDL? Matthewmayer 10:11, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Names of athletes participating in event x?

I'm creating the categories for the athletes, and I'm unsure what some of them should be called. This is a list of the ones I'm unsure of. Please correct this it if it's wrong. Thanks!

• Canoeing - canoers
• Equestrian - ?
• Judo - judokas
• Shooting - ?
• Taekwondo - ?

Finally, the games are over...

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Recent changes

User 66.167.252.134 made so many liberal edits and removes from the text, and most of them are to me not improvements. Can someone check it out? Mandel 12:19, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Contacting Athens OC for pic use?

I was going to contact the Athens PR staff to request their approval for use of the media center's images. What exactly should I ask them for, just an "okay", or a license text, or what? [3] -- user:zanimum

Medals/Top 8

For the pages on the individual sports (i.e., Archery at the 2004 Summer Olympics), do we want the table to be of medals by country or top 8 placings by country? - Jonel 06:51, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. I was granted permission to make these tables after the games were completed, to avoid confusion. If it's an aesthetics thing, why dont we sugges ways to improve the tables? Earl Andrew 06:59, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Where was this discussed? I don't remember that. - Jonel 17:46, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[Quote from the medals talk page] Thanks for the reply Andrew, I did notice on the athletics for example that space had been made for upto eigth place. I don't think that this will harm the medal tables reverting to the standard usage as these extra places would not be taken into consideration in the ranking normally. I think that the best idea would be to revert to IOC standards at the end of today when all results have been completed and checked, then possibly create a separate page(linked from the main medal table) rating all countries by the top eight finishes as I agree this would make interesting details. I presume you will rank upto eigth place using the system that the IAAF use in the World and continental cups ie; 8 points for 1st down to 1 point for eigth. I had already decided, as there was lack of suggestions as to why the currebt system is as is, to revert all the tables at the end of the today. If you feel like helping I am more than willing to split the sports up between us for speed, but I'll probably be awake most of the night to do it, as I have broken my ankle and am finding it hard to sleep at the moment. Scraggy4 21:43, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC) [/quote]

I believe this may have been it. Earl Andrew 18:32, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Athena and Phevos

Can we have some second opinions on the copyright status of the photos at Athena and Phevos - see talk:Athena and Phevos and User talk:Matthewmayer

I really don't know if anything could be done anymore. According to the official site, even the '04 Olympics logo is protected by strong copyrights, and it's still on this article's page. Nobody bothered removing it, so I wonder if anyone even knows. – Mackeriv 13:53, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cleanup...

There are a lot of pictures. I moved some of them around a bit, but I think it would be sensible to keep some of them on that page and have the others at a 'Images of the 2004 Summer Olympics' page. Thelb4 20:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

We don't generally have image pages, as they would not be encyclopedia articles - putting them on Wikimedia Commons would be more useful. Ambi 14:46, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

All I'm saying is if someone with a bit more knowledge than me put them somewhere else, I think the page would look a lot tidier. Thelb4 15:48, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Improvement

I think with new donations for Wikipedia we can help update the other Olympic Games. The official Olympic site has the medal winners since the beginning of the games so we can use that site for updating the other articles. tdwuhs

The way to find that is to go to here, click on the particular games you want, and in the right-hand column, a little way down, it will say:

.........
OLYMPIC RESULTS
Medals by country

Click on that link, and a medal table will appear. Thelb⁴ 21:49, 22 December 2005 (UTC)